Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Is a spending cap amendment good?

Republican candidates take sides over a proposed tax limitation

By ALAINA FAHY

The Eagle-Gazette Staff
afahy@nncogannett.com

FAIRFIELD COUNTY - An amendment that would put caps on local and state government spending has officials asking questions and taking sides.
Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro, who opposes the amendment, spoke to a group of county residents and answered questions about the tax expenditure limitation, an amendment to Ohio's Constitution.


If passed in November's election, the Tax Expenditure Limitation Amendment will limit state and local government spending by whichever is higher - a 3.5 percent cap on annual increases or a formula using totals from the rate of population growth plus the annual percentage increase of the Consumer Price Index.
''It demonstrates, in my mind, the recklessness of the people who put this on the ballot,'' Petro said.

Petro is running against fellow Republican and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in the May 2 primary election for governor. Blackwell supports the amendment, while Petro is speaking out against it.

Blackwell's Web site says the amendment eliminates unfunded mandates by stopping the states from requiring any programs of political subdivisions without providing necessary funds.
Blackwell's office could not be reached for comment.

Petro says the amendment is a bad idea because it was ''recklessly drafted.''
Petro said the amendment may sound and look good on the surface. But voters should know about the ''great havoc'' the amendment would cause if passed.

Tom Darnel of Lancaster said it's about time there's an alternative to raising taxes in order to balance budgets.
''People feel spending is out of control,'' Darnel said.

But Petro said local spending may not be as ''out of control'' as residents think .Petro said he doesn't know of any argument that shows local government spending is out of control - or on its way there.

A majority of registered voters would have to decide if a local jurisdiction wanted to exceed the cap.
Petro would prefer to see the restriction lessened, so that only a majority of those voting - not a majority of all registered voters - would be needed.
Petro said it's unlikely a subdivision could even get 50 percent of registered voters out to the polls.

The Ohio Municipal League has taken a stand against the amendment because it is impossible to fund schools, municipalities and other bodies of government with one formula or percentage for a cap, Deputy Director John Mahoney said.
Baltimore is one municipality that would be affected, said village administrator Marsha Hall.

''It will just do irreparable damage to small communities,'' she said.

Originally published April 12, 2006

More about the gov race

Blackwell's duplicity comes in various sizes

Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Thomas Suddes
Plain Dealer Columnist

To borrow Richard M. Nixon's im mortal maxim, ''It would be easy, but it would be wrong,'' to lampoon Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell for having had personal investments in companies that make slot machines, the abortion pill and voting machines.
True, Blackwell, a Cincinnati Republican who wants to be governor, is a conservative Christian who says he opposes abortion and casinos. True also, as Ohio's chief election officer, Blackwell has at least some influence over which brand of voting machine Ohio's 88 bipartisan county boards of elections individually decide to buy.
Blackwell told the Columbus Dispatch, before its coverage ticked him off enough that he stopped speaking to its reporters, that the investment in Diebold Inc., the voting machine (and ATM) company, ''was made . . . without his knowledge . . [and] has been sold at a loss.''
There's no reason to doubt Blackwell's claim that he was in the dark about where stockbrokers parked his money. As Blackwell's tenure as secretary of state proves, he's not real big on details. That's why his hands-free portfolio is actually good news for voters: Finally, Ohio has an elected Statehouse official who takes no better care of his own business than he does of the people's. In today's Columbus, that - pathetically - is a good-government breakthrough.
Still, it's asking too much to expect Blackwell's circus parade to promote sincere principles. And it doesn't.
For example, the secretary of state is backing a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that purports to put clamps on taxes and public spending.
The amendment is so badly worded that it would give judges control of state and local government. You wouldn't mortgage your house using paperwork drafted by people who don't command the lingo. Yet that's exactly how Blackwell wants to encumber Ohio's future. (There's nothing like wanting to be the head of a state government for which you have intellectual contempt.)
But hey, wording - like the secretary of state's personal investments - is just another pesky detail. What, however, is not a mere detail is the bid by Blackwell's camp followers to preach one thing about state government, but practice another.
Case in point: Republican Akron millionaire David Brennan. On the plus side of the ledger, Brennan has steadily advocated - albeit, at great personal profit - giving Ohio parents more choices in picking the schools their children attend. Parents have the right to educate a child as they see fit. And, this side of North Korea, children aren't state property.
Charter schools are Brennan's preferred option for offering parents choices. Charter schools (in Ohio, legally called ''community schools'') are, in effect, privately run public schools. The state Education Department terms charter schools ''public schools of choice.''

