Advocacy Update, July 5, 2023

This week, as we celebrate Independence Day, there is a lot of news on legislation and court decisions affecting low-income and minority people in Ohio and beyond:

• July 11 and 14: Train the Trainer sessions on the Regional Impact of the Farm Bill
• Key Elements in Ohio’s Compromise Budget
• Supreme Court denies student debt relief to 1.68 million Ohioans
• U.S. Supreme Court issues surprise ruling on Ohio redistricting
• US Constitutional History in the light of last week’s landmark rulings

July 11 or 14 Train the Trainer sessions on the regional impact of the Farm Bill:  Up for renewal in 2023, the Farm Bill determines a massive range of federal policies affecting food security and promoting environmentally-sustainable farming and land use. Its biggest program is nutrition, including SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. The Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council is offering two Train the Trainer sessions to support community advocacy. Click on the link to register for the program you prefer.  The July 11 training is in person from 5 to 7 pm at the Walnut Hills Public Library in Cincinnati, with food provided by the award-winning food recovery program La Soupe. The July 14 training is virtual from 10 to noon, so easy for participants from any part of Ohio.

Amanda Lucas of the Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council has created three short, informative videos and blog posts on the Farm Bill, rich in examples from Ohio.  These cover the nutrition, conservation, and sustainable farming components of the law. Lucas compiled the information from organizations including the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Community Farm Alliance, American Farmland Trust, and the Ohio Ecological Food and Farmer Association (OEFFA).  She reviews policies on commodities, conservation, nutrition, and loans for farmers, including those historically underserved.

Ohio Legislature Passes Compromise Budget: The Ohio House and Senate reconciled almost 900 differences between their budget bills Friday, passing a bill that now goes to the Governor for signing. He could make line-item vetoes.Here are key elements of the compromise budget.

Education:  House Finance Committee Chair Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville) emphasized the importance of public school funding when he addressed a Hunger Network delegation including many Episcopalians on May 11. He followed through, fighting hard for the House’s plan.  You can send him a note at this link.

• The House’s funding formula for public schools prevailed, sending school districts $1.5 billion more than the last biennium.  The compromise budget restores the $541 million for K-12 public schools that the Senate had stripped from the House version.  In exchange:
• The Senate President won universal eligibility for private school vouchers. The House would have expanded eligibility from the current 250% to 450% of the federal poverty level (FPL), but now any Ohio student can request a voucher, though the voucher amount goes down on a sliding scale over 450% of the FPL. The Columbus Dispatch reports this change could cost taxpayers up to $850 million more than the current voucher program. 
• The minimum salary for public school teachers with bachelor’s degrees rises from $30,000 to $35,000 – half what the House passed.
• Most of the powers of the State School Board –  11 of whose 19 members are directly elected by voters – will now be put under the Governor’s administration.
• The controversial SB 83 on higher education policy – which the Senate put into the budget – was taken out.  This could still pass on its own. It would prohibit faculty from striking, prohibit mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training, and constrain faculty in how they teach “controversial” topics such as climate change.  It would set up annual faculty reviews including a question to students on whether the faculty member “creates a classroom free of bias.” Also,
• The budget funds the creation of “free speech institutes… that would allow students to receive broadened inputs” at five public universities – including Ohio State, Miami, and the University of Cincinnati in Southern Ohio.
• The budget approved the Governor’s request for $162 million in funding for “science of reading” curriculum and teacher training.

Food security and work supports:

• The budget provides $32.5 million a year for Ohio’s food banks, half the increase the House passed, but still good news as food inflation hammers low-income families, especially senior citizens. 
• $4 million will provide free school meals to all Ohio children who were being charged reduced price again after the end of federal pandemic programs.
• Most of the Senate’s proposals to increase hurdles for SNAP (food stamp) recipients were defeated.
• Child care vouchers will be cut off at 145% of the federal poverty level, rather than at the Governor’s request to increase eligibility to 160% of the FPL. This is a tiny rise from the current limit of 142% of the FPL. The high cost of child care is a huge barrier to women remaining in the workforce.  If they get a raise above 145% of the FPL, parents will lose child care subsidies altogether.

Income and commercial activity taxes were slashed, which will cut revenues significantly going forward.

• The Senate’s deeper tax cuts prevailed: reducing brackets to two, and cutting tax rates to 2.75% for incomes from $26,050 to $100,000 and 3.5% above that. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that this $3 billion tax cuts more than triples the House plan, which would have reduced taxes only for low to middle-income Ohioans.
• Currently, Ohio businesses with gross receipts over $150,000 pay Commercial Activity Tax (CAT). The budget sets a new threshold of $6 million in receipts, which means an estimated 90% of Ohio companies will now be exempt from the tax – a massive reduction in this tax base.
• The Senate’s $100 million appropriation for low-income tax credits prevailed – just 20% of what the House had voted for.

