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Commentary: Dems avoid tax hike, but was it the right decision?

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By William Hershey, Staff Writer 11:23 PM Saturday, July 18, 2009

Attention, class!

The freeze is over. Tuition can go up at Ohio’s public colleges and universities -– 3.5 percent a year under the new state budget.

So here’s a free chance to audit TOP — Taxes and Ohio Politics.

Today’s topic: taxes and the Democrats.

We’ve got team teachers, both Democrats.

On the right, state Rep. Vern Sykes, D-Akron, House Finance Committee chairman.

On the left, Paul Leonard, 66, Dayton’s former “rock ’n roll” mayor.

Sykes, 57, probably has more academic degrees than anybody in the legislature.

There’s a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University, a master’s from Wright State, a second master’s from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in public administration and urban studies from the University of Akron and Cleveland State University.

The guy’s a scholar.

Leonard’s a former lieutenant governor and state legislator with a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University and a law degree from the Salmon P. Chase College of Law, now part of Northern Kentucky University. He’s no academic slouch.

Leonard has been teaching at Wright State and in the fall plans to join the University of Dayton’s political science department.

Prof. Sykes will go first.

He helped shepherd through the legislature the battered, bruised and — at least on paper — balanced state budget that Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland signed on Friday, July 17.

Personally, Sykes believed a tax increase was needed, preferably through the state income tax, with higher income Ohioans taking a bigger hit.

“More than ever, the safety net should be strong and viable,” said Sykes. “Because of this budget, there are a lot of holes in the safety net.”

Sykes, however, agreed with Strickland and House Speaker Armond Budish, D-Beachwood, that a tax hike was off the table.

“I think first of all it would be difficult to get a tax increase approved legislatively,” he said.

Even formally proposing a tax increase would backfire on Democrats, he said.

Sykes came to the legislature in 1983, the year Democrats pushed Democratic Gov. Dick Celeste’s “90 percent” income tax hike through the legislature without a single Republican vote.

Republicans banged Democrats over the head with that tax hike to gain control of the Senate in 1984. It took until 1994 for the GOP to take control of the House, but the 1983 tax hike helped, said Sykes.

Democrats didn’t regain the House until 2008. Voicing support for a tax increase would have doomed Democrats in competitive districts and maybe even put Republicans back in charge, said Sykes.

“The only thing Democrats would get out of it would be the credit for wanting to raise taxes,” he said.

Leonard, who has the luxury of not having to count votes, understands why Democrats did what they did, but doesn’t agree.

“What happened may have sacrificed political courage in order to retain power status in Columbus,” Leonard said.

He conceded that getting a tax hike through the legislature would have been tough, with Republicans firmly in control of the Senate, 20-12.

“The governor would have to be out on the hustings. He’d have to take his charts. He’d have to take his budget director,” Leonard said.

If legislators, even Senate Republicans, heard back from constituents that a tax increase was needed, they might have gone along, Leonard said.

“Just holding on to power and being a do-nothing legislature and a do-nothing governor will eventually catch up with you and you lose power,” he said.

The Democrats now in power hope that the economy improves and tax revenues increase before the do-nothing label takes hold.

Class dismissed.

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