Ohio
Ohio offers a new way to use public money for Christian schools. Opponents say it’s unconstitutional
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Around the country, advocates for Christian education have been finding legal ways to tap taxpayer money used more typically for public schools. One new approach in Ohio is benefiting schools tied to a burgeoning conservative political group and facing objections from defenders of the separation of church and state.
In President-elect Donald Trump, backers of school choice have gained an ally in their efforts to share taxpayer money with families to pay for things like private school tuition. Trump has cast school choice as a way to counter what he calls leftist indoctrination in public classrooms and is expected to seek a boost for the movement at the federal level.
The Ohio case shows how governments can push the envelope to funnel money to private schools.
The state has put a small part of its budget surplus toward competitive grants for expanding and renovating religious schools. Most of the winning construction projects are associated with the Center for Christian Virtue, an Ohio-based advocacy group that’s seen its revenues balloon amid the state’s push to expand religious educational options.
Ohio last year established a universal voucher program that provides tuition to nonpublic schools, including religious ones, to any family in the state. Backers of the construction grants say they can help address a capacity problem created by the vouchers’ popularity, particularly in rural areas.
The nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State has objected to the capital investments in religious schools, calling the practice unconstitutional and unprecedented in scope. Where voucher programs involve spending decisions made by individual parents, the group argues the new program involves the government paying the schools directly.
“The religious freedom of taxpayers is violated when their taxes are forcibly taken from them and devoted to religious instruction of a faith to which those taxpayers do not subscribe,” said Alex Luchenitser, the group’s associate legal director.
The One-Time Strategic Community Investment Fund originated in the Republican-led Ohio Senate.
Spokesperson John Fortney rejected the claim that helping religious schools directly is unconstitutional. “This is laughable and a lie that the left is using to yet again vilify parents who send their students to a school of their choice,” the Senate GOP spokesperson said in a statement.
Around the country, expanded school choice programs have benefited religious organizations seeking to increase their educational offerings. Of the 33 states with private school programs, 12 allow any student to apply for public money to subsidize private, religious or homeschool education, according to FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.
The CCV and its education policy arm, Ohio Christian Education Network, advocated for several years for Ohio’s primary voucher program, EdChoice, to apply to religious schools.
In an interview, Ohio Christian Education Network Executive Director Troy McIntosh said Ohio’s voucher expansion didn’t create new demand. It merely made the options families already wanted affordable. He said Ohio lawmakers had “a compelling interest” in addressing the capacity issue with the new construction grants.
“Parents who had children were paying taxes, but they were all going to schools that that parent would rather not be in,” he said.
A total of $4.9 million from the $717 million One-Time Strategic Community Investment Fund went to religious school construction grants. Those include one new school campus, the retrofit of an old building into a new school, a cafeteria expansion, and dozens of new classrooms, according to grant applications obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Six of eight schools to receive grants are part of Ohio Christian Education Network, which has grown from roughly 100 schools to 185 schools over the past three years. The network opened its first new school in 2022. The other two schools that received grants are Catholic.
Another Ohio program allows nonprofits to take financial advantage of expanded school choice through entities called “scholarship-granting organizations,” or SGOs. These groups can collect money for private school scholarships, and donations of up to $1,500 per household are made effectively free through a tax writeoff. Public records show Corrinne Vidales, an attorney and lobbyist for CCV and legal counsel to OCEN, was pivotal in laying the groundwork for the arrangement.
“We think SGOs will be great for the students of Ohio and would like to be instrumental in whatever way we can,” she emailed a member of Republican Attorney General Dave Yost’s staff in July 2021.
In a separate email exchange, Vidales said the center had reserved the name “Ohio Christian Education Network” some years earlier but not used it. They kept it active, she wrote, “for a purpose like this.”
Once a fringe anti-pornography group called Citizens for Community Values that was best known for its role in Ohio’s 2004 gay marriage ban, the group known today as the Center for Christian Virtue has remade itself over the past eight years and profited in the process.
Along with the school choice measures, the group lobbied for bills requiring public schools to keep transgender students out of girls’ restrooms and girls’ sports and to ban gender-affirming care. IRS filings show annual contributions to the center grew nearly tenfold, from $412,000 in 2015, to $3 million in 2021, to $4.4 million in 2022. That was the year it established its own scholarship-granting organization.
In 2021, the group purchased a $1.25 million building on Columbus’ Capitol Square, within sight of the Ohio Statehouse.
