LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

Without fear or favor
Since 2004

Year: 2024

  • What would “mass deportations” do to Ohio’s economy?

    What would “mass deportations” do to Ohio’s economy?

    COMMENTARY

    by Rob Moore Ohio Capital Journal

    The dust has settled on the 2024 presidential election and we now know that Donald Trump will once again be President of the United States.

    Trump has promised many things for his second term in office: deregulation, tax cuts, an end to Russia’s war with Ukraine, tariffs on all goods from other countries. The step he could take that could have the most immediate impact on both human rights and Ohio’s economy, however, would be on immigration.

    Trump has promised to conduct mass deportations of unauthorized migrants, rounding up immigrants in workplaces, schools, homes, and places of worship to send them back to their countries of origin. Local law enforcement will be a key player in determining how “mass deportations” will be carried out in the state of Ohio.

    Municipal police departments, county sheriffs offices, and the state highway patrol will have to decide how much to defer their work from policing violent crimes and property crimes to carry out federal immigration policy. What decisions local law enforcement make around prioritization could have a significant impact on Ohio’s economy.

    Earlier this week, Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Marty Schladen wrote about the important role immigrants play in Ohio’s economy. Immigrants in Ohio are taxpayers, consumers, business owners, doctors, software developers, professors, cooks, health care workers, and college students.

    GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

     

    An analysis done by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, and Niskanen Center released before the election shines some light on what the new administration’s immigration policy could do to immigration. Trump’s immigration plan is estimated to reduce both authorized and unauthorized immigration, increase removals from the interior, increase adjudication of current cases leading to more removals, and encourage others to leave on their own.

    These researchers estimate this would mean as many as 740,000 fewer immigrants in the United States in the first year of Trump’s presidency. Weighted for Ohio’s foreign-born population as reported in the American Community Survey, that could mean as many as 9,700 fewer immigrants in Ohio in about a year.

    The AEI/Brookings/Niskanen study reports this massive reduction in the number of immigrants in the United States would cost the country 0.1 to 0.4 percentage points in GDP in 2025. In Ohio, weighted for Ohio’s foreign-born population, that would mean somewhere between $330 million and $1.3 billion in lost gross state product.

    For comparison, the Ohio Department of Development estimates 21 counties in Ohio have a gross domestic product of $1.3 billion or less. So if these policies are carried out as planned, Ohio could lose a small county’s worth of its economy in fewer consumers, business owners, and workers. On a per capita basis, this means a cost of $28 to $110 per person in the state. So you can consider this a head tax of $28 to $110 per person to pay for having fewer immigrants living in this state.

    Just because something shrinks the economy doesn’t mean it is bad. We might decide it appropriate to institute policies that trade off economic growth for reductions in poverty and inequality, improvements in environmental quality, or more time for people to spend with their children or elderly parents. But what exactly are we buying for this immigration crackdown? After all the national conversation on this topic, I still don’t have an answer to this question.

    YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

    ___________
    Rob Moore
    Rob Moore

    Rob Moore is the principal for Scioto Analysis, a public policy analysis firm based in Columbus. Moore has worked as an analyst in the public and nonprofit sectors and has analyzed diverse issue areas such as economic development, environment, education, and public health. He holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of California Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Denison University.

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  • Majority of Ohioans are in favor of universal free school meal program, according to poll

    Majority of Ohioans are in favor of universal free school meal program, according to poll

    Students getting their l lunch at a primary school. Photo by Amanda Mills/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    By:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    Two-thirds of Ohioans support a universal free school breakfast and lunch program for all public school children, according to a Republican research firm.

    “This is extremely rare in a time where voters are really reluctant to support further spending, either at the state or federal level,” Alexi Donovan, vice president of Tarrance Group Polling, said Monday during the Ohio Legislative Children’s Caucus monthly meeting.

    This month’s meeting heard testimony on the importance of universal school meals and Tarrance Group Polling surveyed 600 Ohio voters about this topic in May.

    “It is clear from the research and the data over the years, universal school meals help students thrive, physically, mentally, socially and educationally,” said John Stanford, director of Children’s Defense Fund–Ohio.

