Tune in to the Ohio Channel (ohiochannel.org) today at noon to watch Governor DeWine’s final State of the State speech as we head into his last year serving as Ohio’s 70th Governor.
We’ve made a BINGO card of things we expect to hear if anyone wants to play along with us during the speech!
“No Tax on Tips and Overtime” policies come with a whole slew of conditions and caveats that ultimately don’t benefit the average tax payer.
Join us on Monday (March) 16th for a 30-minute educational webinar and Q&A.
11am: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
7pm: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
Trump’s idea of a good economy is one where Palantir pays zero taxes #SOTU2026
Valentine’s Day was Saturday but we’ve got enough love for public transportation to keep us going through #OhioLovesTransit week and beyond!
Happy Valentine’s Week!
Make sure you and your Valentine are being paid properly by checking your paystub! PMO (lovingly) advocated for the Pay Stub Prevention Act to make sure all workers get paystubs to combat wage theft.
policymattersohio.org/news/2025/01...
Childcare providers forced to pay for and install camera systems in classrooms that live-stream to the government.
Thousands of hours of videos of kids and babies saved and accessible to the government.
No security measures.
No way for parents to opt out.
policymattersohio.org/research/chi...
With inequality at Gilded Age levels and more billionaires than ever, the Republican message is poor people have it too good
bsky.app/profile/alis...
I unfortunately went through a similar process today.
Ali is 100% right - this is not a flash in the pan. The CCDF public comment period opening now turns this into a whole new thing.
No tin hats here.
Another failure of an administration making policy for billionaires rather than Americans.
Behind the mask of reducing “costs and burden” for states administering and “restoring flexibility,” it does away with requirements to limit family co-payments to 7% of income and to pay providers prospectively based on enrollment (just like they are in the private market).
This will deepen the child care crisis. Not just for publicly funded programs and subsidies. Costs will continue to skyrocket for everyone. Passionate, excellent educators will continue to leave the sector. Child care deserts will continue to grow.
Today the administration quietly released a proposal to FULLY RESCIND these provisions.
public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-24272.pdf
I hoped I was reading the situation wrong. These rules would improve the child care system for millions of children, working families, and early educators. They’d been a long time coming and, in my expert opinion, were the bare minimum in improvements.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t wrong.
In the early hours of the New Year I was working on our press statement about the “fraud” (linked below) and told my comms director it was too coordinated and I bet it was all a ruse “to provide cover for the new federal mandates to be rescinded.”
policymattersohio.org/news/2026/01...
It was suspicious because the policy is so in-the-weeds. Why mention it? Most readers wouldn’t know what it was or why it mattered. It wasn’t great PR.
Statements from anti-child care legislators started coming out. All at least mentioning paying providers based on enrollment rather than attendance - one of several best practices ALL states were being mandated to implement soon by the 2024 CCDF Final Rule.
acf.gov/occ/outreach...
Then Ohio’s famously sluggish and inactive legislators miraculously got together over a holiday and published a statement. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark.
www.cleveland.com/news/2025/12...
I’ve seen programs get dinged for having tweezers in the wrong place or the wrong kind of bleach spray. I’ve seen families get denied subsidies for providing the wrong week of paystubs or skipping an application question accidentally.
Providers in Ohio go through rigorous, regular, unannounced inspections every year. There are more than 1000 rules for Publicly Funded Child Care providers. We are VERY serious about accountability.
Hundreds of obviously bot/AI comments started appearing on social media posts. The claims started getting traction in mainstream media but all I could find were circular citations all leading back to the same easily debunked YouTube videos of guys being creepy trying to get into child care centers.
Then it, predictably, spread to allegations of child care fraud in my state of Ohio. Not because there were actual issues or evidence of widespread fraud, but simply because Columbus and Minnesota both enjoy large populations of Somali refugees. More thinly veiled race baiting.
When “news” first broke I was super skeptical. I’m a child care researcher and work with providers who accept publicly funded kiddos all the time. First of all there were no substantiated cases of fraud, it all seemed to be thinly veiled race baiting using buzzwords and old, unrelated fraud cases.
I thought I was getting a little too conspiracy theory about the child care “fraud” nonsense. Regretfully, I was actually 100% right. This is a coordinated attack on families and children. 🧵
Ohio has strong systems in place to protect children & taxpayers. Child care providers undergo routine, thorough, unannounced inspections every year, & those reports are available for anyone to review. Suggesting that oversight is lax is simply not true.
policymattersohio.org/news/2026/01...
Trump’s ‘Bah! Humbug!’ address suggests he is feeling the chill of opinion polls
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President Trump's signature law of his second term provides vastly more benefits to the rich Ohioans than to any other group. It also takes more away from Ohio's most vulnerable families than most people might realize, a new analysis says ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/12/04/r...
DeWine vetoed SB 50, which would have extended working hours for young teens to 9pm on school nights, in violation of federal law.
This veto is good for kids, businesses, and workers. Thank you to everyone who signed our petition urging for this veto!
policymattersohio.org/news/2025/12...
Governor DeWine has vetoed SB 50, a child labor bill that would have eroded longstanding protections for young teenage workers. I appreciate his capitalization on this one.
