The newspaper, citing a deposition transcript obtained through a public records request, reported that Frankart was questioned for several hours by attorneys for WIN Waste Innovations as part of ongoing litigation involving the Ottawa-Sandusky-Seneca Joint Solid Waste Management District.

During that testimony, Frankart said he had taken no steps to correct earlier claims he made publicly and in written testimony to state lawmakers, the Advertiser-Tribune reported.

Among the issues discussed was a statement Frankart previously gave suggesting Seneca County had been consistently outvoted by other counties on oversight matters. According to the report, he acknowledged during the deposition that the claim was not accurate during his time serving on the board.

The Advertiser-Tribune also reported that Frankart was unable to provide specific examples, under questioning, to support prior assertions that the landfill had a pattern of regulatory violations in recent years.

In addition, when asked whether he had evidence that landfill operations had caused health impacts or exceeded regulatory thresholds, Frankart indicated he did not have such information, according to the deposition excerpts cited in the report.

The deposition took place in May 2024 in connection with a lawsuit filed by WIN Waste in Sandusky County. That case was later dismissed, and a separate federal case involving related parties was resolved in 2025.

The Advertiser-Tribune said it sought comment from Frankart ahead of publication. A response provided on his behalf did not directly address the questions but indicated additional time was needed to review the information.

WIN Waste, in a statement to the newspaper, criticized Frankart’s past statements and pointed to inspection data it said showed no enforcement actions in recent years. The company did not provide underlying records but said they were available for review in person.

The report was published one day before the Republican primary election in which Frankart is seeking another term as county commissioner. Click here to read the full report on the Advertiser-Tribune’s website.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“BOOM: @JonHusted just won the most sheriff endorsements in Ohio history!” the Husted campaign posted on X Monday morning, listing “75 total. All 3 Independents. 1 Democrat.” A paid graphic accompanying the post listed each endorsing sheriff by county. Among them: Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski.

What Zuchowski posted in 2024

On Sept. 13, 2024, Zuchowski posted identical messages to his personal Facebook account and his campaign Facebook account that drew condemnation from the ACLU of Ohio, the Portage County Board of Elections, the U.S. Department of Justice and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.

The post read in full: “When people ask me … What’s gonna happen if the Flip - Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say … write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo … when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live … We’ll already have the addresses of their New families … who supported their arrival!”

The post was reported by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC News and local outlets including WKYC and Ideastream Public Media. DeWine, asked about the post, told reporters the comments were “very unfortunate” and “not helpful.”

ACLU, election board and DOJ all weighed in

The ACLU of Ohio sent Zuchowski a letter calling the post an unconstitutional “impermissible threat” against residents who wanted to display political yard signs and demanded he take it down. Local Democrats filed complaints with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and federal authorities. The office of Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said the post did not violate state election law.

One week after the post, on Sept. 20, 2024, the Portage County Board of Elections voted 3-1 to remove the sheriff’s office from its early voting security plan. Board member Randi Clites, a former Democratic state representative, made the motion. She was joined by Democratic chair Denise Smith and Republican member Doria Daniels.

“As Board Members we are charged with preventing violence and disorder at the polls, and to conduct a safe and secure election process,” Clites said before the vote. “It is clear by public comments in the past week there is perceived intimidation by our Sheriff against certain voters.”

By mid-October, more than 60 voter intimidation complaints had been filed with the Ohio Attorney General and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. On Oct. 15, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would monitor Portage County’s compliance with federal voting rights laws during early voting and on Election Day, citing “concerns about intimidation resulting from the surveillance and the collection of personal information regarding voters, as well as threats concerning the electoral process.”

Zuchowski deleted, then doubled down

Zuchowski deleted the original post after the ACLU letter. In a follow-up post, he wrote that his comments had been “misinterpreted” and asserted his First Amendment right to express political views.

He went on Fox News to defend the post. “We need to remember where these signs were,” he said, “because when there’s nowhere else to put these people, I look at it as a welcome mat.”

Zuchowski won reelection on Nov. 5, 2024, defeating Democrat Jon Barber by 1,198 votes — 50.7% to 48.7% — according to unofficial results from the Portage County Board of Elections. He had won his first term in 2020 by 12 points.

Husted’s endorsement rollout

Husted was appointed to the Senate by DeWine on Jan. 17, 2025, to fill the seat vacated when JD Vance resigned to become Vice President. Husted was sworn in Jan. 21, 2025, and is unopposed on Tuesday’s Republican primary ballot. The general election in November 2026 will determine who serves the remainder of Vance’s term, which expires in January 2029.

The Democratic primary features former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is the heavy favorite, against Ron Kincaid.

Monday’s rollout placed Husted’s campaign emphasis squarely on law enforcement support. The graphic, marked “Paid for by Husted for Senate,” listed all 75 sheriffs by county across three columns under the heading “Endorsed by Ohio Sheriffs.” The Husted campaign did not single out or distinguish Zuchowski from the other 74 names on the list.

Not the first controversial endorsement Husted has touted

Monday’s sheriff rollout is not the first time in recent months that Husted’s campaign has publicly promoted endorsements from Ohio Republicans with documented allegations or controversial conduct in their backgrounds.

On March 19, 2026, the Husted campaign posted an endorsement graphic on X listing dozens of Ohio House Republicans backing his Senate bid. Among them: state Reps. Gary Click (R-Vickery) and Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria). The campaign reposted the graphic several hours later.

Creech was accused in 2023 by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Creech admitted to investigators he had gotten into bed with the minor in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations. Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, serving as special prosecutor, declined to file charges but called Creech’s conduct “concerning and suspicious.” House Speaker Matt Huffman stripped Creech of all four committee assignments in May 2025 and asked him to resign; Creech refused and Huffman reinstated him in February 2026.

Click also serves as Husted’s Sandusky County campaign chair, according to a county-by-county leadership graphic the campaign posted on Dec. 10, 2025. In 2023 sponsor testimony for House Bill 68, Click — a former Baptist pastor — told the Ohio House Public Health Policy Committee that “young girls” had described to him in graphic detail what painful sex was like. Click has never publicly identified who these girls were or in what capacity he was discussing sex with them.

Other Ohio Republicans have publicly or quietly distanced themselves from Click and Creech ahead of the May 5 primary. Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy briefly removed both names from his campaign’s endorsement page. U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno was dropped as the headliner of Click’s campaign kickoff. OH-9 GOP candidate state Rep. Josh Williams quietly removed Creech from his own endorsement page before later restoring him. Husted has done none of those things.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The service is available to Tiffin residents who live within city limits and have active residential accounts with Rumpke. Each household may place up to five bulk items at the curb for collection.

Items must be set out no earlier than 18 hours before the regularly scheduled pickup day.

Accepted materials include appliances that are free of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and properly tagged by a certified technician, as well as furniture, mattresses, carpet, and similar bulk items. Upholstered items must be wrapped and sealed in plastic.

The company will not collect certain materials, including car parts, batteries, ashes, dead animals, or 35- or 55-gallon drums containing hazardous liquids such as paint. Items weighing more than 75 pounds are also excluded.

Residents with questions about the program can contact Rumpke customer service at 800-828-8171.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The agreements, which take effect in the fall 2026 semester and continue through the 2031 academic year, establish structured academic pathways across counseling, criminal justice, teacher education and nursing.

University officials said the partnerships create opportunities for dual enrollment, allow students to complete graduate-level coursework earlier and streamline credit transfers between the two institutions.

“These agreements create clear and intentional pathways that help students move more efficiently from undergraduate study into graduate and professional preparation,” said Tiffin University President Dr. Lillian Schumacher. “By aligning programs, expanding access and strengthening academic continuity, we are making it easier for students to stay focused on their goals and enter high-demand careers prepared to lead and serve.”

Heidelberg University President Rob Huntington said the collaboration reflects coordination between two institutions serving the same community.

“These partnerships reflect what is possible when two institutions in the same community intentionally align their strengths in service to students,” Huntington said. “By creating structured academic pathways across multiple disciplines, we are expanding opportunity, reducing barriers to graduate education and strengthening the talent pipeline to our community and the region.”

Officials from both universities said the agreements also focus on improving advising systems, coordinating faculty efforts and maintaining consistent academic standards across programs.

Heidelberg Provost Dr. Courtney DeMayo Pugno said the structure of the agreements connects undergraduate and graduate education more directly.

“Students benefit from clearer academic pathways, stronger career alignment, earlier access to advanced coursework and reduced duplication of effort across programs,” she said.

Dr. Peter J. Holbrook, provost and chief operating officer at Tiffin University, said the partnerships are designed to address workforce needs in education and healthcare while improving academic continuity.

“By forging streamlined pathways into teacher education and nursing, we are not only addressing current workforce needs but also pioneering the evolution of education to create sustainable, impactful careers in education and healthcare,” Holbrook said.

The five agreements include:

• A counseling pathway allowing Tiffin students to transition into Heidelberg’s Master of Arts in Counseling program, with reserved seats and up to six graduate credits earned during undergraduate study
• A criminal justice bridge enabling Heidelberg students to enter Tiffin’s Master of Science in Criminal Justice program with up to six graduate credit hours completed early
• A teacher education collaboration in which Tiffin provides subject-area coursework and Heidelberg delivers licensure and certification training
• An expanded education licensure pathway for first-time, full-time Tiffin students across multiple teaching disciplines
• A nursing pathway allowing students to progress from associate and bachelor-level coursework through licensure and into bachelor’s and master’s-level nursing education

Administrators described the agreements as part of an ongoing effort to coordinate academic planning between the institutions.

“This collaboration builds on the strengths of both universities and reinforces our shared responsibility to support the educational and workforce needs of this region,” Schumacher said.

Holbrook said the agreements also emphasize consistency between academic programs and professional expectations.

“This work reinforces how we link knowledge to professional practice by ensuring academic expectations remain consistent and intentionally connected across both institutions,” he said.

University officials said the partnerships are intended to support students from undergraduate enrollment through graduate and professional preparation within a coordinated academic framework.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m. The Seneca County Board of Elections is at 71 S. Washington St. in Tiffin. Voters who haven’t cast an early ballot can verify their polling location and view their precinct ballot through TiffinOhio.net’s 2026 Primary Election Voter Guide.

Here are the top races to watch.

Ohio House District 88 — Republican primary

Three-term Republican State Rep. Gary Click of Vickery faces a primary challenge from Tiffin entrepreneur Eric Watson in a race that has drawn substantial outside spending. Click is term-limited after this cycle and is seeking his fourth and final two-year term.

The American Conservative Fund — a super PAC whose only stated income through the end of 2025 came from a $500,000 transfer from Win For America, which itself reported $2 million from DraftKings parent DK Crown Holdings — has spent roughly $190,000 in the District 88 race, according to Cleveland.com reporting. The ads have promoted Watson and attacked Click, who is a primary sponsor of legislation to ban mobile sports betting prop and parlay bets.

Days before the primary, Ohio Gun Owners downgraded Click from a C-minus to an F rating, citing what the organization characterized as unreturned campaign contributions from gun-control lobbyists. Watson holds the organization’s top non-incumbent “Aq” rating.

The winner of Tuesday’s primary will face Tiffin City Councilman and Army veteran Aaron Jones, the only Democrat on the District 88 ballot, in the November general election.

Seneca County Commissioner — Republican primary

Republican incumbent Bill Frankart faces Clinton Township Trustee Jim Distel in a primary shaped by Frankart’s handling of the Seneca Poultry concentrated animal feeding operation in Bloom Township. Frankart, elected commissioner in November 2022, was the subject of a public correction by the Seneca Conservation District after he incorrectly told voters the facility was locally monitored; the conservation district publicly clarified that the facility falls under exclusive Ohio Department of Agriculture jurisdiction.

Distel told the Advertiser-Tribune he had heard from residents who felt dismissed when raising concerns about the operation and pledged not to approach decisions with a predetermined outcome.

No Democrat filed for the seat, meaning Tuesday’s winner will run unopposed in November.

Governor — Republican primary

Five statewide executive offices are open in 2026 because every current Republican holder is term-limited — a once-in-a-generation reshuffle that has produced contested primaries up and down the ballot.

The marquee race is the open governor’s primary. Tech entrepreneur and former 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, running with Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, holds the Ohio Republican Party endorsement and an endorsement from President Donald Trump. He is the heavy frontrunner.

Tiffin native Casey Putsch, founder of the Genius Garage nonprofit, is running with Warren County Republican Central Committee member Kimberly Georgeton.

A third ticket — former Morgan County School Board member Heather Hill and Stuart Moats — will appear on the ballot but cannot receive valid votes. After Moats filed paperwork on April 22 to formally withdraw, the Secretary of State’s office determined Hill no longer qualified to receive votes for governor under Ohio Revised Code 3513.30. Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections have been instructed to post notice at polling places that votes for the Hill/Moats ticket are void.

Former Ohio Department of Health director Dr. Amy Acton, running with former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper, is unopposed on the Democratic ticket and advances to the November general election.

Secretary of State — both parties

Both major parties have contested primaries for the office that oversees Ohio elections.

On the Republican side, term-limited Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague faces retired Air Force Lt. Col. Marcell Strbich. Sprague holds the Ohio Republican Party endorsement and the backing of most county GOPs. Strbich, an election-integrity activist who endorsed Watson in the District 88 primary, has secured backing from conservative groups including Ohio Value Voters. Both candidates have called for moving Ohio away from electronic-only voting machines, but Strbich’s proposal would require hand-marked paper ballots; Sprague’s would accept ballots produced by ballot-marking devices.

On the Democratic side, former Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo faces Cincinnati blood cancer physician Bryan Hambley. The Ohio Democratic Party did not endorse in the race. Russo led Hambley 32% to 8% with 60% undecided in a Bowling Green State University poll released in mid-April. Hambley has criticized Russo for her 2023 vote on the Ohio Redistricting Commission to approve current state legislative maps and for accepting corporate PAC money during her tenure as legislative leader. Russo has pointed to her experience and to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement of her bid.

Treasurer of State — Republican primary

State Sen. Kristina Roegner of Hudson faces former state Rep. Jay Edwards of Nelsonville in a Republican primary that has split the GOP’s national leadership. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno endorsed Edwards. Ramaswamy and most of the legislature’s Republican leadership endorsed Roegner. The Ohio Republican Party declined to endorse in the race.

Roegner, a Wharton School graduate and former corporate finance consultant, has emphasized fiscal discipline and her current legislative experience. Edwards, a former House Finance Committee chair, has run on his familiarity with the state budget and has signed petitions for a constitutional amendment to abolish Ohio’s property taxes.

Cincinnati City Councilmember Seth Walsh is unopposed on the Democratic side and advances to November.

Ohio Supreme Court — Republican primary

Four Republicans are competing for the GOP nomination to challenge Justice Jennifer Brunner, the only Democrat on the seven-member Ohio Supreme Court. The candidates are Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King, Ninth District Court of Appeals Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger, Second District Court of Appeals Judge Ronald Lewis, and former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell. The Ohio Republican Party did not endorse in this race.

O’Donnell was the subject of a judicial campaign grievance filed in March alleging she violated rules governing how judicial candidates may use the title “judge” after she reposted an Ohio Value Voters endorsement that referred to her as a sitting judge. The case proceeded after a panel of appeals court judges found probable cause.

The winner faces Brunner, unopposed on the Democratic ballot, in November. The other Supreme Court seat features Republican Justice Daniel Hawkins against Democratic First District Court of Appeals Judge Marilyn Zayas; both are unopposed in their primaries.

Ohio’s 9th Congressional District — Republican primary

Five Republicans are competing for the right to challenge longtime Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the longest-serving woman in congressional history. The district now leans Republican under maps the Ohio Redistricting Commission approved in October 2025.

The candidates are former state Rep. Derek Merrin, who lost to Kaptur by roughly 2,300 votes in 2024; Ohio House Majority Whip Josh Williams of Sylvania Township; former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Madison Sheahan; Air National Guard Lt. Col. Alea Nadeem; and health care industry worker Anthony Campbell.

The race has been roiled by a series of damaging headlines targeting Merrin, Williams, and Sheahan in the closing weeks of the campaign. Reporting by the Toledo Blade tied a website attacking Williams to digital fingerprints linked to a consultant paid by the Merrin campaign. Williams faces continuing scrutiny over sexually explicit Facebook posts first surfaced by The Rooster in 2023. Sheahan has denied an April allegation by a former Trump campaign worker about a past relationship.

Ohio’s 5th Congressional District — Democratic primary

Four Democrats are competing for the chance to challenge Republican Rep. Bob Latta in a district that includes Seneca County and stretches across Crawford, Hancock, Huron, Lorain, Sandusky, parts of Richland, Wood, and Wyandot. Latta is unopposed on the Republican ballot and was reelected in 2024 with 67.5% of the vote.

The Democratic candidates are Daniel John Burket of Findlay, a small-business owner and Hancock County Developmental Disabilities board president; Martin M. Heberling III, a Lorain City Schools teacher and former Amherst at-large councilman who ran for the seat in 2022; Brian A. Shaver of Fostoria, a Fostoria City Schools social studies teacher and Fostoria City Council president; and Scott E. Tabor, a retired Local 33 sheet metal worker.

U.S. Senate — Democratic primary

Former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown faces Ron Kincaid in the Democratic primary for the unexpired Senate term ending Jan. 3, 2029 — the seat vacated when JD Vance became Vice President in January 2025 and currently held by appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who is unopposed in the GOP primary. Brown is seeking a return to the Senate after losing his 2024 reelection bid to Bernie Moreno.

Voter information

Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Voters in line at 7:30 p.m. are entitled to cast their ballot. Ohio voters must present an unexpired photo ID, and Ohio primaries are open — voters do not need to be registered with a political party in advance to choose a partisan ballot. Voters may also request a nonpartisan ballot to vote on local issues only.

The Seneca County Board of Elections is located at 71 S. Washington St. in Tiffin. Voters with questions about polling locations or registration status can contact the Board of Elections directly.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In Ohio, they’re particularly stark between white people, Black people and Hispanic people. A panel of experts recently said a raft of cuts passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump will only make them worse — which may be why Trump is trying to make them harder to measure.

It’s long been known that poorer people have less access to quality care and are sicker than their better-off neighbors. But differences among racial and ethnic groups persist even when members of those groups have incomes similar to their white counterparts.

“Racial disparities are among the most persistent and well documented in the U.S. health care system,” a report released last week by the Commonwealth Fund said.

“Landmark studies have shown that racial and ethnic disparities remain even after accounting for insurance coverage, income level, and access to care. The root causes for these disparities are multifactorial, and include the historical and continued consequences of structural racism, the impact of social drivers of health, variations in health coverage, and unequal treatment within health care.”

Ohio fared particularly badly in the study.

States were rated for “health system performance” — health outcomes, access to care, quality of care, and use of health services.

For white people, Ohio’s score wasn’t great, ranking 33rd overall. But for two minority groups it was even worse.

For Hispanics, Ohio scored 16th-worst among the 48 states for which researchers had sufficient data. And for Black people, Ohio ranked 10th-worst among the 39 states for which there were sufficient data.

Those numbers are likely to get worse, said Joseph Betancourt, a family doctor and president of the Commonwealth Fund. 

“The data in this report reflect the most recently available information on how the health system was performing through 2024 before the expiration of enhanced marketplace credits from the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid funding cuts, elevated eligibility rules and restrictions on coverage for legal immigrants all took effect,” he said last week during a virtual press conference.

“These recent changes are likely to make it even harder for people to afford and access care, and risk widening the very disparities this report documents.”

Betancourt was referring to nearly $1 trillion in funding cuts to Medicaid — mostly through new work and eligibility requirements that were part of the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed last summer.

He was also referring to subsidies for insurance bought on Affordable Care Act marketplaces that Republicans allowed to expire at the end of last year.

Betancourt added that instead of addressing racial and ethnic health disparities, the Trump administration seems intent on blinding itself to them.

KFF, the health-information nonprofit, in September said data from which disparities could be detected was being disappeared by the federal government.

“The Trump administration has taken actions to eliminate equity-related initiatives and has removed federal data from online sites, deleting sociodemographic variables from datasets, and has delayed the release of some data,” it reported. 

KFF added, “Decreased availability of federal data may impede efforts to identify and address health needs and disparities, trend changes in health and health care among different groups over time, and impact how resources are allocated, which could lead to overall declines in the nation’s health and productivity.”

Or, as Betancourt put it, “We know you cannot fix what you cannot measure.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Columbus was selected late last month as the NWSL’s 18th franchise and the team will be owned by Haslam Sports Group, Nationwide, and Drs. Christine and Pete Edwards. 

The team will play home games at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field — where the Columbus Crew play — but the training facility will be built at McCoy Park on the city’s southwest side, in the neighborhood with the state’s lowest life expectancy. 

“We want to be excited about women’s professional soccer coming to the city of Columbus, but the fact that you did it off of the backs of an area that is so underserved … it has muddied any kind of excitement that would have been built around this team coming here,” said Columbus resident Jennifer Crayton. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers discovered Census Tract 51, which includes McCoy Park, had an average life expectancy of 60 years — the lowest in Ohio. 

“It was a vital resource for a community that is continually underserved and we don’t have the equity that some of our other neighborhoods in Columbus have,” Crayton said. 

“This is the only green space in this area between the south side and the west side of any significance that would be a safe place for our kids to go.”

The city of Columbus had previously announced plans to upgrade McCoy Park with adaptive soccer and softball fields, pickleball courts, a pond and a splash pad by next year, according to the city’s website. 

Crayton’s husband is a disabled veteran, so they were looking forward to the adaptive fields. 

“This park meant everything because it allowed him the ability to play with his kids again and create those memories that kids so desperately need with their parents,” she said. 

The next closest park with adaptive fields would likely be in the suburbs, Crayton said. 

“It’s too far for us to go,” she said.

The city of Columbus now has to come up with a plan to figure out where else in the Southwest Side they can build the type of park that was promised and the ownership group will donate $3 million toward the new park, Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin said.

The plan is for construction on a new park to break ground this year and for it to be complete by the end of 2027.

“Let me be very clear — no plans, no site, then no money,” Hardin said. 

The City of Columbus and Franklin County will both pay $25 million to build the training facility at McCoy Park and upgrades to ScottsMiracle-Gro Field.

The city of Columbus plans to pay back its debt with a 2% ticket tax on all events at the ScottsMiracle-Gro Field. 

“Everyone in our city will benefit from this team, which will create tax revenue and jobs, bring additional global notoriety to our city and show Columbus women and girls that we want them to shine on the biggest stage and under the brightest lights,” Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said in a news release. 

Hardin supports bringing a professional women’s soccer team to the city.

“I think it’s the right thing to do for our city, and I don’t want us to miss out,” he said during a press conference. “But how we do things matters. Process matters, and honoring commitments to neighborhoods, especially underserved neighborhoods, matters.”

He said there will be some public access to parts of the training complex, including some of the soccer fields. 

Crayton invites Jimmy and Dee Haslam to Columbus’ south side neighborhood.

“Come walk this neighborhood with me,” she said. “Come see what we deal with because when you’re looking at it from the outside in, it has a different impact than when you’re looking from the inside out.”

The Haslam’s also own the Cleveland Browns and the Columbus Crew. 

“Sports are one of today’s greatest unifiers and are incredible for their communities,” Haslam Sports Group Managing Partner Whitney Haslam Johnson said in a news release.

