Here is our second video on Ohio budget and tax policy “Where Should Ohio Invest a Billion Dollars?” For sources and citations see the links below. Watch the first video in our series here.

Ohio’s tax changes since 2005 are costing us billions of dollars every year and they haven’t worked. Ohio has lost over $3 billion annually from tax changes over past decade.

The wealthy are wealthier while many Ohioans pay more. The average increase for the poorest 20% of Ohioans is $138, the middle 20% average increase is $65 and the top 1% have received a $20,477 tax cut.

Investments that benefit everyone can’t be made. Since 2005, Ohio has cut inflation-adjusted funding for local government ($752 million), higher education ($601 million), social services ($426 million), k-12 education ($213 million).

There are better ways to use a billion dollars.

We could reduce Ohio’s tuition by 1/3 at all our public colleges. In 2014, Ohio had 401,874 FTE students enrolled in Ohio’s public colleges and universities. The average tuition was $7,548 and the state provided $4,434. If $1 billion were divided amongst the students evenly for tuition reduction, that would reduce tuition by $2,488 per student – nearly 1/3 of current tuition.

We could make housing affordable for 100,000 families on the brink of homelessness. Extremely low-income households have a gap of about $260 a month ($3,120 a year) between their income and affording the cost of a fair market apartment. This investment for low-income families would be $312 million. Ohio also has an affordable housing shortage. An additional $700 million investment in the construction of affordable units will begin to fill this gap, totaling $1 billion toward affordable housing.

We could repair nearly 2,000 of Ohio’s bridges that are functionally obsolete or structurally deficient. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates it would cost about $3.6 billion to fix the bridges that are in need of serious repairs or upgrades. For $1 billion we could fix about 1/3 of the 5,700 bridges in need of repair.

These investments would create jobs and strengthen our community. Research shows that smart public investments, like those to improve our infrastructure, can create jobs and improve the economy.

We could do all of this and more if we stopped cutting taxes that benefit the wealthy. It is time to start seriously investing in Ohio’s future, let’s do it now. Ohio can be a great state, and tax cuts just aren’t the answer. Research shows that income tax cuts are unlikely to create jobs and economic growth. They certainly have not worked since 2005.