The Ohio House/Senate Conference Committee on Am. Sub. H.B. 119 (State Budget) begins today at 1:00 p.m. in hearing room 313. The committee meeting should be relatively brief as the members will only hear testimony from the Office of Budget and Management and the Legislative Services Commission on revised revenue estimates (which fall into the category of worst kept secret because it’s already widely known that they will be lower). I have talked to both Republican and Democratic policy makers and no one seems to believe that it will be very difficult to figure out a way to balance the budget even with the lower revenue figures (of course this may have the effect of creating/increasing a structural deficit if the budget is balanced with more one-time funds).

House appointees to the conference committee include Representatives Matt Dolan, Larry Flowers and Mike Skindell. Senate appointees include Senators John Carey, Tom Niehaus and Dale Miller. As an interesting aside, it’s been awhile since half of the conference committee was made up of Northeast Ohio legislators.

The conference committee will resume on Friday at 9:30 a.m. to begin the process of accepting either the House or Senate version of various budget proposals. If past practice is any guide, the committee will begin by dealing with the easier issues (those where an agreement has already been worked out) first and the hearing on Friday may be relatively speedy.

Conferees will not return until Sunday at 3:00 p.m. This will give the conferees (along with the Speaker, the Senate President and the Governor and their respective staffs) time on Saturday and Sunday morning to work out those issues where differences remain. The conference committee session on Monday is not scheduled to start until 1:30 p.m. and the Tuesday session will begin at 9:00 a.m. The Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday sessions might feature more breaks to allow members to caucus on sticking points in the budget. But hopefully those caucus breaks won’t last for hours like have during past conference committee hearings (I still haven’t forgotten the one that lasted until 6:30 the following morning!). This time the goal seems to be to have everything wrapped up by Tuesday so that the House and Senate can proceed to ratify the conference report in their respective chambers.

The Governor continues to push the legislature to adopt his plan to provide all children with access to health care coverage and to restore Medicaid coverage for several thousand low-wage working parents whose earnings keep them below the poverty line.