    In Ohio, 1 in 6 children, or about 413,000 kids, live in a household that experiences hunger. Despite that, more than 1 in 3 children who live in a food insecure household do not qualify for school meals, according to a 2023 report from Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

    “We believe that in a country as wealthy as we are, we should not have hungry children,” said Lisa Quigley, director of Solving Hunger.

    Exposing students to various fruits and vegetables through school meals helps them get a taste for “food that’s far more nutritious than what a lot of them are bringing to school,” she said.

    “What we’re finding in the schools that are doing universal school meals, the food is getting better,” Quigley said.

    National security

    Children’s hunger is a national security issue, said Cynthia Rees, Ohio’s director for the Council for a Strong America.

    The U.S. Department of Defense conducted a study in 2020 that found 77% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The most prevalent disqualification rate was for being overweight at 11%, above drug and alcohol abuse (8%) and medical/physical health (7%).

    “It is critical to recognize that overweight and obesity can often be manifestations of malnutrition, food insecurity or the lack of access to affordable healthy foods often result in consuming cheaper and more accessible food, which often lack nutritional value,” Rees said.

    GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

     

    The food insecurity rate for Ohio children is 15%, with some counties having rates up to 24%, Rees said.

    “Increasing children’s access to fresh and nutritious food now, including through free school meals for all students, could help America recover from the present challenges and bolster national security in the future,” she said. “The military has a long standing interest in the health and nutrition of our nation’s youth.”

    Universal school meals would eliminate the stigma of categorizing students who receive free and reduced meals and those that don’t, Rees said.

    “Instead, all students can just have a meal together,” she said. “When we make school meals accessible to all, we remove that stigma.”

    Ohio legislation

    Last year’s budget bill allowed any student who qualified for free or reduced school breakfast or lunch got those meals for free during the 2023-24 school year.

    Currently in Ohio, children are eligible for free or reduced school meals if their household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty line, which is $57,720 for a family of four, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

    State Reps. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require public schools to provide a meal to any student that asks.

    House Bill 408 would also ban a district from throwing away a meal after it was served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals.” The has only had sponsor testimony so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

    Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on X.

    Megan Henry
    Megan Henry

    Megan Henry is a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal and has spent the past five years reporting in Ohio on various topics including education, healthcare, business and crime. She previously worked at The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • Pursuit of quick profits makes hospice care worse, new research says

    Pursuit of quick profits makes hospice care worse, new research says

     (Getty Images)

    By:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    Private equity firms — high-dollar investors known for aggressively seeking profit — and publicly traded health conglomerates have been buying up businesses that provide hospice care. But when it comes to caring for patients facing the end of their lives, those businesses perform worst, according to a research letter published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    Since private equity firms and publicly traded companies thirst for short-term profit, the researchers wanted to see if they sacrificed quality to get it.

    Publicly traded behemoths such as UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health are already the subject of investigations and lawsuits by federal and state government over allegedly anticompetitive actions as drug middlemen. At the same time, both provide hospice care.

    Meanwhile, the business practices of private equity groups have been coming under increasing scrutiny over the past decade. They often buy businesses in deals structured so they can quickly recoup their investment, identify the most profitable assets, sell them and then sell the resulting business or declare bankruptcy. Indeed, private equity funds were behind 65% of billion-dollar bankruptcies in the first half of 2024, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project reported in September.

    GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

     

    The firms also have been accused of being predatory toward consumers.

    In her book “These are the Plunderers,” journalist Gretchen Morgenson reported how they sought profit by purchasing medical providers such as emergency rooms, sometimes engaging in surprise billing, and then fighting legislation intended to stop the practice.

    In the case of hospice care, researchers at Emory, Vanderbilt, and Cornell universities, plus the Department of Veterans Affairs, looked at four different ownership models for hospice providers and evaluated the quality of care provided by each. It classified providers as for-profit private equity, publicly traded for-profit companies, for-profit companies that are neither publicly traded or private equity, and nonprofit.

