Obscene salaries, unscrupulous lenders
Posted December 12, 2020 in eNews
Saturday Stats from Policy Matters Ohio
Four: Number of distinguished Ohioans on tap to lovingly needle our founding Executive Director at Wednesday’s Virtual ROAST of Amy Hanauer:
- Founding board member Joyce Goldstein of Joyce Goldstein & Associates.
- Founding board member David Megenhardt, Executive Director of the United Labor Agency.
- Founding co-chair John Ryan, State Director for Senator Sherrod Brown.
- Cornell University sophomore Katrina Cassell, committed voter and Amy’s daughter.
To learn more, check out our event page, or just read to the bottom of this page!
You can REGISTER HERE! (Registration is free, but required.)
306 to 1: Ratio of median CEO pay to median worker pay among some of Ohio’s largest employers. Researcher Michael Shields presents this and other ugly insights into pay disparity and executive greed in this year’s report on CEO pay ratios. The statistics are frustrating, but the report empowers Ohioans with concrete ways to rein in CEO pay and stand up for working people.
346,219 / 372,408: As of Nov. 28th and December 5th respectively, the number of Ohioans at imminent risk of losing unemployment benefits unless Congress steps in. A week after Research Director Zach Schiller’s analysis of the potentially devastating cutoff, more than 25,000 additional Ohioans have joined the ranks of those at risk of losing the federal lifeline. Ohio Senator Rob Portman is one of the senators in a position to move the bipartisan COVID Emergency Relief Framework, without which the cuts will happen on December 26.
Over 100%: Annual interest rates for payday lenders, as reported by the Ohio Department of Commerce. That’s despite Ohio voters overwhelmingly passing a 2008 measure that capped interest rates at 28%. How did this happen? And what can Ohioans do about it? Find out in this new report from Project Director Kalitha Williams.
8: Factor by which Black students in Ohio are more likely than their white peers to attend a school with an F rating. As Superintendent Marlon Styles of the Middletown City School District put it in his recent testimony before Ohio’s House Finance Committee: “The difference between an F school and an A school is not the quality of the students or teachers, it’s the resources invested in those students and educators.” Ohio has been shortchanging low-income districts—primarily rural and urban ones—for decades. A long overdue fix passed the House but looks like it hit a wall in the Senate, at least for this year. The bill is good, and we can make it better, says Senior Project Director Wendy Patton in her latest blog post.
$9,800,000,000: Estimated tax revenue forgone by the state in 2019 due to tax breaks. And still, the legislature is pushing through more. Wendy Patton released this statement on one of them: SB 95, against which she testified back in May. Among other revenue-squandering features, the bill would extend -- from 15 years to 30 -- the duration of state and local tax breaks for “megaprojects.” That’s the kind of strategy that led to Wisconsin’s Foxconn boondoggle.
390,000: Number of active institutional student debt accounts open with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office in FY 2019. Institutional student debt isn't the same as student loans; it’s owed for fines and fees, like those charged on books overdue to the campus library. Ohio has an especially punitive way of collecting these debts—as reported by Piet van Lier earlier this year. Now, our friends at the Ohio Student Association are collecting stories of people affected by these practices, which include withholding transcripts and preventing reenrollment. If you or someone you know is caught in the #TranscriptTrap, please lend your voice to the calls for change.
Coming up:
The ReImagine Appalachia Coalition will hold its post-election strategy summit on Tuesday, January 12th, from 1:00-5:00 PM. Save the date, and register here.
Our original celebration may have been postponed, but it’s still our 20th birthday, and we’re not letting Amy off the hook!
Join us on December 16, 2020 at 4:00pm as we bring back the ROAST of Amy Hanauer to a digital device near you!
Send Amy a shout-out!
Thanks to a generous donor, Policy Matters Ohio is able to match all new and increased donations up to $100,000! A match-eligible donation with registration gets you a mini ROAST of your own (up to 50 words)!
All shout-outs will be compiled into a keepsake book for Amy to keep and a few lucky shout-outs will be read LIVE! Double your gift, and help us reach our goal today!