“The NWSL will have a significant impact on Columbus within and beyond sports, now and for future generations.”

The club is set to begin play in 2028 and the team’s official name and colors have yet to be determined. 

“As the NWSL continues its rapid growth, expanding to Columbus is a natural next step,” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said in a news release.

“This is a city with a rich soccer tradition, a proven track record of support at the highest level, and an ownership group making meaningful, long-term investments in women’s sports.” 

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Races for the state’s top judicial positions were made explicitly partisan when Republican state lawmakers added party labels to the races starting in 2022, joining seven other states in the U.S. With a recent decision, the current partisan Ohio Supreme Court made Ohio the first state in the nation to allow political endorsements from judges.

The Ohio Supreme Court has two seats up for election this year, one held by Brunner and the other held by Republican Justice Daniel Hawkins. The Republican primary for the nomination to challenge Brunner features four candidates.

From factories to farmland, the judges facing off in Tuesday’s May 5 primary say their experience outside of the courtroom feeds into their work ethic.

They say their career moves meet the qualifications to become the justice who would make the Ohio Supreme Court a full 7-0 Republican panel, should Hawkins defeat a Democratic challenge to his seat as well.

Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger

Ninth District Court of Appeals Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger worked midnights at a gas station, and with her mom at a factory in Seneca County before working her way up in the legal field.

Lanzinger interned for a public defender’s office, was mentored by an Akron judge, and worked for the Stark County Prosecutor’s Office, before becoming a judge in Barberton and Summit County. She’s served on the Ninth District Court of Appeals since 2023.

“I’m just a woman who likes the law, desires to do good, and would just really love to be on the supreme court and have these bigger issues,” Lanzinger told the Capital Journal.

Now in her seventh judicial election, the appellate judge fully supports the idea of voters getting their say in the judges that stand in the courtrooms of their communities, and in the panel answering the highest constitutional questions in the state.

“When you’re elected, you’re elected by the people, they can get to know you a little bit,” Lanzinger said. “But you have an obligation to follow the law … and if there’s something (voters) want to change in the justice system with the judiciary, or you don’t like something a judge is doing, then you can make a campaign and get them out.”

She says riding the line between campaigning for the job and adhering to legal ethics standards in not taking sides is something that is expected for judges and justices. In the same way as all of her competitors, Lanzinger considers herself a conservative.

“I think the word conservative is partly about my personal views, that I’m personally conservative, and I think the Constitution requires us to make sure that the government is limited,” Lanzinger said.

Her judicial philosophy on interpreting the law boils down to the thought that “most of the time, the words say what they say.”

“The (U.S.) Constitution says what it says, the Ohio Constitution says what it says, and the statutes say what they say, and then the question is does one conflict with the other,” Lanzinger said.

Colleen O’Donnell

Former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell came to the legal field honestly, as the daughter of now-retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell. But the judge has since moved her career from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to a decade-long tenure in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. She’s also served with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, and most recently as a federal immigration judge in Laredo, Texas.

“I was very comfortable in the immigration court, I was comfortable managing a busy docket, I was comfortable taking testimony and reviewing evidence for admissibility,” O’Donnell said.

The judge said she never granted asylum in any of the cases before her in the Texas court, while honoring her “oath and obligation to interpret the law with integrity and to approach every case with an open mind.”

Growing up with a father as a judge, O’Donnell and her siblings had a unique perspective into the importance of serving the public, she said, and how that work must be done without the presence of bias.

“Regardless of my personal, emotional feelings about what I think the law should say, or what might make it better, or what it might make it worse, I’m quite comfortable with how to compartmentalize, how to honor the oath that any judge should take to simply interpret the law,” O’Donnell said.

As part of interpreting the law as written, the judge said she believes in ruling on cases based on the language of legal statutes, “and give those words the meaning that they had at the time that they were enacted.”

“I do not take the view that the Constitution, for example, is a living, breathing document,” she said.

Judge Andrew King

For Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King, the judicial field started with night classes at Capital University after he made the decision to change his career path.

“It was sort of a do-over for myself, put myself on a new path kind of thing,” King said.

Since then, King has worked as a private lawyer, public defender, assistant prosecuting attorney in Delaware County, and legal counsel for several agencies. In 2024, he returned to Capital as an adjunct law professor.

In considering cases during his career, and talking to voters during his campaign for the Ohio Supreme Court, King sees the law as a field that is “responsive to society.”

“It’s never really done, it just keeps going, and that’s why I think these issues ebb and flow and change over time,” King told the Capital Journal. “We’re encountering new things that we as a society prioritize and deprioritize.”

That includes topics like immigration, the Second Amendment, data centers, and even emerging technology.

“20 years ago we wouldn’t have been talking about AI, but now every conference I go to is about the impact of AI,” King said.

The direct impact of court proceedings is why the judge sees the importance of an elected judiciary. He encourages voters to research a judge’s previous rulings, history in the field, and the judges approach to cases as they decide who is right for their community.

“I think most voters get that who their judges are matters a lot, because that’s going to determine what the next step in the process is,” King said. “Are we going to need to go back to the lawmakers, are we going to need to do a rule amendment, are we going to need a constitutional amendment? How judges approach those things sort of determines the next steps.”

The approach judges take has to be different than that of lawmakers or the governor, for example, because there’s no room for promises other than following the law in the role of a judge, according to King.

“I can be conservative in my own personal life and my own personal views, but if the law, the constitution, dictates an outcome that maybe I personally would not prefer, well my oath and obligation as a judge is to follow the law,” King said. “So it’s not you recasting the law to fit a view, you deal with what’s right in front of you.”

Judge Ronald Lewis

After graduating from law school, Judge Ron Lewis spent some time in Washington, D.C., working as congressional legal counsel, but a postage-stamp-sized backyard drove a desire to get back to his family’s Greene County farm where he was born and raised, and worked in his family’s excavating business.

“I was probably a lawyer for at least 10 years before I’d spent more time behind a desk than I did in a field or a ditch,” Lewis said.

The now-Second District Court of Appeals judge, who was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine in 2022, previously served on the Xenia Municipal Court and as the city’s law director and prosecutor, along with work in private practice and on agencies from the Ohio State Highway Patrol to the Greene County Animal Control, according to a biography on the appellate court’s website.

But the Ohio Supreme Court is where the legal impact on voters really comes to a head, which is why Lewis is campaigning for a seat behind the bench.

“It’s that 1% of cases that go on to the Ohio Supreme Court that impact the majority of people in the state and society,” Lewis told the Capital Journal.

Like his fellow Republican candidates in the race, Lewis said he’s interpreted the law as written. He said that’s what voters want in a judge, even though it may not always bring a legal decision in the way they wish.

“While you might like it when I bend (interpretation of the law) in your direction today, I might bend it away from you the next day,” Lewis said. “I don’t have to be pro this or con that, because quite honestly, my opinion really shouldn’t matter … I apply (the law) as it was originally intended.”

Voter education

Lewis and the other Republican candidates for the state supreme court have spent their time campaigning on originalist ideals. For voters, they say there is a balance between educating the masses on the importance of judicial elections, and pointing to their own values as reasons to vote for them.

“Ultimately, you just have to educate people about who you are and what you stand for, and where you come from,” Lewis said. “Hopefully they relate to you.”

For O’Donnell, the votes cast in the May 5 primary are important not only because they show support for a particular candidate, but they drive the vote into the Nov. 3 general election.

“Having high voter engagement and as much participation from our electorate is what everyone on the ballot or off the ballot should seek,” O’Donnell said.

Upholding the law without promising voters a particular outcome leads judicial campaigns to be more like job interviews, the judges said.

“It’s a lot more work to keep your job, a lot more people contact,” according to Lanzinger. “When you’re looking at judges, these are the people who make those decisions and make sure that happens … so it’s important we look at judges and see if they’re doing that, see if they’re following the law.”

For King, a judicial philosophy is not chosen by a judge, but shown through the way in which they made decisions, and while judges shouldn’t be laying out how they’d rule on specific cases, the way one runs their courtroom should be indication enough of what kind of judge they are.

“So when I go talk to people, I say hey, I can’t tell you, and you don’t really want me to tell you how something’s going to come out, but I can tell you how I approach cases, and the methods and concepts that I use to try to help me resolve cases,” King said.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the cases of the only two people who have served prison time related to the largest utility corruption scandal in Ohio’s history.

Ohio’s House Bill 6 saga arose out of efforts by the utility FirstEnergy to obtain more than $1 billion in subsidies for its former nuclear plants in the state. Although lawmakers revoked that part of the law in 2021, HB 6 still cost Ohio utility customers approximately half a billion dollars and delayed the state’s energy transition by gutting its clean energy standards and subsidizing two 1950s-era coal plants.

In 2020, the federal government indicted former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and lobbyist Matt Borges, a previous head of the Ohio Republican Party, among others, on charges related to HB 6. The racketeering charges included allegations that the defendants had accepted some $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries in exchange for their actions in pushing HB 6 through the legislature and then blocking a bid to let voters reject the law.

FirstEnergy admitted it had bribed Householder in a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.

Householder and Borges were convicted in federal court in 2023 for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as RICO. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions last May.

The men appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court in petitions last December. Householder and Borges essentially argued that they couldn’t be held liable because, in supporting HB 6, Householder was carrying out a campaign promise to FirstEnergy — and such promises are protected by the First Amendment.

The government responded unequivocally: There was no basis for reversing the convictions.

“The Court has explained that the First Amendment does not protect corruption, whose ​‘hallmark’ is ​‘the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors,’” lawyers for the Department of Justice wrote in their brief in March.

The Supreme Court’s April 27 order is the end point of the Householder and Borges appeals process. It does not say why the justices denied review.

The ruling leaves open a path for prosecutors in the related federal criminal case against former FirstEnergy executives Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling. The two men face retrial in September on state criminal charges after jurors failed to reach a verdict in March. The trial date for the federal case has yet to be set.

Canary Media has not heard back from lawyers who represented Householder and Borges on their petitions to the Supreme Court.

Scott Pullins, a longtime lawyer for Householder on other matters, said it was a sad day for Householder’s and Borges’ families, and ​“even a sadder day for free speech and the rule of law.” Efforts to release Householder through executive action — perhaps a presidential pardon or commuted sentence — would resume, he added.

Pullins is also the treasurer for Householder’s political campaign committee, which remains active. In December 2025 it paid Pullins $5,000 as a legal retainer.

For now, clean energy advocates are counting the court’s action this week as a win.

“If we want more clean energy, then we need clean government,” said Howard Learner, CEO and president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. ​“The racketeering conspiracy and bribery actions engaged in by Householder distorted the public process, leading to unfair FirstEnergy utility charges. Justice is now being served.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Thirteen state Medicaid programs are covering GLP-1 drugs for the treatment of obesity this year, down from 16 last year. 

Medicaid programs in California, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have eliminated coverage of the drugs for weight loss, because the expense strained state budgets. 

In Massachusetts, the governor’s proposed fiscal 2028 budget would not fund the state’s Medicaid program, MassHealth, to cover GLP-1 medications for weight loss alone, though the state would continue covering the drugs for diabetes and other conditions. The legislature is still debating the state budget. 

Rhode Island’s governor also has proposed removing GLP-1 coverage from the state’s Medicaid program for weight loss treatment. 

North Carolina reinstated such coverage in mid-December after having dropped it in October. 

Medicaid programs in Delaware, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin also cover the drugs for obesity treatment, according to KFF, a health policy research group. 

But some states, such as Michigan, have restricted eligibility for these medications to morbidly obesity patients rather than those who are overweight or obese. The move is expected to save the state an estimated $240 million. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Louisiana are debating whether to allow Medicaid to cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment if enrollees have another chronic condition, or comorbidity, such as prediabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease.  

The medications generally have been too expensive for people without insurance. In February, one of the largest producers of these drugs, Novo Nordisk, announced it would reduce their list prices to $675 per month in 2027. 

Gross spending on Medicaid prescriptions for GLP-1s — for diabetes as well as for weight loss — has increased from around $1 billion in 2019 to almost $9 billion in 2024 as demand for these drugs has risen, according to KFF. 

At the same time almost 40% of adults and a quarter of children with Medicaid have obesity and may benefit from having access to the drugs, according to KFF. 

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Charles Tingler of Defiance filed a public complaint with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which operates under the Ohio Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division, and a separate grievance with the Ohio State Bar Association’s Certified Grievance Committee. Both filings are dated May 1, 2026.

The complaints center on publicly visible transaction records on a Venmo account operating under the handle @BuckeyeBradSmith, which received payments with memos explicitly identifying them as campaign contributions. On April 8, 2026, Charles Yamarone sent a payment with the description “Campaign contribution: BS4Judge.” The same day, Adam Greenslade sent a payment described as “B Smitty for Judge.” A third payment from Stacey Gibson is dated March 25, 2026. The same account also shows personal transactions, including payments for Ohio State football tickets and kart racing entry fees.

TiffinOhio.net reported on the Venmo transactions and their apparent conflict with Ohio campaign finance law after a review of publicly visible records on the @BuckeyeBradSmith account. Smith did not respond to a request for comment submitted by reporter Dave Miller before a noon May 1, 2026 deadline.

Ohio Revised Code §3517.10(D)(3)(a) requires campaign committees to deposit all monetary contributions into an account separate from any personal or business account of the candidate. The Ohio Elections Commission addressed the issue directly in Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04, issued December 16, 2021, concluding that peer-to-peer payment platforms such as Venmo are permissible under Ohio law only when the account is established specifically for the campaign committee and kept entirely separate from any personal account of a beneficiary of the campaign fund. The opinion states that receiving campaign contributions into a personal Venmo account before transferring them to a campaign account is not acceptable under Ohio campaign finance law.

The complaint filed with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission enumerates 7 alleged violations. Counts 1 and 2 allege Smith violated R.C. §3517.10(D)(3)(a) and Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04 by receiving campaign contributions through an account that also reflected personal transactions. Count 3 alleges the campaign treasurer failed to maintain the strict accounting of contributions required under R.C. §3517.10(D)(2). Counts 4 and 5 allege that if the Venmo contributions were omitted, understated, or incorrectly reported, the campaign violated the itemized reporting requirements of R.C. §3517.10(A) and §3517.10(B) and the accurate filing requirements of R.C. §3517.13(B), (C), and (D). Count 6 alleges potential knowing concealment or misrepresentation of contributions under R.C. §3517.13(G)(1). Count 7 alleges that if any campaign finance filing knowingly omitted or misstated the Venmo contributions, the filing may constitute election falsification under R.C. §3599.36 — a fifth-degree felony.

The Bar Association grievance raises additional concerns specific to Smith’s status as a sitting judge. The filing alleges potential violations of Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct Rules 1.1, 1.2, and 4.4, which require judges to comply with the law, act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, and handle judicial campaign contributions in accordance with applicable rules. The grievance also cites Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct Rules 8.4(b), 8.4(c), 8.4(d), and 8.4(h), which prohibit conduct involving dishonesty or misrepresentation, illegal acts reflecting adversely on honesty or trustworthiness, conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, and conduct adversely reflecting on fitness to practice law.

Tingler’s complaint requests that the Ohio Election Integrity Commission obtain the full Venmo records for @BuckeyeBradSmith, all campaign bank records for the relevant election cycle, all campaign finance reports filed by Smith’s committee, and any records showing whether contributions were transferred to a separate campaign account. The complaint also requests that the Commission refer the matter for criminal investigation if evidence shows knowing concealment, misrepresentation, or election falsification, and refer any judicial ethics issues to the appropriate disciplinary authority.

The complaints are allegations. Neither the Ohio Election Integrity Commission nor the Ohio State Bar Association’s Certified Grievance Committee has made any findings in this matter. Smith has not publicly addressed the allegations. He serves as judge of the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas, Probate and Juvenile Division, a position he has held since 2009. TiffinOhio.net’s prior reporting documented a $33,300 state audit finding against Smith that was formally abated by Sandusky County Prosecutor Beth Tischler with no repayment required.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The reporting lands three days before Tuesday’s Republican primary, in which Ramaswamy is the front-runner.

A national registry to ‘segregate’ Americans

One of Ramaswamy’s companies — the healthcare data firm Datavant — pushed for a national COVID-19 registry that would have allowed the small share of Americans gaining natural immunity to “get back to normal life,” while the rest of the population would continue to be “segregated,” the AP reported Saturday. The quoted language comes from the proposal itself.

The concept did not originate with Datavant alone. In April 2020, Ramaswamy told the host of a Rockefeller Capital Management podcast that he had been discussing the idea with policymakers, including a U.S. senator, according to reporting by Contra that transcribed the interview.

“Could we tolerate a national system in which certain people on the basis of a biomarker are segregated?” Ramaswamy asked on the podcast, according to Contra. He answered his own question: “I personally think that it is better than the status quo if we can send 10 or 20 percent of the people back on the basis of having immunity.”

A discussion draft obtained by Contra showed Ramaswamy proposing a “public-private partnership” featuring an entity he called “Organization X” — described as “a division of government, a private company, or a nonprofit organization” — that would maintain “the registry of individuals who are immune and individuals who should be prioritized for testing.”

Five days after the Rockefeller podcast appearance, The Wall Street Journal reported that Datavant was “spearheading” an effort to create a national COVID-19 patient registry by pooling medical records. By November 2020, Datavant had entered into a partnership with the National COVID Cohort Collaborative — a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, according to the company’s own press release at the time.

In an interview with the AP this week, Ramaswamy said his support for the registry was about getting the economy moving again. He described his overall position on the virus as nuanced.

$2.25 billion from COVID-19 vaccines

On March 3, Roivant Sciences — the biotech firm Ramaswamy founded in 2014 and led as CEO until 2021 — announced that subsidiary Genevant Sciences and partner Arbutus Biopharma had reached a $2.25 billion global settlement with Moderna over the pharmaceutical company’s unauthorized use of their lipid nanoparticle delivery technology in its COVID-19 vaccines, including Spikevax.

Under the terms of the settlement, Moderna will pay Genevant and Arbutus $950 million upfront in July, with an additional $1.3 billion contingent on a future appellate court ruling, according to the announcement.

Datavant was incubated under Roivant in 2017. Ramaswamy stepped down from the Roivant board in early 2023, before launching his 2024 presidential campaign. According to the AP, his gubernatorial campaign referred questions about his time at Roivant to the company, which did not respond.

Attacking Acton on the same issue he profited from

Ramaswamy has built much of his Republican primary campaign around attacking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton over the public health orders she signed as Ohio’s health director in 2020. The AP reports that Ramaswamy has accused Acton at his rallies of spreading dangerous COVID ideology.

Acton’s campaign spokesperson, Addie Bullock, told the AP that Acton is proud of the work she did with Gov. Mike DeWine to put public health over politics and save lives, and called Ramaswamy’s framing an attempt to play politics with the issue.

A private-sector adviser to Ohio’s pandemic response

While running Roivant during 2020, Ramaswamy advised Ohio’s then-lieutenant governor on the state’s COVID-19 response, according to a 2021 op-ed Ramaswamy himself wrote for Cleveland.com that the AP cites in its reporting. The lieutenant governor at the time was Jon Husted, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate by DeWine in January 2025 and is now running in Tuesday’s Republican primary special election to keep the seat.

Husted was a regular participant alongside DeWine and Acton at Ohio’s daily pandemic briefings throughout 2020.

Ramaswamy told the AP his discussions with Husted, like his support for the COVID registry, were about restarting the economy.

A pattern of pandemic deflection

The AP also reported Saturday that in early 2023, Ramaswamy paid an editor to remove a reference to his service on Ohio’s “COVID-19 Response Team” from his Wikipedia page. He told the AP the edit was a simple correction, saying the panel never met.

TiffinOhio.net previously reported on the same February 9, 2023 Wikipedia edit, which also removed references to Ramaswamy’s Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship. According to Mediaite’s review of the edit history, the COVID-related content was removed at Ramaswamy’s explicit request.

DeWine endorses Ramaswamy but rejects the Acton attack

DeWine has endorsed Ramaswamy in the Republican gubernatorial primary, but he has publicly rejected one of the campaign’s central attack lines against Acton — the ad faulting her for the order suspending in-person voting in Ohio’s March 2020 primary. The governor told the AP that he, not Acton, made the call to issue that order.

Ohio’s primary is Tuesday, May 5. Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The campaign, titled “The Ritz at 100 — A Legacy in Light,” will fund facility upgrades, modern technology, accessibility improvements and long-term sustainability efforts intended to keep the theatre operating for future generations.

The Ritz hosts more than 60 events each year, including concerts, comedy, films and educational programming.

Campaign leadership

Co-chair Celinda Scherger said the theatre’s reach extends beyond its programming.

“The Ritz Theatre enriches our community through accessible, high-quality entertainment and education,” Scherger said. “Its impact reaches far beyond the stage.”

Co-chair Jeff Stockner framed the venue as a multigenerational community space.

“This is more than a building — it’s a place where memories are made and shared across generations,” Stockner said.

Executive Director Michael Strong said the campaign is intended to secure the theatre’s future while honoring its legacy.

Financial position

The campaign builds on what organizers describe as steady financial progress at the nonprofit theatre. The Ritz currently covers about 70% of its operating expenses through earned revenue and has reduced long-term debt from $2.7 million in 2004 to less than $240,000 today, according to the campaign announcement.

Additional support, including an endowment held by the Tiffin Community Foundation, continues to bolster the theatre’s financial base.

A 1928 movie palace

The Ritz opened on December 20, 1928, drawing more than 1,500 patrons to what was billed as “Tiffin’s quarter-million-dollar movie palace.” It is the only one of Tiffin’s four vaudeville-era theatres still standing and underwent a major restoration in 1998.

How to get involved

Community members can learn more about the campaign at ritztheatre.org/ritz100 or contact the theatre at getinvolved@ritztheatre.org.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of new data centers — 67 percent — are being built in rural areas. And three-quarters of those are in Midwestern and Southern towns. That includes 166 in Ohio that are already operating plus another 57 scheduled to be built. That’s one of the highest total figures in the country.

The negative effects have not gone unnoticed. A new data center in Southaven, Mississippi, for example, is reportedly terrorizing the community with high levels of noise and air pollution, and residents are now regretting its existence.

But it’s not just the pollution, the depletion of water systems, and the increased energy costs to consumers that should lead communities to resist data centers. When you dig a little deeper, you begin to see how data centers are built on exploitation that goes far beyond small-town USA.

Data centers are both products and producers of wars that kill people and destroy the planet on a global scale. The rapid expansion of these data centers requires raw materials, especially fossil fuels — resources often obtained through violence — and they fuel a technology that is increasingly used to commit war crimes.

Fossil fuels provide almost 60 percent of the power for data centers, especially for “emergency generators.” AI data centers run almost 24/7, so these “emergency” generators are consistently operating.

Control over fossil fuels, of course, is a driving factor behind the U.S. regime change efforts in Iran, Venezuela, and other resource-rich regions. And the extraction of other needed minerals — like silicon, gallium, lithium, and cobalt — requires both the destabilization of the sovereign regions in which they are found and inhumane mining practices, including the use of child labor.

Then there is the question of the moral and ethical use of generative AI. The expansion of data centers comes at a time when AI and LLMs (large language models) are increasingly being used by the Pentagon for militarism domestically and internationally.

