The Coalition for Ohio’s Future is a broad-based, bi-partisan organization including teachers and other educators, firefighters, police, elected officials, concerned citizens, social service organizations, business people, doctors and other health professionals, labor unions, senior citizens, faith-based organizations and many others all dedicated to defeating the TEL Amendment.
A State of Decline: What a TABOR Would Mean for Ohio (cont.)
Public Safety
State funding for public safety and protection would have been $260 million less in fiscal year 2003. Cutting $260 million from the public safety budget could be achieved in different ways.
- Ohio could have incarcerated 11,000 fewer inmates — fully one-fourth of the average inmate population in 2003. Ohio’s inmate population increased 19 percent from 1993 to 2003 and is projected to increase by 14 percent in the next decade. TABOR could severely limit the state’s ability to follow current incarceration policies.
- Ohio could have cut 4,560 security employees in the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. This reduction would constitute a 57 percent cut in the security workforce. A reduction of this magnitude in security staff would have to be accompanied by the release of a substantial number of prisoners to avoid endangering the safety of the correction personnel and the inmates.
- Ohio could close several of its correctional facilities. Ohio could achieve $260 million in savings by closing the Belmont, Chillicothe, Madison, North Central, Pickaway, Richland, and Ross correctional facilities.
Higher Education
The Ohio system of higher education would likely shoulder a heavy share of TABOR-induced spending cuts, just as the system of higher education has under TABOR in Colorado. Higher education’s proportional share of spending cuts in 2003 would have been $408 million.
- To cut higher education spending by $408 million, Ohio could have reduced its subsidy for each in-state student, causing in-state tuition to rise by $1,200. That would represent a 36 percent increase in tuition.
- Alternatively, subsidies could be eliminated for 90,000 students — one-quarter of all in-state students.
- Or, the TABOR-driven shortfall of $408 million in higher education could be made up by cutting the entire state subsidy for all of the following institutions combined: all 23 branch campuses in the state university system, all 15 community colleges, all nine technical colleges, and Youngstown State University. In effect, these institutions (or others) would have to charge the full rate to students, rather than the in-state rate, to remain viable.
Other
All of the service cuts detailed above would have comprised approximately $2.0 billion of the $2.7 billion in reductions that would have been required in FY 2003 if a TABOR had been effective since 1995. The other $700 million in cuts would have to come from other areas of the budget, including environmental, public health, mental retardation and developmental disabilities, judicial, and youth service spending. To cut an additional $700 million from the budget, Ohio legislators could cut all of the following.
- All funding for community and hospital mental health ($360 million)
- All Residential and support services for mental retardation ($140 million)
- All Residential facilities operations for developmentally disabled Ohioans ($100 million).
- All state funding for RECLAIM Ohio, a program that seeks to develop alternatives for incarceration for at-risk youth ($155 million).
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