We launched this site to bring an intensive focus to the budget process, ensuring that even as state government fell into total control of a single party, nothing would slip by unnoticed. We were the first to report on a massive privatization power grab, the JobsOhio liquor profits rip-off, new unnoticed tax breaks and Kasich’s casino consultants taking $15 million away from schools. We recapped some of our biggest stories in our 2011 Year in Review.

We thought this project would last six months, and here we are, fourteen months later. We’ve written almost 300 posts, picked up nearly 1,100 followers on Twitter, and had over 107,000 page views. We even had our content picked up by ThinkProgress and MSNBC.

But now, an election year is here and there’s lots of policy swirling around beyond the mid-biennium budget, and we have lots to say about other topics. For example, we recently blogged about how Team Kasich’s bungling of basic legislative outreach put their income tax cut plan in jeopardy.

From now on, we’ll redirect our blogging energies over at Plunderbund. We hope you’ll join us.

And, as always, follow @OHBudgetWatch on twitter for news, commentary and analysis.

What’s not in the bill is raising more eyebrows. Democrats on the House Finance committee pressed OBM Director Tim Keen about the lack of funding in the bill for community projects—zoos, museums and parks that legislators add at the request of constituents back home to create jobs and revitalize communities.

Because four years have passed since Ohio enacted a capital budget, a long list of worthy projects has piled up, but legislators are being denied the opportunity, not because the money isn’t there—apparently the state could afford up to another $1 billion in spending while staying within the constitutional debt limit—but because, Director Keen testified, the Governor “at no point considered any community projects.”

I’ve speculated before that this could be part of a deliberate strategy, paired with slashing local government funds and canceling transportation projects around the state, to strong-arm local official and legislators into supporting Turnpike privatization as the only way to pay for needed projects. Whatever the reason, as House members prepare to vote on the bill tomorrow, they should keep in mind that Kasich made a deliberate choice to deny them funding for projects back home. It’s not that there was no money, it’s just that he didn’t want to spend it.

A related “fact” that’s been trotted out in testimony from the administration about this budget is its supposedly extraordinarily small size. According to Keen, the $1.74 billion capital bill that borrows $1.3 billion is the smallest in recent memory. From his March 14 testimony:

As a comparison, total biennial capital appropriations over the past decade have ranged from $2.4 to $3.5 billion, with $2.1 to $2.5 billion of those amounts being in the form of GRF-backed debt.

But it’s simply not true. Keen is deliberately ignoring the last capital budget, introduced and signed by a Governor, not named Kasich who also desired to limit the state’s borrowing and “restrain” the size of the capital budget. Strickland’s 2009-2010 capital bill, HB562, spent just $1.29 billion and borrowed $1.2 billion—smaller on both counts than Kasich’s bill.

And, even though it was smaller than Kasich’s, Strickland’s capital budget still managed to fund important projects in Ohio’s local communities. Kasich’s moves, taken together, make clear that he wants to starve local governments. And, by not allowing them to fund projects back home, he also appears to have little interest in good relations with legislators, a strategy that hasn’t worked out so well for him lately.

Today: House Finance hears the two capital bills and hears from OBM about the main budget bill (HB487). Chairman Amstutz has indicated that the first order of business will be to accept a substitute version of the main budget bill (HB487) without Governor Kasich’s changes to bank taxation, increases to the oil/gas severance tax and triggers to lower the income tax.

Wednesday: House Ways & Means will hold hearings on tax changes affecting oil companies and banks and House Local Government will invite testimony about shared services and other efficiencies to help local governments.

Thursday: House State Government will hear testimony about shared services and efficiencies among state agencies, while the full House is set to hold a vote on the capital appropriations bill in an afternoon session

As always, see our calendar for all the details.

Funny thing, though. It seems Kasich forgot to brief legislators.

We posted that, as of Wednesday—the day Kasich’s unveiled his tax plan to the media—according to Speaker Batchelder, legislators had not yet seen the tax proposals. The same day Senate President Niehaus confirmed, according to Gongwer (subscription required), that  he, too, “had not yet reviewed details of the governor’s proposal.”

