Foraker

Bump -- @KJP -- any news?

RTA, please don't delay -- vote to exercise the option. Keep the momentum going.

Call his bluff. Tell Haslam that we'll endorse the proposal with the state, but he has to guarantee those "hundreds of millions of dollars" in revenue. (And there's no way he's getting Cleveland funds for a development outside of the city, and the County doesn't have any money to give.)

Ohio Issue 2 (2025) raises the amount of debt that the state can take on to build infrastructure (roads and sewers -- does not appear to enable funding trains, streetcars, or other mass transit -- except maybe "bridges" as needed), and passed overwhelmingly. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/05/06/issue-2-election-results-2025-vote-would-extend-public-works-program/83463686007/ This is not the first time voters have been asked to approve such infrastructure bonds. And the vote seemed to fly under the radar this year. No strong anti-government-debt action, no strong support either. It annoys me how much "legislation" in Ohio is passed as a Constitutional amendment, I am concerned about the amount of debt, and I don't like how the definition of "infrastructure" eligible for funding is constrained the way that it is to not include mass transit projects. But here we are. Any thoughts?

That's fine, you can dismiss the amount at issue and the statistics and address the substance then. You implied that voucher money is important to allow kids to escape schools with disruptive students that impair their education. I suggested that those students should be removed from the classroom and given special assistance to get them back on track. You said that that was not economically feasible, but provided no alternative other than an implication that public schools should let those kids blow in the wind, "like chaff." I suggested that we spend more money on that special assistance in a trial to find out whether that special assistance is effective. If it is, I would argue for more funding in that direction, and if not, then I would argue that we should be trying something else. Kids behaving badly are still kids. Not trash to be thrown away.

Deflecting from any consideration of the substance of the suggestion -- using a small percentage of the funds spent on incarceration to test whether "therapeutic options" for disruptive students makes a difference in future outcomes for those kids struggling with behavior issues in school would be a good use of state funds.

First of all I agreed with you that problem kids need to be removed from the classrooms. I agree that disrupters disrupt and create problems for the majority. I said that they need help to not be a problem -- that does not require keeping them in the classroom. But that doesn't mean you just push them out of the system entirely, a la your Christian "those childs are chaff to be thrown to the wind." "I wipe my hands of them, let them find their way to prison." How widespread is this problem of the Problem Child? You seem to think it is ubiquitous -- perhaps a couple of kids in every public school classroom? Entire classrooms in the inner city? I think it is rather rare -- perhaps one kid in 200, or fewer. We can "believe" whatever we want and never come to a true solution if we can't agree on what the facts are. You suggest that therapeutic options are not a cost-effective solution. Based on what? How much do we spend and what is the "success" rate? Mass incarceration is unsustainable too. $80B and counting. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/economics_of_incarceration/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/ Ohio is just under 4% of US population -- perhaps we could spend 3.5% ($2.8B) on therapeutic options --- assistance for troubled youth -- and see if they would actually make a difference.

Look, I'm not fan of vouchers. If you want to send your kids to private school, go for it -- but I don't like that the government will give you money to do so. But I'm trying to find compromise. If you truly think that competition is what is going to make schools better, take the shackles off the public schools that make it harder for them to compete with private schools -- eliminate some of those regulations. No doubt, a small number of kids can totally disrupt a classroom, and violent kids (particularly as they get older and bigger and stronger) are a huge problem and need to be out of the classroom and get some special help, absolutely. And both real and over-hyped fear of violent kids in public schools drives parents to move their kids to private schools. Absolutely. Your implication that Christian schools are better because they can kick the problem kids to the curb is hard for me to wrap my head around. The lack of empathy is striking. I realize that some of the absolute hardest teachings of Christianity are to love your enemy, love the leper, love the worst of society. But you're mocking "dreams of rehabilitation of lost causes" and celebrating Christian schools for not doing so -- when it seems like Christian schools ought to be the ones serving those very kids that they're dismissing as un-saveable. That's the Christian message, that a kid is a "lost cause"? A kid. Wow. Does that mean that every school must have the resources to help the problem kids? No. That would be cost-prohibitive as well. Public schools are the "schools of last resort" -- and that means that public schools need more counselors, more psychologists, more alternative programs -- more resources. They need more funding. But don't be deluded into thinking that vouchers solve these problems -- they just let a small number of students run away from the problem (and only a small number, since most vouchers are not used by students in poverty who truly cannot otherwise afford it). I don't expect that that will change, even if voucher dollars and public school dollars otherwise are treated equally. I am glad that there are still public schools that will continue to try to save the "lost" causes, because working to find better ways to help these kids while they are still kids is cheaper and better for our society in the long run than building more prisons.

