COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — State lawmakers will soon decide how to spend billions of dollars as part of their biennial duty to pass a state operating budget.    

“The state is doing well,” Gov. Mike DeWine said.  

DeWine will introduce his ideal budget on Monday. Then, the Ohio House Finance Committee will start hearing testimony on Tuesday. But this year’s budget has come with some concerns that there may not be as much money as year’s past.  

“Some people could say, ‘Well we’ve got a tight budget,’” DeWine said. “Well, I’m not sure that’s the best way to describe it.”

DeWine said the spending concerns come after extra cash was given to Ohio during the pandemic.  

“We had a period of time, because of COVID and frankly because of the federal dollars that were coming in, some of them fairly unrestricted, where it was an unusual period of time as far as the total amount of money that we had to do all kinds of things with,” DeWine said. “Now we’re back sort of to normal, we’re back to normal growth, we’re back to not that extra money.”  

Regardless of dollar amount, DeWine said there are a lot of things to consider when crafting the state budget.  

“We have a lot of choices to make,” he said. “And sometimes these are very, very difficult, difficult choices.”  

DeWine said funding for education will be a priority, but aside from that, he wants to keep building upon investments made these past few budget seasons.  

“We have mental health progress, we have been making health progress in regard to our drug problem. These are two big things that take a lot of money,” he said. “Education, early childhood education, early childhood development, K-12, our colleges, our universities — all these things are important.”  

DeWine said income tax cuts have been successful historically, but there are a lot of things to consider this budget season.

“We’re going to jump into the budget and I would imagine there’s going to be a desire to continue the tax reform that we’ve done over the course of time,” Ohio Senate President Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) said.  

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) is hesitant to say that an elimination of the income tax is possible this year. He said although the income tax has been reduced nearly every budget year since 2007, he is mindful that the tax comprises about one-third of the budget. And Democratic leadership is wary of what an income tax cut will mean to other critical programs.  

“We’ve got a lot of things that we need to fund, a lot of priorities, people who need some of the services that we fund in the state budget and the math doesn’t work if you eliminate an income tax,” Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) said.  “Anytime we’ve seen these large-scale income taxes, it really has amounted to a tax shift, it’s not a tax cut.”  

Instead, Huffman said he wants to shift his focus to property tax relief.  

“Income taxes and sales taxes people can kind of control. The harder you work, the more you pay in income tax. That’s not always true, but it’s mostly true,” Huffman said. “The more you spend, the more you pay in sale tax. Property tax is a bigger, more difficult problem.”  

A slew of property tax relief bills will soon be introduced at the Statehouse, and Huffman said whether some provisions end up in the budget does not change the complexity of the issue.  

“I think we need to resolve how real estate taxes are assessed, how they’re increased,” he said. “It’s not simply a matter of increasing or cutting. It’s how can we make the real estate tax system more predictable, smooth out the paths.”  

DeWine said he does not think it is a fair excuse to fail to pass any property tax relief under the guise of a tighter-than-normal budget.  

“But again, everybody has to deal with the same numbers, everybody has to deal with the same reality,” DeWine said.  

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) and Russo agree that funding public schools — and not funneling excess dollars to the school voucher program — is a priority this budget year.  

“We know there are going to be school funding issues, we want to see transparency and accountability from private schools that’s at the same level as the public schools,” Antonio said.

Russo said she wants to see significant investments in childcare, both making sure people have access and there are enough well-paid childcare workers.  

“It is clearly a priority, especially for the business community and for our workforce and obviously for early childhood development as well,” Russo said.

But Russo said she is also keeping an eye on the federal government to ensure that programs like Medicaid, TANF block grants, school meals, SNAP and food assistance can all be funded. Russo said 30% of the revenue funding the state operation budget comes from federal grants and loans.

Other entities like food banks and abortion groups have also already lobbied for money in this year’s budget.  

The Ohio House will work on the budget for the next few months before it goes to the Ohio Senate for more testimony and consideration. Several negotiations will likely happen behind closed doors until a final budget is reached and passed by the start of July.