Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio are being required to wear ankle monitors and turn their passports over to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Haitians in Springfield are getting letters telling them to report to the ICE office in either Blue Ash (near Cincinnati) or Westerville (near Columbus). 

“When they do, their passports are collected,” said Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church. 

“They’re fitted with ankle (monitors); I call them ankle shackles.” 

This is happening after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that President Donald Trump can end temporary protected status for the 330,000 Haitians who’ve fled the violence in their home country.

TPS officially ended for Haitians on July 27 and a court lifted an injunction last week.

About 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship, and other legal status.

Even though about 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio, only Haitians in Springfield are being asked to wear the ankle monitors as of now, Ruby said.

“What you’re seeing in Ohio is a Springfield focused effort,” he said.

He has gone down to ICE’s Blue Ash office with some Haitians to receive their ankle monitors, which can track where people are at any given moment and have about a 75 mile radius, Ruby said.

“The ICE officers indicated, ‘If you keep coming back every time we call you, that may help your immigration case,’ which I don’t believe,” he said. 

“I think it’s a means to round up people quickly, and that when they’re ready, they have the logistics in place to deport them. I think that’s what’s going to happen.” 

The Haitians are then told to report back to the ICE office when they are summoned, which is expected to be every three to four weeks, Ruby said. 

“It’s inciting a lot of fear,” Ruby said. “I think (ICE’s) real goal is for them to self-deport. … I think it boils down to they want to have complete control over them, so (ICE) can easily deport them as soon as they’re ready.”

Ruby is unaware of any Haitians from Springfield who have self-deported back to Haiti. 

The U.S. Department of State currently has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti“due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care,” according to the state department. A top security official and chief of staff to the nation’s defense minister was kidnapped in June. 

“It just makes me sick thinking of the sexual violence that is the norm in Haiti,” Ruby said. “There there are kids who sat next to our kids in Springfield City Schools who are going to be raped if they’re sent back, and that’s just the truth.”

More than 1,000 children born in Springfield with American citizenship have Haitian parents. Springfield City Schools declined to comment for the story.

ICE detained 35 people — including four Haitians — in central Ohio between Aug. 5 through Aug. 10, said Maqueli Eldredge, a paralegal at Legal Immigration Services in Dublin. Ruby said he has not noticed an increased ICE presence in Springfield. 

“They say they would come for the Haitians on this special task force, but they take any collateral damage people,” Eldredge said in a text message. 

The ICE office in Westerville was full of Haitians coming out with ankle monitors when Eldredge was there last week.

Many of their Brazilian clients in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were asked to start wearing ankle monitors in July 2025. She said they have a 16-year-old client wearing an ankle monitor in Pittsburgh. 

“It is very embarrassing to wear them,” Eldredge said in a text message. “(The) devices cause lesions, rashes and blisters, bleeding on their ankles.” 

She said it can be hard for their clients to sleep with the ankle monitors. 

“It beeps in the middle of the night and (it’s) hard to get comfortable,” Eldredge said in a text message.

The ankle monitors will start beeping if the battery is not functioning well, Eldredge said. 

“They break all the time and batteries malfunction and get very hot, some caught on fire when charging,” she said in a text message. 

Some people are afraid of going back to the ICE office, so Eldredge knows folks who have cut off the ankle monitors and leave the state or self-deport. 

“(Officials) follow up where they leave that monitor and sometimes just take some collaterals,” she said. 

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Two years after Ohio recreational marijuana sales began, Ohio’s adult-use marijuana continues to be significantly more expensive than Michigan, according to pricing data. Meanwhile, Ohio Republican lawmakers have outlawed buying from other states.

The cheapest ounce of marijuana in Ohio is $112 while the cheapest ounce in Michigan is $6.99, according to the WeedBuddy Cannabis Price Index. 

In Arizona, it’s $49.99, and in Colorado, it’s $16.73.

The median cost of an ounce shows far closer prices though Ohio still sits as most expensive among the four states at $147.35, compared to $99 in Michigan, $120 in Arizona, and $110 in Colorado.

Ohio’s median price for an eighth of cannabis flower is $35, compared to Michigan’s $20 for the same amount as of July 31, the index shows.

“Price is going to be one of the most important aspects in terms of determining where they purchase cannabis,” said Morgan Fox, political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. 

“People were already used to driving to Michigan to purchase cannabis, so as long as there’s still a massive price differential, they’re probably going to continue doing so at least for the foreseeable future.” 

