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For a bigger payoff, Ohio should invest $2 billion in preschool and higher education, not income tax cuts, writes Brent Larkin. In this 2013 file photo, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson visit a preschool class at Cleveland's Anton Grdina elementary school on East 71st Street.

(Tony Dejak, Associated Press, File)

In his heart of hearts, Gov. John Kasich might actually believe a three-year, $2.2 billion income tax cut will trigger economic growth and job creation.

Voters seem less certain.

In mid-February, the Quinnipiac University poll asked Ohioans to identify the top priority in 2014 for the governor and legislature.

Two percent named taxes.

Topping voters’ priority list, at 34 percent, was jobs. The GOP explanation for that two percent dilemma would be that there’s a direct connection between lower taxes and job creation, and vice versa.

Problem is, Ohio history doesn’t support that claim.

To fill a gaping budget deficit, in 1983 Gov. Dick Celeste and the Democratic legislature enacted a hefty income tax increase, labeled, not quite accurately, by Republicans as a "93 percent tax increase."

A year later that tax hike cost Democrats control of the Ohio Senate. They’re still trying to win it back -- and won’t succeed anytime soon.

But the doom and gloom that Republicans predicted for Ohio’s economy never materialized. At the time the tax was enacted, unemployment in Ohio was 12.2 percent, compared to 9.6 percent nationally.

Tax hike notwithstanding, that yawning gap between the state and national jobless rate narrowed every year for the next eight years. And in 1991, the year Celeste left office, unemployment in Ohio fell below the national average.

A year later, the economy hit the wall. And in the fall of 1992, a lame duck legislature enacted a $1 billion tax package Republican Gov. George Voinovich argued was needed to balance the current budget and finance the next one.

Again, the naysayers in Voinovich’s party argued the tax hikes would hold Ohio back.

A year after the tax hikes took effect, Ohio added 185,000 jobs -- the highest number in at least the last 50 years.

Ohio’s workforce didn’t grow in 1983 and 1994 because of the Celeste and Voinovich tax hikes. It happened for the same reason it has added jobs in Kasich’s three-plus years as governor: because the national economy was in a growth spurt.

Over time, a governor’s policies can influence a state’s economy a great deal. In the short term, a governor can impact an economy only on the margins.

Much was written by myself and others last year about the monthly release of job growth numbers that suggested Ohio's post-recession growth slowed to a crawl. Since then, the U.S. Labor Department has revised those jobs numbers upwards.

Ohio’s new numbers allow for a conclusion that 2013 was neither a good nor bad year on the jobs front, but a decidedly average one.

The worldwide economic waves that propelled Ohio to job growth in Kasich’s first term will be the foundation of his re-election campaign -- and perhaps his run for president in 2016.

But if Kasich wanted to really change Ohio, instead of cutting the income tax, he’d advocate making gigantic investments in the future. And it seems to me the most effective way to do that would be to pour $1 billion each into the beginning and the end of the educational process.

A $1 billion bet on quality preschool would enable the state to offer it to families of every middle class and poor four-year-old in Ohio. It might be possible to also include some three-year-olds.

As I’ve written countless times in the past decade, lots of caring folks and nonprofits in Cleveland and other Ohio cities have figured out that quality early childhood education is essential to raising the state’s educational attainment level.

So, too, have some (but not enough) state legislators, including Sen. Peggy Lehner, a Dayton-area Republican who last year tried to add $100 million in preschool funding to the two-year state budget. Lehner's colleagues gave her only $32.7 million.

Ohio’s insufficient investment in preschool is mirrored by its spending on higher education.

In fiscal 2015, which begins July 1, 9.9 percent of the state budget will be allocated to higher education funding -- the first time that figure has dropped below 10 percent in at least 40 years.

Despite the colossal increase in the cost of a college education, Ohio’s general fund budget will spend less money on higher education in fiscal 2015 than it did in fiscal 2000.

Meanwhile, many of Ohio’s young people are priced out of the higher education marketplace, while others are saddled with unconscionable debt that takes decades to repay.

Spending $1 billion a year on ways that dramatically reduce the cost Ohio residents pay to attend the state’s community and four-year colleges would do more to spur long-term economic growth than cutting the income tax.

Better yet might be a loan/scholarship program that generously eases repayment terms, provided the students graduate and remain in Ohio for a predetermined period.

Developing meaningful preschool and college funding programs would take several years to implement. But, over time, they might just reverse Ohio’s brain drain, raise its educational attainment level and produce a workforce with the skills needed to compete in a knowledge-based economy.

Problem is, the return on those investments wouldn’t be felt in 2014, 2016 or even 2018. And officeholders aren’t in the habit of making long-term investments that don’t pay short-term political dividends.

So instead of investing in Ohio’s future, we’re stuck with a plan that would leave a little bit more money in the pockets of most Ohioans by taking a little bit more out of the pockets of businesses, oil companies and smokers.

That’s Ohio’s idea of progress.

But it’s really nothing more than a shell game.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer's editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.