Wages in Ohio make health care unaffordable for many Ohioans. Approximately 20 percent of all Ohioans live in families earning less than needed to meet their basic family budget. A basic family budget for Ohioans includes costs for housing, utilities, food, health care, child care, transportation, clothing, school supplies, and taxes. When families do not earn enough to meet all of these basic needs, they spend more than they can afford on health care or go without health care coverage altogether. While some Ohioans manage to pay for health care or health insurance, often they cannot afford to do so, and over one million Ohioans, 11 percent of Ohioans under the age of 65, lack health insurance altogether. Policymakers should use a progressive sliding scale when considering what families at different income levels can afford to spend on health care. People with lower incomes can afford to spend not only less in absolute dollars, but also less as a percentage of their income — they have less disposable income, with more of their basic family budgets devoted to other core necessities such as housing, food, and transportation. People with low incomes can pay only nominal amounts toward health care. Limiting total health spending to 4 percent of household income, for households earning between 300 and 500 percent of the federal poverty line, would enable most of these Ohioans to “take up” coverage and enroll. The upper limit that anyone should be expected to pay is approximately 8.5 percent of income.e should be expected to pay is approximately 8.5 percent of income.

Executive Summary

Full Report

In the spring of 2008, Ohio’s state government finds itself in familiar territory – facing a budget shortfall because of an inadequate revenue system and a slowing economy. Despite the worsening economic outlook, state policy makers refuse to consider revenue-raising alternatives and are committed to allowing a scheduled cut in income tax rates to take place in 2009.

Next year’s cut would be the fifth in a series of annual cuts started in 2005 that will reduce income taxes by approximately $2.2 billion next year when compared to original rates. The gains are skewed to the wealthy. The top 20 percent of Ohio families by income will receive $1.56 billion, or 70 percent, of the aggregate $2.22 billion annual reduction.

Now is the time to begin examining the state’s options for raising revenue, both to avert a deficit and to invest in needed priorities. Policy Matters Ohio worked with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a Washington, D.C., based research institute with a sophisticated model of state and federal taxation systems, to review three possibilities: (1) freezing rates at 2008 levels, (2) restoring the original 7.5 percent top rate for the highest income families, and (3) and rolling back rates to 2007 levels.

We recommend moving forward with the first two options immediately. Combined, these options would preserve $817 million in income tax revenue in 2009. The top rate applies to less than two percent of all Ohio families, while all others would pay the same rates they do this year.

The third option, combined with a restoration of the 7.5 percent top rate, may be necessary if the state’s fiscal health worsens. These actions would increase income tax revenue by $1.16 billion over the expected level in calendar 2009. The vast majority of the additional revenue, 78 percent, or just above $900 million, would be paid by the top 20 percent of income earners.

Press Release

Full Report

by Dr. Jon Honeck, in The Hillsboro Times-Gazette 

For an economy in transition, retraining workers who have lost their jobs is one of the most important and promising roles government can play.

A retrained workforce helps companies find the right employees, allows workers to be productive, and families to stay in the middle class. But, for the past eight years, Ohio’s retraining program has not adequately fulfilled its promise.

Ohio’s most important retraining program distributes federal funding from the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to local boards that run the program.

Ohio’s WIA program does not serve as many unemployed workers as it should and does not spend all of its resources. Over 3,100 people completed Ohio’s program after receiving training or other intensive services in the most recent program year, compared to 5,700 in Pennsylvania and 4,600 in Wisconsin, a state that has half of our population.

The program has two challenges: improving outreach and recruitment, and removing barriers to training. Local areas are responsible for outreach through the delivery of “rapid response” services at workplaces that face a large layoff.

At a minimum, these services include informational sessions about unemployment compensation and WIA one-stop services.

Unfortunately, most rapid response services in Ohio do not exceed the minimum required by law. More labor-intensive and effective techniques are seldom used.

With a cooperative employer, rapid response could establish a transition center at the worksite to help workers plan their job searches or develop a training plan; create workforce transition committees with employees, management, and community representation; and train individuals as advocates and counselors to help their fellow workers get the assistance they need.

This lack of extra effort and creativity in rapid response is the single greatest contributor to a buildup of unspent program funds. The latest federal budget proposal will recapture unspent WIA funds from Ohio and other states.

The state will have to give back $20 million to the federal government, even as 78,000 Ohioans used up their six months of unemployment benefits last year without finding another job.

