Cautious optimism
Posted March 20, 2021 in eNews
We apologize for putting out an email version of the enews that incorrectly stated that the American Rescue Plan was $1.9 billion instead of $1.9 trillion.
Policy by the numbers, from Policy Matters
$1.9 trillion: Total amount of aid included in the American Rescue Plan, which (finally!) passed last week. The historic aid package will be a lifeline for Ohioans, as Executive Director Hannah Halbert explains in our press statement.
92%: Share of Ohio children living in households that will benefit from the Rescue Plan’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit. (That’s from the same statement linked above; it’s just too amazing to leave out…)
$40,532: On average, the annual amount by which Ohio’s leaders cut state taxes for the wealthiest 1% between 2005 and 2018. Ohio can be a state with great schools, clean water and air, and strong support for people when times get tough. But we can’t get there without the wealthy and corporations paying their fair share. We have lots of ideas for how to rebalance the tax code; get a taste of them in a new Budget Bite from Research Director Zach Schiller and Senior Project Director Wendy Patton.
Roughly 4 days: Amount of time between the passage of the American Rescue Plan and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filing a lawsuit that would enable legislators to spend the aid on even more tax cuts instead of using it to help our communities recover. Zach Shiller was having none of it; read his statement here.
$0.00: Total cost of recognizing racism as a public health crisis, an essential first step toward repairing damage from centuries of systemic racism. That’s one of four budget recommendations from the Health Equity Network, described in a Budget Bite by Senior Researcher Amanda Woodrum. (The other three recommendations don’t cost much more than that. The Budget Bite includes a handy table outlining each recommendation, its cost and major benefits!)
20%: Share of Ohio’s transportation budget that should be spent on healthy transportation choices such as public transit, rail, electric vehicle infrastructure and walkable/bikeable streets—That’s according to another Budget Bite from Amanda Woodrum.
<2%: Share of Ohio’s transportation budget legislators have proposed to allot for public transit in each year of the biennial budget. That’s one of the reasons Amanda also submitted written testimony to the Ohio Senate Transportation Committee, pressuring them to do more to ensure every Ohioan has safe, healthy transportation options.
307,000: Number of jobs cut by Ohio employers in 2020. That’s even worse than the initial estimate of 290,000, meaning a year of devastating losses for Ohio’s working people was in fact even worse than we thought. On the bright side, 28,900 jobs were added in January, and revised numbers for December show improvement as well. Researcher Michael Shields digs into the numbers in this month’s JobWatch.
$8,287,767: Amount of “origination fees” collected by installment lenders in 2019. According to Project Director Kalitha Williams, these fees are unnecessary and unrelated to the loans to which they are added. A provision in House Bill 133 would allow unscrupulous lenders to add even more exploitative fees, saddling borrowers with even more debt and making it even harder to pay back the loan. Kalitha submitted testimony to the Ohio House Financial Institutions Committee, warning that the provision would harm Ohioans who are already doing everything they can to get by.
$50 million: Amount of the state budget Gov. DeWine proposed to spend on a public relations campaign designed to attract people to Ohio. During a time of extraordinary challenges, Ohioans need a budget for everyone, not a few billboards in Times Square. In testimony submittedto the Ohio House Finance Committee, Senior Project Director Wendy Patton outlined a People's Budget for Ohio.
24: Number of hours (in mean solar time) in one day on planet Earth. Despite this limitation, Executive Director Hannah Halbert still manages to do things like become the Board Chair for the Ohio Association of Nonprofit Organizations.
Announcements!
ROAST highlights: Did you miss the (Virtual) ROAST of Amy Hanauer on December 16, 2020? Do you want to relive the night honoring Policy Matters Ohio's Founding Executive Director, Amy Hanauer? We got you covered. Check out the Highlight Reel, giving you the best of the burns from our virtual event celebrating 20 years of Policy Matters Ohio.
NEO Worker Center: Interested in building worker power in Cleveland and beyond? Tune in on Zoom for the NEO Worker Center’s March open meeting, Thursday, March 25th from 12:00 – 1:00. This year, we’ll be creating a worker bill of rights and a wage theft/worker resource hub. Email Grace Heffernan for Zoom credentials at heffernangs@gmail.com.
Fair School Funding webinar: Join a bipartisan group of legislators and union and school leaders to learn how the Fair School Funding Plan will provide an equitable, comprehensive, transparent funding model that will change the face of public education for 600+ school districts and 1.7 million students across Ohio. Tune in on Zoom, Tuesday, March 23 at 7:00pm. Register here.
City Club of Cleveland virtual forum: Tune in live on Tuesday, March 30 at noon for “Learning Disrupted?: The Future of K-12 Education After a Pandemic.” Learn more here.