Innovation Ohio

What you need to know about Ohio Politics and Policy

Ohio’s Hard-to-Count Communities and 2020 Census Outreach Efforts

Understanding and communicating with Ohio’s Hard-to-Count communities for 2020 Census outreach efforts

As a joint effort, Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio, Innovation Ohio Education Fund and the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network have put together this document using national messaging guidance, research, and feedback gathered from discussions with leaders, community members, and direct service providers in Ohio’s hard-to-count (HTC) communities across the state.

By combining national messaging guidance from the U.S. Census Bureau and national nonprofits and our own messaging research, we believe the following document provides the best advice and guidance for how to motivate Ohioans to participate in the 2020 Census. 

Download Census Message Guidance

The Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio (CDF) facilitated design-thinking workshops in communities across the state to gain insight into the barriers communities faced to participating in the Census and how we can work to overcome these barriers. 

The Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network (WPPN) is a coalition of more than 30 organizations working collaboratively to advocate for public policies that build economic opportunity for women and strengthen families. Considering the large stake women and their families have in the Census and the key role women will play in ensuring a complete count, WPPN conducted listening sessions with their coalition partners to identify the particular concerns and barriers women of all backgrounds in the state expressed.

How the Latest State Budget Impacts Ohio’s Women and Working Families

Read the full analysis of the Ohio budget through a gender lens on the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network’s website.

Ohio’s new two-year state operating budget brought numerous improvements for the livelihood of women, but that’s not to say there weren’t plenty of drawbacks and lack of action on key issues as well.

Progress was made to improve the quality of childcare in Ohio. But there’s more work to be done.

The new state budget allocates $198 million to improve the quality of Ohio’s publicly funded childcare system. This increase in funding will allow improvements in ensuring that workers within the childcare sector are paid fair wages, and will also help to facilitate professional development and facility improvements.  Where the budget falls short is allocating resources to increase the access and affordability of childcare. By increasing the accessibility of childcare, children would enter school well prepared, and parents would have the opportunity to participate in the workforce.  While the DeWine Administration stated that increasing eligibility for childcare was a policy priority, ultimately no funds were allocated to support this endeavor. 

After attempts to restrict access to Medicaid via the inclusion of the “Healthy Ohio” Program in the budget, Medicaid services were ultimately left unharmed.

The provision of the so-called Healthy Ohio Program would have required premiums to access Medicaid, which would have had crucial implications on women, who comprise more than half of Ohio’s Medicaid population. Medicaid has long been a lifeline for women, and the legislature’s decision to ultimately remove the “Healthy Ohio” language was crucial to protect access to the program.

Progress was made towards addressing wage theft, an issue that faces many working-class Ohioans, particularly women and people of color working in low-wage jobs.

When workers are paid less than they were contractually promised, it is known as wage theft. Whether it be through violation of minimum-wage laws, not getting paid overtime, or forcing an employee to work off-the-clock, Ohio clocks in with the second-highest amount of wage theft among the ten largest states. Additional funding was allocated to the Ohio Bureau of Wage and Hour to help address this issue.

The state budget also codified some policies that we expect to negatively impact Ohio women and working-class families. 

By continuing to support a business tax cut known by many public service advocates as the  “L.L.C. loophole,” Ohio loses out on about $528 million per year or $1.1 billion for the duration of every state operating budget where it remains intact. There is little evidence to suggest that this tax break for L.L.C.s has created any significant number of new jobs in the state. Ohio is missing out on billions of dollars of revenue that could have been allocated towards programs to address our school funding crisis, increase childcare assistance eligibility, or invest in a refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (which we’ll discuss in just a moment), to name only a few ways this money could be better spent. 

There were also some issues facing Ohio women and their families that the state budget failed to address, entirely. 

Ohio’s Earned Income Tax Credit remains non-refundable.