Even Kasich admits he failed to do any outreach to members of the House and Senate to prepare them for what was to come. On Friday,  when it was revealed the House was yanking the tax provisions from the budget bill, Kasich responded:

“I think the fact is that some special interests were able to get their point of view out there maybe before we got a chance to get our point of view out there,” Kasich said.

“Before we got a chance?” Kasich has been hinting he might raise the severance tax since at least December. That means he’s had three months to start the process of reaching out to legislators—the same people who will have to do the heavy lifting of introducing, holding hearings and voting on his budget. He could have armed them with details of the  plan and talking points to respond to oil lobbyists when they come complaining. But, instead, he left them in the dark and gave the oil companies three months to convince them that even slightly higher taxes would be job-killers.

Legislators, armed with no information, could hardly be blamed for being sympathetic to industry’s claims.

Voting on a bill that arguably contains a tax increase is not a small thing to ask a bunch of pledge-signing taxophobes who will be facing voters in the fall. Doing so with no information or justification for taking on a huge lobbying force such as the oil and gas industry is just too much to ask.

And it’s not the first time. When he introduced his biennial budget in 2011, the administration was nearly two weeks late delivering the text of the legislation, forcing lawmakers to hold hearings without the benefit of having read the proposals before having to ask meaningful questions about them.

This all comes as little surprise given the fact that Kasich’s deputy legislative director, Ben Kaiser, recently left the staff to work full-time on the effort to unseat Republican Party Chair Kevin DeWine. Perhaps if the Governor’s legislative team had been doing its job instead of doing politics, they could have had an income tax cut to boast about for Kasich’s re-election.

Meanwhile, the MBR, which Governor Kasich unveiled at a press conference yesterday, still remains to be introduced, and a hearing with testimony from OBM Director Keen set for this morning has been cancelled. Hearings are expected to begin in the House Finance committee next week.

We’ll update our calendar with this and other budget-related activity’s on the schedule as soon as we get official committee notices in our inbox.

Speaker Batchelder said it was “conceivable” the bill would be passed out of the chamber the week after next, but he does not know if that is possible because the House does not yet have the bill language.

Some of you may remember that last year, the administration failed to introduce its 2012-2013 biennium budget bill in time for the March 15 deadline, instead providing only the blue book for legislators to work from, and at least ten days of hearings took place in which legislators had no actual text to work from or ask questions. Unlike last year, there is no requirement for budget hearings to begin immediately—or for there to be a budget passed at all—so it’s unclear why there is a rush to hold press conferences and hearings if the actual text of the policy proposals is not yet available.

Speaker Batchelder

The Speaker also indicates that because of its many policy proposals, the bill will be split in two, as we have previously reported, and will be heard by multiple committees, giving members of the Finance Committee a bit of a break. However, Batchelder has not ruled out holding hearings during what would otherwise be the General Assembly’s spring break—the first two weeks of April. (close observers will recall they just took three weeks off prior to the primary, so in all, not a bad gig).

The first hearing on the MBR is this morning at 9 a.m. We will not be attending, but if you follow us on Twitter, we’ll direct you to folks who are live-tweeting the hearing and retweet some of the best stuff.

The main difference between this capital budget and the previous one is that Kasich’s includes $675 million for the Ohio School Facilities Commission, an agency that receive its last two-year capital allocation of $525 million in a separate 2010 bill. Taken together, Strickland’s capital budget (including OSFC) and Kasich’s appropriate nearly the exact same amount—just over $1.7 billion.

Ohio Historical Center

One big change, as expected, in the Kasich budget, is the elimination of most community projects—funding for civic facilities such as parks and museums. However, the bill funds $7.5 million in projects via the Cultural Facilities Commission, including $1 million for new exhibits at the Ohio Historical Society (OHS), another $1 million for OHS headquarter renovations and $546,000 for an online history portal. It should be noted that the Ohio Historical Society is a private, non-profit organization and not a state agency. The bill also funds $1.5 million for the National Afro-American Museum and $222,000 for the Ohio River Museum. It will be interesting to see if legislators, under pressure from civic officials back home, will feel comfortable advancing these projects while others in their district languish.