They should fit the schools too

As The Plain Dealer reported in March, Brennan's for-profit management company has sucked about $350 million from the state treasury since Ohio's charter-school program began in the 1990s. The company runs charter schools called Hope Academies. Of 15,700 Ohio pupils enrolled in Hope Academies last year, 5,300 were in Cleveland, the newspaper reported.
But in one of those amazing Ohio coincidences - you know, the kind that anywhere else in America might be considered, say, brazen hypocrisy - Brennan happens to be No. 1 on the list of four petitioners who initiated the signature drive for the so-called Tax and Expenditure Limitation amendment to the state Constitution. If it takes a tax-spender to know one, then Brennan surely is an expert on why Ohio's budget may be slathering cash where it shouldn't. One doubts, somehow, that Brennan considers charter schools frills Ohio can do without.
Predictably - given where donations come from - Blackwell blames budget gluttony on Statehouse cooks (fellow Republicans), not the pushy diners thronging the Statehouse lobbies. The proposed tax and spending limitation amendment, says Blackwell, ''will curb politicians' appetite for unlimited spending.'' (Emphasis added.) Evidently, the GOP-run General Assembly force-feeds cash to Brennan and other hot-wired Republicans as if they're geese being fattened for pati.
Actually, the real deal for the state's self-styled conservatives - most don't know what ''conservative'' means - would be to privatize the profits and socialize the losses, which is as good a description as any of the Blackwell-Brennan ''vision'' for Ohio.
Suddes, The Plain Dealer's former legislative reporter, writes from Ohio University.
Contact him at:
suddes@frognet.net

2006 The Plain Dealer
2006 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved

Now Bexley

Council resolution opposes state tax-limitation measure

Thursday, April 13, 2006

By INA HORWITZ-WHITMORE
ThisWeek Staff Writer

Bexley City Council introduced a resolution Tuesday night to oppose the proposed Tax Expenditure Limitation Proposal constitutional amendment. The amendment is expected to be on the November ballot.

The amendment would institute tax-and-expenditure limitations at the state and local levels of government. The measure is opposed by the Ohio Municipal League.

According to council's resolution, the proposal places arbitrary spending limitations on local governments and would ''severely'' limit Bexley's ability to provide adequate safety and other services to citizens.

The resolution also said that the proposal would ''tie the hands of local leaders in times of crisis and other unpredictable circumstances, circumventing the city's thoughtful consideration of policy decisions by requiring special elections to approve these increases in expenditures.''

The resolution stated that the proposal may affect, and place in limbo, Bexley's ability to get money from the local government fund, which comprises 12 percent of its budget.

Bexley resident Cathy Levine, executive director of Universal Health Care Action Network of Ohio and a representative of a group called Coalition for Ohio's Future, addressed the finance committee about the proposal prior to the council meeting.

The coalition describes itself as a bipartisan organization of more than 125 service, business, medical, labor, public-safety and other groups who oppose the amendment.

More than 2-million Ohioans are represented in the coalition, including AFSME United, Catholic Charities Health and Human Services, Children's Defense Fund of Ohio, Jewish Family Services, Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, Ohio Association of Area Agencies on Aging and the Ohio Association of School Business Officials.

According to the coalition's Web site, if an amendment to limit expenditures -- similar to Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) -- had been in place for the past decade in Ohio, state and local services would have deteriorated substantially.

''The state government could distribute local government funds as it sees fit,'' Levine said. ''Bexley could get zero because a new formula for distribution would be established.''

Council president Helen Mac Murray said 75 percent of the state budget is spent on health care and schools.

''They could take the biggest hit,'' she said.

Assuming that a TABOR-type limit, such as the one proposed by Ohio Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, had been adopted in 1994, a cumulative total of $19-billion would have been cut from state expenditures and services over the next 11 years, according to the coalition's Web site. Levine said Colorado has been in economic distress since TABOR began.

''Parents have to buy their children's textbooks in district schools,'' she said.

On another matter, the service committee has scheduled a meeting for 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 18, to discuss sidewalk repair.