ohiobudget.jpg
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, center, joins Senate President Keith Faber, left, and House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, right, to discuss the state budget Friday at the Statehouse in Columbus. The $71 billion general-fund budget for the two years starting Wednesday awaits Kasich's signature.
(Kantele Franko, Associated Press)
Officially, Ohio's proposed $71.2 billion state budget for the two years that begin Wednesday is called Amended Substitute House Bill 64. But for the Statehouse's teeming business lobbies, HB 64 is more like the packing list for Santa's sleigh.
Among thousands of pages of dollar amounts for the Bureau of "X" and Department "Y" are countless words. Some of those words write new state laws. Some of them tweak old state laws. But all those words are there for a reason. And all of them will affect somebody, for better (usually, a lobbyist's client), or for worse - Joan and John Taxpayer.
Consider, for example, something the state Senate inserted in the budget, something that a Senate-House budget conference committee kept in HB 64, a bill now headed to Gov. John Kasich's desk. A Legislative Service Commission summary labels the Senate amendment, "Repeal of tax on electric company generation property." "Tax" refers to Ohio's tax on a public utility's tangible property - that is, in this case, a generating plant's equipment and machinery.
You'd have to be a CPA to sort through HB 64's wording. But for Ohio utility consumers, especially residential ratepayers, there are three key things to know.
First, Columbus-based American Electric Power Co., the giant utility that includes the Columbus Southern Power and Ohio Power companies, was among those who requested the tax amendment. The Ohio Senate obliged. So did the Senate-House conference committee.
Second, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission, which reviews the wording of bills for the legislature, the tax repeal on generating plants "may increase electric rates for Ohio electric utility ratepayers."
Third, Ohio Consumers' Counsel Bruce Weston, in a June 23 letter, told the Senate-House conference committee on HB 64 that the tax break on generating plants, although theoretically revenue-neutral -- the state says it will reimburse local governments for the property-tax loss -- "could still result in overall higher charges to some or many utility customers, including residential consumers and small businesses." Those would be the small businesses that Ohio's Republican legislative leaders claim to support.
So: What's supposed to be a budget, allowing the Bureau of "X" to spend this amount, and the Department of "Y" to spend that amount, also may raise the prices Ohio homeowners, renters and business owners pay for electricity. That part of the budget "process," for some reason, never appears in those "how-a-bill-becomes law" charts.
Those charts also don't reveal the larger reality of Statehouse deliberations. Since early 1994, a state law has required that all meetings of Senate-House conference committees be held in public. And indeed, this year's conference committee met in public -- maybe twice.
It's one thing to say that, since forever, the final decisions on what's in a budget bill are made by the House speaker and Senate president - in this case, Speaker Clifford A. Rosenberger of Clinton County's Clarksville, and Senate President Keith Faber of Celina, both Republicans.
But it's another thing to ram through the "the process" -- without thorough public discussion and hearings -- whatever they decide.
That's further complicated by part of the 1999-2001 budget (that session's Amended Substitute House Bill 283) that makes some legislative documents confidential. Among them: so-called bill files, which can reveal which lobbyist or organization got a General Assembly member to write a certain bill or amendment.
True, broadcasting conference committees (or anything else at the Statehouse) on the Ohio Channel is a true public service. But an Ohioan can't really judge a play unless he or she knows who wrote its script. And that's something the General Assembly prefers to hide.
Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.
To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@gmail.com, 216-999-4689