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Young mother with a baby sitting on the floor and working. (Photo from Getty Images).
Ohio lawmakers are considering a measure that could allow business owners to shift their tax burden for remote workers. Proponents of the idea argue it’s a way to simplify tax filing. But it could also make it easier for businesses to reduce their tax burden.
State law allows municipalities to levy income taxes on businesses operating within city limits. Businesses determine how much they owe through a formula weighing payroll, sales and property.
But remote work has thrown a wrench into that calculation. The sales and payroll that businesses previously attributed to one office could now be spread over as many cities as they have employees. Ohio Chamber of Commerce general counsel Tony Long explained that presents an administrative nightmare for small businesses.
“Employers would need to track remote work locations of employees determine if the employee was using company property and if sales were generated from that remote location,” he said, adding employers would “potentially face filing requirements to municipalities that they do not conduct business in or have property located in but for the remote worker.”
Long and others noted the potential expense of filing those returns could exceed the amount of tax they owe. To address the problem, businesses could apply their remote workers to a “qualifying reporting location” for the purposes of calculating taxes.
It’s similar to emergency changes made early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses calculated taxes as if workers kept showing up in person even if they actually clocked in from their couch. The current bill, however, gives businesses the ability to change that reporting location at will.
Importantly, the changes only apply to business income tax — not the payroll tax that makes up the biggest share of many city’s local revenues. Still, according to proponents, business income tax makes up roughly 15% of overall tax base.
Rep. Sean Brennan, D-Parma, was quick to zero in on the potential local impact. A former city councilman, he pressed Greg Saul from the Ohio Society of CPAs about the possibility of companies using the measure to “disproportionately decrease their tax burden.”
Saul insisted the intent is to be “revenue neutral,” and the law wouldn’t create new avenues for tax avoidance.
“If that was the business’s goal, I would think that that mechanism is available to them under current law,” Saul argued. “This is really just trying to situs the net profits to a location that the business is at.”
Saul noted townships don’t charge a municipal income tax and businesses could always move out of state. Picking up stakes and moving, after all, is time-honored if cumbersome means of seeking lower taxes.
But if businesses can easily alter an employee’s reporting location by simply changing an election on their tax forms, it’s easy to imagine companies working the angles. Some might go abatement shopping, jumping from one city to another. Others might “shift” workers to that warehouse just outside of town instead of their offices on main street.
Saul argued the measure has a “good faith” clause to avert those moves, but enforcement sounded a bit fuzzy.
“There’s a three-factor formula of how they can choose the remote work location, but the last one is (it) requires the employer to act in good faith when designating a reporting location,” Saul said. “Any city that is concerned about the location can challenge an employer on that point.”
Under the bill, companies should determine reporting location first by the place of business where an employee typically works. If there isn’t one — for instance, because they work from home — the company should next look to the place where their supervisor reports. But if the supervisor isn’t coming into the office either, the company has its pick of locations so long as it makes the designation in “good faith.”
Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.
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NICK EVANS
An electric vehicle charging station. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
The number of electric vehicles on U.S. roadways is expected to ramp up dramatically in the coming years, and with it the number of charging stations will have to grow as well.
Now groups representing Ohio utility consumers and manufacturers are trying to kill a plan that would force ratepayers to finance the electricity infrastructure needed to serve those charging stations. The people who will be profiting from those stations or the utilities themselves should bear those costs, they said.
In addition, they said, the way the language is written “is generally lacking in consumer protections.” That’s famously been a problem with Ohio utilities and the agency that’s supposed to be regulating them.
A provision in House Bill 33, a draft state budget, would allow monopoly utilities to impose higher rates to fund economic-development activities such as supplying EV stations even though subsidies for such activities are already available from the state and local governments, the advocates said.
“The federal government is making substantial funds available to local governments for electric vehicle charging stations,” Maureen Willis, legal director for the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, told the House Finance Committee last week, according to a written copy of her testimony. “That is occurring under the federal infrastructure bill. Ohio’s share of the funding is significant.”
The growth in sales of electric vehicles through the rest of the decade is expected to be enormous — going from 4.6 of all new passenger-vehicle sales in 2021 to a projected 40% to 50% in 2030, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
Driving such high expectations are a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. And earlier this month, President Joe Biden proposed two new EPA rules aimed at dramatically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles by 2030.
