Policy Matters Ohio News
Policy Matters Ohio is a non-profit policy research organization founded in January 2000 to broaden the debate about economic policy in Ohio.

• JobWatch for October 2007
  The leaves are changing but Ohio's job market has not. Over the past two years employment the state has only grown 0.3 percent.  Check our progress (or lack thereof) here.
• Living Wage Study for Cuyahoga County 2007
  A study by Policy Matters Ohio for the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners has concluded that a county living wage requirement would benefit a significant number of employees at county contractors. At the same time, Policy Matters found, a large majority of such employees already are paid $10 an hour or more, and such a requirement is not likely to impose major additional costs.  To read more about a possible living wage requirement in Cuyahoga County, click here.
• Ohio Should Target Homestead Exemption
  Policy Matters Ohio issued a release today analyzing Gov. Strickland's proposed homestead exemption and two alternatives that would target the tax reductions more narrowly. We found each of the two would save at least $118 million a year, while delivering the same or greater tax reductions to low- and moderate-income Ohioans.  Click here to view the release.
• Study Released on Pre-K Education Investments
  A study by Economist Robert Lynch finds that investments in pre-K education pay for themselves more than twelve times over, in the long run.  The study reveals the societal benefits of early education nationwide and Policy Matters Ohio condenses the information into a 3-page fact sheet on the potential benefits Ohio can expect from investing in early education.

  Access the national report and the 3-page Ohio fact sheet here.

• Costly Trade With China
  Losing 66,100 jobs and job opportunities since 2001, Ohio is ranked the 8th hardest hit state affected by China's entry into the WTO. In Costly Trade With China, the Economic Policy Institute reports the impact that trade with China has had on Ohio, and the United States as a whole. Read the press release and view the report here.
• Policy Matters Ohio Testifies on Unemployment Compensation and Social Security
  

  Ohio is now the only one of the 50 states that reduces unemployment insurance by 100 percent of Social Security payments received by jobless workers. Thus, many older workers find when they lose their jobs that their unemployment insurance is reduced or cut to zero. Ohio Senate Bill 116, introduced by Sen. Joy Padgett, would eliminate this Social Security “offset,” as it is called. Policy Matters Research Director Zach Schiller testified in support of the bill at an April 24 hearing of the Senate Finance and Financial Institutions Committee.

   

   

  Read Zach Schiller’s Ohio Senate Committee testimony
• JobWatch for March 2007
  The ground has thawed but Ohio's job market has not. The state lost jobs during the winter, more than offsetting the modest gains experienced during calendar 2006. Over the past year, the state has lost 24,000 jobs. Get the dismal forecast here.
• Policy Matters Ohio Announces New Board Members
  Policy Matters Ohio elected attorney Joyce Goldstein as its new board chair effective June 2007, and elected as new board members David Bergholz, the retired Executive Director of the George Gund Foundation and Seth Rosen, the Vice President of the Communication Workers of America District Four, a five-state region.  "Joyce, David and Seth each contribute a strong vision for the future of our organization, passion for public policy and phenomenal reputations in their respective professional communities," said Amy Hanauer, Executive Director of Policy Matters. "Their leadership on our board will help Policy Matters become an even more important voice in the policy debate in Ohio."

  You can read the full press release here.

• Foreclosure Growth in Ohio 2007
  Ohio foreclosure filings jumped sharply in 2006, Policy Matters Ohio reported in a study released today. Overall, according to data reported by common pleas court judges across the state to the Ohio Supreme Court, there were 79,072 new foreclosure filings, an increase of more than 15,000 or 23.6 percent from 2005. The latest numbers indicate that Ohio’s foreclosure crisis, already severe, worsened substantially in 2006. Cuyahoga County again led the state in foreclosure filings per person, while filings in Delaware County shot up faster from the year before – almost 50 percent – than in any Ohio county. Read the study here.
• Policy Matters Testifies in Congress on Payday Lending
  On March 21, the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, held a hearing on predatory mortgages, payday loans, and foreclosures that plague inner-city America. This was be the first in a series of hearings Subcommittee Chairman Kucinich plans to hold looking at various issues afflicting urban America.

  David Rothstein, Researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, testified at the hearing regarding the massive growth of payday lenders in Ohio – from 107 in 1996 to 1562 in 2006. Also included in Rothstein’s testimony was the figure that there were more payday lenders in Ohio during 2006 than McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s restaurants combined. Rothstein recommended to the Committee that Congress extend the recent protections of the Talent-Nelson Amendment, mainly a 36 percent rate cap on payday loans, to all working families in America.

  You can read the report here.

• EITC Gains, RAL Drains: The widespread use of the Earned Income Tax Credit throughout Ohio
  In this analysis, Policy Matters Ohio uses data from the IRS and the Brookings Institution to breakdown how the EITC helps working families in Ohio. This data is presented for each state legislative district in Ohio. As the charts indicate, the EITC brings millions of dollars into legislative districts across Ohio. However, roughly one-third of those receiving the EITC purchase a Refund Anticipation Loan (RAL). For EITC recipients who pay for tax preparation, more than 60 percent purchase RALs.

  You can read the analysis here.

• Trapped in Debt: The Growth of Payday Lending in Ohio
  The number of payday lending shops in Ohio catapulted from 107 locations in 1996 to 1562 locations in 2006, a more than fourteen-fold increase in a decade, according to this report from Policy Matters Ohio and the Housing Research and Advocacy Center. The report finds that payday lending shops are now more common than McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy's restaurants combined in Ohio. Once concentrated in troubled urban centers, payday lending locations have now become ubiquitous across the Ohio landscape, appearing in all but two Ohio counties. The high-interest, high-fee loans pushed at these locations often lead borrowers into a destructive cycle of debt. The report ends with recommendations to rein in this disturbing form of credit.

  You can read the report