Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced Monday that Ohio Voters First has gathered enough petitions for its redistricting amendment, and the amendment will appear on the Ohio ballot. If the amendment is approved by voters, redistricting will be taken up by an independent commission without politicians and lobbyists. If it is not successful, then state officials and politicians will continue drawing district boundaries. CityBeat has previously covered the redistricting issue and how redistricting has been abused by politicians in a process known as “gerrymandering.” Cincinnati’s district was redrawn by the Republican-controlled committee to include Warren County, giving an edge to Republicans in the district.
Music Hall’s renovation is likely to see another delay. The conflict has been ongoing as Mayor Mark Mallory refuses to transfer ownership of Music Hall from the city to the nonprofit group doing the renovations.
Four Greater Cincinnati colleges appeared in Forbes’s top college list. The University of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University ranked toward the bottom of the list, and Miami University and Xavier University ranked closer to the top.
The city of Cincinnati is considering letting Blue Ash rescind the purchase of the Blue Ash Airport to strike a new agreement. The move would free up $11 million for the streetcar and $26 million for other municipal projects.
Lincoln Educational Services is closing down branches around Cincinnati. Oh well. For-profit colleges are a rip-off.
A program to rebuild infrastructure at Ohio schools is about halfway done. The program started in 1997 and was originally supposed to finish in 2012, but rising construction costs, school funding problems and the bad economic climate held the project down. The program seems to be picking up again, however.
Ohio Democrats are upset Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction Stan Heffner is getting away without criminal charges after abusing his position and potentially breaking the law.
Another study has found a correlation between earthquakes and wastewater injection wells, which are used to dispose of wastewater produced during fracking. The study does not draw a direct link, but study author Cliff Frohlich of the University of Texas at Austin says it’s possible the injection of water could trigger earthquakes if a nearby fault is “experiencing tectonic stress.” Earthquakes in Youngstown, Ohio, around New Year’s Eve were linked to wastewater injection wells.
Transgender people are now protected under Obamacare. The U.S. Department of Human Health and Services now considers discrimination based on “gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity” to be illegal, according to a memo obtained by BuzzFeed from the agency. With these new rules, companies obtaining federal funds will no longer be able to discriminate against transgender people.
The U.S. government is still making money back from the bank bail-out.
Apparently, those junk-mail checks can actually be worth something. For one man, one of the checks ended up being worth $95,093.35.
A new solution to climate change: artificial floating islands.