    To evaluate quality, they looked at datasets of eight indices — “communication, timely care, treating family member with respect, emotional and religious support, help for symptoms, hospice care training, hospice rating, and willingness to recommend.”

    When they ran the numbers, the researchers’ suspicions were confirmed.

    “Across all… measures, (private equity and publicly traded company) owned hospices demonstrated the lowest performance and not-for-profit hospices the highest performance,” the research letter said.

    Placed on a scale of one to 100, private equity and publicly traded company-owned hospice providers scored 79.8 points, other for-profit companies scored 81.2 points, and nonprofits scored 83.1 points.

    “Although prior research has highlighted poorer user experiences in for-profit vs not-for-profit hospices, this study found that (private equity or publicly traded company) ownership was an especially problematic category of for-profit hospice,” the report said.

    Another issue that critics of private equity have been raising is that some of its biggest investors — pension funds — represent people private equity is hurting. For example, the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System has plowed $1.3 billion into private equity groups that are heavily invested in big fossil fuel producers and users.

    YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

    ____________
    Marty Schladen
    Marty Schladen

    Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017. He’s won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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  • Do you know the Winter weather alerts?

    Do you know the Winter weather alerts?

    Loveland, Ohio – Below are the definitions of winter weather “Watch”, “Warnings”, and “Advisories” issued by the National Weather Service and our local forecast.

    Today
    Showers, mainly before 2pm. High near 53. Breezy, with a west wind 10 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
    Tonight
    A chance of snow showers, mainly after 3am. Increasing clouds, with a low around 31. West wind 13 to 17 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.
    Thursday
    Snow showers, mainly before 1pm. High near 36. Breezy, with a west wind 18 to 22 mph, with gusts as high as 32 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible.
    Thursday Night
    Snow showers. Low around 28. Southwest wind 11 to 18 mph becoming northwest after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible.
    Friday
    A chance of snow showers before 11am, then a chance of rain and snow showers between 11am and 1pm, then a chance of rain showers after 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 43. West wind 11 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

    Hazardous Weather Outlook
    National Weather Service Wilmington OH
    848 AM EST Wed Nov 20 2024
    Wayne-Fayette-Union-Franklin-Ripley-Dearborn-Ohio-Switzerland-
    Carroll-Gallatin-Boone-Kenton-Campbell-Owen-Grant-Pendleton-Bracken-
    Robertson-Mason-Lewis-Hardin-Mercer-Auglaize-Darke-Shelby-Logan-
    Delaware-Miami-Champaign-Clark-Madison-Licking-Preble-Montgomery-
    Greene-Pickaway-Fairfield-Butler-Warren-Clinton-Ross-Hocking-
    Hamilton-Clermont-Brown-Highland-Adams-Pike-Scioto-
    848 AM EST Wed Nov 20 2024

    This Hazardous Weather Outlook is for east central Indiana,
    southeast Indiana, northeast Kentucky, northern Kentucky, central
    Ohio, south central Ohio, southwest Ohio and west central Ohio.

    DAY ONE…Today and tonight

    Wind gusts up to 40 mph will be possible this afternoon. Snow
    showers will move into the region overnight tonight bringing some
    minor snow accumulations, mainly on elevated and grassy surfaces.

    DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN…Thursday through Tuesday

    Snow showers are expected Thursday morning and then again Thursday
    night. Snowfall accumulations will be possible, especially on
    elevated and grassy surfaces.

    Winter Weather Warnings, Watches and Advisories

    Winter weather related Warnings, Watches and Advisories are issued by your local National Weather Service office. Each office knows the local area and will issue Warnings, Watches or Advisories based on local criteria. For example, the amount of snow that triggers a “Winter Storm Warning” in the Northern Plains is typically much higher than the amount needed to trigger a “Winter Storm Warning” in the Southeast.

    +Warnings: Take Action!

