On January 31, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine shared this year’s State of the State address. In his speech, Governor DeWine highlighted his goals for the state in the coming year and outlined the plans that have been set in motion to help achieve those goals.
In the opening address, the Governor said “We meet at a time of great opportunity for Ohio and its citizens. Yet, it is also a time of great challenges. Our future is bright—but that future will be defined by how well we educate all our children and how well we tear down barriers to their success.” He shared, at length, the evidence that Ohio students are in need of more tools for academic success. “Tragically, today 40 percent of all Ohio third grade students are not proficient in reading,” he said. “I am calling for a renewed focus on literacy– and on the way we teach reading.” In his budget proposal, Governor DeWine is directing funds to the Ohio Department of Education to ensure that Ohio students are provided with evidence-based curriculum for their reading skills.
He also highlighted the state’s effort in recent years to reduce infant and maternal mortality rates and expand funding to programs that offer support to mothers in need through providing stable housing. Furthermore, he shared the upcoming budget plans to ease parents’ financial burdens by repealing state sales tax on critical infant supplies, enacting a $2,500 per child tax deduction and make childcare more affordable for working families.
Other family-oriented aspects of the Governor’s proposed budget include expanding funding to public children services programs. He hopes to provide Medicaid to children in the system and make it easier for Ohio families to adopt children, increasing support for OhioRise—a specialized program to help children with severe mental health challenges, create a new agency called the Department of Children and Youth services, make schools safer with the School Safety Center and School Resource Officer programs, invest a historic amount in the Ed-Choice scholarship program to expand academic options for economically disadvantaged students and provide one-time funding of $300 million to schools for building improvements and updated technology equipment.
The speech also highlighted his hopes for the future of Ohio’s workforce. “In the last four years, 48 companies left the east and west coasts for Ohio, creating more than 14,000 new jobs, $1.1 billion in new Ohio payroll and $24.9 billion in new capital investment,” said Governor DeWine. While these numbers are a great trend for Ohio, the Governor still has plans to expand the state’s ability to support more widespread job growth, “Our budget creates the ‘All Ohio Future Fund’ — a one-time investment that will provide a lifetime of returns. We will make an unprecedented $2.5 billion investment to prepare the infrastructure of large economic development sites located in every single part of Ohio.”
His budget will devote an additional $150 million to create “Innovation Hubs,” in hopes of bringing together individual community strengths to encourage economic developement.
Another key point of the address was his concern and financial initiative to better the mental health of Ohioans. In the upcoming budget, funds will be provided to all 88 Ohio counties to expand programs in “treatment and counseling services delivered either in person or through telehealth visits to people directly in their homes and workplaces. Suicide prevention to end the needless loss of our brothers and sisters; support for our youngest Ohioans, so they can have a great start to life and get help at the earliest sign of a behavioral health need; expansion of the crisis care system and the new 9-8-8 hotline so fewer Ohioans land in the emergency room; and, increased access to state hospitals and private psychiatric hospitals to ease stress on families, emergency departments, courts and jails.”
The Governor additionally shared that the state is “proposing a one-time investment to expand the capacity of our pediatric behavioral health care system to address the shortage of behavioral health professionals serving children— and to expand critical facilities.”
He asked members of the General Assembly to join him in creating the State of Ohio Action for Resiliency Network to begin comprehensive, multi-year research about the brain and its resilience. With this research, the Governor hopes to lead the country in understanding mental health and the warning signs of disease so that severe mental health conditions can be prevented in future generations.
Governor DeWine acknowledged the housing issues facing Ohioans. With lower rates of construction and a scarcity of available rental properties, there is a strain on the housing market that heavily impacts those in low income families. To encourage the development of housing for lower-income houses, he said he intends to “continue revitalization efforts of downtowns and historic areas, and create Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Single Family Housing Tax Credits, and an Ohio Home Ownership Savings Account program.”
The Governor shared his desire to amend Ohio’s nursing care facilities. In recent years, it has become clear that the state is falling short in its care of mature citizens and shared plans to create a task force to investigate this issue and search for ways to improve the quality of care that Ohioans can expect in nursing homes.
On the topic of public safety and crime, Governor DeWine shared a plan for a $40 million yearly investment in continuous training for Ohio law enforcement officers on issues ranging from de-escalation of hostile situations to proper crisis intervention for those with mental illness.
State funds will also support the ‘Next Generation 9-11 System’ which more accurately connects emergency calls made with cell phones to the nearest dispatch station for faster assistance from first responders.
Governor DeWine spoke of the importance of the state’s efforts to restore and preserve Ohio’s water and wildlife. With the H2Ohio program, the state has made strides in reducing algal blooms in Lake Erie, creating and restoring wetlands, planting more than 80,000 trees and removing lead pipes that were a danger to communities. The Governor intends to expand the H2Ohio efforts in his budget, and create the H2Ohio Rivers Initiative—which will serve all Ohio water sources and protect wildlife habitats from pollution.
In his conclusion, Governor DeWine said that, while he appreciates and acknowledges the trust that Ohioans have placed in him by making him a leader of the state, “our greatness as a state lies, not so much in our leaders, but rather in the wisdom, and common sense and the goodness of our people.”
~ Sarah Heckler
