Administrative Foreclosures

Ohio Supreme Court Green Lights Fast-Track Process That Gives Homes to Developers But Fails to Compensate Owners and Taxpayers

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In 2019, Taxpayers lost at least $11.25 million, While Homeowners and Banks lost up to $77 Million, But Title to Revamped Houses Remains Sound

This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism. Please join our free mailing list as this helps us provide more public service reporting.     The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that an unusual foreclosure process that can result in people’s homes being sold without compensation for their equity should remain legal in the Buckeye State. However, in a recently released opinion the state justices couldn’t agree on the reasoning behind it. 

Justice Judith French authored the lead opinion, joined by Justices Michael Donnelly and Robert Hendrickson. (Justice Robert A. Hendrickson, of the Twelfth District Court of Appeals, replaced Justice Melody Stewart.) They declined to comment on the constitutional issues presented by the case involving what are called “administrative foreclosures,” saying that they would not stop the process because the law governing these procedures was not “patently and unambiguously” unconstitutional. 

Not to be confused with expedited foreclosures, administrative foreclosures send abandoned properties to a county’s board of revision, a committee that usually considers home values for property owners wanting to contest their taxes.

Tens of thousands of Ohioans told to repay unemployment benefits

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After waiting weeks for unemployment insurance payments, some are receiving letters demanding they pay back thousands; software troubles continue to dog system

Marnie Behan got a surprising message in April from Ohio’s Department of Jobs and Family Services about her ongoing unemployment payments. Instead of sending her next unemployment payment, they said she needed to pay the Department. The bill was almost $3,000. She had 45 days to repay it, or the case would be sent to the Ohio Attorney General. Since March 15, new claims have inundated the unemployment system at a level not seen since The Great Depression.

Slideshow: Protest Art

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This slideshow is a sample of art drawn on buildings in Columbus' Short North district. To read Eye on Ohio's previous articles on police stops:

Investigation: Blacks, black neighborhoods most likely to be traffic stop targets in Ohio’s 3 biggest cities

Sidebar: Beleaguered Cincinnati agency probing stop complaints rarely faults cops

Sidebar: Can an officer's perception of you alter your ticket? Biracial man's 'white' tickets dismissed, 'black' tickets sustained

African Americans

A college where the graduation rate for black students has been 0 percent — for years

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Several Ohio campuses have abysmal success rates for black college students, even as the state pushes for, and desperately needs, more graduates

This story about Kent State Ashtabula was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter. ASHTABULA, Ohio — Alexis Turner listened carefully as the administrators at the freshman orientation for Kent State University at Ashtabula ticked through the student groups she could join on campus that fall: English Society, Psychology Club, Student Veterans Association. 

She left the auditorium apprehensive. There was no Black Student Union, Latino Student Union or Multicultural Society. 

Once the semester started, it became more apparent why those clubs don’t exist. 

“There’s not a lot of black representation,” said Turner, a black freshman. Kent State Ashtabula is in a rural county near Cleveland, where black and Latino students make up about a third of the local high school.

COVID

Families weigh the risks of sending a loved one to a nursing home during the coronavirus pandemic

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Data analysis and Graphics by Cid Standifer 

In early March, just as Ohioans were learning about the first cases of novel coronavirus in the state, Anna Bondar’s grandfather fell at his Cleveland home. Luckily, the 92-year old, who lives with dementia, wasn’t injured badly. The tight-knit family started to discuss the possibility of a nursing home, though they had serious reservations. Their tough choice was made even more difficult by mounting fears about the coronavirus.  In nearly four months, COVID-19  has infected more than 31,191 people statewide and has proven particularly deadly for residents of long-term care facilities in Ohio. Seventy percent of the reported deaths in Ohio due to COVID-19 complications have been in long-term care facilities, which is among the highest in the country. 

Nationally the portion of COVID-19-related deaths in long-term care facilities has hovered just over 40%, though the amount of testing done in nursing homes varies significantly by state. 

Every day, families like Bondar’s are making what can feel like an impossible choice – whether to send a loved one to a nursing home where they will receive around-the-clock specialized care but face a greater risk of contracting COVID-19, or to care for that person at home where risk of transmission is lower but providing care can be more challenging. 

