Never mind the nasty snowstorm raging outside the House chambers, where Gov. Ted Strickland delivered his third State of the State speech.

The really unusual part happened inside, after the meaty 65-minute talk.

Bill Phillis actually was happy.

"This has been the first ray of hope that we've had since March 24, 1997, when the Supreme Court ordered the state to fix the system, and the state never has," he said.

But let's just say that warm glow didn't extend to numerous critics who wonder how Strickland is going to pay for it all -- both this year and especially in two years, when the federal economic-stimulus money is gone.

To many Statehouse types, Phillis, a 71-year-old former assistant state superintendent, has become a pain in the posterior over the years, mainly because he's seemingly never satisfied with what the legislature or administration does on school funding.

But yesterday, the director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding was almost raving about the historic nature of Strickland's school-funding plan.

"It's historic from the standpoint he's going to connect resources with student needs. It's historic from the standpoint of reducing reliance on property tax," Phillis said.

"Historically, the state has not assumed responsibility. Historically, it's been a matter of local districts fending for themselves with some state resources. Now, he's changed the whole nature of the debate."

The most charitable of the dissenting Republicans, including veterans such as House Minority Leader William Batchelder of Medina and Ron Amstutz of Wooster, said they have questions but will hold their fire until they see more details.

Amstutz pointed out that Strickland's proposal to adjust how the state calculates millage in local districts would reverse laws the legislature enacted in the 1990s to help poorer districts and would wind up aiding primarily more affluent schools. Presumably, the governor has yet to reveal the portion of his plan that would benefit the poorer districts.

Meanwhile, the more critical GOP faithful, including a surprisingly vocal Auditor Mary Taylor, openly ripped the governor, especially for his apparent desire to use one-time federal money to balance the budget.

"You can't continue to put off the tough decisions," said Taylor, who previously had not embraced a visible role as Ohio's only nonjudicial Republican statewide officeholder.

"I believe the governor has used a lot of accounting gimmicks over the last several months and other one-time money to plug holes, but yet we're still not dealing with the overriding issue of balancing a budget that's structurally out of balance."

Sen. Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, the No. 2 Senate leader, also questioned the use of stimulus money.

"While that $3.4 billion may not be a loan that we have to repay to the federal government, at some point it's going to come due," said Niehaus, filling in for Senate President Bill M. Harris, who fell Tuesday night on a slippery sidewalk across from the Statehouse and broke his left thigh bone.

"We can't go on a big spending spree just because we got a check, because someday we have to pay, and that's going to be two years from now."

Strickland is taking a political risk by revealing only broad outlines of his school-funding plan now, leaving the financial details for Monday, when the administration's two-year budget proposal is to be unveiled.

"What's unclear to me is what will show up in that information vacuum. It could be quite negative," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

"Politically, many of these things will be problematic. I think the financing issue is big, because a lot of people are really worried about it now."

Green questioned whether many voters will grant their school districts a "conversion levy" proposed by Strickland that would allow some property taxes to climb automatically with increased property values.

"Will Ohio voters, who've shown themselves reluctant to vote for any kind of levy, vote for that kind of levy?"

Green also wondered whether local voters and school officials will buy into what appears to be a massive shift toward centralized control of education in Columbus.

"At least implicit in many of the proposals is that money could be saved by centralizing a lot of these functions at the state level," he said. "We're going to have a very different Department of Education than we have in the past. It's going to have larger and more sophisticated responsibilities."

But Democrats expressed confidence that Strickland will be able to make his case once his full proposal becomes public.

"The complete school-funding package that we will see next week will go a long way toward reducing and, in fact, eliminating the disparities between districts," said new House Speaker Armond Budish of suburban Cleveland. "I view the changes, as proposed, to be extremely dramatic, and I believe they have the potential to be transformational."

Rep. Peter Ujvagi, D-Toledo, said, "The details of it, where the money's going to come from, how we're going to make those things happen, I guess the only comment I can make is what I've heard the governor repeat several times, and that is, 'You never waste a good crisis.'  "

Dispatch Senior Editor Joe Hallett and reporter Jim Siegel contributed to this story.

drowland@dispatch.com