It is essential that the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services move forward with key administrative reforms that would make the system work better in the short run.

First, the agency needs to set minimum numerical targets for the number of unemployed workers participating in services in each local area. These targets could be based on measures of unemployment and announced layoffs.

Areas that do not meet minimum targets should prepare a corrective action plan and ultimately face sanctions if they fail to raise their service levels. Second, the system should remove unnecessary barriers to training by streamlining the procedures that local boards use to determine eligibility for tuition support.

In the long run, Ohio will need to bring its dislocated worker program up to par with those of other states. Unemployed workers are often reluctant to enter training programs that last longer than the duration of unemployment benefits.

This prevents them from taking more intensive training courses that provide a significant boost in the labor market.

Many states that have greater success in moving unemployed workers into training find ways to extend income support for trainees and supplement WIA training funds with other revenues.

The odds of a successful transition to a new job are increased when workers have more time to adjust, but federal plant closing notification law is full of loopholes and weakly enforced.

Some states, including Illinois, Wisconsin, and California, improved on federal policy by passing layoff notice legislation that covers smaller layoffs and creates penalties for non-complying employers.

Although state dislocated workers policy reform must start from within the WIA system, it must involve all stakeholders in order to be successful.

Employers, organized labor, higher education institutions, and community groups all have a stake in improving outcomes for dislocated workers. Many states are experimenting with innovative ways to better connect employers with training institutions and create career ladders for workers to move up.

Employers, even in manufacturing, find that they are facing skills shortages that will become worse with the retirement of the baby boom generation.

A successful retraining program for unemployed workers is critical to ensuring that they contribute to the economy, use their skills, and have the means to support themselves and their families.

Dr. Jon Honeck is the senior researcher for Policy Matters Ohio, a non-partisan policy research institute.

Keeping the Promise? examines one of the most complex reforms in education: charter schools. In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of essays published by Rethinking Schools in collaboration with the Center for Community Change, authors including Policy Matters Ohio director Amy Hanauer and nationally known educators Ted Sizer and Linda Darling-Hammond examine the charter school movement’s founding visions, on-the-ground realities, and untapped potential.

Essays also include interviews with leaders of community-based charter schools, analyses of charters around the country; and an exploration of the charter-takeover of the New Orleans public schools after Hurricane Katrina.

Order your copy today!

Undernews

America’s public education system is being taken over by a variety of educational mercenaries under such guises as charter schools. Amy Hanauer of Policy Matters writes in an important new book, “Keeping the Promise?,” that in Ohio alone powerful business interests drain $500 million a year from public education.

The record of charter schools ranges from the mediocre to the disastrous. In DC, for example, less than 15% of charter schools meet federal and academic performance goals.

In New Orleans more than half of the city’s public schools were replaced by charters, with the charters skimming the cream off the top of the teacher pool.

‘Keeping the Promise?’ is a collection of essays examines the charter school movement’s founding visions, on-the-ground realities, and untapped potential – within the context of an unswerving commitment to democratic, equitable public schools. Essays include policy overviews from nationally known educators such as Ted Sizer and Linda Darling-Hammond, interviews with leaders of community-based charter schools, and analyses of how charters have developed in cities such as New Orleans and Washington, D.C.

There’s good news, too: the story of Boston’s semi-independent “pilot schools” that are part of the system and use union teachers but set their own course. The four year graduation rate for 2006 was more than 23 percentage points higher than tradition Boston public high schools: 75% vs. 52%. Pilot 10th graders also score 23% higher on the 2006 state English exam.

This is one of the best books we’ve seen from an advocacy group. Rethinking Public Schools has put together a factual, thoughtful work that looks at both the positives and the negatives and shows how a semi-independent schools could actually work to the benefit of all. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone involved in public education and/or charter schools, whether as a teacher, a politician, a parent, or a journalist.

Ohio’s foreclosure crisis continued to worsen in 2007 with another 6.7 percent increase in filings from the year before, according to the annual study issued by Policy Matters Ohio. Overall, there were 84,751 new foreclosure filings in 2007, up from 79,435 in 2006. The study includes filings in state courts reported to the Ohio Supreme Court and filings in Ohio’s two federal district courts. Foreclosure filings grew by double-digit rates in 39 of Ohio’s 88 counties, and state-wide have more than quintupled since 1995. Cuyahoga County led the state once again in foreclosure filings per person, followed by Montgomery, Summit and Lucas counties.

