From NBC4i:

It would be easy to assume that Gov. Ted Strickland’s latest budget-balancing tax proposal would face its biggest hurdle in the Republican-led Ohio Senate. Try again.

It’s in the Ohio House, controlled by fellow Democrats, that suspending a planned 4.2-percent cut in the personal income tax is going to have its toughest time.  Strickland’s proposal is to forgo the final round of a 21-percent tax cut that was being phased in over five years. He called for the cut to be delayed for at least two years, to raise the roughly $850 million put in jeopardy when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a citizen group could take his plan for lottery-run slot machines before voters in 2010.

Democrats took control of the House last year for the first time since 1994, capturing a 53-46 majority. They did so by running moderate and conservative candidates in some districts that had long been held by Republicans.  In the 18th district, representing the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville, Democrat Matt Patten received 50.86 percent of the vote, for example. And his squeaker of a victory surely had something to do with name confusion. He won a seat formerly held by Republican Tom Patton, a popular Republican who had won 68 percent of the vote the last time he ran.

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