One of these crucial areas of inaction was the budget’s failure to make Ohio’s Earned Income Tax Credit (E.I.T.C.) refundable, a policy that would have given a major economic boost to low-income families across the state. Nationally, the E.I.T.C has been crucial in lifting working families out of poverty. However, it is not without its limitations here in the state. The greatest shortfall of Ohio’s state E.I.T.C. is that it is non-refundable. If this gap in anti-poverty policy had been addressed, the state budget would have been able to put money back into the hands of working families. 

Despite the 2020 Census being right around the corner, the bill allocated no funding towards planning or conducting a complete census count in the Buckeye state. 

About $33 billion dollars in federal funding rests upon the outcomes of the U.S. Census, which determines how those federal dollars are dispersed, state-by-state. Without a correct and complete count, the well-being of women and historically undercounted communities, populations which rely heavily on these federal grant dollars, are undermined.

No efforts were made to create a framework for statewide paid family leave. 

Paid family and medical leave policies allow workers to address the needs of their families or their own health without risking their financial health. Currently, only 17% of American workers have access to paid leave through an employer, but lawmakers made no effort through the state budget to increase those statistics here in Ohio… To learn more about the push to bring paid family leave in Ohio, check out the Women’s Public Policy Network’s Paid Leave Advocacy page on their website.   

Read the full analysis of the Ohio budget on the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network’s website.

House committee to vote on bringing anti-abortion education to Ohio classrooms

The House Health Committee has scheduled a vote on House Bill 90 for Tuesday, June 4. The bill, introduced by Rep. Niraj Antani (R-Miamisburg), would require Ohio public schools to teach students about the “anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child” that pertains to each week of gestation. While pushing the message to students that “abortion is killing a living human being,” any education regarding human sexuality would be prohibited. This misleading informational attack on reproductive choice will be aimed at students of various levels. This curriculum would be taught in 3rd through 8th grade science classes and in high school health classes.
  • Mandates the state Dept. of Health to implement curriculum in Ohio public schools regarding the “anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child” that pertain to each week of gestation to be taught in 3rd through 8th grade science classes, 9th through 12th health classes
  • Prohibits the curriculum from including any “component of human sexuality education”
  • Directs Dept of Health to create and maintain a pregnancy and child services database to provide women a comprehensive list of public and private adoption agencies
  • Dept of Health to include the following statement on its website and all public restrooms: “There are many public and private agencies willing and able to help you carry your child to term and assist you and your child after your child is born, whether you choose to keep your child or place your child for adoption. If you are pregnant, the State of Ohio strongly urges you to contact an agency listed on the Department of Health’s pregnancy and child services database.”
If passed by the committee, the proposal could come before the full House of Representatives as early as this week. To share your views about this new mandatory education curriculum, contact your State Representative. Update (6/5/19): The committee did not hold a vote on HB90 on June 4. Opponent testimony from the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio and others, which can be located on the committee website under “June 4”. The bill could be brought up for a final hearing and vote at any time. Follow @innovationohio on Twitter or subscribe to our legislative alerts newsletter for the latest. 

More on House Bill 90:

Ohio House: Legislation Text and Status Legislative Services Commission: Synopsis of Changes in Substitute HB6 vs. Original Version Columbus Dispatch: Critics say bill would push ‘harmful’ anti-abortion beliefs onto Ohio school children

Ohio Lawmakers Showcase Three Bills to Close the Gender Wage Gap on Equal Pay Day

Equal Pay Day marks the day each year that the average American woman would have to work until to make up for the gap between her earnings and the earnings of a white man from the previous year. Over a 40-year career, the gender pay gap means that American women, on average, $500,000 compared to their male counterparts. The impact of this inequity for women of color, in particular, is significantly worse. For black women, those lost wages increase to $700,000 and to $800,000 for Latina women, according to a statement from the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network. On April 2, the Ohio House Democrats unveiled three bills which comprise a legislative strategy to narrow and ultimately eliminate the gender pay gap in the State of Ohio; the Ohio Equal Pay Act (its fifth introduction), a statewide paid family leave policy, and a bill to create an anonymous system for Ohio workers to report wage discrimination and theft. The Ohio Equal Pay Act, sponsored by Rep. Stephanie Howse (D-Cleveland) and Rep. Randi Clites (D-Ravenna), prohibits gag orders on employees that keep them from talking about their salaries with one another and requires the state’s private-sector vendors to obtain an Equal Pay Certificate, certifying that women at those companies are given equal opportunity for career advancement. The bill also requires state government entities to evaluate employees’ pay scales to ensure compensation is based on skills, responsibilities and working conditions across job categories.
   