Marijuana is illegal for recreational use in West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. 

Ohio recreational sales started in August 2024, about nine months after Ohioans voted to legalize recreational marijuana.

A new law passed by Republican state lawmakers took effect earlier this year that made a wide variety of changes to the voter-passed law.

Ohio Senate Bill 56 criminalized bringing legal marijuana from another state back to Ohio. 

“If you’re caught with cannabis that cannot be verified purchased in Ohio or verified grown in Ohio, then it’s the same penalties as it was under prohibition of pre-legalization,” Fox said. 

However, he was doubtful Ohio customers knew about the changes to Ohio’s law. 

“If people had gotten used to doing that when cannabis was not legal in Ohio, they’re probably going to continue to do so,” Fox said. 

The law also bans possessing marijuana in anything outside of its original packaging and requires drivers to store marijuana in the trunk of their car while driving. 

Furthermore, the law reduced THC levels in adult-use marijuana extracted from a maximum of 90% down to a maximum of 70%, capped THC levels in adult-use flower to 35%, and banned smoking in most public places. 

Ohio’s total recreational marijuana sales were $1.67 billion as of July 11, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Cannabis Control. 

The median price of a standard eighth of cannabis flower was $36.40 in Columbus, $32 in Cincinnati, and $30.80 in Cleveland at the end of July, according to the price index. 

Compared to cities in Michigan, the median price of the same amount of cannabis flower, according to the price index., cost $25 in Lansing, $20 in Detroit, and $20 in Monroe, Michigan which is about 12 miles from downtown Toledo.

There have been 32.5 million units of manufactured products that have been sold and 267,590 pounds of plant material, according to the division. 

There are 223 dual-use marijuana dispensaries in Ohio as of Thursday, meaning they can sell medical and non-medical marijuana, according to the division. 

More than 160 Ohio municipalities or townships that have moratoriums in place banning the sale of adult-use cannabis as of June 3, according to Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Michigan voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2018 and sales started in December 2019. 

“Michigan’s market is much more well established, and we’ve seen in most cannabis markets that prices tend to go down over time,” Fox said. 

Michigan has more than 800 active retail licenses as of June 2026, and Michigan marijuana stores reported about $3.17 billion in revenue in 2025, according to the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency. 

“Michigan also has a much bigger market in terms of the numbers of dispensaries and the number of licensed businesses than Ohio does, largely because Ohio artificially capped that, so that means that since there’s more competition between those businesses, they have to keep their prices a little bit lower to be competitive,” Fox said. 

Michigan is the second-largest adult-use marijuana market in the nation, behind California. 

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Ohio’s two candidates for governor have conflicting ideas of what they would like to see happen to future data centers, which have become a political lightning rod in this year’s November election. 

Ohio’s next governor will appoint the five members of the Public Utilities Commission, which sets utility rates and set the parameters for data centers opening in cities across the state. 

Ohio Democratic candidate for governor Dr. Amy Acton announced on July 27 she supports a conditional moratorium on data centers “if requirements on costs, union labor, transparency, environmental standards, community benefit agreements, and development are not met,” she said in a statement.

Innovation Ohio, a progressive policy advocacy organization, said Acton has a strong data center proposal. 

“Requiring data centers to really pay their own money in terms of electricity, electricity in terms of really protecting the environment, protecting water, making sure workers are getting a fair shake out of these fields, that to us is really leveling the playing field and ensuring that going forward,” said Innovation Ohio President Michael McGovern. 

Ohio Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy announced his three-fold data center plan on Aug. 6.

“If a data center is built in your community, then (1) you will no longer have to pay for your home’s electricity, (2) you will pay lower property taxes, and (3) the data center will be required to abide by all air and water quality standards without exception, and we will take the necessary steps to protect Ohio’s fertile farmland,” he said in a post on X.

“If any one of these three conditions is not met, the data center won’t be built. Period,” Ramaswamy said in his statement.

McGovern called Ramaswamy’s idea for data centers to pay for citizen’s electric bills “utter nonsense.”

“We see Vivek Ramaswamy’s plan that’s just like absolute nonsense in coming up with these wild ideas that don’t make any sense and aren’t based in any actual policy research, and instead are sort of just these silly promises,” McGovern said.

Ramaswamy’s plan does not specify how many miles away from a data center someone must be living to get their electricity for free. 

“There’s no detail, there’s no substance,” McGovern said. 

Ramaswamy said last year it’s a “good thing” AI data centers moving to Ohio. 