And, because nobody wants to drive a battery powered vehicle out into the boonies without being sure they’ll be able to charge it, $7.5 billion was built into last year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to subsidize building out a national network of charging stations.
Building out the system might seem laudable in the face of catastrophic climate change. But Ohio’s electric utilities and the Public Utilities Commission that’s supposed to be regulating them have a history of abusing ratepayers.
The PUCO has allowed more than $1 billion in rate hikes that were later ruled illegal by the state Supreme Court. But, because of the way the “riders” were written, there’s no way to make the utilities refund the money. In one instance, Akron-based FirstEnergy collected $460 million and then couldn’t show whether the money was spent on bribes, much less whether any of it was spent on its stated purpose.
And, speaking of bribes, the PUCO and a very recent employee in 2019 drafted a bailout law that was at the center of a scandal in which FirstEnergy and AEP spent $61 million to help pass a $1.3 billion bailout. Former House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges last month were convicted of racketeering in the matter.
Now, consumer and manufacturing representatives say, someone is again trying to give Ohio utilities broad latitude to raise rates on their customers.
Ryan Augsburger, president of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, this week told the House Finance Committee that the provision in the draft budget would allow Ohio utilities to collect from ratepayers for expenses that taxpayers are already subsidizing. And, he said, the wording of the provision is so loose that utilities would have great flexibility in applying it.
“The electric utilities are already poised to benefit from recovery of costs associated with infrastructure expansion,” Augsburger said, according to a written copy of his comments. “This new language grants electric utilities swift cost recovery from customers for all net costs associated with infrastructure development and economic development projects… Cost recovery from customers is to make the electric utility whole after (the utilities) have already received funds from the All Ohio Future Fund for the economic development projects.”
Willis of the Consumers’ Counsel said the language allowing for utility increases “is generally lacking in consumer protections.”
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MARTY SCHLADEN
An Ohio House committee took up two measures Wednesday aimed at re-establishing an August special election. Lawmakers eliminated nearly all such contests in the waning days of the last session, just a few short months ago.
But with an abortion amendment looking likely to appear on the November ballot, Republicans are pulling out all the stops in a bid to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments first.
That threshold resolution has already passed the Senate. If Republicans in the House can cobble together enough votes, voters will soon decide whether it should take a 60% supermajority to amend the state constitution. The two elections measures in the House would settle the question of when.
At the outset of Wednesday’s hearing, committee chair Rep. Bob Peterson, R-Washington Court House, admonished members and witnesses to stick to the substance of the August election bills. Throughout the hearing he tried — valiantly — to maintain that separation, but it proved a losing effort.
In the end, the move to reinstate August elections has only arisen as an counterpart of the feverish bid to raise the constitutional threshold.
That became clear in the testimony offered by the bill’s sponsors and supporters. Instead of presenting a case for an August election’s necessity, they often offered non-sequiturs.
“Our hopes were to get SJR 2 or HJR 1 to the ballot in May, but things didn’t work out in time,” Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, argued.
Later, in a back and forth with Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, added that a May election would’ve been preferable “because it was already scheduled.”
“Did you know that we have an election scheduled already for November?” Isaachson asked.
Separately, McColley acknowledged the reasoning behind Republicans’ effort to bring back the August election date. Again, their logic boils down to a political calculation inextricable from raising the constitutional threshold.
“In order to get 60 votes for this, there are other considerations that needed to be made for enough members to get us over the 60-vote threshold I had to be on in August,” McColley explained.
Some members, notably former chair of the House constitutional resolutions committee, Scott Wiggam, R-Wayne County, flatly rejected allowing the constitutional threshold question on the same ballot as an abortion rights measure. In a letter for House Speaker Jason Stephens, after his ouster from the committee, Wiggam elaborated.
“If that initiative and HJR 1 were both to pass we could see the very real scenario of abortion on demand placed in Ohio’s constitution with a 50% plus 1 vote and then it be protected with the 60% threshold because of HJR 1’s passing,” he wrote. “It is well known that this scenario is not acceptable to the Republican Caucus.”
Democrats repeatedly hammered the sponsors about timing because August elections typically involve far lower voter turnout. In the most recent August election, turnout averaged just 8% statewide.