    +Watches: Be Prepared

    +Advisories: Be Aware

    Here are some more key terms to understand:

    • Freezing Rain: Rain that freezes when it hits the ground; creating a coating of ice on roads, walkways, trees and power lines.
    • Sleet: Rain that turns to ice pellets before reaching the ground. Sleet also causes moisture on roads to freeze and become slippery.
    • Wind Chill: A measure of how cold people feel due to the combined effect of wind and cold temperatures; the Wind Chill Index is based on the rate of heat loss from exposed skin. Both cold temperatures and wind remove heat from the body; as the wind speed increases during cold conditions, a body loses heat more quickly. Eventually, the internal body temperature also falls and hypothermia can develop. Animals also feel the effects of wind chill; but inanimate objects, such as vehicles and buildings, do not. They will only cool to the actual air temperature, although much faster during windy conditions.

    Find the current forecast at weather.gov.

  • Trump picks Dr. Oz to run mammoth Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

    Trump picks Dr. Oz to run mammoth Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

    President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced his intent to nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In this photo, Oz speaks at a March 15, 2022 press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Pennsylvania Capital-Star).

    By:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    WASHINGTON — Former TV personality and onetime U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz could become the next administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an expansive government agency that is responsible for large swaths of the country’s health care.

    President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Oz on Tuesday, writing in a statement “there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again.”

    Oz won the Republican primary in the 2022 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race but was defeated during the general election by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.

    Trump wrote that Oz would “work closely” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will be nominated for Health and Human Services secretary, “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”

    “He will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget,” Trump wrote in the announcement.

    The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services manages the country’s largest health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, and the health insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

    There are 67.7 million people enrolled in Medicare, with nearly 90% of those enrollees over the age of 65. The program also provides health care coverage for younger people with severe illnesses or disabilities.

    Medicaid, a state-federal program that provides health coverage for low-income people, has about 72.4 million enrollees.

    There are 7.1 million CHIP program participants.

    And 21.3 million people purchased health insurance through the ACA marketplace during the 2024 open enrollment period.

    When added together, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services provides health care coverage to 1 in 4 Americans, according to its latest financial report.

    The agency spent about $1.516 trillion during the last fiscal year and has more than 6,700 federal employees as well as contractors to handle the workload.

    “CMS and its contractors process over one billion Medicare claims annually, monitor quality of care, provide the states with matching funds for Medicaid benefits, and develop policies and procedures designed to give the best possible service to beneficiaries,” according to the report.

    “CMS also assures the safety and quality of medical facilities, provides

    health insurance protection to workers changing jobs, and maintains

    the largest collection of healthcare data in the United States.”

    Oz received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University before earning a joint M.D. and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Wharton Business School.

    He starred in the daytime show “Dr. Oz,” which ran from 2009 until 2022.

    Oz’s nomination is subject to Senate confirmation and is under the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee, currently led by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo.

    Oz’s confirmation hearing won’t be the first time he’s testified before a Senate committee. More than 10 years ago, he testified in front of a Senate panel that his comments on his TV show about certain weight loss supplements were “flowery.”

    Last updated 5:50 p.m., Nov. 19, 2024

    Jennifer Shutt
    Jennifer Shutt

    Jennifer covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. Her coverage areas include congressional policy, politics and legal challenges with a focus on health care, unemployment, housing and aid to families.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • Attorney: ex-Ohio Speaker Larry Householder using Trump ‘connections’ to try to get out of prison

    Attorney: ex-Ohio Speaker Larry Householder using Trump ‘connections’ to try to get out of prison

     Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder gives the thumbs up as he enters a federal courthouse in Cincinnati. (Photo from WEWS.)

    By:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    The attorney for former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder said that his team is using the convicted felon’s power — and his connections to President-elect Donald Trump — to get out of prison.

    The jury foreman from the speaker’s case is furious, arguing that this is the exact kind of corruption for which Householder was convicted.

    Back in 2019, Householder took a $61 million bribe in exchange for legislation to give FirstEnergy a $1 billion bailout, named H.B. 6, all at the expense of the taxpayers.

    In March 2023, a jury found that Householder and former GOP leader Matt Borges participated in the racketeering scheme that left four men guilty and another dead by suicide.

