Here’s another fun fact about Kasich’s budget: the cuts in Governor’s office spending are not only much, much lower than in any other are of the budget, but they are most likely not coming out of his staff’s salaries. As a matter of fact, spending on salaries has actually GONE UP since Kasich took office.

We looked at a weekly comparison of salaries associated with the Governor’s office for the second part of February 2011 and compared them to the salaries from the same period in 2010 under Strickland and found that they went up nearly 10% from $83,547 to $91,980. Oh! And that doesn’t even include Special Assistant Jai Chambria, whose $5,726 bi-weekly salary is paid by the Department of Commerce.

full salary comparison is here

To be fair, Strickland also had people working in his office with salaries paid by agencies. But Kasich claimed his staff costs would actually be dropping despite the fact that he gave all of his closest friends huge salary increases when he hired them. And this is absolutely not turning out to be the case.

John’s budget and the union-busting SB5 legislation he is pushing through the legislature have both been sold as necessary measures requiring shared sacrifice to make the state stronger. Not surprisingly, the sacrifice seems only to be required for people who don’t work in John Kasich’s office.