Noon News and Stuff

• Mayor Cranley has hit a few more speed bumps on his proposed city park tax levy. The Charter Committee of Greater Cincinnati has come out against his proposed levy after initially taking a neutral position. The group changed its mind after a letter by nine board members suggested that Cranley had access to how the board members were voting a month ago, and then made calls to some member to vote neutral on the measure. Cranley responded that he did indeed call come board members, but, hey, it’s a free country. “Do I talk to people? Yes, I believe in free speech,” he told the Enquirer. He also denied having any knowledge of the board’s original vote. 

• One of Cranley’s parks projects is in jeopardy. Rev. Damon Lynch III of the New Prospect Baptist Church, the site of one several proposed projects, decided not to sell the church’s land to the city after a town hall meeting last night. The proposed $8 million Roselawn Neighborhood Center — including a swimming pool, tennis courts and an urban campground — was to use most of the church’s land and will now have to be privately funded. Lynch and members of the church said yesterday they refused make a move as drastic as selling the land to support a vision that they claim was initially their own. They’d rather hold on to the land and do it themselves. 

• A Republican lawmaker from Mount Lookout has introduced a plan to make Ohio a “right-to-work” state. Under Rep. Tom Brinkman’s plan, Ohioans would have the option of opting out of unions and their dues. The measure would make Ohio the 26th state to pass “right-to-work,” putting it in the same family as Wisconsin, Michigan and Texas. Brinkman’s measure has opposition from Democrats, of course, who say these kind of plans lead to lower wages, reduced benefits and an overall less safe work environment. But the measure also might have a hard time getting past his fellow Republicans, including Gov. John Kasich, who has stopped going after unions after a state referendum overturned his attempt to limit the collective bargaining rights of public employees. 

• The Ohio Senate just voted to defund Planned Parenthood, but that’s not enough for Gov. Kasich, who’d also like to see the clinic stripped of its Medicaid funding. Ohio Right to Life has been pushing Kasich to cancel contracts with Medicaid, but that might not sail through like the Senate’s bill did two days ago. Federal law prohibits Medicaid programs from excluding qualified healthcare providers, which Planned Parenthood is. 

• State lawmakers finally released a report on the state’s fracking tax that confirms what many environmental groups, and even Kasich himself, have asserted: The severance tax in Ohio is really, really low, but they also recommended not increasing it right now. Republican Sen. Bob Peterson of Salina said that with the oil and gas industry dealing with deflated prices, now would not be the time to increase the tax, which Kasich has called “a total and complete rip off to the state.” The report was released by a task forced created to study the tax in the last state budget. Kasich, who has been pushing for the increase in order to fund income tax cuts, called the findings “disappointing.” 

• No one needs the upcoming weekend more than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spent more than eight hours yesterday testifying before a Republican House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead. Lawmakers grilled Clinton on why requests for additional security were denied. The hearing brought little new information on the attack, which has been a sore subject for Clinton, and Democrats say the committee was called as a way to knock back support for the leading Democratic presidential candidate during an pivotal time on the campaign trail.  

That’s all for now! Emai: nkrebs@citybeat.com; Twitter: @natalie_krebs.