Internet Postings of Ohio Public Records

  Ohio House Representatives Mike Duffey and Christina Hagan, last week introduced a set of bills professing “the general assembly recognizes that public-use data from government agencies offers an avenue toward open and transparent government, stimulates business innovation, and can help government agencies become more effective; and declaring it to be a public purpose and function of the state to facilitate the ability of the public easily to find, download, and use data sets generated and held by the state government and other public offices, herein creates the DataOhio board to:

• Recommend categories of public records that state agencies and local governments should make available to the public online in an open format;
• Recommend technology standards for open data use in the state that reflect the most current standards nationally and within other states;
• Recommend accounting standards for financial data in the state to facilitate comparison across governmental units and services;
• Recommend metadata definitional standards for nonfinancial data in the state to facilitate comparison and use of this data across governmental units; and
• Consider creation by the state of data.ohio.gov, an online catalog of data sets made available by state agencies and local governments, as well as collaboration with efforts underway at the federal and state levels.

  Secondarily, having “the director of administrative services establish, administer and operate a web site to function as a portal and catalog where public records and data sets of public records, created by state government and other public offices, can be located and accessed by the public online.

  "The web site shall be registered at data.Ohio.gov, and the state shall consider participation and affiliation of data.Ohio.gov with data.gov, the official online data catalog of the United States government.”


Texts of Proposed HB 321 and HB 323 

Ohio House balks at proposed permanent Ohio income-tax cut

   The Columbus Dispatch this morning is carrying an article which is saying “after the state Controlling Board last week approved spending $2.56 billion in federal dollars to expand Medicaid for about 275,000 low-income Ohioans, Sen. Chris Widener’s proposal for a 4 % permanent state income-tax cut in Senate Bill 210, introduced last week, instead wants to take the estimated $400 million gained from expanding Medicaid and turn it into the income-tax cut – and it’s getting a cool reception from House GOP leaders.

  “The entire Senate GOP leadership team signed on to support the bill, which got its first hearing this week,” the  article said. “ Widener, one of the ‘yes’ votes on the board, has touted it as a way to build upon the phased-in 10 percent income-tax cut passed in the two-year budget that took effect in September, saying that by allowing all Ohio taxpayers to directly benefit from the unbudgeted savings is the economically sensible and the right thing to do,”

  House Republicans don’t exactly see it that way. House Speaker William G. Batchelder, was attributed as saying    he’s still looking for assurances that $400 million is the correct amount, and that, if it is, there are other issues that probably should be addressed first, saying “veterans are not being adequately treated, and the tremendous problems with heroin addiction in this state among the many problems we’d probably should look at before doing a (tax) cut of that size.”.

Reduced Food Stamp Benefits

  With cuts to food stamp benefits starting tomorrow – by some estimates totaling $5 billion just a few weeks before the start of the holiday season – we have yet another  issue about to show more face.

  “Congress has the power to stop the cutbacks,” CNNMoney reported last week, “but experts say that’s highly unlikely at a time when Republicans are calling for even more drastic cuts to food stamps, which benefits were bumped up in the midst of the recession… The temporary provision expires Nov. 1, and families nationwide have already received emails and letters warning that their benefits were going to be reduced.

  “Some 47.6 million people --  or nearly 15% of the population – are now getting food stamps, according to September federal data,”  CNN’s article said. “That compares to 26.3 million, or 8.7% of the population, in 2007.”

  Focus House Bill 3102 .

  FoxNews yesterday morning now suggests “as House and Senate negotiators met for the first joint talks on the bill that includes sharp cuts to food-stamp funding, an open question was whether lawmakers would get serious about targeting fraud in the massive program.

  “A recent inspector general audit suggested a full-blown crackdown on food stamp fraud could save $222 million a year,” the article said. “Food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are part of the larger farm bill, but are being dealt with through the House’s separate Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity bill. Among the anti-fraud measures in the bill is one that requires states to get tough on households that repeatedly ask for replacement EBT cards, which have largely replaced food stamps or vouchers as the method by which food is actually purchased at stores.”