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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > December > 07 > Entry
Editorial: Republican state senate changing the subject in budget crisis
The budget crisis in Columbus comes down to this: the Senate’s Republican leadership is trying to get something into the crisis-resolving legislation that has nothing to do with the crisis.
This is fairly odd behavior, particularly given that are other ways to get these items enacted.
And given that the state really does have to get the budget resolved this month or face dramatically new and worse circumstances.
There is some good news: The two political parties are not going in diametrically opposite directions. Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland has proposed suspending the last year of an ongoing, gradual cut in state income taxes. The leadership of the Republican senate is saying it will give him the five Republican votes he needs — if all Democrats stay in line —if he signs off on additional provisions relating to subsequent budgets. In other words, the Republicans are not proposing cuts in this budget.
The Republican add-on generating the most controversy is a plan for reforming the state’s regulations for awarding construction contracts. The state has antiquated rules that prevent it from dealing with one prime contractor. By all accounts, having to deal with “multiple prime” contractors increases costs by millions for major projects. Ohio State President Gordon Gee has been particularly vocal on the subject.
Gov. Strickland acknowledged the problem when he created a bipartisan commission to make recommendations. Those recommendations raised alarms in the legislature’s Black Caucus, the fear being that if smaller contractors are cut out, black-owned firms will suffer most.
But the Senate leadership wants to incorporate contracting reform into the budget. In response, Democrats say the plan hasn’t been through normal legislative processes, including public hearings. That’s a strong argument, because it’s a complex matter involving billions of dollars.
If reform is passed all of a sudden as a package, the public, the contractors and unions have every reason to wonder whether games are being played behind closed doors, whether ideas that couldn’t stand the light of day are being enacted.
Some say the proposal should have had hearings by now. But if the concern is that the legislature is stalling, the solution may be to win a guarantee from the governor and legislative leaders in both houses to take up the matter fully and quickly next year.
If the legislature does not pass the tax-cut suspension this month, it will not be able to apply the suspension to this year. Revenue will be forfeited. That will mess up everything, eliminating the least painful solution to the budget gap.
Also, failure to pass a budget this year could result in dramatic cuts in the schools. That’s partly because the existing budget shortfall results from a court ruling that cuts off money that was slated for the schools (from slot machines at racetracks).
And it’s partly because finding spending cuts elsewhere, on top of recent cuts, would be difficult and painful.
The governor is not playing games with the budget crisis. He has put forth a clean, commensensical solution that has been embraced even by the leading business organizations as the least painful available. The House has embraced it. The Senate needs to do so as well, and then move on, clearing next year for next year’s battles, not this year’s.
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