The Pentagon recently agreed to massive deals with both Palantir and OpenAI. The employment of AI in military operations has already resulted in war crimes. For instance, Anthropic’s Claude was used in the bombing of the girls’ school in Minab, Iran, which killed around 170 students and teachers. Do towns that pride themselves on family values want to be behind a killing machine capable of murdering young girls?

It’s easy to understand why the announcement of these data centers can seem like good news for areas facing dire economic conditions. Existing low-wage jobs are difficult to survive on. But the evidence suggests data centers create very few local jobs in the towns where they’re built. Should this small number of jobs come at the expense of people and the future of our planet?

The state officials brokering these deals with tech companies could instead work on bringing jobs that design, install, and maintain renewable energy systems to replace fossil fuel reliance. They could sign contracts with companies that manage and protect the beautiful natural ecosystems, habitats, and biodiversity that often surround rural towns.

We need jobs that sustain the heartbeat of the Midwest and the charm and hospitality of the South — not jobs in an industry that terrorizes communities and kills people.

Data centers are not just toxic installations in communities’ backyards — they are a driving force behind wars and instability, and they keep American workers tied to the endless cycle of wars for fossil fuels.

In defense of the planet, our communities, and communities around the world, I hope urban and rural communities alike can unite to stop data center projects — especially across the Midwest and the South, where they have so much beauty and love to protect.

Rural communities’ future is not AI. We should be investing in what makes us great: the people and the land.

Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK.This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Smith’s Venmo account, operating under the handle @BuckeyeBradSmith, is publicly visible and shows multiple transactions in which senders explicitly identified their payments as campaign contributions. On April 8, 2026, Charles Yamarone sent a payment to the account with the memo “Campaign contribution: BS4Judge.” The same day, Adam Greenslade sent a payment with the memo “B Smitty for Judge.” A third payment from Stacey Gibson, dated March 25, is also visible on the account’s public feed.

The same account shows transactions unrelated to Smith’s campaign, including a December 2024 payment from Adam Smith described as discounted Ohio State football tickets as a birthday gift, along with multiple payments in September 2024 for kart racing and street racing entry fees — including a $40 entry labeled “Clyde GP Vintage Entry Fee” — indicating the account is used for personal financial activity.

Under Ohio Revised Code §3517.10(D)(3)(a), campaign committees are required to deposit all monetary contributions “into an account separate from a personal or business account of the candidate or campaign committee.” The Ohio Elections Commission addressed peer-to-peer payment platforms including Venmo directly in Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04, issued December 16, 2021, concluding that such platforms are permissible under Ohio campaign finance law only when the account is established specifically for the campaign committee and is maintained separately from any personal account of a beneficiary of the campaign fund.

TiffinOhio.net submitted written questions to Smith on April 30, 2026, asking whether @BuckeyeBradSmith is a personal or campaign-dedicated account, whether campaign contributions received through it have been transferred to a separate campaign account, and whether Smith’s campaign committee has a designated campaign Venmo on file with the Ohio Secretary of State. Smith did not respond by deadline.

Smith serves as judge of the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas, Probate and Juvenile Division, a position he has held since 2009. He is the subject of prior TiffinOhio.net reporting regarding a $33,300 state audit finding that was formally abated by Sandusky County Prosecutor Beth Tischler with no repayment required.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In February, Ohioans’ electricity bills were up 22% compared to a year earlier. That was the sharpest increase of any state except for Virginia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

Prices will still be high this summer.

The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projects the average electricity cost to cool homes between June and September will reach $778.

That’s a $61 — or 8.5% — increase from last year and nearly 37% higher than in 2020.

Much of the increase can be attributed to spiking demand from data centers.

Despite increasing costs for consumers, Ohio’s Republican leadership incentivizes construction of the centers with huge tax breaks paid for by those same consumers. 

And already in the throes of an affordability crisis, ratepayers also shelled out tens of millions last year to pay the salaries of utility executives who each make as much as many hundreds of Ohioans. 

The top salary at one utility — Columbus-based AEP — was by far the biggest of any utility in the United States.

That was after the CEO got a $23 million raise in 2025.

According to a new report by the Energy & Policy Institute, CEOs of the four electric utilities serving Ohio made a combined $81 million last year.

The utilities say executive salaries are determined by compensation committees operating in a competitive marketplace.

But the report said that the lavishly paid execs are often rewarded for doing things that make customer bills go ever upward.

“In some cases, utilities pay bonuses tied to regulatory outcomes that drive profits, often at the direct expense of customers,” it said.

“Most notably, this includes incentives tied to return on equity (ROE), or the profit utilities can collect from customers on qualifying capital expenses. Where financial metrics like utility share price can rise independently of customers’ rates, higher ROEs directly correspond to higher costs for customers.”

After getting his huge raise, AEP CEO Bill Fehrman received nearly $37 million in 2025, the report said.

That’s $8 million more than the next best-paid CEO, Southern Company’s Christopher Womack.

Assuming Fehrman works 60 hours a week, he makes nearly $12,000 an hour.

That’s 507 times as much as the median household in Ohio earned in 2024 — and 900 times the state’s per-capita income.

AEP disconnected service to Ohio customers 173,000 times between June 2024 and May 2025.

Amid such struggles — and skyrocketing consumer costs — the company was asked how it could justify Fehrman’s huge pay package.

Scott Blake, AEP’s director of media relations, said that while Fehrman’s compensation is in the tens of millions, it’s not all guaranteed.

“AEP’s Board of Directors sets CEO compensation through an independent, performance-based process designed to support long-term value creation and the company’s strategic goals,” Blake said in an email.

“While the reported 2025 compensation reflects a $36 million figure, a significant amount of that compensation is based on future performance and much of it will only be payable if five-year performance targets are met.”

AEP’s strategic goals include execution of its long-term capital plan, system reliability, safety, regulatory outcomes, and sustained financial performance, Blake explained.

If the company doesn’t meet those targets, Fehrman will be paid “substantially less,” he said.

However, according to the Energy & Policy Institute report, some of those goals are in the interest of shareholders at the literal expense of its customers.

It pointed to an AEP filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying that when considering Fehrman’s pay, 17% of the decision was based on “regulatory and legislative integrity.”

It defined that as “achieve plan return on equity.” 

In other words, when considering Fehrman’s huge raise, a major factor was how much did shareholders make through rising stock values tied to company profits.

Regulators allow utilities to profit from customers financing capital — or construction — projects.

In Ohio, a rash of such projects has been tied to increasing costs for customers — and increasing profits for utilities. And those are tied to big executive pay packages.

AEP’s execs aren’t alone in doing well thanks, in part, to Ohio ratepayers.

Duke Energy’s Harry Sideris was the country’s 17th highest-paid utility CEO at nearly $14 million.

The company also paid outgoing CEO Lynne Good $8 million in 2025.

Company spokeswoman Madison McDonald said Duke was sensitive to the jam in which consumers find themselves. But she added that Sideris has a tough job.

“We understand affordability is top of mind for many customers, and Duke Energy’s leadership and Board consider that context carefully,” McDonald said in an email.

“President and CEO Harry Sideris’s compensation reflects the responsibility and complexity of leading one of the country’s largest electric and gas utilities during a time of major investment and transition. As we invest to strengthen and modernize our electric and natural gas delivery systems, we remain focused on keeping costs as low as possible, while delivering safe, reliable service for Ohio customers.”

Ranking just behind Sideris on the 2025 compensation list was FirstEnergy’s Brian X. Tierney at $13 million.

He is leading the Akron-based company in the aftermath of the largest bribery and money-laundering scandal in Ohio history. 

Spokeswoman Jennifer Young said Tierney’s pay was benchmarked against that of other utility executives.

“Like many large companies, FirstEnergy’s CEO compensation is determined by the Board’s independent Compensation Committee with advice from an outside compensation advisor and benchmarking against a peer group,” Young said in an email.

Another CEO of a utility operating in Ohio, Andrés Gluski of AES, made nearly $9 million in 2025.

The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some state legislatures have taken on lavish pay for utility CEOs by shifting the cost from ratepayers to shareholders.

In Maryland, a law limits the amount of CEO pay that can be billed to ratepayers to 110% of the salary of the chairman of the Maryland Public Service Commission, or $285,000 a year.

In Minnesota, a bill is pending that would cap the maximum share of CEO pay shouldered by ratepayers at the salary of the governor, currently $200,000.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The hearing indicated the court seems likely to side with the actions of President Trump to strip legal status from Haitians and Syrians.

About 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio and an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians call Springfield home, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship and other legal statuses.

Springfield became a flashpoint in the 2024 Election when Donald Trump and JD Vance spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants there.

Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, came to the United States from Haiti in 2020. 

“The question before the court is not just a legal one — it is a moral one about who we are as a nation and how we treat people who have rallied in our communities,” Dorsainvil said during a press conference standing outside the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“We urge a decision that reflects both the law and our shared values, fairness, stability, and compassion,” he said.

“Stripping protections from those communities would cause needless harm, separate families, and disrupt the local economies across the country.” 

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a federal program established by Congress in 1990 that allows people from specific countries destabilized by conflict or natural disasters the chance to live and work in the United States for a set period of time.

Haiti is currently plagued with gang violence and instability, with many fleeing the small Caribbean nation to the United States.

Many of the refugees have no homes to return to in Haiti, and are fearful for their families’ safety if forced to return.

Syria was first granted TPS in 2012 and there are about 6,000 Syrians living with temporary status.

Syria is experiencing ongoing armed conflict, terrorist violence, kidnapping, hostage taking, and crime. 

The U.S. Department of State currently has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti and Syria. 

Haitians were initially granted temporary protected status after Haiti’s earthquake in 2010 killed 222,570 people.

The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in 2021 after the assassination of Haiti President Jovenel Moïse. 

“This administration is not above the law and should not be able to ignore Congress and bypass the courts conduct the largest de-documentation effort in American history,” Sharif Aly, president of International Refugee Assistance Program Project, said during the press conference.

“The law is not optional,” he said.

TPS for Haitians was set to expire Feb. 3, but U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end temporary protected status for about 330,000 Haitians living in the United States. 

The Trump administration quickly appealed the decision and lower courts blocked its efforts to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status. 

Springfield experienced a shrinking population for decades as manufacturing jobs disappeared, but Haitian immigrants have grown Clark County’s workforce by more than 10,000 workers.

About 60,000 people live in Springfield and Haitians make up about a quarter of the population. 

Deporting Haitians in Springfield would eliminate roughly $300 million in annual spending from Clark County with an estimated economic loss projected to exceed $400 million. 

Deema Abdo, co-founder of Immigrants Act Now, said people living with temporary status have lived in the shadow of uncertainty for too long. 

“(Uncertainty) looks like parents lying awake at night knowing that they cannot protect their children from what comes next,” she said during the press conference.

“It looks like going to work every day not knowing if today is going to be the day you’re told that you no longer belong.”

TPS does not give people a shortcut, Abdo said. 

“It gave them a chance, a chance to live with dignity, a chance to work hard, a chance to contribute, to build something real,” she said.

“To take that away now, to send people back to danger and instability that is not a policy solution. That is abandonment, that is tearing families apart, ripping people from the very communities they helped build.” 

The Trump administration has revoked TPS status for 13 countries — Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.  

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Submetering companies make money on the difference between wholesale and retail energy costs. They buy in bulk at a lower rate and then sell it on at the higher retail markup.

As the court noted, the companies have developed into sophisticated service providers —providing and maintaining the physical equipment on-site, reading customers’ meters, and billing for power use.

“From the tenants’ perspective,” the court wrote, the submetering company is “for all practical purposes the supplier of their electricity.”

The court decision reversed a 2023 finding by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. The commission determined the submetering company National Energy Partners is not a “utility” and thus doesn’t fall within its jurisdiction.

To meet that definition, the company must be “engaged in the business of supplying energy” to Ohio consumers.

The commission found NEP was providing power to the landlords rather than the tenants. And in managing the day-to-day delivery of power, the company was simply acting as the landlords’ agent instead of supplying energy itself.

The court wasn’t having it.

“As a matter of plain English, this reading of the statute is self-evidently wrong,” the opinion stated. “There is little question,” the court went on, that NEP is in the business of providing power.

The case now returns to the PUCO for further hearings.

Still, the majority seemed reticent to make the ultimate decision. The opinion noted the court reversed a similar decision previously, and urged lawmakers at the time to clear up state law.

“The General Assembly has not done so,” the court explained, so it was left to decide how to handle the issue.

“But of course, whatever this court decides, the General Assembly retains the ability to legislatively determine PUCO’s jurisdiction over submetering companies,” the justices added.

Lawmakers have started work on legislation to rein in submetering companies, with two measures working their way through the general assembly.

Backers of those proposals had differing reactions to the state supreme court decision, but they agreed there is more work for lawmakers to do.

The Ohio Supreme Court opinion

There’s some justification for the PUCO’s reluctance to consider NEP a utility.

Landlords sometimes fill a role similar to a submetering company by splitting up the cost of power or water among their tenants.

Does that make the landlord a utility, too? State regulators and courts have agreed that it does not, and the PUCO relied on that implied landlord-tenant exception when it made its decision.

“The flaw in that analysis,” the majority opinion stated, “is that it does not necessarily follow that because landlords may fall outside PUCO’s jurisdiction, that NEP does as well.”

The justices reasoned that a landlord passing on utility services to tenants is ‘incidental’ to their core business. But the same can’t be said of NEP.

The company purchases $8.5 million in wholesale energy a year, the court noted, and served as much as 1.75% of AEP Ohio’s residential customers.

Similarly, the court brushed aside the idea that NEP was merely operating on the landlord’s behalf.

NEP’s contracts depict it as the landlord’s “agent and authorized representative,” and state that the landlord “take(s) title” to the energy arriving at the master meter.

After the initial complaint was filed with state regulators, NEP updated its contracts ascribing ownership of its onsite equipment to the landlord.

“The mere recitation of words like ‘agent’ and ‘take title’ does nothing to alter the relationships in this case,” the majority wrote.

“Rather than rely on the labels that NEP has chosen, we should look at the economic realities of NEP’s business model.”

Regardless of the contracts’ framing, the court wrote, the landlords have no control over the power flowing to their tenants and no role in billing for that service.

Lawmakers’ reactions

Ohio state lawmakers are working on two separate proposals clarifying how regulators should treat submetering companies.

On the one hand, Ohio state Reps. Tex Fischer, R-Boardman, and Sean Breannan, D-Parma, want them to be treated as utilities.

On the other, Ohio state Rep. David Thomas, R-Jefferson, and state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, would impose significant restrictions, but stop short of classifying submetering companies as utilities.

In a press conference, Rep. Brennan praised the decision as “a huge victory for Ohio consumers.”

He explained people who wind up getting electricity from a submetering company lose out on payment assistance programs, shutoff protections, and the ability to shop for different providers

“The court made it clear,” Brennan added, “if you’re supplying electricity to Ohio consumers, you are a utility, and you must follow the same rules as any other utility.”

Brennan said the court’s ruling “vindicates” the bipartisan measure he introduced with Fischer. That measure has so far failed to gain traction.

Rep. Thomas, meanwhile, has successfully moved his “happy medium” proposal through the Ohio House, and it’s currently awaiting hearings in the state Senate.

“This is one of the problems when there’s no legislation, there’s no actual code on this,” he said.

“The Supreme Court was kind of legislating from the bench — which I don’t like — but they essentially had to do that because the legislature hadn’t acted.”

Thomas contends going as far as Brennan and Fischer propose — treating submetering companies as utilities — would effectively end the practice.

“And that that was never my intent,” he said. “My goal was, okay, this is a legitimate business practice that has good potential, but it needs a lot of safeguards.”

Thomas’ proposal bars submetering companies from charging customers more than the standard retail rate.

It also imposes restrictions on utility disconnects, requires the companies to provide alternative payments plans, and accept payment from utility assistance programs. Thomas believes that’s enough to protect consumers.

“How I describe it,” he said, “we’ve essentially turned the industry on its head, but we haven’t killed it.”

Following the Supreme Court decision, though, Brennan warned that proposal is a “dead letter.”

Prior to the decision, he explained, lawmakers could portray Thomas’ bill as providing important protections where none currently existed.

Now that the court has directed regulators to take an even harder line on submetering companies, it’s harder to make that argument.

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The state’s highest court heard oral arguments in the case one year ago, in which attorneys for the two women, who are no longer in a relationship, debated whether or not a “would-have-been-married” test would decide whether the parental rights were allowed.

Priya Shahani and Carmen Edmonds discussed the idea of marriage during their 12-year relationship, with Edmonds proposing, and a trip to Boston that Edmonds’ lawyers argued could have led to a wedding.

But, because the trip happened before the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, Ohio would not have recognized the marriage at the time of the Boston trip.

Common-law marriage wasn’t possible either, because Ohio does not legally recognize common-law marriage that occurred after 1991.

Shahani and Edmonds were never legally married, but entered into a shared custody agreement after they broke up.

The three children born during the relationship had hyphenated names for the two women during their relationship, but Shahani chose to remove the hyphenation later.

In juvenile court, Edmonds argued Ohio parentage laws were “deficient and lagging” when it came to same-sex parents, especially following the recognition of same-sex marriage by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A magistrate in juvenile court denied Edmonds’ request to be named a legal parent for the three children, and for shared custody of two of them, but also denied Shahani’s request that the shared custody agreement be terminated for the third child. Edmonds was also awarded “companionship time.”

When both women appealed the case to the First District Court of Appeals, Edmonds brought a new argument, citing a “non-spousal artificial insemination statute,” which allows a husband to be recognized as a biological father for children born to his wife via artificial insemination and donor sperm.

Attorneys for Edmonds argued U.S. Supreme Court precedents “require the statute to be applied gender neutrally so as to include same-sex couples.”

The appellate court decided to bring about a legal “test” they ordered the lower court to use in determining the parenting rights of the couple if same-sex marriage had been nationally recognized when the couple had discussed getting married, and Ohio had recognized the union.

The First District Court of Appeals concluded that under the previous cases, “the statute should be judicially modified to apply retroactively to an unmarried same-sex partner if the couple would have been married, but for Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage,” according to the Ohio Supreme Court analysis of the case.

The justices of the Ohio Supreme Court did not agree, saying that the artificial insemination statute only applies to married couples, and that the appellate court “erred in empowering the trial court to retroactively create a marriage under this ‘would have been’ standard.”

“How is a court to determine what parties would have done had same-sex marriage been legal in Ohio? Some couples may have chosen to remain unmarried for financial or personal reasons,” Justice Patrick DeWine said in the majority opinion.

“Or, as sometimes happens, the relationship could have ended when the topic of marriage arose.”

The “would-have-been-married” test would set trial courts “out on an impossible mission to retroactively determine whether a different reality would have produced different events,” the justices in the majority stated.

All of the justice signed on to the majority opinion, with the exception of Justice Jennifer Brunner, who agreed with the judgment, but wrote a separate opinion.

The state supreme court noted in the opinion that same-sex marriage was legal in more than a dozen states before the couple ended their relationship, and the couple still chose not to get married.

“If they had, Obergefell would require Ohio to recognize that marriage and (Edmonds) would have a strong argument that the non-spousal artificial insemination statute should be applied in a gender-neutral manner to her,” DeWine wrote.

DeWine went on to say the Obergefell decision “did not consider any retrospective implications of its holding on states that had not previously recognized same-sex marriage.”

In Brunner’s separate opinion, the justice agreed that the appellate court “erroneously decided this case solely on an unpreserved issue,” but also said she would have declined to consider the appeal at all because Edmonds brought up a different argument in her appeal than she did when arguing her rights to the juvenile court.

During the juvenile court case, Edmonds said she’d been a parent to the children “as much as she possibly could, and she believed that denying her and the children the legal rights and obligations that a parent-child relationship confers – simply because the General Assembly failed to update Ohio’s laws post-Obergefell to recognize her family’s formation – was unconstitutional and harmful to her family,” according to Brunner.

“The juvenile court was careful to recognize the importance of the rights at stake here,” Brunner wrote.

“It aptly acknowledged the ‘disconnect between the laws of this state and the precedent set by the highest courts,’ including the failure to ‘make appropriate accommodations for same-sex couples in line with case law regarding family formation.”

But upon appeal, the argument changed to cite the artificial insemination law, something the First District did not have the authority to remedy “when that remedy was never presented to the juvenile court by any party,” Brunner wrote.

The case will now head back to the First District Court of Appeals for further consideration.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

To that end, Sprague recently dropped a campaign ad ahead of next week’s election that is highly revealing about the candidate’s fidelity to facts.

In a stroll past random brownstones, he walks up to a ballot drop box plunked next to a garbage can and asks, “seen one of these in your neighborhood?”

As Sesame Street-like graphics appear, an Oscar the Grouch rip-off named “Lefty the Cheat” pops out of the box.

Sprague declares “ballot boxes just aren’t secure” while the puppet agrees “they make elections messy!”

Sprague pledges “I’ll support President Trump. I’ll ditch the drop boxes. I’ll verify American citizenship for new voter registration” and ensure “cheaters get kicked to the curb.”

The state treasurer, who would be the state’s chief elections officer, signs off with “don’t let Democrats trash your vote.” 

Lot to unpack. But for starters, after seven years in a statewide office and four terms as a state rep, surely Sprague knows or should know the truth about ballot drop boxes in Ohio — which have been used for decades in red and blue states without controversy as a convenient way for voters to drop off their ballots without relying on the mail.

During the pandemic, ballot drop boxes understandably grew in popularity as an alternative to in-person voting.

But they inexplicably became a GOP target in the heat of 2020 politics.

Trump described them as a “voter security disaster” (with zero evidence) as he deliberately seeded unfounded doubt about voting in the run-up to the presidential election — the same way he is seeding corrosive distrust of election systems ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Republicans eager to align with Trump then and now, like Sprague, have likewise fueled misinformation about drop boxes as a source of widespread election fraud.

Never mind that after the 2020 election, states across the country told the Associated Press there were no cases of fraud, vandalism, or theft involving drop boxes that would have affected election outcomes.

Sprague knows or should know how incredibly secure and sturdy the roughly 1,000-pound steel ballot drop boxes actually are in Ohio — bolted to the ground, only one per county boards of election, with 24/7 surveillance under stringent bipartisan oversight. (So not exactly something you’d see in “your neighborhood” sharing the sidewalk with a trash can.)

Sprague also leans into the made-up GOP story of widespread noncitizen voting in U.S. elections in his ad — which he knows or should know is extremely rare and already illegal.

For years in Ohio, voters signed an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, to affirm their citizenship. The practice endured without incident (or massive voter fraud by noncitizens) until Trump and Co. began pushing the false claims of hordes of noncitizens voting despite all evidence to the contrary.

Finally, Sprague manifests the rank partisanship he would bring to the job as a supposedly impartial administrator of free and fair state elections.

He tags his campaign ad with a word of caution (to presumably Ohioans across the political spectrum) not to “let Democrats trash your vote.”

Here’s a word of clarity to Ohio voters about who has held one-party rule over the state for roughly 26 of the last 33 years.

The Republican trifecta in both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office, as well as the Republican monopoly on every statewide office, wields absolute power over how, when and whether your vote counts or is trashed, (for noncompliance with never-ending GOP voting restrictions) or is purged without notice in more frequently conducted cancellations of voter registrations.  

The overarching tell of Sprague’s ad is its soft allegiance to hard truths.

It’s the same dead giveaway exhibited by other Republican candidates (or administration nominees) in every non-answer they sputter when asked “who won the 2020 election?”

