Good morning all. Here’s a bit of news on this stormy Tuesday.
Will Cincinnati score big on the state’s upcoming transportation funding bill? Local Republicans and Democrats alike are crossing their fingers that the Ohio General Assembly will pass the bill, which has made it through a House committee. Included in the legislation are more state funds for public transportation and ways to raise more money that could come in handy for county officials looking to replace infrastructure like the aging Western Hills Viaduct. The budget as it stands would boost Ohio’s spending on public transit, currently among the lowest per capita in the country, from $23 million a year to $33 million a year. It would also create new funding mechanisms like a new $5 state registration fee on cars that could raise significant money for infrastructure projects.
• Walnut Hills residents mourning the loss of the neighborhood Kroger say the Cincinnati-based grocer’s departure will leave a big hole in the neighborhood, but they’ll get some slight temporary relief. The store will shut its doors March 8 after decades in Walnut Hills, leaving the community without a grocer. Kroger is offering a once-a-week shuttle service for shoppers older than 50 from the parking lot of the old location to its new Corryville store, which opens the same day, from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesdays through March 31. Shoppers can also go to the Walnut Hills location before it closes and register for free round trip bus pass twice a week if they spend at least $20 a trip at the new Corryville location.
• Hamilton County Sheriff Deputies will get body cameras after a vote by the county commission yesterday. Sheriff Jim Neil expects to spend about $125,000 on the 100 new cameras and related equipment, with other costs hopefully covered by a $125,000 federal matching grant. Neil has been working to get the cameras for his deputies since last year.
• Nine people died of overdoses in Hamilton County over the weekend, an alarming spike during an already terrible month for overdoses. Emergency rooms throughout the county saw 258 overdose visits in the last month, a much higher level than usual. Officials are working to figure out why overdoses here continue to rise. Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco says her office has seen numerous other drugs mixed with heroin, a likely cause for the overdoses increases. Additives like fentanyl increase heroin’s potency, but also make overdoses much more likely.
• OK, I don’t normally do weird news but this one is too weird to pass up. A man from Hamilton, land of my birth, was busted for stealing $1,000 worth of fishing lures at a WalMart in nearby Lebanon. Dude gathered all the lures in the store, put them in a storage container, then tried to buy the container through the self-checkout aisle. Authorities suspect he has done the same thing at other locations. As a wise person once said: If you teach a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you steal a man $1,000 worth of fishing lures, you feed him prison food for a few years at least, probably.
• Let’s go down to Kentucky for this next item. It seems state lawmakers in the Bluegrass State want to pass a law that would allow universities to offer bourbon tasting in college courses about distilling. Bourbon is big business in Kentucky, and with a distilling boom going on, more students are hoping to get into the industry. But as the laws are written now, they can’t sit around a classroom sipping whiskey. Have no fear, though — State Rep. James Kay, a Democrat, wants to remedy that. Kay represents Woodford County, home to Midway College, which is home to a bourbon studies minor, because of course it is. Kay wants to make it possible for Midway and other schools to allow students to engage in “educational sampling,” which many students probably already do on the low. Kay and other supporters of the bill argue that developing a palate for one of Kentucky’s biggest products is very advantageous for students who may be considering the field for a career.
• The 911 operator involved in the 2014 police shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland faced a disciplinary hearing Friday over her role in that incident. Constance Hollinger received a report that a person who “was probably a juvenile” had a gun that “was probably fake” on a playground outside the Cudell Recreation Center. Hollinger alerted a dispatcher to the report, but failed to pass along the details that the caller thought the person was a juvenile and that the gun likely wasn’t real. Cleveland Police officer Timothy Loehmann jumped out of a police cruiser driven within feet of Rice by officer Frank Garnback and shot the 12-year-old a few seconds later. Rice died from his wounds. A grand jury declined to indict Loehmann and Garnback, who were served internal disciplinary charges over the incident in December, more than two years after the incident. Cleveland Police haven’t reached a decision on Hollinger’s case, and hearings for Loehmann and Garnback have yet to be scheduled.
• Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced yesterday via an email news release that his office found that 82 non-citizens voted in the 2016 election in Ohio, and that some 385 had registered to vote statewide. Husted, a Republican, has pushed back on claims by President Donald Trump that massive voter fraud occurred in many states where undocumented people voted by the millions. Trump has advanced that explanation to claim that he received more votes the popular vote, which his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, actually took by more than 3 million people. Trump, however, prevailed in the electoral college. The non-citizens Husted’s investigation uncovered represent just a fraction of a percent of the more than 5.5 million Ohio residents who cast votes in the presidential election. Husted’s office says the names of the undocumented people who cast votes have been forwarded to law enforcement agencies.
• Finally, another prominent Ohio Republican is throwing shade at the idea that the Affordable Care Act can be repealed and replaced by congressional GOPers. Last week, it was former House Speaker John Boehner saying a repeal wasn’t really feasible. Now, it’s Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Making an appearance on a cable news talk show Sunday, Kasich said repealing Obamacare is “not acceptable” if it means that the 20 million who gained insurance under the program lose it under a repeal. Kasich has fought especially hard for the program’s Medicaid expansion, going head to head with his own party in the Ohio State House to make sure Ohio was included in that expansion. More than 700,000 people in the state gained insurance via that expansion. U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, a conservative hardliner also from Ohio, fired back at Kasich following the governor’s remarks Sunday, saying that voters didn’t elect him and other staunch conservatives to reform the ACA, but to completely remove it. Kasich vowed a tussle with his party if necessary on the law.
“At the end of the day I’m going to stand up for the people that wouldn’t have the coverage if they don’t get this thing right,” Kasich said. “And I happen to believe that the best way to get this right over time is for actually both parties to work together. I know that’s considered an impossibility now, but what’s at stake is not some political thing. What’s at stake here are 20 million Americans.”
This article appears in Feb 22 – Mar 1, 2017.