What Ohio House Republicans want to do with the state budget is, to some, the textbook definition of bad optics.
In other words, it just doesn’t look good.
“Bad optics” usually is something people want to avoid.
Here's how that's currently playing out in Ohio's Statehouse:
The GOP House leadership is poised to hand Dee and Jimmy Haslam, the principal owners of the Cleveland Browns, $600 million to finance bonds for the building of a $3.4 billion domed stadium in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park. The state would be on the hook for about $1 billion to pay off the bonds at $40 million a year for the next 30 years.
Even their fellow Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, thinks the bond issue is a bad idea. His version of the budget would double the sports betting tax to create a fund for Ohio’s professional sports teams to finance new stadiums and ball parks.
°Őłó˛ąłŮ’s bad optic No. 1.
No. 2 is even worse.
Matt Huffman, the speaker of the Ohio House, and Rep. Brian Stewart, the finance committee chair, want to take a meat ax to public school funding at a time when the Trump administration is trying to do away with the U.S. Department of Education altogether.
It would be a double-whammy for your neighborhood public school. And it wouldn’t matter if your kids’ public school is in a blue city like Cincinnati or a ruby-red rural county. All 611 public school districts in Ohio will take the hit.
Ohio’s Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP), a bipartisan bill signed into law in 2021, has a formula that says public schools should be getting $666 million in the new state budget. Public school administrators say the figure is more likely about $800 million.
The budget proposal of Huffman and Stewart increases public school funding by about $226 million, far short of what the FSFP says they will need.
Stewart, from the village of Ashville in Pickaway County, told Ohio Public Radio that the House Republicans' budget includes a new measure that allows school districts to carry over 25% of their budgets. Go over that, Stewart said, and each of the 88 county tax officers will will refund the overage to taxpayers.
That 25% reserve was increased to 30% when the budget passed Stewart's finance committee Tuesday.
“We're not going to shift the tax burden from one set of taxpayers to another," Stewart said. “We believe that those monies are better in the taxpayer’s pocket than in the school districts bank account just accumulating, just sitting over time.”
Scott DiMauro, executive director of the Ohio Education Association, one of two major teachers’ unions in Ohio, told Ohio Public Radio he thinks the House budget will be a disaster for public schools in Ohio.
And, even though the money for the Browns stadium bonds and funding public schools come from separate pots, DiMauro was struck by what Ohio House Republicans believe is important.
"It's a struggle for me to understand how legislators can underfund our public schools but still at the same time commit to funding significant money to the Cleveland Browns for a new stadium that's not even needed," .
An increase in private school voucher funding
The other aspect of the House Republicans’ budget proposal that worries public school administrators is the fact that they budget a $500 million increase in funding for private school vouchers — more than twice as much as they would give Ohio’s public school districts.
“They’ve started a death match to end local control of public schools,” said Eve Bolton, vice president of the Cincinnati Board of Education and a former teacher.
Even under DeWine’s school funding proposal — which has a much smaller cut in state funding than the House Republican proposal — Cincinnati Public school officials say they would have a $27 million budget hole to fill over the next two years.
“Everyone is going to have to sacrifice,’’ Bolton said. “At Cincinnati Public Schools, we’ve had a flat budget for eight years now. °Őłó˛ąłŮ’s not going to work going forward.”
Bolton said CPS has two choices: major cuts in spending or go to the taxpayers and ask for more money.
“You can’t just keep asking for more,” Bolton said. “And, really, there is no way local taxpayers can pay for all the challenges we face.
“It’s not just CPS; it’s most school districts in the state,” Bolton said. “We have 22 public school districts in Hamilton County alone. If this kind of pressure keeps up from Columbus and Washington, some of them are not going to exist anymore.”
The explosion of state funding for private school vouchers has been “devastating” to public school districts around the state, Bolton said.
°Őłó˛ąłŮ’s why Cincinnati Public Schools is part of a coalition of over 300 school districts around Ohio who have joined “Vouchers Hurt Schools,” which is battling the Republicans’ school voucher program in the Statehouse and in the courts.
In southwest Ohio, Cincinnati Public Schools is the largest member of the coalition, but it includes dozens of southwest Ohio suburban and rural school districts, including Clermont Northeastern, Clinton-Massie, Finneytown, Goshen, Hamilton, Lakota, Western Brown, Talawanda, St. Bernard-Elmwood Place, Norwood, Mt. Healthy, and Middletown.
Bolton said there is a hearing Friday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court on Vouchers Hurt Ohio’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Ohio’s private school voucher program, which has grown from a $42 million pilot program to $1 billion in the budget proposals before the legislature today.
Ohio, according to the Vouchers Hurt Ohio website, is “fast becoming the Wild West for vouchers.”
Bolton said that if the courts won’t declare the voucher system unconstitutional, maybe the voters of Ohio will — through a petition initiative to be placed on a future statewide ballot.
“Voters in Kentucky did it last year, and Ohio voters can, too,’’ Bolton said, referring to last November’s vote on Issue 2 in the Bluegrass State, which would have given Kentucky legislators the ability to spend tax dollars for private school vouchers.
“Ohio legislators have to get their priorities straight,’’ Bolton said. “It’s not funding private schools. It’s not helping building sports stadiums. It’s giving Ohio kids a good, fully funded public school system.”
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