There were a few awkward moments at Gov. John Kasich’s recent presentation before the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
The governor put his hosts on the spot when it comes to his policy plans for the coming budget. Ohio Public Radio's Karen Kasler reports.
John Kasich and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce have had an interesting relationship. The Chamber has twice endorsed Kasich for governor – the first time in 2010, the group broke a century-old tradition of not backing anyone in the gubernatorial contest. But while the Chamber has been supportive of Kasich’s income tax cuts, businesses weren’t pleased that Kasich wanted to broaden the state’s sales tax and didn’t like his increase on the tax on oil and natural gas drillers, so he ended up settling for a smaller tax cut than he wanted. Kasich told Chamber members at his annual “end of the year” review that he wasn’t done with tax reform.
“But that’s going to require people being uncomfortable. It’s going to require groups like the Chamber of Commerce being willing to stand up and take a position, not just hiding behind its membership: ‘Oh, we can’t support tax reform because it makes three of our people mad.’ Who cares.”
Chamber of Commerce president Andy Doerhel says his organization wants to stand with Kasich, but there are no guarantees even for this governor.
“Totally depends on what he’s going to come up with, and he knows that. We are a membership based organization. Do I ever worry about what three of our members say? No. Do I care what 30 of them say? Yeah, a little bit more. And if 300 of them say it, even more. The old line ‘the devil’s in the details’ – let me see the details. “
Kasich has long supported increasing consumption taxes while cutting income taxes, and one of his targets in his budget update in 2014 was the state’s cigarette tax, which he wanted to hike by 60 cents. That went nowhere, and Kasich blames tobacco lobbyists. Doerhel says shifting to consumption based taxes is a good plan, but tax policy needs to be looked in a broad context.
“We’re big believers in that – businesses are consumption based as well, they buy products and everything else. So they are impacted as well. But you share that with all the other segments of the society that then benefit. So we’ll have to see.”
And at the Chamber event, it was clear there were big concerns – as heard in this question from an unnamed audience member to Kasich, read by Doerhel.
Doerhel: “Are you going to look to the business community to make up the lost revenue needed to pay for the tax cuts?”
Kasich: “Well, the answer to that is that everybody’s going to have to be part of tax reform. We have to have a system that encourages economic growth that allows us to collect the revenue that we want. Now I will tell you, if we get to the point where we say, ‘don’t tax me – tax the guy behind the tree’, this fails.”
But Kasich also told the audience that he would have a lot more to say in this second term for those who he says “stand in my way”.
