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54 articles
What a Governor Can Do About a Medical Bill
Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Toledo already bought and canceled their residents' medical debt for pennies on the dollar. A statewide version is one of the few affordability tools a governor actually controls.
16 July 2026
The Fastest-Growing County in Ohio Is Closing Its Delivery Room
OhioHealth is shutting the labor-and-delivery unit at Grady Memorial in Delaware County on July 31, in the one county adding people faster than any other in the state. Growth did not save it. The math of obstetrics did.
15 July 2026
86 Percent and 133 Days: Ohio's Public Workers Are Organizing Again
Columbus Metropolitan Library workers voted 368-60 to unionize, the sixth central Ohio library system since 2021. An hour north, a county human-services strike is stretching toward a state record.
15 July 2026
Sanctuary Cities That Don't Exist: What SB 172 and HB 26 Actually Do
Ohio is advancing bills to punish sanctuary jurisdictions that officials concede do not officially exist in the state. SB 172 passed the Senate in June 2025; HB 26 would dock 10% of funds.
15 July 2026
Seven Rulings in Fourteen Months, and a Closet in Medina County
The Supreme Court upheld state bans on transgender athletes on June 30, declining to extend its own 2020 logic. Ohio's trans community is answering with state courts and a free clothing closet.
14 July 2026
18 Months: The Abortion License Ohio Won't Transfer
Ohioans put abortion rights in the constitution in 2023. The state health department has spent a year and a half not processing the ownership paperwork for a Dayton clinic, and Planned Parenthood is now asking a court to call that contempt.
14 July 2026
Who Reads the Fine Print on a $600 Million Settlement
Norfolk Southern's roughly $600 million residents' settlement and its $310 million federal deal are two different checks. The fine print decides what each one actually buys.
14 July 2026
Struck Down Twice, Used Anyway: The Limits of Ohio's 2018 Map Reform
Ohio voters wrote anti-gerrymandering rules into the constitution in 2018. A court used them to void the GOP congressional map twice. The map governed two elections anyway, and a 12-3 replacement is now locked in for the decade.
13 July 2026
The Senate Race Turned Into a Fight Over Your Electric Bill
Ohio exempted $1.6 billion in sales taxes for data centers last year while household power bills jumped 23 percent. Who pays for the boom is now a campaign, a lawsuit, and a ballot measure that never happened.
13 July 2026
From Right to Access: What Still Stands Between the Amendment and Care
Ohioans won the right in 2023. Turning a constitutional right into care people can actually reach is a slower fight running through the courts, the clinics, and the map.
13 July 2026
Why Your Value Jumped 32% But Your Bill Didn't Double
How Ohio's millage formula quietly rolls back tax rates as home values climb, and why the sticker-shock number on your reappraisal notice isn't your bill.
12 July 2026
Governor's Toolkit: How the Executive Shapes Enforcement Beyond the Veto
The veto gets the headlines, but a governor also holds health-department rulemaking and appointment power that shape how HB 68 is enforced day to day. In 2026 those tools go to Amy Acton or Vivek Ramaswamy.
11 July 2026
Five Days to Comply: The Pressure on Ohio's Vote Before November
In June the FBI searched an Ohio voter-registration group that says it has signed up hundreds of thousands of people, and never said why. Weeks later the Justice Department gave all 50 states five days to fall in line.
10 July 2026
$115 Million: The Coal Fee Ohioans Paid and Won't Get Back
In one week this July, the Ohio Supreme Court let utilities keep roughly $115 million in HB 6 coal charges and a federal judge tossed the fraud case against FirstEnergy's former CEO. The bill stays on you.
10 July 2026
The 5-2 Ruling That Decided Nothing Yet
On April 1, 2026 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 5 to 2 in the Columbus gun case. What it actually decided was that the fight can continue, not who wins it.
10 July 2026
Ohio Has a Machine That Destroys Forever Chemicals. The EPA Is Loosening the Rule That Needs It.
A Columbus company can now break down PFAS "forever chemicals," and federal officials came to watch. The same EPA is giving water systems until 2031 to meet the drinking-water limits that make the cleanup necessary, in the same week 24 Ohio beaches went under advisory.
