Excerpt:
The Ohio state legislature today passed a state budget which includes multiple pro-life amendments ensuring the state is not involved in abortion funding with taxpayer money.
The state budget, House Bill 153, now advances to pro-life Governor John Kasich. Among other things, the state budget contains Ohio Right to Life amendments that will protect taxpayer dollars from paying for abortion.
The first amendment bans abortions from being performed in public hospitals. The second amendment prohibits abortion coverage in insurance plans of local public employees.
“These two pro-life amendments will ensure that Ohio taxpayer dollars are not funding abortion,” said Mike Gonidakis, executive director of Ohio Right to Life. “It is crystal clear that a vast majority of Ohioans oppose all forms of taxpayer funding of abortion.”
Additional pro-life amendments were also included. One measure requires the Ohio Department of Health to apply for federal abstinence education grants to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies. The final pro-life amendment preserves the right of student groups to use and benefit from school funds and facilities, therefore protecting the rights of pro-life groups on college campuses.
“Abstinence education taught by our pro-life educators reduces teen pregnancy. These efforts have resulted in a decrease in teen abortions in Ohio, having a dramatic impact,” Gonidakis said.
“I am pleased that the Ohio House budget bill once again places a priority on abstinence education,” added Valerie Huber, Executive Director for the National Abstinence Education Association. “Passage of this measure assures that students in Ohio will again receive the benefits of this important risk avoidance message. We appreciate Ohio Right to Life’s support for this measure that returns a state priority on abstinence education in Ohio.”
House Bill 153 will be signed into law on June 30th by pro-life Governor John Kasich, who Ohio Right to Life fully expects to support each of these life-saving measures.
[…]The passage of the budget comes after state House passage of three pro-life bills, including an abortion ban, ban on late-term abortions, and a bill to stop abortion funding in Ohio via the state exchange created under Obamacare. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/06/28/ohio-house-passes-ban-on-abortions-late-term-abortions/
And more from National Review on some of the fiscally conservative provisions in Ohio’s budget.
Excerpt:
For conservatives, it’s a recession-era dream budget. “It balances the budget, preserves our tax cuts, and sets the stage for renewing the ability of Ohio to create jobs,” Ohio governor John Kasich tells National Review Online.
The $55.5 billion budget, which covers the next two fiscal years and fills an $8.6 billion shortfall, cuts $1.4 billion from Medicaid funding, sells five prisons to private operators, and slashes the money sent to local governments by 25 percent next year and an additional 25 percent in the following year. That last decision has proven to be controversial already, with critics charging that Kasich is passing the deficit problems to local governments, forcing them to raise taxes or severely restrict services. Kasich sees the cuts as an opportunity — and says it would be a “huge mistake” for local government to raise taxes, thus “providing disincentives for companies to locate in their communities.”
[…]On education, over the next two years, Kasich is expanding school choice by quadrupling the numbers of vouchers available and rescinding a statewide cap on charter schools. He is capping higher-education tuition hikes at 3.5 percent, requiring that all university professors teach an extra class, and asking universities to look into ways of offering three-year bachelor’s degrees.
On the jobs front, he’s adamant about the need to forgo tax hikes, even preserving an $800 million tax cut implemented in January. “States with lower levels of taxation have faster economic growth,” Kasich observes. He’s also setting aside $100 million — the profits from the state’s liquor monopoly — to fund JobsOhio, a new initiative dedicated to attracting and retaining businesses in Ohio. With an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent and a loss of over 600,000 jobs in the last decade, Ohio could use the boost.
Both the state house and senate are Republican-controlled, and Kasich is “very optimistic” that the budget will pass. “I’ve told [state lawmakers] that if they have some better policy ideas, that’s fine — but we will not negotiate the numbers. We will have a balanced budget, and we will preserve the tax cut,” he says.
[…]But if the budget succeeds in bringing about an economic resurgence, look for Kasich to reap the benefits. In a piece headlined “Kasich’s beliefs at heart of plan,” Columbus Dispatch writer Joe Hallett commented that the “plan is as much a social budget as a fiscal one, built on ideology as much as practicality,” and said that “Ohio, at least in modern times, has never seen a state budget like [this].”
Kasich is ready to be judged on the results. “Budgets are just a means to an end. They’re not an end in themselves,” he observes. “This budget can set the stage in our state for recovery.”
And the Toledo Blade reports that the Ohio budget should please parents, as well.
Excerpt:
Some 1,100 Ohioans swarmed the grounds of the Statehouse Tuesday to demonstrate support for Gov. John Kasich’s plan to quadruple the number of school vouchers, even as overall aid for public schools is cut.
The governor’s $55.5 billion, two-year budget proposed last week also would lift the cap on the creation of charter schools, which operate with more regulatory freedom than their traditional public K-12 counterparts.
“School choice is not about doing away with public schools,” Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor told the crowd. “It’s about making them better. … Ohio’s future depends on our children being the best and the brightest in the world.”
Mr. Kasich’s spending plan would more than quad- ruple the number of vouchers to 60,000 by 2013 from roughly 14,000 now.
Suzanne Donahue of Toledo sends her 13 and 11-year-old daughters to St. Catherine of Siena School. She’s never received an Ohio EdChoice scholarship, and she’s not sure that her children would qualify under the proposed expansion. But she attended Tuesday’s rally to support that option for other children.
“We pay out of our pockets for it, and I vote for every tax situation that’s on the ballot for the kids because I hate to see the children suffer,” she said. “However, it would be nice to have some of those funds come to my own family. … I believe healthy competition will equal better schools and that better schools will survive.”
[…]The state runs two voucher programs — the statewide Ohio EdChoice Program, which caps the number of scholarships at 14,000, and a smaller, less generous program only for students in Cleveland city schools.
The EdChoice program targets students who attend a school that has been in academic emergency or watch for two out of the last three years. The grants are $4,250 for K-8 students and $5,000 for high school students, or the amount of the participating school’s tuition, whichever is less.
The budget also would lift the cap on how many bricks-and-mortar and on-line charter schools may be sponsored by one organization. The cap was imposed to slow the proliferation of such schools after a number of highly publicized failures. More than 300 charter schools in Ohio serve nearly 88,000 students.
Good news for fiscal and social conservatives. Well done, John Kasich!
WINTERY KNIGHT 