Rotunda Rumblings

Back to work: Welcome back to our regular programming! We hope you enjoyed your holidays and the special content we brought you over the last two weeks. Today, we’ll catch you up on some news you might have missed and look at a few things on the horizon.

No progress: Why can’t Ohio lawmakers pass a nondiscrimination law protecting LGBTQ people, when the idea has strong public support and the backing of the influential business community? Cleveland.com’s Laura Hancock tackled that question and looked behind the scenes at the attempts to get it done in recent years.

Too late for Ohio: It’s too bad for Ohio that the census didn’t occur in 2018. Based on population estimates then, Ohio would have hung onto all of its 16 congressional seats. But projections based on new estimates, show Ohio looks like a solid bet to drop to 15 after the 2020 census, cleveland.com’s Rich Exner reports. Exner lists Ohio among the projected states set to lose seats, along with neighboring West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Check out the national breakdown of gainers and losers.

Money, age and income: Draw a diagonal line across Ohio, roughly following the path of Interstate 71 from Cleveland to Cincinnati, and you’ll generally find the counties with the highest incomes and education levels. But in southern and southeastern Ohio, you’ll find older, lower income residents with fewer college degrees. Those are some of the trends confirmed by updated estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, Exner notes. See rankings for income, age and education for every Ohio city and Ohio county with “census snapshots” at this link.

Oops: A paperwork problem will keep Andrew Yang off Ohio’s March 17 presidential primary ballot, cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias reports. Yang intends to mount a write-in campaign. A paperwork error is also forcing State Rep. Paula Hicks-Hudson, the third-ranking Democrat in the Ohio House, to run as a as a write-in, Liz Skalka reports for the Toledo Blade. ““I’m human,” the Toledo representative said. “This is something that’s not that unusual.”

Refugees welcome here: Gov. Mike DeWine is one of more than 30 governors who have told the Trump administration that they will keep welcoming refugees into their states. As cleveland.com’s Jeremy Pelzer reports, DeWine told U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a letter that Ohio was well prepared and cited “the administration’s stringent vetting process.”

Capital idea: As lawmakers ponder the state’s next capital budget this year, they’ll consider a lot of wish lists from different interests. Tobias and cleveland.com’s Emily Bamforth have details on some of what Northeast Ohio wants.

Party time: A new bill in the Ohio legislature would allow judicial candidates to have their party affiliation listed on general election ballots, Hancock reports. The bill, which has bipartisan support, wouldn’t affect this year’s judicial races if it passes. It would take effect in 2021.

No consideration: Not surprisingly, the Ohio Supreme Court has declined to reconsider its decision that effectively struck down Cleveland’s Fannie Lewis law requiring public construction contractors hire city residents. Hancock has details.

Call for change: Some relief from those annoying robocalls is on the way. As cleveland.com’s Sabrina Eaton reports, a new law that Rep. Bob Latta of Bowling Green helped draft “will require telephone carriers to provide free call-authentication technology to stop fake phone numbers from showing up on caller IDs, require companies to let consumers opt in or out of robocalls, and give the Federal Communications Commission power to boost enforcement actions against unlawful robocallers with higher fines and a longer statute of limitations.”

No to Roe: Nearly every Republican member of Congress from Ohio has signed on to a legal brief that urges the U.S. Supreme Court to use a Louisiana abortion case the court will hear in March to reconsider the historic Roe v. Wade case that set forth a “right to abortion," and to overrule it, “if appropriate,” Eaton reports. Several of the state’s Democrats signed onto a different brief that argues that the Louisiana law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital should be declared unconstitutional.

Dennis endorses: Ex-Cleveland mayor, congressman and gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich is backing the longshot presidential campaign of Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Eaton reports. Gabbard joined Kucinich in meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017, and in denouncing last week’s attack that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

Back to the Buckeye State: President Donald Trump is coming back to Ohio again this week. As Pelzer reports, Trump has scheduled a rally on Thursday at Toledo’s Huntington Center. The day before that, his daughter-in-law and senior campaign adviser Lara Trump will hold an event in Columbus to “highlight the accomplishments of the Administration and the commitments of the president,” according to the Trump campaign.

Disincentive for conservation: Tobias reminds us that starting this month, owners of hybrid and electric vehicles in Ohio will owe more money when they renew their vehicle registrations. The fees were part of the deal last year to raise the gas tax.

Livestocking up: The U.S. and Canada have agreed to reduce phosphorus runoff into Lake Erie by 40 percent by 2025, but that’s not likely to happen. As the Columbus Dispatch’s Beth Burger explains, even though DeWine has unveiled a $172 million program to reduce the runoff, which feeds toxic algal blooms in the lake, the Ohio Department of Agriculture has been issuing more livestock permits. As of 2018, there were 775 livestock farms in the Maumee River basin – up more than 40 percent since 2005.

A new (pay)day: Ohio’s new limits on payday lenders’ interest rates and loan amounts took effect in April, and so far they’re working – at least, “kind of,” according to Jessie Balmert of the Cincinnati Enquirer. The attorney general’s office is fielding fewer complaints about payday lenders, though they’ve still received 15 such complaints since late April. And while the number of payday-loan locations in Ohio has dropped from about 650 to 229, “the changes haven’t eliminated the payday lending industry as business owners feared,” Balmert writes.

Into thin air: Remember all that talk last fall by DeWine about banning flavored vaping products in Ohio? Just a couple of months later, the issue seems dead in the Ohio legislature, writes Jackie Borchardt of the Enquirer. House Speaker Larry Householder says he doubts bills to ban flavored e-cigarettes will pass, and even the bills’ sponsor, state Rep. Tom Patton, isn’t optimistic. “I get a feeling from my colleagues that nobody wants to talk about it,” he said.

Now that’s constituent service: Alicia Hopkins, an advocate for people with disabilities, didn’t know what to do when her wheelchair broke down last Saturday – that is, until House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes came to her aid. As Alan Ashworth of the Akron Beacon Journal explains, the Akron Democrat was arriving home when she saw Hopkins in distress and arranged for a bus to take her and her broken wheelchair home. “She’s a true hero to me,” Hopkins said.

Lobbying Lineup

Five groups that lobbied on House Bill 51, which would require the Ohio Department of Transportation to install center-line rumble strips on all two-lane highways with a speed limit of at least 45 miles per hour. State lobbying forms don’t require people to disclose which side they’re on.

1. Lyft, Inc.

2. Akron-Summit Convention and Visitors Bureau

3. Caterpillar, Inc.

4. Ohio Conference of AAA Clubs

5. Nationwide Insurance Company

On the Move

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown has hired a new communications director in his Washington, D.C. office: Trudy Perkins, who was previously communications director for the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Formerly a television news producer in Maryland and New York, Perkins spent 17 years on Cummings’ communications team.

Bill Blair, a Canton attorney and lobbyist, is joining McKinley Advisors as a senior partner. The firm recently was founded by former TimkenSteel CEO Tim Timken.

Birthdays

Michael DiSalle, Ohio’s 60th governor (1908-1981)

Straight from the Source

“We’re not sure why Tim Ryan thought he could ever be president, or vice president, or in any room where an important decision was made.”

-Writer Stephen Robinson, in a piece for the website Wonkette that skewered the male presidential candidates who ended their candidacies in 2019 and “bid adieu to all the Tim Ryans who thought they were what America needed or wanted.”

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