Ohio House Speaker Is Now Confident in Lawmakers Meeting State Budget Deadline

Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) said he is now confident in lawmakers passing the state’s biennial budget before its Friday deadline.

This follows his previous statement that with the approximately 800 differences between the biennial budgets passed by the Ohio House and Ohio Senate, the state legislature may likely miss its end-of-the-month deadline and need to pass a temporary budget until they can strike a final deal.

Under the Ohio Constitution, lawmakers must pass the state’s two-year budget and have it signed into law before the fiscal year’s end on June 30th. However, the budget legislation approved by the Ohio House and Ohio Senate differ significantly, causing some in leadership to conclude that the budget will not be able to pass before its deadline necessitating a deadline extension.

Stephens (pictured above) said he is now confident in the budget’s passage by Friday night and reports that lawmakers only have a few more budget issues to work through.

“We are making good progress on our budget negotiations. It’s just a volume of work but I think we’re moving in the right direction,” Stephens said.

On Monday, the House Rules and Reference Committee approved an amendment to add a seven-day interim budget to Senate Bill (SB) 43 that aims to expand the situations in which surviving spouses of disabled veterans may receive the “homestead” tax exemption in preparation for if lawmakers cannot pass the budget before its deadline.

State Representatives and Veterans Steve Demetriou (R-Bainbridge Twp.), Jennifer Gross (R-West Chester), Beth Lear (R-Galena), Brian Stewart (R-Ashville), Scott Wiggam (R-Wooster), and Bernie Willis (R-Springfield) adamantly opposed the interim budget amendment to SB 43 claiming that leadership is using the legislation to play their “political games” and are using military families as “bargaining chips” for budget discussions.

The house intended to vote on that measure this week, but Stephens tabled the measure for the time being.

Stephens said that if they need a budget extension within the upcoming weeks, they are ready to pass it, but Ohioans shouldn’t worry if they miss the budget deadline.

Lear told The Ohio Star she is “so pleased that the amended bill was pulled from consideration” and that “jumping the gun and pushing a continuing resolution is not negotiating in good faith.”

Stewart said that leadership changed its tune on the budget deadline in a matter of a day.

“What a difference a day (and no premature continuing resolution) makes…,” Stewart said.

Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine have both said that they are confident the General Assembly can pass the budget before its Friday deadline.

According to Huffman (R-Lima), Senate Republicans are committed to good-faith negotiations.

“We understand that we are not going to get to 50 votes in the House without doing some of the things the House wants to do,” Huffman said.

The house’s $88 billion budget included greater funding for social services, daycare, K–12 schools, and food banks. It also aims to eliminate Ohio’s third-grade reading guarantee, which requires kids to repeat third-grade if they don’t pass a reading proficiency test. The budget passed with substantial bipartisan support.

The senate’s $86 billion budget increased taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools well beyond what the house authorized, and it delivered larger tax cuts by combining the three tax bands in the house budget into two. Republicans in the senate also reduced the amount spent on social services by the house and reinstated Ohio’s third-grade reading guarantee. The senate budget passed on party lines without support from the Democrats.

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Hannah Poling is a lead reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Hannah on Twitter @HannahPoling1. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Jason Stephens” by Jason Stephens. Background Photo “Ohio House of Representatives Floor” by Minh Nguyen. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Editor’s Note: Beth Lear was a journalist with The Ohio Star from May 2019 to December 2019.