City officials were either disastrously wrong or misleading the public when they insisted the parking plan was required to avoid massive public safety layoffs.
If you can’t beat them, make it so they
can’t play to begin with. That’s been the mentality of the Ohio
Republican Party time and time again, and the latest budget bill from
the Republican-controlled Ohio House continues the trend.
To cyclists, it’s a given that Cincinnati
desperately needs more bike lanes. But recent research shows bike lanes
don’t just pose advantages for cyclists; they can also help local
economies and public health.
In the past few weeks, Cincinnati’s
political scene has been engulfed by debate over the budget, often
prompting testy exchanges between city officials.
Attorney General Mike DeWine says Obamacare infringes on religious liberty, but Republicans just want special economic rules for religious institutions.
When Cincinnati found out about the city
manager’s parking plan, it was not through a press conference or a
widely dispersed announcement from the city; it was through a silently
released memo that media outlets stumbled upon almost by accident.
LGBT-supporting Cincinnatians had a
bipolar March 15, with Sen. Rob Portman coming out in support of
same-sex marriage and the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network
(GLSEN) being publicly barred from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on the
same day.
Budgets are supposed to give elected officials at all levels
of government a chance to show off their strengths and agendas, but
recent issues have mostly raised questions about whether these people
are actually capable of leading to begin with.
Washington, D.C., is once again on the
verge of another manufactured crisis. On March 1, the sequester, a
series of mandated spending cuts, is set to kick in, threatening the
country with another round of austerity measures that will cut jobs and
bring down an already-fragile economy.
I’ve been a longtime supporter of the
streetcar project, but I have to admit I’m a bit worried after finding
out the streetcar might be delayed once again because construction bids
for the project were way over budget.
Gov. John
Kasich released a more moderate budget proposal for the 2014 and 2015
fiscal years, but it fails to make up for the governor’s history
of massive spending cuts and the state’s faulty social welfare
programs.
State Board of Education President Debe Terhar drew
criticism recently for posting a politically motivated picture on Facebook comparing Adolf Hitler to President Barack Obama.