We have previously released our calculations of the full, four-year impact of Gov. Kasich’s budget plan on districts, now we look at the Senate plan, adopted earlier this month and currently the subject of a House-Senate conference committee. The bill must be finalized and signed by the Governor before July 1.

Research Highlights

• In the Senate version of the budget, school districts get $532.7 million less than they received in 2010-2011
• Three in four — 436 in total — school districts will continue to have fewer resources than in 2011

View the list of districts, with 4-year impact of Kasich budgets.

Or see our complete spreadsheet showing changes to each individual funding stream since 2011.

And review our March analysis of cuts to district in the Governor’s original introduced budget.

Methodology

Innovation Ohio used the following revenue streams for comparison: State Aid, State Fiscal Stabilization Funds, Tangible Personal Property Tax Reimbursement for operational and non-operational costs, and Killowatt-Hour Reimbursement for operational and non-operational costs. The Ohio Department of Taxation had the State Aid and SFSF figures from FY10, and the TPP and KwH payments for FY10-FY11 and FY14-FY15. The FY11 State Aid and SFSF figures came from the Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s calculation from the previous budget cycle in 2011. The State Aid figures came from the Ohio Senate’s District-by-District simulations produced for its version of the budget.

The conference committee is preparing to meet today, Tuesday, to begin the process of reconciling the House and Senate versions of the budget.  After this process is completed the budget will head to Governor John Kasich’s desk where he will have the opportunity to line item veto any provisions he disagrees with.

As we have previously noted the Ohio Budget contains many provisions which negatively impact women.  These provisions would:

• Reprioritize family planning funds, essentially blocking funding for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood serves nearly 100,000 women in Ohio, providing cancer screening, birth control, STD treatment and prevention, pap tests and health information.
• Prevent funds from going to rape crisis centers that refer women to facilities or medical care providers who also provide abortions. (HB 108, a separate bill with these provisions ,was also voted on by the House and is receiving hearings in the Senate.)
• Prevent genetic counseling services funded by Ohio Department of Health from referring to entities that provide abortions except for cases of medical emergency.
• Prohibit abortion clinics from entering agreements with public hospitals or with doctors affiliated with public hospitals. These agreements to transfer patients in medical distress are required by State law, so without them many clinics will be forced to close. The closure of an abortion clinic in Toledo that could not obtain a transfer agreement demonstrates how this provision could impact the rest of the state.

The budget isn’t the end of policies that negatively impact women. Representative Hood has introduced HB 200, which has been deemed “One of the Nation’s All-Time Worst Abortion Bills.”  Scheduled for it’s first hearing on Wednesday, at 9:30am, this bill would do the following:

• Increase the mandatory waiting period for an abortion from 24hrs to 48 hrs
• Require the woman to undergo an ultrasound that would reveal the entire body of the fetus and pay for this ultrasound out of pocket. In the early stages of pregnancy a transvaginal ultrasound may be the only type of ultrasound that would show the entire fetus.
• Redefine a medical emergency as something that would result in the woman’s death. This means doctors may not be able to intervene even in cases of a miscarriage.
• Eliminate “medical necessity” as a reason to forego the waiting period.
• Require physicians to disclose any earnings that would result from carrying out the abortion.
• Require physicians to give a verbal description of the ultrasound, including the amount of pain a fetus can feel and offer women pictures from the ultrasound.
• Charge doctors who do not follow these rules with a first degree felony and a fine of up to $1 million.
• Require physicians to give women information regarding the risks of abortions, including false information stating that women who have abortions have an increased risk of breast cancer. Studies have shown that there is no link between the two.

Both the budget and HB 200 attempt to put enough restrictions in place to eliminate the ability of women to obtain an abortion in Ohio without passing an outright ban.  Apparently Ohio politicians think they know better than doctors when it comes to women’s health. These continued restrictions on abortions are dangerous for women and limit access is a way that soon only wealthy women, who can afford to travel, will be able to have an abortion.

Share this post with your friends, women need to be informed about policies that impact them.  Then make sure you call your Representative, Senator and the Governor and let them know how you feel.

Initially the bill did not have a rape or incest exception, however after Rep. Franks (AZ-R) took heat for comments that ”the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low,” the House quietly added this exception.  Noting that this bill contradicts Roe vs. Wade, the White House has threatened a veto.  It is unlikely that the Democratic led Senate will consider it.

