The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a story today about Governor Strickland’s thinly-veiled ultimatum to mortgage lenders:

Strickland urges mortgage firms to aid homeowners
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Mark Rollenhagen
Plain Dealer Bureau Chief
Columbus — With 200,000 Ohioans facing ballooning monthly house payments over the next year, Gov. Ted Strickland on Tuesday asked mortgage companies to work harder to prevent people from losing their homes.

Strickland wants companies that manage mortgages to voluntarily sign an agreement to commit to identifying struggling homeowners and assigning staff to work with individuals to develop more-manageable loan terms.

If the companies don’t agree, tougher legislation could be in store, the governor said, although he said he hopes to work cooperatively because foreclosures hurt both borrowers and lenders.

Read the full story here.

How “voluntary” is this agreement with this kind of threat lurking in the background?

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This morning’s Wall Street Journal focuses attention on Ohio’s hyper-aggressive new attorney general. In the story, Buckeye Institute President David Hansen points out that an anti-business environment is the last thing Ohioans need.

“The big problem is that we have a dismal economy,” says David Hansen, president of the conservative think tank the Buckeye Institute, who recommends lower taxes and spending to improve Ohio’s job market.

Read the entire story.

Update: The Columbus Dispatch has an interesting story regarding Dann’s campaign contributions from gambling machine operators.

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As the debate heats up over Gov. Ted Strickland’s energy plan, Ohio’s largest utility has doubts. However, some trade associations and organized labor groups are supportive.

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Friday, October 5, 2007 4:17 AM

Utilities rip Strickland’s plan
Biggest companies say competition exists for energy deregulation
By Paul Wilson

Electricity customers in Ohio could face much higher bills if Gov. Ted Strickland’s energy plan is approved, the leader of the state’s largest utility said yesterday.

Tony Alexander, president and chief executive of Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., said there’s enough competition for electricity customers to keep prices from rising sharply when markets are set to be deregulated in Ohio at the end of next year.

“The push to change Ohio law should be driven by facts, not fear — fear that competitive markets don’t exist for electricity, which simply isn’t true,” Alexander said in testimony before the state Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee.

Strickland and others say the governor’s plan would keep rates from skyrocketing. Under the plan, utilities would be forced to prove they have competition for selling electricity before they could move to market-based pricing.

Ohio and many other states have moved to deregulate their electricity markets. The hope was that customers could buy electricity from independent power providers instead of just the utilities whose wires are connected to their homes.

Proponents believed that competition would lower prices. But Strickland and others — including some manufacturers, labor leaders and the Ohio Farm Bureau — say competition never emerged in states where deregulation already has taken place. They also fear what might occur when full deregulation is set to take effect in Ohio in 2009.

Read the entire story.

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After a recent exposé in the Columbus Dispatch, the Center for Education Reform and the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools expressed concern over Attorney General Marc Dann’s coordination with the politically powerful Ohio Education Association (OEA) in shutting down charter schools.

From the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools:

Ohio Alliance files public records request with Attorney General

October 4, 2007 - In response to the unwarranted attack on Ohio charter schools, the Ohio Alliance immediately filed a public records request seeking prompt inspection of all communications between Attorney General Marc Dann’s office and the Ohio Education Association from January 1, 2007 through September 18, 2007.

The Alliance also distributed a press release to media statewide announcing our intent to review the dialogue between the teachers union and the Attorney General that led to the settlement of an OEA lawsuit against the state (specifically, against the Ohio Department of Education for failing to adequately monitor charter schools) and the AG’s recent lawsuits against selected charter schools.

It appears that Cathy Candisky, an education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch, was intrigued by our response and filed a similar public records request that served as the basis for her story, “Teachers behind Dann’s strategy? E-mails with union show charter-school debate.”

Other reporters from major Ohio media outlets have requested copies of the records provided to the Ohio Alliance by the Attorney General’s office yesterday. Copies were hand-delivered by Ohio Alliance staff to two key Statehouse reporters on Oct. 3 and additional stories may be written and published.

