The hottest book on Capitol Square tomorrow will be the Blue Book , the real story behind Gov. Ted Strickland's wildly ambitious State of the State speech that heralded a momentous change in how Ohio educates its children.

The book will be previewed by Strickland's collaborators -- Budget Director J. Pari Sabety and Tax Commissioner Richard Levin -- to a breathless audience of Statehouse insiders desperate to know whether they won or lost.

A revised Blue Book is compiled every two years and now is available only electronically. It is paradoxically boring and full of drama. A monument to minutia, the book is profoundly consequential to the lives of Ohioans. It outlines how the governor proposes to spend roughly $50 billion of their tax dollars for their benefit.

A new question presages the release of the latest version of the Blue Book : Will it be a work of fiction or nonfiction? Skeptics, aka Republicans, who heard Strickland's Wednesday address contend that the only way he can continually fund everything he proposed is through let's-pretend-we-have-money financing.

Here are some of the big-ticket items Strickland wants: universal all-day kindergarten; sufficient new money to induce state universities to freeze tuition in the budget's first year and raise it only 3.5 percent in the second; nearly $1 billion more for Ohio schools; health-care coverage for all Ohio children and 110,000 more adults; and more spending to stimulate job growth.

Strickland's education plan alone costs an estimated $3.5 billion, although he wants to spread the expenses over eight years. The governor promised to deliver his spending priorities with no tax increases, but the plan would raise some fees and cut spending for some programs by up to 20 percent.

Here's the rub: The state is broke. In fact, at current taxing and spending levels, it faces a $7.3 billion deficit in the next two-year budget beginning July 1. That deficit will be partly offset by a $3.4 billion federal gift from the economic-stimulus bill moving through Congress.

But once the state burns through that money, it will be left in two years with the additional spending Strickland is proposing for education, health care and other programs.

"One-time federal dollars are nothing more than a Trojan horse," said state Sen. Karen L. Gillmor, R-Tiffin. "They may help balance the budget today, but two years from now, the state will be scrambling for funds to support programs funded or founded on one-time money."

Keith Dailey, Strickland's spokesman, said cuts in other areas of the budget and more tax revenue produced by a rebounding economy will cover the costs in two years and beyond. That rosy projection might be wishful thinking because many economists project that it could be at least a couple of years before Ohio sees tax growth from an economic recovery.

Republicans were right to question how Strickland will pay for all he wants, especially his ambitious plans for education. But one thing they can't question is his courage. He promised in the 2006 campaign that in his first term he would fix school funding and reform education or be a failed governor. Amid a deep recession, he might have tried to renege on the promise or delay it, but on Wednesday he delivered a plan.

The debate ahead will tell whether it will work or remain intact. But it is there for all to pick apart, for allies to rally around and foes to condemn. Hanging in the balance is his 2010 re-election.

What Strickland has proposed represents the most sweeping change in the education of Ohio children since the 1830s, when Samuel Lewis, the state's first superintendent of schools, rode on horseback from one one-room school to another.

Strickland has redesigned an education system that too often fails to prepare students for jobs or college. He has recast the debate about what students should learn, how they should learn it, who should teach it, how to pay for it and who should be accountable for the results.

Tomorrow, the Blue Book will begin to detail Strickland's vision for school funding. But that's only half the story.

Joe Hallett is senior editor at The Dispatch.

jhallett@dispatch.com