Following approval from the Republican-controlled General Assembly earlier in the week, Gov. John Kasich last night signed a $62 billion two-year state budget that makes sweeping changes to taxes and takes numerous anti-abortion measures. On the tax front, Policy Matters Ohio previously criticized the mix of income tax cuts and property and sales tax hikes for
favoring the wealthy
. Meanwhile, abortion-rights advocates say the budget will hurt women by limiting access to abortion, while Republicans say they’re trying to
protect the “sanctity of human life.”
The budget also makes changes to the school funding formula that increases funding to schools by $700 million, but the funding is still
$515 million less than Ohio schools got in 2009
. Stephen Dyer, former Democratic state representative and education policy fellow at left-leaning think tank Innovation Ohio, says Republican legislators should have spent less time on tax reform and more on education. Although Dyer acknowledges the final education plan is more equitable than
Kasich’s original proposal
, he argues equity doesn’t matter much when schools are still underfunded.
One policy that didn’t make it into the final state budget: the Medicaid expansion. Kasich strongly backed the expansion throughout the budget process, but Republican concerns about federal funding ultimately won out and
kept the Medicaid expansion from the final version of the budget
. Col Owens, co-convener of the Southwest Ohio Medicaid Expansion Coalition, says the expansion’s absence is irresponsible, but he’s optimistic it will be passed in a stand-alone bill later on. Owens and other supporters of the expansion argue it will help insure hundreds of thousands of Ohioans and save the state money by placing more of the funding burden on the federal government.
One beneficiary of the state budget:
low-rated charter schools
.
Democratic State Sen. Nina Turner today announced her candidacy for Ohio secretary of state — a position she will attempt to take from Republican Jon Husted. Turner is a vocal critic of Republicans’ voting policies, which she says suppress voters, particularly minorities and low-income Ohioans.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on Friday
released the first Human Trafficking Statistics Report
, which his office plans to release on an annual basis to continue spotlighting Ohio’s trafficking problem. Law enforcement identified 38 human trafficking victims in the last year, but that’s only a fraction of the estimated thousands of Ohioans, particularly youth and those “at risk,” who are reportedly trafficked and abused each year.
won the National/Facility Park Design Award for Smale Riverfront Park
. The award from the National Recreation and Park Association recognizes the park’s design, the inclusiveness of the design process and how the board met the local community’s needs for the park. This is just another major national award for The Banks; earlier in the year, the project
won the American Planning Association’s 2013 National Planning Excellence Award for Implementation
.
Some Republicans are not taking last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage well: State Rep. John Becker, a Republican from Clermont County, now says
polygamy is inevitable
.
Cincinnati is currently looking for a new police chief, and it already has
13 applications
.
down again
this week.
not interested
in running for president in 2016.
Apparently, the unmanned Voyager 1 spacecraft entered a scientifically funky region
last summer.
is an explanation of what happens when stars collide.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2013.