Cuts to lead poisoning prevention and lead abatement funding in Ohio’s latest budget may be felt by Clevelanders in coming years, local officials say.
Since 2024, Cleveland has received $1 million from a small state pot of funding that lawmakers eliminated from the state budget passed July 1. The cuts were relatively small compared to the city’s $2.1 billion budget, but they were meaningful given Cleveland’s ongoing work to cut down on the number of children being poisoned, said Dr. David Margolius, the city’s Public Health director. The city has the highest lead poisoning rates amongst large cities in Ohio.
“The cuts are incredibly cruel and just, you know, just feel very personal and uncalled for,” Margolius said. “You know, we were doing good work with this money.”
The city spent the state grant money on lead awareness efforts, including radio ads and “Don’t Let the Lead Win” billboards with the city health department’s phone numbers. The dollars also funded a “kiddie prom” in May, where kids were screened on-site for lead poisoning. More than 400 families attended and 40 kids received lead tests, Margolius said.
Margolius said he is preparing to ask for money in the city budget to maintain the billboards and host another kiddie prom. If his department does not get it, he said, the awareness program may have to be pared down.
“Whatever happens with what we’re able to ask for from city taxpayers, I mean, it won’t be as robust as what we were able to get through the state grant,” Margolius said.
Using the grant, the health department also purchased devices that detect lead paint. And, the money helped remove lead hazards from five homes that were under health department orders. The city has federal money to keep doing some of this work, but it has struggled to spend those funds. Margolius said the state dollars had fewer strings attached and were easier to get out the door.
The state dollars are separate from several other lead-related funding sources in Cleveland, such as the nearly $92 million in commitments the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition has garnered.
MetroHealth Medical Center could be impacted by state budget cuts, too – though it’s unclear by exactly how much. In 2024 and 2025, the hospital received about $177,000 in state dollars for education and outreach about lead issues and to increase lead screening of pregnant patients.
The lead abatement line item that funded MetroHealth’s program got cut to $225,000 a year in the recently passed two-year budget – compared to $7.5 million a year in the prior one. The money served about a dozen cities and counties around Ohio and was used for everything from lead-safe renovations to promoting lead-safe rental registries.
MetroHealth is assessing the potential impacts the state cuts would have on programming, a spokesperson wrote in an email. The hospital system “looks forward” to working with the state and other funders to continue offering lead poisoning prevention services, the spokesperson added.
Why state lawmakers make cuts to lead funding?
In his original budget, Gov. Mike DeWine kept funding relatively steady for the lead programs.
Lawmakers from the Ohio House then cut the money in their version of the budget bill.
Opponents of the cuts, such as Margolius and Timothy Johnson, a senior policy advocate with the Ohio Poverty Law Center, said they did not know why the dollars were cut from the state budget or who cut them.
“I wish I had a definitive or any sort of explanation for why the funding was cut,” Johnson said. “There was never anything, to my knowledge, stated publicly as to why the lead poisoning prevention funding was cut.”
Rep. Steve Demetriou, a co-sponsor of the budget bill, has previously criticized lead programs run by both the state and Cleveland for being overly bureaucratic and slow to spend funds. Demetriou said that he did not know who in the House introduced the amendment to cut lead funding – but he believes it’s a response to state and local lead spending struggles.
“I just think it’s a response to the fact that we want to be helpful to families dealing with lead paint in their homes,” Demetriou said. “ … If the money is not going to get used, why would we continue to appropriate it?“
The City of Cleveland has moved slowly to spend money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to fix up lead-riddled homes. And Demetriou pointed to a state-run lead abatement tax credit program that he said has not passed out many of its dollars, either. Both programs are separate from the funding cut in the most recent state budget.
Margolius said that Cleveland had spent all $1 million it received from the state lead funding program that got cut. He felt the decision to reduce funding was anti-city and anti-Cleveland.