Democratic News

Marking the three-year anniversary of the creation of JobsOhio, State Reps. John Patrick Carney (D-Columbus) and Ronald V. Gerberry (D-Austintown) today called on GOP leaders to hold hearings on the JobsOhio Accountability Act, citing stagnant job creation and underperformance at the state’s controversial economic development entity.

Since the creation of JobsOhio three years ago, investigative news reports have chipped away at the secret, so-called economic development entity, finding an agency mired in conflicts-of-interest questions, misappropriations, accounting problems and severe underperformance. One analysis found that JobsOhio actually did worse than its state-run predecessor, targeting $16.8 million more in taxpayer subsidies to corporations while bringing in 1,258 fewer job commitments.

Meanwhile, Ohio trails the national job creation rate, and ranks 45^th for private-sector job growth over the last year. 31,000 more Ohioans are looking for jobs than at this time last year.

Today’s call follows a litany of requests to GOP officials for transparency and accountability at JobsOhio. Most requests—including those for investigations and public records—remain unanswered.

A copy of the letter can be seen below:

State Reps. Heather Bishoff (D–Blacklick) and Michael Henne (R-Clayton) on Wednesday outlined a bill to provide transparency in police records. Their legislation, House Bill 429, would require private police forces to comply with the same records requirements as public forces.

State Rep. John Rogers (D-Mentor-on-the-Lake) recently introduced the “Student Safety Act,” bipartisan legislation to increase student safety by requiring specific security features for newly-constructed school buildings. 

State Reps. Heather Bishoff (D-Blacklick) and Robert Hackett (R-London) on Thursday introduced a bipartisan measure to clarify social media privacy laws for students, school employees and school districts. 

On Wednesday, Rep. Mike Sheehy (D-Oregon) announced the passage of House Bill 399, legislation which designates the first Friday in May as Prescription Drug Abuse Awareness & Education Day. The bill was inspired by a constituent in the district who testified before the Toledo opioid sub-committee hearing over the summer.

State Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) today called on Secretary of State Jon Husted to restore illegally purged Ohio voters to the rolls and count the vote of any voter who should never have been purged in the first place. Yesterday, Husted ended negotiations with voting rights advocates and filed a motion in federal district court seeking to keep purged voters off the rolls and to continue to throw out the ballots of the wrongly purged.

“Over the past five years, under Husted, Ohio has led the nation in purging voters from the rolls. That's not on accident. That's on purpose. And the court caught him. And like so many other GOP officials across the country who want to tip elections in their favor, Husted is still refusing to make things right even after he was caught red-handed,” said Rep. Clyde.

State Rep. John Boccieri (D-Poland) today decried the lack of results from Ohio charter schools in light of the Ohio Department of Education (ODE)’s release of unflattering school sponsor evaluations. The Mahoning County ESC was one of many sponsors that received an overall rating of “poor,” the lowest on the scale, while also earning a “D” for academic performance, an “ineffective” for compliance, and a “significantly below standards” rating for quality practices.

“These ratings show just how ineffective charter schools have been under the current law and what a financial bust they are for taxpayers and students,” Rep. Boccieri said. “Ohio spent $1 billion in the recent state budget— the most ever documented— on for-profit charter schools that cannot make the grade above the worst performing public schools. We have been far too flexible in allowing our sponsors to duck quality measures, conflicts of interest and performance standards.”