Blade: Gov. Kasich Promotes the Jobs Budget 2.0 in Maumee

Gov. Kasich was in Maumee recently to host a roundtable discussion about the Jobs Budget 2.0 at a local business. The Blade has more below:

Maumee was Mr. Kasich’s second stop on a road tour that took him to Cleveland on Tuesday and will take him to Dayton today to sell the two-year, $66.3 billion state spending plan.

Mr. Kasich and Ohio Tax Commissioner Joe Testa on Wednesday went through a foam-board presentation showing that the combination of business and income tax cuts will give 98 percent of business owners in the state a 50 percent tax cut.

Clearly energized by his plan, which coincides with enough of a rise in the state’s economy to create a $1.9 billion surplus, Mr. Kasich said he still needs backing from Ohio’s business owners.

“There are so many big things here that people are having a hard time digesting it all,” Mr. Kasich said to the audience of about 60, mostly northwest Ohio family business owners. They gathered at the headquarters of Service Spring Corp., headed by Chief Executive Officer Mike McAlear. The business, with 150 employees, makes springs for overhead garage doors.

Mr. Kasich said the school-funding formula in his two-year budget addresses a problem that has been the subject of decades of constitutional law wrangling.

“I’ve been very, very pleased with the reaction. I’m very hopeful this will make it through the legislature, and once that happens we can lower the volume on all the fighting,” he said.

He also boasted of his plan to expand Medicaid to take advantage of an offer from the federal government under the Affordable Care Act to reimburse the state for raising income eligibility to include nearly 450,000 added Ohioans.

“It takes the working poor out of the emergency rooms where they get their primary care,” he said, and returns $13 billion in federal funds “back to Ohio.”

And

Mr. McAlear’s son, Kevin, 25, in charge of emerging technology at Service Spring, described how the company provides a social-media platform to all its 150 employees. He said not all of the comments are work-related, by design, to create a sense of relaxed communication.

When Mr. Kasich asked Kevin McAlear to comment on the tax-cut plan, Kevin McAlear said: “When you lower taxes, it gives us money to do more of what we’re doing.”

You can read the entire article here.