Ohio Republicans move to ban cheap, fast, and successful municipal broadband programs in the state
newsdepo.com
Ohio has at least 90 things going against it: Gov. Mike DeWine, 25 state senators, and 64 state representatives are Republican officials with a majority control of the state. That isn’t simply a facetious bit of business. These legislators seem hell-bent oOhio Republicans move to ban cheap, fast, and successful municipal broadband programs in the state
Ohio has at least 90 things going against it: Gov. Mike DeWine, 25 state senators, and 64 state representatives are Republican officials with a majority control of the state. That isn’t simply a facetious bit of business. These legislators seem hell-bent on hurting Ohio citizens’ health and pocketbooks. The public health experts GOP representatives bring into chambers to speak are snake-oil charlatans, and even the former Republican speaker has been expelled for outrageous levels of apparent corruption. The corruption in question led to an unpopular $170 million bailout of failing nuclear and coal power plants, at the expense of renewable energy initiatives. On June 9, a new $75 billion budget passed through the GOP-led Ohio Senate. Members of the Ohio House have criticized the Senate’s handling of the budget, saying it was done haphazardly, without taking into account all of the work and negotiations done by the House. Senate Democrats say that the House plan, created by a still-majority GOP body of state reps, was considerably more acceptable. With cuts to education, Medicaid administration, and rural broadband grants, the Ohio Senate bill cuts $874 million from the budget while the House bill cut $380 million. But “tucked inside” of the Senate bill are all kinds of predictably screwed up things like backdoor women’s health restrictions on abortion, and doing away with municipal-created broadband infrastructure. Read more