    Read on at News5 Cleveland…

  • P & Z meeting to consider 12 single family homes for Riverside Drive now scheduled on December 3

    P & Z meeting to consider 12 single family homes for Riverside Drive now scheduled on December 3

    Planning & Zoning Commission
    Regular Meeting
    12/3/2024 6 PM
    Loveland City Hall

    Loveland, Ohio – City Council member Andrew Bateman has emailed Loveland Magazine to say, “I would share that we won’t reschedule the P&Z meeting, but instead just roll over from November to the regularly scheduled December meeting.”

    The meeting that was cancelled and rescheduled was to consider the proposal to construct 12 single family homes for Riverside Drive in the West Loveland Historic District.

    City Hall has yet to publish the agenda for the meeting, however Bateman suggests the agenda from the cancelled meeting will now be on the December 3 meeting.

    Background

    Schildmeyer family propose 12 single family homes for Riverside Drive in the West Loveland Historic District

    Across Riverside Drive from Loveland Museum Center and the Tufts Schildmeyer Family Funeral Home

    Loveland Magazine file photos of past flooding at the location where12 single family homes…

  • Barbie™: A Cultural Icon coming to Cincinnati Museum Center this April

    Barbie™: A Cultural Icon coming to Cincinnati Museum Center this April

    More than a doll. A cultural icon.

    Barbie™: A Cultural Icon takes you from 1959 to present day, examining how pop culture and fashion trends have shaped this global phenomenon. The exhibition coming to the Cincinnati Museum Center will celebrate Barbie as a reflection of culture, featuring a priceless collection of over 300 artifacts from the 66-year history of Barbie, including the very first 1959 doll, an original Barbie™ Dreamhouse, behind the scenes prototypes, as well as some of the most infamous Barbie dolls throughout history. You’ll also find numerous photo ops throughout the exhibition for shareable moments.

    Curated and toured by Illusion Projects Inc., curated by Karan Feder, in partnership with Mattel Inc.

    More information/Buy Tickets

    Billie Eilish – What Was I Made For? (Official Music Video)

  • Follow Loveland Magazine to Bluesky Social

    Follow Loveland Magazine to Bluesky Social

    Loveland, Ohio – Loveland Magazine has joined the more than 16 million users worldwide who are now using the social platform Bluesky.

    TechCrunch describes Bluesky as a, “Decentralized social app conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter. The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with algorithmic choice, a federated design and community-specific moderation.”

    Here is a GUIDE to get you started using Bluesky.

    We will be posting our latest stories and news daily and Bluesky will be a nice way for readers to keep up with the news, events, videos, and commentary we publish. Bluesky will also be a place to interact with us and other readers.

    You will find us with our hashtag #lovelandmagazine.

  • LIFE Food Pantry would love for you to have a neighborhood Food Drive this holiday season

    LIFE Food Pantry would love for you to have a neighborhood Food Drive this holiday season

    Loveland, Ohio – Do you live in one of these neighborhoods? LIFE Food Pantry would love for you to conduct a neighborhood Food Drive this holiday season.

    Please contact Emily Grant at fooddrives@lifefoodpantry.org with your neighborhood name and for more information.
    _____________
    Ashton Woods
    Bentley Pass
    Bluffs of Bares Creek
    Branch Hill
    Brandywine
    Butterworth Glen
    Carrington Crossings
    Carrington
    Cedar Woods
    Chimney Ridge
    Cozaddale / Dallasburg
    Crane Meadow
    Epworth Heights
    Fox Chase
    Fox Meadow Farm
    Glen Lake
    Henry Hannah’s Farm
    Hermitage Pointe
    Hidden Creek
    Huntington
    IR Stonebridge Farm
    Laurel Glen
    Loveland Park
    Mitchell Farm
    Myrtle Brook
    Nantucket
    Overlook at Blossom Hill
    Parkland Meadows
    River’s Bend
    Sentry Hill
    Steeple Chase
    Stoney Brook
    Stoney Hollow
    Sugar Tree Estates
    Sundale
    The Estates of Stone Pillars Farm
    The Reserve of Loveland
    Townsley
    Turnbury
    Village of Heritage Green – including The Forest, The Glen and Heritage Village
    West Loveland North
    Willow Brook Farms
    Windfield Hills
    Woodford