Press Release

Full Report

View our map of Ohio County foreclosure filings (1995-2007)

Ohio’s foreclosure crisis continued to worsen in 2007 with another 6.7 percent increase in filings from the year before, according to the annual study issued by Policy Matters Ohio. Overall, there were 84,751 new foreclosure filings in 2007, up from 79,435 in 2006. The study includes filings in state courts reported to the Ohio Supreme Court and filings in Ohio’s two federal district courts. Foreclosure filings grew by double-digit rates in 39 of Ohio’s 88 counties, and state-wide have more than quintupled since 1995. Cuyahoga County led the state once again in foreclosure filings per person, followed by Montgomery, Summit and Lucas counties.

Press Release

Full Report

View our map of Ohio County foreclosure filings: 1995-2008

Americans own about 70 percent of the value in their homes, a sharp counterpoint to reports that homeowners are swamped by debt, a new survey shows.

Columbus Dispatch

The national survey, conducted by the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University, indicates recent problems with mortgages are isolated to a small share of consumers.

“When it comes right down to it, consumers are managing their affairs better than Bear Stearns,” said economist Randall Olsen, director of the research center.

He thinks the main problem isn’t the prevalence of bad loans, but rather the inability of financial institutions to measure the potential losses from those loans.

“The biggest problem here is pricing the risk,” he said.

In early March, the Federal Reserve reported that homeowners’ share of equity had dropped to 47.9 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the lowest percentage since the figures were first kept in 1945.

The low number was one of many indicators analysts used to show the poor health of the housing economy. High-profile meltdowns at investment banks, such as Bear Stearns, gave added weight to the idea of a far-reaching problem.

Olsen acknowledged that his study’s numbers and the Fed’s are considerably different. He expressed confidence in the validity of the data from his survey and noted that the Fed used a different type of data to come to its conclusion.

The OSU survey shows that the share of troubled borrowers is in the single digits, even among borrowers who are caught up in the most unfavorable loans. For instance, of the homeowners who owe more than 100 percent of their house value, only 7 percent have been 60 days late on payments in the previous year.

The survey was based on interviews with 3,500 randomly selected households.

Zach Schiller, research director for Policy Matters Ohio, doesn’t quibble with the accuracy of the survey, but he thinks the results have been framed in a way that understates the problem.

“This is a problem that nearly brought down the financial system of the U.S. a few weeks ago. For someone to minimize it is really problematic,” Schiller said.

He said the presence of troubled homeowners — even if their share is small — can harm entire neighborhoods if there is a foreclosure.

“It’s very important that we not get caught up in the notion that, ‘Oh gee, it’s only X percent of the total,’ ” Schiller said.

Ohio had an estimated 83,230 new foreclosure filings last year, an increase of 45.8 percent since 2003. Franklin County had an estimated 8,928 foreclosures last year, up 47 percent since 2003. The 2007 estimates, based on actual results for January through September and projections for the rest of the year, were provided by Gov. Ted Strickland’s task force on foreclosures.

The Mortgage Bankers Association has reported that Ohio led the nation in percentage of homes in foreclosure at the end of 2007, with 3.9 percent.

Amid all those negative indicators, the OSU survey provides a much-needed dose of common sense, said Jeff Wherry, executive director of the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association.

“We tend to shine a light on a problem so intently that we lose the big picture,” he said.

Wherry fears the situation is being over-hyped in a way that will lead to overreaction from lawmakers and regulators. He said this as policymakers consider a variety of ways to help people who are unable to pay their mortgages.

“My real fear is that the government is going to step in and say, ‘We’ve got to bail some of these people out,’ ” he said. “I don’t think people should be bailed out for making bad business decisions.”

The gap between the richest and poorest families and between the richest and middle-income families grew in Ohio over the past two decades, according to a new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, released in Ohio by Policy Matters Ohio 

Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends

Education Weekly

By Christina A. Samuels

The 4-year-old voucher program in Ohio that gives parents of children with autism up to $20,000 to shop around for educational services is often used in schools that do not accept students with severe needs, by agencies that do not offer a school setting, and by residents of relatively affluent areas, according to an analysis by a public-policy group.