Even before the pandemic, sorting through the myriad of quality ratings and measures was daunting enough.

coronavirus

The Uphill Battle Ohio Job Seekers Face

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Buckeyes Battle Uneven Playing Field; COVID-19 exacerbates trends; Women and Young Workers Hit Particularly Hard

Graphics by Cid Standifer

Note: this article has been updated to include previously unavailable nursing home data. Carmine Ballard graduated from The Ohio State University in 2016, with two Bachelor of Arts degrees— one in Psychology, another in Women’s and Gender Studies. Ballard’s parents helped them through college— paying their tuition. Yet, despite that, Ballard still ended up with about $10,000 worth of federal student loans by graduation, for living expenses during college. Ballard graduated with a 3.0 average, and made the dean’s list several times.

COVID

In Ohio’s coal country, pandemic pushes unemployment rate from bad to worse

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As the novel coronavirus spread, Appalachian Ohio saw the state’s highest percentages of people out of work. Ohio’s coal mining counties have been hit even harder as unemployment surged following the country’s novel coronavirus outbreak. As the statewide unemployment rate moved from 4.7% in February to 5.6% in March, counties in Appalachian Ohio also saw rates twice as high — up to 12.2% in Monroe County. The six counties with the highest percentages of people out of work in March were all in the state’s Appalachian region. 

Job security has been an ongoing concern for coal miners and their communities, and the coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse. As of April, the U.S. coal industry had lost one in seven jobs since January, when doctors diagnosed the first U.S. case of COVID-19.

Health Care

CDC Reverses Course Again on Using Race As Testing Criteria

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Minority Groups with Higher Case and Death Rates Deemed a Priority, Then Not

After changing the guidelines to test ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by COVID-19, the CDC reversed course again Wednesday, saying that African Americans exposed to the virus could not get tested without symptoms.

A May 3 directive allowed physicians to test “persons without symptoms who come from racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by adverse COVID-19 outcomes—currently African Americans, Hispanics, and some American Indian tribes (e.g., Navajo Nation).” 

On May 6, however, all mention of race and ethnicity disappeared. The agency once again advised prioritizing persons with symptoms, especially if they were hospitalized, or were healthcare workers. Asymptomatic persons could be tested if  local health departments deemed it necessary for surveillance or monitoring, the CDC said. Nationally, CDC statistics reveal Blacks comprise 28 percent of the nation’s 1.5 million COVID cases and 21 percent of fatalities — more than double their percentage of the nation’s population. It’s a change that the National Medical Association, the nation’s oldest organization advocating for African American physicians and patients, has been advocating for since April 15.

Energy

Utilities, gas industry coordinate to oppose Ohio village’s clean energy goal

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Emails obtained by a utility watchdog group reveal push by Dominion Energy and allies against a local resolution. Dominion Energy’s opposition to an Ohio village’s clean energy proposal appears to be part of a larger trend nationwide in which gas utilities are becoming more active at the local government level. Unlike other cases involving bans on new gas hook-ups, however, Bratenahl’s proposed resolution stated a general goal of achieving 100% clean energy, with no specific plan or enforcement provisions. The resolution would have set a goal of fully transitioning to clean energy for village-owned facilities by 2025 and for the general community of about 1,200 people by 2035. 

The proposal surfaced in November in the wake of state lawmakers gutting the state’s renewable energy standards last year. 

“In response, you have local communities stepping up to make commitments to 100% clean energy,” said Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute. Cleveland and Cincinnati had already committed in 2018 to move to 100% renewable energy for electricity.

Energy

To Charge, or Not To Charge? You Decide

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Regulatory proceedings have big impacts on how much Ohioans pay for their electric service. How would you decide some of Ohio’s cases on electricity rates? Eye on Ohio, in a joint project with the Energy News Network, surveyed the biggest changes to the recent legal landscape. Each of the following problems is drawn from a real case decided by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio or the Ohio Supreme Court. 

The PUCO’s five commissioners are appointed by the governor for rotating five-year terms, while the court’s seven justices are elected. As of May, five of the seven justices on the court were registered Republicans, and two were Democrats.