Actions by the federal government have taken health care out of the hands of state officials and centralized it in Washington. The result: families are paying ever higher health insurance premiums for coverage they often do not want or need. This means less money to pay other bills, college tuition, or even buy food.
In The Columbus Dispatch, Buckeye’s Quinn Beeson highlights the importance of occupational licensing reform to women who want to join the cosmetology profession. “In Ohio, an EMT who makes life and death decisions receives less training than a cosmetologist in whose hands you place your hair. This is ridiculous and illustrates why Ohio needs to expand opportunities for women and minorities and remove barriers to employment.”
Proponents of occupational licensing often claim that the reason we need licensing is to protect citizens – both their health and safety. And protecting people is of paramount importance. But what if public health and safety aren’t at risk? Or what if licensing requirements in one profession are completely out of line with a profession where workers are entrusted with peoples’ actual lives?
Several states, including our neighbor Michigan, have recently proposed increasing their respective renewable energy mandates, which will end up costing consumers more money on their electric bills and slow renewable energy innovation in their states. In Ohio we have a chance to avoid these problems, help consumers save money on their energy bills, and encourage investors who have innovative ideas for renewable energy.
Every Ohioan deserves the opportunity to build a better life for themselves and their family, and few things have a greater impact on that than a growing economy. However, too often, Ohio creates permission-slip policies that make it harder—and sometimes impossible—for Ohioans to pursue their careers and put food on the table for their families. Such policies must end.
It’s not often that The Buckeye Institute agrees with Policy Matters Ohio, but when it comes to opposing the increase of the special interest motion picture tax credit, we do! Policymakers are proposing increasing this special interest film tax credit, currently capped at $40 million a year, to a whopping $100 million annually and broadening it to include some Broadway productions, claiming that this tax credit will incentivize Hollywood and Broadway producers to set up shop in Ohio. What it really does is waste your tax dollars on a multi-billion-dollar industry that doesn’t need handouts from Ohioans.
In National Review, Rea S. Hederman Jr. and Doug Badger call on Congress and the administration to give states more latitude to fix their health insurance markets, which is the central recommendation of their new Mercatus Center study.
This morning, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. The case asks a similar question to one raised just two years ago in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association — namely whether forcing a public employee to choose between subsidizing a union’s political speech or being subject to termination for failure to do so violates the First Amendment.
Ohio’s cash bail system remains broken. Just ask Markcus Brown, the man locked-up for nine days because he did not meet the RTA’s dress code and he could not afford bail after his arrest for “trespassing” at the bus station. Mr. Brown’s case is another stark reminder that the cash bail status quo does a remarkably poor job of determining which defendants should be released before trial and which should wait in jail.
A newly-released report from the Reason Foundation, reinforces the need for state policymakers to keep the soon-to-be-released capital budget focused on repairing and building Ohio’s physical infrastructure. Something The Buckeye Institute recently called for in our own report, Principled Spending: Using Ohio’s Capital Budget to Benefit Ohioans.
