Copeland: Kasich budget would force cuts in basic services here

By Warren Copeland 5:00 PM Saturday, March 19, 2011

Think a bit about what government services are most important to you. I am guessing that somewhere near the top of your list are police protection, fire protection, emergency medical service, snow removal, housing inspection and building code enforcement.

I suspect that is why the Ohio General Assembly promised you as a citizen of Ohio that a portion of your state income tax payment would be returned to local governments so they can provide these very basic services.

I have been asked to respond to the proposals Gov. Kasich has made for the Ohio state budget for the next fiscal year. My first reaction is great sympathy for the governor.

We in Springfield city government know it is hard to cut budgets. We have had to do a lot of it, especially in recent years, to the tune of not filling about 120 jobs in city government.

It is hard, but as we have cut, we have tried to keep in mind both the need to protect essential services and the need to be fair.

So those of us who serve in local governments understood that we would need to take our fair share of the cuts needed to balance the state budget and had tried to prepare ourselves for cuts similar to other parts of the state budget — say 15 percent.

Instead, Gov. Kasich is proposing cuts of 25 percent next year and an additional 25 percent the year after next. For Springfield this means cuts of $278,126 for 2011, $1,037,515 for 2012 and at least $1,576,863 for 2013.

Add to this the fact that the governor has urged elimination of the estate tax, a tax currently collected on large estates, which would cut city revenue by about another $900,000.

If this all happens, the City of Springfield is looking at a very serious budget problem in the next few years. We have not asked for an increase in our income tax rate in the nearly 23 years I have served on the Springfield City Commission. We have no current plans to do so.

So what can we do if these reductions are actually enacted? We can hope that we take in more revenue. We have, in fact, seen a slight increase in income tax receipts early this year.

This suggests that some people have gone back to work in our community, which is good news all around. But not enough people have returned to work. This recovery appears to be too slow to provide enough new revenue to be very helpful anytime soon.

Obviously, we will try to make more cuts in our costs. At this point those costs are primarily people, so that means more reductions in employees.

Coming back to where I started, those basic services I listed — such as police protection, fire protection, emergency medical service, snow removal, housing inspection and building code enforcement — are close to 80 percent of the city’s general fund budget.

There is no foreseeable way that most of the cuts will not have to come from those basic services. There will be real pain in our everyday lives as a result.

I have focused on the City of Springfield because that is the local government I know best. County jails will experience even greater overcrowding if state prisons are closed. Citizens already rightfully complain when those taken to jail are released because there is no room for them. That will get worse.

County agencies that provide assistance to those in need — children who are abused or neglected, children who need financial support from their parents, parents out of work, and so on — will have their budgets cut.

Not-for-profit organizations will also feel the pain. Smaller communities in this area with smaller local tax sources may feel the pain even more than Springfield. Townships, cities and villages other than Springfield also depend upon the Local Government Fund and the estate tax.

I do not believe that Gov. Kasich has ever served as a local official. As a result, he may not understand as much as those of us who have that experience both how important basic local services are and how stretched local government budgets that support those services already are.

Hopefully, some members of the General Assembly who have served in local government will understand better.

Perhaps they may even remember that their predecessors in the Legislature recognized these facts well enough to promise the taxpayers of Ohio that a portion of the taxes they paid to the state would help fund those basic local services.

If so, perhaps those legislators will cut local services only to the same extent that they cut the state budget. If not, we are certainly going to feel extra pain right here in our local community.

Warren Copeland is the mayor of Springfield.

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