We have never had a monopoly -- only public schools -- in Ohio. (Although there are many rural places that only have a public school, but since COVID probably now have some access to an online school.) In 2024, Ohio had 1.6m students. Of that, there are 117k charter school students, and 160k students receive vouchers. The state of Ohio spends about $11.6B for 1.3m public school students (about $8,923 per student) and $970M for 160k voucher students ($6,062) (K-8 students can receive a $6,165 voucher and secondary students can receive a $8,407). So yes, it looks voucher students are getting less than public school students on average. Overall test score averages have generally been falling over the last twenty years, while education spending has increased. So I'm sympathetic to the view that "spending more money doesn't make all of our kids successful, so why are we spending more money?!" https://www.ohiobythenumbers.com/#lead As that report from Fordham shows, however, success on just about any metric is correlated with income, not education spending. In other words, on average, kids from well-off families do better in school than kids from poor families, even though more money is spent on school districts with higher poverty. And vouchers are mostly going to students who are not in poverty. https://www.nbc4i.com/news/politics/ohio-voucher-program-data-shows-nearly-90-of-participants-are-not-low-income/ If traditional measures of success, test scores, graduation rates, etc., are correlated with family income, the question is not "are state averages going up as the state overall spends more money" but "does more money for education make more of a difference for the poor"? Not "does more money make poor students AP stars" but does more money increase their rate of success? And success might be a combination of high school graduation, vocational training, and college completion rates rather than test scores alone. (It costs more to educate kids from poor families -- they need free meals, basic healthcare, smaller class sizes, start off behind their wealthier peers, etc. -- but the state benefits in the long run from investing in their education.) My primary position is not that we should not have vouchers but that if we're going to attach strings to public education dollars, those same strings should be attached to the dollars whether for public schools (or charter schools) or vouchers. One way to do that would be to eliminate all the state requirements on public schools that don't apply to voucher recipients -- I would think that conservatives would be sympathetic to that idea, reducing regulation.

Copied from the SCOTUS forum "Competition" is not always the most cost-effective. Competition in health insurance has not stopped rates from rising faster than inflation. We can't effectively improve policing by having multiple private police departments in the city. It makes no sense to have private competition in firefighting, military, and other government functions that benefit the COMMUNITY. I would argue that it is not cost-effective to have multiple school systems, with multiple school buildings, etc. We don't send our kids to private schools for cost reasons, and different schools are not better or worse for the cost to run the school -- better schools are ones with wealthier parents. Putting aside whatever the U.S. Supreme Court says about Oklahoma funding for charter schools, there is an aspect of Ohio law that makes a big difference -- the Ohio Constitution. Ohio Constitution, Article VI, Section 2: Arguably, "common schools" means schools receiving public funds must be subject to the same rules and regulations. Charter schools, public schools, and schools receiving voucher funds are each subject to different rules and regulations, and thus are not "common" schools. The Ohio Supreme Court has struck down the current school funding system multiple times since 1999. Ohio Executive and Legislative branches have disregarded the Judiciary on that point, and a majority of Ohio's citizens don't appear to mind. Even though it takes more than a majority to change the constitution, a simple majority can ignore it. (If we don't have to follow parts of the constitution that we don't agree with, why follow any of it? Should we be able to moot any provision of the state Constitution in this way?) I can appreciate the feeling that we should allow parents to decide where a student goes to school. If we have a system of "common schools," all of which are subject to the same rules and regulations, and we pay for those schools by letting every student have a voucher and decide where they want to go to school, that would seem to meet the constitutional requirements. We can have a common fund to support school buildings and buses. "Common schools" that receive public funding should not be able to decline to admit any student who applies, every student must take the same state tests, meet the same state graduation requirements, and schools cannot dismiss a student for any reason other than what any other school could dismiss a student for. But if we want some of that funding to go to religious schools we need to change that second part of this constitutional provision to allow religious schools to participate. (Vouchers form "a part" of state funding, the schools can use those government funds however they want after accepting a student's voucher -- so there is an argument that current vouchers paid to religious schools also are in violation of the state constitution.)

Copied from Cleveland Transit History -- would love to bring this idea back into discussion, particularly if Haslam moves forward with development in Brook Park.

The freight trains also have gotten longer, but the sidings haven't -- although they're still long enough for passenger trains. Strange....

I think the law actually gives Amtrak a lot of power to ensure that the freight industry doesn't impede passenger trains. If we actually had pro-passenger-rail officials in the right positions that would be a big help.

I'm not eager to just give the railroads $14B. First, we need to figure out how to better enforce the rules on sharing the rails with passenger trains, because that doesn't seem to be working under the current system. And we need to make sure that that money goes to maintaining the existing infrastructure, building additional track (particularly sidings for passing trains and infrastructure investments to clear bottlenecks in the system) instead of stock buybacks or executive bonuses. Frankly, I have zero confidence that the freight railroads have any incentive whatsoever to maintain the rails in such a way that we can have great passenger rail -- there's a cost and no economic incentive to do so. (I'd prefer to give the railroads $14B in exchange for meaningful federal control over the maintenance and construction.)

