Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.
After issuing a raft of line-item vetoes, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed Ohio’s 2025-27 operating budget, ending — for now – Statehouse jabberwocky over how to spend $90.4 billion in taxpayers’ money.
The headline was that the budget, as signed by DeWine, will help Dee and Jimmy Haslam, owners of the Cleveland Browns, build a new stadium in suburban Brook Park, abandoning the team’s stadium on Cleveland’s lakefront.
The budget also does some profoundly crucial things, such as providing (’til congressional Republicans and Donald Trump forbid it) Medicaid health insurance for one-in-four Ohioans (25.3% of Ohio’s residents).
Things you may have missed from the budget talk
But like every recent budget, oddments are also tucked in this one (House Bill 96). For example, the budget creates a force of super General Assembly sergeants-at-arms — Swiss Guards with Glocks? — to provide security for Ohio’s 99 state representatives and 33 state senators.
And the budget authorizesDeWine and any former Ohio governor (those now living: Democrats Richard F. Celeste and Ted Strickland; Republicans Nancy P. Hollister, Bob Taft and John R. Kasich) to officiate at (“solemnize”) weddings.
The final Senate vote on the budget was 23-10. Senate Republicans supplied the 23 “yesses” votes, while the Senate’s nine Democrats (and Republican Sen. Louis W. Blessing III, of suburban Cincinnati, a leading Statehouse voice for property-tax reform to benefit Ohio homeowners) voted “no.”
The final House budget vote was 59-38, with 59 of the House’s 65 Republicans voting “yes.” Voting “no” were 33 of House’s Democrats, plus five Republicans: Reps. Scott Oelslager of North Canton; Ron Ferguson of the Wintersville; Tim Barhorst of Fort Loramie, in western Ohio’s Shelby County; Levi Dean of Xenia; and Michelle Teska of Warren County’s Springboro. House members absent were Democratic Rep. Terrence Upchurch of Cleveland, and Republican Rep. Diane Mullins of Hamilton.
DeWine’s vetoes
The “enrolled” version of the budget (the copy that landed on DeWine’s desk) totaled 3,154 pages, a page count that’ll be pruned by the 67 “item vetoes” that DeWine made.
Unlike the federal budget, which presidents must sign as-is, or veto entirely, Ohio lets governors veto individual parts of proposed budgets. It requires 60 Ohio House votes (of 99) and 20 Ohio Senate votes (of 33) to override a gubernatorial veto.
In the fantasy world civics books describe, the legislature’s 132 members write Ohio’s budgets.
In fact, the new budget was written by House Speaker Matt Huffman of Lima, and lame-duck Senate President Rob McColley of northwest Ohio’s Napoleon. One of Ohio’s few checks on their power is the line-item veto.
Among less-noted but bad moves GOP legislators made, which DeWine blocked: A bid by GOP senators to kill Ohio’s Percent for Arts program. Created in 1990, it earmarks up to 1% of the cost of new or renovated state-funded buildings (with a project cost of at least $4 million) to buy or commission original works of art to install in them. The word “art” may have three letters; some GOP state senators must think it has four.
Also vetoed by DeWine was a GOP attempt to handcuff the power to use eminent domain to acquire land for recreational trails. The push to crimp trail development likely grew out of a longstanding Mahoning County battle over the Mill Creek Metropolitan Park District’s failed attempt to acquire some former Erie Lackawanna Railway right of way for a partially complete north-south trail.
DeWine, in vetoing the eminent domain roadblock, said “preventing the state from obtaining property for recreational trails would unnecessarily limit options for public projects to ensure adequate safety for bike riders … According to the Ohio Department of Public Safety, since 2020, nearly 900 Ohio bicyclists were either killed or seriously injured in traffic crashes with automobiles. Therefore, the veto of this item is in the public interest.” (Three cheers for DeWine citing “the public interest,” words seldom heard in our sordid Statehouse.)
Whether legislators will try to overturn DeWine’s vetoes is unclear.
Sure, maybe the governor should have gone much further. But at least DeWine wants to move Ohio forward.
That’s saying a lot at today’s Statehouse, where some people seem to long for a state run by old white guys who think Ohio, around, say, 1955, was just dandy. It was. For them.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Will DeWine’s veto hold? Ohio needs to strap in | Opinion
Reporting by Thomas Suddes / The Columbus Dispatch
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