Today, the Ohio Senate gave final approval to a revised state budget that diverges significantly from the plan passed in April by the Ohio House. The most significant change to a Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC) issue is a proposal to alter who can apply for funding from the Ohio Brownfield Remediation and Building Demolition and Site Revitalization Programs.

Under the changes included in the Senate budget plan, Ohio’s 66 county land banks would be the lead applicant and funder in counties where they operate. In the counties without land banks, county commissioners would recommend to the Department of Development a lead applicant on behalf of the county.

Further changes restrict who can be a sub-recipient of the funding, designating local governments, nonprofit organizations, community development corporations, regional planning commissions, county land banks, and community action agencies as such recipients. This language appears to exclude private entities from being sub-recipients of funds in the absence of a development agreement with one of the other designated entities listed above.

GOPC is concerned that the use of a designated party as the lead applicant for all grant requests will significantly slow the process for submitting applications, and have an adverse effect on smaller counties’ abilities to apply for funds under the program’s “first come, first serve” set-up.

We are also concerned that private entities, who are already required under the existing program to have a letter of support from a local government to apply for funds, are not listed as designated sub-recipients. This could greatly impact the work of remediation statewide. In some instances, private entities are the appropriate applicant to acquire brownfields, take on the risk, and complete necessary remediation and redevelopment to put the site into productive use.

With this in mind, GOPC respectfully requests that the conference committee on House Bill 33 reject these changes and restore the language from the House-passed version of the budget.

We see the programs, which were able to allocate $500 million in just one year, as an overwhelming success and not needing any significant changes as are being proposed in the Senate-version of the budget.

As we did last week, GOPC is strongly urging supporters to contact members of the House of Representatives and urge them to reject the changes made to HB33 related to the Brownfield and Demolition programs and restore House-passed language in conference.