Gov. Mike DeWine took a break from reviewing the two-year state budget that he’s set to sign next week. He said there will “certainly be something” he’ll veto, but he wouldn’t give too many hints.
DeWine’s spokesman posted on X that the 5,500-page budget was delivered—in four boxes on a cart—to DeWine’s office at 5:08pm on Friday. The budget includes a 2.75% flat income tax, a 40% cap on the collected property tax that school districts can hold as a percentage of their operating budgets, and a $600 million grant to the Cleveland Browns for a domed stadium development in Brook Park financed with unclaimed funds.
DeWine said his office was "wallpapered" with pages from the budget as he and his staff started working on it. He spent time Saturday morning at a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Ohio-Erie Canal in Newark, dressed in period clothes and a top hat that First Lady Fran DeWine said was an heirloom from her family.
“I think every governor has vetoed something in a budget. So sure, certainly there will be something,” DeWine said. “We’re trying to be respectful of the state legislature but at the same time exercise my constitutional obligation that I owe the people of the state of Ohio.”
DeWine vetoed 44 items in the current budget when he signed it two years ago, 14 in the budget before that, and 25 in the first budget he signed. DeWine is term limited and has not announced any plans to run for office again.
But DeWine pushed off questions about specific items in the budget, and that he’s have more to say on Tuesday when he’ll make his veto announcements.
DeWine praised the budget for maintaining the Science of Reading initiative and sets deadlines for required training to be completed. But he has suggested he’s not a fan of the flat income tax, which is a cut for people making over $100,000 a year. He said an event earlier this month: “The type of income tax cut we need in Ohio is to help working families. And the best income tax to help working families is a child tax credit that I have proposed, which would be $1,000 for every child under the age of five that you have.”
DeWine’s fellow Republicans cut that credit out of DeWine’s initial budget, and cut the doubling of a tax on sports gambling operators to create a sports and cultural facilities fund. While lawmakers did bring back that fund, they created it by taking $1.7 billion of the $4.8 billion the state is holding in unclaimed funds. And Republican legislators also hacked DeWine’s $270 million request for his clean water program H2Ohio to $165 million, and cut his increase in funding for public libraries.
DeWine has been getting veto requests from library supporters and LGBTQ activists—who are concerned about a provision requiring libraries ensure material on sexual orientation or gender identity can't be seen by minors. Libraries said that's close to censorship and likely unconstitutional, and could take libraries with large collections years to accomplish and cost millions of dollars. He's also gotten veto requests from public school officials, advocates for low-income Ohioans, and Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who asked DeWine to strike the Browns stadium money.
“I don’t have a vote or a veto in the legislative process, but like every citizen, I have a voice,” Yost wrote in an email Friday. “I oppose not only this funding mechanism but also its intent: billionaires should finance their own stadiums – full stop. Ohio taxpayers cannot be left on the side lines while the wealthiest score with public money.”
DeWine also commented on the Trump administration terminating temporary protected status for Haitian refugees. A statement from the Department of Homeland Security said the “environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home”.
"Haiti is not safe. It’s one of the most dangerous places in the world,” said DeWine, who established a school named for his late daughter Becky in Port-au-Prince and continues to work with a priest there. “It’s a horribly, horribly violent place today, and things have not gotten better. They’ve actually gotten worse. Those are just the facts.”
Thousands of Haitians under TPS are legally living and working in Springfield, and employers there have said they need those employees. DeWine has defended them as "hardworking people" who "care about their families".
“We talked to the management of those companies, and they basically said, look, if we didn’t have these Haitians, we couldn’t fill these slots, and we can’t produce what we need to produce,” DeWine said, adding that an auto parts manufacturer told him they wouldn’t be able to make their deadlines to the big auto makers. “Those are the simple facts. Those facts have not changed.”
President Trump and Vice President Vance shared false and racist rumors about Haitians in Springfield during last year’s campaign, which DeWine and Springfield officials called out as baseless and untrue—though DeWine did say he would support Trump as the Republican nominee. When asked if he’s talked to Trump or Vance, DeWine said “I don’t want to talk about my discussions with anybody else, but I think everybody knows what I say. And look, we’re just trying to tell the truth of what’s going on here in Ohio and what the situation is.”
