One week from today, Gov. Mike DeWine will deliver his final State of the State remarks from the Ohio House chamber, whose leader has already thrown cold water on an idea he thinks DeWine might bring to legislators’ attention.
House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said DeWine has discussed with him a bond issue for H2Ohio, the state’s multi-agency clean water initiative established by the governor in 2019.
“I don’t think we’re going to do that,” Huffman told reporters Wednesday morning. “The governor, of course, has the right to make his case, and maybe he’ll talk about that, maybe he won’t. That’s a conversation that he and I had recently.”
DeWine has shared only some details about what might be among his remarks.
“I’m going to be talking about the future, I’m going to talk about where Ohio needs to go,” DeWine told reporters last week. “We’ll talk some about what we’ve done, but then we’ll also talk about the work that still remains.”
When asked about bonds for H2Ohio, his spokesperson did not comment Wednesday.
The final version of the two-year state budget, which DeWine signed June 30, gutted funding to H2Ohio—one of his earliest initiatives as governor. Under House Bill 96, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency were given much less money in 2026 and 2027. The cuts totaled about 40% of H2Ohio funds, according to budget data.
Huffman said Wednesday he looks at some new state government initiatives with “a little bit of a jaundiced side” and questions whether the money the state has allocated is actually effective, the same reasoning he gave in June for scaling back H2Ohio funding.