They either refuse to state the obvious, that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden — by margins of 74 votes in the Electoral College and over 7 million votes in the national popular vote — (see Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno) or skirt a clear response on Trump’s exhaustively reviewed and repeatedly affirmed defeat (over 60 court challenges tossed as groundless) with some lame variation of “Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 election.”

The soulless apparatchiks obfuscate to pass a litmus test of loyalty to one man.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, JD Vance twisted himself into a pretzel when asked if Trump came up short in 2020: “So did Donald Trump lose the election? No. Not by the words I use.”

Refusing to follow the facts where they lead just to keep a convicted felon happy should be disqualifying on its face for anyone seeking public trust in elected office. But it isn’t.

Vance is vice-president. Moreno is a U.S. senator.

State treasurer Sprague could win his game of musical chairs in the fall and wind up running elections in Ohio.

Political loyalty has trumped fidelity to facts about the 2020 outcome, or the security of ballot drop boxes with fabricated narratives that try to obliterate truth.

But reality is not erased. And it must be boldly acknowledged. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projects the average electricity cost to cool homes between June and September will reach $778 this summer. That’s a $61 — or 8.5% — increase from last year and nearly 37% higher than in 2020.

The association, which represents state employees administering federal energy assistance programs, attributes the increase to warmer temperatures and higher electric prices.

“Families are squeezed from both directions,” Mark Wolfe, the association’s executive director, said in a news release. “They are paying more for electricity, and they need more of it to stay safe during increasingly hot summers.”

Projections show a pronounced impact in the South because of its higher temperatures and widespread air conditioning usage. South Atlantic states — from Delaware to Florida — are expected to see average cooling bills rise by more than $100 between June and September compared with last year. But Midwestern states are expected to see summer costs go up by about $30 per household. 

One in six American households are behind on energy bills, with total utility debt expected to reach approximately $23 billion by the end of the year, the association said. With home energy costs rising by more than double the rate of inflation, the group has urged Congress to appropriate billions more in energy assistance funding.

State lawmakers of both parties are increasingly scrutinizing high electricity prices as most Americans are served by state-regulated utilities. Despite growing outcry, state leaders say they have little ability to provide consumer relief because of broader energy market realities.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents the nation’s investor-owned electric utilities, has pointed to surging electricity demand, extreme weather, new technologies and widespread electrification as factors leading to increased prices. The organization says its members will invest more than $1.1 trillion in grid improvements and expansion over the next five years.

“We’ve got to build a lot of infrastructure to meet this incredible growing demand that’s going to benefit our economy, benefit our communities, and help the United States lead in the technologies of the future,” EEI Vice Chair Chris Womack said during an April 14 event hosted by Axios. 

A February study commissioned by the organization said electricity prices have remained stable across much of the country but hikes in “a few states and regions” have put upward pressure on national average costs. 

That report attributed regional price hikes to changes in markets, policies and other circumstances beyond the control of utility providers.

“In general, the utilities have managed controllable costs effectively,” it said. 

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The downgrade was posted to Ohio Gun Owners’ 2026 voter guide five days before the May 5 primary. Click’s primary challenger, Eric Watson of Tiffin, maintained the organization’s “Aq” rating — its highest grade for non-incumbent candidates.

Ohio Gun Owners’ Facebook page announced the change Thursday morning, calling it “BREAKING” news.

“In the HD88 race (Sandusky and Seneca Counties), candidate Gary Click, who was already a shameful C-, has been downgraded to an F RATING for undisclosed, unreturned campaign contributions from gun-control lobbyists in his campaign reports,” the organization wrote. “TERRIBLE!”

Ohio Gun Owners Executive Director Chris Dorr added in a comment on the post: “Gary has received stacks of campaign cash DIRECTLY from a gun-control organization as well as from the lobbying firm employed by another gun-control organization. Terrible!”

Ohio Gun Owners did not name the specific contributors it was characterizing as gun-control lobbyists in its public posts Thursday.

TiffinOhio.net independently reviewed Click’s pre-primary campaign finance report filed with the Ohio Secretary of State. The report shows contributions from a range of PACs and organizations during the 2026 pre-primary filing period, including $3,000 from the Ohio Association for Justice PAC, $5,000 from ACT Ohio Foundation PEC, $1,500 from the Ohio Dental Association PAC, $1,500 from UA Local 50 Plumbers & Steamfitters, and $500 from the Ohio Trucking Association PAC, among other donors. Ohio Gun Owners had not publicly attributed the F downgrade to any specific contributors in that report as of Thursday afternoon.

Click’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A feud months in the making

The F downgrade is the latest chapter in an escalating conflict between Click and Ohio Gun Owners that has played out publicly since early April. Ohio Gun Owners first gave Click a C-minus rating for the 2026 primary cycle, citing his refusal to complete the organization’s candidate survey in both 2024 and 2026 and his vote in December 2024 against advancing the Second Amendment Preservation Act on the Ohio House floor.

Click responded by calling Dorr a “fraud” and a “stalker” on his official state representative Facebook page, alleging Dorr had altered his survey answers and harassed female legislators — allegations Dorr denied, calling Click “a damned liar.” Several of Click’s specific claims remain unverified; Dorr has denied each of them.

Click later changed his official Facebook profile photo to an image of himself in hunting gear, aiming a scoped shotgun — a move that coincided with Ohio Gun Owners posting a video contrasting his gun record with Watson’s 100% pro-gun survey score.

Despite the feud with Ohio Gun Owners, Click has maintained an A rating and endorsement from the Buckeye Firearms Association, which he has cited as proof of his pro-gun credentials. BFA and Ohio Gun Owners have been publicly at odds for nearly a decade; BFA has referred to Ohio Gun Owners as a “false flag group.” Dorr has argued that BFA’s endorsements are coordinated with House Republican leadership rather than based on legislators’ voting records — a claim BFA disputes.

Primary context

Click is seeking his fourth and final consecutive term in the Ohio House due to term limits. He faces Watson in the May 5 Republican primary. Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin, a U.S. Army veteran and Tiffin City Council member, is running in the general election regardless of the primary outcome.

TiffinOhio.net has previously reported that 65.6% of Click’s total fundraising since 2020 has come from corporate PACs and industry groups, while individual donors within the 88th District account for just 13.9% of his campaign war chest. In 2025 alone, Click transferred $39,000 to OHROC — the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee, the House caucus PAC controlled by Speaker Matt Huffman.

Early voting is underway. The primary is May 5, 2026.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The spike reflects a broader national and statewide surge tied directly to President Donald Trump’s ongoing war with Iran, which has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway that ordinarily carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies — since the conflict began on Feb. 28, 2026.

According to the American Automobile Association, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rose 27 cents in a single week to $4.30 — the highest it has been in four years, since late July 2022. The national average is $1.12 higher than it was at this time last year. Ohio’s statewide average hit $4.46 on Thursday, placing it among the 10 most expensive gasoline markets in the country, according to AAA.

Ohio drivers are paying roughly $1.39 more per gallon than they were a year ago, when the statewide average stood at $3.07, according to AAA data.

“Drivers had been seeing some minor relief at the pump, but that trend has quickly reversed as crude oil prices climb and uncertainty continues around the Strait of Hormuz,” said Nick Chabarria, a spokesperson for AAA. “Because crude oil is the main driver of gasoline prices, continued volatility in the global oil market could keep upward pressure on pump prices in the days ahead.”

Global crude prices have risen for eight straight days. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures settled at $106.88 per barrel on Wednesday, while international benchmark Brent crude briefly surpassed $126 per barrel Thursday morning — its highest price in four years — before pulling back to close at $114.01, according to CNBC. Both contracts are up roughly 60% since the U.S. and Israeli-led war against Iran began, according to CNBC.

The war started when the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Since then, daily oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has plunged to single digits, resulting in what the International Energy Agency has called the largest supply disruption in history, according to CNN. A ceasefire took effect April 8, but Trump has maintained a naval blockade of Iranian ports, and peace negotiations have stalled. Iran has refused to reopen the strait until the blockade is lifted.

On Wednesday, Trump told Axios that the blockade would remain in place until Iran agrees to a nuclear deal. “The blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing,” Trump said. “They are choking like a stuffed pig, and it is going to be worse for them. They can’t have a nuclear weapon.”

Energy analysts said the market has shifted from optimism about a resolution to concern about prolonged supply disruptions. “The oil market has moved from over-optimism to the reality of the supply disruption we are seeing in the Persian Gulf,” Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at Dutch bank ING, said in a research note cited by CNBC. Goldman Sachs has flagged emerging demand-side risks as well, noting global oil consumption in April may be roughly 3.6 million barrels per day lower than in February.

Ohio’s gas prices can be tracked in real time through AAA’s fuel price dashboard and GasBuddy.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

David Thornbury, who served as president of the Fremont Exchange Club, published a public post on Facebook in February 2020 addressing Click directly.

“Gary, I have always considered you a friend but you betrayed the Fremont Exchange Club,” Thornbury wrote. “When I was president you joined our club because you said you were passionate about helping children who were victims of child abuse, investing in our youth and giving back to our community. I now know after you came to our meetings for over a year and never paid your dues after repeated statements were mailed, emails sent, and phone calls made that your intentions were not genuine. It was all for self political gain.”

Thornbury said Click owed the club “a significant amount of money” in unpaid dues and warned voters: “Gary can’t be trusted. Either way Gary if you are elected or not, do the right thing, pay your dues!”

The Fremont Exchange Club describes itself as “a group of men and women working together to make our community a better place to live through programs of service in Americanism, Community Service, Youth Activities, and its national project Child Abuse Prevention.” Child abuse prevention has been the National Exchange Club’s signature cause since 1979.

In a follow-up comment on the post, Thornbury said he was notified that Click had paid the outstanding dues — 910 days after they were owed, or nearly two and a half years later.

Attempts to reach Click’s campaign for comment were unsuccessful.

Click, a Republican from Fremont, has represented Ohio’s 88th House District since 2021. He faces a primary challenge from Eric Watson on May 5, with Democrat Aaron Jones in the general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ohio Supreme Court unanimously rejected a lawsuit Wednesday from a fracking waste disposal company seeking millions from the state after its operations caused two earthquakes in Trumbull County, not far from an aging dam. 

As a result of the tremors – a comparatively modest 1.7 and 2.1 magnitude – the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 2014 suspended injections into the company’s two wells. The more problematic silo of the two reaches more than 8,000 feet underground and was built to store the millions of gallons of hazardous wastes of spent fracking brine at high pressure in rock formations deep underfoot. 

The quakes and ensuing suspensions set into motion 12 years of litigation that finally ended Wednesday. 

American Waste Management Services, the disposal company, said the suspension amounted to an unconstitutional government “taking” of its property. As compensation, it wanted $20.5 million from the state. 

But the justices unanimously rejected the idea, emphasising the reasonable interest in public safety from the regulators and foreseeability from company officials of the tendency of injection wells to rattle the earth. 

The opinion, authored by Justice Pat DeWine, leans heavily on a confidential memorandum the company circulated among potential investors. The memo is explicit: fracking waste injections can cause earthquakes, which can cause regulatory actions. 

“Thus, AWMS anticipated the very occurrence that happened here: a shutdown of its operations because one of its wells caused an earthquake,” Justice DeWine wrote. 

Plus, the company opted against underground testing that could have detected the fault line near the drilling site. 

AWMS previously argued that because the earthquakes were small and didn’t damage any persons or property, the shutdown was in some ways speculative about a harm that might happen down the line.

In a news release, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said the ruling is a victory for taxpayers, “who don’t have to open their pocketbooks every time the state enforces the law.”

ODNR previously argued that Ohioans have a right to be free from manmade earthquakes powerful enough to be felt. 

“The dispute between AWMS and the division isn’t about whether AWMS should be able to cause earthquakes or not – everyone acknowledges that AWMS will cause some earthquakes,” state attorneys wrote. “AWMS just wants to cause bigger earthquakes.”

AMWS and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources didn’t respond to inquiries.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Tischler was called as a witness during the May 2025 disciplinary hearing for Sandusky County Common Pleas Judge Jon Ickes before the Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Conduct. Under cross-examination by Ickes’ attorney, she was asked to rate Ickes as a trial judge. “Since I was taught by somebody you don’t give anybody a perfect score, I’ll go with nine,” Tischler said, according to the hearing transcript. When asked to confirm — “Nine out of 10?” — she nodded. Tischler also testified that during her frequent visits to Ickes’ chambers, she had not observed court employees appearing demonstrably offended by anything Ickes said or did.

The disciplinary proceedings, documented in the formal amended complaint filed January 23, 2025, detail a pattern of misconduct the Board found violated multiple judicial conduct rules. Among the findings: for the eight months that a child rape case involving an 18-month-old victim was on his docket, Ickes repeatedly referred to it as the “baby cocksucker case” when discussing it with court staff, according to the amended complaint. During jury selection and trial in that same case, Ickes participated in a group text message thread with three staff members who were present in the courtroom, exchanging sexual and joking messages while presiding over the proceedings, the complaint states.

In a separate incident, Ickes used the n-word in the courthouse in front of a group that included Judge Jeremiah Ray, court staff, and a defense attorney, according to the complaint. The conversation began when Judge Ray mentioned he had watched the film Blazing Saddles the night before. Ickes loudly recited quotes from the film in a southern accent and sang a portion of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” He then stated his favorite part of the film is when a character tips his hat and says, “Good morning,” followed by the slur — which Ickes spoke aloud. A Black criminal defendant, Nathaniel Simmons, was seated on a hallway bench just outside the open office door and heard Ickes use the word. Simmons’s attorney immediately left to speak with him. “So I’m not supposed to be pissed off about what I just heard?” Simmons said, according to the complaint. When Simmons learned it was the judge presiding over his own case, he asked to file a complaint. Ickes subsequently recused himself.

Ickes acknowledged using the n-word but argued to disciplinary counsel that it was intended as satire, saying there was “a distinction between using and saying something,” according to WTOL’s reporting on the disciplinary brief.

The amended complaint also alleges Ickes harassed a pregnant 20-year-old staff member with repeated sexual comments, created courthouse nicknames of a sexual and demeaning nature for court and probation staff, showed staff photographs he had taken of women, and kept a firearm in his chambers — on one occasion accidentally grabbing it instead of a Nerf gun while attempting to “shoot” a staff member, then joking, “that would not have been good.”

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel recommended a two-year suspension of Ickes’ law license, with one year stayed. The Board adopted Ickes’ own proposed sanction — a one-year suspension, fully stayed — meaning Ickes would serve no time off the bench absent further misconduct. During the proceedings, the hearing panel separately dismissed two categories of add-on professional conduct charges related to the racial slur, the child rape case conduct, and the failure to disqualify counts; the underlying judicial conduct rule violations on those counts were not dismissed. The Board’s recommendation is before the Ohio Supreme Court as Case No. 2025-1323. As of late April 2026, no final ruling has been issued.

Tischler’s connection to the Ickes proceedings predates her testimony. It was Judge Jeremiah Ray — the same judge Tischler is now challenging in Tuesday’s primary — who first brought the underlying allegations against Ickes to Tischler on April 29, 2024, contacting her in her capacity as the court’s statutory counsel, according to the amended complaint. Tischler then reported those allegations to Sandusky County Administrator Theresa Garcia, helping set the formal accountability process in motion.

Sandusky County Judge Brad Smith, who also testified favorably for Ickes during the disciplinary proceedings — calling him “a solid human being and a good judge” — has publicly backed Tischler’s campaign. Campaign signs for both candidates have been displayed together, and Smith has solicited yard sign hosts for both races on social media. Smith is also seeking re-election on Tuesday’s ballot. TiffinOhio.net previously reported that Tischler formally abated a $33,300 state audit finding against Smith with no repayment required before publicly backing his campaign.

Tischler responded to a request for comment shortly before publication. Tischler confirmed she was subpoenaed to testify by disciplinary counsel — the office that brought the case against Ickes — and said readers should review the full transcript for context. She did not address her 9-out-of-10 rating of Ickes or her testimony that she had not observed court employees appearing demonstrably offended by his conduct.

“Judge Ray was correct in reporting the allegation raised by J.D. to discipline,” Tischler wrote. On the question of her campaign against Ray, she wrote: “My decision to run against Judge Ray, and the fractured relationship between Judge Ray and my office have nothing to do with him reporting Judge Ickes to discipline.”

Tischler did not elaborate on the nature of the fractured relationship she described. The primary election is Tuesday, May 5.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The proposed constitutional amendment would prohibit building data centers with a peak load of more than 25 megawatts per month, but the amendment will need more than 413,000 signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by July 1. 

“I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t think it was a doable task,” said Austin Baurichter, a Brown County resident who was part of the group that submitted the petition. 

The Ohio Ballot Board gave the petitioners the go ahead to start collecting signatures about a month ago. 

“I feel completely confident that we’re going to get enough signatures,” said Nikki Gerber, an Adams County resident who was part of the group who submitted the proposal. 

They don’t know how many signatures they have collected so far, but hope to get an idea in the next couple of weeks, Baurichter said. 

They are only using volunteers to collect signatures. 

“That was an intentional choice to make it widely accessible, because, in our opinion, that was the only way that we can get these signatures in the time that we need,” Baurichter said. 

Ohio has about 200 data centers, the fifth-highest state in the country. Most of the data centers are in central Ohio. Cincinnati has 26 and Cleveland has 23, according to the Data Center Map. 

“The push and the urgency to build data centers are coming from a national level, but much of the decision making on data centers take place locally, and the impacts are also felt locally,” said Kate Stoll, the project director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues.

More than a dozen Ohio cities have enacted temporary moratoriums on data centers. 

“There exist all these communities already that have been resisting these data centers and being concerned about it,” Baurichter said.

“So in some sense, the grassroots network that sprung up was already in existence because of how many of these data centers were already springing up.” 

A large data center can use as much electricity as 100,000 homes, according to the Office of Ohio Consumers’ Counsel.

Data centers used 4% of all U.S. electricity in 2023 and that is expected to grow to 9% by 2030, according to the counsel. 

Virginia has a high concentration of data centers and electricity prices there have increased by up to 267% in recent years, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. 

A large data center can use up to five million gallons of water per day, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. 

“A lot of the water used to cool data centers comes from municipal taps,” Stoll said.

The Ohio House unanimously passed a bill that would create a new data center study commission. The bill now heads to the Ohio Senate. 

Lawmakers in at least 11 states — Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin — have introduced legislation that would temporarily ban data centers. 

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Acton sat down with seven community members inside Bond Hill restaurant Brunch de Lux as she fielded questions from college students, parents, and business owners about rising costs of living. 

Affordability is one of the most pressing issues coming into this year’s midterm election, where 45% of Ohio’s renters are paying more than they can afford on rent, according to the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.

Acton began by mentioning the rollout of her affordability agenda, titled ActOn, which she said will be informed by the experiences of Ohioans like those participating in the discussion.

Acton said she plans to introduce a tax cut for lower and middle income individuals as a part of her plan. 

“We have had tax breaks for people at a million plus, and we are trying to do something for everyone else,” Acton said. 

Paul McMillan, a roundtable participant and owner of Brunch de Lux, said the rising cost of living not only puts a strain on the restaurant’s customers but also makes it more difficult to pay their employees a livable wage. 

“We want our employees to make more, we see what we are paying them and we know that those wages are not necessarily liveable wages,” McMillan said.

“Put something in place for us to be able to, as small business owners, be able to pay our employees more and it be sustainable.”

McMillan also emphasized the inaccessibility of health care, citing his own experience with being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

He said he thought his insurance would take care of his medical costs, until he was rejected for showing prior signs of arthritis five years ago. 

He asked Acton to put a plan in place that will lower health care costs and ensure people with preexisting conditions are still covered. 

Acton said access to quality health care is getting harder and harder, especially since Americans pay twice as much for health care as other countries. 

“That is why in our affordability rollout, we’re working on some of the issues we can grab right away,” Acton said. “One of the big things we are very passionate about is helping forgive medical debt. 

According to Acton’s website, she also plans lower health care premiums and prescription drug prices.  

“We have a lot to do in health care,” Acton said. “We have to leverage the buying power of the state. Medicaid is a huge part of our budget to affect our private insurers. So we are going to be using every lever we can within a state, and we are going to be advocating federally to get the right thing for Ohioans.”

Sausha Parma, a roundtable participant and new mother, said she feels as though she has done everything right in terms of finances, and still experiences the strain that comes with rising costs of living. 

“I still feel the brunt of rising costs,” Parma said. “My mortgage is paid off, my car is paid off, I don’t have a lot of these expenses that most people do. So we would think that I could potentially be ahead, savings should be up, but it’s not because our wages aren’t rising at the same rate inflation is.” 

Energy bills and child care costs were a large part of the discussion, which Acton said she will fight hard to address as it is a part of everyday life. 

Acton pointed to her data center policy in ActOn, another hot button issue for Ohio voters in the midterm.

Data center growth within the state is raising concerns from critics about potential increases to energy bills due to the massive wattage and power investment needed to run the plants. 

“Data centers that are coming as a part of the AI battle, we know they are here,” Acton said. “We know they are here, but there are ways to do it.” 

She said there are ways to “make data centers work for Ohio and not the other way around,” and pointed to her commitment to have the centers pay for their own energy usage. 

“We have to be bold and forward about how we want to do energy in Ohio,” Acton said. 

Acton’s opponent, Republican front runner Vivek Ramaswamy, posted on X that data centers were “good,” despite the strain they will put onto the state’s electric grid. 

“I’ll unshackle energy production in Ohio, from fossil fuels to nuclear energy, without apology,” Ramaswamy posted. 

According to his website, Ramaswamy plans to “streamline” energy project permits and slash regulations so projects continue to be built.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

RICHLAND COUNTY, Ohio — In a mostly rural stretch of Ohio nestled between Cleveland and Columbus, residents now have a rare opportunity: They get to vote directly on the future of renewable energy in their area.

Last July, Richland County banned large-scale wind and solar projects in 11 of its 18 townships. The decision not only caught many locals by surprise; it also struck them as bad for economic development and as encroaching on individual property rights.

Almost immediately after the county’s three commissioners made their decision, dozens of residents formed a group, called the Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development, to fight what they saw as an unjust restriction on renewable energy.

Their initial goal was clear but daunting: Collect thousands of in-person signatures within 30 days in order to put the clean energy ban on the ballot during the 2026 primary election. They succeeded.

Before early voting opened last week, the group held several town halls and spent months educating and canvassing voters. Now, their efforts face the final test. By May 5 at 7:30 p.m., every voter in Richland County will be able to weigh in on the question: Should the county keep its ban on most solar and wind farms — or scrap it and give clean energy a chance to be part of the area’s energy mix?

A majority of ​“yes” votes on the referendum will mean the ban remains. A majority of ​“no” votes will overturn it. The referendum comes as local restrictions on solar and wind energy have proliferated nationwide, rising by 16% from June 2024 to June 2025. More than 450 counties and municipalities across 44 states now severely limit whether renewables can be built, according to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

In recent years, these rules have been a stumbling block for renewable energy projects, which are needed both to decarbonize the energy system and to meet the nation’s soaring electricity demand. New solar and wind are also among the cheapest forms of energy — a crucial distinction as utility bills rise nationwide.

Restrictions on renewable energy are especially common in rural areas, where the vast majority of the nation’s utility-scale solar and wind projects are located.

