State and Local News That Matters
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted joined a growing list of officials increasing the pressure on President Joe Biden and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to keep open a pipeline that affects fuel supplies across Ohio, along with 20,000 jobs.
DeWine and Husted sent a letter to Biden seeking to keep the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline operating, saying a closure would cause significant issues in supply chains, unemployment and fuel costs.
The Massillon Police Department on Tuesday issued a warning to parents about a destructive “challenge,” inspired by the social media app TikTok.
During the “Kool-Aid Man” challenge, the social media users have broken down fences by kicking them down or colliding into them, like the style of the Kool-Aid Man in previous commercials.
The Michigan Department of State (MDOS) has provided more than 5,000 state identification cards and driver’s licenses to parolees through its joint initiative with the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC).
The program offers newly paroled Michiganders a driver’s license or state ID has boosted these transactions by more than 10 times the prior amount.
One Ohio lawmaker is on a crusade to do away with traffic cameras across the state, and especially in the small town of Linndale, described as “Northeast Ohio’s most notorious speed trap.”
“Speed cameras are not law enforcement. Speed cameras are not a public safety measure. Speed cameras are only a cash register for the cities or villages involved,” State Rep. Tom Patton (District 7) told WJKW. “I have four bills I am going to drop that deal with cities and the use of speed cameras.”
Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Renacci will announce his pick for Lieutenant Governor on Thursday, December 2nd in West Chester Township, according to an emailed press release.
Throughout his campaign, Renacci has portrayed his potential administration as a more conservative alternative to Governor Mike DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted.
After its major cities raked in more than six billion dollars from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan for COVID-19 relief, Ohio will once again be flush with federal cash.
The state is expected to receive more than$10 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is meant to be spent on rebuilding roads, bridges and other public structures, according to reports.
In a rare showing of complete bipartisanship, a bill that would allow families to monitor activities inside loved ones’ nursing home rooms with cameras and other electronic equipment, passed through the Ohio Legislature unanimously.
Senate Bill 58, known as Esther’s Law, has been in the works since 2011, when an activist named Steven Piskor used a hidden camera to catch employees at a nursing home facility run by MetroHealth Medical Center abusing his mother, Esther.
The Center for Christian Virtue on Tuesday announced the purchase of a new building, which is located near the Ohio State Capitol.
The CCV was able to purchase the building because of donations from supporters throughout the state.
A national liberal organization has challeged Ohio’s recently approved congressional redistricting maps in a lawsuit filed with the Ohio Supreme Court, contending the new “gerrymandered” maps violate redistricting reforms added to the Ohio Constitution in 2018.
The National Redistricting Action Fund affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee said the map passed last week in the Ohio General Assembly “undluly favors the Ohio Republican Party” and minimized the political power of Democrats, particularly minorities.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday reaffirmed his support for congressional candidate Max Miller.
Miller, who originally launched his campaign to challenge incumbent Representative Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH-16), recently announced that he would run in a different district established by the state’s redistricting process.
Former congressman and GOP candidate for governor Jim Renacci urged Governor Mike DeWine to stop using taxpayer money to fund “wasteful” vaccine lotteries.
Currently, the state is conducting a lottery-style giveaway called Vax2School, which will distribute $2 million on scholarships to school-aged children who receive the coronavirus vaccine.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wants the Biden administration to ease restrictions on the trucking industry to help small businesses and consumers get access to goods during the holiday season.
DeWine has joined 14 other Republican governors in asking the federal government to suspend what they called burdensome regulations and make immediate changes to federal law that could relieve supply chain backlogs.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has urged President Joe Biden to support keeping propane and light crude flowing through pipelines along the floor of the straits of Mackinac under threat of closure from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and environmentalists.
DeWine and Lt. Governor Jon Husted, who heads Ohio’s workforce development efforts, sent a letter to Biden warning of the severe economic damage a shutdown would entail to the state and the region.
Ohio State University (OSU) and President Kristina Johnson announced a new program that will help students obtain a degree without going into debt.
The initiative, entitled the “Scarlet and Gray Advantage,” was announced during a program honoring Johnson, who was recently hired by the university.
A bill passed in the Ohio House would help the state prepare for a future with electric vehicles.
House Bill 292, which was passed in the House on Thursday, establishes the Electric Vehicle Commission, consisting of elected officials and industry leaders, to study electric vehicle production and the steps needed to take to adapt to potential growth in the industry.
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Ohio has joined a federal lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s new federal immigration policy, which Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said stops nearly all deportations and handcuffs U.S. immigration officers.
Yost and attorneys general in Arizona and Montana want to stop the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law, which is scheduled to take effect Nov. 29. The lawsuit called the guidelines irrational and said they likely will increase a border crisis.
Business organizations and health care groups criticized the Ohio House after the passage of a bill that prohibits schools and public and private businesses from requiring students, employees or customers to receive any vaccination, including COVID-19, that has not been fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The House’s action Thursday came little more than two weeks after House Speaker Bob Cupp, R-Lima, twice pulled a similar bill from the House floor and shutdown a committee hearing planned for another bill that would prohibit vaccination mandates. Cupp said at the time the House was moving on to other legislative matters.