09 July 2026
$88 per $100,000: The Safety Net Lands on Your Property-Tax Bill
Cuyahoga County wants voters to renew and raise its health and human services levy and add a disabilities levy this November, roughly $167 more per $100,000 of home value. Trace the reason and it runs back to Washington.
09 July 2026
Fixed Income, Rising Bill: The Homeowners Relief Is Supposed to Reach
The property-tax fight is nominally about retirees on fixed incomes. Whether the relief on offer actually reaches them is a different question.
09 July 2026
When the Debunk Came From a Nonprofit, Not the Daily
When a national lie hit Springfield, the early on-record correction came from the nonprofit Ohio Capital Journal and local officials, not a big daily. It shows who is left to check the facts.
08 July 2026
The $2 Billion Bet That's Five Years Late
Ohio handed Intel the largest incentive package in state history for 3,000 promised jobs. First production has slid from 2025 to 2030, and Washington now owns a piece of the company.
07 July 2026
Follow the Opioid Money: How Ohio Closed the Books on Billions
A court ruled that Ohio's opioid-settlement foundation was the functional equivalent of a public office, subject to records law. Then the legislature used the state budget to exempt it.
06 July 2026
The $2.86 Billion Schools Were Promised, and Didn't Get
In 2021 both parties agreed on a formula to fund Ohio schools by what they actually cost. The 2025 budget abandoned it and left districts an estimated $2.86 billion short.
05 July 2026
Ohio's Industrial Spine, in Numbers
Manufacturing is still Ohio's single largest private industry. Here is how big it actually is, before the campaigns start talking past each other.
04 July 2026
Ohio's Biggest Jobs Promise Is a Weapons Factory
Anduril's Arsenal-1 in Pickaway County is the largest single job-creation project Ohio has ever announced: 4,008 jobs by 2035, backed by a tax credit and $70 million in public funds, to build autonomous combat drones.
04 July 2026
The Ban a Governor Vetoed, His Own Party Passed Anyway
How Ohio turned a bill its own Republican governor rejected into law, and what that says about who holds power in Columbus.
04 July 2026
The Map of Ohio's News Deserts
Where local reporting has vanished, and who is left with no paid watchdog at a school board or zoning meeting.
04 July 2026
The Bill Doubled. Nobody Warned Them.
For a retiree on a fixed income, a reappraisal notice is not a line item. It is a question of whether they can stay in the house. That is who real relief should reach first.
04 July 2026
Arming Teachers, and the Ruling It Was Written to Erase
A 2021 Ohio Supreme Court decision said the Madison district armed staff with too little training. In 2022, House Bill 99 capped that training at 24 hours and wrote the ruling out of the law.
04 July 2026
How "Eating the Pets" Spread in Days
A secondhand Facebook post became a national talking point in under a week, drew more than 33 bomb threats to Springfield, and was debunked first by a nonprofit newsroom and local Republicans.
04 July 2026
If the Levy Base Shrinks, What Fills It?
Relief bills, a veto override, and a 2027 abolition fight all point one way: a smaller local levy base. The forward question is what fills the gap, and every answer names a different payer.
04 July 2026
"The Largest Rollback in Ohio History": Who Pays for Ramaswamy's Math
Vivek Ramaswamy promises the biggest property-tax rollback ever plus phasing out the income tax. The unanswered question is which public functions absorb the cut.
04 July 2026
They Tried to Change the Rules Before the Vote
Months before the abortion amendment, Ohio held an August special election to raise the bar for passing amendments at all. Voters saw the timing and said no.
04 July 2026
$445,000 a Day: The Coal Subsidy That Outlived the Scandal
Ohio repealed the famous part of HB 6 in 2021 and called it fixed. The charge that kept costing ratepayers $445,000 a day stayed on the bill for four more years.
04 July 2026
The July 1 Cliff: What Happens When 26,500 People Lose the Right to Work
Haitian work permits became invalid July 1, 2026, months before the election. DeWine called ending TPS a job killer for Ohio and for Springfield, breaking with national GOP policy.
04 July 2026
40 Homes for Every 100 Families: Ohio's Missing Quarter-Million
Ohio is short about 264,000 rental homes its poorest families can afford. The math guarantees that most of them lose, and the math was built on purpose.
