State Budget Gives Billionaires a Stadium and Ohioans the Bill

COLUMBUS – State Rep. Tristan Rader (D-Lakewood) today voted “NO” on the Republican state operating budget, House Bill (HB) 96, citing its reckless disinvestment in working Ohioans and its prioritization of handouts to the wealth over basic public services.

“This budget gives billionaires a stadium and leaves everyday Ohioans to foot the bill,” said Rep. Rader. “It guts public schools, childcare, libraries, Medicaid, food banks—and then hands $600 million in state bonds to the Browns’ billionaire owner. That’s not fiscal responsibility. That’s corporate welfare dressed up as policy.”

Instead of solving Ohio’s most urgent problems, the budget:

• Underfunded Fair School Funding Plan by $2.75 billion.
• Cuts childcare expansion by 20,000 kids.
• Makes it easier to kick 770,000 Ohioans off Medicaid.
• Replaces predictable library funding with an arbitrary line item, risking service cuts and closures.
• Guts the H2Ohio clean water program by 45%.
• Backslides on LGBTQ+ inclusion, workers’ rights, and racial equity.
• Fails to provide real property tax relief

“They’re making it harder to find childcare, harder to stay insured, harder to drink clean water—and somehow easier to give away public money to unaccountable private schools and billionaire sports team owners,” Rep. Rader added. “This is a budget of missed priorities and manufactured scarcity.”

Key Concerns from Rep. Rader:

• Education: The budget dismantles Ohio’s bipartisan Fair School Funding formula, pushes more public money into private school vouchers, and sets up public schools for more local tax levies.
   
• Libraries: It ends the Public Library Fund’s 1.7% guarantee, severing local libraries from future growth and cutting their FY26 funding by $40 million.
   
• Medicaid: Includes a “trigger” that automatically ends coverage for nearly 800,000 Ohioans if federal reimbursement dips below 90%. 
   
• Food Security: As Greater Cleveland food banks lose over 1.5 million pounds of food due to federal and state cuts, this budget does nothing to replace it.
   
• LGBTQ+ Rights: Restricts funding to programs that support or affirm LGBTQ+ youth and strips inclusive language from mental health training.
   
• Housing & Health: Flat-funds maternal housing support at $500,000 statewide, underfunds the Ohio Housing Trust Fund, and eliminates the Lead Safe Home Program.
   

“This budget doesn’t fund Ohio’s future—it rigs it,” said Rep. Rader. “Ohioans deserve a budget that puts people first, not profits.”

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.