“I want the sectors of the future to come here, but that will make a level of demand on our electric grid of a kind that we have not seen in the history of our state … right at a time when we’ve also cut off and reduced the supply of base load power generation, shutting down coal plants that, on my watch, would have remained open,” Ramaswamy said in a video posted to X in March 2025. 

Ramaswamy has a financial stake in data centers by having financial positions in the chips that power AI to the companies that run the data centers, according to a report released earlier this year from Innovation Ohio. 

“He has rolled out a plan that is unserious and does not really tackle this vital issue for Ohioans, and he is personally getting richer off of data centers,” McGovern said. 

“He’s making money here, and all of a sudden that’s a political problem, so he’s walking that back.”

Ohio has more than 200 data centers, the sixth-highest state in the country, according to Pew Research Center. Most of the data centers are in central Ohio. Cincinnati has 26 and Cleveland has 22, according to the Data Center Map. 

Ohioans are seeing increased electric bills. The average Ohio residential utility bills are projected to be about $800 for the summer — a 17% increase compared to last summer, according to a report by Third Way. 

Lawmakers at the Ohio Statehouse have yet to pass any data center legislation. 

Conserve Ohio, the grassroots organization behind a proposed constitutional amendment to ban new data centers, is collecting signatures to make the 2027 ballot.

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Ohio cities with big Haitian populations are preparing for a possible uptick of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement after temporary protected status for Haitians ended this week. 

Carl Ruby, pastor of Springfield’s Central Christian Church, said he recently heard of a new tactic ICE is using in Springfield. 

“I received a call from a leader in our community who said that what’s happening is Haitians in Springfield are getting letters asking them to report to Homeland Security and ICE down in Cincinnati,” he said. 

“They’re asked to report in, and what I was told is that once they get there, they are asked to wear an ankle bracelet and report back in a month.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that President Donald Trump can end legal status for Haitians who’ve fled the violence in their home country.

About 330,000 Haitians are living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that allows people from specific countries in conflict or facing natural disasters the chance to live and work in the United States for a set period of time.

About 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio and 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship, and other legal status.

“The federal officials are now telling us that they do not have any plans,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who was born in Springfield, told reporters on Wednesday. 

“They’ve received no instructions to have any kind of raids in Springfield. Now that can change, but they did tell us they’ve heard nothing.” 

Mike and his wife Fran DeWine help support the Becky DeWine School in Haiti, named after their late daughter, but the school had to close due to gang activity in 2024. 

“It’s a mistake to say that (Haitians) can no longer stay in this country,” DeWine said.

“I think that the people who have come here to work, the Haitians who came to Springfield, were filling jobs that had not been filled before. They are part of the resurgence of Springfield.”

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said he has not received information from ICE about enforcement operations. 

“I hope Congress will seize this opportunity to modernize our immigration system in a way that upholds the rule of law, strengthens our economy and reflects the values that have long made the United States strong,” he said in a statement. 

Maqueli Eldredge, a paralegal at Legal Immigration Services in Dublin, anticipates an uptick of ICE activity as a result of TPS ending. 

ICE detained more than 280 people in Columbus in December during Operation Buckeye. 

“I’m afraid it might turn into that, but I hope not,” Eldredge said.

“We might see some large numbers, but it wouldn’t be as public as it was in December.”

She said ICE has changed their tactics from detaining people in public spaces like courthouses and in the streets to instead knocking on people’s doors and detaining people where they live. 

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther called forcing Haitians back to Haiti “irresponsible and inhumane.”

“Our immigrant and refugee neighbors make positive contributions to our community through their unique perspectives, workplace contributions and participation in our economy,” he said in a statement. 

“We cannot prevent federal operations from happening in our city, and federal officers do not communicate their plans with us.”

Ruby is asking ICE not to come to Springfield.

“We will encourage people to protest peacefully,” he said. “There are many who are willing to place themselves between ICE and people who are targets for detainment and deportation.” 

Haitians were initially granted temporary protected status after Haiti’s earthquake in 2010 killed 222,570 people. The Biden administration extended Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in 2021 after the assassination of Haiti President Jovenel Moïse. 

The U.S. Department of State currently has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti“due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care,” according to the state department. A top security official and chief of staff to the nation’s defense minister was kidnapped last month. 

“I’ve talked to families who are so afraid of going back to Haiti,” Ruby said. 

