Things are a little clearer over at the Statehouse here in 2009, also A.D.
Ohio’s falling apart while Gov. Ted Strickland, House Democrats and Senate Republicans play tit for tat.
That’s not a new game; it’s played frequently for political advantage.
This time it revolves around the state budget.
All that’s at stake are the fates of school children, college students, prisons, the mentally ill and abused, needy kids, hungry and homeless folks, libraries and anything else that depends on tax dollars from the state.
The deadline for passing a two-year state budget was June 30 but Strickland and lawmakers couldn’t agree.
They entered the fiscal new year with a temporary seven-day budget. The House already has passed a second stop-gap spending plan that would carry things through July 14. The Senate probably will go along unless everybody agrees to a permanent budget first.
Meanwhile, most state programs – with the big exceptions of K-12 education, colleges, Medicaid and debt service – are getting by on 70 percent of what they got last year.
The stumbling state economy and plummeting tax revenues set the stage for this fiasco but it has human touches.
Strickland applied one of the first on June 19 when he abruptly unveiled a proposal to raise $933 million by putting video slot machines at Ohio’s seven racetracks. His plan lacked details.
The plan was a shocker because Strickland had been denouncing expanded gambling about as frequently as he bad-mouthed raising taxes. Committing the tax-raising sin contributed to Strickland’s re-election defeat back in 1994 when he was a U.S. House member.
Senate Republicans were aghast that Strickland — a Democrat by the way — would ask them to authorize video slots. Voters have rejected expanded gambling four times since 1990 and the senators didn’t want their fingerprints on that one. Let the voters decide, they said.
Except they’d be glad to appropriate the money if Strickland unilaterally gave the OK to slots. They said he could do that by expanding the Ohio Lottery.
Strickland said he didn’t have that authority. He wondered about an apparent change of heart by Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, and six other Republican senators, including Gary Cates of West Chester.
All had voted for legislation in 2007 that approved putting video horse racing machines at the seven tracks without a vote of the people. The horse racing machines and video slots are different, Harris and his colleagues said.
That difference had escaped Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina, who voted against the horse machines back in 2007. “If it looks like a slot machine, plays like a slot machine, it just might be a slot machine,” Faber said.
Harris called hearings to examine the legality and economic projections of Strickland’s slots plan.
House Speaker Armond Budish, D-Beachwood, called hearings to hear about all the drastic cuts that would occur without money from the slots.
Maybe everybody should get citharas and learn how to play together before Ohio burns.
Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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