Beyond the Boom: Ensuring Adequate Payment for Mineral Wealth Extraction

Examines Ohio's severance tax rate and receipts on gas and oil extraction compared with other states, oil and gas production's costs to the state, and potential impact of a higher tax. Recommends raising the tax and creating a severance tax trust fund

Taxing Fracking: Proposals for Ohio's Severance Tax

Outlines the proposal to raise the state's severance tax on oil and gas extracted by fracking and return most of the revenues in income tax cuts, concerns with the proposal, and recommendations for using the severance tax to restore jobs and services

Boosting Home Care Options Under Medicaid: Balancing Incentive Payment Program, Community First Choice Option

In Ohio and nationally, a significant share of Medicaid is dedicated to patients who are elderly or have disabilities. Too often, this is in a high-cost nursing home setting. The ACA offers incentives to encourage more cost-effective home care services for people who need help with dressing, bathing, chores, preparing meals, or other activities of daily living. A study of state expenditures on long-term care and services between 1995 and 2005 found that states with broad access to home and community-based services realized cost savings in the long term as they shifted from institutionalized settings (nursing homes) to home care services, although there was a short-term increase in costs during the shift.The ACA offers new opportunities to help states provide long-term services and supports to people in their homes. This brief examines two of the programs: The Balancing Incentives Payment Program, which increases federal matching funds for states like Ohio by two percentage points through 2015 for increased home and community-based services, helping with any up-front costs, and the permanent Community First Choice Option (CFCO) which provides a boost of six percentagepoints, from 63.58 to 69.58 percent, in federal funding for personal attendant services in the home or community

The Budget Control Act of 2011: Impact on Public Services in Ohio

Outlines how reduced federal support for states between 2012 and 2021 will affect Ohio's public services, including K-12 education, work study and aid for low-income college students, health and human services, food aid, and housing and urban development

Deregulation and Higher Education: Potential Impact on Access, Affordability and Achievement in Ohio

This paper refocuses attention on the importance of supporting Ohio students. States may appreciate deregulated higher education because, like other forms of privatization, it reduces support, responsibility and oversight. University administrations may see opportunities to raise revenues through real estate deals, parking arrangements, subcontracting, reducing staff compensation, and changing other employment relationships. Private contractors and the business community may favor these arrangements because there are lucrative possibilities for contracts, real estate deals and other arrangements. But the point of the system is not to serve the needs of legislators, administrators or contractors -- it is to educate students. Students, families, employers and taxpayers need a vibrant higher education system capable of delivering affordable academic programs that connect to the 21st century economy

Career, family, and workforce mobility: an interdisciplinary conversation

The purpose of this article is to synthesize conceptual and empirical work from the fields of both sociology and career development to explore how issues of career, family, and workforce mobility are necessarily interrelated. The use of work from sociology and career development demonstrates that the complexities of family solutions to career mobility undo the apparent simplicity of delivering a worker to a new worksite. Although organizations and governments work to develop policies that incentivize mobility, including transport infrastructure, housing, employment conditions, and tax incentives, these will not necessarily address the private concerns and priorities of families. This article argues for an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the intersubjective complexities implicated in the growing phenomenon and expectation of worker mobility and suggests both areas and design strategies for further research

Intensifying Impact: State Budget Cuts Deepen Pain for Ohio Communities

Policy Matters Ohio looked at the size and scope of cuts in each county and in many municipalities. We talked with city and county administrators, local elected officials and residents. On our website, there is a link for each Ohio county that describes the loss in state funding and the impact on cities, towns and services within that county. Because local newspaper clips and quotes from local officials are used, this brief is an oral history as well as a presentation of charts and graphs. The insights of those interviewed add clarity and depth to a description of hard times

No Windfall: Casino Taxes Won't Make Up Cuts to Local Governments

The opening of casinos in Cleveland and Toledo and the "racino" at Scioto Downs in Columbus means, among manyother things, additional tax revenue. A third casino is scheduled to open in Columbus on Oct. 8, with a fourth tofollow in Cincinnati next spring. This brief reviews tax revenue that may be produced by casinos, and how that compares with state cuts to schools and local governments. Any new revenue is a welcome addition to strained local budgets. However, casino revenue makes up only a fraction of the cuts that local governments recently sustained because of slashed revenue from the state and the impending end ofthe estate tax