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Tag: Ohio Statehouse

  • Lauren Welch Running For Ohio State Representative Seat – Cleveland Scene

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    It seems that Lauren Welch has caught the political bug.

    Just three months after former Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack chose Lauren Welch to serve out the remainder of his term on Cleveland City Counil, Welch is announcing her own campaign as she nears the end of her short-lived tenure at City Hall—a bid for the Ohio Statehouse.

    Welch has collected enough signatures to officially launch a campaign for District 20, a seat that’s been held by Terrence Upchurch since January 2023. Upchurch himself will be termed-out come November.

    District 20 encompasses most of Downtown Cleveland, Slavic Village and Central, and runs up to University Circle and North Collinwood. 

    Neighborhoods that Welch, as a Downtown resident for the past two years, believes she’s well-equipped to advocate for. She told Scene there are two reasons behind the run —she loves the work and wants that love to translate into state policy.

    “For me, it’s about having competent individuals in these seats who are able to work across the aisle,” she said. “We need common-sense folks who understand these systems who are ready to fight for us in these places. And to be occupying seats to actually do the work.”

    Welch’s brief three-month stint as Ward 3’s representative was brief but she helped open up a kiosk on Public Square and used casino funds for the Warehouse District. She ran a series of newsletters, TL;3, that took a more conversational approach to what was happening in the city.

    “Hold space for joy just as deliberatively as you hold space for work,” Welch wrote in one of her newsletters.

    Born and raised in Ohio City, Welch moved to Los Angeles in her twenties to work in communications. She’s been on three boards—RTA, the Cleveland Press Club and Environmental Health Watch—and worked at Say Yes! Cleveland before McCormack handed off the Ward 3 job to her in October. She was one of Crain’s Notable Leaders in Communications in 2024.

    At 37, Welch is a newcomer to politics but champions her youthful energy as an asset to the job. She feels that public policy should meet lived experience, whether that be through funding public transit, tightening curfews to curb car break-ins, or fully supporting Cleveland’s co-response model for crisis reponse á la Tanisha’s Law.

    In her view, those pieces of local policy that have clear influences at the Statehouse.

    “What Council reinforced for me is that many of the challenges facing our neighborhoods are decisions that are made and shaped by decisions made in Columbus,” Welch said.

    Mike Seals, a labor organizer who ran against Upchurch in 2022, is Welch’s only challenger so far, according to Cuyahoga County Board of Elections records. Once her signatures are verified, Welch will compete for votes against him and anyone else in the May 5 primary election.

    Welch said she’s already doorknocking with help from her team of 10, yet is still on the lookout for a campaign manager. If she’s elected, Welch said she’ll operate a people’s-first seat, one that balances dollars for lakefront development—she supports Burke closing—equally with issues around gun control and mental health.

    And she’s not looking to be your run-of-the-mill career politician.

    “I’m a girl who went to Jane Addams High on East 30th,” she said. “I grew up in Ohio City. I’ve been in various neighborhoods, in this community, doing the work. And I want to hear from them what’s most important in this moment.”

    “I mean, I don’t want to wake up in November and regret the representation that we have,” she said. “I’ll say that.”

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    Mark Oprea

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  • Ohio Bill Would Remove Hep B From Required Preschool Vaccines, Emphasize Right to Vaccine Exemptions – Cleveland Scene

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    A new Ohio bill would remove a requirement that the hepatitis B vaccine be administered to children attending child care or preschools. It would also bar public schools from keeping out unvaccinated students if outbreaks of any disease occur.

    The legislation is concerning for pediatricians, who worry about the state of public health should the bill be passed and signed into law.

    Ohio House Bill 561 was introduced by state Reps. Melanie Miller, R-Ashland, and Monica Robb Blasdel, R-New Waterford.

    One of the main goals of the bill, according to the sponsors, is to underscore medical, religious, and conscientious exemptions that already exist in Ohio law with regard to vaccines.