Supreme Court ruling denies student debt relief to 1.68 million Ohioans:  When President Biden announced his student debt relief program last fall, the Columbus Dispatch reported that 1.68 million Ohioans – 94% of Ohioans with student debt – qualified to have $10,000 in loans forgiven, and 1.08 million Pell Grant recipients were eligible for an additional $10,000.  The Supreme Court ruled Friday in Biden v. Nebraska that this program is unconstitutional. Business Insider reported that Ohio has the second highest share of residents who would have qualified for the program, just behind the District of Columbia. The average debt of Ohioans is $34,721.  40% of Ohioans who attended college have student debt.

If you are concerned that it’s not fair for some people to get debt relief when others have paid their debt, please read this December, 2020 Policy Matters Ohio report on how Ohio government funding of state universities has dropped while tuition has risen steeply. For example, tuition at Ohio’s two-year colleges rose 16.6% between 2017-18 and 2020-21. The state government’s share of higher education funding in FY 2021 was lower than FY 2006 in inflation-adjusted dollars!  I graduated from a private university in 1974. My tuition, room and board that year was $5,000. Tuition, room and board for undergraduates at the University of Cincinnati’s Clifton Campus (multiple occupancy) cost $26,028 in 2022-23.

“Today, the court substituted itself for Congress,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cordona. “It’s outrageous to me that Republicans in Congress and state offices fought so hard against a program that would have helped millions of their own constituents. They had no problem handing trillion-dollar tax cuts to big corporations and the super wealthy. And many had no problems accepting millions of dollars in forgiven pandemic loans, like Senator Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma had more than $1.4 million in pandemic loans forgiven. He represents 489,000 eligible borrowers that were turned down today. Representative Brett Guthrie from Kentucky had more than $4.4 million forgiven. He represents more than 90,000 eligible borrowers who were turned down today. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia had more than $180,000 forgiven. She represents more than 91,800 eligible borrowers who were turned down today.” 

U.S. Supreme Court issues surprise ruling on Ohio redistricting: After its June 26 decision in Moore v. Harper, rejecting the theory that only state legislatures have authority over redistricting, the US Supreme Court was widely expected to reject a 2022 suit by Ohio Republicans, who had asked the US Supreme Court to invalidate the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling that the Congressional maps drawn in 2021-22 give an excessive and unconstitutional advantage to their party.  Republicans had argued that the state Supreme Court lacked authority for the decision, despite language in Ohio’s constitution explicitly granting the Court the power to review redistricting plans.

But on June 30 – to the surprise of both Republican leaders and Ohio plaintiffs against the redistricting plans –  the US Supreme Court issued a 32-word ruling ordering the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider its July 22 decision ordering the state legislature to redraw the map. No one knows yet how this will play out.

The composition of the Ohio Supreme Court has changed with the retirement of Republican Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor at the end of 2022 due to age limits.  The court continues to have four Republicans and three Democrats, but O’Connor had voted seven times against her Republican colleagues, finding every state and Congressional plan produced by the Redistricting Commission to be an unconstitutionally partisan gerrymander. She has been replaced by Justice Joe Deters, who was appointed by Governor DeWine. DeWine served on the Redistricting Commission and voted for every one of the plans that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.

Stay tuned.

An article on U.S. Constitutional History in the light of last week’s Supreme Court rulings:

This week, marking America’s Independence Day, is a good time to read about the importance of last week’s Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and state laws protecting minorities against discrimination.  I recommend the June 30 post by Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters from an American” blog. It is a compelling summary of the history of citizens’ quests to overcome state laws disenfranching Black Americans, appealing on the basis of the post-Civil War 14^th and 15^th Amendments.

Here’s part of her summary: “Taken together with yesterday’s decision ruling that universities cannot consider race as a category in student admissions, the Supreme Court has highlighted a central contradiction in its interpretation of government power: if the Fourteenth Amendment limits the federal government to making sure that there is no discrimination in the United States on the basis of race—the so-called “colorblind” Constitution—as the right-wing justices argued yesterday, it is up to the states to make sure that state laws don’t discriminate against minorities. But that requires either protecting voting rights or accepting minority rule…

“Yesterday the Supreme Court said that the Fourteenth Amendment could not address racial disparities, but today, like lawmakers in the 1870s, it signaled that it would not protect voting in the states either. It rejected a petition for a review of Mississippi’s strict provision for taking the vote away from felons. That law illustrates just how fully we’re reliving our history: it dates from the 1890 Mississippi constitution that cemented power in white hands. Black Mississippians are currently 2.7 times more likely than white Mississippians to lose the right to vote under the law. 

“The court went even further today than allowing states to choose their voters. It said that even if state voters do call for minority protections, as Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws do, states cannot protect minorities in the face of someone’s religious beliefs. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that for “the first time in its history,” the court has granted “a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” 

Richardson also reviews the student loan ruling as an example of curtailing the authority of the executive branch to set regulations under existing statutes. The Court’s invocation of the “major questions” doctrine has already restricted the ability of the EPA to regulate water and air pollution including greenhouse gas emissions.  The major questions doctrine has even been criticized by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

Advocacy briefings are compiled by Ariel Miller, a longtime community advocate and member of Ascension & Holy Trinity, Wyoming. Connect with her at arielmillerwriter@gmail.com