AP and others are reporting that the Capitol Square Review & Advisory Board is seeking $200,000 immediately and another $800,000 eventually for upgrades to the 96 security cameras state troopers use to keep tabs on people in and around the Statehouse in Columbus.
The CSRAB said:
“We need to protect the governor, who is now making his [...]

The federal government has launched a website, www.usaspending.gov, detailing a myrad of details about apparently every federal contract issued. I’ve spent just a short few minutes on it, but it appears to be a revealing look into the line-by-line transactions in a large part of the national treasury’s checkbook. You know, that big [...]

The Dispatch’s Ann Fisher had a piece last week detailing spending out of public coffers by Attorney General Marc Dann and his predecessors, Republican and Democrat, for a booth, sponsorship and a parade slot in Columbus’s Fourth of July festivities.
Good stuff, but what puts Fisher in the running for our Pistol of the Week award [...]

Last week, Eye on the Statehouse drew attention to the Ohio Investment in Training Program (OITP), a corporate welfare program at the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD). Under the program, even Fortune 500 companies qualify for taxpayer funded reimbursement of up to 50 percent of their workforce development costs.
OITP is getting $24.8 million over [...]

Last week, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced plans to test the security of electronic voting machines. However, state and county elections officials have already spent four years and hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on perhaps the most comprehensive voting machine security testing in the nation. It seems Brunner intends to [...]

Each Friday, Eye on the Statehouse announces its “Porker of the Week.” It’s our way of calling attention to a particularly big or wasteful spender.
This week’s Porker is the Strickland Administration. Over the past two weeks, Governor Ted Strickland has disclosed that social security numbers of every single state worker and many Ohioans [...]

Do elected officials make enough money? State Rep. Dan Dodd (D-Hebron) would like to find out. During a hearing this last week before the House State Government and Elections Committee, Rep. Dodd argued in favor of his bill, HB 184. The measure seeks “to establish the Elected Officials Review Commission to study the [...]

Today’s Senate Finance and Financial Institutions committee featured testimony from Auditor of State Mary Taylor.
Auditor Taylor spoke in favor of Senate Bill 146. This bill proposes a system to externally monitor audits in each state government agency. The thought is the additional safeguards will prevent another scandal such as the infamous BWC investment [...]