Here are a few articles on this issue:

Abortion rules assume women stupid

House takes up far reaching anti-abortion bill

White House threatens to veto anti-abortion bill

House GOP leaders add rape exception to abortion bill

The IOEF analysis finds that:

• Traditional public school districts in Ohio dedicated 11.5% of their spending to administration
• The average charter spends over 28% on administration
• The best charter schools spend 20.5%, while the worst spend nearly 40% on administration
• On a per pupil basis, the worst charter schools in Ohio spend six times as much on administration

Even the best charters spend more money on administration than the worst public school districts and buildings.

As a House-Senate conference committee works to finalize the state’s upcoming two-year budget, they should consider whether charters, particularly poor performing charters, are a good investment of taxpayer funds if the goal is truly to get dollars into the classroom.

Read the IOEF analysis here.

Title: Abortion Notification

Sponsors: Representative Hood

Co-Sponsors:  Representatives Beck, Young, Huffman, Becker, Terhar, Hill, Blessing, Roegner, Maag, Hottinger, Brenner, Burkley, Schuring, Buchy, Boose, Hayes, Adams, J., Butler, Lynch, Retherford, Stautberg, Thompson, Wachtmann, Blair, Hall, Henne, McClain, Rosenberger, Slaby, Sprague, Johnson, Smith, Scherer, Romanchuk

Bill Analysis:  This bill has a number of very concerning provisions. First it modifies the notification requirements prior to performing an abortion, requiring a physician to meet with a woman 48 hours, instead of the current 24 hours, prior to the abortion. The bill also requires additional documents to be provided to a woman considering an abortion including documents that outline the physiological and anatomical characteristics of the fetus. Among other changes the bill adds the requirement an ultrasound be performed and that the physician describe the fetus and its neurological development.

Currently if the woman is experiencing a medical emergency or there is medical necessity the waiting period does not have to be carried out. This law change the definition of medical emergency from creating an “immediate threat of serious risk to the life or physical health of the woman” to “so complicates the medical condition of the woman that the death of the woman would result from the failure to immediately terminate the pregnancy.” It also eliminates medical necessity as a reason to perform an abortion without completing the waiting period.

The bill also contains additional restrictions on physicians who perform abortions. The bill requires physicians  who performs an abortion to sign a conflict of interest disclaimer stating their gross income, or the facility’s, from the previous year and the percentage of income that was “obtained as fees for the performance of an abortion” along with a “statement concerning the monetary loss to the physician or facility that would result form the woman’s decision to carry the woman’s pregnancy to term.”  The bill makes any violation of this section of law a first degree felony and fines the offender 1 million dollars. 

Status: Introduced in the House June 11, 2013.

If the language currently in HB 59, the Ohio budget, is enacted this scenario will likely be mirrored across the state, greatly restricting women’s ability to make medical decisions for themselves.  As we’ve mentioned before, HB 59 currently contains language that requires abortion clinics to have transfer agreements in place with local hospitals. The Senate took this language one step further and added language that would prohibit clinics from have a transfer agreement with any public hospital or from entering into a contract with any physician who has privileges at a public hospital. As we are seeing in Toledo, this language will have a real impact on women’s access to abortions in Ohio.

The budget is now headed to conference committee, which gives the legislature one last chance to remove this language from the bill. After the bill moves through conference committee it will head to Governor Kasich’s desk where he will have the option of using a line-item-veto to remove this dangerous language.

The Toledo Blade reported that Kasich was asked if he would veto this language at a budget event yesterday and  said the following:

“We’ll have to see how this proceeds through the House and the Senate conference committee and have just got to wait and see how it goes, then I’ll make a decision as to whether I think it goes too far or doesn’t, but keep in mind that I’m pro-life.”

You can let Governor Kaisch know how you feel about this issue by calling his office at 614-466-3555.

