Karen Kasler

The bill to legalize sports gambling in Ohio is not even a week old. And it was changed even before its first hearing on Wednesday.

The school funding formula that’s in the latest version of the two-year state budget now being considered by the Ohio Senate will likely cost more than expected. The formula passed by the House last month seeks to calculate state aid based on 60% property values and 40% income in each school district.

Former Speaker Larry Householder (R-Glenford) remains in the House as he awaits trial on federal bribery charges related to the 2019 passage of House Bill 6, the sweeping energy law.

All Ohio students could be eligible for vouchers to go to any private school in the state under a bill being proposed by House Republicans.

Ohio’s sales tax revenues were up for the last month, but income tax collections were way down.

A bill that would put changes and restrictions on Ohio laws related to early voting, ballot drop boxes and other election laws has finally been introduced, after weeks of speculation.

Ohio’s libraries say they’ll lose money if the $74.7 billion state budget stays as is. And they told a Senate committee looking into the budget that they also won’t share in the billions that the state and local governments will get from the American Rescue Plan.

One of the four bills that address the interaction between police and people on the streets, including protestors, could have stopped what’s become a common practice – videotaping cops on the job.

A group has taken the first step to asking voters next year to eliminate qualified immunity for police officers and other government employees accused in shootings or other actions.

The head of the Senate committee looking over the House-approved version of the state budget says he’s concerned that the new school funding formula includes money that was supposed to be earmarked specifically to help economically disadvantaged kids catch up to their wealthier counterparts.

Three employees of a conservative think tank in Ohio plan to appeal a decision by a Franklin County judge, dismissing their lawsuit over municipal income taxes paid during the pandemic.

The Ohio Senate is now considering the $74.7 billion two-year state budget, which includes a 2% income tax cut. And the Republican who’s leading the committee looking at the spending plan says he hopes that will change.

Ohio will lose a seat in the US House of Representatives starting with next year's election, bringing its total to 15 – its smallest Congressional delegation since 1833. And it’s unclear who among the 12 Republicans and four Democrats stands to lose their district when the lines are redrawn for next year’s election.

Groups that represent elections officials and voters are cautiously approaching a Republican-backed bill to make changes in Ohio’s laws on early voting, voter ID and other issues – just a few months after a historic election in which the GOP won the state but their candidate lost the White House. 

Ohio has joined the list of states where Republicans want to make changes to voting laws after the 2020 election. And there are changes in this bill that appeal to both parties, but some that Democrats have spoken against.

On a mostly party line vote, the Ohio House has approved the version of the $74.4 billion two-year state budget that was proposed by Republican leadership.

A bill to list party affiliations of candidates for court of appeals and the Ohio Supreme Court on the November ballot has passed the state Senate – on a party line vote.

One of the changes made by Ohio House leaders to the budget of their fellow Republican Gov. Mike DeWine deals with language for people who want to become parents through adoption.

The Ohio House will vote on its version of the two-year state budget Wednesday, after it cleared a House committee with all Republicans and two Democrats voting for it. But there are still questions about the changes to the school funding formula in it.

A week after House Republicans stripped some of Gov. Mike DeWine’s gun regulations from the state budget, minority House Democrats have responded with a package of even tougher legislation.

Arts organizations in Ohio and around the country are waiting for the relaunch of a system that will allow them to apply for billions in COVID relief – after it shut down on the day it was supposed to open for business in early April.

Fourteen Ohio House Republicans have signed onto a bill that could allow the state to reject federal gun laws and rulings that state lawmakers feel violate the Second Amendment.

An income tax cut inserted into the budget by Ohio House Republicans only strengthens the state’s case against a ban on tax cuts in the latest federal COVID relief package, according to the official who’s leading the lawsuit over that ban.

The top Democrat on the committee hearing the Ohio House's version of the two-year state budget says she’s not surprised that Republicans have added a 2% income tax cut, though that wasn’t in the initial proposal from their fellow Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. But she’s frustrated by it. 

Ohio House Republicans added a provision into Gov. Mike DeWine’s two-year state budget that would erase violations of his COVID health orders by bars and taverns, such as selling too many cocktails to go, not enforcing social distancing and masks or allowing drinking past curfew. But it would also refund those liquor permit holders what they paid in fines.

Republicans in the Ohio House have added a tax cut and changes to school funding to Gov. Mike DeWine’s two year budget. And they’ve made some other changes that Democrats are calling “a mixed bag”.

A coalition of bowling alleys, bars and other businesses that sell lottery games, and mayors is pushing back and rejecting any plan to allow Ohio’s four casinos to control sports gambling in the state. This comes as a proposal on sports gambling is set to come out of the Senate soon.

Some 15 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses had to be discarded after an incident at a production plant in Maryland. And it’s unclear if that will affect Ohio’s plans to continue its vaccine rollout, now that everyone over 16 is eligible to get a shot.

This week Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law the end of a billion dollars in charges that Ohio electric ratepayers would have paid to prop up the state’s two nuclear power plants. This new law effectively takes the nuclear bailout out of the energy law known as House Bill 6, which passed in 2019.

There are a little over 167 coronavirus cases per 100,000 Ohio residents this week. That’s more than three times Gov. Mike DeWine’s target number to end all health orders such as the mask mandate issued in July.