Ohio House Minority Whip,
(Photo/Ohio House)
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio House Minority Whip, State Representative John Adams, will present sponsor testimony Tuesday on his controversial plan to put Ohio government on an Atkin's Diet of sorts, that will cut state fat without cutting state muscle by dropping government girth from its current size 24 departments to 11.
To many supporters of the bill, like those in Adams' caucus who have recoiled against the growing size and reach of government, primarily fueled forward with federal stimulus dollars from Washington, his bill is both timely and long overdue.
To others, like Gov. Ted Strickland, House and Senate Democrats who say Ohio would be worse off than it is now without funding jolts from the Obama White House, Adam's bill may likely be perceived at best as nothing more than ideological wishful thinking masquerading as good government is small government.
Republicans, who want to parlay their gubernatoral wins in New Jersey and Virginia on Election Day to Ohio next year, say Adams' bill is a reasonable alternative to Gov. Ted Strickland's plan to delay the final installment of a five-year cut in the personal income tax they have said represents a tax increase on working Ohio families already struggling to make ends meet. Bill supporters also say downsizing Ohio government will produce savings of about $1 billion a year, slightly more than what suspending the income tax reduction plan produces.
The Strickland administration estimates that a delay in the last 4.2 percent component of a total 21 percent cut in the income tax would generate $844 million over two years.
The bill may also be seen as a bill with no real future given the control by Democrats over the progress of any bill but more as a political marker that sets a political hurdle Gov. Strickland will be challenged to overcome, by a rival party whose endorsed candidate for governor, John R. Kasich, has already said he will vault on his way to changing how Ohio does business.
In his second term in the General Assembly representing the west central counties of Shelby, Champaign and most of Auglaize, Adams' bill to explore innovative cost-saving measures that make state government run more efficiently and responsibly arrives at a time when many think just the opposite is happening.
“This bill, it’s going to make government responsible, efficient and it’s going to be sustainable," Adams said, adding, "And it’s going to be accountable to the taxpayer.”
Adams' bill aims to restructure Ohio’s state government through consolidation and reorganization. This plan, he says, would eliminate duplicative services that cause wasteful spending while making essential services operate more effectively. And by reducing the size of government and eliminating wasteful spending, Adams says Ohio taxpayers would save approximately $1 billion annually.
Sympathetic Senate Republicans have expressed in the past a willingness to set up a study panel that would have a set deadline to come up with a workable solution. Former Republican Ohio attorney general and auditor Jim Petro, in his failed campaign of 2006 to be his party's candidate for governor, included the issue of too many jurisdictions and elected officials in his call for reorganizing state government.
Some estimates of the repercussions on the state's workforce from enactment of Adams' bill range as high as a fifth. For a union like the Ohio Civil Services Employees Union, the largest state worker bargaining unit with roughly 30,000 members, what would be left of the state workforce after Adams' bill would endanger public safety, cut social services, and destroy state employee morale.
Due to the sour national economy and its affect on Ohio state revenues, Gov. Strickland has reduced state spending by about $2 billion already, including the reduction of about 5,000 state jobs.
House Bill 25 appears to continue at the state level the peripheral study Ohio lawmakers have spent in recent years that attempts to tie better, more efficient government to a reduction in the total number of elected officials that from rudimentary township trustees to higher iterations like mayors or county commissioners.
Adams, the small business owner and former Navy SEAL, said of the need to refocus and retool the public workforce: "State government hasn’t been looked at in over 50 years. Can anybody tell me that manufacturing a car 50 years ago hasn’t changed to what it is today?”
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