IO Calls for Delay of Tom Price’s Hearing for HHS Secretary Amid Accusations
Get Involved, Get Engaged, Come Together and March
Columbus: Women’s March on Washington Ohio Sister March Date: Sunday, January 15, 2017 Time: 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM [line-up starts at 12:30 PM] Location: Columbus, OH [Line-up for March at Washington Blvd between W Broad St and Town St (right behind COSI Science Center)] Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1839160356298611/
Chillicothe: Ross County Ohio Women’s Sister March Date: Saturday, January 21st, 2017 Time: 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM Location: Ross County Courthouse, 2 North Paint Street, Chillicothe , OH 45601 Event Sign-Up: https://actionnetwork.org/events/ross-county-ohio-womens-sister-march
Cincinnati: Women’s March on Washington Sister March Date: Saturday, January 21st, 2017 Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM Location: Cincinnati, OH [Line-up at Washington Park – 1230 Elm St, Cincinnati 45202] Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/620743914780648/permalink/623726294482410/
Cleveland: Women’s March on Cleveland Date: Saturday, January 21st, 2017 Time: 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Location: Cleveland, OH [Line-up at Public Sq, Cleveland, OH 44113, United States] Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/779232568896876/
Dayton: Rally in Support of Women’s March on Washington Date: Saturday, January 21st, 2017 Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Location: Courthouse Square, 3rd & Main St in downtown Dayton Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1884247885139066/
Washington D.C: Women’s March on Washington Date: Saturday, January 21st, 2017 Time: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM Location: Washington, D.C. [Line-up at Independence Ave & Third St SW] Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2169332969958991/
The momentum from this movement cannot stop at the conclusion of these marches. We must remain engaged and active around policies and legislation in Ohio and DC that impact women. Sign up for Innovation Ohio’s alerts:
Betsy DeVos: Ohio’s Top Campaign Money Launderer, Trump’s Pick for Education Sec’y
Lame Duck Lawmakers Pass Government Shutdown Bill
- The extensive reviews mandated for Departments every four years would be time and resource intensive, and duplicate reviews already performed by the Auditor of State, JCARR, and the Governor’s Common Sense Initiative Office.
- Nothing in the legislation would eliminate burdensome rules or regulations, it merely provides for the elimination of Departments currently empowered to oversee them.
- Without an affirmative act of the legislature to keep departments open, state rules, licenses, and contracts would remain in effect, raising significant questions about how the executive branch could continue to carry out its obligations under Ohio law. The bill permits, but does not require the legislature to transfer these obligations to other departments.
- Many programs that Ohioans rely on, including vital education, public safety, and other essential services would be put at risk, with no provisions to ensure these functions continue after closure of a cabinet department.
- By closing departments that carry out essential functions, the proposal could put Ohio into conflict with federal requirements, and may violate parts of the state Constitution, such as the obligation to establish and maintain a workers’ compensation program.
- By forcing the review of 25 cabinet agencies every four years, the legislation could consume much of the legislature’s oversight capacity and put essential services at the mercy of an already slow legislative process.
- Empowers the legislative branch by eliminating a future check on its authority by the executive branch; the bill’s automated future elimination of departments by the failure of the legislature to act would provide no opportunity for the executive to exercise its veto authority.
- Empowers the majority party to appoint members of standing committees, postpone reviews, and, ultimately, to continue operation of a government department without bipartisan support.
- Protects today’s and future legislators from blame by eliminating departments automatically, without an affirmative act of lawmakers required.
- The arguments in favor of the proposal (to review, modernize, and eliminate unnecessary regulation) are all currently served by existing functions of the general assembly;
- Meanwhile, the claim that unneeded or overly technical licensing law creates a burden is not served by the legislation which would not eliminate any rules or licenses either in SB 329 or through the expiration of statutes creating Departments.
- Without eliminated government departments and staff, executive would have little option other than to employ private contractors to carry out essential health and safety functions (police, fire, etc.).
- Elimination of cabinet agencies would reduce the significance of the state as a public sector employer, weaking the power of its employee unions.
- The departmental review process emphasizes market-based solutions, such as private credentialing, wherever possible as an alternative to state regulation and licensing.
- Straight from the Conservative Playbook. Similar measures have been proposed by right-wing lawmakers in a number of states and in Congress.
Lame Duck Lawmakers Push Array of Education “Deregulation” Measures
- A school or district eligible for performance-based private school vouchers will remain eligible for vouchers through the 2018-2019 school year, even if its performance exceeds any other building or district in the state. Prior to SB3, if a school or district is eligible for vouchers because of poor performance, they would be removed from the voucher-eligibility list if that performance sufficiently improved. No longer.
- Allowing charter schools to admit students of school employees over other students, which is a system employed by most private schools, but not at the public schools that charter school proponents claim to be.
- Does not provide safe harbor to the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, so the politically connected but now politically toxic outfit will need to find another way to avoid repayments to the state for the $60 million it was paid to educate students that it cannot prove actually attended.
- Eliminates requirement that Ohio Department of Education rate school and district extracurricular activities
- Eliminates requirement of sign-off from the local superintendent for homeschool students to be issued a diploma
- Limits to 2 percent of school time spent on state assessments, and 1 percent on test preparation
Lame Duck Recap
Lame Duck Lawmakers Block Local Wage, Sick Leave Laws
Take Action Now: contact your State Representative today to oppose SB331
Today, the Ohio House is moving a bill that radically undermines the notion of local control and ties the hands of communities to set standards for the treatment of workers. Enshrined into the constitution is a strong commitment to local control, or “home rule”:Municipalities shall have authority to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws.Ohio lawmakers appear ready to throw that notion out the window with the adoption today of a major overhaul to Substitute Senate Bill 311, which would block the authority of communities around Ohio to, among other things:
- Regulate the sale of puppies from unlicensed breeders at pet stores
- Adopt a minimum wage rate higher than the state minimum
- Adopt any ordinance that regulates worker benefits, schedules or work locations.
