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A six-member legislative conference committee advanced a final budget plan Wednesday that includes a cigarette tax hike and an income-tax exemption for business owners.

(Shari Lews, Columbus Dispatch)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio lawmakers' final compromise budget plan includes a small-business income-tax cut and a increase on cigarettes, a legislative conference committee revealed late Wednesday night.

The committee's budget plan would also impose new restrictions on abortion clinics, allow later bar hours during the Republican National Convention, provide pay raises for local officials, block journalists' access to concealed-handgun records, and remove a proposed state tax on Social Security benefits.

Under the plan, business owners would receive a 75-percent income-tax reduction on their first $250,000 of net income for the 2015 tax year. In tax year 2016, they would pay no state income tax at all on their first $250,000 of income.

Any income beyond $250,000 would be taxed at a flat rate of 3 percent under the budget plan.

The committee added a new rule that would only allow abortion clinics to enter into a required ambulatory transfer agreement with a local, private hospital if the hospital is within 30 miles of the clinic.

The proposed rule, which could threaten the only remaining abortion clinics in Toledo and Cincinnati, had been removed from the Senate budget by Sen. Sandra Williams of Cleveland, who subsequently became the only Senate Democrat to vote for the bill.

Conferees also kept another abortion clinic rule, offered by the Senate, which would automatically deny any variance application for a transfer agreement that the Ohio Department of Health director doesn't approve within 60 days. The Women's Med Center in Dayton has had such a request pending for two years.

The cigarette tax hike was set at 35 cents per pack. The Senate version had a 40-cent increase, while Gov. John Kasich had proposed a $1 per pack increase.

The budget plan also would:

Give judges, prosecutors, and sheriffs a five-percent pay raise

Allow many Cleveland bars to stay open two hours later

Repeal part of Ohio's concealed carry law

Scrap

The budget plan is expected to clear a final vote in the Ohio House and Senate before heading to Kasich's desk.