Rep. Susan Manchester, R-Waynesfield, however, argued back that low turnout isn’t “a forgone conclusion.”
She pointed to her own election in 2022.
“I’m proud to say that my district had the highest voter turnout in the entire state, and it was equal if not similar to what the turnout is during a November or May election.” Manchester argued. “So let’s not underestimate the voice of our citizenry and wanting to participate in this process.”
At best, however, Manchester’s boast is a bit of an exaggeration. The 18.23% turnout in Auglaize County in 2022’s August election was the most in the state, but it was not quite in line with prior elections. It was four percentage points behind the 2020 primary, marred by COVID-19 and more than eight percentage points behind the 2018 primary.
When it comes to general elections, the August 2022 turnout is a pittance. The 2022 general election saw 58.47% turnout — more than three times the turnout in August. In 2020, Auglaize turnout was nearly 80% and in 2018 it cleared 60%.
The problem, as critics of August elections — many of them Republicans — have consistently noted, is that the contests are an inconsistent grab bag of local issues like school or construction levies. They aren’t the sort of issues the average voter spends an enormous amount of time thinking about, and they come up at a time most voters aren’t thinking about heading to the polls.
To that end, Rep. Richard Brown, D-Canal Winchester, asked Manchester if she’d voted in any recent August elections. Manchester admitted she couldn’t recall. But aside from the 2022 primary, Auglaize County hasn’t had an August election in at least ten years.
Still, for all her optimism about turnout, even Manchester isn’t immune from sitting out a sleepy election or two. According to the Auglaize County board of elections, her even-year voting record is basically flawless, save missing a primary in 2014. But when it comes to odd-year elections where posts like city council, mayor and school board get decided, she’s only shown up once since casting her first ballot in 2006.
Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.
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Justice Clarence Thomas might be the most egregious when it comes to taking gifts and not disclosing them, but he’s not alone. His colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court also haven’t been shy about taking fancy freebies from rich people — many of whom have an interest in the actions of the court.
The justices seem not to think it’s fair to have to entertain themselves on their $268,000 salaries that are in addition to whatever other income they get from book deals, investments and other sources. So it might not be a coincidence that in 2016, those same justices unanimously voted to make it a lot harder to prosecute public officials — including themselves — for accepting bribes.
No matter how much fun they are to hang out with, average people aren’t likely to be offered a $500,000 Indonesian vacation on a private jet and a superyacht. Nor is a billionaire likely to buy your mother’s house, pour tens of thousands into it, and let her live there rent-free.
But when ProPublica exposed those regal freebies — and the fact that Thomas failed to disclose those and others for decades — the justice in a statement characterized them as just the kinds of things good buddies do when they want to hang out. And he implied that his status as a Supreme Court justice had nothing to do with it.
Describing Texas billionaire and conservative activist Harlan Crow and his wife as among Thomas and his wife’s “dearest friends,” Thomas wrote, “As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.” He added that he had no conflict because it was “personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court.”
Thomas made the claim even though Crow has spent at least $14.7 million on conservative causes over the years — including to move the judiciary to the right. That figure doesn’t include any 501(c)(4) dark money contributions by Crow that Thomas helped to facilitate with his affirmative vote in the 2010 split decision, Citizens United v FEC.
Crow didn’t make Thomas’s acquaintance until he was on the Supreme Court and it seems unlikely that their friendship would be so dear if Thomas’s powers were limited to working a cash register — the most common job in the United States — as opposed to having a potentially dispositive say over the meaning of the U.S. Constitution. And in his statement, Thomas didn’t mention that as part of many of the freebies he’s taken from Crow, the justice was in close proximity with other conservative activists who also have had business before and a strong interest in the makeup of the federal courts.
Thomas has been far from alone on the court in enjoying the largesse of the uber-wealthy.
Late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in 2018 took a trip to Israel compliments of billionaire Morris Kahn, who had business before the court just a year earlier.
Late Justice Antonin Scalia took at least 258 subsidized trips while he was on the court and he was on one when he suddenly died in 2016.
Scalia’s more-liberal colleague, retired Justice Stephen Breyer, took at least 225 subsidized trips between 2004 and 2016. They include a 2013 trip to the exclusive island of Nantucket compliments of private-equity billionaire David Rubenstein, Gabe Roth, executive director of the group Fix the Court, reported.
