The Ohio General Assembly earns and gets a lot of criticism. But the Republican-run legislature responded quickly, decisively and clearly last week, and with bipartisan unanimity, to address the coronavirus pandemic.

So three cheers for House Speaker Larry Householder, of Perry County’s Glenford, and Senate President Larry Obhof, of Medina, both Republicans – and for their Democratic counterparts, House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, of Akron, and Senate Minority Leader Kenny Yuko, of Richmond Heights. The contrast between their focus and congressional antics is stark.

That’s especially laudable because, unlike the U.S. Senate’s Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer, and the U.S. House’s Nancy Pelosi, the General Assembly’s leaders can’t print money.

Among key items in Amended Substitute House Bill 197, which passed Wednesday:

* Setting July 15 as Ohio’s tax-filing deadline, same as the newly set federal deadline.

* Letting Ohioans, on or by April 28, vote by U.S. mail in the state’s primary election. The primary, originally set for March 17, was postponed because of the pandemic.

* Meshing Ohio unemployment compensation law with Gov. Mike DeWine’s orders eliminating the one-week waiting period for benefits and work-search requirement. Those are especially timely moves: For the week that ended March 21, almost 188,000 Ohioans filed for unemployment compensation – a record. (The week before, roughly 7,000 filed.)

* Ending, for now, state-required tests of school pupils and the widely derided grading of school buildings’ academics (“school building report cards”). That means HB 197 should slim the looming bloat in the number of EdChoice school vouchers – vouchers that school boards must pay for – attributable to misgraded school buildings.

* Permits DeWine, if necessary, to ask the seven-member Controlling Board (four Republican legislators, two Democratic legislators, a DeWine appointee) to draw on Ohio’s $2.7 billion Rainy Day Fund to balance the state budget.

Meanwhile, DeWine, Householder and Obhof announced that DeWine’s State of the State speech to the legislature, scheduled for Tuesday, is being postponed. A new date hasn’t been set.

The Ohio Constitution requires governors to “communicate at every session … to the General Assembly, the condition of the state.” Governors aren’t required to deliver State of the State messages in person, in a speech, but since 1917, when Gov. James M. Cox, a Democrat, is believed to have been the first to do so, that’s the Statehouse custom.

At this writing, there’s no telling when the coronavirus pandemic will recede, and how much damage it will do to Ohio’s budget. But it likely will do plenty.

While it’s too soon to know, the pandemic may mean that passing anything besides a bare-bones (if any) capital improvements (state construction) bill this year may not be financially or politically feasible. The capital improvements bill, usually passed in election years, funds state building projects and, in some instances, local marquee (“community”) construction projects that arts-and-culture fans want.

Yes, President Donald Trump did say Wednesday, for example, he supports the $25 million grant the congressional coronavirus (“CARES”) bill gives the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. But, one can imagine the kind of brickbats a General Assembly challenger might fashion against a Statehouse incumbent for a 2020 cap bill’s “arts,” etc., projects.

As for Ohio’s operating budget, a keen observer pointed out that moving Ohio’s tax filing deadline to July 15 (from April 15) may create challenges in balancing the state’s operating budget. Ohio fiscal years are from July 1 through June 30. The legislature writes Ohio’s two-year budgets (current one: HB 166) based on estimates of revenue collections and their timing.

But the pandemic fuels two problems. First, high unemployment will hammer down Ohio’s state income tax collections. Second, what income tax the state does collect will crest in July, during Ohio’s next fiscal year, not during the current fiscal year, in April, as budget-writers had assumed when they crafted the budget last year. At a minimum, Ohio may be facing a big cash-flow problem – and in an election year.

Neither of two textbook remedies – cutting state services (during a pandemic?) or raising taxes (amid widespread unemployment?) – is feasible. So, for the rest of 2020, Ohio’s going to need the same kind of mature Statehouse leadership that Ohioans saw last week.

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-408-9474

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