Ohio House overrides 11 Kasich vetoes

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COLUMBUS — The Shelby County Commissioners traveled to Columbus Thursday to witness a historical event.

“As we have been told it has been 40 years since the legislature convened for the purpose of over-riding the governor’s veto on a budget bill,” said Commissioner Julie Ehemann. “Today, (Thursday) the House of Representatives met to consider overriding the governor (John Kasich) on 11 different matters.”

All 11 issues were successfully overridden, said Ehemann.

“Of interest to Shelby County was veto No. 33 which dealt with the Franchise Fee on Medicaid Managed Care entities,” said Ehemann. “The issue passed with 87 ayes and 10 nays. Locally Rep. (Keith) Faber voted for the override and Rep. (Nino) Vitale voted against it.”

Ehemann said it’s not known when or if the Senate will review this issue.

“We are extremely appreciative to the members of the House that understand our concerns and voted in support of their local communities,” said Ehemann.

The Franchise Fee on Medicaid Managed Care is a sales tax which has been applied for the past six years to services provided by MCO’s for Medicaid recipients.

According to Commissioner Tony Bornhorst, the state received 5.75 percent and Shelby County received 1.5 percent sales tax on these services. The county receives approximately $455,000 annually from the sales tax.

Current law stats that effective Oct. 1, 2009, “all transactions by which health care services are paid for, reimbursed, provided, develiered, arranged for, or otherwise made available by a Medicaid health insuring corporation pursuant to the corportation’s contract with the state” is subject to both state and local sales and use tazes collected by the Department of Taxation.

On July 1, Kasich vetoed portions of Ohio’s new two-year budget, which included the 11 vetoes which the House put back into the budget Thursday. The House restored a provision giving legislators additional control over future Medicaid spending and revived the Healthy Ohio program, which imposes additional Medicaid requirements that could bump 125,000 enrollees off the program.

By Melanie Speicher

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