BY NICK EVANS
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has approved $3.5 billion for building and renovation projects over the next two years. The governor shared details of the capital budget Tuesday.
[See capital budget details including $24 Million in spending earmarked for Wood County.]
But perhaps more notable than the latest appropriations is DeWine’s plan for how to pay for them. Instead of funding the projects through borrowing, as the state normally does, DeWine plans to pay for the bulk of the budget in cash.
“If we pay cash for all of this, I am told by our budget team that it will save the taxpayers of the state of Ohio up to $1.6 billion dollars in interest in the coming years,” DeWine said.
DeWine explained lawmakers have already cleared his administration to pay $1.5 billion in cash, but he may go back to them for further spending authority. The move would give the state added flexibility going forward as interest rates rise. Ohio is in the position to pay ahead for these infrastructure projects at least in part because of an influx of federal dollars meant to assist with COVID-19 relief easing state balance sheets.
Walking through the budget, DeWine emphasized how these investments in physical improvements will support broader policy efforts. Dollars for hospitals and treatment facilities will further mental health and addiction services, for instance, he said. New funding for the Community Capital Assistance Program, he added, will continue helping people with developmental disabilities secure housing.
“The Ohio Department Developmental Disabilities worked with local partners and has authorized so far with that money the purchase of 62 homes, constructed 15 homes and renovated 344 homes,” DeWine described.
The budget will spend just over $400 million on the state’s jails and prisons including nearly $75 million to replace aging buildings and $85 million for various safety and security upgrades. DeWine boasted that the $515 million earmarked for Ohio’s state parks is the largest investment of its kind in state history.
The state will also spend $100 million on a new round of school safety grants, and devote $22 million to training facilities for firefighters, including a high-rise structure meant to simulate an apartment or office tower.
DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted also put significant emphasis on how investments tied to the deal bringing Intel to Ohio will yield benefits beyond the immediate area. Street and wastewater improvements will serve the region, DeWine argued, and the chips Intel starts making will benefit the country. Husted similarly framed the investments.
“It’s not just Intel, it’s the companies that we will bring with them that will create the economic momentum for a generation,” he said. “What we did is the envy of 49 other states, and they wish they would have had a chance to do it.”
Still, the money pouring into the area isn’t just for roads and sewers. After previously stacking up $5.5 million in tax incentives, the historic Newark Arcade will receive another $1 million in the capital budget to fund renovations. The glass-roofed shopping center is more than a century old and has been closed for improvements since 2019.
Also from Ohio Capital Journal:
Commentary: Did the assault weapons ban of 1994 bring down mass shootings? Here’s what the data tells us
A spate of high-profile mass shootings in the U.S. has sparked calls for Congress to look at imposing a ban on so-called assault weapons– covering the types of guns used in both the recent Buffalo grocery attack and that on an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Such a prohibition has been in place before. As President Joe Biden noted in his June 2, 2022, speech addressing gun violence, almost three decades ago bipartisan support in Congress helped push through a federal assault weapons ban in 1994, as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
That ban was limited – it covered only certain categories of semi-automatic weapons such as AR-15s and applied to a ban on sales only after the act was signed into law, allowing people to keep hold of weapons purchased before that date. And it also had in it a so-called “sunset provision” that allowed the ban to expire in 2004.
Nonetheless, the 10-year life span of that ban – with a clear beginning and end date – gives researchers the opportunity to compare what happened with mass shooting deaths before, during and after the prohibition was in place. Our group of injury epidemiologists and trauma surgeons did just that. In 2019, we published a population-based study analyzing the data in a bid to evaluate the effect that the federal ban on assault weapons had on mass shootings, defined by the FBI as a shooting with four or more fatalities, not including the shooter. READ MORE