Those were some of the 1,309 trips Supreme Court justices took compliments of others between 2004 and 2019, according to a list compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets. That’s nine trips per justice, per year, and it’s unlikely they stayed at the Holiday Inn on most of them.
And those are just the ones that justices have disclosed. It’s unclear how many — like decades of Thomas’ travels — have been unreported, or whether the justices will suffer any consequences for not reporting them.
Disturbing examples of such non-disclosure continue to flow in — thanks to investigative reporters, not the justices themselves.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that Justice Neil Gorsuch had been trying for some time in 2017 to unload a 40-acre property he co-owned in Colorado. Nine days after he was confirmed to the Supreme Court, the property was purchased by the CEO of a law firm that has had numerous cases before the court — and whose clients Gorsuch has sided with much more often than not.
Gorsuch disclosed that he made between $250,000 and $500,000 off of the sale, but he left blank the box that would have informed the public of the identity of the person who paid the money, and who had a lot of lucrative business that Gorsuch would preside over, Politico reported.
Despite all the ethical lapses, at least some justices from across the ideological spectrum are indignant at the notion that their conduct should be scrutinized. When Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in 2006 proposed an inspector general to keep an eye on the justices, liberal icon Ginsberg likened it to “Stalinism, saying that such oversight ‘is a really scary idea’ that ‘sounds to me very much like [how] the Soviet Union was,’” Roth of Fix the Court wrote.
In the midst of such hostility to oversight, the court in 2016 took up McDonnell v United States. Perhaps not surprisingly, it sided in its decision with a powerful public official who had taken expensive gifts from a wealthy friend who was pushing a special interest.
Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife had been convicted in 2014 on charges of bribery. But the McDonnells appealed their convictions, arguing that federal prosecutors failed to show that McDonnell undertook an “official act” in return for the presents they received.
The couple got about $175,000 worth of stuff from Jonnie Williams, including rides in a private plane, a Rolex, $20,000 worth of designer clothing, a $50,000 loan and $15,000 for their daughter’s wedding. Williams, the CEO of Star Scientific, was trying to market a nutritional supplement made from a compound found in tobacco, and he wasn’t having much luck interesting the scientific community in conducting research.
To help, the governor directed Williams’ proposals for research at the Medical College of Virginia and the University of Virginia School of Medicine to his director of health and human services. When that didn’t bear fruit, McDonnell hosted a lunch at the governor’s mansion and brought in university officials. Even so, the actual scientists were skeptical of Williams’ claims and didn’t embrace his supplement.
As a general matter, governors have great sway over state budgets and public universities partly depend on state funding. Governors also often appoint public universities’ governing boards — in the case of the University of Virginia, the Board of Visitors. So, when McDonnell pushed Williams’ supplement on his health director and on university officials, it probably wasn’t easy for them to say no.
But in writing for the Supreme Court in the case, Chief Justice John Roberts said McDonnell’s attempts to help Williams didn’t amount to an “official act.”
“An ‘official act’ is defined as ‘any decision or action on any question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy, which may at any time be pending, or which may by law be brought before any public official, in such official’s official capacity, or in such official’s place of trust or profit,’” Roberts wrote.
Somehow, he and the other eight justices couldn’t see it as an abuse of the governor’s place of trust or profit when he brought subordinates and quasi-subordinates to his official residence to hear a new-age medical pitch from a guy who had given the governor $175,000 in fancy presents. Perhaps the gifts the justices themselves were taking had influenced them in ways they didn’t see.
In an interview last week, Roth of Fix the Court said the Supreme Court decision in McDonnell made it a lot harder to prosecute public officials in federal court for taking bribes.
“I think (the decision) appears to be a simultaneously textualist and tone-deaf decision,” he said. “The opinion is focusing on what the parameters of what the law are as written by Congress, but it’s never that easy. It’s never just, ‘Oh, hey, I’m going to do a bribe.’”
Perhaps making it seem extra tone-deaf lately has been Roberts’ continued inaction as Thomas’s failure to report millions in gifts and payments to his wife from conservative groups is serially revealed.
In concluding his opinion in McDonnell, the chief justice seemed to express his own hostility to oversight, slamming federal prosecutors for their “boundless interpretation” of bribery laws.