Ohio, in particular, is a hot spot for efforts to stymie renewable energy. A 2021 state law, Senate Bill 52, gave counties the right to ban new large solar farms and wind farms of 5 megawatts and up. Roughly three dozen counties now have such restrictions in one or more of their townships.

The Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development and its supporters would like to see their county removed from that list.

The group reflects the composition of Richland County, with a range of ages, income levels, and professions; many members hadn’t known each other or worked together before last summer. And while some are concerned about climate change and air pollution, the group’s main arguments — evidenced by its name — echo familiar American issues: property rights and job creation.

“I just don’t think it’s right for the county commissioners to tell other property owners that they can’t do what they want with their land,” said Emily Adams, the group’s treasurer. ​“I have what I want on my roof. And I think farmers and landowners should be able to do what they want with their property, too.”

No Ban on Property Rights flyers, shirts, brochures, magnets, and tote bags were on display at a town hall information session sponsored by the campaign calling for a “no” vote to overturn Richland County’s ban on large-scale solar in 11 of its 18 townships. (Kathiann M. Kowalski/Canary Media)

The effort to overturn Richland County’s ban could empower other communities to push back on similar restrictions, said Shayna Fritz, executive director of the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, which favors an all-of-the-above energy policy.

“If you gather enough people and you really voice your concerns to them, you have a chance to walk it back,” Fritz said. ​“This does not have to be permanent.”

Coalition member Brian McPeek, who is the group’s deputy treasurer and also the business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 688, hopes that’s the case. Union workers stand to get jobs from both renewable energy projects and from other businesses that may move nearby to take advantage of their clean energy.

“I think it’s very important for the nation to see what we’re doing here,” said McPeek, who was among the dozens of local citizens who attended and spoke out at the Richland County Board of Commissioners’ meeting last July, when it voted in favor of the restrictions. ​“I feel like it kind of flipped the blueprint for what others can do if their commissioners do the same thing. We needn’t close off the county for development.”

Richland County’s ban originated in Sharon Township, an area of approximately 9,000 people in the northwestern part of the county.

In January 2025, the township’s zoning board members requested that the commissioners impose a ban there. The following month, the commissioners asked all 18 townships in Richland County if they also wanted to prohibit renewables. (The county’s authority under SB 52 doesn’t extend to its nearly half dozen villages and cities.)

More specifically, the commissioners sent a fill-in-the-blanks resolution to ban solar and wind development to the township trustees. Trustees simply had to add names and dates and put marks on a few lines to sign on to the restriction.

Eleven townships’ trustees ultimately sent back filled-out resolutions asking the board of county commissioners to institute a blanket prohibition in their townships.

So, ​“that’s exactly what we did,” Commissioner Darrell Banks said.

The three county commissioners did not consult with the general public during this time, according to opponents of the ban. Few people knew their township trustees had even considered the issue until last summer, when it appeared on the agenda of the July 17 commissioners’ meeting.

Dozens opposing the ban showed up to that meeting, held on a weekday morning, to speak out. Still, the commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the ban for those 11 townships. Rose Feagin, a council member for the city of Ontario who opposes the ban, expressed disappointment with the way the commissioners went about the process.

“Other avenues would have been a better way to get input from people, and from across the board, not just a couple of people in a bubble or in a boardroom somewhere making decisions for other people’s lives,” Feagin said.

Under SB 52, county-level bans on renewable energy can be challenged via referendum — so long as enough local residents support a ballot measure. But the law gives groups only 30 days to get enough signatures on petitions.

By the Aug. 18, 2025, deadline, the coalition had managed to collect thousands of signatures, and on Sept. 3 the Richland County Board of Elections ruled that they had cleared the threshold required to put it on the ballot.

Bella Bogin helms the sign-in table at a Feb. 24 town hall meeting held at the Ontario Public Library. Bogin is director of programs for Ohio Citizen Action, which has been helping the No Ban on Property Rights campaign with organizing and volunteer support to raise awareness about the referendum. (Kathiann M. Kowalski/Canary Media)

It’s only the second time a county-level restriction on renewable energy has been challenged via referendum under SB 52.

In 2022, Crawford County commissioners blocked Apex Clean Energy from developing the 300-MW project Honey Creek Wind. A field manager for the company then helped lead the campaign to put it before voters, but ultimately that referendum failed.

At this time, no company is looking to develop a large solar or wind project in Richland County, noted Nolan Rutschilling, managing director of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council.

So, the Richland County ballot measure isn’t spearheaded by a company looking to profit from a particular project. Rather, it’s the work of citizens who want to preserve possibilities for the future — and restore the right to consider opportunities on a case-by-case basis.

In the lead-up to the election, the Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development has been using a slogan meant to win over their neighbors: ​“No Ban on Property Rights.”

Dan Fletcher, a Madison Township trustee who isn’t actively involved in the referendum campaign, said he knows how he plans to vote: ​“Taking the rights away from the property owner? That’s wrong in my opinion.”

Richland County is a farming powerhouse. More than 120,000 acres of cropland stretch across nearly 500 square miles. Farmers here mostly grow soybeans and corn, and to a lesser degree, forage, wheat, and other crops. The county also ranks among the top fifth of the nation’s leading producers of poultry, livestock, and other animal products.

The region’s agricultural character is the main focus of the campaign to keep the ban in place, run by a group named Richland Farmland Preservation.

The group’s website calls for farmland preservation and ​“commonsense limits” on solar and wind. It also includes a badge of endorsement from the Richland County Republican Party, which might go a long way in a county that went heavily for Trump in the last presidential election.

Banks, the county commissioner, is on the advisory committee for Richland Farmland Preservation. Other members include Richland County Prosecutor Jodie Schumacher and a trustee from each of the townships of Sharon, Blooming Grove, and Jefferson.

The group may have links to The Empowerment Alliance, a nationwide pro–natural gas organization that has been an impetus behind bills and resolutions labeling the fossil fuel as ​“green energy.”

A filing with the Richland County Board of Elections identifies the treasurer for Richland Farmland Preservation as Dustin McIntyre, with an address for a building with several offices in Bellville. But VoterRecords.com does not note any Dustin McIntyre in Richland County, nor does Whitepages.com show him living there.

Federal Elections Committee data does list a Dustin McIntyre with an address in Virginia as treasurer for multiple super PACs, including the Affordable Energy Fund PAC. That group was set up by The Empowerment Alliance in 2021.

The alliance began as a project of former Ariel Corp. chair Karen Buchwald Wright and her husband, Tom Rastin, who was also an executive there. Headquartered in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Ariel makes compressors for the oil and gas industry.

The Richland Farmland Preservation website also features anti–renewable energy talking points espoused by The Empowerment Alliance and other groups, including a variation of a graphic used by The Empowerment Alliance that implies gas-fired power plants should be favored over solar because of their smaller land footprint. (The illustration ignores the large swaths of land needed for drilling and pipelines, as well as pollution.)

Neither McIntyre nor Richland Farmland Preservation responded to Canary Media’s emails or calls.

The No Ban on Property Rights campaign held a fundraiser in February, and its volunteers have been distributing lawn signs, door hangers, and brochures. Volunteers with the nonprofit Ohio Citizen Action have also been helping with efforts to raise awareness and get out the vote.

As to whether the Richland Farmland Preservation group was mobilizing in a similar way, Banks told Canary Media he didn’t expect it to hold a general fundraiser. Instead, he noted that they planned to ​“call a few people.” Without saying who, he said, ​“There’s some people who will put some money towards this.”

Nonetheless, the push to preserve the renewable energy ban is tapping into real anxieties about ceding land to non-farming uses.

“We’re seeing more and more farmlands being used up for developments, and we want to keep them as farmlands,” said John Jaholnycky, who previously worked for natural gas and electric companies and is now a trustee for Mifflin Township, which opted for the ban.

In Jaholnycky’s view, solar should go on buildings and over parking lots. ​“I think it’s kind of shortsighted that we want to use up all of this farmland to put these solar panels up.”

Richland County Commissioner Cliff Mears pointed out that the city of Mansfield plans to add a solar farm at the site of a former landfill. But he added, ​“We feel that farmland overall should remain farmland.”

Still, blocking renewables won’t necessarily preserve farmland. In fact, urban and suburban development has been the major threat over the past several decades.

From 2002 through 2022, Ohio lost over 930,000 acres of farmland. Researchers at The Ohio State University reported last year that most of that loss occurred around metropolitan areas, where urban and suburban sprawl was extending into formerly rural areas. The number of acres for certified and planned utility-scale solar projects, meanwhile, is about one-tenth that amount.

Data centers are also a growing concern, with roughly 200 already in the state, and plans for another 100 or so.

For farmers, leasing their land for renewable energy can supplement income and actually let them keep the land in their families.

“The alternative is that [landowners] will sell it for development or data centers or something,” said Annette McCormick, a county resident and opponent of the prohibition.

Nor are renewables necessarily incompatible with farmland preservation.

Agrivoltaics uses land under and around solar panels for grazing sheep or growing forage or other crops. ​“There’s a lot of opportunities for farming” amid clean energy installations, McCormick said. ​“Maybe just not think about corn and soybeans all the time” as the only farming options.

Permit restrictions also generally require renewable energy companies to restore agricultural land when projects finish using it.

Both Banks and Mears criticized SB 52’s provision that lets all voters in the county — not just those in the relevant townships — sign a referendum petition and then vote on the issue. ​“It has nothing to do with anybody in the cities or villages,” Mears said. In his view, voters ​“should have some skin in the game.”

That arrangement was once on the table. An earlier version of SB 52 would have given each township the authority to ban solar and wind and then left any decisions on referendums solely up to its own voters. Ultimately, however, the law put the decision to enact prohibitions — and the rights of voters to seek their reversal — at the county level.

“Every voter in Richland County should have a voice on this important issue because it’s a countywide policy,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, who grew up in Richland County. Although the commissioners chose to defer to trustees in individual townships, ​“it is the role of county commissioners to represent every voter and to hear from every voter.”

Former Richland County Commissioner Gary Utt agreed: ​“It’s a county issue. Let the people decide.”

Energy costs are also a big issue this year, not just in Richland County but across the state. Utility bills are rising for all customers as electricity demand surges in Ohio, especially with the proliferation of data centers and growth in electrification. Solar power can come onto the grid faster than other sources. Adding more generation quickly could ease the supply crunch, and clean energy could help protect residents from the volatility of fossil fuel prices.

“That affects all of us — not just countywide, but statewide also,” said Christina O’Millian, a volunteer who worked on last year’s campaign to get the issue on the ballot.

Because SB 52’s hurdles apply only to solar and wind farms, it’s ​“picking winners and losers in what should be a free market,” said Fritz of the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum.

For McPeek, the electrical union business manager, blocking renewables also means fewer jobs for himself and other IBEW members throughout the county.

“Historically, communities that sort of close themselves off often see investment and innovation going elsewhere,” he said.

Even if residents defeat the ban, it doesn’t mean that any large solar or wind projects will be built in Richland County.

“It just restores the right of a project to be considered,” McPeek said. ​“There are a lot of hurdles that they have to jump through.”

In unincorporated areas without any ban, SB 52 still lets county commissioners review almost all new large-scale solar and wind farms of 5 MW or more before developers can even file a permit application with the Ohio Power Siting Board.

The law gives commissioners 90 days in which they can prohibit a project, change its footprint, or do nothing. No action means a company can then file its application with the siting board, provided the developer also complied with additional notice and public meeting requirements.

If a company does get to file an application for a solar or wind farm with the siting board, SB 52 then calls for two ad hoc representatives of counties and townships where the development would be located. Those individuals take part in the case as voting members. Any project also must satisfy a long list of other requirements before the siting board grants its approval to move ahead.

Even for projects that have otherwise met all legal criteria, the siting board sometimes simply defers to local government opposition to conclude they are not in the ​“public interest” — a stance that is currently under review by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Ultimately, it may take a repeal of SB 52 and some other legal changes to put all types of energy generation on an equal footing when it comes to siting and permitting.

But for now, advocates for a ​“no” vote on Richland County’s ballot issue are focused on what they can most immediately control: defeating a ban that makes solar and wind a nonstarter from the get-go.

“I want to make my children proud,” said Morgan Carroll, a Shelby resident who urges people to vote no. ​“I want to say that we tried to help them with their energy costs in the future, help the future of clean energy in the county.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sponsored by Indivisible Central Ohio and Common Cause Ohio, the Columbus event will take place in Bicentennial Park starting at 4:30 p.m. Friday.

The “We the People of Ohio” project follows events in numerous other American cities, including Cleveland, Dayton, Marietta and Gambier in Ohio.

“It is both a stunning visual and a participatory experience: community members sign the scroll with oversized feather markers, adding their names as a visible commitment to democratic values and civic participation,” organizers said in a written statement.

“The signature section has already grown hundreds of feet long across the country — and Ohio will contribute to that growing national testament.”

When and where the document will appear in other Ohio cities:

• Youngstown — 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, May 3, Calvin Civic Center, 755 Mahoning Ave.
• Peninsula — 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, May 9, Boston Township Hall, 1775 Main St.
• Akron — 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Monday, May 11, First Congregational Church of Akron, 292 E. Market St.
• Mentor 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday, May 17, Eleanor B. Garfield Park Pavilion, 7967 Mentor Ave.
• Toledo, Sandusky, Hamilton, Norwalk, Lima and Springfield — times, dates and locations to be announced.

Organizers said the Constitution prescribes a democracy that depends on citizen participation. The “We the People” project is meant to underline that.

“Democracy is strongest when people see themselves reflected in it,” they said. “’We The People’ is not abstract — it is a call to participation. This project offers Ohioans a chance to visibly affirm their role in shaping our shared future.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

They haven’t learned. In their phenomenal arrogance, Ohio Republican lawmakers once again want to spit in the face of Ohio voters and try to convince us it’s raining.

After cheating voters with flagrant gerrymandering, making it harder and harder to vote with law after law, and overriding voters on the 2023 legal weed law, they want to try to kneecap Ohio voters’ fundamental Constitutional power, again.

They tried to do this in 2023 and failed spectacularly.

As Ohio voters were gearing up to consider a reproductive rights amendment that year, gerrymandered Ohio Republican lawmakers proposed raising the threshold to pass amendments to the Ohio Constitution from a simple majority to a 60% threshold.

The gerrymandered Republican lawmaker sponsoring the 2023 effort openly advocated to his colleagues that his proposal was intended to stop the reproductive rights amendment, as well as any further anti-gerrymandering reform.

Voters easily saw through their charade and rejected them in humiliating fashion.

Now, as voters have launched efforts to ban data centers and eliminate property taxes, the same legislature that has made a mess of things with data centers and property taxes wants voters to give up significant power to do anything about it.

Ohio Republican state Sen. Jerry Cirino of Kirtland wants to give it another try at convincing Ohio voters to lie down and roll over for politicians who have obnoxiously demonstrated over and over again that they have zero respect for voters.

In a personal demonstration of his absolute disregard for the opinions of voters, Cirino was the lawmaker who ignored the heartfelt testimony of 700 Ohioans and thousands of protesters across college campuses throughout Ohio, to force through a new higher education law to gut academic freedom, regulate classroom discussion, destroy diversity efforts, and dismantle the power of unions.

The result? Ohio’s college campuses are suffering. High school students said they are leaving the state. Students who’ve stayed say they feel the “bleak” chill of stifled campus speech and classroom discussion. Professors have been robbed of both their academic freedom and their job security, also noting the frigid air in classrooms subjected to the menace of government censorship.

Minority students on campus have had their spaces for acceptance and understanding stripped away from them. And 90 programs including economics, physics, and mathematics, have been eliminated from campuses across the state, as Cirino’s generation pulls the ladder up behind them.

As voters across the country question the wisdom of data centers, in Ohio, our politicians have showered them with state government candy.

While cutting billions from Ohio pubic schools, state lawmakers have handed out billions worth of incentives to data centers. In one notorious case, Ohio gave $4.5 million to a data center project to create just 10 jobs.

Regarding property taxes, gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers have repeatedly abused our local communities by making massive cuts to funding for public schools and the local government fund that helps pay for public works jobs and emergency personnel like police officers, paramedics, and firefighters.

Facing the devastating loss of local jobs and services, some Ohio communities eat the cuts and lay off employees, while others have rallied to support levies on the local level.

But for those communities that pass levies to keep their local jobs and service intact, state officials have taken it as a cue that those communities will fend for themselves, so they cut their funding even more.

A vicious cycle perpetuates where local communities are asked to do more and more and more, while state lawmakers do less and less and less.

What do Ohio’s state leaders do instead?

They give enormous tax handouts and giveaways to unaccountable corporations and the richest people in the state. They give out $12 billion with little to show for it.

It’s a cozy little arrangement if you’re a wealthy corporation or sports franchise owner who can buy political influence with campaign donations.

But if you’re a regular Ohioan trying to live in a decent community with decent opportunities for your children, your family is getting your lunch eaten by unscrupulous and unaccountable politicians who have insulated themselves from electoral consequences with gerrymandering.

They don’t have to really care what destruction they cause, unless some happy day they discover any sense of human shame or conscience.

In the meantime, what you can do is join with your fellow citizens and go to enormous lengths, with incredibly high financial and practical barriers, to try to bring change directly to voters for consideration at the ballot box.

You could introduce a law — an initiated statute.

But Ohio lawmakers showed very clearly with the voter-passed weed law of 2023 that they will not respect voter-passed laws and they will change them however they want, whenever they want, voters be damned.

Or you could try to introduce a constitutional amendment, protected from the machinations of unaccountable, gerrymandered lawmakers.

Those unaccountable, gerrymandered lawsmakers really, really don’t like that though.

How dare you present any check whatsoever on their abuse of power?

‘Can’t have it.

Better try to convince you, again, to willingly give up your own power so that they can continue to abuse theirs.

To me, the worst part is that they are so arrogant and so condescending that they still think you’re dumb enough to buy it.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The warrant, signed by Seneca County Common Pleas Court Judge Damon Alt, was served April 27, 2026, at 5771 E TR 106 in Tiffin — the residence of Brandy Johnson, 34.

Johnson was taken into custody on an active arrest warrant and transported to the Seneca County Jail. Possible charges of Trafficking in Drugs, Possession of Drugs, and Weapons under Disability are pending against her at the conclusion of the investigation, according to the task force.

A second individual present at the residence, Andrew Wilson, 39, was arrested by the Adult Parole Authority and also transported to the Seneca County Jail.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/drug-task-force-hits-tiffin-home-hauls-out-firearms-and-narcotics/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Click’s campaign sent a mass email on Tuesday with the subject line “Primary Voter Rally,” characterizing the final stretch of the race in increasingly defensive terms.

“It’s less than a week before the primary, and it’s getting crazy out there!” Click wrote. “I’m getting attacked by conspiracy theorists on the right, liberals on the left, and liberals pretending to be conservatives.”

Click also pointed to a Facebook post — embedded in the email itself — in which a social media user called on Democrats and independent voters to pull a Republican ballot to vote him out. “While the post seen below completely mischaracterizes me, it does show you the depths to which Democrats will stoop to win in November, even crossing over to vote for a weak Republican in our primary,” Click wrote. “Shame on them!”

The urgent tone is a marked departure from Click’s posture throughout much of the campaign.

When former U.S. Senate candidate Mark Pukita commented on Facebook that Click “really has his panties in a wad” over the primary challenge from Eric Watson, Click replied directly: “You’re funny, Markie. Not concerned at all.”

When the Fremont News-Messenger asked about Watson’s campaign, Click said: “You move to the right of Gary Click and you’re in the ditch.” And when Watson called for public debates, Click dismissed the idea: “It’s always the guy losing that wants the debate. They are trying to grift off of the leader’s name ID.”

In March, Click’s campaign sent a fundraising email acknowledging that “this is a tough primary” — the first public signal that the race had tightened — and hosted a campaign kickoff in Clyde featuring Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, State Treasurer Robert Sprague, and Majority Whip Nick Santucci. U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, who had originally been announced as the event’s headliner, did not appear.

Tuesday’s email included a “Donate Today!” button three separate times and announced a pre-primary rally set for Friday, May 1, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Fremont Airport, Hangar 1, 365 State Route 53, Fremont. The event, called “Rich’s Rally for Votes,” is co-hosted with Richard J. Farmer II, a Republican candidate for Sandusky County Commissioner, along with other local conservative candidates.

Attempts to reach Click’s campaign for comment were unsuccessful.

Watson: ‘I’m approachable. I listen.’

Watson, in a statement to TiffinOhio.net, said Click’s messaging reflects a campaign under pressure.

“Many months ago, he said he wasn’t concerned at all about my entry into this race,” Watson wrote. “Now he’s urgently asking for a May 1st rally and still pushing for donations this late.”

Watson declined to accept Click’s framing that crossover voters are driving his primary challenge.

“He’s also leaning on the idea that Democrats are crossing over as a big psyop against him,” Watson wrote. “What I’m seeing on the ground is different. I’m approachable. I listen to people’s concerns. I don’t brush things off as conspiracies or ‘liberal propaganda.’ I take the time to hear voters out, even when we don’t fully agree, and that matters.”

Watson added: “I’ve had plenty of conversations across the board, and people respond to being heard. As I’ve been saying, we may not see 100% eye to eye on everything, but if we come together and work toward what’s best for the district, we’re going to be just fine.”

Jones focuses on jobs and costs as Republicans fight over ideology

While Click and Watson spend the final days before the primary trading accusations and debating the loyalty of their supporters, the Democratic candidate in the race has kept his focus elsewhere.

Aaron Jones — a U.S. Army veteran, production supervisor at Toledo Molding & Die in Tiffin, and Tiffin City Councilman — has built his campaign around the economic concerns facing working families in Seneca and Sandusky counties: jobs, cost of living, property tax relief, and funding for public schools.

Jones, who has worked at Toledo Molding & Die for more than 20 years, has a direct personal stake in one of the district’s most pressing economic stories. The company — which operates a plant in Tiffin employing more than 400 workers — has been the subject of active sale discussions following announcements of potential closure. Jones has spoken publicly about the uncertainty facing his coworkers and has made manufacturing job security a central part of his platform.

Jones is running unopposed in the May 5 Democratic primary and will advance directly to the November 3 general election, where he will face whichever Republican emerges from Tuesday’s contest. National veterans organization VoteVets has endorsed his campaign.

“I’ve spent over 20 years on the factory floor, I’ve served my country, and I serve my neighbors on City Council,” Jones said in a statement earlier this month. “I’m running because the people of District 88 deserve a representative who understands what it takes to make ends meet — not someone beholden to out-of-state special interests.”

The May 5 primary is the deciding contest for the Republican nomination. Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sen. Jon Husted’s first ads of his campaign to get elected to the U.S. Senate will start today.

Husted, a Republican, will spend $1 million on the ads, scheduled to start Wednesday and remain on the air for the next two weeks. They will air on TV in Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo, as well as on Fox News and online streaming. 

The ads come even as Husted faces no opponent in the Republican primary election that will be decided on May 5. His likely opponent in the November election is Sherrod Brown, the former longtime Democratic senator. Husted has held the job since January 2025, when Gov. Mike DeWine appointed him to fill Vice President JD Vance’s unexpired term.

In a statement, Husted Campaign Manager Drew Thompson said the election will give voters a choice between Husted and Brown, who served in Congress for 32 years total – split between the House and Senate – before he was defeated in the November 2024 election. 