“It is long past time to empower women in the workplace to be what they are—equal,” said Rep. Clites. “Closing the gap ensures better lives, brighter futures and the opportunity for Ohio women and families to get ahead and save for the future.” The wage gap has real economic consequences, not only for women but for the State of Ohio as a whole. “Wage inequality means that women have less to spend on themselves and their families, less to invest and save for the future, and less to put back into businesses and the local economy,” said Erin Ryan, Managing Director of the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network. The second bill discussed at the Tuesday press conference is a paid family leave policy sponsored by Rep. Janine Boyd (D-Cleveland Heights)  and Kristin Boggs (D-Columbus). House Bill 91 received its first hearing last week on March 26. The bill would create up to 12 weeks of paid parental, family, and personal medical leave insurance benefits for Ohio workers during a 12-month period. The insurance program would apply to individuals who must take a leave of absence from work to address a serious health condition, to care for a family member, or to bond with a new child. Finally, Rep. Erica C. Crawley said she will soon jointly sponsor a bill requiring the Ohio Civil Rights Commission to establish a system allowing workers to anonymously report wage discrimination by an employer. Such complaints could be submitted by phone or online. A 2018 study by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that Ohio workers lose 600 million dollars each year to wage theft. Meanwhile, the state’s capacity to investigate these infractions is limited to follow-up on complaints by a total of six employees who comprise the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Wage And Hour Enforcement unit. “If the current pace of change continues at the same rate as it has in the United States since 1960, men and women will not reach gender pay parity until the year 2059,” said Ryan. “And that is far too long for women and their families to wait.”

Male-Dominated House Leadership Announced

This week, Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger announced the leaders of the House’s 25 standing committees, and women will be outnumbered by men 5 to 1. House_Committee_chairs_600 Legislative committees are where the hard work of lawmaking gets done. The chairs of these committees wield considerable power in deciding which bills are heard and will advance to a vote. In the past two legislative sessions, at least 10 new restrictions were enacted that restricted women’s healthcare choices. The significance of who runs these committees cannot be overstated. [Read more…]

Ohio working women fared better than men during the recession

Last week, the Associated Press examined employment trends since the recession and found that nationally, women have regained the jobs they lost during the Great Recession. Over 68 million women are currently employed, back above the 67.97 million women with jobs before the start of the recession in December, 2007. Men, by contrast, still have 2.1 million jobs to go. We were intrigued to see if the same trends were evident in Ohio. As monthly data at the state level does not tally employment by gender, we looked at full year data from 2007, 2009, and 2012; 2007 representing the period before the recession, 2009 representing the peak year of the recession, and 2012 being the most recent available data. Unlike their national peers, Ohio women (and men) have a long way to go toward employment at pre-recession levels. In 2012, 2.5 million women in Ohio were employed compared to 2.7 million before the downturn. Given the slow growth in job creation displayed this past year, it’s unlikely we’ll return to pre-recession employment levels when data for 2013 becomes available. [Read more…]

Testimony on House proposal to de-fund Planned Parenthood

On Tuesday, the Ohio House Finance and Appropriations Committee inserted language at the discretion of Chairman Ron Amstutz into the mid-biennium budget bill, HB 487, that would effectively eliminate any pass-through funding flowing from the State of Ohio to Planned Parenthood. Not only would this prohibit the organization from receiving over $1.4 million in federal Title X family planning funds, but it eliminates federal funding for the only providers of family planning in thirteen Ohio counties. Below, we provide links to the complete written testimony that was offered by two strong advocates for Planned Parenthood in Ohio.  [Read more…]

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