Given the magnitude of the issue - likely to impact charter schools across the state and, potentially, the nation - the Ohio Alliance is dedicating significant resources in its response to the unwarranted attack on three Ohio charter schools. We are in close communication with key stakeholders and with legal counsel.

We will continue to question the Attorney General’s preemptive and unwarranted action and obvious bias against Ohio charter schools, and to stand up for the rights of those impacted and the legal principal of these cases. We’re committed to providing updates to the Ohio charter school community as our best courses of action are identified. In the meantime, be assured that we stand squarely behind the legal rights of charter schools dedicated to serving Ohio students.

From the Center for Education Reform:

Ohio Attorney General Takes Orders From Teachers’ Union

October 3, 2007 - Attorney General Mark Dann’s attack against three low-performing charter schools in impoverished neighborhoods was actually a crafty deal between Dann and Ohio’s largest teachers’ union according to press reports.

Public records obtained by the Columbus Dispatch indicate that Dann’s legal strategy of suing the charters under the state’s charitable-trust laws came at the suggestion of an attorney representing the teachers’ union.

The Ohio Education Association, which filed suit against the state in March in an attempt to close down charter schools, agreed to drop the suit as soon as Dann promised to aggressively pursue closing down charter schools. The settlement came just one day prior to Dann filing the first of his three lawsuits against the Dayton charters - saving the union a costly legal battle they were likely to lose, and advancing Dann’s political agenda on the taxpayers’ dime.

Jeanne Allen, nationally recognized education expert and president of The Center for Education Reform, is be available for comment at 1-800-521-2118.

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Lawyers’ paperwork on limiting campaign contributions arrives late
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Julie Carr Smyth
Associated Press

Columbus- Well over half the lawyers required to limit their campaign contributions to Attorney General Marc Dann in order to qualify for state work didn’t fill out the required paperwork until this month, long after the office began doling out contracts, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The cap on donations to Dann, the state’s top lawyer, stemmed from a law he championed as a state senator and later used as a centerpiece of his 2006 campaign that sought to curb the role of donations in the awarding of state contracts.

Fifty of the affidavits by outside lawyers who have landed state legal work came in on a single day, Sept. 12, after Dann’s office faced scrutiny from lawmakers over two of the contracts. Twenty-nine others were submitted after a records request was made by The Associated Press, many bearing the marks of fax machines from around the country.

Ben Espy, an executive attorney general who oversees outside legal contracts for Dann, conceded that the office went out and collected the affidavits after public interest arose.

Read the entire story

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After receiving an annoying or threatening telephone call, most government officials would get an unlisted home telephone number. Marc Dann’s staffer, Brian Laliberte, got an expensive taxpayer funded security system.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol investigated Mr. Laliberte’s call and concluded it was unfounded. Nonetheless, Mr. Dann set an imprudent precedent. The attorney general has 1,300 employees. For the taxpayers sake, let’s hope no other attorney general staffer gets another “unfounded” but scary telephone call at the office.

The Associated Press
Friday, July 13, 2007

State pays for home security system
Attorney general’s aide receives $3,700 in gear after phone threat made

COLUMBUS - A top assistant to Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has received a $3,700 home security system at state expense after receiving a telephone threat.

The system is to be installed by state agents, then monitored by the attorney general’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation rather than by a private contractor. The total cost to the state of equipment, labor and monitoring is not yet known.

Deputy First Assistant Attorney General Brian Laliberte, 33, said he received a strange call at work on June 29. The deep voice of a male caller said: “Karma is a b, what goes around comes around.” As he was hanging up, Laliberte said he thought he heard the caller say, “You’re dead.”

Laliberte oversees Dann’s criminal division.

“I’m just very grateful the attorney general has extended this protection to my family and I know he’d do the same for someone under similar circumstances,” he said.

The State Highway Patrol investigated the incident but closed it as unfounded. The patrol arranged to begin capturing incoming phone numbers to Laliberte’s telephones, however.

