People packed into the Fatima Family Center in Cleveland's Hough neighborhood for the breakfast gathering, but only a handful of legislators showed-up to hear from Bishop Lennon and the heads of the Diocese's school, hospital and charity arms, which cover eight counties.
Speaker after speaker expressed grave concerns about the state's cuts in the funding of social services and higher service fees built into Governor Strickland's 54 billion-dollar budget proposal.
Pat Gareau who head's the St Augustine Health campus on Cleveland's west side said the budget hits operations like his the hardest.
PAT GAREAU: 81% of what the state is going to save from the budget is going to fall on the backs of the not-for-profits --- most of whom are faith-based.
Democrat Dale Miller who sits on the Ohio Senate's Finance Committee said some adjustments to the governor's original budget plan already have been made to ease that pain, but he said there's only so much money to go around.
DALE MILLER: Education, healthcare and social services comprise about 80% of the state budget. So, there isn't a whole lot of room to say we're going to fund these things by cutting other things, because there's not much else.
Surprisingly, it was a Republican on the Finance Committee who suggested it might be time to raise the dreaded "T" word. Here's representative Thomas Patton.
THOMAS PATTON: In 2003, we voted for a penny sales tax to raise 2.6 billion dollars. And two years later when the economy got better we also took that tax away. And maybe the time has come for that tax to be brought back again.
Patton says he'd rather raise money in what he called "the old fashion way" as opposed to Governor Strickland's plan to increase 176 fees. Lawmakers have a little over two months to make these hard choices. The new budget takes effect July 1st.