“This November, Ohioans will have a clear choice between the past and the future. Jon Husted is getting an early start by taking his story directly to voters who are ready for a fresh, common-sense approach in Washington,” Thompson said.

Voters will see what political operatives call a “bio ad” that’s meant to give them a snippet of Husted’s life story. It depicts Husted talking about his background as an adoptee who spent the first few days of his life in foster care, and touts his work as an elected official, including in the Senate, promoting technical education programs. 

The ad campaign comes a week after Husted reported having $8.2 million in his campaign account, compared to Brown’s $16.5 million. Senate Republicans have announced a large-scale campaign to support Husted, with plans to spend $79 million boosting him, the most of any state this year.

That announced spending, plus millions more committed by outside groups, foreshadows that Ohio’s Senate race this year could be a repeat of the historically expensive 2024 election. That year, Republican and Democratic groups spent $250 million as Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno defeated Brown by three percentage points.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

A week after Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy doubled down on his push to reform the state’s public universities, Kent State University President Todd Diacon delivered a message: “Come visit.” 

Though Diacon didn’t explicitly mention Ramaswamy by name in an essay on the future of Ohio higher education published April 28, there’s no mistaking who he’s talking about.   

The piece’s headline and its lead sentence included the phrase “centers of excellence,” the same words Ramaswamy used to describe what he wants the state’s 14 universities to become amid enrollment and financial challenges. His calls to consolidate sparked pushback from his Democratic rival, Dr. Amy Acton, and others across the state. 

“The idea of ‘centers of excellence’ has entered Ohio’s higher education conversation, and I welcome it,” Diacon wrote in a message sent via email to the university community and posted online. 

Ohio’s university presidents rarely talk publicly – even tangentially – about politics. Public institutions rely on state support. Diacon didn’t touch on the gubernatorial race, instead simply writing that he wanted to give “some context that the current debate is missing.” 

“We are not waiting for someone to tell us to change,” he wrote. “We’ve reduced our budget, and balanced it, every year save one during the past 30 years, and we did so without drawing on reserves to cover revenue shortfalls.” 

Diacon concluded the piece by inviting “anyone raising questions about Ohio’s public universities” to spend time on one of Kent State’s eight campuses across Northeast Ohio – or even that of another public peer – to better understand these schools.

Ramaswamy spokesperson Evan Machan didn’t respond to Signal Statewide’s question about whether the candidate plans to take Diacon up on his offer to make a campus visit. He did say, though, that the campaign is “excited to partner with the leaders of universities across our state to understand where our universities are excelling and where we have room to improve.”

Ramaswamy’s calls to consolidate begin in March

Ramaswamy first floated the idea of combining public universities in March. He described it as one area where Ohio could cut excess spending to save money. 

“When you consolidate them, they can actually be centers of excellence, who are actually the best in their respective domains instead of trying to create replicas and clones of one another throughout the state,” he said in a video shared online by his campaign. 

He shared more thoughts in a Columbus Dispatch opinion piece a few weeks later. It mentioned Ohio’s dwindling number of high school graduates and pointed out other states with larger populations have fewer public universities. 

If elected governor, Ramaswamy would require the Ohio Department of Higher Education to conduct a thorough review that would identify “where missions overlap, where enrollment collapse has made independence untenable, and where administrative functions can be unified without harming students,” he wrote. 

“Either we reform our higher education system with purpose, or we watch it decline by default,” he wrote. 

Looking at enrollment across Ohio’s public universities

Kent State’s Diacon wrote that total enrollment across the state’s public universities is “roughly the same” now as it was in 2005. 

Data from the Ohio Department of Higher Education supports that claim. The state’s university system enrolled 264,400 full-time students in 2005, dropping by just 0.2% to 263,854 students in 2025.  

Few changes are noticeable when looking at those beginning and ending figures alone – but the years tucked inside contain more storylines. 

One of the biggest includes the enrollment ebbs and flows that colleges in Ohio and nationwide experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected people of color and/or women. Enrollments at many institutions, especially two-year public colleges, plunged during that time, though national data shows those rates may be rebounding.  

Another shift: The state’s biggest institutions got bigger. The growth was most explosive at the University of Cincinnati. Its main campus grew by a whopping 60%, going from 22,389 students to 35,928 students. Last year, UC’s Cincinnati campus and Ohio State University’s Columbus campus accounted for about 36% of all students enrolled at a main campus in Ohio. 

Growth was more modest at places such as Kent State, where enrollment grew by 9.4% from 20,713 students to 22,664 students. Ohio University saw an uptick of nearly 16%, moving from 20,920 students to 24,264 students. 

Smaller universities saw more magnified declines. Enrollment at the University of Akron fell nearly 40% from 17,839 students to 10,802 students. The University of Toledo enrolled about 32% fewer students, going from 18,547 students to 12,673 students. Shawnee State University, in the Southern Ohio city of Portsmouth, saw about a 22% decline as its enrollment fell from 3,273 students to 2,567 students. 

And at the state’s two dozen regional campuses, total enrollment fell by about 14.5% from 33,909 students to 28,993 students. 

It’s important to note that regional public universities tend to enroll more part-time students, including working adults. 

Kent State’s Diacon touts university successes amid declining state support

Diacon’s essay also outlined what he views as some of Kent State’s biggest successes. 

He pointed to individual academic programs, including healthcare, and how those programs prepare both local and national workforces. He also nodded to the university’s role as the region’s only public university to earn a prestigious national distinction recognizing its high scientific research output. 

It wasn’t just a love letter, though. Diacon also called out how state financial support has dwindled since Republican Gov. James Rhodes launched the statewide university system in the 1960s. Back then, about 75% of Kent State’s operating budget came from state allocations, he wrote. Now, Diacon reports that number has shrunk to roughly 22%. 

“The universities didn’t drift into this moment,” he wrote. “Even though public investment was quietly withdrawn over decades, our institutions have continued to deliver ever-improving results.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“The use of race in redistricting should never happen,” the governor’s general counsel, David Axelman, wrote in a memo unveiling a map that aims to hand Republicans four additional U.S. House seats in Florida.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court delivered an opinion sharply weakening a major portion of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Even before the decision, Republicans and Democrats across the country were scrambling to get ahead of the court’s anticipated ruling. 

The rush comes even as state legislative sessions wind down and the window to redraw maps rapidly closes ahead of the midterm elections in November — likely pushing most redistricting battles into the 2028 election cycle.

The opinion in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, could reverberate for decades. The court’s conservative majority significantly curtailed the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps. 

Until now, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has limited states from using maps that dilute the voting power of minority citizens.

“If the Supreme Court does decide to gut or significantly weaken Section 2 of the VRA, we’re very concerned that it would give, basically, the green light to states to racially gerrymander,” Michael McNulty, policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said in an interview ahead of the decision.

Republicans could ultimately secure up to 19 U.S. House seats nationally directly because of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a projection by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters. At the state level, the groups have projected that Republicans could gain up to 200 state legislative seats across the South. 

“It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,” Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote in a blog post following the opinion’s release on Wednesday.

Louisiana case

A group of white voters challenged Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander after the state in 2024 created a second district where a majority of voters are Black. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices agreed, ruling 6-3 that the map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the state didn’t need to create a second majority-minority district.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent that the Supreme Court has “had its sights set” on the Voting Rights Act for more than a decade.

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote.

Following the opinion, Republican-led legislatures across the South are expected to move to break apart Democratic districts where a majority of residents are Black or from other minority groups. 

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, called on the state legislature to reconvene and redraw the state’s congressional districts to create another Republican-held seat in Memphis. Blackburn, who is running for governor, said an additional seat is essential to cement President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves last week announced a special session to redraw the state’s Supreme Court districts, to begin 21 days after the court releases its decision.

“It is a decision that could (and in my view should) forever change the way we draw electoral maps,” Reeves said in a statement announcing the session.

Although the Supreme Court case centered on Louisiana, state officials are likely out of time to adopt a new map for this year’s election. The primary election is set for May 16.

Still, Louisiana will be free to pursue redistricting next year.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, Sr., a Democrat who represents one of the state’s two majority-minority districts, said the court’s decision was a “devastating blow” to the promise of equal representation.

“This ruling is about far more than lines on a map — it’s about whether Black Louisianians will have a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard,” Carter said in a statement.

The redistricting wars of 2026

As of 2024, roughly a third of U.S. House seats represented majority-minority districts — 122 held by Democrats and 26 held by Republicans, according to estimates by Ballotpedia. Texas and California account for nearly half of all the districts.

Seven states have already taken the extraordinary step of redrawing their maps this year after President Donald Trump urged Republicans to draw lines that maximize partisan advantage ahead of the midterms. Maps are typically redrawn every 10 years after the census.

Texas and California struck first, followed by Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah. Virginia voters last week approved a redraw, and Florida lawmakers approved a new map Wednesday. 

All told, Republicans may emerge from the redistricting war with a small net advantage of a handful of seats if the Florida plan is enacted and the other maps are upheld.

The calendar will prove a major obstacle to additional gerrymanders this year. Primary elections have already been held in some southern states and ballots have been distributed in others. 

Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas have already held primaries, while ballots have been distributed in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. 

But after November the clock resets, giving states more than a year to pursue further changes to their maps before the 2028 election.

“We are much more concerned about the impact on 2028 and beyond that that would have, letting these politicians basically just pick their voters instead of the voters picking them,” McNulty said.

John R. Lewis bill

As Democrats look ahead to Callais’ likely fallout in the coming years, they have begun urgently calling for action in Congress and at the state level. They also say the decision emphasizes the stakes of this year’s elections.

“Today is a devastating day for democracy and a wake-up call for all those who seek to protect it,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement.

Democrats in Congress have repeatedly offered the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Named after the civil rights activist and Georgia congressman who died in 2020, the legislation aims to strengthen Section 2 and other elements of the current Voting Rights Act, though it’s unclear whether the bill would be constitutional under the Callais decision.

The U.S. House, under Democratic control, passed the legislation in 2021 but it was filibustered in the Senate. Some lawmakers are speaking about the measure again, and Democrats may take control of Congress in November’s elections—though they would still face President Donald Trump in the White House. 

“We can and must revive the Voting Rights Act,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat and the ranking member of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, said at a shadow hearing on voting rights on Monday.

For their part, Republicans hailed the Supreme Court decision as long overdue.

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement said “activists” for too long had manipulated the redistricting process to achieve political outcomes, dividing Americans in the process.

“The Supreme Court made clear that our elections should be decided by voters, not engineered through unconstitutional mandates,” Hudson said.

Voting Rights Act over the years

Over more than a decade, the Supreme Court has narrowed the potency of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law banning racial discrimination in voting that came as Congress battled Jim Crow laws in southern states. 

The measure was intended to help enforce the U.S. Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, which guarantee equal protection under the law and prohibit denying the right to vote on the basis of race.

In 2013, the court effectively halted preclearance — the requirement that some states and local governments with a history of discrimination obtain federal permission before changing their voting practices. At the time of the decision, most southern states and a handful of others were subject to preclearance.

The Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that federal courts cannot review allegations of partisan gerrymandering. The decision cleared the way for state lawmakers to gerrymander their maps for political advantage without fear they would be second-guessed by federal judges. 

The opinion helped empower a wave of gerrymanders after the 2020 census and set the stage for this year’s mid-decade redistricting.

Turning to the legislatures

Facing a bleak federal landscape, some voting rights advocates are increasingly turning to state legislatures. The Supreme Court decision undercutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will likely intensify efforts to advance state-level legislation.

“Because political participation is inherently local, it is imperative to press for protections at the ground level,” Todd Cox, associate director counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice legal organization, said at the shadow hearing.

Some Democratic state lawmakers already introduced measures in anticipation of an unfavorable Supreme Court decision.

The Illinois House last week approved a state constitutional amendment that would require districts to be drawn “to ensure that no citizen is denied an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of his or her choice on account of race.”

The Illinois amendment would also require, where practical, the creation of racial coalition or influence districts — terms that refer to districts where racial minorities together constitute a majority of residents. The measure, which must also pass the state Senate before going to voters, was a pre-response to the Callais opinion.

“This will ensure that Illinois will always recognize the fundamental principle that a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people must include all the people,” Illinois Democratic House Speaker Emanuel Welch told reporters after the amendment advanced.

Illinois Republicans have cast the amendment as a Democratic power grab. The state has some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, a Republican, said in a statement. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has given Illinois’ maps an overall “F” grade.

“Let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with strengthening democracy,” McCombie said. “It’s about locking in one-party control at any cost.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland told lawmakers that from “bitter division” 250 years ago, the two nations “forged a friendship that has grown into one of the most consequential alliances in human history.”

“I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth and across the world,” he said.

Charles is the first British king to address a joint session of Congress, and only the second monarch to do so after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, spoke before lawmakers in 1991.

Charles was received with loud unanimous applause from both sides of the aisle — a notable difference from the usual one-party enthusiasm during the president’s annual State of the Union address.

He punctuated his roughly 27-minute speech with laugh lines, including a quip that 250 years for America is “just the other day” for the British.

To whoops and cheers, Charles nodded to the “bold and imaginative rebels with a cause” who declared independence but also “carried forward” the ideals of the Magna Carta, a 13th-century document outlining the protection of rights and property from the monarch.

Both sides of the aisle stood applauding in unison as the king cited U.S. Supreme Court cases that laid the “foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”

But the king also delivered his speech against the ominous backdrop of a breakdown of American support for Ukraine and an ongoing war in Iran, initiated by the United States and Israel, that has disrupted energy supply in the United Kingdom and around the world.

The conflicts “pose immense challenges for the international community and whose impact is felt in communities the length and breadth of our own country,” he said. 

As the king was still speaking on Capitol Hill, the White House shared on social media a photo of Charles and Trump together under the heading “TWO KINGS” and a crown emoji.

Trump attacks on British prime minister

U.S.-U.K. relations have frayed as a result of Trump’s recurrent attacks on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to not join offensive operations targeting Iran.

Trump paused his scathing online screeds against the British government during the king’s first full day of his state visit, which included a 21-gun salute and ceremonial flyover after Charles and Queen Camilla arrived on the White House South Lawn. 

Shortly before Charles addressed Congress, Trump took aim on his Truth Social platform at another European leader, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, accusing him of thinking “it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”  

Just over one month into the U.S. campaign in Iran, Trump, on Truth Social, told the U.K. and other allied partners to “Go get your own oil!” from the blockaded Strait of Hormuz. 

“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” he wrote.

Two weeks earlier, Trump attacked NATO allies, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “I’ve long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So … this was a great test, because we don’t need them, but they should have been there.”

Charles recounted in his speech to Congress how the only time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, invoked Article 5 was to defend the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.

The king and Camilla are scheduled to visit the 9/11 Memorial in New York City on Wednesday.

“We stood with you then, and we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten,” Charles said.

Just under 460 British troops died fighting alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

Epstein files

The king’s trip to the U.S. also comes after the high-profile release of millions of records related to the disgraced hedge fund manager and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had ties to Charles’ brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. 

Mountbatten-Windsor settled outside of court in 2022 with the late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein and the former British prince of trafficking her for sex.

Mountbatten-Windsor has been stripped of his royal title of prince and is under investigation in Britain for allegedly sharing confidential government information with Epstein, which came to light in the publicly released files.

The king acknowledged victims of sexual abuse in his speech, according to a palace aide, when he remarked to lawmakers, “In both of our countries, it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse and free societies that gives us our collective strength, including to support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.”

Answering questions about the king’s address, the palace aide told reporters traveling with Charles, “It was certainly in (his majesty’s) mind to acknowledge victims of abuse, so they are naturally incorporated in this line.”

Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother who has become an activist following his sister’s death last year, was on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a roundtable about Epstein victims ahead of Charles’ visit.

Roberts and the king did not meet.

King will visit Virginia

Charles, a vocal advocate for the environment, is also scheduled to visit Shenandoah National Park in Virginia Thursday to view America’s “extraordinary natural splendor.” The king emphasized to lawmakers the need for a collaborative effort to fight climate change.

“Even as we celebrate the beauty that surrounds us, our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems, which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of nature,” he said. 

“We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems, in other words nature’s own economy, provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security,” he said.

Charles also celebrated the shared financial economy between the United States and U.K., highlighting $430 billion in annual trade. Just over a year ago, Trump began a new tariff regime on British goods, and imports from many other trading partners.

Review of the troops

Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed the king and queen on the White House South Lawn Monday morning for a ceremony full of pomp and circumstance, including a review of the troops, a distinguished honor for a visiting head of state.

During brief and mostly scripted remarks, Trump highlighted a tree planted on the White House grounds by Elizabeth II in 1991. Trump described the tree as a “living symbol” of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

“In the centuries since we won our independence, Americans have had no closer friends than the British. We share that same root. We speak the same language, we hold the same values, and together our warriors have defended the same extraordinary civilization under twin banners of red, white and blue,” Trump said.

Trump and Charles met in a closed-door Oval Office bilateral meeting following the ceremony. 

The first lady and the queen met with American schoolchildren at the White House tennis pavilion, where the students donned Meta Quest headsets to view several U.K. landmarks, including Stonehenge and Buckingham Palace. The event was part of the first lady’s effort to promote technology in education, according to the White House.

Charles and Camilla are scheduled to attend a state dinner at the White House East Room Tuesday night before heading to New York City Wednesday.

The king and queen are scheduled to visit the small town of Front Royal, Virginia, Thursday, as well as meet Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in Shenandoah National Park, according to the British embassy.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended those and other proposed cuts to her agency outlined in Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which calls for $75.7 billion in new discretionary budget authority for the department that would mark a $3.2 billion, or 4.1%, reduction from fiscal 2026 levels. 

The administration has taken major steps to dismantle the 46-year-old Department of Education as part of the president’s quest to send education “back to the states.” That effort continues despite much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurring at the state and local levels.

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on April 28, 2026. (Screenshot from committee livestream)

“We’ve been clear: Shifting authority back to the states will not come at the expense of the central federal programs (and) support, much of which predate the department itself,” McMahon told lawmakers at the hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.

The panel shares jurisdiction over Education Department spending with the corresponding subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The president’s budget request is generally considered a starting point for negotiations, but Congress is responsible for deciding federal spending.

Bipartisan support for TRIO 

Republican and Democratic senators took particular aim at the administration’s proposal to eliminate Federal TRIO Programs in fiscal 2027.

The Federal TRIO Programs — funded at $1.19 billion this fiscal year — help support groups including low-income students, first-generation college students, individuals with disabilities and veterans. 

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, said she opposes the president’s proposal to eliminate TRIO, noting that these programs have “changed the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students in Maine and across the country.” 

The Maine Republican added that TRIO “enjoys robust support and has made such a difference in the lives of children.” 

Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman also emphasized his support for TRIO, noting that in his state, these programs “have been a game-changer in helping low-income and first-generation students not only access higher education, but also succeed once they are there.” 

Sen. Jeff Merkley was the first in his family to go to college and said he comes from a “very blue-collar, frontier, homesteading, timber background.”

The Oregon Democrat said it’s from that perspective he believes that “having conscious programs to help people overcome the cultural chasm that exists between blue-collar kids like myself and that college world that you have very little contact on is enormously valuable in America, and the stats from these programs are pretty damn impressive.” 

The secretary told the panel that while “there are many instances where the TRIO program has been very beneficial … as we look across the country in how to spend these dollars and how to have similar results by maybe not necessarily focusing students towards college degrees, maybe there’s another way for them to have their path to success.” 

McMahon said her agency was in the process of spending “about $2.1 million” for investigating and evaluating the TRIO programs.

In its summary of Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, the department said that TRIO “has failed to meet the vast majority of its performance measures, and studies of program effectiveness have shown that it has not increased college enrollment.” 

Dems decry plan to eliminate agency

Meanwhile, McMahon took heat from the leading Democrats on the subcommittee and the broader Senate Appropriations panel over the administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the agency. 

Part of those efforts include several interagency agreements between Education and the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury that transfer many of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the subcommittee, said Education “is transferring the vast majority of its programs to other federal departments, agencies with little experience or expertise or capacity to administer them.” 

The Wisconsin Democrat said that instead of “reducing bureaucracy” — a major goal of the administration across the federal government and the department in particular — the transfers are creating “another layer of it.”

She added that “where states previously primarily dealt with the Department of Education, they will now have to deal with multiple federal agencies.” 

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the full Appropriations Committee, pressed McMahon on the status of the administration mulling the transfer of special education services out of the Education Department amid its dismantling efforts. 

The possible move to transfer programs out of the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has stoked widespread concern from disability advocates.

McMahon said her department was “still evaluating where those programs would best be located, and we have not made that determination yet.” 

“I can assure you that the intent of this administration is not to put these students at risk in any way whatsoever,” McMahon said. 

But Murray was not satisfied with the secretary’s response, saying she is “deeply concerned that your answer sounds like you’re still moving ahead — let’s make it clear that will break the law, and it will make it a lot harder for these students with disabilities to get the education and understanding that their country will stand behind them with that.” 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The war will enter its third month on Friday without a clear rationale or goal. A fragile cease-fire is in place, but Iran continues to restrict access to the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint for global energy, fertilizer and mineral flows.

Gas prices in Ohio have surged by more than one-third since Trump launched the war, and some fertilizers have spiked as much as 50% nationally as planting season is underway. Meanwhile, as of January, Trump’s tariffs are estimated to have increased consumer costs by 1.5%, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

Those factors — combined with uncertainty over what will happen next — have created problems in multiple sectors of the economy, according to the Cleveland Fed’s latest Beige Book. 

The Cleveland Fed represents the Federal Reserve System’s Fourth District — a region that covers all of Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. Eight times a year, it conducts interviews and online questionnaires with businesses, community organizations, economists, and other sources. 

The latest Beige Book said that businesses were feeling the pinch from higher prices.

“Overall, non-labor input cost pressures were robust for the seventh consecutive reporting period, intensifying further and continuing an upward trend that started in September 2024,” it said.

“Contacts across sectors highlighted escalating energy costs related to the conflict in the Middle East, with some describing fuel costs as ‘skyrocketing’ and others noting that this would further exacerbate already-high freight costs. Materials costs continued to rise, particularly for metals like copper, steel, and aluminum, with manufacturers citing tariffs as drivers. Two agricultural contacts reported fertilizer cost spikes, and one attributed this to the Strait of Hormuz closure.”

The report said that due in part to frenzied construction of data centers, manufacturing is expected to grow “modestly.”

But it said manufacturers outside of that field and defense may have a tough outlook.

“While two producers with defense contracts reported stronger activity related to the conflict in the Middle East, many manufacturers worried that a prolonged conflict would increase input costs and soften demand,” it said.

“A few producers continued to report flat or softer demand as customers strategically reduced existing inventories.”

And many producers worried about consumers’ ability to buy their products.

“Consumer spending declined modestly in recent weeks, driven by extreme weather events and high fuel prices,” the Beige Book said.

“Grocery store and automotive contacts noted that higher fuel prices strained customers’ wallets, and one higher-end grocer reported customers making fewer trips and purchases. Contacts expected flat consumer spending in the coming months, with many noting that the evolving conflict in the Middle East and associated increase in fuel costs could hurt their demand.”

People in the bottom half of the income distribution are feeling most of the pain. The Beige Book reported on a semiannual survey of nonprofit community organizations.

