Gov. Mike DeWine will deliver his second-to-last State of the State speech at noon Wednesday. Last year he talked up requiring schools to develop cell phone policies – which happened – and a primary seat belt law, which didn’t.
In Wednesday's speech, he’ll likely highlight the priorities from what is his last budget, introduced last month. DeWine’s budget includes a cigarette tax increase to pay for a $1,000 tax credit for children under 6 and a doubling of the sports betting tax to fund professional sports projects.
House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) has been cagey about that – as he was last week.
“What we’re always trying to do with tax policy is collect the money that folks think that we need for governing and paying for various services, but not affect behavior of people," Huffman told reporters. "I think it's it's a much more complicated question than it was ten years ago."
Senate President Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) has also been non-committal, as he also was in talking with reporters last week.
"Obviously we want to support policies that are pro-family. We want to support policies that enable parents to be able to have less stress on the pocketbook when they're raising young children in particular," McColley said. "But we'll see what it looks like. All of it is generally, if I had to describe it, it all gets thrown into a bucket. And then we decide what the priorities are and what we can actually afford, and we'll see what it looks like coming out of the House."
There’s no income tax cut in DeWine’s budget, but lawmakers haven’t ruled it out. DeWine has not included an income tax cut in any of the four budgets he's proposed. Income tax cuts proposed by Republican state lawmakers have been part of the last seven budgets.
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- ‘Devil’s in the details.’ Democrats ready for Ohio Gov. DeWine’s annual State of the State