The claim seems hard to square with exploding dark money expenditures by undisclosed special-interests as federal corruption prosecutions have gone down in recent decades. But Roberts implied that the feds are out of control when it comes to charging public officials with taking bribes.
“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that,” Roberts wrote. “But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute. A more limited interpretation of the term ‘official act’ leaves ample room for prosecuting corruption, while comporting with the text of the statute and the precedent of this Court.”
Recent revelations about the lavish freebies Thomas and his colleagues have been accepting cast the decision in a new light. Roth said that when the McDonnell decision was handed down seven years ago, the public wasn’t as sensitized to the fact that many on the court are taking ritzy presents from oligarchs, granting them extended facetime and then pretending it doesn’t influence their decisions.
“I was screaming about this in 2016,” he said. “Now folks are getting wise to the fact that the lavishness is not restricted to state officials in Virginia, but it has in fact infected the highest court. It is an incredibly elite, incredibly out-of-touch institution.”
Roberts illustrated such a lack of self-awareness in his opinion.
He used an example of a social interaction that overzealous bribery prosecutions might dampen that is wildly different from Thomas’ trip to Indonesia, Ginsberg’s to the Holy Land and Scalia’s many, many luxurious hunting vacations that came compliments of billionaires. What’s wrong, Roberts asked, with constituents wanting to take an official to a good, old-fashioned ballgame?
“The basic compact underlying representative government assumes that public officials will hear from their constituents and act appropriately on their concerns — whether it is the union official worried about a plant closing or the homeowners who wonder why it took five days to restore power to their neighborhood after a storm,” the chief justice wrote. “The Government’s position could cast a pall of potential prosecution over these relationships if the union had given a campaign contribution in the past or the homeowners invited the official to join them on their annual outing to the ballgame.”
When wealthy patrons shower justices with gifts — the like of which average Americans will never see — it’s only logical to think they expect something in return, Roth said.
“The justices say they only care about what they see or read that exists within the four corners of the page,” he said. “But clearly if someone is taking the time to get to know someone once he’s already on the court you can’t help but expect there to be some sort of quid pro quo or ulterior motives there.”
He added that it’s up to Congress to fix the problem.
“We need laws to change, not justices who don’t care that much about ethics to begin with,” Roth said.
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MARTY SCHLADEN
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. (Photo by Justin Merriman/Getty Images)
Question hinges around whether local prosecutors can be removed for saying they won’t bring charges under abortion bans
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and 14 other attorneys general are arguing in federal court that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was within his powers when he removed a local prosecutor who had spoken out against the state’s restrictive new abortion law.
But the group that represents Ohio’s local prosecutors doesn’t seem comfortable with that claim, expressing worries that the Florida case threatens the principle of “prosecutorial discretion” — that faced with many possible crimes and limited time and resources, prosecutors need great latitude to decide which cases are most wisely brought.
Yost said his friend-of-the-court brief doesn’t violate that principle. He said that he doesn’t want to impinge on prosecutors’ decisions about individual cases, but only to allow for their removal when they make blanket statements that they won’t enforce laws they don’t agree with.
“This case is about a ‘prosecutor’s veto’ — the nullification of a democratically passed law by the act of an executive,” Yost said in an email Thursday. “The application of discretion to a single case is proper; the application of discretion to every case arising under a statute eliminates the legislative act itself, the core function of a democratically elected government.”
Yost on Wednesday led the Republican attorneys general in filing a friend-of-the-court brief with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. It argues that DeSantis — who is widely thought to be seeking the Republican presidential nomination — had the power to remove Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren last August over positions Warren took regarding the state’s new abortion law and other matters.
Warren, whose jurisdiction includes Tampa, signed declarations by a group of progressive prosecutors opposing charging people under laws restricting abortion and transgender care, the Florida Phoenix reported. DeSantis also objected to a Warren policy that his office usually would not bring low-level cases arising from bike or pedestrian stops in which a disproportionate number of minorities have historically been prosecuted, the Phoenix reported.
Warren sued DeSantis in U.S. district court in an attempt to be reinstated.
