The morning newsletter of the Ohio Capital Journal
Reporting for the People
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By David DeWitt | Editor in Chief
Good morning Ohio!
Ohio public school districts continue to be desperate for bus drivers, while the status of school transportation as a whole is being debated by public and private schools alike.
A school bus. (File photo by Getty Images)
By Susan Tebben
A recent transportation workgroup put together by the state recommended, among other things, a “comprehensive system change” to transportation along with immediate actions to “ease current system challenges and build the new system foundation.”
By Author Name
Central State University incorrectly charged students tuition and rent, according to State Auditor Keith Faber.
By Morgan Trau, WEWS
The candidates for Ohio governor have unveiled more in-depth policies to reduce the growing property tax crisis. A nonpartisan tax expert isn't too impressed.
COMMENTARY
An electricity meter. (Stock photo from Getty Images.)
By Joe Flarida
Ohio families have been mired in an ongoing energy affordability crisis. The question is whether our governor, lawmakers, or utility regulators will ever confront it. The answer has been resounding silence, punctuated only by the approval of the next rate hike.
STATELINE
The big challenges and policy issues that cross state lines.
By Tim Henderson
Immigration arrests reached 1,593 per day in early July in a new push to detain and deport immigrants that has led to deaths in traffic stops. There were more than 43,000 arrests in June, the highest recorded by the Trump administration.
By Nada Hassanein
A federal commission voted Tuesday in favor of a Trump administration proposal to rescind requirements that larger employers report the demographics of their workers — information that’s used to help enforce racial and gender antidiscrimination laws.
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris
The Trump administration has a new plan for teenagers learning about pregnancy: Beginning this summer, it will steer millions of dollars toward organizations that focus on anatomy, fertility tracking, hormonal production and “reproductive goals counseling.”
By Anna Claire Vollers
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it is freezing more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota in an effort to crack down on fraud.
By Tim Henderson
State unemployment rates in June were little changed in a month in which some hoped for a boost from World Cup-related tourism and socializing. That failed to materialize nationally, but some states saw a positive effect from fans.
THE RUNDOWN
News from other states
By Lauren McCauley and Eesha Pendharkar, Maine Morning Star
Biddeford, Maine citizens shaken by the killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by an ICE agent July 13, are calling on their leaders to do something to protect their community, which they say has been threatened for months by federal immigration authorities.
NATIONAL NEWS
By David Lightman
Mass voter challenges are likely to occur in the 2026 midterm elections, the Brennan Center for Justice warned Tuesday, with the potential to “undermine the democratic process.”
By Ariana Figueroa
As many as 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children are at risk of losing their federally funded legal representation due to the Trump administration withholding appropriated funds, immigration attorneys warned Tuesday.
By Jennifer Shutt
The U.S. Senate committee in charge of funding the government spent hours in a hearing room Tuesday, trying to parse out just how much extra spending lawmakers should provide for the military amid the ongoing war in Iran.
By Amelia Twyman
New data reveals the number of women running in the 2026 elections is slightly up from 2024, but experts say there is still progress to be made with women’s representation in public office overall.
By Jennifer Shutt
The U.S. House approved a stopgap spending bill Tuesday that would keep the government up and running through the fall, sending it to the Senate, where lawmakers expect to rework the measure.
HISTORY THURSDAY
On this day, July 23, in 1885, U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant, an Ohioan who commanded the Union armies to victory in the American Civil War and later served as the 18th president of the United States, died at the age of 63. Learn more
CATCHING OUR EYE
Lakes and rivers. The Statehouse News Bureau’s Sarah Donaldson reports, “Ohio EPA drops plan to permit data center discharges into lakes, rivers.”
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Tuesday that for now, it will abandon a proposal to make it easier for data centers to discharge their wastewater into some lakes, rivers and streams.
The state agency had been considering streamlining its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits process for all data centers statewide.
But after the EPA received a “significant volume” of comments against doing so, it won’t move forward with the one-size-fits-all model, saying that issuing permits for a data center on a case by case basis “is the most appropriate path forward at this time.”Haitians in Lima. The Ohio Newsroom’s Kendall Crawford reports, “In a small western Ohio city, Haitian residents prepare for an uncertain future.”
It wasn’t easy for Jacson Joseph to leave behind his life as a high school English teacher in Haiti. But he says the gang violence he witnessed left him with no choice but to flee in 2021.
Since then, he’s worked hard to make Lima feel like home for his family of four. “By living a new life in a new country, I told myself I'm a learner,” he said. “When I'm fighting, either I learn or I win. I never lose.”
Joseph was living legally in Lima under temporary protected status, or TPS — a federal designation that allows vetted people from certain countries to live and work legally in the U.S. when it's considered unsafe for them to return home, due to armed conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary conditions.
The Trump administration has argued conditions have improved in Haiti and has taken steps to revoke the country’s TPS status. It’s unclear when protections will expire, as legal details are still being hammered out following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to allow the administration to end TPS for both Haiti and Syria.Library funding. Ideastream’s Kabir Bhatia and Ygal Kaufman report, “Getting a read on how much Ohio libraries rely on property tax.”
Ohio’s public libraries are already reeling from cuts to the state’s Public Library Fund instituted in 2025, said Tuscarawas County Public Library Executive Director Michelle McMorrow Ramsell.
“Ohio libraries do not benefit from any county sales tax, city income tax, school district income tax, casino or marijuana income tax,” she said during a recent panel on library funding. “The revenues that public libraries receive are from the state and from local property taxes.”Farmers. Ideastream’s Richard Cunningham reports, “Ohio farmers' property taxes have risen tenfold since 2005, leading some to call for relief.”
Another big economic issue: rising property taxes. Farmers aren’t taxed the same as homeowners or businesses. Their land is valued differently through a program called the Current Agricultural Use Value, or CAUV.
Under the CAUV, farmland is taxed for its agricultural value, not its development value. That means farmers get a break on the acres they farm compared to what the valuation would be if the land were used for houses or offices…
But even with the CAUV, farmers are seeing increasing valuations — and higher tax burdens. The value of an acre of farmland jumped from $123 in 2005 to a record high of more than $1,600 dollars in 2014. Even after legislative reforms in 2017, values are at $1,300 dollars an acre, or more than 10 times what they were 20 years ago.
THE POD
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS.
Mahalo!
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