Columbus, OH – Today, The Buckeye Institute unveiled its Top 10 Worst Capital Budget Requests of 2018, which total more than $18 million in spending. Buckeye’s review of the capital budget also found more than $85 million in pork barrel or highly localized projects that should be paid for with private donations or through local efforts.
“As our Top 10 list shows, once again, Ohio’s capital budget is riddled with pork projects that benefit narrow local interests and not larger state needs. If these, and other pork projects in the budget, were funded using local or private dollars, as they should be, Ohio could have at least $85 million more that it could spend on pressing state priorities, save, or better yet, return to taxpayers,” said Greg R. Lawson, research fellow at The Buckeye Institute. “Policymakers should do more to heed our call to focus the capital budget on strengthening Ohio’s physical and democratic infrastructure and move away from projects of predominately local interest. Simply put, it is hard to see how it benefits someone in Youngstown for Cincinnati to get a soccer stadium or how people in Cleveland benefit from renovations to COSI.”
(article supplied by Buckeye Institute)