“Rape is endemic in Haiti right now, and if all of the Haitians who are in Springfield who have been on TPS were sent back to Haiti, some of the teenage girls who have sat in our city schools next to our own children are probably going to be subject to that.” 

Springfield experienced a shrinking population for decades as manufacturing jobs disappeared, but Haitian immigrants have grown Clark County’s workforce by more than 10,000 workers. 

The Clark County city became a flashpoint in the 2024 Election when Trump and JD Vance spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants there.

Rev. Michelle Boomgaard of Christ Episcopal Church talked about the growth Springfield had because of the Haitians. 

“We are seeing buildings long shuttered now open,” she said. “We are seeing new vibrancy in our communities.”

Deporting Haitians in Springfield would eliminate roughly $300 million in annual spending from Clark County, with an estimated economic loss projected to exceed $400 million.

Haitians also contribute millions of dollars in Columbus, said Yola Lamarre, an advocate with the Haitian Community Network.

“We’re going to see that impact because of this job loss,” she said. “We’re going to see the shortages in the healthcare industry and other industries that Haitians mostly populate.” 

Haitians in Ohio lost their work permits when TPS expired on Monday.

More than 1,000 children born in Springfield with American citizenship have Haitian parents. 

“I think that many of them are planning on taking their children with them, even if (the children) are U.S. citizens and have the protection,” Ruby said. 

Haitian parents are now faced with the choice of leaving their children or taking them back to Haiti “where they could be kidnapped, raped, or murdered,” Ruby said. 

“Imagine the dilemma that that is for mom and dad who love their kids, and that’s the situation that we have created for Haitian families right now, and it’s completely unnecessary.”

The Ohio Department of Children and Youth gave a grant to the Nehemiah Foundationand the Department of Jobs and Family Services to create a respite care network, said Tim Voltz of Champion City Church in Springfield. 

“There would be temporary places for those children to go, so they wouldn’t end up in a facility or detained somewhere,” he said. 

At least 18 families are part of the network, which can host children for up to 14 days at a time, Voltz said. 

“It is not a permanent solution,” he said. 

“It is only meant to provide a place for them while the state and the parents themselves and everyone tries to figure out how to reunite the parents of their children, or place them with kin. … The goal was to keep children from being shipped all over the state to foster care placements.” 

The emotional burden is overwhelming for Haitian families, said Jimmy Pierre of Gospel Grace Baptist Church in Springfield.

“Parents worry about what the future holds,” he said. 

“Some are having difficulty sleeping because they fear separation from their spouses or children. Many are dealing with anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion as they try to care for their families while living with uncertainty.”

Haitians can apply for asylum, but the Trump administration put an indefinite freeze on processing all asylum applications at the end of 2025.

About 4% of asylum cases are being approved, Ruby said. 

“Applying for asylum isn’t really a realistic option,” he said. 

At the federal level, the U.S. House voted in April to extend TPS for Haitians through 2029. The bill is now in the U.S. Senate, but the White House said President Donald Trump would veto the bill. 

U.S. Senators introduced an identical bill last month. 

“It’s time to put our ideology aside and focus on saving the lives of families,” Ruby said. 

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Nearly 3,000 acres of land in Ohio’s only national forest will be auctioned for fracking in September. 

The Bureau of Land Management announced 41 parcels totaling 2,840 acres in Wayne National Forest will go up for a bid on Sept. 15. The announcement was made earlier this month and these parcels are in Monroe and Washington counties. 

“Leasing is the first step in the process to develop federal oil and gas resources. Before development operations can begin, an operator must submit an application for permit to drill detailing development plans,” the Bureau of Land Management said in a statement.

“The BLM reviews applications for permits to drill, posts them for public review, conducts an environmental analysis and coordinates with state partners and stakeholders.”

Fracking is the process of injecting liquid into the ground at a high pressure to extract oil or gas.

There were approximately 2,000 incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio from 2015-2023, according to FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that collects data on fracking pipelines. 

Evidence shows increased exposure to fracking impacts health, in particular children’s health, including low birth weight, preterm births, congenital anomalies, and asthma, according to Yale School of Medicine. 

The Ohio Capital Journal recently published a story about how Washington County residents are concerned injection wells leaking brine waste could contaminate Marietta’s drinking water. 

Ohio Environmental Council Senior Attorney for Land and Water Nathan Johnson said putting out bids to frack Wayne National Forest is concerning. 

“It’s unfortunate that the feds keep trying to push this,” he said. “We really need to take good care of our public lands.”

