The group backing a ballot issue to legalize marijuana stepped up its campaign this week with a new mascot. ResponsibleOhio has introduced Buddie, who will travel to college campuses around the state along with the group’s RV. And ResponsibleOhio has done as it promised last week and filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court to change the actual words that voters will see on the ballot. Meanwhile, more support is coming in for the issue at the top of the statewide ballot. The League of Women Voters has endorsed Issue 1, along with Secretary of State Jon Husted.
Gov. John Kasich has talked extensively on the presidential campaign trail about his decision to expand Medicaid. State lawmakers who were opposed to that said they accepted that his budget would include it, but they made some changes in the rules on some recipients. Two experts in Medicaid return to talk about those changes. Greg Lawson is the Statehouse Liaison and Policy Analyst with the Buckeye Institute, which calls itself a free-market think tank, and John Corlett, who was the state’s Medicaid Director, is now the president and executive director of the Center for Community Solutions, a public policy research group headquartered in Cleveland.
Since its first publication in 1996, the Ohio Politics Almanac has been the source of information about Ohio’s political history, its people, and its status as a battleground state. It’s been called the “bible” of Ohio politics, featuring the usual data along with historical background about the eight presidents from Ohio, Ohio’s eight biggest cities and the state’s 69 governors in very readable bios and story form. The authors of the new updated version of the Ohio Politics Almanac talk about it. Mike Curtin, a former reporter, associate publisher, vice president and COO with the Columbus Dispatch, who retired in 2007 and is now serving his second term as a Democratic member of the Ohio House. Curtin wrote the first edition of the book. Joe Hallett is a former reporter and senior editor with the Dispatch who covered politics for more than 40 years with the Toledo Blade and then the Dispatch – he retired last year.