Title: Breast and Cervical Cancer Tax Check Off

Sponsors: Representative Gonzales,  Representative Schuring

Co-Sponsors: Representatives Brenner, Strahorn, Cera, Smith, Barborak, Lundy, Mallory, Antonio, Blair, Letson, Anielski, Ashford, Baker, Barnes, Beck, Bishoff, Blessing, Brown, Buchy, Burkley, Carney, Celebrezze, Conditt, Dovilla, Driehaus, Fedor, Foley, Gerberry, Green, Grossman, Hackett, Hagan, C., Hall, Hill, Johnson, Kunze, Lynch, McClain, Milkovich, Patmon, Patterson, Pelanda, Perales, Ramos, Rogers, Romanchuk, Ruhl, Scherer, Slaby, Slesnick, Sprague, Stinziano, Terhar, Winburn, Speaker Batchelder 

Bill Analysis:  This bill a creates an income tax refund contribution check off that benefits the Breast and Cervical Cancer Project.  It also discontinues any income tax refund check off category if contributions to that category do not exceed $250,000 in two consecutive years.

Status: Introduced in the House March 27, 2013, Passed the House May 28, 2013. Received hearings in the Senate.

Votes:

Current law provides for five senior employees to be involved in policy implementation and development at each state agency.  These positions are unclassified, meaning there is no competitive process to apply for them, they merely serve at the pleasure of the appointing authority – in this case the Governor or his cabinet members. They may even be employees who are paid by an agency but work directly out of the Governor’s office.

A provision in Kasich’s two-year budget — retained by House and Senate lawmakers — increases the amount these appointees can be paid from $102,960 to $134,056 annually:

If you’re a cop or firefighter in a community struggling with cuts in state funding, this budget offers little. But if you’re lucky enough to be a political friend of the Governor, you may have a 30% raise coming.

(See how your Senator voted on the budget)

House Bill 59 passed 23-10 and contained language that would:

• Prohibit abortion clinics from entering agreements with public hospitals or with doctors affiliated with public hospitals. These agreements to transfer patients in medical distress are required by State law, so without them many clinics will be forced to close.
• Block funding for rape crisis centers from going to organizations that refer women to facilities that provide abortions.
• Effectively blocks federal family planning funds from going to family planning providers, putting them last in a prioritized list of recipients.

After a national election cycle in which abortion rights — especially for the victims of sexual assaults — played a central role, you would think that lawmakers would not be so quick to revisit this debate. But this overlooks the effect of gerrymandering, which means most incumbent Senators represent such safe districts that they have no reason to fear a challenge from the opposite party and their biggest electoral threat could come from more conservative members of their own party in a contested primary.

Ohio’s move to put women’s right to a legal abortion and access to affordable health care returns the state to the national spotlight, something party leaders must hardly welcome. Within hours of yesterday’s vote, headlines appeared in the Huffington Post, ThinkProgress and Salon.com and in wire stories nationwide. With the national spotlight on Ohio, Governor Kasich may now be forced to make a high-profile decision whether to veto the provisions or allow them to become law.

The bill now heads to a joint House-Senate conference committee. A bill must be presented to the Governor to sign by June 30.

But the fact is, it’s only an increase when you squint your eyes and do some mathematical gymnastics.

When you directly compare the plans — something that requires backing out transportation and career tech funding (which the Governor did not include in his budget numbers) — the Senate plan actually provides $80 million less funding than the Governor’s initial proposal. The only way it counts as an increase is if you compare it to the House plan, which cut $200 million from the Governor’s plan.

In all three cases (the Governor’s budget or the House or Senate modifications), funding for education is significantly below where it was in fiscal years 2010 and 2011. The only way legislators can claim to increase funding is when they compare to the past two-year budget (FYs 2012-2013) which contained historic cuts to education totaling $1.8 billion. In total, this budget restores less than $1 billion of that amount, leaving most districts below where they were in 2010-2011.

Without full restoration of the 2012-13 cuts, districts are faced with a choice of making painful cuts or raising taxes. According to Policy Matters Ohio, 82% of districts have cut staff, 43% have increased class sizes and 23% have reduced course offerings. Our research found that $1.1 billion in new operating funds for schools have appeared on local ballots since Governor Kasich first proposed these cuts.

Beyond the statewide numbers, another way to look at the budget is how individual districts fare. Under the Senate plan, 154 districts will receive less money in FYs 2014-15 than they got in FY 13. This is up from 126 districts that were cut in the House plan.

Is there a greater indictment of a plan’s unconstitutionality than putting more money in it, but shorting more districts? I can’t think of one.

The Senate is set to finalize its changes to the budget this afternoon, after which a conference committee will be assigned to work out the differences with the House. The bill must be signed by the Governor by June 30.