So should we apply an income tax county-wide, and redistribute those funds on a per-capita basis?

Thanks -- are these communities taking on debt to fund those deficits or are they spending from reserves?

Nope. Not Lakewood. https://www.lakewoodoh.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/12-31-24-City-of-Lakewood-Month-End-YTD-Financial-Report.pdf Parma seems to be doing ok https://www.cleveland.com/community/2024/03/parma-city-council-approves-2024-budget-with-police-department-receiving-new-tasers-cameras.html Cleveland Heights is a mess politically right now, but also seems to be doing ok. https://www.cleveland.com/community/2025/03/persistence-pays-off-as-cleveland-heights-council-passes-2025-budget.html

Rather than run the buses further and further from the core, I would argue that we need more TOD -- fix the route and the stops, then add density around the stops.

But in many cases the railroads were built on land given to them by the government. And government subsidized the build-out through tax breaks. I agree that it's going to be hard lift to change course, but it needs to be done. Government ownership and maintenance of the rails (they can contract out the maintenance if they like, but government oversight of maintenance is important), combined with private ownership of the vehicles traveling on the rails, is working well in Europe. Benefits of a nationally-managed network, better rails for passengers, relieving the freight companies from maintenance responsibilities beyond their yards and from the local/state taxes they paid on the right of way. And yes, local/state governments will fight this "loss of revenue".

This controversy over the promise of new stadiums is not limited to the US. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/apr/29/football-soccer-stadiums-everton-nfl

I'm not overly concerned with picking Shedeur that late. Hopefully we're all wrong about the circus that may form around him, but at least with a late pick he can use that chip on his shoulder to prove his value or he'll flame out with a lot less damage than cough DeShaun Watson. (Although it would be nice if he came back next year and proved everyone wrong.) What really baffles me though is what the thinking was in selecting Dillon Gabriel. I just don't see why he was more valuable than some other needs -- like OL and LB depth.

Rather than create another exception, why don't they fully fund schools out of income taxes so that schools don't have to rely on property taxes at all! The bipartisan Fair School Funding Plan was adopted, but now the Republican legislators don't want to fund it. Surprise. https://columbusunderground.com/ohio-lawmakers-working-to-reduce-property-taxes-ocj1/

https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2025-04-23/despite-layoffs-and-delays-dewine-says-he-has-faith-intel-will-make-computer-chips-in-ohio Anyone want to ask DeWine if he remembers how much General Motors invested in Ohio, and how much of that investment has been "walked away from"? I don't think a company will keep pouring money into a project only because they have already poured a lot of money into it. (Any MBAs want to weigh in?) I think Intel will move forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being a smaller facility than was initially pitched. We'll see.

I don't think it's that clear-cut. Part of the problem is that the cost to maintain the infrastructure from the core, roads in Cleveland, for example, (or the sewer lines in the first mile from the treatment plant (which have to be bigger than what would be needed for just the Cleveland population)) are born more by the people of Cleveland, while residents of the outlying suburbs do drive on Cleveland-maintained roadways (and send their sewage to the regional treatment plant) and don't pay the full cost of living farther away. (The outlying suburbs are predominantly only paying for maintenance of the newer and lower-capacity last-miles of the system.) A developer can more easily buy large tracts of land to develop well outside the urban core, build only the infrastructure internal to the development, connect it to the existing network (for a small fee) and walk away, without truly paying the cost of adding on to the miles of infrastructure network that needs to be maintained (or the increased capacity costs needed at the other end). The new suburbanite is now maintaining brand-new infrastructure while adding to the burden on older infrastructure that is necessary for the new infrastructure to be functional without meaningfully adding to the cost to maintain the old infrastructure. This is certainly an exaggeration -- I realize that we do collectively fund some things outside our immediate locale through state and federal taxes, county-level sales taxes, etc., and the person living one mile from the sewage plant pays the same rate as the person five miles from the plant -- the cost to maintain most of our infrastructure is shared. But building further and further out, we are adding many more miles of infrastructure for relatively few people to live farther and farther away (the population of greater Cleveland has not grown in decades, but has spread outward quite a bit.) Financially, the overall community would be better off if the geographic area covered by our utility networks in 1960 was the same size today. Consider if the money spent on expanding those networks had instead been used to upgrade the older networks, not to mention if the houses in the city had been maintained, rehabbed, or even torn down and replaced with new -- rather than spread out throughout the county as they are today (and likely will be tomorrow). I don't think Cleveland would be as poor as it is if the focus had been on solving its problems rather than expending resources to run away from them.

"Sprawl" in Europe probably wouldn't fit the same definition as it does in the US as a result. Is TOD sprawl?