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Ohio: Alan Melamed

June 1, 2009 - 01:24 pm
NEWS FEED: Columbus Dispatch

Thomas Suddes: Easy money from slots could prove enticing to legislators

By Thomas Suddes

Example: The slot machine fight. Contrary to folklore, that's no more about morals than is personal marijuana use (de facto legal in Ohio) and, among consenting adults, anything-goes sexual conduct (legal in Ohio since the mid-1970s).

The slots fight is really over (1) who gets richer, thanks to General Assembly decisions and (2) whether schools, if slots became legal, ever again could pass property-tax levies. Schools can't want levies to become harder to pass. And levies aren't going away. But legalizing slots might make levies a tougher sell - as the Ohio Lottery might have done.

As everyone "knows," the Ohio Lottery was "supposed to take care of" schools.

Read More at Columbus Dispatch >
There have been 39 comments posted in response to this story.

February 3, 2009 - 08:40 am
NEWS FEED: Columbus Dispatch

Pay cuts, medical-facility fees stir outcries

By Catherine Candisky

The administration announced yesterday that the governor will ask nearly all state employees to take pay cuts of up to 6 percent to save as much as $200 million in the next two years. Reductions would be based on salaries; the lowest-paid employees would be exempt.

Meanwhile, Ohio hospitals would pay $598 million in the two-year budget period because of a new hospital franchise fee, and nursing homes would cough up an additional $285 million under a near doubling of the nursing-home "bed tax."

A statewide coalition of nursing homes has been running television advertisements for a week urging viewers to call Strickland and urge him not to cut funding to nursing homes.

Read More at Columbus Dispatch >
There have been 27 comments posted in response to this story.