Death threats to the attorney general, Ohio’s top law enforcer, are fairly common, said Mark Weaver, a deputy attorney general for Betty Montgomery from 1995 to 1999, but it is rare for a staff member to be threatened.

A militia group “tried” Montgomery in the mid-1990s in absentia, found her guilty and mailed her a death warrant, he said.

“She did not have the state go out and buy her a security system,” he said.

Dann, a Democrat, beat Montgomery, a Republican, last year. Weaver was a consultant to Montgomery’s campaign.

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The following video offers State Senator Kevin Coughlin’s perspective on the $52.4 billion state budget. We encourage all legislators who have produced similar videos to send a link to Eye on the Statehouse.

The Buckeye Institute recently recognized Sen. Coughlin for his leadership on the special needs voucher provision passed by the Ohio House and Senate. Unfortunately, this important educational choice reform for disabled children was vetoed by Governor Ted Strickland.

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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 was her call on the dodge by Dann’s office suggesting that the spending was ok as it wasn’t using tax dollars:

I say the court settlements generated by the good lawyers in the office of the Ohio attorney general and then channeled into a special fund don’t qualify as tax revenue per se.

But it is the people’s money, even if it didn’t arrive freshly minted from the hip pockets of the taxpayers.

The people pay the taxes that are spent to run the office. The lawyers in that office work on behalf of the people. Their wages are paid by the people.

Any jack they nail in the process belongs to the people.

Fisher restates one of our findings from the 2006 Ohio Piglet Report: for the individual there is no difference between the dollars taken from you by government through direct taxation and the dollars taken from you through the civil justice system or any other of the several coercive means available to government. Either way it is a loss of your economic freedom and government’s gain at your expense.

And it is still wasteful spending regardless if the money came from taxes or from fees, charges, settlements, fines or all other means. After all, government has nothing to spend it hasn’t first taken from someone else.

Government revenue that doesn’t qualify as “tax revenue per se” was 45 percent of state spending in 2006, or almost $19 billion. Politicians need to be held as accountable for non-tax spending as they are tax dollar spending.

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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.

Over the next biennium, the state of Ohio will spend $52.37 billion, including millions of dollars in pork.

Ohioans, through the state budget, will continue to provide corporate welfare to Fortune 500 companies, publicity for the NFL, and rent for historical societies statewide. Taxpayers will continue to subsidize obsolete international trade offices around the world and wealthy nursing home owners here in Ohio.

Throughout the current budget, grant grabbers, rent-seekers, and earmark porkers have passed their bills onto the Ohio taxpayers. Below is an example of the pork Ohio tax dollars will fund over the next two years. These entities are this week’s Porkers of the Week.

