Ohio’s recently-passed budget included a long overdue victory for Ohio’s families and school choice advocates that The Buckeye Institute has championed for years. Included in the 2,600-page budget bill was a significant expansion of Ohio’s EdChoice program, which provides education scholarships for students from failing public schools and scholarships to low-income families.
In the Akron Beacon Journal, Buckeye’s Greg Lawson responds to a July 3 editorial “Cut state regulations? Not in this way,” writing, “Ohio desperately needs regulatory reform that eliminates unnecessary regulations that strangle private industry and enterprise as part of the state’s broader reform efforts to boost economic growth. If Ohio does not focus its regulations and rules on protecting the public from genuine harm, the state will continue to see slower growth and lower prosperity compared to many other states.”
Immediately following the Supreme Court’s landmark Janus decision, The Buckeye Institute launched its comprehensive and multi-pronged Workers Choose campaign to notify hundreds of thousands of public employees in Ohio of their newly-recognized Janus rights through direct mail and targeted online ads. The Buckeye Institute was not satisfied to stop there, but insisted upon asking the next big question in labor law, namely, “if it violates the First Amendment to compel financial support for union advocacy, how on earth can states require these same public employees to speak through unions that many of them choose not to join?”
In The Columbus Dispatch, Buckeye’s Greg Lawson shines a light on Ohio’s “shadow budget,” writing, “Finding the bottom line on Ohio’s budget is not as simple as most of us might think it should be. And too often it looks nothing like what we have been told. Recent headlines, for example, trumpeted: ‘Tax cuts, money for schools, children highlight House-passed $69 billion budget,’ when the real budget will see Columbus spend more than $140 billion of Ohio taxpayer money.”
Melonia Lillie has been a registered nurse for 20 years and has served this country alongside her active duty Marine Corps husband as a military spouse since 2008. Through military transfers, Melonia’s support of her husband’s military service has taken her and her family from California, to Colorado, to Washington, DC, back to California, and now to Ohio. And while we are glad to have her here in the Buckeye State, our occupational licensing requirements have not been welcoming.
When the House budget was voted out of the Finance Committee it contained an important program that has been unfairly maligned and misunderstood since it was first introduced in 2015. Healthy Ohio—structured after the popular and successful Healthy Indiana 2.0—was removed from the final version of House Bill 166 before it passed the Ohio House and the Ohio Senate can now reverse this action and restore this critical program to Ohio’s biennial budget.
In the Akron Beacon Journal, Buckeye’s Greg Lawson looks at restrictions placed on debt settlement companies that make it more difficult for Ohioans to get help resolving their debt, writing, “There is growing concern in the state’s debt-settlement industry that a decision by the Ohio Supreme Court will be misapplied and ultimately prevent non-lawyer debt settlement firms from serving Ohioans.”
Powerful, entrenched interests prospered from a restrictive occupational licensing regime in Ohio for decades. This dysfunctional form of crony capitalism narrowly benefited the well-connected, while disadvantaging people seeking to start new professions or become eligible for promotions. The Buckeye Institute recognized the injustice, and went to work combat this unfair system.
As the Ohio General Assembly continues to look at drug sentencing reform in Ohio, a new poll from the U.S. Justice Action Network found that a whopping 87 percent of Ohioans favor reducing prison time for low-level, non-violent offenders and reinvesting savings into community-based supervision programs.
In The Cincinnati Enquirer, Buckeye’s Rea S. Hederman Jr. looks at the budget passed by the Ohio House of Representatives, writing, “The House budget includes some sound tax policies and promising improvements, but if the Ohio Senate fails to tap the brakes on the proposed ‘crazy train’ spending roaring out of the House of Representatives, the Ohio taxpayer will be on board for a spectacular economic train wreck.”
