Ohio bill boosts penalties for assaulting transit workers

By   /  April 24, 2013  /  Featured, News, Ohio  /  No Comments

END OF THE LINE: An Ohio bill would ban riders convicted of assaulting bus drivers from all public transit in the state.

Should bus drivers and other transit workers have special status when they are the victim of an assault? Ohio Senators Tom Patton, R-Strongsville, and Nina Turner, D-Cleveland, think so.

They’ve introduce S.B. 107, which, would make an assault on a bus driver or other transit employee more serious than an assault on an ‘ordinary’ citizen.

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Forest Service to Ohio: Give us back the money

By   /  April 17, 2013  /  News, Ohio  /  No Comments

Gov. Kasich has yet to decide how to respond to the Forest Service demand for retroactive cuts.

Suppose your employer announced a five percent reduction in income and, because of that, a five percent reduction in pay for all employees.

Would you expect him to demand that you return five percent of the pay you’ve already received?

Probably not.

But that’s the scenario facing the state of Ohio.

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Congrats Ohio, it’s your Tax Freedom Day

By   /  April 12, 2013  /  Ohio  /  No Comments

The Tax Foundation calculates that April 12 is Tax Freedom Day for Ohio,

Today is a special day for Ohioans – it’s our Tax Freedom Day.

What’s that, you ask?

Well, until today you’ve been working for Uncle Sam. Not literally, of course, but it takes Ohioans until April 12 to earn enough money to pay all their taxes for next year.

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New bill would make Ohio’s Open Meetings Act even more favorable to residents

By   /  April 10, 2013  /  Featured, News, Ohio  /  No Comments

A new bill would expand fees and expenses that may be recovered for violations of Ohio's Open Meetings Act.

Ohio has a good reputation when it comes to openness and transparency with a citizen-favored public records law that applies to all public agencies, including mandatory training on the law for all public officials and financial ramifications for non-compliance.

But there is still room for improvement when it comes to the requirements of the Open Meetings Act.

Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Springboro, has introduced S.B. 93 to mandate additional information in motions to hold executive sessions and to expand the fees and expenses that may be recovered for violations of the Open Meetings Act.

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$40,000? That’s not a salary, it’s a paycheck for 100s of Ohio bureaucrats

By   /  April 9, 2013  /  News, Ohio  /  No Comments

OhioFlagOutline

Hundreds of thousands of Ohioans are groaning this week as they write painfully large checks to the government.

The government, though, has been writing a lot of big checks of its own. The biggest checks come right at year’s end, when abstractions like unfunded liabilities turn into very real cash for thousands of state employees.

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