It said “most respondents reported a decline in their clients’ financial well-being over the past six months due to elevated prices. One respondent said more people sought foreclosure prevention services amid rising property taxes and insurance, while a homeless shelter operator observed longer stays due to the lack of affordable housing.”

The groups also reported a deteriorating jobs outlook for their clients.

“Some respondents who assist jobseekers noticed fewer entry-level positions available,” the report said. “By contrast, others noted more openings for low-paying jobs — manual labor, part-time or temporary jobs, and gig work — that typically lack health-care benefits or a reliable income.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio state Sens. Beth Liston, D-Dublin, and Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Township, introduced Ohio Senate Bill 396 which would provide Ohio workers with up to 14 weeks of job-protected paid leave for personal medical needs, caring for seriously ill family members or caring for new children.

“It will help to grow our population by telling those workers who want to start families or to add to their families that Ohio has their back,” Blessing said. 

More than three-fourths of Ohioans do not have access to paid leave and a typical Ohio worker who takes four weeks of unpaid leave loses nearly $3,100, according to Time to Care Ohio.

“That means when they have a family health emergency, they are faced with a devastating choice — do they stay home with a sick child? Do they care for an aging parent in need? Do they tend to their own health crisis, or do they keep their paycheck?” Blessing said. 

No Ohioan should have to make that choice, he said. 

The bill would create a paid family leave fund maintained by the state from an additional payroll contribution from both employees and employers of about 0.4%. The family and medical leave insurance fund would be in custody of the treasurer of state, but not part of the state treasury. 

The bill would allow someone to take off up to 14 weeks for a qualifying event and up to 18 weeks a year.  

Under the bill, workers would be paid 85% of their pay with a maximum benefit up to $1,231 per week. An employee would also have their job protected while they are on leave. 

The director of Ohio Job and Family Services would administer the program, which would begin in 2028. 

An employer with less than 15 employees would be exempt from the payroll contribution, but their employees would still contribute their half and be eligible for pay. 

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year. 

But 40% of Ohio workers are not eligible for the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to Time to Care Ohio.

Both of Liston’s now-adult children were born during her medical residency and her husband ended up staying home with their kids due to the high cost of child care. Liston was able to take six weeks of unpaid leave when her daughter was born. 

“We built up credit card debt, which we struggled to stay on top of, even after my paycheck came back,” she said. “My son was born at the end of my residency, and once again, they entered a time of no income.” 

Her family eventually moved to Columbus in part because of financial stresses. 

“(Our debt) snowballed as we couldn’t climb out of the hole that began when my daughter was born,” Liston said. “Out of necessity, I started working full-time at my current employer four and a half weeks after my son was born. … It’s really hard to recover from the financial hit of taking unpaid leave.” 

Madison Greenspan’s three-year-old twin daughters were born prematurely at 27 weeks and spent weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. 

Despite saving up vacation and sick days, she went back to work three weeks after her caesarean section. 

“When it takes 45 and 65 days for your children to come home from the hospital, you start doing the math in your head and making some really hard choices,” said Greenspan, who lives in the Cleveland area. 

“Be there to hold them, advocate for them when they’re in the NICU, or be there to take care of them when they can finally come home,” she said. “We are forcing parents to make the impossible decision to be there for the NICU babies, or to keep their jobs to care for those babies when they come home.”

After having her daughters home for a month and half, she got a letter in the mail from her employer saying her family and medical leave was running out and they needed to know her plans for returning to work.  

“But that was the same week that one of my daughters had a medical emergency that required me to keep her alive with CPR on the living room floor until medics arrived,” Greenspan said. “How could I possibly go back to work at this time, when we were still just fighting for basic survival and better health for our daughters?” 

If state-funded paid family leave existed, she believes she would have had a chance to keep her job and care for her daughters. 

“It was hard losing my job because my career has always been part of who I am, and I have lost so much myself that year,” Greenspan said. “I just really want to keep that one piece.”

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have guaranteed paid leave: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.  

The Ohio bill was introduced last month and has yet to have had any hearings so far in the Senate Financial Institutions, Insurance and Technology Committee. 

Blessing said he thinks the Republican leadership in the Ohio Statehouse is going to have to look at this bill. 

“I would imagine it is incredibly popular amongst Ohioans,” he said. 

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Bailey Magers and Sunil Kumar cut strange figures on Pensacola Beach. Bags of disinfectant solution surrounded them on the white sand; their gloved hands juggled test tubes while layers of rubber and plastic shielded their skin from the elements. As the two organized their seawater samples on the popular Florida beach last August, an older woman wearing a swimsuit walked over to ask what they were doing.

“We’re just actively monitoring water quality,” they told her, but she pressed on.

“Are you looking for that flesh-eating bacteria?”

“We’re looking into it,” they replied, hoping not to frighten her. The woman turned back toward the ocean, her curiosity satisfied. As she walked away, Kumar noticed that she had scrapes and bruises on her body. A few minutes later, he watched her step into the waves. He shook off a chill and returned to the task at hand. 

Magers and Kumar study a bacteria called Vibrio, part of a lineage of ancient marine species that likely emerged sometime around the Paleozoic Era. Enormous, shallow seas flooded the massive, interconnected supercontinents that constituted the Earth’s landmass at the time, and complex marine ecosystems developed that thrived in these temperate, freshly-formed bodies of water. Researchers think there are more than 70 Vibrio species in the environment today, hundreds of millions of years later. The organisms float in warm, brackish water, attaching themselves to plankton and algae and accumulating in prolific water-filtering species like clams and oysters. 

A small number of Vibrio species can sicken and even kill. In worst-case scenarios, a person who has been exposed to the most dangerous of them — by swimming in brackish water with an open wound or ingesting a piece of raw shellfish that is contaminated with the tasteless and odorless toxin — may find themselves with only hours before the flesh on one or more extremities starts to bruise, swell, and decay. Without the quick aid of powerful antibiotics, septic shock can set in and lead to death. Anyone can get infected, though it is much more likely in people who have liver disease or are immunocompromised, elderly, or diabetic.

Climate change is making the world’s oceans, which have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, more hospitable to Vibrio. Research shows that temperature and salinity are the largest predictors of how widespread Vibrio bacteria are. As water temperatures rise, so does the concentration of Vibrio in seawater — boosting the risk of infection for beachgoers and shellfish consumers. The bacteria start getting active in water temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and multiply rapidly as coastal waters warm throughout the summer. In recent years, scientists have documented Vibrio expanding into places that were once too cold to support the bacteria, pushing as far north along the U.S. East Coast as Maine and appearing with more prevalence in temperate seas around the world. 

Vibriosis infections in general are the leading cause of shellfish-related illness in the U.S. They have increased “more than any other illness caused by a pathogen in the U.S. food supply” since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, started keeping tabs on such illnesses in 1996, according to a 2019 analysis by the International Association for Food Protection. The report attributed the precipitous rise to a “perfect storm” of factors that include climate change, food handling practices, expanding globalization, a patchwork of regulatory oversight, and improved diagnosis. 

On their conspicuous expeditions to Pensacola and other Sunshine State beaches, Magers and Kumar are trying to understand where, and when, harmful Vibrio species are present across the state. The research they’re doing is part of an ongoing effort by a laboratory at the University of Florida to create a Vibrio early warning system for the eastern United States — a program that can alert public health departments to high Vibrio concentrations in any given area a month in advance. How many limbs would be saved, Magers wonders, if doctors and nurses could be warned ahead of time that their emergency rooms would soon see an uptick in these chronically underdiagnosed infections? 

The work serves more than one purpose: As Vibrio bacteria spread north into cooler waters, they serve as a first warning signal of changing marine conditions — giving researchers a heads-up that the familiar composition of marine species in their local waters may be starting to shift. In Europe’s Baltic Sea, for example, a spike in Vibrio infections in July 2014 closely mirrored a heatwave that rapidly warmed the shallow sea. The incident showed researchers that Vibrio spikes herald unusually warm marine conditions — and they have since been utilized as barometers for ocean heatwaves and sea-surface warming patterns, not just food safety.

“We see Vibrio as the indicator for climate change,” said Kyle Brumfield, a microbiologist at the University of Maryland who has been studying the bacteria for a decade. “We can use the presence of Vibrio and Vibrio cases as a proxy for water health in general.”

The CDC estimates that about 80,000 cases of vibriosis occur in the U.S. every year, resulting in about 100 deaths. Of those 80,000 cases, most are caused by a Vibrio called parahaemolyticus, which most commonly results in gastroenteritis, or food poisoning. The vast majority of the deaths, however, are caused by a type of Vibrio called vulnificus — the Latin word for “wound-making.”

Vulnificus is so potent it can squeeze through a pinhole-sized cut in the skin and lead to death in just 24 hours. In the last five years, the CDC registered 429 such vulnificus cases, plus 136 foodborne cases. But even though foodborne cases are less numerous, the patients that contract vulnificus by eating contaminated shellfish are more likely to die than those infected via open wounds. Thirteen percent of those nonfoodborne cases died, compared to 32 percent of people who got the infection from eating seafood. Most cases occur in the Gulf and Atlantic coastal regions.

As far as infectious diseases go, vulnificus is exceedingly rare: The CDC reports between 150 and 200 cases a year. The sexually-transmitted disease chlamydia, by comparison, one of the most common bacterial infections in the U.S., infects northward of 1.5 million Americans annually. But vulnificus’ astonishing speed and high fatality rate — 15 to 50 percent, depending on the health of the person exposed and the route of infection — makes it a unique public health threat, particularly as climate change grows its pathways of exposure. 

Vulnificus is not the kind of pathogen you’d want behaving erratically, but that’s exactly what it’s been doing since the late 2010s. Across the Eastern Seaboard, local and federal health officials have been reporting “unusual increases” in vulnificus prevalence — jagged spikes in infections that appear to correspond to extreme weather events like hurricanes and marine heatwaves.

In 2022 and 2024, years when the brackish water that Vibrio bacteria thrive in was pushed inland by major hurricanes, Florida’s public health department reported 17 and 19 deaths, respectively, linked to vulnificus exposure via open wounds. North Carolina, New York, and Connecticut also saw small clusters of infections during a record-breaking heatwave in the summer of 2023. “As coastal water temperatures increase,” the CDC warned in its investigation of those outbreaks, “V. vulnificus infections are expected to become more common.”

A 2023 study that analyzed a 30-year database of confirmed vulnificus infections from outdoor recreation along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts found the northern boundary of infections has moved north by a rate of 30 miles per year since 1998. The study noted that “V. vulnificus infections may expand their current range to encompass major population centers around New York,” and that annual case numbers may double as temperatures rise and America’s elderly population grows. 

“In the 1980s, Vibrio abundance would increase in the late spring and stay high through the summer and drop in the middle of October,” Brumfield, who conducts research on Vibrio in Maryland, said. “Now … we can pretty much find them almost year-round.”

Two ways to get infected

Just how worried we should be about the changing dynamics of Vibrio bacteria depends on who you ask and what you read. The gruesome and fast-acting nature of the vulnificus infection makes it enticing fodder for local and national news media, fueling a spree of terrifying reports every time a new severe infection or death surfaces. “Virginia dad wades in calf-high water, dies 2 weeks later of flesh-eating bacteria that ‘ravaged’ his legs,” read a recent headline in People magazine. “2 dead after eating oysters, contracting flesh-eating bacteria, officials say,” per a 2025 web story about two deaths linked to oyster consumption in Louisiana and Florida. Like many others in their mold, neither story mentions how rare the bacteria are. 

The press is bad news for some in the seafood industry, which does not welcome a national conversation about the rise in vibriosis cases, vulnificus in particular. Shellfish farmers and industry representatives that Grist spoke to in Florida and New York argued media attention on the safety of their products is unwarranted. “‘Flesh-eating bacteria,’” said Leslie Sturmer, a researcher who works for the University of Florida’s shellfish aquaculture extension program and consults with the shellfish industry on research and regulation — “the media loves it.”

Paul McCormick, an oyster farmer in Long Island who sells 750,000 oysters a year, thinks all press is bad press. “Even if the title of your article says ‘New York oysters are the safest oysters in the universe,’” he told me on the phone from his office in East Moriches in January, “you’ve already created a problem.”

In unrefrigerated oysters left out in warm conditions, Vibrio bacteria reproduce every 20 minutes. But in 2010, states began deploying strict protocols known as “Vibrio control plans,” which require harvesters to rapidly cool their catch onboard and then refrigerate it at a shellfish processing facility within a set number of hours. The measures have proven effective at stopping the growth of Vibrio in harvested shellfish and preventing disease.  

The fact that infections can happen in one of two ways — shellfish consumption and seawater exposure — makes it easy to shift blame and point fingers. Consumers have more control over how much exposure they have to Vibrio than they have with E. coli, for example. A person with a kidney condition can choose not to eat oysters on the half shell. E. Coli, often found in raw vegetables, is far tricker to avoid. Likewise, someone with an open wound can opt not to bathe in brackish waters if they are aware of the risks lurking in the surf.

For shellfish industry representatives, personal responsibility is the primary way to bring caseloads down. “The person is the risk,” said Sturmer. “Not the climate, not the water, not the bacteria.” Implicitly, this appears to be the government’s position as well: There is currently no numerical threshold at which state public health agencies will “shut down” a beach for outdoor recreation, though states will issue public advisories and, very rarely, close beaches if they happen to find high levels of Vibrio in the water.

But that perspective doesn’t account for the rapid marine changes brought on by climate change, the patchiness of vibriosis awareness, and the fact that Americans often make personal decisions that are at odds with their own health and safety.

The shellfishers Grist spoke to fully acknowledged the research underpinning Vibrio’s spread. McCormick studied environmental science in college, and Sturmer is running her own climate experiments in a laboratory in the fishing town of Cedar Key, Florida, putting different kinds of clams and oysters through heat stress tests to determine which species are best equipped to weather the decades ahead. Marine mollusks are uniquely threatened by rising ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, and sea level rise, issues that can lead to thin shells, low crop yields, and mass die-offs on farms. A detailed understanding of climate science, in other words, is good business for those who make their living fishing.

The problem, according to Sturmer, is that shellfishers have been unfairly singled out for a health issue that doesn’t affect most consumers and is more often contracted by ocean bathing rather than raw oyster consumption. While beaches stay open even when Vibrio bacteria are present in the water and lead to infections, a small number of foodborne vibriosis cases can trigger state closures of shellfish harvesting areas and product recalls. The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science noted that these precautions “erode consumer confidence and likely decrease sales.” 

Leslie Sturmer checks on oysters growing in her laboratory in Cedar Key. Sturmer puts baby oysters through heat stress tests to see which species will be able to withstand rising temperatures. Zoya Teirstein / Grist

The panic that ensues after media reports of Vibrio infections has a similar effect: A 2024 study asked more than 350 shellfish consumers in Rhode Island — a state that relies heavily on its shellfish industry, particularly in summer months when people vacation along the coastline — to bid on entrees of raw oysters and clams. After showing study participants a real newspaper article about a 2015 Vibrio outbreak linked to an oyster farm in Massachusetts, the researchers reported that the news had a “significant negative impact” on participants’ willingness to bid on oysters. It had a depressive effect on clam sales, too.

“You should really be out there beating the drum on botulism or salmonella or E. Coli,” Sturmer told me on a recent visit to her lab in Cedar Key. “Why worry about [vulnificus] when the number of cases are so minimal?” Sturmer is quick to point out that even the term “flesh-eating bacteria” is a misnomer. She’s right, in a sense: The bacteria doesn’t “eat” tissue; it destroys it. But it’s hard to say whether someone who has survived a bout of necrotizing fasciitis, the medical term for what vulnificus does to the flesh, would care to dispute the difference.

Protecting consumers from being sickened by the deadly bacteria isn’t as simple as trusting people with underlying medical conditions not to eat shellfish. Americans consume 2.5 billion oysters every year, half of which are eaten raw. Vibrio infections, which most often resemble food poisoning, are still underreported and underrecognized, even among individuals who are most at risk of developing a severe infection. Vulnificus infections are also underreported, but much less so than other Vibrio-related infections because they often require a hospital or emergency room visit. 

“I’ve cared for many people with salmonella infections and water-borne infectious processes, but this is the one that is likely the most serious,” said Norman Beatty, an associate professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine who is also a practicing infectious disease doctor in Gainesville, and has seen limbs and lives lost to vulnificus. 

Identifying coastal areas most at risk

When it comes to preventing Vibrio infections, the work Magers and Kumar are doing could take some of the onus off of individual responsibility. The researchers are identifying which parts of the eastern U.S. coastline will be most risky for overall vibriosis infections, and vulnificus specifically, as waters warm. Alongside a group of microbiologists from the University of Maryland, including Brumfield, the scientists have developed a computer model that can predict how high the vibriosis risk will be in any given coastal county on the Gulf or East coasts a month in advance. The team trained their model by pairing the CDC’s count of Vibrio-related foodborne and waterborne illnesses from 1997 to 2019 with satellite data that measures the conditions that fuel Vibrio growth, such as water temperature and salinity. 

The system is far from perfect. When the model was first trained and evaluated, it was only 23 percent precise in pinpointing high-risk counties, meaning just one in four of the counties the program labeled as high-risk actually ended up seeing a vibriosis case in a given month. But it was very good at determining which counties were low-risk, capturing those regions with 99 percent precision. And it improved over time as the quality of the data they fed it got better. When they had the model do a test run on data collected by the Florida Department of Public Health from 2020 to 2024, 72 percent of total cases occurred in counties the tool flagged as high-risk for vibriosis. 

Perhaps most significantly, the model was especially adept at predicting high-risk counties ahead of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024 — more than 80 percent of the vibriosis cases that occurred in Florida in the aftermath of those hurricanes were reported in counties the model had already flagged as high-risk. 

The tool is geared toward predicting water-borne infections, but it may also provide useful information to the shellfishing industry, though the system isn’t a replacement for the established protocols farmers already use — protocols that have proven to be effective, particularly in states that are aggressive about enforcing them. What the new tool could do, however, is supplement those Vibrio control plans, especially when an upcoming weather pattern deviates from the historical norm — something that has been happening a lot lately.

States currently use a rolling five-year average illness rate to calculate how many minutes or hours harvested shellfish can stay on a boat before moving into indoor refrigeration. In February, for example, Florida shellfishers have to get their oysters into refrigeration by 5 p.m. on the day of harvest. In July, they have no more than two hours, or they have to cool their catch in ice slurries on board. But these timetables don’t account for sudden temperature anomalies.

“It’s going to be 80 degrees this week in Alabama,” Andy DePaola, a Gulf Coast oyster farmer, told me in February. “Yet I can keep my oysters out for, like, 14 hours, because the rolling five-year average is 20 degrees less than that anomaly.” (DePaola is also a microbiologist who worked on Vibrio at the FDA for the better part of 40 years, and is the author of the 2019 analysis that diagnosed the “perfect storm” for Vibrio spread.)

But the shellfish industry doesn’t appear enthusiastic about the idea of assigning counties a risk category based on Vibrio prevalence. Vibrio researchers, by their own admission, haven’t done a good job of reaching out to shellfishers to find out how such a tool would work best for them. At an August meeting of the Delaware Bay Section of the ​​New Jersey Shellfisheries Council last year, the director of a shellfish research laboratory brought up the idea of using Vibrio predictive models to “determine optimal days to harvest to reduce the transfer of infection to humans.” A lengthy discussion ensued. The consensus, ultimately, was that the model was a bad idea, and could be “used against the industry.”

A member of the Texas Task Force 1 Water Search and Rescue Team is scrubbed down with bleach and soap in order to reduce the chances of Vibrio vulnificus infection after a day of running boat rescues in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on September 5, 2005. Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images via Grist

Not all shellfishers are dead set against the kind of work Magers and Kumar are doing. “If Vibrio is an indicator of global warming, then that’s just an unfortunate bad luck scene for us,” McCormick, the Long Island oysterman, said. But it’s hard for him to see what relevance that research has to an industry that already has its own methods of controlling Vibrio. “In my mind that exists in one realm and the safety of our oysters is a whole different thing.”

As we move deeper into the 21st century, however, those two realms will have more overlap. If countries keep up their current pace of greenhouse gas emissions, most coastal communities along the East Coast will be environmentally primed for vibriosis outbreaks during peak summer months by midcentury. It won’t be a question of if there will be more vibriosis cases — it will be a matter of how to manage them. That’s the scenario Magers and Kumar are preparing for.

“In 30, 40, 100 years, these models won’t even matter because the risk is so high,” said Magers, the lead author of the predictive modeling study. “When it gets to that point, it would probably be a different kind of modeling strategy where we’d be modeling case numbers instead of infection risk.” 

Know the facts about Vibrio, a bacteria found in coastal waters and raw oysters

Stay informed about your risk level as you enjoy fresh shellfish and beach trips this summer. 

By Lyndsey Gilpin

This story was produced by Grist and co-published with States Newsroom.

What is Vibrio? 

Vibrio is a type of bacteria that has been around for hundreds of millions of years; researchers have identified more than 70 species. These species are mostly harmless, but some can cause infection. The bacteria thrive in warm, brackish (slightly salty) water such as estuaries and bays, attaching themselves to plankton and algae and accumulating in prolific water-filtering species like clams and oysters. Serious infections typically happen either through exposure to an open wound in saltwater or, more rarely, ingestion of raw shellfish that contain the bacteria. 

The concentration of Vibrio in coastal waterways is higher from May through October, when temperatures are warmer. Most U.S. cases are in the Gulf and Atlantic coastal regions. Vibrio is tasteless and odorless. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, estimates that about 80,000 cases of vibriosis (an infection caused by the Vibrio bacteria) occur in the U.S. every year, resulting in about 100 deaths. Florida has the highest number of cases, with about 20 percent reported from the Indian River Lagoon region, a popular recreation destination on the Atlantic Coast. 

What happens if you come into contact with Vibrio?

Most people are not at risk of developing illness, or they may have only mild symptoms. However, those with compromised immune systems can develop life-threatening infections. 

The majority of the 80,000 annual U.S. cases are caused by a Vibrio called parahaemolyticus, which most often infects people via the raw seafood they eat and usually leads to gastroenteritis, or food poisoning. The symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, fever and chills, weakness, fatigue, and headache. 

A different type of Vibrio, vulnificus, is much less common, but can cause severe illness. The infected wound may be red, swollen, and painful, or you may develop mild gastrointestinal issues such as watery diarrhea, stomach cramps, or vomiting. Symptoms typically appear within 12 to 24 hours and can last up to seven days. Healthy people tend to fight off the infection on their own. But if flesh on one or more extremities to bruise, swell, and decay, or symptoms of sepsis occur, it is a medical emergency. Vulnificus can squeeze through a pinhole-sized cut in the skin and lead to death in just 24 hours. This severe infection is rare, but it has a 15 to 50 percent fatality rate; the vast majority of the 100 annual deaths are from this strain. A severe vulnificus infection is much more likely in people who have liver disease or are immunocompromised, elderly, or diabetic.

How concerned should I be — and how do I stay safe? 

