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Conservative, liberal representatives offer budget solutions

Rep. Mike Foley, D-Cleveland

Rep. John Adams, R-Sidney

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By William Hershey, Staff Writer 8:05 PM Saturday, October 17, 2009

COLUMBUS — In the best of times, Rep. John Adams, a Sidney Republican, and Rep. Mike Foley, a Dayton native who’s now a Cleveland Democrat, wouldn’t be caught dead tilting at the same windmill.

Adams is a conservative who believes less government is good government.

Foley’s a liberal who doesn’t mind a targeted tax hike now and then.

In September, Ohio unemployment stood at 10. 1 percent, the sixth straight month more than one out of every 10 Ohioans has been looking for jobs.

The rate would be higher, but many Ohioans have given up looking for work and have dropped out of the labor force.

The high unemployment rate is the most painful symptom of the devastating recession that has led to declining tax revenues and the state budget stalemate.

Gov. Ted Strickland has proposed putting an $850 million bandage on a hole in the current two-year budget by postponing the final year of a five-year plan to cut personal income tax rates.

House Speaker Armond Budish, D-Beachwood, embraced Strickland’s plan on Friday, Oct. 16, on behalf of House Democrats and coupled it with a proposed 5 percent pay cut for legislators. Hearings are set to start Monday but even if the plan gets through the House there’s no guarantee it will be accepted by the Senate, controlled by Republicans.

Strickland has laid down a marker.

“My friends in the legislature in both houses have an obligation to either accept what I have suggested as the solution or they have an obligation to come up with their own realistic, achievable plan and I’m encouraging quick action,” Strickland declared last week.

Adams and Foley have alternatives to the Budish proposal.

Adams basically wants to blow up state government and put it back together again as a leaner operation.

Last February he introduced legislation to reduce the number of state agencies reporting to the governor from 24 to nine and in the process cut the state work force by 11,000. This ultimately would save about $1 billion a year, he said.

No hearings have been held.

Meanwhile, Foley last week, along with Rep. Robert Hagan, D-Youngstown, introduced legislation to hike income tax rates on the wealthy to bring in about $1.4 billion more over two years.

The plan would restore a 7.5 percent tax rate on income over $200,000. It also would create a “half millionaire tax” – a new tax rate of 8.5 percent on income over $500,000.

“We’ve got real revenue problems that are going to be hitting us in the state in two years time,” said Foley. “A progressive tax system is something we really need to be thinking about and pushing.”

Strickland doesn’t want anything to do with the Foley-Hagan plan.

“At this point in the national recession, the governor believes his proposal to freeze income tax rates at last year’s rate would be a better option to protect local school districts from devastating cuts,” Amanda Wurst, Strickland’s spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Apparently neither proposal meets Strickland’s “realistic” and “achievable” standard.

Of course, this is from a governor who, along with the legislature, considered it “realistic” and “achievable” to put slot machines at Ohio’s seven racetracks without a vote of the people.

The Supreme Court shot that down last month.

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