The BLM’s overall plan is to lease out 40,000 acres for fracking in Wayne National Forest, Johnson said. 

 “That’s a huge amount of land for Ohio,” he said. “That’s more than 30,000 football fields.” 

As required by law, the BLM is currently in the middle of a 30-day public protest to receive additional comments which will end Aug. 17. The BLM scoped out the 41 parcels in January.

Ohio state Rep. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, urged people to post comments.  

“This is just continued exploitation of the people and resources of Ohio by large corporations,” Rader said in a statement. “For generations, the people of this region and this state have been sidelined by the interest of extractive industries.” 

The Wayne National Forest was established in 1935 and comprises 244,000 acres spanning 12 counties with three units in Athens, Ironton, and Marietta in Southeast Ohio. 

More than 200,000 people annually visit Wayne National Forest, which is known for its hiking, biking, horseback riding trails, and off-road vehicle trails. 

“If development occurs on this scale … you’re going to have heavy truck traffic,” Johnson said.

“You’re going to see well paths. One of the the major concerns if you’re visiting the area is health, safety, truck traffic, but the air pollution is just always a constant. It does not respect boundaries.”

There are already 1,200 conventional wells operating in Wayne National Forest, Ohio Oil and Gas Association spokesperson Mike Chadsey noted.

But Johnson said there are very big differences between the two.

“This project, it’s all shale development with these huge, massive well pads, massive pipeline developments,” Johnson said. “So totally different ball game than what the Wayne has seen in the past with these much smaller operations.”

A national forest is managed by the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture and blends conservation with public service and resource extraction like logging and mining. 

A national park is managed by the National Park Service under the U.S. Department of Interior and the goal is to protect and preserve natural lands in their natural state. 

Ohio has one national park, Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Northeast Ohio. 

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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A full-time Ohio worker needs to be making at least $23.82 an hour to be able to afford a “modest” two-bedroom apartment, according to a new report released this week. 

This is slightly more than a 5% increase from last year — which was $22.51, according to National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio’s annual Out of Reach report. 

The Housing Wage is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must make to afford a rental home at HUD’s Fair Market Rent without spending more than 30% of their income. 

Ohio’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,238, meaning a household must earn $49,537 annually to cover rent and utilities, according to the report. 

The state’s Fair Market Rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $996, according to the report. Ohio has nearly 1.6 million renter households. 

The report showed the average Ohio renter earns $19.59 an hour, $4.23 less than what they need to be making to afford a two-bedroom apartment. 

The Housing Wage gap was $1.57 an hour in 2020, meaning the Housing Wage has increased by 169% in the past six years, the report said. 

“Renters’ incomes shot up in the early 2020s, but then rent increases eventually swamped the wage gains,” COHHIO Executive Director Amy Riegel said in a statement. 

“And it’s not just housing. The cost of food, transportation, healthcare, childcare, and education is continuing to rise while people working in low wage jobs are getting squeezed.” 

Of the 10 most common jobs in Ohio, only general operations managers and registered nurses pay more than $23.82 an hour, according to the report. 

Fast food workers, retail salespeople, stockers, laborers, home health aides, and cashiers earn a median hourly wage less than $20 an hour, according to the report. 

Ohio’s minimum wage is $11 an hour for non-tipped workers — meaning a minimum wage worker would have to work 87 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom rental and 70 hours to afford a one-bedroom rental. 

Economic Policy Institute modeling shows 616,700 Ohio workers would get a raise due to a state minimum wage increase of $15 an hour by 2030, according to a report by Policy Matters Ohio published earlier this year. 

Union County had the highest Housing Wage, where full-time workers need to make at least $27.56 an hour, the report showed. 

Urban areas in the state were not far behind. The Housing Wage is $27.50 an hour in Columbus, $26.02 in Cincinnati, $24.60 in Cleveland, and $24.48 in Dayton. 

Ohio has a shortage of 266,000 affordable and available rental units, according to the 2026 Gap Report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and COHHIO. 

“While we’re helping many families get stably housed, even more are falling into homelessness every day,” Fred Berry, president and CEO of Humility of Mary Housing in Akron, said in a statement. 

“The lack of affordable housing is increasing the risk of homelessness and making it harder to get out of homelessness.” 

There were 12,196 people experiencing homelessness in Ohio last year, according to HUD’s annual Homelessness Assessment Report. 

Only one in four eligible households receives federal housing assistance, NLIHC President and CEO Renee M. Willis said. 

