Budget Fails Ohioans, Recklessly Underfunds Children, Public Education, Medicaid, Property Tax Relief

COLUMBUS – State Rep. Karen Brownlee (D- Symmes Twp) today voted “NO” on the Republican state operating budget, House Bill (HB) 96, because it arbitrarily and recklessly slashes critical state funding areas while failing to benefit everyday Ohioans. Rather than provide real and meaningful support to Ohio’s citizens, House Republicans chose to dismantle the constitutional and bipartisan fair school funding formula, dump more taxpayer money into vouchers for charter non-public and private schools that benefit the wealthiest Ohioans, and authorize a $600M handout to billionaires to build a new Browns stadium outside of Cleveland amidst opposition by local leaders.

“State legislators have a choice, and the supermajority members chose to invest in billionaires and private interests. I believe we should invest in ALL Ohioans, and Ohioans deserve better than this budget,” said Rep. Brownlee.

House Republicans have chosen to be the architects of a fiscally irresponsible $60 billion-plus (GRF) state operating budget that will cost Ohioans more and fail to meet Ohio’s most pressing needs. HB 96 cuts key investments from what Governor Mike DeWine proposed in childcare, public schools, Medicaid, public libraries, affordable housing, clean drinking water, pediatric cancer research, lead abatement funding, food assistance, and programs that save the lives of mothers and their babies. It also fails to provide real property tax relief; makes future school levies more likely; launches more attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, minority-owned businesses, and the collective bargaining rights of workers; and ignores the will of voters by reducing the amount of marijuana sales tax revenue returned to local host communities.

Some of the most damaging provisions found in HB 96 include: 

• Foregoing Fair School Funding: Dismantling the bipartisan, constitutional, school fair school funding formula that was created by education experts and passed by this legislature to fund our children’s public school education. Around 90% of Ohio’s school age children attend their local public school.
   
• Forcing Schools to Put More Property Tax Levies on the Ballot: Inexplicably limiting public school districts from carrying over more than 30% of reserve funds from the previous fiscal year in their operating budget, an arbitrary and unvetted cap, and stripping funds from the district if reserves exceed the cap. This will force local districts to recklessly spend down cash reserves or lose the funding, which will result in public districts needing to rely more heavily on local levies more often at a time when Ohio is the most levied state in the nation. 
  More Giveaways for School Vouchers: Accelerating the shifting of taxpayer dollars for vouchers and expansion to entirely unaccountable non-public, non-chartered schools in the amount of $2.4 billion over the biennium, which will continue to benefit the wealthiest Ohioans. This amounts to a 16.5% increase over current state voucher program funding. This will not result in greater school choice–it will only result in more taxpayer dollars being dumped into unaccountable systems–as parents only have real choice when all schools eligible for public funds are held to the same standards.
   
• No Real Property Tax Relief: Failing to provide real property tax relief for the thousands of Ohioans who have reached out to their lawmakers asking them to act. Instead, Republicans have put forward a fake and unvetted scheme that will actually raise Ohioans property tax bills and punish public schools for responsible financial planning, forcing more levies at a time when homeowners’ tax bills are already too high.
• Fewer Childcare Slots to Support Working Ohioans: Slashes the Governor’s proposed expansion of childcare eligibility to Ohio’s hardest working families, which means more families and children will leave the state and many that stay will not be able to enter the workforce due to childcare needs. The governor proposed addressing the childcare crisis that Ohio families are facing by increasing access to childcare for 30,000 kids, helping tens of thousands of parents pursue better jobs and stabilize their families, and this House budget contains funding for 20,000 fewer children. The Ohio Chamber of Commerce estimates that more than $5 billion in economic growth is being lost each year due to Ohio’s lack of adequate childcare.
   
• Risking Medicaid Expansion for nearly 800k Ohioans: Makes it easier to kick 770,000 Ohioans off Medicaid by implementing a mandatory trigger to withdraw from the Medicaid expansion if there is even a $1 decrease in federal share reimbursement to the program. Republicans have placed Medicaid expansion on the chopping block for years and are now using this cruel and unnecessary trigger as a method to kick off hundreds of thousands of Ohioans from healthcare coverage. If the trigger occurs, many hospitals will be at risk for immediate closure, especially in rural communities, because Medicaid expansion covers a large portion of patients served. Ohioans will be less likely to seek preventative care without insurance coverage, ultimately increasing emergency room visits and uncompensated care costs to our healthcare system overall. This affects all of us.
   
• Cuts to Public Libraries: Reduces public library funding from what libraries currently receive in State funding by $40M in FY '26 when compared to projected FY '25. The budget cuts also amount to a nearly $100 million funding cut compared to the Governor’s proposal. Republicans eliminated the Public Library Fund, which has funded Ohio’s libraries for nearly one-hundred years, and they replaced library funding with a line-item block amount, eliminating future predictable funding for Ohio’s local public library systems.
   
• Rolls Back Will of the Voters on Marijuana Funding: Voters overwhelmingly passed Issue 2 to allocate substantial tax revenue from cannabis sales to the local host communities. The budget cuts that funding by 44% and ends it after 5 years, sending the remainder of the money to the state budget to subsidize private school vouchers. 
• Making Our State Hostile for LGBTQ+ Ohioans: Makes Ohio more hostile to LGBTQ+ individuals by legislating state health policy regarding gender identity, vaguely and ignorantly requiring public libraries to hide books that, “relate to sexual orientation or gender identity,” and prohibiting the distribution of funding for youth homeless centers that support or affirm trans identities. We know that a significant portion of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+, and codifying these kinds of heartless policies in our budget is unnecessary and harmful to children in Ohio. 
   
• Limits Minority-Owned Businesses Access to State Contracts: Eliminates certain filing requirements that support the state’s affirmative action contracting provisions for state contracts which could render useless the state-sponsored programs that help more minority-owned businesses to secure state contracts. 
   
• Cuts to Clean Water Programs: Cuts $120 million (nearly 45% of funding) from H2Ohio which is a successful program to clean up our waterways, address algal blooms and protect our drinking water. H2Ohio also supports local communities to make critical water infrastructure upgrades to protect against lead and PFAS contamination. Recent polling shows that 75% of Ohioans support programs funded by H2Ohio, yet Republicans are using this budget process to cut popular and widely supported programs that protect the health and wellbeing of our people and our water sources. 
   
• Attacks on Collective Bargaining and Organized Labor: Attacks unions and collective bargaining by prohibiting workers from negotiating about their working location assignments both in an education setting and as a state employee–even when that working assignment has nothing to do with working from home–which is a key component of an employees’ working conditions. Conversations around work reporting locations are critical so that employees can effectively perform their job duties without wasted time and costs, better serving the people of Ohio and the students in our schools.
   
• Putting the State’s Credit on the Line for $600M to Billionaire Browns’ Owners but Doing Nothing for Food Banks: The budget still includes the state fronting $600 million to secure bonds to build a new Cleveland Browns stadium in a suburb of Cleveland, which would move the stadium from its downtown location, which is opposed by local leaders. 
   

HB 96 passed the Ohio House of Representatives by a vote of 60-39 Wednesday. It now heads to the Ohio Senate for further consideration.