Cultural Facilities Commission
Hayes Center Renovation & Repairs $ 300,000
Renovations and Repairs $ 850,000
Historic Site Signage $ 250,000
Serpent Mound Improvements $ 340,000
Information Technology Project $ 364,000
Center Rehabilitation $ 1,035,000
Digitization of Collections $ 300,000
Exhibit Replace/Orientation $ 415,000
Collections Facility Planning $ 1,240,000
W.P. Snyder Restoration $ 876,000
Lockington Locks Restoration $ 172,000
Huntington Park $ 7,000,000
Schuster Center for the Performing Arts $ 5,500,000
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra - Riverbend $ 3,000,000
Marina District Amphitheatre $ 2,900,000
Cincinnati Museum Center $ 2,000,000
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center $ 2,000,000
Cincinnati Sports Facility Improvements $ 2,000,000
Pro Football Hall of Fame $ 1,650,000
Heritage Center of Dayton Manufacturing & Entrepreneurship $ 1,300,000
Western Reserve Historical Society $ 1,000,000
COSI Columbus $ 1,000,000
Columbus Museum of Art $ 1,000,000
Mason ATP Tennis Center $ 1,300,000
Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens $ 1,175,000
Akron Art Museum $ 1,000,000
Sauder Village $ 830,000
Horvitz Center for the Arts $ 750,000
Ensemble Theatre $ 750,000
Voice of America Museum $ 750,000
Cleveland Steamship Mather $ 600,000
Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors Monument $ 500,000
King-Lincoln Arts & Entertainment District $ 500,000
Art Academy of Cincinnati $ 500,000
Great Lakes Historical Society $ 500,000
McKinley Museum $ 425,000
Charles A. Eulett Education Center and Appalachian Museum $ 300,000
Davis Shai Historical Facility $ 300,000
Massillon Museum $ 275,000
The Mandel Center $ 250,000
Worthington Arts Center $ 250,000
CCAD $ 250,000
BalletMet $ 250,000
Stambaugh Hall Improvements $ 250,000
Youngstown Symphony Orchestra $ 250,000
Wood County Historical Center & Museum $ 220,000
Harding Memorial $ 210,000
Cincinnati Ballet $ 200,000
City of Avon Stadium Complex $ 200,000
Renaissance Performing Arts Center $ 200,000
Oxford Arts Center Historic Renovation $ 174,000
Wayne County Historical Society - Lincoln Highway $ 170,000
Maumee Valley Historical Society $ 150,000
Trumbull County Historical Society $ 150,000
First Lunar Flight Project $ 25,000
Holmes County Historical Society $ 140,000
Canal Winchester Historical Society $ 125,000
Ukrainian Museum $ 100,000
Gordon Square Arts District $ 100,000
Moreland Theatre Renovation $ 100,000
Karamu House $ 100,000
Symmes Township Historical Society - Ross House $ 100,000
Springfield Veterans Park Amphitheatre $ 100,000
Gallia County Historical Genealogical Society $ 100,000
Gallia County French Art Colony $ 100,000
The Octagon House $ 100,000
Vinton County Stages - Pavilion Project $ 100,000
County Line Historical Society (Wayne/Holmes) $ 100,000
Paul Brown Museum $ 75,000
The Works - Ohio Center for History, Art and Technology $ 75,000
Van Wert Historical Society $ 70,000
Indian Mill Renovations $ 66,000
Hale Farm & Village $ 50,000
Howe House Historic Site $ 50,000
Beavercreek Community Theatre $ 50,000
Jamestown Opera House $ 50,000
Johnny Appleseed Museum $ 50,000
Vinton County Historical Society - Alice’s House Project $ 50,000
Woodward Opera House $ 50,000
Little Brown Jug Facility Improvements $ 50,000
Applecreek Historical Society $ 50,000
Wyandot Historic Building Renovation $ 50,000
Galion Historic Big Four Depot $ 30,000
Bucyrus Historic Depot Renovations $ 30,000
Myers Historical Stagecoach Inn Renovation $ 25,000
Arts West Performing Arts Center $ 25,000
Chester Academy Historic Building $ 25,000
Portland Civil War Museum and Historic Displays $ 25,000
Morgan County Historic Opera House $ 25,000
Crawford Antique Museum $ 9,000
Monroe City Historical Society Building Repairs $ 5,000
Wright-Dunbar Historical $ 250,000
Hip Klotz Memorial Facility Improvements $ 150,000
Music Hall Garage $ 1,000,000
AB Graham Center $ 40,000
Bradford Ohio Railroad Museum Restoration $ 30,000
WACO Aircraft Museum $ 30,000
Fort Recovery Renovations $ 100,000
CAP-087 Columbus Children’s Hospital Amphitheater $ 1,000,000

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The Associated Press is reporting the state budget could be completed by tomorrow.

Here is the story:

The Associated Press
6/26/2007, 5:34 p.m. EDT
State lawmakers make final budget push
By JOHN McCARTHY

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — State lawmakers put the finishing touches Tuesday on a budget bill that freezes college tuition, increases dollars for children’s health care and gives seniors and the disabled a property tax break.

The $52.3 billion spending blueprint, which will pay for state operations for the two years beginning Sunday, was expected to clear a House-Senate committee in time for final votes planned for Wednesday.

In early evening, the panel was awaiting testimony by state budget director Pari Sabety on suggested cuts needed to cover a $167 million projected shortfall.

Read the full story here.

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