COLUMBUS, Ohio — The financial strain of this pandemic has many people trying to scrape together the money needed to get by, and the state of Ohio is no different. Some look to the loose change in their sock drawer or under the cushions; the state of Ohio looks to the budget stabilization fund, better known as their rainy day fund, which sits at nearly $2.7 billion.
The governor acknowledged this week that the time has come to ease the financial burden on the state as we start the new fiscal year facing what was projected in May to be a $2.5 billion deficit.
The good news since?
“Not as bad as we thought it might have been, but certainly not good,” Gov. Mike DeWine said.
The governor resisted the urge to dip into the fund too early and instead cut funding for education, for example, as an early warning to districts to start tightening their belts.
“Our goal has been, for example, in regard to education, not to cut education. Our goal has been to keep the funding that we ended up last year after we made the 3.7 percent cut to keep that as a baseline. And why? Well, I want to do is make sure that schools knew what was coming,” DeWine said.
To put it in household terms, that $2.7 billion in the fund is the equivalent of a person earning $50,000 a year having $3,910 stashed away for an emergency. It's enough to cover expenses for about four weeks.
DeWine’s not the first governor to raid the fund. George Voinovich did in 1991, later building it back up. So did his successors Bob Taft and Ted Strickland, who famously left the fund in 2010 with just .89 cents during the Great Recession.
It was Governor Kasich who took it to its current level, a gift to his successor that DeWine acknowledged he will spend.
“We're certainly going to use a lot of the rainy day fund. And by the time we get completely through this, I'm sure we will use all the rainy day fund.”