While CCV now boasts of being “Ohio’s largest Christian public policy organization,” McIntosh emphasized that the center’s bottom line is not fed by taxpayer money. While that is true, the impact of the SGO tax writeoff to Ohio’s budget has been estimated at as much as $70 million a year, including via direct revenue lost to cities, towns and libraries.
Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said it’s clear that expanded school choice is redirecting money from public education to private schools and their operators. The union supports long-running litigation alleging EdChoice has created an unconstitutional system of separately funded private schools.
“It’s just patently evident that the profit motive is running through this movement,” he said.
Last year, after Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to protect abortion access in the state constitution, CCV President Aaron Baer blamed the public school system for undermining conservative values.
“The fact (is) that now every kid is eligible for a scholarship to get out of the public schools, right, and for us we need them to get into a real education, and a real education is a Christian education,” Baer said in a podcast.
Baer said he was aware such a statement would face criticism.
“But how in the world do you understand what’s going on around you, how things work, why things work, if you don’t understand who made them, and what He made them for?” he said. “And so for us, getting kids out of the public education system, getting them into church schools — that means starting more church schools — is huge.”
According to state business filings, CCV incorporated two for-profit entities this summer: the Ohio Christian Education Network LLC and the United States Christian Education Network LLC.
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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A critically acclaimed name in Cleveland’s food scene is making a comeback of sorts and entering a new era in the food and restaurant business.
After the official closure of Melt Bar and Grilled locations across the area in late 2024, founder Matt Fish is stepping back into the restaurant business with a brand-new concept in Ohio City.
More Melts close
Fish is preparing to open “Proof Public House” inside the former Proof BBQ space along Lorain Avenue.
The new restaurant and bar is expected to officially open in mid-June after recently obtaining its food service license.
The announcement was just made on the restaurant’s official Instagram page this week.
But Fish says this project is very different from Melt’s previous projects, with more than a dozen locations across Ohio.
“I’m starting from scratch. Brand new concept. Brand new feeling, brand new attitude,” Fish said. “I wanna get back to basics.”
Fish describes Proof Public House as a punk rock-inspired neighborhood bar and restaurant with elevated comfort food, craft drinks, and an evolving seasonal menu.
“I’ve always wanted to get back to my roots,” Fish said. “I’ve always wanted to get back to a small place and recapture that magic of what Melt Bar and Grilled was when it first opened up.”
The longtime chef and restaurateur says music and creativity will help define the atmosphere and capture the essence.
Fish grew up on punk rock music and is also a drummer.
He says Cleveland’s history and punk rock roots make this latest project feel even more special.
The menu, he says, will feature chef-driven comfort food with rotating seasonal dishes and a specialized beverage program.
“Just have fun with the menu,” Fish said. “The beverage program will be very seasonal. It’s gonna be very evolving.”
Although many fans still associate Fish with the iconic grilled cheese sandwiches that helped make Melt Bar and Grilled a Northeast Ohio staple after opening in 2006, he says this new chapter is about moving forward.
“That part of my life is over and gone, but it was something special to so many of us,” Fish said.
Still, longtime Melt fans may notice subtle nods to the past.
Fish hinted there would be occasional “odes to Melt” appearing on the menu in the future, in some capacity.
He also credits former Proof BBQ and current Visible Voice Books owner Dave Ferrante for encouraging him to jump back into the hospitality business.
Fish quietly consulted on projects behind the scenes after Melt’s closure, including work connected to Visible Voice.
“I want to do something for myself, do something for the City of Cleveland, do something for my family and friends,” Fish said.
Proof Public House is expected to announce an official opening date soon.
News 5 promises to Follow-Through.
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Ohio, one of the nation’s data center destination hot spots, is suspending a tax break that has been critical to its competition with other states to attract the massive new facilities that power and train artificial intelligence chatbots.
The move Wednesday by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine comes as tax breaks for energy-hungry AI data centers are increasingly playing a role in state budgets and the industry is under pressure to pay the full costs of the vast network of its computing warehouses needed to power AI.
The size of Ohio’s tax break skyrocketed, dwarfing previous projections, as opposition to data centers is sweeping through cities, suburbs and towns there and prompting lawmakers to form a committee to study the impact.