“To meaningfully address the affordable housing crisis, the federal government must adequately fund housing programs in a way that would expand rental assistance and both preserve and increase the supply of deeply affordable homes for those with the lowest incomes,” she said in a statement. 

“We have the resources to invest in expanding housing solutions that provide stable homes for the lowest-income people in our country. We just need the political will to do so.” 

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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The number of Ohio unclaimed funds paid out nearly tripled during the 2026 fiscal year, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce. This comes after Ohio lawmakers and the governor decided to tap that money to fund sports stadiums. 

There were 884,912 claims filed for $746.50 million during the 2026 fiscal year, said Ohio Department of Commerce Spokesperson Reagan Reetz. 

Of those, 184,083 claims were paid out for $182.57 million during the most recent fiscal year, she said. 

In fiscal year 2025, there were 68,787 claims paid out totaling $109.73 million, Reetz said. 

It’s been a little over a year since Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine approved using $1 billion of the state’s unclaimed funds to help Ohio professional sport teams pay for new stadiums or improvements through the state’s two-year operating budget. 

Of that money, $600 million of unclaimed funds have already been spoken for and will go to the Cleveland Browns’ new domed stadium in Brook Park — about 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland. 

The remaining $400 million is set aside for other qualifying projects as determined by the Ohio Office of Budget and Management and the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission. 

Twenty-two applicants are trying to get a slice of the $400 million for their facilities, according to the Ohio Office of Budget and Management. 

Eight of those applicants have been denied — narrowing the list down to 14. 

Teams with facilities still in the running include the Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Cavaliers, Columbus Blue Jackets, Cleveland Guardians, and FC Cincinnati. 

The budget allows the state to take existing unclaimed funds that are at least 10 years old as of Jan. 1, 2026, and put them into the Ohio Cultural and Sports Facility Performance Grant Fund. It also gives property owners until 2036 to make a claim even if their money was previously transferred to the state.

Ohio’s unclaimed funds is money that is property of Ohioans held by the state for things like forgotten bank accounts, rent or utility deposits, or uncashed insurance policies. An initiated claim is when someone submits a form to claim their funds. Additional documents are needed to prove ownership of the funds. 

Ohio’s unclaimed funds is worth close to $5 billion, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce. 

Two former Ohio Democratic lawmakers — former state Rep. Jeff Crossman and former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann — filed a class action lawsuit against the state’s plan to use unclaimed funds for the new Browns stadium at the end of last year. 

Franklin County Common Pleas Court Magistrate Jennifer Hunt granted a preliminary injunction blocking the state from taking unclaimed funds to help pay for the Browns stadium earlier this year. 

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sided with the state.  

The Cleveland Browns broke ground on the new stadium earlier this year and it is expected to be ready for the 2029 season, according to the NFL.  

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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Ohioans will see changes to student loans as a result of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill. 

A handful of policy changes for student financial aid borrowing and repayment took effect last Wednesday, one year after President Donald Trump signed the massive bill into law. 

“We’re already facing a huge affordability crisis, and folks are already saddled with so much debt that isn’t just student loan debt,” said Amy Czulada, senior advisor for outreach & engagement for Protect Borrowers.  

“Folks are just really being pinched at every level. … We’re really concerned about what’s coming down the pike here, because of the One Big Beautiful Bill, but also all these other things that are happening simultaneously.” 

About 1.78 million student borrowers live in Ohio and the average student loan debt is $35,072, according to the Education Data Initiative. 

Nearly half of Ohio’s borrowers are younger than 35 and 15% of Ohio residents have student loan debt, according to the data. About a fifth of Ohio borrowers owe between $20,000 to $40,000, according to the data. 

Borrowing

The changes creates loan limits for borrowers, capping the amount of money graduate students can borrow. 

Graduate students were previously able to borrow enough money to pay the cost of their program, but those loans are being phased out. 

Graduate students earning “professional” degrees are limited to borrowing $50,000 per year and a lifetime total of $200,000. These degrees include chiropractic, clinical psychology, dentistry, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, podiatry, theology. and veterinary medicine.

All other graduate programs will have a cap of $20,500 per year and $100,000 total. 

“It’ll end up with folks either not being able to go back to school or needing to wait to go back to school until they can save enough money to go back to school,” Czulada said.

Private student loans are an option for borrowers, but she cautions people do their research beforehand.

“Private student loans have all sorts of issues associated with them, including higher interest rates and no cancellation programs,” Czulada said. “It’s much more of an opaque market, so they end up being a lot riskier and costing folks a lot more money.” 

