Tagged: State Budget

As expected, the Republican dominated Senate passed its budget in a marathon seven hour session. But as Statehouse correspondent Karen Kasler reports, minority Democrats did all they could to get their concerns heard before Republicans passed the bill.

Food banks might lose the money that House lawmakers put in their version of the budget. The Senate’s changes to the budget plan that was voted out of committee today/yesterday do not include a House provision to add 2 million dollars into the state’s food banks, and a Democratic amendment to do that was rejected. Lisa Hamler Fugitt of the Ohio Association of Food Banks says she’s disappointed that more funding for food banks was out of the Senate version of the budget, while changes to the state’s exotic animals law stayed in.

Majority Republicans in the Ohio Senate say their state budget education proposal spreads more money to more school districts.

Senate President Keith Faber says the plan increases state aid to schools in the two-year budget by more than $717 million compared to the current budget, which ends June 30.

Faber said Thursday the money stems from expected adjustments to state revenue and Medicaid caseload projections.

The GOP-controlled Senate's proposal spends almost $142 million more to fund schools compared to the House-passed version of the spending bill.