Editorial Roundup: Ohio The Associated Press
Editorial: H2Ohio needs assured funding to protect Ohio’s precious water resources
The H2Ohio fund created by Gov. Mike DeWine and legislators in 2019 is a critical long-term work in progress. It aims, most prominently, at reducing, and eventually ending, dangerous toxic algal blooms in western Lake Erie by creating more local accountability on phosphorus-reduction plans, more farmer buy-in, improved monitoring of streams and rivers, widened use of agricultural best practices and the creation of new wetlands and other buffers.
But that’s far from H2Ohio’s totality. The program also seeks to ensure that both Ohioans and the state’s priceless freshwater resources are protected amid soaring water infrastructure costs, as price tags climb for lead service-line replacements, mandated septic-system upgrades, and modernized drinking-water and wastewater treatment plants.
Editorial Roundup: Ohio washingtontimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtontimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Those who care about the well-being and quality of life of Ohioans and about the state’s future prosperity should recognize how critical H2Ohio is to the calculus of both. That means sustained, meaningful funding for this initiative if not by the legislature, then through a bond issue, writes the editorial board of The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com in an editorial today.
General Assembly carves out special window for pandemic-based tax appeals
Dustin Franz/Bloomberg
Senate Bill 57, which is headed to Gov. Mike DeWine s desk, creates a special window for property owners hard hit by the pandemic to challenge their 2020 tax valuations. The spread of the coronavirus and related public-health restrictions have been particularly painful for hotels, restaurants and parking facilities in downtown Cleveland.
Property owners hard-hit by the pandemic will have an unusual opportunity to seek tax reductions this summer, thanks to a bill that just passed the Ohio General Assembly.
On Wednesday, April 21, the Ohio Senate approved legislation that will allow real estate owners and certain commercial tenants to challenge their 2020 property-tax valuations based on fallout from the coronavirus and public-health orders. Senate Bill 57, which secured passage in the House in late March, is headed to Gov. Mike DeWine s desk.
TRENTON – New Jersey’s budget is balanced in part through nearly $4.3 billion from emergency borrowing authorized in response to the coronavirus pandemic, but a nonpartisan budget analyst says it’s now clear that wasn’t necessary.
At a Senate budget committee hearing Tuesday, Thomas Koenig, the Office of Legislative Services’ budget and finance officer, said the borrowing was defensible at the time the budget was adopted in September.
“But from today’s vantage point, the borrowing was not essential to balancing the FY21 budget,” Koenig said.
Koenig said that without the borrowing, the state’s surplus would have fallen by only $165 million since Oct. 1 and remain slightly above $2 billion. Revenue forecasts have been upgraded by $3.4 billion, and the budget counts on $1.1 billion in lapses, helping build a surplus of $6.4 billion – over 15% of spending.