Tagged: State Budget

Ohio's budget director says state revenues have "modestly exceeded" projections during the budget year that began in July.

Budget director Tim Keen says that has allowed the state to stash money in its rainy day fund. But he warns that assembling Ohio's next two-year budget will still have its challenges.

Gov. John Kasich's last budget closed a budget gap that approached $8 billion.

The plan is to make Ohio Medicaid a cabinet-level agency starting halfway through the next two year budget cycle on July 1, 2014. Right now Medicaid is housed in the Department of Job and Family Services, but is also administered by five other state agencies.  Greg Moody is the head of the Governor’s Office of Health Transformation.

“We realized that the organization of the program itself was stifling innovation," says Moody.

Medicaid is a nearly $19 billion program – it’s a third of the state budget and growing. But Moody says this move isn’t designed to cut the budget.

Democrats in the Ohio legislature are angry about a proposal that’s been slipped into a budget adjustment bill. The proposal would strip away money from Planned Parenthoods throughout Ohio.

In PoliticsOhio this week, Emily McCord spoke to Karen Kasler from Ohio Public Radio's Statehouse News Bureau. Kasler reported on a story this week on how the state budget is impacting the Ohio Arts Council. It received more money but there are strings attached to how that money can be used, and according to the OAC, that's unique in the state. Kasler breaks down what happened and the implications.