Innovation Ohio

What you need to know about Ohio Politics and Policy

Failure for Half of New Money School Levies This Week

cutsleviesfeatThree of the six new money school levies on Tuesday’s special election ballots failed. The Midview levy passed with 62% voting in favor of the property tax. The Jackson Center levy passed after failing by only 3 votes in the November election. Waterloo Schools levy passed by just 25 votes, or 50-49%. The failure of the levies for the Hillsdale, Coventry and Edison districts could result in immediate consequences. Hillsdale may be forced to lay off as many as 19 staff members to close a $1.7 million deficit, and Edison has said it will eliminate busing and close an elementary school. The three levies that passed will add to the $487 million in new taxes Ohio residents have voted to put into effect since the Kasich budget — which left schools with $1.8 billion less funding — was introduced.

Kasich School Funding Plan Falls Short for Property Poor Districts

Gov. John Kasich released his much-anticipated education plan last week – a plan he once boasted would be the best in the country. Its hallmark was the claim that it would fix Ohio’s disparity in property wealth by having the State pick up the cost to bring all districts up to $250,000 in per pupil valuation on 20 mills – a measure reached by just 4% of Ohio districts on their own. It sounded great – nearly every district would get more money, and the poorest would get the most. He even received plaudits from many media members. However, reality has proven otherwise. Looking at Kasich’s own district-by-district runs released yesterday, poor districts actually fare worse than wealthy. According to administration figures, for every dollar going to a kid in the property richest school districts, just 25 cents goes to the property poorest districts.
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The top 1/3 of districts based on property wealth — or the ability to raise money on a mill — fare best under the Kasich plan, when comparing FY15 to FY13.
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More ‘new money’ levies on tap tomorrow in Ohio local schools special elections

Voters in nine Ohio counties will vote on local school levies tomorrow. All of the levies to be considered are requests for new money. This seems to be the trend in the aftermath of Kasich’s $1.8 billion in cuts to school district funding. We have seen an unprecedented $1.1 billion in new property and income taxes for schools since Kasich’s last budget. On Tuesday, there will be 5 school districts asking for money to use on operating costs in 8 counties. There is also a levy on the ballot in Summit County, but it’s for construction projects so it’s not related to the schools who are struggling to maintain operation. [Read more…]

Kasich, PUCO have lost their way when it comes to Ohio consumers, businesses

In Gov. John Kasich’s first budget, he slashed the Ohio Consumer’s Counsel in half, laying off 30 employees and severely injuring the agency from fully representing 4.5 million Ohioans against the well-financed utilities. When the top consumer cop asked to meet with the Governor to explain how this would hurt the average person, he refused. Kasich has since appointed Todd Snitchler to run the PUCO. Snitchler is a former politician with no significant background in public utilities. Snitchler recently gained national attention for using his Twitter account to negatively portray the renewable energy industry and climate science. But it is not the tweeting that should concern Ohioans. Kasich’s appointees at the PUCO are getting a reputation as not adequately protecting the interests of consumers and businesses, siding all too often with powerful special interests like FirstEnergy. [Read more…]

[Video] Husted on Record Touting Right Wing Electoral College Takeover

Last week we brought you a post regarding a concerted GOP effort to change election laws in “blue” states so that Electoral College votes would be given to presidential candidates based on congressional district rather than the winner takes all system currently in place in 48 of our 50 states. The only reason this is possible is because Republicans ruled the roost in several state governments during the last reapportionment of congressional districts in 2011 – leading to gerrymandered districts in many large states, including Ohio. lovechildOhio’s Democratic congressional candidates, as a whole, received more votes than Republican candidates in 2012. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, carried the state. Yet, Republicans hold more seats in Ohio’s congressional delegation by a 3-1 margin. Our current federal (and state) legislative maps were conceived in a downtown Columbus hotel room, the love children of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R) and Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder (R). Of course, that was done in 2011. Their legislative plans worked out – Ohio Republicans are disproportionately represented (and rule) the Ohio General Assembly and our congressional delegation. Gerrymandering doesn’t work for statewide races, though. When all Ohioans vote, this fairly evenly divided state can swing either way. In the past two presidential elections, Ohio has favored a Democrat. In the past two gubernatorial elections, Ohio has elected a Democrat and then a Republican. Because Ohioans who identify with one or the other party are evenly divided along partisan lines, and most are self-described Independents in the middle, you might think that the GOP can’t fool with statewide general elections. You would be wrong. The current GOP tyranny in Columbus is inviolable for the time being short of real and immediate redistricting reform. With both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office under their control, they can do anything. The governor and Ohio’s GOP legislative leaders have been quiet on the possibility of changing the way Ohio’s Electoral College votes are cast, but Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted seems comfortable with the idea: Husted does include “redistricting reform” in his statement, but what does that mean? You will hear other Republicans say things like, “Statewide candidates will have to compete in every congressional district – not just the urban centers.” That’s a meaningless statement when our districts are not competitive and there is no plan to correct that fact. Be on the lookout Ohio. You’ve been able to count on one person, one vote when voting for president. If the GOP has its way, the rules change and a candidate with a majority of statewide votes could go down in flames courtesy of a gerrymandered Electoral College.

