Ohioans’ budget priorities and the State of the State

Hours after the governor’s State of the State address, Policy Matters Ohio Research Director Zach Schiller will deliver testimony to the House Finance Committee on House Bill 96, the biennial state budget. Prepared well in advance of the governor’s speech, the testimony advocates for a litany of policy actions that would strengthen Ohio’s economy, bolster the budget, and improve the lives of working and low-income Ohioans, children, families, and communities.

“If there is a single message we’d like to deliver today, it’s this: Don’t cut the personal income tax,” Schiller says. “The General Assembly has tried that for the last 20 years, and it hasn’t worked.”

The testimony describes how two decades of tax cuts have harmed working and low-income Ohioans, blown a hole in the state budget, and failed to deliver on promises of broader, “trickle-down” benefits, redounding instead to the very wealthiest households.

The testimony also describes how legislators can begin living up to the responsibilities of state government, by providing an equitable system of public education for Ohio’s children, supporting college students as they pursue higher education, addressing the crisis in childcare, rejecting Medicaid cuts, and creating functional Unemployment Compensation and public transportation systems.

Policy Matters also provided a clear, evidence-based proposal for tax policies to pay for these investments, detailed in our six-point tax platform released last month.

PMO research staff will be available to offer analysis and comment on whether and how these priorities are reflected in the governor’s State of the State address, and how the ongoing state budget negotiations can do right by all Ohioans.