Policy Matters Ohio’s review of the program concludes that the Autism Scholarship Program is a poor model for other states, as well as a bad foundation on which to build a broader disability voucher program, said the report’s author, Piet van Lier. The Cleveland-based policy group suggests that the money would be better spent on strengthening services for all students.

During the 2006-07 school year, 734 children used the program, at a cost to the state of about $10.8 million.

“There’s no question that not many school districts are up on” the best ways to educate children with autism, Mr. van Lier said. The report, released March 19, does point to a partnership of three school districts, a college, and a state agency in a rural section of Ohio as an example of how districts can improve their professional capacity to educate students with autism.

“We just think there should be some oversight to make sure these dollars are well-spent,” he said.

Few Barriers
Those who run the voucher program at the state level say it was created expressly to have few bureaucratic barriers between parents and the money. The state ensures that providers have been in business for at least one year, and that people who work directly with children have criminal-background checks. The state-approved providers submit claims for reimbursement from the program.

All the children in the program must have an individualized education program, or IEP, from their home districts, indicating that they have a disability on the autism spectrum. Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by impairments in communication, repetitive behavior, and social withdrawal.

“A lot of our oversight is paperwork,” said Paul Sogan, one of two educational consultants with the Ohio Department of Education’s office of exceptional children who oversee the program. Parents are free to shop around and “vote with their feet,” he said.

And parents whose children are in the program say that without the vouchers, they would not have been able to create appropriate educational programs for their children.

“I think this is a great model,” said Lori Peacock, whose 12-year-old son receives help from an array of instructional aides paid by state funds to supplement home schooling. She felt that her home district in Columbus did not offer the structure her child needed to succeed.

On the Rise
The number of K-12 students in Ohio schools with an individualized education program that includes autism has increased dramatically in the past decade. Figures include students in charter schools.

Source: Ohio Department of Education

“I’ve been in touch with parents in other states who are desperate for something like this,” Ms. Peacock said.

Erica Thomas, who also lives in Columbus, is not using the voucher for her 7-year-old son, but she has in previous years.

“So many of our kids were getting lousy services and just falling through the cracks,” she said. She believes that the voucher program, however, has prompted her home district to improve the services it offers. “They started seeing this as something they needed to compete against,” Ms. Thomas said.

Policy Matters Ohio is the only group so far to take an in-depth look at the program, state officials said.

The Ohio office of legislative oversight examined the program in its first year, but there were few children enrolled, and it was more of an examination of implementation issues, Mr. van Lier said. The office of legislative oversight is now defunct, he said, and “we felt it was time to look at this again.”

District Involvement
Under the program, the family of a 3- to 21-year-old with a diagnosis of autism is eligible for a voucher. In return, the family waives the guarantee of a free, appropriate public education from the local school district, a foundation of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

School district staff members are responsible, though, for interacting with private providers in each jurisdiction to write a student’s IEP. The IEPs are not reviewed by the state; it is the parents’ responsibility to make sure the program is implemented properly.

Policy Matters Ohio found what it describes as geographic and wealth inequities in the program. Students who participate tend to be clustered in suburban areas, the analysis says, and most of the approved providers are also located in those areas.

Many of the schools that are approved providers are religious schools, but some approved providers are tutoring and therapy programs that are not comparable to classroom programs, the group found. Further, a few schools charged $20,000 for students with autism, while charging a lower tuition rate to students without disabilities.

The analysis reviewed all 127 providers that submitted claims for the first quarter of fiscal 2008, 40 of which offered a classroom setting. Only 15 of the 40 had a school-like setting for children with the most severe needs.

The financial impact to districts from the voucher program is unclear, the report notes. Ohio’s complex student-funding formula means that while some districts may lose some state money under the program, other districts may end up retaining some state aid for a student, even if the student is a voucher recipient. Federal funding for special education is unaffected by the program.

The review also includes responses from 21 families who participate in the program, reporting uniform support for it.

Their sentiments reflect the experience of Barbara Yavorcik, the co-president of the Autism Society of Ohio. The society has no position on the voucher program, but Ms. Yavorcik said she knows that parents are pleased with it. She said she would have liked to see the report from the policy group dive into why parents who use the program like it so much, and what public schools can learn from such responses to improve their own programs.

“Our position is that parents need choice, and choice is good,” Ms. Yavorcik said. “But we also need to find a way to strengthen public schools.”