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Author: ellenbardash
Hillary Clinton opens campaign office in Athens
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
City council discusses police collaboration and credit ratings
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Photos: I went to the zoo!
PhotographyPhotos: Paris, Normandy and London
PhotographyIf you follow me on any social media, you might already know that at the beginning of the month, I spent 10 days traveling around France and London with the Marching 110. Here are some of the photos I took to remember the experience.
In the House
Class projects, Data, The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Despite this lack of recognition, Ohio’s state legislators, both in the House and the Senate, put significantly more time into their jobs than legislators in many other states do, from deciding how to vote to simply finding a way to get to and from the statehouse.
Data: Ohio House of Representatives 2015
DataI recently compiled a spreadsheet of every vote taken by the Ohio House of Representatives in 2015. It was extremely tedious and time-consuming, so hopefully someone else out there who needs this information can benefit from downloading my data set here rather than having to sort through all those session journals themselves.
HSBC and state governments reach $470 million settlement deal
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Ohio, 48 other states and D.C. have joined a $470 million settlement with HSBC, a mortgage lender and servicer. Attorney General Mike DeWine announced the settlement last Friday.
According to a press release, the settlement will provide payments to almost 20,000 Ohioans who borrowed from HSBC between 2008 and 2012.
“Former and current borrowers will get relief. Current borrowers will get relief in the form of reduced terms of their mortgage, either reduced interest rates or forgiveness of a portion of a loan,” Dan Tierney, spokesperson for the Ohio Attorney General’s office, said. “People who may have lost their homes would receive direct cash payments, and moving forward there’s criteria that the company agrees to abide by for the protection of homeowners and borrowers and potential borrowers.”
Online voter registration could soon come to Ohio
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Ohio voters could be registering online before the 2016 election, if one Ohio Senate bill becomes law.
Senate Bill 63 deals primarily with creating a system for online voter registration and, if passed, would make Ohio the 29th state to implement such a system. Registration would involve the Bureau of Motor Vehicles database verifying personal information, allowing anyone with an Ohio driver’s license or state ID to register remotely.
“It’s convenient for voters, and what that means is that it can help them take that first step of participating in our democracy,” said Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Copley, the bill’s primary sponsor. “Obviously, before you vote, you have to register, and every year we’ve got a new group of people that are turning 18 and should be registering to vote, and yet they don’t register until later in life.”
Attorney General awards $1.2 million in grants for campus sexual assault victims
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine awarded over $1.2 million in grants to campus sexual assault and rape crisis centers across the state in late December.
After the attorney general’s office reviewed applications, the first round of grants was announced. According to Dan Tierney, a spokesperson for the Ohio Attorney General’s office, more awards could be announced either in a second round of grants or sporadically as grant applications are approved.
According to a press release, the money is a provision of the Victims of Crime Act and will be taken out of the $3 million of federal funding from VOCA set aside by DeWine in 2015. These specific VOCA grants are only intended for crime victim services, not preventative ones.
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