Every two years, ready or not, there’s a conference committee to hammer out a two-year state budget.
It’s an exercise that looks as clumsy as the dancers in the Geico commercial – “Does it take two to tango?”
Geico’s three dancers have a hard time not stepping on each other.
In the Statehouse tango, the governor, House and Senate must put egos and aspirations aside and figure out the best way to pay for schools, colleges, prisons, health care for the poor and elderly, local governments and much more.
This year’s tango really includes only Republicans. Democrats are wallflowers at the dance.
That’s just the way it is with a Republican governor and the GOP in charge of both the House and Senate.
So far, the budget process has been a series of solos.
Gov. John Kasich proposed his budget, the House passed its version and next week the Senate is expected to approve its plan for spending about $55 billion.
After the Senate acts, the conference committee will get to work.
Formally, members of the House and Senate are on the committee, but the governor’s representatives also play a key role.
Kasich must sign a new balanced budget into law by June 30, end of the fiscal year.
Last week, House Speaker William Batchelder, R-Medina, provided a not-so-sneaky preview of possible budget tango choreography.
Kasich’s budget and the version passed by the House, for example, included provisions that based teacher pay on performance, rather than time in service.
The budget unveiled last week by the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Chris Widener, R-Springfield, pulled the performance-pay language.
Batchelder called that “crazy.”
“I think that’s part of what we want to encourage teachers to be doing,” Batchelder said.
“...and I realize there are some unions who don’t feel that way.”
How would he get performance pay in the final bill?
“I tried to hold my breath and turn blue,” he said. “I think it’ll go back in.”
He said he was “more excited” about that happening after a weekly meeting of the “Big Three” – the Speaker, Kasich and Senate President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond.
He and Kasich, said Batchelder, are in agreement and “the Senate feels differently.”
“We’ll just have to discuss it and work it out,” he said.
They’ll try not to step on each other’s toes, but that’s always tough in a three-way tango.
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