Mayor from Ohio. (Getty image file photo.)
Each morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio, the country and the world that catches our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye and have published it here.
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Catching our eyes
• Pay to play. Jeremy Pelzer of Cleveland.com reports: “Ohio’s doomed submetering bill passed amid avalanche of GOP campaign contributions“
State records show that donors representing utilities gave nearly $72,000 to top Ohio lawmakers and GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy around the same time lawmakers pushed legislation that benefited them in June.
The timing of the donations led one of the state’s key Democratic senators to accuse GOP lawmakers of moving the vetoed bill solely because of the donations – an allegation that legislative leaders fiercely denied.
Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed the bill two weeks after it passed, saying it was “fundamentally flawed” and did not provide sufficient consumer protections.
• Teaching only one path to success. Karen Kasler of the Statehouse News Bureau reports: “DeWine signs 13 bills, including one requiring schools to teach ‘success sequences’“
Gov. Mike DeWine signed 13 bills into law on Tuesday, a holdover from lawmakers passing them in June before a recess that is expected to last until the November election.
They included Senate Bill 276, which began as an uncontroversial plan to license school psychologists coming to Ohio who are licensed in six other states. But it was met with partisan opposition when a Conservative-backed proposal titled “The Success Sequence” was added last month.
• Deserts associated with childbirth. Ohio Newsroom’s Erin Gottsacker reports: “One of Ohio’s fastest-growing counties will soon lose its labor and supply department“
More than two dozen Ohio hospitals have closed or consolidated maternity care since 2018, according to Ohio Hospital Association estimates. Another one will be added to the mix at the end of this month.
OhioHealth plans to close the labor and delivery unit at Grady Memorial Hospital in central Ohio’s Delaware County on July 31.
• Vivek Campaign Credit Card. WCMH’s Katie Millard and Colleen Marshall report: “The legislator files a complaint accusing Ramaswamy of incorrectly reporting the funds“
Ohio Senate Democrats on Tuesday filed a complaint with the secretary of state alleging that Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy violated campaign finance law by failing to disclose a $500,000 payment.
State Sen. Kent Smith (D-Euclid) filed a complaint Tuesday accusing Ramaswamy and his running mate, state Senate President Rob McColley, of violating campaign finance law by not specifying what the credit cards were used for. Smith claims that credit card payments may reflect any purchases, which allegedly violates the specificity required by law.