IO Week in Review

Feel out of the loop? Here is your chance to catch up on the issues that matter and Innovation Ohio’s activities this week: IO hit the airwaves over the weekend, appearing on Columbus on the Record and Capitol Square to discuss the latest news in Ohio politics. On Tuesday, a story broke that Ohio State Board of Education President Debe Terhar compared President Obama to Hitler in a Facebook post, based on a dubious misreading of history. Innovation Ohio called on Terhar to resign immediately and asked that Governor Kasich speak out on the matter. [Read more…]

Paying for Ohio income tax cut with revenue from gas patch looking sketchy

wellhead2Oil and gas development in Ohio is once again going to be a major policy issue in 2013 and Gov. John Kasich intends to push for an increased severance tax on horizontal drilling in Ohio to help pay for a $500 million income tax cut. While it’s true that the oil and gas industry is growing in Ohio at this time, is it possible that the administration is being overly optimistic in its projection of how many producing wells there will be in the near future? Proper forecasting of wells and production estimates are essential because the production from these new oil and gas wells will pay for Kasich’s income tax cut.  That’s why Innovation Ohio was interested in seeing how close the Kasich administration well estimates were to reality in 2012. [Read more…]

Failure to extend the payroll tax cut will shrink Ohio paychecks and slow economic growth

In all recent coverage of the fiscal cliff at IO, our sister organization, IO Ed Fund and elsewhere, one important detail has gotten relatively little notice. President Obama’s proposal to Congressional Republicans includes a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut enacted in 2010. Without an extension, payroll taxes will go up at year end, meaning workers will see less in paychecks starting in January. The proposal is good news for the economy and for working Ohioans who will take home — and most likely spend — $525 more on average as a result. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, below is the impact of the tax cut on various professions: With no extension, lawmakers will place a significant burden on an economy struggling to grow. Today, Moody’s Analytics released its outlook of the U.S. economy for 2013 and noted that one of the major headwinds that the economy could face is the expiration of the payroll tax cut. Moody’s estimates that allowing the tax cut to expire will cause the economy to shrink by .6 percent in 2013. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities wrote last week, over 150 million workers — including 5.7 million in Ohio — will see some benefit if the payroll tax cut is extended. Those estimates are based on 2010 and 2011 employment numbers, so the number in 2013 is likely even larger. Because the president’s proposal makes the tax cut temporary, an extension won’t add to budget deficits permanently. Compared to extending the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers which could add $1 trillion to the debt over ten years — and not offer much in the form of economic stimulus –extending this tax cut is a relative bargain. Extending the payroll tax cut is an important policy that will get more money into the hands of Ohioans to help stimulate the economy in 2013 and is a policy that both sides should support.  

Part 3: The Charters – Final In Our Series on Recent School Funding Hearing

In the final part of IO’s coverage of last week’s hearing on school funding in the Ohio House, I want to recount one of the most problematic, yet also encouraging portions: charter schools. You may read Part 1 and Part 2 by following the links. While the panel of Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, Rick Hess from the American Enterprise Institute, Students First (Michelle Rhee’s group) and Marguerite Roza of the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, which provided the blueprint for the Cleveland Plan, all made encouraging statements about the need for charter and traditional public school accountability to be the same, there remain deeply troubling issues.
  • They said money should follow the child. There is a big problem with that in Ohio because we know from Ohio Department of Education data that kids not in charter schools lose 6.5% of their state revenue, on average, because of how much more the state pays for charter school kids. Money follows the child leaving for a charter school in Ohio, as does significant money from kids who don’t leave for a charter school. If the “money follows the child” system the state develops next year (a near certainty) ends up leaving kids who don’t go to charter schools with significantly fewer resources; that is a major problem. The witnesses never mentioned the potential impact on kids who don’t go to charters.
  • Students First also suggested that charter schools should get School Facilities Commission money to help pay for their buildings. That’s something I hadn’t heard said before in public. I had heard about how charters need help with capital expenses, and I tend to agree with that, in principle. However, whenever more money goes to charters in Ohio, it seems to come out of the hides of the 90% of Ohio’s children who do not go to charter schools. So I’m always wary of proposals like these.
  • If charters are able to get OSFC money, and collect local revenue without any reduction in their state amount (like the Cleveland Plan allowed Cleveland charters to do), then we are looking at major increases in charter school revenue. And without any increased state commitment to education, which is looking more and more to be next year’s scenario as Gov. Kasich seems bent on using any additional revenue to fund a modest income tax cut, it means the money will come straight out of the pockets of kids who do not go to charter schools.
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