The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions today announced the appointment of nationally respected conservative fiscal policy advocate Matt Mayer as its new president. Mayer is an author, former attorney and university professor, and an experienced public policy implementer.
For those who can remember the 1980s, think back to what phone service was like in those days. Remember the high prices? Remember the lack of choices? It's doubtful anyone recalls these things with fondness. Today talking to friends and family across the country is easier and cheaper than ever...
Accountability is an important concept in our lives. People need to bear the consequences of their actions, for good or ill. Accountability in education is especially important, as education is meant to prepare our children for the rest of their lives. The usual discussion of accountability in...
Is there anything more permanent than a "temporary" government program? Ohio voters may get to decide that if a ballot measure to extend the Third Frontier corporate welfare program is on the November ballot. Ohioans need to ask, however, if there are any real benefits from the Third...
Lynn Walsh, Investigative Reporter for the Buckeye Institute, spoke with 610 WTVN’s Bob Connors this morning about the phantom congressional districts posted on www.recovery.gov. 10 districts in Ohio, that do not exist, received more than $5.3 million in stimulus funds, creating/retaining 11 jobs. Ohio only has 18 congressional districts.
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, responsible for overseeing the information on www.recovery.gov, says the mistakes are data entry errors. Yesterday, the Board purged the state/territory summary pages of Ohio and other states nationwide, lumping all of the phantom districts into an “unassigned congressional district” column; in some case the information was re-entered with the correct congressional district numbers.
Buckeye Institute Investigative Reporter Lynn Walsh uncovered 10 brand new Congressional Districts in Ohio via the www.recovery.org website’s newest state and territory summary for Ohio. Walsh exposed the mistake on the Buckeye Institute affiliated OhioWatchdog.org and the story was picked up today by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Buckeye Institute President Matt Mayer calls for the Ohio to reevaluate the need for state maintained aircraft in the midst of budget woes and a severe decline in usage in this Dayton Daily News article.
It seems the State of Ohio is slow to move on Aviation Administrator James Bryant’s recommendation to sell 4 planes and 2 helicopters from an aging fleet. Buckeye Institute President Matt Mayer also questions Ohio’s use of planes and helicopters for inner state travel instead of Ohio’s highway system in this Dayton Daily News article.
Buckeye Institute President Matt Mayer was featured on the Bob Connors radio show this morning discussing a multitude of Ohio issues including the impact that federal health care reform and cap and trade could have on Ohio’s budget. Matt also spent some time on Ohio’s own budget woes.
Some in Ohio are pushing for legislators to pass a law mandating insurance companies cover autism therapy. California has such a law, and it has just been dramatically expanded by court order:
In a preliminary ruling, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant found that Kaiser Permanente’s refusal to pay for a child’s autism treatment because the provider was not licensed by the state runs counter to California’s Mental Health Parity Act. That act requires insurers to cover care for mental and behavioral problems at the same levels they do for physical illnesses.
So let’s see: the state enacts a mandate that insurance companies cover autism treatment. Insurance companies must raise rates on everyone to cover such a treatment. These higher insurance rates paid by Californians go to pay for treatments by unlicensed therapists and may not even work (at all).
Ohioans would be wise to reject any calls for an autism insurance mandate. As California is showing, it will merely raise the cost of insurance and will probably do little to help autistic children.
In the push to reintroduce passenger rail in Ohio, it is often claimed that passenger rail has strong support from the public. As recent data by the Pew Charitable Trust shows, where passenger rail already exists it isn’t all that popular:
Forty-one of Amtrak’s 44 routes lost money in 2008 with losses ranging from nearly $5 to $462 per passenger depending upon the line, according to analysis by Pew’s Subsidyscope.
The line with the highest per passenger subsidy—the Sunset Limited, which runs from New Orleans to Los Angeles—carried almost 72,000 passengers last year. The California Zephyr, which runs from Chicago to San Francisco, had the second-highest per passenger subsidy of $193 and carried nearly 353,000 passengers in 2008. Pew’s analysis indicates that the average loss per passenger on all 44 of Amtrak’s lines was $32, about four times what the loss would be using Amtrak’s figures: only $8 per passenger. (Amtrak uses a different method for calculating route performance).
The Northeast Corridor has the highest passenger volume of any Amtrak route, carrying nearly 10.9 million people in 2008. The corridor’s high-speed Acela Express made a profit of about $41 per passenger. But the more heavily utilized Northeast Regional, with more than twice as many riders as the Acela, lost almost $5 per passenger.
As I explained here, when taxpayers have to pick up the tab for part (or in Ohio, most) of the cost of your ride, then it’s there just isn’t the demand for passenger rail that supporters claim.
If you really think the health care proposals being debated in DC will cost less than $1 trillion over ten years, the Wall Street Journal today has some history of other government health care programs that should disabuse you of that notion:
The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that [Medicaid's] first-year costs would be $238 million. Instead it hit more than $1 billion, and costs have kept climbing.
Thanks in part to expansions promoted by California’s Henry Waxman, a principal author of the current House bill, Medicaid now costs 37 times more than it did when it was launched—after adjusting for inflation. Its current cost is $251 billion, up 24.7% or $50 billion in fiscal 2009 alone, and that’s before the health-care bill covers millions of new beneficiaries.
Medicare has a similar record. In 1965, Congressional budgeters said that it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Its actual cost that year was $90 billion. Whoops. The hospitalization program alone was supposed to cost $9 billion but wound up costing $67 billion. These aren’t small forecasting errors. The rate of increase in Medicare spending has outpaced overall inflation in nearly every year (up 9.8% in 2009), so a program that began at $4 billion now costs $428 billion.
It’s a victory for all small business in Ohio thanks to the Buckeye Institutes’ 1851 Center for Constitutional Law. Pour House, a locally owned bar in Columbus, will not be fined for smoking violations thanks to a court decision last Friday.
The court ruled that Pour House should not have been fined since there is no evidence that the owner permitted smoking. The court also ruled that it is not the bar or restaurant’s job to enforce the smoking ban. Maurice Thompson, Director for the 1851 Center, discussed the ruling.
Buckeye Institute President Matt Mayer recently spoke to the Tax Foundation’s Natasha Altamirano about Governor Ted Strickland’s plan to freeze a scheduled 4.2 percent cut in the state income tax. Listen to the discussion below courtesy of the Tax Foundation’s Tax Policy Podcast Series.
Posted on October 14, 2009
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland recently announced a plan to freeze income tax cuts for two years in order to fund education. The cuts, totaling 21 percent, were scheduled to be phased in over five years at a rate of 4.2 percent a year.
Matt Mayer recently was named President of the Buckeye Institute in Columbus, OH. He joins us for this week’s Tax Policy Podcast to discuss the governor’s proposal and alternative solutions for Ohio’s budget problems.
