While Ohio voters endure the last two weeks of the midterm election season and candidates make their final pleas, the Fiscal Year 2028-2029 state budget process is already underway, preparing for whichever candidates will be tasked with leading the process come January.
Earlier this fall, the Office on Budget and Management released guidance for agencies, commissions, and boards as those groups prepare budget documents for the next governor. Because the administration is transitioning, OBM advised groups that budget requests should reflect only "the funding necessary to continue fulfilling current constitutional, statutory, and other legal responsibilities through the next biennium," and leave any requests for additional information or initiatives to the next governor and their priorities.
The guidance also touted accolades the state has earned for its engagement with results-focused budgeting and business investment.
"This cycle, we are even more focused on results and on how those outcomes inform and shape policy priorities across the state," OBM Director Kimberly Murnieks wrote in the budget guidance. "Demonstrating clear, measurable results remains central to aligning agency work with statewide goals and ensuring that public resources are directed where they will have the greatest impact."
But it's not just the agencies that will need to show results to justify requests. Ohio's 2028-2029 budget will be drafted under new challenges, including reduced federal support for programs like Medicaid and SNAP, as well as changes to revenue under the flat tax that was adopted by the state during the last budget. When health and human service advocates approach our lawmakers to ask them to support the programs that feed, house, educate, heal, and employ Ohioans, we will have to answer the question of whether this state is getting its money's worth out of these initiatives.
A return on our investments
Health and human service programs are not charity, and thinking of them as such actually obscures how foundational they are to our economy and society. The safety net catches people when they need help — but our human infrastructure goes so much further, with preventative services that keep people from falling off in the first place. As we head into conversations about where Ohio spends our money, understanding and communicating the value of investing in these services will be critical to preserving them.
Fortunately, organizations across the state and across policy areas have already been producing the kind of evidence of results that state leaders will want to see. Earlier this year, the child welfare initiative Ohio Sobriety Treatment and Reducing Trauma (START) published its Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis with support from Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership. That estimate found that between 2017 and 2025, Ohio START, which uses a wraparound service model to help at-risk parents and stabilize families, generated between $157.7 - $349 million for families, providers, and taxpayers.
Put more simply, for every $1 invested, the state saw $3.05 - $6.74 in social returns.
This is far from the only analysis that shows the power of investing in health and human services.
According to the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, every $1 in new SNAP benefits generates $1.54 in economic activity; and critically, that economic activity supports local retailers and farmers in the state.
In 2025, the Public Children Services Association of Ohio found that for every $1 invested into the Northwest Ohio Treatment Foster Care Pilot, $4 of social value were created through reduced placement costs, improved stability, faster reunifications, and benefits for foster families. In totality, the $524,000 invested in the program created $2,200,000 in social value.
In Franklin County, a 2023 analysis showed that human service organizations contributed $2 billion to the county GDP, $900 million of which was outside the health care and social assistance sectors.
These are just a handful of examples of how investments in community support, innovative programming, and preventative services produce benefits far beyond their costs. As we gear up for a budget process that we anticipate will be full of new challenges, having analyses and evidence of what putting money into these programs means will be critical to bolstering support for programs.
Perhaps equally as important to emphasize is what will be lost if we don’t invest in the health and human service safety net. When people lose access to health coverage like Medicaid, they miss preventative care and routine screenings, and small health challenges can escalate into costly emergencies; when someone loses behavioral health services, maintaining employment may be more challenging; when SNAP benefits are cut, children’s lifelong health suffers and becomes more expensive.
So this budget season, when policymakers ask if we can afford to do this or that, we have to turn the question back to them, and ask if we can afford not to.