Saturday Stats
Posted February 11, 2023 in eNews
11,525: Gov. DeWine kicked off Ohio’s biennial budget season with his budget proposal, which would — among other things — expand access to child care and public pre-K to an additional 11,525 children statewide. That’s one of a few bright spots in the governor’s budget, which falls short in a lot of other ways. Check out our initial response, and stay tuned for more analysis.
71%: The governor’s budget doesn’t include income tax cuts, but members of his party are salivating over the opportunity to add them into their version. That would go against the will of most Ohio voters, according to our recent survey with Data for Progress, which found 71% supported raising taxes on the very wealthy. That’s just one of the numbers Executive Director Hannah Halbert cited in her recent appearance on The State of Ohio with Karen Kassler. (Hannah’s segment starts 6 minutes in.)
-$172: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has helped families put food on the table, especially by providing additional assistance during the pandemic. In March, the government will end this additional assistance, cutting monthly food aid by $172 per household on average. That means more children, senior citizens and working adults will have less to eat. Please spread the word to help our neighbors prepare. And please call on lawmakers to support budget and policy solutions to make sure all Ohioans can get enough healthy food to eat and increase family economic security in the state budget.
213,000: Ohio employers steal wages from working people all over the state, especially from people paid low wages to begin with. Each year, they commit a single type of wage theft — paying less than the minimum wage — against 213,000 Ohioans. (There are other, harder-to-measure kinds of wage theft too, so the actual number of victims is likely much higher.) Last week we learned that the city of Columbus and the U.S. Dept. of Labor are teaming up to enforce and educate workers about wage theft laws to keep bosses honest, and hold them accountable when they aren’t.
3: Our friends at the Northeast Ohio Worker Center won’t let Columbus have all the wage-theft fighting fun! NOWC has lined up three months of wage theft clinics around Cleveland, starting on Saturday, February 25th, from noon-3:00. Register here, and get info for the March & April clinics here.
2: We made two notable changes to our staff last week: Ali Smith, formerly our Worker Center Network Liaison is now our Operations Specialist, and Ben Stein was promoted to Communications Director.
Coming up:
Food for Thought — Why Budgets Matter: How can we use our shared resources to do the most good for the most people? Who decides? Join Policy Matters, Participatory Budgeting Cleveland and Northern Ohioans for Budget Legislation Equity for an in-person conversation at Happy Dog (5801 Detroit Ave., Cleveland) on Thursday, March 9 at 6:30 p.m. *Sponsored by the North Shore Federation of Labor!*
The Columbus Education Justice Coalition (CEJC) will launch its “Our City, Our Schools” campaign this week. Email Izetta Thomas to learn more. Register here for their monthly calls (the first Wednesday of the month, at 6:00 p.m.), and stay tuned next week for a spotlight blog about CEJC, from our own Tanisha Pruitt.
Join our friends at ReImagine Appalachia and Moms Clean Air Force to share your thoughts in their Electrifying Transit and Buses Listening Session, Wednesday, February 22, from 2:00-3:00 p.m. Learn more and register here.
If you’re in D.C. later this month, head over to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, February 28th from 8:00 a.m.–noon for the People’s Rally for Student Debt Cancellation. Register here by Feb. 24th.