    “This bill is about transparency and fairness,” said Robb Blasdel in a release announcing the bill. “Ohio parents should never be denied their lawful rights or face confusion about the exemption process.”

    The bill also takes a cue from a federal effort, seeking to remove the hepatitis B vaccine requirement from the preschool regulations.

    Children in child care, Head Start programs, and preschool are required to be vaccinatedagainst 14 diseases, unless exempt: chicken pox (also called varicella), diphtheria, haemophilus influenzae type b (HIB), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, measles, mumps, pertussis, pneumonia, polio, rotavirus, rubella, and tetanus.

    Ohio currently requires vaccinations for 10 diseases to attend K-12 schools: diphtheria, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, pertussis, polio, rubella, tetanus, and chicken pox.

    The federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices mentioned hepatitis B as one immunization for which eligibility requirements may change on the national level.

    Hepatitis B has also seen rising case levels in states like Florida, where mandates for the vaccine are being lifted.

    According to the Hepatitis B Foundation, the virus is transmitted through blood and sexual fluids, which can most commonly occur by direct contact with infected blood; from an infected pregnant person to their newborn during pregnancy and childbirth; from needles and other medical/dental equipments or procedures that are contaminated or not sterile; from unprotected sex; or from use of illegal or “street” drugs.

    While vaccination rates remain high in Ohio, the vaccination rate overall has dropped in recent years below the national average, particularly for kindergarteners.

    Melissa Wervey Gittelman, CEO for the Ohio chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics said the group has “a lot of concerns” about the new bill.

    She and leaders in the group plan to engage with legislators about those concerns as the bill goes along in the legislative process.

    Children’s medical decisions should ultimately be up to the parent, in consultation with their trusted medical professional, Gittelman said.

    “What we often find is people are against (vaccinations) because they read something online,” she told the Capital Journal.

    “But when they are able to talk to a medical professional, they change their minds because they hear the science behind it.”

    Hepatitis B has been in the spotlight due to the advisory committee’s consideration of changing vaccination practices, but also because of political leaders like President Donald Trump giving incorrect statements on the vaccine and others expressing skepticism as to the need for children to receive the vaccine.

    The CDC has recommended a hepatitis B vaccine for infants since 1991.

    Ohio is one of 14 states that have laws allowing vaccine exemptions due to religious or conscientious reasons. Medical exemptions exist nationwide.

    Under the new Ohio bill, schools would not be allowed to require additional documentation for students to be considered exempt from vaccine requirements, and no “specific exemption form” could be used.

    The legislation would also bar schools from “excluding healthy, uninfected children” from attending school based on their vaccination status if they have a legal exemption, even during disease outbreaks.

    Gittelman said not having the proper documentation could lead to confusion as to vaccination status of children, even if they’re fully vaccinated.

    “We’ve seen it where children have the exemption form, but they actually have been vaccinated,” said Gittelman.

    “When there is an outbreak, we don’t really know who is or who isn’t, and this bill doesn’t address that.”

    Not allowing schools to remove unvaccinated children from a facility during an outbreak puts public health at risk, she said.

    She pointed to the recent measles outbreak in New Albany as evidence that public health protocols that remove students who are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status help keep children and the public safe.

    “Those who haven’t had a second dose (of the measles vaccine), they gave that to them so they could be protected,” Gittelman said.

    “Unvaccinated kids stayed out of the school for 21 days. Taking away our ability to do that puts many kids at risk.”

    As Gittelman and other medical professionals talk with legislators while the bill is considered, she said the importance of having and engaging with a trusted physician will be a top message, because the vaccine discussion continues to be a political talking point.

    “Vaccines have become really political, and I think that’s very unfortunate, because health shouldn’t be political,” Gittelman said.

    The bill was assigned to the Ohio House Health Committee last week, but has not yet been scheduled for hearings.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Hands Out $12 Billion in Annual Tax Breaks With Little to Show for Many, Study Says – Cleveland Scene

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    Ohio hands out $12 billion a year in tax breaks, mostly to wealthy individuals and big corporations. Yet the state’s economy continues to lag behind the national average, a report released earlier this month says.