Parent PLUS loans will also be capped at $20,000 per year, per dependent child, with a total cap of $65,000 per dependent. 

Repayment

New student loan borrowers will only have access to two repayment plans — a new tiered standard plan and a repayment assistance plan.  

“The new tiered standard plan is based on how much of a loan balance you have,” Czulada said. “So it’ll keep people in debt a lot longer based on their loan balance, and have higher bills associated with that.”

The new repayment assistance plan is based on a borrower’s adjusted gross income. It also comes with a $50 monthly reduction per dependent. 

The federal Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program is being phased out, meaning more than 7 million people enrolled in the program will have to move their student debt to another plan. 

SAVE borrowers will have until September to switch plans and borrowers who don’t make the switch will be automatically enrolled in a standard federal repayment plan. 

The SAVE program came out of the Biden administration in 2023 and limited federal loan repayment to 5% of an undergraduate borrower’s disposable income. 

There are about 9 million student loan borrowers in default — meaning someone has gone more than nine months without making a payment — with $220 billion in outstanding federal student loan debt, according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. 

Ohio has 428,740 student loan borrowers in default, according to Protect Borrowers. 

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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More than 70 Ohio school districts and 15 Christian schools have staff members who are authorized to carry weapons on school grounds, according to the Ohio School Safety Center. 

A mix of 116 school districts and independent schools have armed staff members, as of June 17. Many of the schools are rural, but there are some urban and suburban districts. 

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law in 2022 that grants local boards of education authority to decide whether to allow their teachers and school workers to carry firearms.

It lowered the required training hours for armed personnel from 700 hours to at least 24, but school boards have the authority to mandate more hours. 

“It’s not a sufficient amount of training,” said Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper. 

“We’re talking about highly intense situations that require a lot of not only tactical training on how to use weapons. but how to deal with making split second decisions.” 

She testified against the bill when it was in the legislature in 2021. 

“I wish that (the lawmakers) would trust us with what we’re actually trained to do, which is to educate students,” Cropper said. “We are firm believers in local control around issues, but we still think it is bad policy for schools to allow teachers to carry guns.”

The law did grandfather in some school districts that had previous training, as long as the training met the requirements of the law. 

There have been more than 430 school shootings since Columbine in 1999, according to The Washington Post. 

Antwerp Local Schools in Paulding County has had a few armed staff members for years. The rural school district has about 700 students and about 100 staff members. 

Police response was the main factor in the decision to arm staff, said district superintendent Marty Miller.

Antwerp has a police department, but they also rely on the sheriff’s department about 10 miles away. 

“Our concern for us was if there was a situation that unfolded, what kind of law enforcement could we get here, and how fast,” Miller said. 

“What we could get here if we needed law enforcement obviously was not going to be sufficient. His party can be over for the bad guy in terms of accomplishing what he wants to accomplish.”

The district currently has four staff members who are armed and receive training each year, Miller said. The district also has a school resource officer. 

“We are confident that they will respond if needed, and that they are there just gives us a better feeling when something happens,” Miller said. 

The district decided not to arm any teachers, but rather staff members who are moving around during the day. 

The district wants people to know they have armed staff members. 

“If it can be a deterrent — and what may appear that there’s only one police officer in town, kind of thing, but there are armed staff — that might convince a bad person who has intentions, ‘maybe I won’t go near that place’ because of that,” Miller said. 

“It’s just letting the public know that your children are protected.”

Euclid City Schools Board of Education in Cuyahoga County decided to arm some of the district’s staff in 2022, said district spokesperson Dominick Ferlito. 

All of their armed employees are Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy trained.

“Our top priority is providing students and staff with a safe, welcoming environment where students are free to learn, create and reach their full potential,” Ferlito said in an email. 

“We continue to work closely with local law enforcement and safety partners to regularly review and strengthen our safety procedures and protocols.”

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

The post More Than 110 Ohio School Districts and Schools Have Armed Staff Members appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission approved 21 bids to frack more than 15,000 acres of Ohio’s public land during Monday’s meeting. 

Nearly 13,000 of those acres are in Egypt Valley Wildlife Area in Belmont and Guernsey counties. The commission is required to pick the “highest and best bid” per Ohio law. 

There was no discussion for most of the bids or nominations. Commission Chair Theresa White did not take questions from the media after the meeting. 