No political subdivision shall establish a minimum wage rate different from the wage rate required under this section.The move is an attempt to undermine a measure on the ballot in Cleveland that would have asked voters whether to gradually raise that city’s minimum wage, but also blocks any other city from doing so. And, reacting to a movement from progressive cities around the U.S., special interests saw a measure adopted that would block cities from requiring local employers to provide earned sick time, family leave or regulate practices that require workers to be on call for shifts without pay and by which employers can make last minute scheduling changes that leave workers in the lurch – especially if they need child care or want to hold down a second job. From the proposed amendment:
Except as otherwise expressly provided in state or federal law, the following matters are exclusively the result of an employer’s policy, an agreement between an employer and the employer’s employees, a contract between an employer and the employer’s employees, or a collective bargaining agreement between an employer and the employer’s employees: (1) The number of hours an employee is required to work or be on call for work; (2) The time when an employee is required to work or be on call for work; (3) The location where an employee is required to work; (4) The amount of notification an employee receives of work schedule assignments or changes to work schedule assignments, including any addition or reduction of hours, cancellation of a shift, or change in the date or time of a work shift; (5) Minimizing fluctuations in the number of hours an employee is scheduled to work on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis; (6) Additional payment for reporting time when work is or becomes unavailable, for being on call for work, or for working a split shift; (7) Whether an employer will provide advance notice of an employee’s initial work or shift schedule, notice of new schedules, or notice of changed schedules, including whether an employer will provide employees with predictive schedules; (8) Whether an employer will provide additional hours of work to employees the employer currently employs before employing additional workers; (9) Whether an employer will provide employees with fringe benefits and the type and amount of those benefits.SB 331 was reported favorably by the House Finance committee this morning, and is expected to be voted on by the full House this afternoon.
Take Action Now: contact your State Representative today to oppose SB331
Women’s Groups Ask For Ohio Unemployment Fix
Terra Goodnight, Policy Director, Innovation Ohio Testimony to the Unemployment Compensation Reform Joint Committee November 3, 2016 Good afternoon Chairman Peterson and members of the Committee. My name is Terra Goodnight, and I am the Policy Director at Innovation Ohio, a policy and advocacy non-profit in Columbus. I am here today to speak on behalf of the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network – a statewide coalition of organizations that advocate for policies that benefit women. Attached to my testimony is a copy of a letter signed by many of those partner organizations. I am here today because women have been mostly overlooked in the conversation about reforming Ohio’s Unemployment Compensation system. The program has real problems that go beyond the size of the trust fund, and those shortcomings disproportionately impact women. Ohio’s unemployment compensation eligibility rules are out of step with our state’s changing workforce. Because these rules favor higher-wage and full-time work, women—who are more likely to work for low-pay or part-time—are less likely to receive benefits than their male counterparts. One recent analysis showed that, over the past decade, women made up over 43 percent of Ohio’s unemployed, but just 36 percent of those receiving unemployment compensation.[1] There are a number of reasons for this gender gap. First, in order to collect benefits, Ohio requires laid-off workers to have earned a minimum average weekly wage of $243 that would be hard to achieve in many low-paying jobs. Under current rules, a minimum wage worker whose hours fluctuate between 25 and 30 hours a week is ineligible for benefits after becoming unemployed because they fail to take home the required weekly wage. In fact, in accommodations and food services, an industry where 57 percent of the workers are women, the typical worker in 34 Ohio counties earns too little to be eligible for unemployment.[2][3] Women are far more likely than men to work for low pay. Women in Ohio take home, on average, $478 per week – this drops to $410 if they are African American – compared to $710 for men.[4][5] Even if a part-time worker earns enough to qualify for benefits, if they seek anything less than a full-time job—even one with the exact same schedule as the job they lost—they remain ineligible under another of Ohio’s outdated rules. In Ohio, 43 percent of women work part-time, compared to just 29 percent of men. For many women, including myself, a non-traditional work week is the only way to balance work with the scheduling demands of a family, especially for the one in four Ohio families with children headed by a woman on her own. We should not preserve a system that discourages non-traditional, pro-family work schedules or that protects only those in high-paying jobs from falling into poverty. Ohio should expand its eligibility calculations to ensure even the lowest-paid workers are eligible for benefits when they lose their job. And Ohio should join the 30 states that currently allow unemployed workers to seek part-time positions and still receive unemployment benefits. Read the Letter from WPPN members. [1] West, Rachel, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Kali Grant, Melissa Boteach, Claire McKenna, and Judy Conti. Where States Are and Where They Should Be on Unemployment Protections. Center for American Progress, National Employment Law Center and Center on Poverty and Inequality, Georgetown Law. July 7, 2016. http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/Issue-Brief-State-Unemployment-Protections.pdf [2] U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey, 2015 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S2403 “Industry By Sex For the Civilian Employed Population 16 Years and Over.” November 1, 2016. [3] Bureau of Labor Statistics. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, “Geographic Cross-Sections: All Counties in a State, One Industry: NAICS 72: Accommodation and Food Services.” November 1, 2016. [4] U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey, 2015 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table B20017 “Median Earnings In The Past 12 Months (In 2015 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars) By Sex By Work Experience In The Past 12 Months For The Population 16 Years And Over With Earnings In The Past 12 Months” October 1, 2016. [5] U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey, 2015 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table B20017B “Median Earnings In The Past 12 Months (In 2015 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars) By Sex By Work Experience In The Past 12 Months For The Population 16 Years And Over With Earnings In The Past 12 Months (Black or African American Alone)” October 31, 2016.