The New Political

HSBC and state governments reach $470 million settlement deal

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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.”

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Online voter registration could soon come to Ohio

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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.”

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Attorney General awards $1.2 million in grants for campus sexual assault victims

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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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State elections determine fair districts are in and pot is not

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More than 7.5 million Ohioans participated in Tuesday’s election and voted on the issues appearing on the ballot. Ultimately, two of the three issues passed.

Issue 1, which dealt with ending gerrymandering in Ohio’s legislative districts, passed by the largest margin of any of the three issues with 71.46 percent voting in favor, according to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s website.

“It was just one of those moments in time — a rare moment in time, in a very divided state — where the two major parties came together and fortunately did something greatly in the public interest, to give the public rational-looking legislative districts,” said Rep. Michael F. Curtin, D-Columbus, who has supported Issue 1 since its introduction to the House. “Even though it won’t take effect until 2022, it’s a huge move forward in good government for the people and now hopefully we can get the second half of the job done, and that’s to do the same thing with congressional districts.”

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Education department faces investigation after records are erased

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As students begin to settle into a new school year, educators, armed with fresh lesson plans, curriculum and standardized tests, are welcoming their students back to their respective schools. But one Ohio education official will not be joining them.

David Hansen, who was the school choice director for the Ohio Department of Education, resigned in July after it was discovered that he omitted failing grades from charter school evaluations. Some believe this indicates a larger problem with Ohio’s standards for charter schools.

“We have long suspected that there’s problems with charter school accountability,” said Melissa Cropper, President of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. “When we saw that there had been some manipulation of data, we weren’t necessarily shocked, but we of course expected something to be done about it.”

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Kasich talks economics, foreign policy at GOP debate

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The top 11 Republican presidential candidates squared off in the second GOP debate Wednesday night in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Among them was Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Many of Kasich’s remarks during the debate, including his opening statements, focused on economic improvement to help the American middle class. He argued that as the only candidate onstage to work on the federal budget the last time it was balanced, he is qualified to be the next president.

“People still have to get to know me, so I want to spend my time talking about my experience reforming welfare, balancing budgets, cutting taxes, providing economic growth when I was in Washington, turning Ohio around,” Kasich said.

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Justice may no longer need to be blind

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The case of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who died a day after being shot twice by a Cleveland police officer, is not as simple as it seems, especially during a time when the public is becoming increasingly skeptical of law enforcement.

Cases of black men who have been killed by police officers have become increasingly prominent recently: A Beavercreek police officer shot and killed John Crawford III in a Walmart parking lot near Dayton, Eric Garner was strangled to death by a New York police officer and Walter Scott was shot in the back of the head by an officer in South Carolina.

They received media attention, sparked heated social movements and share one key characteristic with Rice’s case: they were all caught on video.

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Kasich vetoes voting restrictions

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After receiving a letter from all members of the Senate Democratic Caucus encouraging him to do so, Gov. John Kasich used his line-item veto last week on a controversial amendment to the state transportation budget that would have affected new and temporary Ohio residents’ voting rights.

This section of House Bill 53 included restrictions that would have required people wishing to drive in Ohio to register for an Ohio driver’s license within 30 days of registering to vote.

While the language directly connected to voting has been removed, the provisions that require drivers to obtain an Ohio license within 30 days of establishing residency in other ways were left in the transportation bill.

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New bill regulates farmers and stops algae from blooming

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A bill aimed at preventing more algae from contaminating water in Lake Erie was passed Wednesday after being considered by the Ohio House for a month.

Senate Bill 1, which would regulate farmers’ use of fertilizer, manure and other substances and practices that have contributed to harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie, is expected to be signed into law by Gov. John Kasich and will go into effect 90 days later.

The bill forbids surface fertilizer application by anyone in the western basin when the ground is covered in snow or when the top two inches of soil are saturated by precipitation. However, there are some exceptions; this is permitted if the manure is injected into the ground or if it is applied to a growing crop.

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