Speaker Armond Budish, D-Beachwood, told the House he aims to re-tune tax law to fertilize job growth; via a "compact" with cities, re-focus attention on urban Ohio; and make Ohio "green" with state-built or -owned buildings as energy-saving pacesetters.

Still, Budish punctuated his talk with mentions of Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland's claim that Ohio is "looking at" a $7 billion deficit. Given that the U.S. Treasury, courtesy of Barack Obama, will eat a bigger share of Ohio's Medicaid costs and send Columbus other help, the gap won't be $7 billion. It'll be less. So will expectations. That's the point.

True, voters didn't send Democrats to the Statehouse to shrink government, but finding 50 (of 99) House votes to raise taxes, or "fees," will be tough. Democratic newcomers, who won some seats Republicans could win back, will be skittish. As for GOP tax help, Democrats probably can forget it. House Republican Leader William G. Batchelder of Medina co-sponsored a 2008 bill introduced by one of his lieutenants, Rep. John Adams of Sidney, to repeal Ohio's income tax. That'll pass when water runs uphill, but it's a measure of conservative sentiment.

Budish's call for trading tax breaks for new jobs is a golden Statehouse oldie, first sung in the 1960s by Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes. If targeted tax breaks really worked, Ohio wouldn't be in the pickle it's in. For decades, Capitol Square's business lobbies claimed that if legislators would repeal the property tax on business equipment and inventories, Ohio would arrive at the gates of Jerusalem. Legislators did repeal that tax. But Ohio is now at the gates of its unemployment offices.

If the General Assembly really wants to send a splashy message to out-of-state investors, it needs to shout, not whisper. One possibility, however unpalatable, would be an estate-tax repeal. Ohio's tax applies only to estates worth more than $338,333. Repeal might persuade some rich Ohioans not to flee to Florida with their money. And repeal would cost Strickland's budget a lot less (using last year's split, $72 million) than it would cost Ohio's local governments ($287 million).

True, nicking local governments wouldn't help Budish's state-local compact. In 2006, estate-tax repeal would have cost his hometown, Beachwood, $2.1 million; Cleveland, $2 million; Columbus, $8 million; Upper Arlington, $2.7 million; Dayton, $1.5 million; and Kettering, $2.3 million. But the real state-municipal problem in Ohio is the (GOP-era) General Assembly's assaults on local home rule whenever lenders, gun-nuts or anybody else asked -- and wrote a check. That's what needs to stop in Columbus.

Meanwhile, one reform Budish did implement, with Batchelder's backing, will ensure continued good management of the House clerk's office, which oversees paperwork and parliamentary procedure -- pivotal duties in the amnesiac age of term limits.

In recent decades, the clerk's office was hardly partisan (in the Chicago sense). But the custom was that when a party won the House, it generally claimed the jobs in the clerk's office. Had Budish done that, the first Democratic House since 1994 would have lost years of institutional memory. Budish instead said Republican Laura P. Clemens, House clerk when the GOP was in charge, will be deputy to the new clerk, Democrat Thomas L. Sherman. To rank and file Ohioans, the change may not seem earth-shaking. But it's constructive, creative and respects an institution that deserves some.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University.

tsuddes@gmail.com