Judge Robert Hinkle found that DeSantis violated Warren’s First Amendment rights and separate provisions in the Florida Constitution by removing Warren. But, the judge ruled, the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution barred him from reversing the removal because it was based solely on state law. In making the ruling, the judge looked past the First Amendment violation, saying DeSantis would have removed Warren even if he hadn’t violated the prosecutor’s free-speech rights.
Warren appealed to the 11th Circuit, arguing that Judge Hinkle’s reasoning was “perverse.”
“DeSantis’s violation of one (of Warren’s rights) cannot be permitted to excuse the violation of the other,” said a friend-of-the-court brief signed by Warren’s attorney. “The district court erred by ignoring the deeply intertwined nature of these protections. The decision below contributed to the disenfranchisement of Hillsborough County voters and allowed the governor to censor the speech of another duly elected official.”
In their brief, Yost and the other Republican AGs argued that Warren and prosecutors like him jeopardize another constitutional principle when they say they’re not interested in bringing cases under laws with which they don’t agree — the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government. As part of the executive branch, it’s not a prosecutor’s job to decide which laws have force and which don’t, they said.
The attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia joined Yost in signing the brief. All of the states have some abortion restrictions on the books and most have laws that the Guttmacher Institute rates as “very restrictive” or “most restrictive.”
Local prosecutors can’t unilaterally decide not to enforce those or other laws, the amicus brief said.
“Those prosecutors have considerable discretion to decide whether to prosecute violations in particular cases,” the brief said. “They do not have the power to effectively repeal laws by categorically suspending enforcement.”
It added, “The states can properly remove from office prosecutors who make non-prosecution pledges. These pledges violate the traditional separation of powers between government branches.”
However, there are some devilish details involved. For example, how do you define “pledge” and how do you reconcile removing prosecutors for signing such documents with their right to free speech?
Lou Tobin, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, slammed prosecutors who make such pledges.
He singled out Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who survived an impeachment attempt after Krasner said the office would no longer prosecute marijuana possession, would slash prosecutions of sex workers, sought reduced sentences for other crimes and called to abolish Pennsylvania’s death penalty. Tobin also slammed Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who survived a recall attempt that started just when he took office. Like Krasner, Gascon did things like slash marijuana prosecutions and worked to end cash bail.
But perhaps tellingly, Tobin didn’t mention the Florida prosecutor DeSantis removed and he said such an action is exceedingly grave.
“Ohio has processes in place for the removal of public officers who refuse or willfully neglect to enforce the laws or to perform any official duty imposed by law,” Tobin said in an email Thursday. “It is a process that has been in place since before the General Code became the Revised Code in 1953, it does not involve the attorney general, it should not involve the attorney general, and it is a process that should be used rarely and with extreme caution.”
Tobin also seemed to call out DeSantis for acting out of political motives.
“Threats to unilaterally and summarily remove prosecutors from office are just as damaging to the justice system as people like Larry Krasner and George Gascon,” Tobin said. “We’re heading down a very dangerous road when those threats are made to score political points.”
In entering the dispute, Yost is again wading into national abortion politics. Last year, just after rushing to enact Ohio’s strict six-week abortion ban, the attorney general went on Fox News to question the existence of a 10-year-old rape victim who reportedly had to go to Indiana for an abortion. Days later, her existence was confirmed when Columbus police made an arrest in the case.
While the Ohio law was in effect, obstetricians and maternal fetal medicine doctors said that aspects of it sometimes conflicted with what was in the best interest of their patients. DeSantis signed a similar law in Florida earlier this month.
But Yost said that in filing the brief in the Florida case he wasn’t trying push local prosecutors to charge doctors every time they think abortion laws might have been violated. He was asked if he thought prosecutors should be able to bring a strong violent-crime or public-corruption case over a weak abortion case if they don’t have the resources to bring both.
“Of course,” Yost replied. “… this is a case about one politician’s arrogance to cancel an entire category of criminal prohibition that was enacted by the elected Legislature. If you don’t see the danger in that, imagine your own most hated politician — whomever that might be — vowing that they will not prosecute Clean Water Act violations because it’s a violation of private property rights. Should such arrogance be without redress? Of course not.”
Yost and his colleagues are arguing that prosecutors who say they won’t enforce abortion restrictions and other laws are abusing their power. But some critics argue that many of the post-Dobbs restrictions are themselves abuses of power. A majority of Americans don’t support them and many — such as Ohio’s six-week ban — were passed by gerrymandered legislatures.
