Another year has come and gone and it is time to celebrate National School Choice Week again! This is a week when we celebrate and raise awareness about helping parents find the best education setting that is right for their children based upon their own unique, individual needs.
After filing the first post-Janus First Amendment labor law challenge in the United States Supreme Court, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief in support of a related challenge, Bierman v. Dayton. Buckeye’s brief calls on the court to recognize that laws forcing recipients of government benefits to speak through unions are unconstitutional. It argues that the lower courts have improperly exempted such “exclusive representation” schemes from scrutiny under the First Amendment.
Not many people understand the sacrifices military families make for our country. Not only do our service men and women put their lives at risk to protect us, but their families are asked to make sacrifices too—including packing up their entire life and moving when a spouse is transferred to another state. And when military families are transferred to Ohio, they should be greeted with a welcome mat, not burdened with bureaucracy and government red tape.
Twenty-one nationally renowned public policy organizations filed amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court in support of The Buckeye Institute’s case Uradnik v. IFO, which calls for an immediate end to laws that force public-sector employees to accept a union’s exclusive representation. “Kathy Uradnik has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to protect her First Amendment rights and declare that the laws forcing her to accept representation by a union that has advocated and acted against her interests time and again are unconstitutional.”
Doug Badger, a senior fellow at the Galen Institute and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, looks at The Buckeye Institute’s research Healthy and Working: Benefits of Work Requirements for Medicaid Recipients, and how work requirements can help the poor.
The Buckeye Institute’s longtime efforts championing the reform and elimination of Ohio’s economically-detrimental occupational licensing requirements culminated in the passage of Senate Bill 255 on December 19, which Governor John Kasich then signed into law. “With the signing of Senate Bill 255, Ohio has gone from being one of the very worst states in the nation on occupational licensing to the very best. Ohio can now rightly claim its place at the top of the list of states on occupational licensing…”
The Buckeye Institute commented on newly released employment data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, saying, “Just in time for Christmas, Ohioans received an early present: Private sector job growth has surpassed 106,000 for the year—the third best job growth year in the last three decades. The unemployment rate is also down for the year from 4.9 percent in November 2017 to 4.6 percent in November 2018.”
The Buckeye Institute issued a statement after the passage of Senate Bill 255 by the Ohio General Assembly. “With Senate Bill 255, Ohio becomes a national leader in occupational licensing reform and the policies in the bill will enable policymakers to end permission slip regulations that create barriers to employment for too many Americans…For anyone who has been prohibited from starting a new career or advancing in a job by Ohio’s burdensome occupational licensing requirements, Senate Bill 255 will remove barriers to employment…”
Ohio ranks an unimpressive 38th out of all 50 states in this year’s Economic Freedom of North America report, released by the Economic Research Center at The Buckeye Institute in partnership with Canada’s Fraser Institute. The report ranks every state and province in North America based on economic freedom, as measured by government spending, taxation, and labor market restrictions. “Ohio continues to lag behind many of its neighbors and, compared to last year’s rankings, is flat lining when it comes to overall economic freedom.”
In the Akron Beacon Journal, Greg Lawson responds to an editorial on debt settlement companies, writing that the editorial “wrongly argues that state legislators need to protect Ohioans from debt settlement companies. Such government paternalism may be well-intended, but all too often creates unintended consequences that end up hurting the very people it tries to help.”