You don’t necessarily need to avoid oyster bars or cancel your beach trip, but you should know how to stay informed and take precautions. Here are a few ways to do so:

• Be aware that there are many fearmongering headlines about flesh-eating bacteria, despite vulnificus being one of the rarest forms of Vibrio exposure. Vibrio doesn’t attack random healthy flesh — there must be exposure through an open wound (a break in the skin) or it must be ingested, most often through raw shellfish. People who get sick often have underlying health conditions. 
• If you don’t feel well after eating raw seafood or swimming in brackish water, don’t wait — go to the doctor. Some medical professionals, particularly those in areas where the bacteria hasn’t historically infected people, don’t know what vibriosis is. Advocate for yourself — ask for a test. 
• If you have liver disease, your risk is much higher than the general population’s. Keep an eye out for public health advisories from state and local health officials and avoid swimming in ocean water with an open wound or consuming raw shellfish in warm months. Note that ocean temperatures, especially along the lower Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, have been elevated outside the typical seasonal range in some recent years.
• Be aware when eating raw shellfish, particularly raw oysters. It’s best to be confident that the shellfish was refrigerated and stored in compliance with government standards. The vast majority of foodborne Vibrio cases lead to food poisoning. (Food poisoning from bacteria is always a risk when eating uncooked shellfish and many other foods like salads or deli meat.)

How is climate change affecting Vibrio?

Climate change is making the world’s oceans, which have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, more hospitable to Vibrio. The bacteria start getting active in temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and multiply rapidly as waters warm throughout the summer. Vibrio is expanding into places that were once too cold to support it, farther north on the U.S. East coast and in other temperate seas around the world. As it spreads, it serves as a first warning signal of changing marine conditions.

What’s being done to address Vibrio?

There’s a lot of research happening to better understand the risks these bacteria pose under changing environmental conditions: A group of microbiologists at the University of Maryland, alongside other scientists, have developed a computer model that can predict how high the risk of vibriosis will be in any given coastal county in the eastern U.S. a month in advance. The team trained its model, which is still under development, by pairing the CDC’s count of Vibrio-related foodborne and waterborne illnesses from 1997 to 2019 with satellite data that measures the conditions that fuel Vibrio growth, such as water temperature and salinity. It’s far from perfect, but it’s improving. And it was especially adept at predicting high-risk counties ahead of hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024 — more than 80 percent of the vibriosis cases that occurred in Florida in the aftermath of those hurricanes were reported in counties the model had already flagged as high-risk. 

This story was originally produced by News From The States, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Vallery entered guilty pleas on April 24 in two of three cases filed against him. A second OVI count — filed separately as a breath-test charge — was dismissed by plea agreement.

On the OVI conviction, Judge Robert Hart sentenced Vallery to 30 days in jail, suspending 27 of those days. Vallery received credit for 3 days already served and was credited with completing a Driving Intervention Program in lieu of the remaining jail time. He was placed on two years of probation under conditions that prohibit him from entering bars, consuming alcohol, using illegal drugs or marijuana, and require random drug and alcohol testing and completion of a formal drug and alcohol assessment and follow-up.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/tiffin-detective-pleads-guilty-to-ovi-gets-2-year-probation/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The extensions — filed simultaneously on Friday, April 24 with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services — cover the Toledo Molding & Die facility in Tiffin, the TMD plant in Bowling Green, and First Brands’ Cleveland corporate headquarters. All three letters cite the same reason for the extended retention: to allow the company “to continue to pursue sales of certain of its U.S. facilities.”

At the Tiffin plant, located at 1441 N. Maule Rd., 345 of the facility’s 407 workers have had their WARN notices extended through May 31. In Bowling Green, 263 of 302 workers received the same extension. At the Cleveland corporate office at 127 Public Square, 61 employees will be retained through May 31.

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/first-brands-extends-deadlines-at-all-3-ohio-sites-tiffin-included/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The company made the announcement publicly via Facebook on Tuesday, April 28, 2026. In its statement, AFS said Fine Sinter had completed a review of North American demand and overall group production capacity, and determined that future production for the North American market will be sourced from other group facilities.

“A transition period of approximately two years has been established,” AFS said in the statement. “While the transition will take place in steps over the next couple of years, the first adjustments are anticipated to begin later this year.”

Read the full story at https://tiffinohio.net/posts/afs-closing-tiffin-plant-by-march-2028-175-jobs-to-be-cut/.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“I really want the voters to understand and know that their local law enforcement leaders and I are in full support of Beth Tischler for judge,” Hilton said in the video. “I would like to ask all of you to join me next Tuesday, May 5th, in support of Beth Tischler for Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas judge.”

Hilton is not simply a supporter. According to campaign finance records on file with the Sandusky County Board of Elections, Hilton serves as Tischler’s campaign treasurer — a formal legal role that makes him responsible for managing and reporting all campaign funds on her behalf.

Hilton is also a documented participant in the same network of relationships TiffinOhio.net reported on last week. He was one of six Sandusky County officials who signed a March 6, 2023, letter to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost requesting approval of the abatement of Finding for Recovery 2020-001, a $33,300 state audit finding against Smith. That letter called Braun a “disgraced former prosecutor” and characterized the investigation as having been driven by Braun for “inappropriate or retaliatory reasons.” The Ohio Attorney General’s Office approved the abatement in April 2023. No repayment was ever required of Smith.

Smith is seeking re-election in the May 5 Republican primary for his seat on the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas, Probate and Juvenile Division. Following TiffinOhio.net’s reporting on the abatement, Smith posted publicly on Facebook endorsing Tischler’s campaign, writing “#VoteForTheChangeWeNeedVoteBethTischler.” Tischler is challenging incumbent Judge Jeremiah Ray in the Republican primary for the General Division of the Court of Common Pleas.

The primary election is Tuesday, May 5.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Without naming his opponent directly, Click used a cactus emoji — an apparent reference to Eric Watson of Tiffin — to make the allegation. “Spoke to a farmer this morning who told me that 🌵 is placing signs on people’s property without permission,” Click wrote. “Not only is that unethical it’s also illegal.”

The post included an AI-generated image of a man in overalls holding a “No Trespassing” sign bearing the same cactus emoji.

Watson, reached by TiffinOhio.net for comment Tuesday, denied the accusation and pushed back on the manner in which it was made.

“Let me be clear: I do not put signs on anyone’s property without permission,” Watson said. “I’m a property owner myself, and I respect private property rights. Period.”

Watson said he believes Click may be referring to a situation that had already been resolved before the post was published. “If Gary is referring to the gentleman I spoke with several days ago, that situation was already addressed,” he said. “We had a respectful conversation, cleared everything up, and he knows I never placed anything on his property. That’s not how we operate our campaign.”

Watson also noted that Click has him blocked on Facebook, meaning Watson would not have seen the post without it being brought to his attention. “Apparently he’s comfortable making accusations he thinks I won’t see or respond to,” Watson said.

Watson characterized the post as a distraction from substantive campaign issues. “This is the same kind of baseless stuff I’ve come to expect,” he said. “Instead of focusing on real issues, he’s pushing rumors. I’m focused on the voters and doing things the right way.”

Attempts to reach Click for comment were unsuccessful.

Click and Watson are competing in the Republican primary for Ohio House District 88 on May 5. Click has held the seat since 2021. Democrat Aaron Jones is running unopposed in the Democratic primary and will face the Republican winner in November.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Hundreds of trucking companies, mostly from out of state, have collectively racked up $5.2 million in unpaid tolls in two years, according to the Ohio Turnpike Commission. 

In something of a public shaming, the organization released a list of 315 companies that owe at least $5,000 in unpaid tolls to the turnpike, which connects northern Ohio to Indiana and Pennsylvania. 

About 90% of those companies are out-of-staters. The Turnpike Commission said it only added the companies to the public-facing list if they have been sent at least three invoices and been sent to collections via the Ohio Attorney General’s office. 

“It could be that they don’t have a transponder, or it could be that they’re ignoring their invoices,” said Brian Newbacher, a spokesperson for the Ohio Turnpike Commission. “It’s not fair to the people who do pay the tolls and it’s not fair to our operation.”

The $5.2 million is a small slice of annual revenue – the turnpike received $388.5 million in toll revenue last year. But unpaid tolls deflate the total. And turnpike officials suspect that truckers are removing front-facing license plates or otherwise obscuring them to avoid identification and toll payments, Newbacher said. 

Spokespersons for the Ohio Attorney General’s office didn’t respond to inquiries. 

The biggest debtor on the list, NYC Trucking Inc., owes about $156,000. Federal transportation records list a residential home in Philadelphia as the company’s address. The company didn’t respond to a phone call.

Some companies proved difficult to locate. Cargo Best Inc. owes about $121,000. Its physical address, listed in federal transportation records, is a loading dock in Chicago. Its mailing address is an office building in St. Petersburg, Florida. Several extensions from its corporate phone line are defunct. 

Uzboys Trans owes $120,000 in unpaid tolls. Alex Abdullev, who identified himself as the company’s owner, said he believes Ohio’s two-year-old open road tolling system (as opposed to the traditional, gated model) sometimes misses the transponder. 

He said neither his company nor his drivers shirked any tolls. 

“Why would I avoid tolls on purpose?” he said. 

However, he said the practice is real within the industry, and he expressed sympathy. Tolls are expensive, he said, and it has gotten a lot harder to make money moving freight. Gas prices are high and the freight market isn’t as strong as it was. 

“Everything is expensive nowadays,” he said. “In this trucking business, it’s hard to survive.”

Pamir Express, which lists a residential Pennsylvania address in federal transportation records, owes nearly $85,000. A person who answered a company phone declined to give his name. He said the Turnpike unfairly charged the company for both its cabs and its trailers, and he said the transponder didn’t work. He also said Pamir Express paid the full $85,000. 

Newbacher, from the Ohio Turnpike Commission, said the attorney general’s office has no record of payment as of Monday evening, but there is sometimes a 72-hour lag after payments are made online or by phone.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio’s property taxes generate about $24 billion each year. Property taxes fund Ohio schools, EMS, fire departments, senior services, services for people with developmental disabilities, public libraries, county health departments, social services, road and bridge maintenance and public parks.

So why would anyone want to abolish them?

Well, it’s a long story. I asked Ohio Senate President Rob McColley about Ohio’s property tax dilemma at the Wyandot County Lincoln Day Dinner in March. He explained that unlike other taxes, property taxes are tied to something that now is treated like an investment commodity.

Property values have consistently increased beyond the rate of inflation, so when properties were reappraised by state and county officials, the property values increased much more than people were prepared to pay. Property taxes are based on a specific percentage of the property value, so any major property valuation increase causes property taxes to spike drastically.

That sounds like a serious problem, but if you really look at the current issue, it’s only surface level.

How did we get here?

The real problem with property taxes in Ohio traces back to the state legislators and their insistence on cutting taxes for the wealthiest individuals and then passing the responsibility for paying for services on to regular folks at the local level.

Since 1934, Ohio has had something called the Local Government Fund. The LGF provides state-shared revenue to counties, municipalities, townships and park districts to aid with operating expenses.

For over generations, the LGF paid out enough to local governments that they didn’t need to ask for much more money. Then Ohio Gov. John Kasich came along, and he began slashing Ohio’s income tax, as well as its tax brackets.

Ohio used to have nine different income tax brackets, which meant people who made more money paid a little more into the system, but in 2005, under Gov. Bob Taft, Ohio passed HB 66, which reduced income taxes by 21% over a period of five years.

In 2013, under Kasich, another 10% income tax cut was enacted over a period of three years with HB 59. In 2015, another 6.3% income tax cut was introduced as part of the state’s budget bill. In 2017, the number of tax brackets was reduced from nine to eight. Then in 2019, another 4% income tax cut was implemented and tax brackets were reduced from eight to six.

In 2023 under current Gov. Mike DeWine, House Bill 33 reduced the percentage paid by the top income tax bracket from 3.99% to 3.75%, then to 3.5% a year later. They had previously paid as high as 7.5% into the system. The number of tax brackets was reduced to two in 2024, then the highest tax rate was reduced to 3.125% in 2025.

Ohio legislators finally killed the state income tax bracket system once and for all with its 2026-27 biennial budget this past year, making one tax bracket at a flat income tax of 2.75% for all, with almost all of the $1.1 billion in “savings” for taxpayers going to the wealthiest people in the state and shifting the tax burden to regular schmucks like you and me.

So why does this matter, and what does this have to do with property taxes?

Well, by reducing the amount of taxes brought in, the state paid out less and less through its Local Government Fund. Townships, counties and municipalities all had to either do more with less, or pass their own tax increases to maintain their standards of living. There also was less in the budget to assist all the other services at the local level.

Just in the past eight years that I’ve been writing for The Daily Chief-Union newspaper in Upper Sandusky, we’ve had to pass new property tax levies for libraries, for schools, for senior services, for developmental disabilities services, for fire and EMS and more.

When current U.S. Sen. Jon Husted was running for lieutenant governor in 2017, he visited our newspaper office. Doing my due diligence, I reached out to local mayors asking if there was anything they wanted me to ask him on their behalf.

The response was unanimous: “Would you pleas stop cutting the Local Government Fund?” The state was lauding its tax cuts and its “rainy day fund” while stripping its funding at the local level, then passing the buck on to local politicians so they had to take the hit when asking for tax increases to make up for what they had lost from the state.

With all those new levies at the local level to make up for lost state revenue, it was only a matter of time before Ohio hit a property tax crisis.

The solution to this crisis is so glaringly simple, but the politicians we have in place today will never implement it. We need to increase the income tax on the wealthiest of Ohioans. Return the tax brackets to what they used to be. Undo all the damage the state has done.

But what is the state attempting to do instead? They want to remove the income tax entirely, like in Florida or Texas, where sales and property taxes are exorbitant. McColley said so himself on the campaign trail and at that Lincoln Day Dinner in March.

The state also is throwing away over $1 billion every year to pay for private school vouchers, which go to families that by a rate of 94% were already attending private school before the voucher system was enacted, but that’s an argument for another day.

If Ohio was able to properly pay out its Local Government Fund, we wouldn’t be so reliant on property tax levies to pay for everything. Property taxes wouldn’t be in crisis because properties wouldn’t need to be taxed as much to make up for what the state doesn’t have the guts to do itself. More money would be available to properly fund our schools. Districts like Wynford wouldn’t need to pass a new income tax just to keep maintaining school services and Upper Sandusky schools sure as hell would have additional funds from the state available to pay for desperately-needed new school buildings.

We need to stop trying to put Band-Aids on our wounds at the local level and instead address the root cause of the infection that created this mess in the first place. Vote for politicians that can fix Ohio’s problems instead of claiming they’re solving them while secretly passing them on to be handled at the local level.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio state Reps. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus, and Monica Robb Blasdel, R-New Waterford, introduced Ohio House Bill 307 last year, which would require local water providers to work with the state to identify lead services lines, develop a plan to replace these lines with safe alternatives, and execute this plan over a 15 year time period.

“Those lead particles can seep into your water unknowingly and that then could be poisoning your children, your family, your relatives,” Jarrells said. “Then the impact of lead poisoning has, unfortunately, devastating impacts on a child’s cognitive abilities.” 

The bill has had three hearings in the Ohio House Development Committee and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency would be responsible for overseeing this mandate if the legislation passes.  

The Ohio Legislative Service Commission estimates the costs associated with the bill is more than $16 billion over the next 15 years. Costs could be offset by grants, loan funding, and various charges and rates imposed on customers. 

“Everybody wants lead lines to be replaced, especially the mayors in our cities, but it’s a lot of money,” said Sarah Biehl, policy director at Ohio Mayors Alliance. 

“It’s not the kind of thing that local governments can just raise sewer rates, raise water rates, and make that happen.” 

The Ohio Municipal League would prefer to see direct funding for lead line replacement, said Kent Scarrett, the league’s executive director. 

“We just know that our smaller communities that have smaller budgets, tighter budgets and less financial bandwidth find it more challenging to do this work,” he said. “We would want the state to do more direct funding for this infrastructure because it benefits the state as a whole.” 

When asked about the cost associated with his bill, Jarrells responded by asking “what about the cost of families who are drinking this poisoned water?”

Jarrells is a survivor of lead poisoning as a child. He had take some speech pathology classes in elementary school due to some cognitive diminishment he believes were from lead poisoning.

“Lead poisoned victims are invisible because most people don’t even know what lead poisoning even is,” he said. “This bill, I believe, is the preventative measure to say we don’t want any more children poisoned by lead.”

Lead water service lines release low levels of toxin into drinking water that can lead to health issues. Drinking water can make up 20% or more of a person’s lead exposure, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act to stop the installation of any new lead service lines in 1986, but it did not require existing lines to be replaced.

Ohio has 745,000 lead service lines and nearly 4,000 Ohio children are tested for high levels of lead poisoning.

About 8.1% of the nation’s lead service lines are in Ohio, but only 3.6% of the population is in Ohio, according to the Ohio Environmental County report. Ohio ranked third in the nation for the most lead pipes in 2021, according to the EPA.

“We’re dealing with aging infrastructure that has yet to be replaced,” Jarrells said.

A federal mandate during the Biden administration requires states to replace lead service lines by 2037.

“We already have to do the work,” Jarrells said. “This bill is an attempt to codify a plan statewide.”

Many Ohio cities are already working on replacing lead service lines and Akron removed its last lead service at the end of last year. 

“We’re extremely proud of being one of the first cities of our age and size to be completely lead line free,” Akron Mayor Shammas Malik said in a news release. 

Akron started removing more than 55,000 lead service lines in the 1960s, said the city’s deputy service director Jeff Bronowski.

“The risk associated with lead is negligible now at this point,” he said.

The average cost to replace a water lead service line was about $5,000, Bronowski said.

Akron used some of their funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to help replace the lead lines, but their main source of funding for the last several years was through a state revolving loan fund.

“Your children are better and healthier for it,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a video message congratulating Akron.

For every dollar invested in lead service line removal in Ohio, the state would see a public health and economic benefit of $32 to $45, according to a 2024 report by the Ohio Environmental Council.

“It is going to cost a lot to do this, but the benefits are very high,” said Rob Moore, the principal for Scioto Analysis, a public policy analysis firm based in Columbus.

Replacing all the lead water pipes in Ohio would grow the state’s economy between $145 and $185 billion over the next 15 years, according to the report.

“If you care about economic growth, if you care about improving the future of Ohio, this is a good investment,” Moore said. “It is expensive, but the benefits are massive.”

Removing lead service lines in Ohio would lead to 9,700 fewer deaths from heart disease, 7,300 fewer cases of anemia, 3,800 cases of depression, 2,400 cases of coronary heart disease, 640 fewer infant deaths, 520 fewer cases of dementia, and 150 fewer cases of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder over the next fifteen years, according to the report.

Removing lead service lines could also lead to higher wages because of higher IQs, according to the report. 

“What the policy will lead to is the reduction of a public health crisis,” said Alicia Smith with Junction Coalition, a Toledo nonprofit organization.

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Testifying at the Ohio Statehouse in favor of or in opposition to a new piece of legislation can be a daunting proposition. But veterans of the practice say it’s a vital component to democracy in the state.

Nearly every day, state officials, leaders of advocacy groups, topic experts and Ohio residents who are impacted by proposed changes share their experiences and opinions in legislative committees.

Those who are well practiced in testifying before committees say there are rules that have to be followed, but the message and the passion a person has for a subject doesn’t have to get lost among the parliamentary procedure, or the potential intimidation factor as an Ohioan stands in front of a panel of elected officials.

“It’s incredibly important to remind them that they have constituents, and that there are people they need to listen to that have all sorts of opinions on what’s going on in the Statehouse,” said Catherine Turcer, head of voting rights advocacy group Common Cause Ohio.

You don’t need to know everything about the Statehouse to know important decisions are made there, and even people who are nervous about testifying in person can take a first step by making a phone call to their district’s senator and/or representative, Turcer said. Any way Ohioans go about it brings needed engagement in the legislative process.

“It gives you an opportunity to articulate what you’re worried about and to make your case about why you care about it,” Turcer said.

Six steps for testifying in person

For those who want to testify either in writing or in person, the Ohio Bar Association lays out the process in six steps. Before thinking of your testimony, find the bill number for the legislation of interest on the Ohio Legislature’s website. The first step to entering your comments into the record is identifying the committee in which the legislation is being considered – whether it’s in the Ohio House or the Ohio Senate – and when the committee will meet to hear testimony on the bill. 

Committees in both chambers have websites where they post committee times. It is also possible to sign up for individual committee mailing lists to receive meeting notices. Committees hold specific hearings for testimony supporting a bill and testimony opposing a bill, then they can hold further hearings for “interested parties,” or all other testimony.

Testimony on a bill can be submitted as written-only – meaning the testimony won’t be given in-person or subject to committee member questions – or submitted as an in-person statement, which the person reads to the committee on the day a specific bill is being considered.

Anyone who hopes to speak in front of the committee is required to fill out a “witness slip.” The House uses a slip that requests basic information. In the Senate, each committee has a different witness slip, according to the Ohio Bar Association. Witness slips can be requested by emailing the chair of an individual committee.

The legislature requires testimony to be submitted 24 hours in advance of a committee hearing, even if it’s being given in-person.

“However, sometimes circumstances will not accommodate this timeframe (particularly if committee notices come out late),” the Ohio Bar Association states in its how-to on testifying before a committee. “In these cases, it is okay to reach out to a chair’s office to see if they can work with you to get your testimony in.”

Turcer said a good way to understand what goes into testifying before a committee is by watching previous committee hearings on the Ohio Channel, where all committee hearings are streamed and recorded.

Confidence, personal stories and a cool head

When it comes to testifying in person, confidence in your argument, a personal story about the direct impact of an issue, and keeping a cool head are all good ways to make your mark, said Danielle Firsich, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, and a frequent testifier in committee rooms.

“If you are focused on the things that affect everyday Ohioans, the things that Ohioans are desperately begging the legislature to address in their everyday lives, you have already won,” Firsich said. “Because you are pulling the focus to where it is supposed to be, with a group of individuals who are supposed to be public servants.”

Turcer said some of the rules of committees – such as directing responses to questions “through the chair, to the representative/senator” – can be cumbersome, but it shouldn’t distract from the goal.

“Do your best, but do not worry,” Turcer said. “The goal here is to share your story and share what you’re about and why this issue is important.”

Things can get heated when issues mean a lot to the people talking about them, but the power a citizen has is to speak about the impact, not focus on the legislators in the room. 

“You’re there to influence them, so the goal is to focus on why the action is a problem, not why the person is the problem,” according to Turcer.

With her work in the reproductive rights space, Firsich has testified many times to challenge bills that she and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio believe fly in the face of Ohio’s constitutional amendment that established the right to an abortion. 

Those topics can bring about impassioned arguments, and back-and-forth with legislators in committees. Firsich said she focuses on scientific data and her decorum, while avoiding distractions that may come from being questioned by legislators.

“It’s why I don’t name-call, I don’t raise my voice, I always have a calm, considerate answer,” Firsich said. “Because I don’t want to give them that gift of throwing me off and getting me riled up.”

Speaking in front of a committee can be intimidating, Firsich acknowledged, but sharing a personal story helps.

“(Legislators) cannot argue the lived experience of a human being who is discussing something that verifiably happened to them,” she said.

Turcer added that it’s worth mentioning to legislators if those testifying traveled long distances to get there, to emphasize the importance of the measure.

The advocates recognize that even hours of testimony against a bill can end with passage of the legislation, as happened with a measure banning gender-affirming care for minors. But that doesn’t negate the importance of speaking up.

“I think that being in the historical record on these major issues, and at such a contentious time as this, is really going to matter,” Firsich said. “I think at the end of the day, people have to remember that they work for us, not the other way around, and we pay their salaries.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.