New Governor Shows Spending Problems

One of the first pieces of business that the Ohio Assembly is taking on is to draft the next biennial budget. Many Republican lawmakers are talking about rolling back, or ending the state’s Estate Tax. Governor Strickland says it is a bad idea because the state is facing yet another budget crisis. The Republicans are talking about doing while trying to look like the fiscal heroes. From how little revenue the Ohio Estate tax raises, this is almost a non-issue. Yet, this could be a big fight.

According to the Cincinnati Post, the Estate tax raises $54 million dollars a year for the state government. According to the Department of Budget and Management, in fiscal year 2006, $25.8 billion was spent. That means that the Estate tax contributes 0.2% to Ohio’s annual spending. The question I must ask is Governor Strickland is, can’t you find a way to cut back two tenths of one percent of your budget? I am sure that the state could do a .2% across the board spending cut to every department, and nobody would feel the pinch. Yet Strickland has such a spending problem, that he is not even willing to part with this amount of revenue. And of course the Republicans aren’t willing to make more meaningful steps to make the state government more fiscally responsible.

You can read the Cincinnati Post article here