DeWine should use line-item vetoes

We suspect Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine will be drinking a lot of coffee this weekend. That's because he and his staff need to plow through the 5,648 pages of the roughly $60 billion biennial state budget passed Wednesday on a near-party line vote in the Republican-dominated state legislature. No Democrat, including state Rep. Joe Miller of Amherst, voted for it, and only a few Republicans broke ranks to oppose it. (The Republicans representing Lorain County, state Sen. Nathan Manning of North Ridgeville and state Reps. Kellie Deeter of Norwalk and Gayle Manning of Avon, voted for it.) DeWine's fellow Republicans didn't leave him much time. The deadline to sign the budget is Monday, but the final version passed out of a conference committee around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, and the House and Senate voted on it later that day. Several members said they hadn't read it in its entirety before the final vote. Nevertheless, we expect that DeWine will sign the budget into law, even though it's a far cry from what he proposed earlier this year. Fortunately, signing the budget isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. In Ohio, the governor can issue line-item vetoes, striking out portions of the budget that he disagrees with. DeWine should exercise that power, even though the General Assembly could override his vetoes. To help get DeWine off on the right foot, here are several problematic portions we spotted. The biggest is a massive tax cut that would almost entirely benefit those making more than $100,000 per year. They would benefit because the budget would eliminate Ohio's graduated income tax over the next two years until all taxpayers, regardless of how much they earn, are paying a 2.75 percent income tax rate. (The current top rate is 3.5 percent.) This as the state slashes spending on various benefits that help the poorest Ohioans. Imposing the flat tax would cost the state roughly $1 billion in annual revenue once fully implemented. Ohio's income taxes are not so burdensome on the wealthy that they need to be reduced. Vetoing it is the right call. To help make up for lost revenue the budget would eliminate several sales-tax exemptions, including on newspapers, certain types of advertising, including circulars frequently bundled into newspapers, and the machinery and supplies used in printing. Eliminating those exemptions would not only increase costs for our readers and advertisers, it would make printing this newspaper more expensive. DeWine should veto it. The budget also changes the way public libraries and public schools are funded, which means they will get less state funding in the long term. Speaking of libraries, the budget includes a provision that would require librarians to sequester materials related to sexual orientation and gender identity away from those under the age of 18. Like several other anti-LGBTQ provisions in the budget, it should be struck from the bill. Not only is it a culture-war provision aimed at making life more difficult for teens coming to terms with their sexuality, it would force libraries to spend money and time examining their collections for anything that might run afoul of the vague rules. To be clear, we oppose restricting access to knowledge. DeWine should veto that provision, but if he fails to do so, libraries should not only restrict access to pro-LGBTQ material, but anti-LGBTQ material as well. The budget also would make it harder for schools to fund themselves with property taxes. For example, unless they were saving for capital improvements, public-school districts wouldn't be able to carry over more than 40 percent of their general fund budgets into the next fiscal year. If they exceeded that threshold, they would receive less money from property taxes the next year. This would punish fiscal responsibility. Moreover, the budget would impose significant changes in how local governments can levy property taxes. Among those changes is the elimination of new replacement levies. Replacement levies allow public entities to raise additional revenue by taxing property owners on updated property values rather than the values that were in place when the levy was first passed. Public schools are already overly reliant on property taxes, something the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional, and those provisions would make it even harder for them to avoid cuts that would hurt students. DeWine should veto those provisions. The budget also would require candidates for local school boards to be identified by political parties on the ballot. As a result, school board races, which are now nonpartisan, would devolve into hyper-partisan brawls, potentially hurting public-school students. DeWine should veto that provision, along with one that would eliminate elected positions from the state Board of Education, leaving only five members all appointed by the governor. Yes, the state school board has already been stripped of much of its authority, but Ohioans deserve to have independent voices serving at the highest level of the state education system. We also aren't keen on the plan to raid the state's unclaimed funds to help pay for sports stadiums, including $600 million for a new stadium the Browns want to build in Brook Park. It wasn't DeWine's preferred plan, but if there's one thing most Republicans in Columbus agree on it's giving the Browns millions of dollars. There's plenty else not to like in the budget, which we don't have space to get into, but DeWine has the power to make it better by vetoing the legislature's worst excesses. He should pour himself a cup of coffee and break out his veto pen.