Worse Than We Thought

Don't take my word for it; here is a professional.

Republican legislative staffers hard at work on Ohio’s biannual budget (2021).

Today’s Rooster turns the controls over to a very special poster. I am honored that I have become an ostensible source on the intricate ways in which the predominantly Republican hobgoblins are ruining this state, but the truth is there are actual professionals who know the minutia of the butchery better than I.

Today we are fortunate enough to have one in our presence: I present Rachel Coyle, co-founder of How Things Work at the Ohio Statehouse.

Hi. I’m here to talk about everyone’s favorite subject—Ohio’s biennial operating budget! Asleep yet? That’s exactly what the Statehouse super-villains want. 

While we were all distracted by indicted former House Speakers and vaccine magnetism, Ohio’s Republican supermajority has been sneaking some Lex Luthor shit into the state budget bill.

We will always be able to rant about their evil machinations on the internet, but we’ve only got a few days to stop it from becoming law.

WTF is the operating budget?

Ohio’s budget lasts for two years at a time. It funds most major programs/services in the state. You know, like schools. Ohio funds schools using a system the state Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 1997, when I was 8 years old and thought Santa Claus and democracy were real.

Half of Eminem’s lifetime later, the Ohio House finally decided to fix our school funding system using ostensible research and dat. But Senate President Matt Huffman isn’t a fan of local schools. He’s suggesting we use old data to fund education through a formula Senate Republicans just invented the other night. 

We’ll soon learn whether Ohio will fund schools using a bipartisan plan based on years of research or the one drawn on Matt Huffman’s napkin.

But even if educating future generations isn’t your thing (you monster), there are still thousands of other reasons to hate-watch the budget process.

Why should you care about the budget?

Ohio’s budget is chock-full full of cruelty nuggets this year. 

Example: Senate Republicans want to cut all the money meant for broadband internet expansion and use it on another tax cut for their donors. Don’t worry though. You’ll probably get a cool $22 out of the deal. 

Reliable, high-speed internet for me and the whole state? No thank you. I’d rather use my $22 to order Grubhub once. Oh wait, I can’t. There aren’t any restaurants near me because who would open a business in a town without internet?

Republicans also plan to raise property taxes on affordable housing and take food aid away from thousands of Ohio kids! Just like Jesus taught us to do.

And they’re eliminating a program created to ensure nursing home residents are treated humanely. Out of sight, out of mind, that’s what I always say about my aging relatives.

But wait, there’s more! Republicans are violating Ohio’s single subject law (again) by adding shit to the budget that has nothing to do with money. They’ve added ridiculous new rules for abortion providers that could end up closing some of the only clinics left in the state. And they want to put partisan labels on some judicial races, because Democrats won a Supreme Court seat that one time.

And that’s just some stuff we KNOW is happening. The operating budget is currently 3,307 pages long. Who knows what hidden evils have escaped our frantic binge-reads?

If you’re looking for a wild Monday night, you can Control-F search all 772 pages of this beauty to find all the terrible things we don’t even know they’ve done yet. 

At this point you may be thinking it’s time to just leave the state. I don’t blame you, but consider how rewarding it’ll be to stay and make things a little less awful while everyone drowns.

Now that you’re feeling all noble, I need you to troll some politicians.

Call these people and tell them to remove these things from the budget, but please be polite as their ridiculously underpaid staffers are answering the phones.

Then, when the supermajority ignores you and fills the budget with inhumane garbage anyway, tell Governor DeWine to veto the bad stuff in the budget. DeWine has the power to reject individual lines in this 3,000-page monstrosity. (Tell him to “line item veto” each thing if you want to sound real cool.)

After that maybe tell a few people the Statehouse exists so we can try to save Ohio before Eminem and I get really old.

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Rachel Coyle is the Co-Founder of How Things Work at the Ohio Statehouse. You can follow her on Twitter at @RachelCoyleOhio.

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