These bids in Egypt Valley Wildlife Area were approved for fracking during Monday’s meeting: 

• Oklahoma-based Gulfport Appalachia, LLC had the winning bid for 4,360 acres for $76,306,755 ($17,500/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 7.5% of production. 
• Oklahoma-based Ascent Resources – Utica, LLC had the winning bid for 366.495 acres for $4,583,752.97 ($12,507/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 5.5% of production. 
• Texas-based Grenadier Energy III, LLC had the winning bid for 3846.934 acres for $61,577,872.54 ($16,007/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 7.5% of production. 
• Grenadier Energy III, LLC had the winning bid for 2792.67745 acres for$44,702,387.94 ($16,007/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 7.5% of production. 
• Grenadier Energy III, LLC had the winning bid for 849.881 acres for $13,604,045.17 ($16,007/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 7.5% of production. 
• Grenadier Energy III, LLC had the winning bid for 746.85 acres for $11,954,827.95 ($16,007/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 7.5% of production. 

Fracking is the process of injecting liquid into the ground at a high pressure to extract oil or gas.

There were approximately 2,000 incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio from 2015-2023, according to FracTracker Alliance — a nonprofit that collects data on fracking pipelines. 

There’s evidence that shows increased exposure to fracking impacts health, in particular children’s health, including low birth weight, preterm births, congenital anomalies, and asthma, according to Yale School of Medicine. 

Bids for about 1,840 acres in Jockey Hollow Wildlife Area in Harrison County were approved for fracking during Monday’s meeting: 

• Gulfport Appalachia, LLC had the winning bid for 382.810 acres for $6,699,175 ($17,500/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 7.5% of production. 
• Ascent Resources had the winning bid for 1,460.559 acres for  $18,267,211.41 ($12,507/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 5.5% of production. 

West Virginia-based Infinity Natural Resources was awarded the bid to frack 513 acres in Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County for $3,848,325 ($7,500/acre). There is an additional financial incentive of 7.5% of production. 

Texas-based EOG Resources Incorporated was awarded the bid to frack 6.8 acres at Noble Correctional Institution in Noble County. 

Gulfport Appalachia, LLC was approved to frack four bids, EOG Resources was approved to frack seven bids, Ascent Resources was approved to frack four bids,and Grenadier Energy III was approved to frack four bids. 

Each lease agreement includes a 12.5% royalty paid to the state based on production of oil and gas at that site, per state law, with an additional financial incentive paid by the winning bidder to the state, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. 

The lease bonuses for this round of nominations totals more than $241.2 million, according to ODNR. 

All but one bid was approved during Monday’s meeting. About six acres in Tuscarawas County along State Route 800 was the only bid that was not approved because the nominator withdrew the bid, so no valid bids were submitted, according to ODNR. 

The bidders now go through the regulatory and permitting process through the ODNR Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, as required by law. 

Four different bid selections totaling more than 8,360 acres of land in Egypt Valley were denied to be frack — 5,439 acres, 1,285 acres, 777 acres, and 863 acres. 

“Those nominations included parcels that have already been bid out,” said ODNR spokesperson Andy Chow.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law last week that would speed up the process to frack Ohio state parks and public lands. 

Ohio Senate Bill 219 was introduced by Ohio state Sen. Al Landis, R-Dover and it will give the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission 90 days to decide on a nomination to frack public land — half the amount of time they previously had.  

It will also require the commission to pick the “highest and best bid” within 60 days; currently there is no deadline. 

Advocates for protecting Ohio’s public lands from fracking booed and shouted their disapproval during the meeting: 

“No fracking our parks.” 

“Sounds like a rubber-stamping broken record to me.” 

“Hands off our land.” 

About a dozen people gathered outside the Ohio Department of Public Safety building before Monday’s meeting to protest fracking Ohio’s land. 

“Wake up, commissioners. We cannot give any more of our land to gas and oil,” said Judy Smucker, with Third Act Ohio.

“We care for the future of our children, and we will not give up. We have to follow the science, and unless someone like you, all of us cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.” 

Randi Pokladnik lives about 20 minutes from Jockey Hollow and had a well pad less than a mile from her home during the fracking phase. 

“It was like living on an airport runway,” she said. “We couldn’t even talk to ourselves. My husband and I had to yell in the driveway when we were outside.” 

Terri Sabo lives outside the Salt Fork State Park. 

“Our lands are being destroyed by the oil and gas industry,” she said. “Our parks are being sold off to out-of-state companies from Texas, Oklahoma or West Virginia for the ‘best and highest bid,’ even if there is only one bid.” 

Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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