No Deal In Sight, But This Budget Crisis Is Different Than Ten Years Ago

For the first time in a decade, state officials are poised to miss the deadline to get the two-year operating budget to the governor for his signature.

Ten years ago, Ohio was in a precarious position.

“Each day that passes is putting us into a deeper financial hole,” said Democratic former Gov. Ted Strickland in July 2009, when he was locked with lawmakers in a budget stalemate that dragged on for two weeks.

Strickland’s first budget two years before had passed almost unanimously. But the Great Recession had blown a hole in the budget, and unemployment was at a record high 11.2 percent. And the solution was slot machines, a billion dollars taken from the state’s rainy day fund, major budget cuts and layoffs and a delay in the final year of a tax cut. So the atmosphere was bitterly partisan as both Republicans and Democrats were preparing for the 2010 elections.

Marc Kovac covers Franklin County government and federal courts for the Columbus Dispatch. Then he was the Statehouse Bureau Chief for Dix Newspapers, and shooting what he often called “shaky video” for his Youtube channel Ohio Capital Blog.

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