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| Gov. John Kasich |
Release:
COLUMBUS—Gov. John R. Kasich announced today that on the day he sends his budget proposal to the General Assembly he will also hold an Ohio town hall meeting to discuss the state’s budget challenges and his proposed solutions to them. The meeting will be held on the evening of Tuesday, March 15 at the Capitol Theater in Columbus and will be broadcast live on the internet and via satellite to Ohio television stations. After presenting the budget plan Kasich and his cabinet will take questions from the theater and online audiences.“As I said in my State of the State address, the state of the state is in our hands. Ohio’s at a critical point and it is essential that the people of this state know how their leaders intend to guide us through this crisis. I’ll lay out the problems before us and the Cabinet and I will walk through the solutions we propose. Then, I’m going to take folks’ questions for as long as I can until they start to turn out the lights on me. This won’t be easy, but I led the effort to balance the federal budget and I know that by working together we can get through this, put it behind us and restore prosperity to our beloved Ohio. Budgets are not about numbers but about reaching goals and the goal of this budget is fix our state so we can begin creating jobs. It’s just that simple,” said Kasich.Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor will kick-off the town hall meeting with a look at one of the top reasons Ohio is facing an estimated $8 billion budget gap—the use of one-time federal stimulus money to pay for the ongoing costs of operating government. As Auditor of State, Taylor warned two years ago that this practice was unsustainable but her warnings were ignored at the time.The event will be open to the public but tickets will be required and demand is expected to far exceed supply. A limited number of tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis at: www.governor.ohio.gov/OhioTownHallMeeting.aspx. Tickets will also be provided to legislative leaders, members of the legislature and cabinet agencies.
