Senate Releases Budget Plan, Removes Autism Requirement

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Republican-led Ohio Senate released its version of the two-year state budget Friday.

The chamber has been trying to find ways to cut at least $1 billion from the roughly $54 billion plan approved by the Democratic-controlled Ohio House in April.

The big difference in the Senate’s plan was school funding.

The Senate proposed to fund schools on a per-pupil basis, not Governor’s Strickland’s plan for evidence-based funding, which included all-day kindergarten, new tutors, nurses and counselors, and lower student-teacher ratios.

NBC 4’s Tanya Hutchins was reporting from the Statehouse during the Senate’s release.

The Senate’s budget highlights:

- Eliminates 10-year phase-in of school funding.

Instead, it increases funding to all schools over the next two years, using real, on-hand dollars to provide stability to school districts as they work to weather a slow economy.

For fiscal year 2010, all schools would receive a quarter-percent funding increase over 2009. For fiscal year 2011, all schools would receive a half-percent funding increase over 2010.

Schools in the state's fast-growing districts (those that grow more than two percent each year) would get two percent increases in 2010 and 2011.

Senate President Bill Harris said his chamber's version of the budget retained a committee that will continue to study Strickland's evidence-based education approach.

"We are committed to working with the governor and the House to make further reforms to improve the quality of education for all children," Harris said in a statement. "However, we have looked closely at the evidence-based model and believe it to be fundamentally flawed."

Charter school supporters immediately praised the Senate's bill.

"The Senate's restoration of funding for Ohio's charter schools provides a lifeline to more than 80,000 public school students and their families," said Bill Sims, president of the Ohio Association of Public Charter Schools. "It also annuls the constitutional questions raised by House bill provisions which would have cut funding for Ohio's public charter schools by as much as $160 million in 2010."

- Eliminates 34 proposed fee increases, helping to reduce the burden on Ohio employers in agriculture, coal, construction, etc.

- The Senate’s budget would fund all public schools equally, regardless of charter school, e-school or traditional school.

- Eliminates mandates that private insurance offer coverage for dependents up to age 29.

- Removes requirement that health-insurance companies offer coverage for autism spectrum disorders, which would cost businesses and Medicaid tens of millions of dollars annually.

The Senate also cut $417 million in funding to state agencies, $42 million in Medicaid expenses, and imposed another $200 million in additional service cuts on agencies in line with a cost-trimming executive order by Strickland, a Democrat.

Senate was set to vote out of committee Tuesday and vote full Senate Wednesday or Thursday.

Ohio has faced a series of deep budget cuts in recent months as state revenues have come up short of projections.

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