Gov. John Kasich had proposed the cuts to the local government fund in his initial budget, and he stands by them. And he says local officials need to start looking at how they spend money, and not just how to bring in more money.

Kasich - “I’ll tell you something, let me have their budgets. Let me control their budgets. We got a budget balanced in Washington when I was there, we got a budget balanced in Ohio and we’re being rewarded for it.”

Larry Long at the Ohio Association of County Commissioners says his first reaction was to consider shipping off a few dozen budgets to the governor. But he says what he’d really like from the governor is more tools to cut spending and share services.

Long - “We submitted to the governor and to his administration over 50 proposals in terms of how we could become more efficient and more effective. And frankly, very few of those showed up in the budget. We’re appreciative of the ones that did, but we need help from the governor if we’re going to proceed and meet the challenges, the fiscal challenges that are out there.”

And Long says the worst year of the budget isn’t this year but 2012, when the full impact of this year’s cuts are felt and the ones in the second year of the budget begin.