As passed by House Republicans, the 2025-27 spending plan amounts to an enemies list compiled by angry, mostly male, and often low-information Ohioans, who think Ohio’s best days were, oh, maybe 100 years ago. That’s when female Ohioans, black Ohioans and LGBTQ Ohioans were required to shut up and let a community’s men-folk call the shots.
Some people and places on House Republicans’ enemies list are obvious enough: Public schools and public libraries, actually, pretty much anything that might help Ohioans get ahead. Also in HB 96’s cross-hairs are resources all Ohioans own but imperiled by out of state asset strippers or factory-farm polluters.
And tucked in Ohio House Republicans’ grievance list are what look like less-than-subtle policy swipes at a fellow Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine.
Example: House Republicans heavily pruned a key DeWine program, doing a favor for factory-farm polluters. The House rewrite forbids the H2Ohio program, a much-lauded DeWine initiative, to protect Ohio’s waters, especially from mega-farm runoff. The House forbids H2Ohio to buy land or conservation easements. Conservation easements, which are voluntary, protect watersheds.
And House Republicans slashed almost in half a DeWine request to allot $272 million to the H2Ohio fund itself. That’s a plus if you love seeing Ohio lakes turn green with toxic algae in the summer.
And bystanders may wonder if parts of House Republicans’ cut-and-paste amount to personal shots aimed at the governor and First Lady Fran DeWine.
Example: The DeWines, of Cedarville, ardently support the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which, the state says, “provides more than 400,000 Ohio children from birth to age 5 with a free book (delivered to a child’s home) each month.”
The governor asked the General Assembly to boost the Parton program’s funding so ensure more Ohio children could benefit from it. He wanted to increase the Imagination Library’s annul state outlay from $8 million to $10 million.
Instead, House Republicans cut the governor’s request to $8.25 million per year, a 17.5% slash. (In fairness to House Republicans, the Parton program’s name includes a word — Library — seemingly as unwelcome to GOP representatives as garlic is to a vampire.)
But House Republicans, led by Speaker Matt Huffman of Lima, did find money for something DeWine didn’t seek: Juicy pay raises for fellow politicians: Ohio’s Supreme Court (House Republicans’ buddies) and municipal and county court judges.
Also destined for raises, courtesy of Huffman’s House: Elected county and township officials, and members of Ohio’s elections boards, many — complete coincidence — who often are their counties’ Democratic or Republican party chairs.
(And the House GOP’s budget rewrite continues a recently acquired Statehouse hobby, jumping into disputes over how the Youngstown area’s Mill Creek Metropolitan Park District is run. It includes Mill Creek Park, the “green cathedral” — a perfect description by its historian, the late Dr. John C. Melnick. Fancy brass-knuckle local politics? Visit Mahoning County.)
House Republicans’ handiwork, which would hold Ohio down, is pending in the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Republican from Greater Cleveland’s Kirtland.
His panel must consider Ohioans’ objections to the House budget rewrite: It’d seriously damage Ohio’s best-in-the-nation libraries and crimp DeWine’s drive to clean up Ohio’s waters.
Thinking Ohioans know their state needs to move forward, not back. State senators need to hear that
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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