04 July 2026
"Do Something!" and What Came Instead
Ohio met a mass shooting in Dayton with looser gun law, not a safety bill. The record shows where the promise stopped.
04 July 2026
The Governor Signed the Ban Voters Overturned
Mike DeWine signed Ohio's six-week abortion ban in 2019. Four years later the electorate wrote a right into the constitution that nullified it. The distance between those two facts is the story.
04 July 2026
Anatomy of a Lie: How "Eating the Pets" Traveled From a Facebook Post to a Debate Stage
A false rumor about Springfield's Haitian community went from a deleted Facebook post to a presidential debate in 36 hours, and the trip added reach without ever adding proof.
04 July 2026
Armed at Her Doorstep: What Ohio Did to the Woman Who Ran Its Pandemic
Armed protesters gathered outside the Ohio health director's home in 2020. She resigned that June, and she was not the last public-health official pushed out.
04 July 2026
Health Care Freedom: The Amendment Ohioans Passed That Trans Families Now Invoke
The families challenging Ohio's care ban argue it violates the state's Health Care Freedom Amendment and parental rights, the same bodily-autonomy ground under the 2023 abortion-rights vote.
04 July 2026
The 337,000: A Map of Who Loses Medicaid First
New federal work rules will strip Medicaid from hundreds of thousands of Ohioans, landing hardest where hospitals already closed.
04 July 2026
When the ER Goes Dark: Anatomy of a Rural Closure
A rural hospital closure turns a treatable emergency into an hour-long drive. Here is the math that shuts one down and the pressure that keeps it coming.
04 July 2026
A 40 Percent Cut to the Program Fighting Lake Erie's Algae
H2Ohio pays farmers to keep phosphorus out of Lake Erie, the nutrient that drives the toxic algae blooms. The 2025 state budget cut the program by roughly 40 percent.
04 July 2026
30,000 Megawatts: Who Pays When the Data Centers Move In
AEP Ohio has cited more than 30,000 megawatts of requests to plug into the grid, mostly data centers. A 2025 tariff decides whether they pay for that buildout or you do.
04 July 2026
Vouchers vs. Schools: The Choice on the November Ballot
Vivek Ramaswamy would keep money moving toward private-school vouchers. Amy Acton would fully fund public schools first. The same November ballot picks a Supreme Court that decides whether the vouchers are even legal.
04 July 2026
The Office That Sues Norfolk Southern Is on the Ballot
Ohio's own lawsuit against Norfolk Southern runs through the Attorney General's office, and Dave Yost is term-limited. The 2026 Faber-Kulewicz race decides who inherits the case.
04 July 2026
The Law That Can Force a Teacher to Out a Student
House Bill 8 took effect in April 2025. It can require Ohio schools to tell a student's parents about a change in gender identity, even when home is the unsafe place to be out.
04 July 2026
Follow the Money: Where Ohio's Cannabis Taxes Went
Issue 2 attached a 10 percent tax to treatment and equity. SB 56 kept the tax and deleted the destinations, sending the money to a pool lawmakers control.
04 July 2026
A Billion-Dollar Market in Its First Year
Ohio's legal cannabis market cleared a billion dollars in year one. The size of that number explains why lawmakers wanted control of the money and the licenses.
04 July 2026
Steel, Autos, and the Northern Tier: The Economy That Decides Elections
Ohio's industrial base runs along its northern edge, where economic branding stops being a slogan and becomes a paycheck. That terrain still decides races.
04 July 2026
The Job Nobody Watched Until It Ran the Whole State
What Ohio's health director can actually do, how one 2020 order used that power, and how much of it the legislature took back afterward.
04 July 2026
Ohio Voters Keep Saving Unions. Their Legislature Keeps Trying Again.
Twice at the ballot Ohioans protected union power. The Statehouse majority keeps introducing bills to weaken it anyway.
04 July 2026
Voters Never Got to Choose: How Columbus Banned Rent Control for Cities
In 2022 the state barred every Ohio city from limiting rent increases. No city had tried it yet, and no city's voters got a say.
04 July 2026
Who Labor Actually Backs in 2026
Every candidate on the Ohio ballot claims to be pro-worker. The unions' own endorsements cut through the branding: the AFL-CIO lined up behind Brown and Acton, and stayed off Ramaswamy.
04 July 2026