But Yost said his effort isn’t solely about enforcement of Ohio’s abortion law, under which doctors could be charged with felonies.
“This is not an argument about abortion, although that was the individual motivation of the prosecutor who was removed,” he said. “But this same principle applies to prosecutors (who) would refuse to prosecute all thefts under a $1,000, or those who refuse to prosecute any firearms offense. Prosecutors do not get to make up the law, or revoke it — they only get to enforce it.”
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MARTY SCHLADEN
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Policy and business advocates alike are hoping the Ohio legislature will reconsider changes to the state budget with regard to the child care workforce and scholarships.
The House revised the budget bill last week, eliminating $150 million in American Rescue Plan funds that were a part of the governor’s executive budget proposal to establish a child care scholarship for “critical occupations and other direct service professionals,” according to the budget analysis by the Legislative Service Commission.
The scholarships would have been awarded to those with household incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
Even the Ohio Chamber of Commerce jumped on board with support for scholarships in testimony on the state budget last week. The chamber’s senior vice president, former Republican legislator Rick Carfagna, called child care “one of the biggest workforce dynamics of late.”
“The Ohio Chamber urges this committee to reconsider funding for child care scholarships and to increase infant and toddler child care capacity in communities throughout the state,” Carfagna said in his testimony.
According to the chamber, more than half of rural Ohioans and 39% of all Ohioans live in a “child care desert,” defined as an area where more than 50 children younger than 5 have no child care providers or any area where there are three times as many children as licensed child care slots.
Carfagna said the chamber supported increasing the poverty level eligibility for publicly funded childcare, which would be raised to 160% under the budget, as an expansion that would strengthen Ohio’s employee base.
“However, we caution of the access bottlenecks in place as Ohio still lacks a corresponding increase in provider workforce to accommodate the FPL increase and follow proper ratios,” Carfagna testified.
The ARPA funding would have also been directed toward efforts to “increase access to licensed child care programs for infants and toddlers and streamline administrative efficiency of the child care program,” the governor’s proposal stated.
“If lawmakers don’t support child care professionals, child care providers will continue to struggle to recruit and retain staff and Ohio will remain unable to meet the child care needs of our families,” said Policy Matters Ohio executive director Hannah Halbert after the substitute budget bill was announced.
The Cleveland based preschool and child care advocacy group PRE4CLE sees the $150 million funding as a vital step in not only bringing in needed child care workers, but keeping them around.
“We have many child care centers with classrooms that can’t open (because of staffing shortages),” said Katie Kelly, PRE4CLE executive director. “There are waiting lists in the hundreds of families for centers … it’s causing incredible disruptions for families.”
For families, that could mean not taking jobs due to a lack of child care, something that has an outsized impact on women, according to Kelly.
For children, it could mean slower development and longterm impacts on their education.
“Children who have access to quality child care … have a much greater chance of starting kindergarten ready to succeed,” Kelly told the OCJ.
Not only do advocates like Kelly hope to see the return of the $150 million child care investment in Ohio’s budget, but also another $75 million to support grants that would help the state’s child care workforce, “which faces an ongoing crisis that makes it hard to hire and retain child care workers.”
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Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Voters casting ballots. | Mario Tama/Getty Images
Bill, along with SJR 2 constitutional amendment bill, directly impact abortion rights ballot initiative
– Ohio Capital Journal
Less than half a year after proclaiming August elections to be too expensive for the turnout they attract, the Senate Republican majority expanded the use of a special election this year, complete with $20 million in funding.
“This is legislative whiplash, and we do it really well here in Columbus,” said state Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid.
In a mostly party-line vote, Senate Bill 92 was passed Wednesday by the body. The only Republican to vote against SB 92 was state Sen. Nathan Manning, R-North Ridgeville.
The vote came immediately after the state senate also passed an increase in the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment from 50% to 60% along party lines.
The threshold bill, SJR 2, is a companion bill to HJR 1, which has been making its way through the Ohio House, but has yet to come up for a floor vote. The House resolution passed its committee after three hours of testimony on Wednesday, most of which spoke in opposition to the bill.
Both bills could lead to a ballot measure where voters would approve or deny a constitutional amendment to raise that threshold.
