This week brought another job change for one of the state’s top law enforcement officials. Public Safety Director Tom Charles retired from that job on Wednesday. It’s expected he will now take an advisory position with JobsOhio, the state’s public-private job creating entity that has raised a lot of questions for Democrats and other opponents about transparency and connections. Democratic Sen. Capri Cafaro (D-Hubbard) says politics are holding up Medicaid expansion and reform, so she’s proposing a bill that she says will force the issue. But Republican Senate President Keith Faber says the ideas and numbers in her bill are still being vetted, and that the existing reform bill and the process are bipartisan. And campaign 2014 is well underway, and there’s a huge gap between Republican Gov. John Kasich and his likely Democratic challenger.
Speaking of money, the state budget is a month old this week. But with more than 37-hundred pages and some pretty far reaching changes in tax policy and other areas, many people are still working to get their arms around all that the budget does and whether it will do what some are saying it will. Returning to try to do that are two budget veterans - Neil Clark is the former chief financial officer of the Ohio Senate Republican Caucus, and Bill Shkurti was the state budget director under Democratic Gov. Richard Celeste. They were the chief budget gurus from their parties in the mid to late 80s.
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