COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a
wide-ranging midterm budget bill Monday after removing $30 million that
lawmakers had set aside for bonuses to high-quality nursing homes and
striking a number of other provisions.
The policy and spending
measure trims state spending by nearly $13.6 million as well as making
policy changes aimed at helping government operate with less.
The
legislation changes some laws to allow local governments to share
certain services, and it eliminates or alters the roles of various
government boards and commissions.
In a message explaining his
line-item vetoes of the nursing home bonuses and a dozen other items,
Kasich said lawmakers approved new ground rules for reimbursing nursing
home earlier this session, and the bonus payments could not be
justified.
"This provision would modify that (reimbursement)
methodology and increase payments to nursing facilities, while no new
data has been presented to justify those changes, demonstrate a need, or
explain the rationale for this specific amount," he wrote.
He also cited "significant implementation problems" with the bonus program.
The
Ohio Health Care Association, the state’s largest organization of
long-term care providers representing 700 facilities, expressed
disappointment with the line-item veto.
The association’s
executive director, Pete Van Runkle, said nursing homes are struggling
financially in the wake of $360 million in Medicaid cuts and more than
$400 million in Medicare cuts in the last year. He said the bonus
payments would have been tied to quality measures developed by a team
Kasich’s administration led.
"Tying reimbursement to quality is a
hallmark of the administration’s policy for health care, which makes
this veto doubly frustrating," Van Runkle said in a statement.
The
unusual off-cycle budget bill was Kasich’s creation. He based it on the
one-year budget cycle of the federal government, which contrasts with
Ohio’s two-year cycle. Kasich is a former Republican congressman, and
served as chairman of the U.S. House budget committee in the 1990s.
Other items Kasich struck from the bill were:
—A
provision that would have allowed local school districts to
unilaterally adjust building construction agreements in order to reduce
their agreed-upon share of costs, which Kasich said would potentially
raise the state’s costs and adversely impact average taxpayers to the
benefit of a few "select districts";
—A two-year, $1.5 million
pilot program in Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren counties that
would have provided home repairs and modifications for 180 eligible
elderly or homebound individuals, which he said would have been
duplicative;
—A $1 million intervention pilot program for about
150 opiate- or alcohol-addicted offenders facing or finishing time in
prison or a halfway house, which he said was too narrowly focused on a
single medication;
—A proposed sales and use tax exemption for
aerospace vehicle research, which he said was an unjustified benefit to
one industry;
—A $500,000 pilot project in up to seven Southwest
Ohio counties to test biometric authentication as a way of preventing
patients from visiting multiple locations or doctors to get extra
prescriptions of dangerous drugs, whose timing and funding source —
money that would have come from a fund established to tackle the state’s
"pill mill" problem — he called problematic;
—A requirement that
the state attorney general approve certain construction management
contracts, a duty is a new duty "incongruent" with the office’s mission;
—A
provision seeking additional information on the Ohio operations of
businesses seeking state contracts, a reporting requirement which he
said could have deterred vendors and potentially increased costs.
Despite the vetoes, the bill is still packed with policy and budget changes.
Lawmakers
overwhelmed with the complexity and volume of the revisions brought to
them by Kasich — and in a legislative election year — split the original
bill into several pieces. They also sidelined some of his proposals,
most notably a proposed severance tax increase on oil and gas producers.
Kasich wants to use the money for modest statewide income-tax relief in
two or three years.
House and Senate negotiations on the bill
were also slowed in their final days by attempts to insert contentious
language requiring welfare recipients to undergo drug testing.
Republicans removed that mandate and said it would be pursued in
separate legislation.
The bill includes $500,000 in startup costs
to implement a new exotic animal regulation and registration system in
the state, $42 million for the Clean Ohio fund that preserves farmland
and green spaces, and another $3 million for a Lake Erie protection
program.
The measure also includes $15 million for cleaning up abandoned factory sites.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.