Rotunda rumble
Schoolwork: The Ohio Department of Education and Labor said that as of Aug. 7, the state has spent $966.2 million on scholarships at private schools for the just-ended school year. The General Assembly expanded one of the five voucher programs to high-income Ohioans, and enrollment has grown from 23,272 students participating in the 2022-2023 school year to 89,770 students last year. Final numbers will be announced in October, Laura Hancock reports.
Let’s make a deal: FirstEnergy signed an agreement Monday with Attorney General Dave Yost’s office to pay $20 million to avoid criminal prosecution related to the House Bill 6 scandal and to exclude FirstEnergy from Yost’s civil lawsuit related to HB6. As Jeremy Pelzer reports, the agreement means the Akron-based utility will only have to pay a total of $250 million plus a prospective $100 million fine to avoid prosecution for its role in the largest bribery scandal in Ohio history; advisers had previously warned the company that it could face fines of up to $3.8 billion if prosecuted.
Professional qualifications: Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland has introduced a bill that would make it easier for workers without a four-year college degree to get a job with the federal government, Sabrina Eaton reports. The Federal Jobs for STARs Act, which he co-sponsored with Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, would remove unnecessary education requirements from civil service job postings on USAJOBS.com.
Failed investment: An indoor farming startup called AppHarvest, which U.S. Senator JD Vance invested in and publicly unveiled, “not only failed as a business after rapidly growing, but also left many Kentucky workers with a dismal work experience,” CNN reports. The Cincinnati Republican pledged to help. The rise and fall of the company, which filed for bankruptcy last year, and Vance’s role in it run counter to his image as a champion of the working class – an image that helped catapult him to the top of the Republican ticket as Donald Trump’s running mate.
Red meat: Although Vance’s wife, Usha, praised her husband for adapting to her vegetarian diet despite his “meat-and-potatoes” ways in her speech at the Republican National Convention last month, the vice presidential candidate is not a vegetarian and frequently appears in photos “next to meat dishes of all kinds,” the Los Angeles Times notes. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 4% of Americans identify as vegetarian. And these days, there’s little doubt: In American popular culture, vegetarianism is often perceived as “liberal, whiny and feminine,” a professor of nutritional sciences told the magazine.
Speaking of red meat: A Washington Post fact checker examined three claims made by Vance about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, including the claim that she wants to “take away your ability to eat red meat,” and concluded that those claims are false. Other false claims examined include Vance’s claim that Harris wants to ban gas stoves and his claim that Harris said it was reasonable not to have children because of climate change.
Advertising is worth it: The National Republican Senatorial Committee has canceled its fall cable reservations totaling more than $700,000 for the Ohio Senate race between Democratic incumbent Brown and Republican challenger Bernie Moreno, the Washington Examiner reports. According to AdImpact, the NRSC canceled its entire cable reservation in one of the most competitive races in the country, which was scheduled to run ads between Aug. 31 and Election Day. In a social media post, the Republican Senate campaign arm said it still views Ohio as a top campaign target but believes the money could be spent more efficiently on hybrid ads.
Delayed again: For those awaiting a ruling on whether the state’s six-week “heartbeat” abortion ban is constitutional, the wait continues. First, Hamilton County District Court Judge Christian Jenkins set a May 20 deadline for the decision. Then he pushed it back to June 25. Then he pushed it back to Tuesday. And on Tuesday, he pushed his deadline back to Aug. 29. The state has been barred from enforcing the heartbeat law, meaning women can still get abortions after the sixth week, for 22 months. But abortion clinics and doctors want Jenkins to weigh the law with the new abortion rights amendment voters passed last November and overturn the law for good. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost agrees the ban is no longer constitutional but says other parts of the law should stay.
New job: Lee Strang, a law professor at the University of Toledo who was a driving force behind the creation of five new “centers for intellectual diversity” at some universities, has been hired to head one of those centers. Strang will be executive director of the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Ohio State University. Strang also served as director of the Center for Intellectual Diversity at the University of Toledo and has testified before the legislature on a number of issues, including in favor of last year’s special election to block the abortion law change, reports Megan Henry of the Ohio Capital Journal.
Lobbying setup
Five organizations are lobbying for House Bill 103, which would establish a social studies task force for grades 1-12 to implement the conservative Civics Alliance’s American Birthright standards. There have been no hearings on the bill as of June 13, 2023.
1. Cleveland Metropolitan School District
2. Ohio Council of Churches
3. Ohio Association of Teachers
4. Buckeye Association of School Administrators
5. Warren City Schools
Birthdays
State Representative Thomas Hall
Grace Flajnik, parliamentary advisor to MP Justin Pizzulli
Directly from the source
“All application materials provided to application readers or others involved in the admissions decision have been removed from all application questions and entries that asked about the applicant’s race or ethnicity.”
– A section of Ohio State University’s website reported on by Megan Henry of the Ohio Capital Journal, who examined how Ohio universities are handling affirmative action after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions policies last summer.
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