The chairman of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Election Integrity (AFPI) told The Star News Network that he is watching for how elections run in 2022 and 2024 based on lessons learned from the poor handling of the 2020 presidential election.
“Look back and see that in 1918 you had the Spanish Flu, then in 1929, you had a complete economic collapse, in 1968, you had the riots, and in 1974, we had the Nixon impeachment—well, in 2020, you had all of those things happening in one year,” said J. Kenneth “Ken” Blackwell, who joined AFPI in July after a long career in public service and academia, including service as Ohio’s secretary of state and as the mayor of Cincinnati.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The November 19 vote of congressional Democrats to pass the Build Back Better Act cornucopia of social spending and policies unleashed a wave of criticism from Ohio’s GOP U.S. representatives united in a fear of unbridled inflation and an expanded federal government.
U.S. Representative Brad Wenstrup (R-OH-02) criticized the $1.85 trillion package – even at half of its original cost – as “Build Back Broke” for its effect on the national debt while U.S. Representative Robert Latta (R-OH-05) called House Resolution 5376 a “wish-list spending spree” by Democrats.
Energy prices are spinning out of control and we are facing a crisis of the working people like we haven’t seen since 2009. Energy prices have risen 30 percent on average and the winter has not yet arrived. Families will be faced with the hard decision of choosing between gas to get to work or paying for rent, healthcare, food, or other basic necessities. The economists at Texas A&M University pointed to the tipping point of the “housing recession” of 2010 as being fully caused by gas prices at the pump reaching $3.30 a gallon for a sustained period of 60 days.
The Republican Governors Association (RGA) on Friday slammed Vice President Kamala Harris and her visit to Ohio to highlight the administration’s “infrastructure” bill.
During her visit, Harris will take a tour of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 189, a Columbus union for individuals in the plumbing and mechanical piping industry.
Republicans in the Ohio House passed a four-year congressional map on a 55-36 party-line vote after more than an hour of floor speeches.
Democrats and others opposed to Amended Sen. Bill 258 called for Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, to veto the measure while House Minority Leader Emelia Strong Sykes, D-34-Akron urged Ohioans to overturn the legislati by putting the legislation on the ballot.
Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Renacci on Thursday encouraged the Ohio State Legislature and Governor Mike DeWine to take against vaccine mandates.
In the statement, Renacci slammed President Joe Biden’s overreaching vaccine mandate, which would require companies with 100 employees or more to mandate the vaccine for their employees.
The Ohio House of Representatives passed a flurry of bills this week, including a Constitutional Carry bill, that will now head to the Senate floor.
HB 227 is the Constitutional Carry law. It provides that Ohioans who are not otherwise barred from owning a firearm no longer need need a license to carry a concealed handgun. The law does, however, allow Ohio’s gun owners to obtain a concealed carry license for the purpose of carrying their concealed handguns in other states that do require such licensure.
The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System claims Facebook violated federal securities law and purposely misled the public in a lawsuit filed to recover investor losses of more than $100 billion, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said.
The lawsuit Yost filed on behalf of the state retirement system and Facebook investors says Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and other company officials knew they were making false statements regarding the safety, security and privacy of its platforms.
Legislation to allow all businesses to qualify as “essential” and have an equal opportunity to remain open during a future public health emergency has passed the Ohio Senate.
Unanimous Senate passage on November 16 of Amended House Bill 215 – or the Business Fairness Act – seeks to prevent the wholesale closure of businesses such as smaller Ohio retailers considered “non-essential” under Ohio Health Department’s orders at the onslaught of COVID-19 20 months ago.
Ohio Attorney Dave Yost has taken social media behemoth Facebook to federal court for misleading investors on how the negative effects of its content management algorithms in an effort to boost its stock performance while deceiving shareholders.
The civil lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for Northern California on behalf of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) and other Facebook investors, charged Facebook and its senior executives violated securities laws by purposely withholding information about the negative effects its products have on the health and well-being of children and the steps the company claimed it had taken to protect the public.
The complainant of the October 28 campaign finance complaint against Republican gubernatorial candidate Joseph K. Blystone told The Ohio Star she tried to convince Blystone to play by the rules before leaving the campaign.
“I had conversations about that, I would say at least five times personal conversations about that very thing, not only myself, but other leaders who I have emails from that I still have,” said Sarah Chambers, who joined the Blystone campaign in March and for the next four months served as the co-campaign manager.
“I emailed him concerns about: ‘Hey, how are we supposed to be doing campaign finance? How do donations work? What do we need to be keeping track of?’” she said.
“I really didn’t want to have to bring this complaint. It wasn’t my intention really to bring it, and I kind of just kept putting aside my own personal feelings and responsibility, just to tell the truth about what happened,” she said.
An anonymous group recently distributed a list of demands alongside via flyers labeled “The Black Manifesto” at The College of Wooster, located in Wooster, Ohio. The flyers demanded that the school respond, and it did so by holding a town hall—followed by an email apologizing for perceived dissatisfaction with the event.
Flyers found around campus were divided into two sections: “Word on the Street” and “Demands.”
Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives on Wednesday advanced the Ohio Law and Order Act, aimed to protect members of law enforcement.
The legislation, House Bill 109, would allow police officers who are injured in a riot to sue protest organizers.