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The Statehouse News Bureau provides educational, comprehensive coverage of legislation, elections, issues and other activities surrounding the Statehouse to Ohio's public radio and television stations.

New Plan Floated To Equalize Local Government Funding

John Begala

A study released in 2016showed rural areas are disproportionately poor, uneducated and pay high relative costs for crime and disability because of the loss of good jobs, local businesses and opioid abuse. But there’s an idea being floated to establish a special state fund for those rural counties. Under the plan, a two year, $110 million dollar equalization fund would be established to help counties that lack local revenues to meet basic needs. Center for Community Solutions researcher John Begala, says many people in rural communities often have to go elsewhere to spend dollars, leaving their hometowns without a sales tax base to deal with local needs. “What worked for 100 years is just simply out of whack and we need to revisit the entire revenue sharing system of state and local government in Ohio.”The fund could be tapped to fight the opioid crisis, develop economic programs that increase sales tax revenue or to cover general county expenses. Republican former lawmaker Gene Krebs, who’s now running for state senate, says the fund would expire after a decade. Copyright 2018 The Statehouse News Bureau. To see more, visit The Statehouse News Bureau.

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