With the approval of SB 92, August special elections will now be held “for consideration of a General Assembly proposed constitutional amendment,” to fill a congressional vacancy or hold a special primary for congressional party candidates.
The bill also appropriates $20 million to conduct “a one-time August special election on August 8, 2023,” a funding influx made while the bill was in committee.
That August election would be to send a constitutional voter threshold to the ballot for voters to approve an legislature-initiated amendment to raise the threshold from 50% to 60%.
Republicans pushed back on comparisons between previous August elections, including last year’s that saw an abysmal 8% turnout, with the argument that this time around, voters will care.
“With this being a bonafide, statewide question, and with it being an important question … I would say the turnout is going to be markedly higher in this August election,” McColley told his colleagues on the Senate floor.
The legislative measures seem to be direct hits at a potential constitutional amendment that would codify abortion rights if it makes it to the ballot box and is approved by voters in November. Abortion rights advocates are currently collecting the needed signatures. State law currently requires more than 400,000 in 44 of the 88 states.
One of the pro-abortion rights groups helping with the ballot measure, Pro-Choice Ohio, called the passage of SB 92 “both expected and incredibly disappointing” in a post on Twitter.
Last year, after redistricting confusion rocked the legislature, Republicans all-but eliminated the August election in a move that they said would save the state money and get rid of an unneeded annual election date that historically had low voter turnout.
In August of last year, the special primary election included statehouse races because the redistricting maps were rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court before they could be included in the May election. A U.S. District Court then intervened in the legal snarl that swept up the redistricting process, and allowed the state to use a map previously deemed unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court as the map for the August primary.
That map is still in effect currently.
Speaking in opposition for SB 92, state Sen. William DeMora, D-Columbus, quoted Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose who spoke in support of reducing August special election usage last year, when he said they “aren’t good for taxpayers, election officials, voters or the civic health of our state.”
“(SB 92) is so bad that (LaRose) Secretary LaRose couldn’t even find the time to come and testify about it in committee,” DeMora said.
State Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, said claims that the August special elections were eliminated last year was an exaggerated claim.
“We’re not reinventing the wheel on this legislation,” Gavarone said, pointing out that certain occasions allowed for an August special election.
SB 92 now moves to the House for consideration.
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Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Loveland, Ohio – The Loveland City School District will hold a Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday, April 25, at 6 PM in the Media Center at Loveland Intermediate School. In his April 19 “Schools Update” Superintendent Mike Broadwater said, “The purpose of this Town Hall is to provide a forum for our Loveland City Schools community to ask questions about the upcoming 4.9 mill operating levy on the ballot on May 2.”
The Town Hall will include the Superintendent, Treasurer Rob Giuffre’ and two members of the Board of Education. It will not be an official meeting of the Board. The Superintendent’s newsletter did not specify which board members will participate in the discussions.
If you cannot attend, you can watch a live stream by following this link.
Only in-person attendees can participate with questions or comments. After the meeting, the live stream recording will be available on the Board of Education YouTube channel.
During the Town Hall, Broadwater said, “We will work to take questions or comments from as many participants as possible to foster conversation around these important issues.”
AARP Ohio is hosting a live telephone townhall with Ohio Department of Aging Director Ursel J. McElroy, tomorrow, Thursday, April 20 at 11:00 a.m. EST. The discussion is an opportunity for Ohioans to share their personal stories, ideas for improvements and learn more about the new Ohio Governor’s Nursing Home Quality and Accountability Task Force, chaired by McElroy.
“We are encouraging all Ohioans to participate and help drive realistic solutions” said AARP State Director Holly Holtzen. “Their input is vital to making sure the final report reflects the complexity and inconsistent quality Ohioans experience in caring for parents, spouses, and other loved ones in nursing homes.”
With the goal of finding solutions to improve the quality of care and experience in Ohio’s 960+ nursing homes, the task force has been traveling to communities around Ohio to hear directly from nursing home residents and their families during a series of in-person listening sessions. More information about the task force and other options for public participation is available here. Resources and information on family caregiving are available at aarp.org/caregiving
WHO: Holly Holtzen, AARP State Director
Ursel J. McElroy, Ohio Department of Aging Director
WHEN: Tomorrow, Thursday, April 20, 2023, 11:00 a.m. EST
WHERE: Register for the AARP event here.