    In all, Ohio has 177 tax exemptions or deductions worth $20 million a year or more. In its last session, the General Assembly limited or eliminated nine, but it increased the cost of others, the report by Policy Matters Ohio said. 

    Tax breaks on certain people and businesses are effectively tax increases on everybody else. That’s so because government services have to be paid for, and those who remain on the tax rolls have to bear the burden.

    “Unproductive tax breaks that favor corporations and wealthy Ohioans have riddled the state tax code for years,” the report said. 

    At more than $8 billion a year, the state’s biggest cuts are those to businesses. 

    The biggest single tax break — costing $2.5 billion a year — primarily targets supplies to manufacturers in an attempt to avoid taxing them repeatedly through the process. 

    The state seems to have something to show for it. Ohio has the third-most manufacturing jobs in the U.S., and the sixth-most per 100,000 residents. 

    However, other such tax breaks have long raised questions. One is the LLC tax break, which costs nearly $1 billion a year. Sold in 2013 as a way to spur job creation, it greatly limits taxes on income run through limited liability companies. 

    “Wealthy individuals benefit most from the LLC loophole,” the Policy Matters report said. “In (fiscal year) 2023, a majority of filers claiming the deduction claimed less than $20,000 and received 6.9% of the total value of such deductions. Meanwhile, the 8.3% of filers who claimed $240,000 or more received 41.1% of the deductions.” 

    The state has given up billions in revenue on that deduction and paying for the private agency JobsOhio on promises they would supercharge the job market to everyone’s benefit. But more than 25% of Ohioans are poor enough to be on Medicaid, and the state has consistently ranked in the top 10 in unemploymentthis year. 

    Ohio also lags in a broader economic sense. Last year it ranked 28th in terms of per-capita gross domestic product.

    That might mean that other business breaks also aren’t helping most Ohioans.

    Unlike most states, Ohio has no tax on corporate profits. It taxes gross receipts under its “Commercial Activity Tax” instead.

    In 2023, the legislature raised the threshold at which companies had to start paying it from $1 million a year to $6 million, and it eliminated certain minimum payments. Since most businesses were already paying the minimum $150 a year, more than half the benefit of the higher threshold went to businesses large enough to take in more than $6 million annually.

    That tax break costs the state $1.5 billion a year, the Policy Matters report said. The increased thresholds will grow the fastest of any over the next two years, it added.

    The report also faulted Gov. Mike DeWine for vetoing a measure in the state budget that would have stopped new data centers from getting tax exemptions. Such centers employ few people, and they’re being blamed for rapid increases in Ohioans’ electricity bills.

    “The sales tax exemption for data centers, one of the state’s fast-growing tax breaks, will be worth $289.9 million over the FY 2026-27 biennium, according to the Tax Expenditure Report, and probably a lot more if more recently announced investments were included,” JobsOhio researchers wrote. “In many cases, the exemption amounts to as much as $1 million for each data-center job created.”

    The tax breaks persist even as lawmakers plead poverty when it comes to funding public education. Abandoning an earlier commitment to pony up at least $666 million more for education over the next two years, the budget DeWine signed slashed that amount by about two-thirds. Meanwhile, the legislature found $600 million to help the billionaire owners of the Cleveland Browns build a new stadium outside the city.

    The Policy Matters Ohio report said the legislature opted to look past evidence that some tax breaks weren’t performing as promised. In 2016, the General Assembly passed a bipartisan bill to create a Tax Expenditure Review Committee.

    “However, lawmakers found living up to the promise of good government harder than anticipated,” the report said. “They eliminated the (review committee) in the 2022-23 budget bill, after a weak review of 15 sales-tax breaks and failing to carry out its mandates at all in the 2020-21 budget period.”

    That and other factors mean that once tax breaks are signed into law, reform is “excruciatingly difficult,” the report said.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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