Looking at the funding by County, the big winner is Franklin, the home of state government and proposed recipient of $128 million in project funding, down from $160 million in HB562. Hamilton County is the next largest recipient at $37 million, down from $58 million in HB562. Cuyahoga County receives only $24 million—half what it saw in the last capital bill. Erie County, home of the State’s Veterans Home, gets the same amount as Cuyahoga. $17 million goes to Lucas County, down from $30 million in HB562. Stark County actually sees an increase, thanks to a new energy training center at Stark State.

The legislation appropriates $250 million from the Lottery Profits Education Fund—to be collected from racetracks upon licensing for video lottery terminal operations—for school construction. In total, the School Facilities Commission receives $675 million, the most assigned to any recipient agency in the bill. Previously, the program of school construction had been funded by a $4 billion securitization of the proceeds of Ohio’s tobacco settlement.

A total of $400 million was allocated among Ohio’s college and university campuses and the Board of Regents. Ohio State University, whose President was assigned the task of leading a process to determine which school’s projects got funded, received the most money of any university—$82 million—and the single largest project at any campus—a $45 million Chemical & Biochemical Engineering and Chemistry building. The next largest campus projects were a $25.9 million medical center expansion at the University of Cincinnati and a $19 million student activity center at Central State University.

Training for Ohio’s burgeoning shale drilling industry was a focus of funding in the bill, with funds allocated for energy training & education at Zane State College ($6 million), Stark Technical College ($10 million) and Hocking Technical College ($2.5 million).

The first hearing of the bill was held today in the House Finance committee. We were unable to attend, but will pass along any interesting news we can obtain about the bill and its prospects in the General Assembly.

Ohio Governor's Residence

Projects that will continue to receive funding in the bill include: $35 million in funds for the Clean Ohio program, $30 million for advanced energy projects, ongoing repairs to the Governor’s official residence, $87 million in projects at Ohio prisons and $245 million for school renovations by the Ohio School Facilities Commission.

Typically non-controversial, reappropriations bills must pass by March 31 for the money to be available on the first of July. The bill is expected to move quickly, getting its first hearing tomorrow afternoon in the Senate Finance committee (see our complete budget events calendar).

The text of the legislation is available here. No bill analysis is available yet as to the total amount expended by the legislation, but the last state capital reappropriations bill, HB 462 in 2010, contained $3.2 billion of carry over spending.

The vast majority of the bill deals with legislative changes needed to support reforms sought by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. Today’s Plain Dealer wraps it up as follows: “Drafts of the proposed legislation cover charter schools, sale of old school buildings, sharing of taxes and teacher pay, seniority, school assignments and contracts.”

The exact text of the changes Jackson is seeking is available online.

Also included in the plain will be a number of smaller changes to education policy. According to the Dispatch:

Kasich also will call for a new and tougher grading system for schools, curriculum guidelines for digital education, and reporting academic performance at technical schools. In addition, he wants to help students find their passions and give them a clearer understanding of why school matters through opportunities to interact with business professionals and other out-of-school activities.

Education expert, Steve Dyer, provides his initial reaction to these proposals on his blog.

the tax cut in 2014 would be about 1.6 percent.

What does that work out to, for the average earner? As we pointed out in our earlier analysis, an Ohio taxpayer earning the median income of $47,358 pays $1,346 in state income tax. That means the 2014 taxes for the average Ohioans would be reduced by $21, or 40 cents per weekly paycheck. I don’t know about you, but that much won’t even buy me a copy of the Dispatch, let alone make a dent in my weekly expenses, so it seems a rather empty gesture as far as election year gimmicks go.

Perhaps preparing for criticism that the amount would be miniscule for ordinary Ohioans, the report clarifies:

The reduction would be the same percentage for all tax brackets, but in terms of actual dollars, it would benefit the wealthy and small businesses more because they pay more in income taxes.

Which seems a rather odd defense, that it will help the wealthy and businesses more than the rest of us. For an election year gimmick, this seems mis-targeted. I think we can all assume that the wealthy and small business community (as represented by the local Chambers and ultra-conservative NFIB) were already on Kasich’s side.

Details of the proposal are expected to be included in the Mid-Biennium Review (MBR) budget legislation, expected to be introduced early next week. Hearings will start Wednesday in the House Finance Committee. As they prepare to consider this proposal, Ohioans might want to contact their House member and let them know what an annual tax cut of $21 would mean to them.