The Ohio Senate has produced a bill outlining some of the changes it is making to the proposed two year state budget. Ohio Senators have removed from the state budget a proposal forcing universities to offer in state tuition to out of state students who request the documents necessary to vote in Ohio. The Senate bill also removes spider monkeys from the list of exotic animals to be regulated by the state. But Governor Kasich’s plan to expand Medicaid expansion, which was removed in the house version of the budget, hasn’t been added back into the senate plan. Senate President Keith Faber says there’s a good reason why.
"Medicaid Expansion has not yet been addressed," says Faber. "We indicated that would not be part of the budget at this time. We’ve had great work groups going on in the Senate on a bipartisan basis with Senators Cafaro and Burke leading that effort and they are making good progress. A lot of good ideas are coming forward. But again, constraining that within this limited time period of the budget just seemed to be artificial."
The Senators continue to work, behind closed doors, on the school funding piece of the budget. The changes to the Senate plan include stripping out the 7 percent personal income tax break that was included in the house version of the budget. But the senate proposal includes a one point four billion dollar tax cut for small businesses.