Jan Resseger writes with cogency and insight about the frightening trend to defund public education. Trump once said that he loves the poorly educated—the rubes who buy whatever lies he is peddling, the gullible who hang on his every word, the low-information voters who trust him—and that same philosophy seems to be dominant in red states. That is, to defund public schools with a costly combination of tax cuts and privatization, while enriching grifters, religious proselytizers, and stripmall charters.

Resseger writes:

Ohio’s fiscal troubles certainly have been exacerbated by the hugely expensive universal EdChoice Expansion voucher expansion now projected to divert over a billion dollars in the current fiscal year out of the school foundation budget line (that also funds the state’s public schools) to pay for private school tuition mostly for upper income students already enrolled in private and religious schools.

But the depletion of the state’s fiscal capacity isn’t merely attributable to the universal school voucher expansion.  In mid-May, The Statehouse News‘ Jo Ingles published a brief warning from Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine about the tax cut his Republican legislative colleagues inserted into the budget he signed in June of 2023:  “Ohio’s tax revenue has come in below projections for four out of the last five months. And while some state leaders who advocated for tax cuts in the last budget say they’re still waiting to see more data, Gov. Mike DeWine said he thinks that’s why the state is seeing a shortfall.” Ingles elaborates: “The Office of Budget and Management had projected close to $23.2 billion in tax revenue by this point in the fiscal year, but it’s collected just under half a billion less… DeWine hasn’t included an income tax cut in any of the three budgets he’s proposed. But his fellow Republicans in the legislature passed $3.1 billion in tax cuts in the budget that took effect last July, largely through consolidation of four tax brackets into two. DeWine signed the budget into law.”

As part of a major report last November on the danger of state tax cutting, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reviews what happened in Kansas back in 2012, when according to  far-right dogma, the Kansas legislature and Governor Sam Brownback tried to boost the state’s economy through what they hoped would be economic growth followed by trickle-down economics: “Billed as a way to boost the state economy, the tax cuts led instead to plunging revenues and cuts in K-12 schools and higher education, as well as other public services… In 2017 lawmakers agreed on a bipartisan basis to repeal most of the tax cuts.” (States’ Recent Tax-Cut Spree Creates Big Risks for Families and Communities, report, p. 10)

Tax cutting in Ohio has never been quite as damaging as it was in Kansas, but it has been a persistent problem for years. Back in 2017 after the state passed a biennial budget without a tax cut, PolicyMatters Ohio’s Zach Schiller celebrated: “The biggest news about taxes in the new Ohio budget is what isn’t in it… Ohio has been on a tax-cutting spree that has lasted most of the last dozen years. These cuts have sapped the state of billions of dollars a year of vitally needed revenue….”

Times have changed, however. A week ago the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities launched a  project to track tax slashing today across far-right Republican states. One story features Ohio: “States have gone on a tax-cutting spree in recent years. More than half have slashed income taxes for wealthy people and corporations, in some cases by extraordinary amounts.” In Ohio: “Republican members of the state legislature are blaming slowing economic growth for the emerging revenue gap, but that is likely compounding the problem rather than causing it. The more straightforward culprit is a pair of personal income tax cuts passed in 2021 and 2023 (the two most recent biennial state budgets). The cuts are already costing the state nearly $2 billion in lost revenue each year… Ohio also made a flurry of other costly tax and budget choices last year. Most notably, the state cut its Commercial Activity Tax and removed income limits for its private school voucher program, leading to a spike in enrollment. These changes, which mostly benefit corporations and wealthy families, could exacerbate the state’s revenue shortfalls.”

When states cut taxes as Ohio just did in the two most recent biennial budgets, the result is not merely a one time revenue loss. In last November’s report, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details what has been happening in Ohio and 25 other states: “State policymakers nationwide have embarked on a tax-cutting spree over the past three years, using the cover of temporary budget surpluses stemming from robust federal aid in response to COVID-19 and the economic recovery that followed. The tax cuts—-most of which are both permanent and tilted toward wealthy households and corporations—-will weaken state revenues by large and growing amounts over time, limiting these states’ ability to maintain support for schools and other vital public services….”

Permanent tax cuts affect state budgets again and again, year after year: “Twenty-six states cut their personal income tax rates and/or corporate income tax rates, 13 of them multiple times. Permanent cuts to tax rates are especially harmful to state balance sheets since they reduce revenues every year going forward absent further legislative action, in contrast to temporary or one-time tax cuts… Combined, the cuts will cost those 26 states an estimated $124 billion by 2028, including $13 billion that they have already lost (2022-2023) and $111 billion over the next five years….”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects that by 2028, the tax cuts that were part of Ohio’s biennial budgets passed in 2021 and 2023 will cost the state more than $10.5 billion.

The fiscal consequences for Ohio will, of course, also be complicated by the annual cost of the uncapped, ever-expanding universal EdChoice Expansion vouchers, enacted in the budget passed in 2023. Ohio has five different private school voucher programs. Earlier this week, the leader of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School funding, Bill Phillis published data showing that in the past year, due to the legislature’s action, the new  EdChoice Expansion vouchers grew explosively by 274.3 percent.

In late March, the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Laura Hancock reported that the enormous expansion of EdChoice Expansion vouchers in Ohio will bring the state’s investment in its five private school tuition voucher programs to at least a billion dollars by the end of the current fiscal year on October 1, 2024.  In Ohio, a total of 152,118 students, according to Hancock’s data, now attend private schools using tax funded vouchers, with most of the new participants in the universal EdChoice Expansion program upper income students who were already enrolled in private schools at their parents’ expense. The state simply began giving away to these families $6,165  for each K-8 student and $8,407 for each high school student.

Ohio is on the cusp of completing the enactment of the Fair School Funding plan, a new public school funding formula designed to ensure that Ohio’s 610 public school districts can all afford the real costs of the services necessary to meet the needs of Ohio’s 1.6 million students in public schools, including the needs of disabled students, English learners, and students in districts where family poverty is concentrated. Our legislators have always said the phase-in must be renegotiated in each biennial budget because its full enactment will depend on the amount of state revenue available. In 2023, Ohio’s legislators completed the first two steps of the phase in.

Clearly the full funding of the third step of the plan in the budget that must pass by June 30, 2025 will be threatened by a revenue shortage created by not only the extravagant voucher expansion for the wealthy but also by the legislature’s repeated state tax cuts.