In the meantime, residents are trying to bypass the GOP-controlled Legislature and get a referendum on November’s midterm election ballot that’s designed to permanently ban hyperscale data centers, likely the strictest such statewide ban under consideration in the U.S.
DeWine’s office cited the rising utilization of the tax break and the state Legislature’s new research undertaking to declare a “pause” in granting it to new applicants.
“The governor felt it was the right time to let the citizens know, let businesses know that we’re going to pause on new offers of this tax incentive while that process plays out,” DeWine’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, said Thursday.
DeWine has stressed that he supports data centers — calling them a critical component in today’s economy — and that the roughly $37 billion in data center-related investments in 2024 and 2025 in the state has been worthwhile.
The state, in 2024, had used previous history in projecting that the exemption would total $136 million in fiscal 2025 and $142 million in fiscal 2026. It was $554 million in 2024 and nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, the state reported.
The resumption of Ohio’s tax break — should it resume — could happen under a new governor: DeWine is term-limited and the race is on to replace him. The Republican nominee, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy — an Ivy League-educated biotech billionaire — likes to talk about turning the Ohio River Valley into the next Silicon Valley.
However, Ramaswamy and Democratic nominee Amy Acton could share the midterm ballot in November with the citizen-led drive to ban the construction of data centers across Ohio. It faces a July 1 deadline to gather more than 400,000 voter signatures.
State tax breaks for the massive data center industry are facing growing criticism by governors and lawmakers.
The cost is likely rising as data center and AI-related investments drive higher consumer spending in the U.S. and tech giants keep boosting their spending commitment to hyperscale data centers.
In Virginia, negotiations between the state House and Senate have been hung up for months on a bid by Senate Democrats to eliminate the roughly $1.6 billion annual tax break.
Thirty-eight states have some form of a sales tax break for data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Many were approved more than five years ago, when data centers were a small, but growing part of the economy, and well before the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched an intensifying buildout of increasingly large data centers.
Ohio’s exemption is fairly broad, applying not only to construction materials, but to the expensive equipment — such as server racks and cooling systems — used in data centers. Operators might buy new server racks every couple of years as the technology improves.
DeWine’s order was a surprise.
Dorsey Hager, executive secretary-treasurer of the Columbus/Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, where union members spend much of their time on data center projects, said he was upset with DeWine and trying to understand the governor’s reasons.
He worried, he said, that developers that were in the midst of trying to finalize plans or permits for a project might have second thoughts.
Lawmakers acknowledged the opposition in announcing their joint data center committee on May 13.
“We’re well aware of initiatives to limit Ohio data center development during this critical point in America’s history,” state Rep. Adam Holmes told a news conference. “This public concern has become a priority issue for us and could have dramatic impact on Ohio and American’s future.”
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Follow Marc Levy at http://twitter.com/timelywriter
Ohio
After months of traffic headaches, Ohio, Ontario bridges in and out of Chicago to finally reopen
After more than a year of major congestion, lane closures and traffic bottlenecks in and out of downtown Chicago from the Kennedy Expressway, two major connecting ramps from the Kennedy to River North are finally set to reopen.
Lanes on the Ohio and Ontario Street feeder bridges, which bring Kennedy drivers into the city at Ohio and out of the city at Ontario, started reopening with three lanes each Thursday morning, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. That’s up from the narrow two that has caused major traffic headaches since Nov. 2024.
As of 5:30 a.m. Thursday, IDOT was still working to finish its final overnight “punch list” for the Ohio Street bridge going east, NBC 5 traffic reporter Kye Martin said. By 6 a.m., things were clear, with new pavement markings set and traffic barricades removed.
“Haven’t been able to say that since November 2024,” Martin said.
Thursday night, Ontario street will be closed from Orleans to the Kennedy Expressway in order to finish final work westbound. By 5 a.m. Friday, the Ontario Street feeder to the outbound Kennedy was expected to fully reopen, IDOT said.
The end of the construction means drivers on Thursday will have three lanes eastbound on Ohio open from the Kennedy to Orleans. Friday morning, three lanes open westbound on Ontario between Orleans and the Kennedy.
“This will ease the bottleneck that was caused by having only 2 lanes and off-peak closures during the duration of this effort,” Martin said.
“The public can expect delays and should allow extra time for trips through this area,” IDOT said, as the closures come to an end and reopening begins. “Alternate routes are encouraged. Drivers are urged to pay close attention to flaggers and signs in the work zones, obey the posted speed limits and be on the alert for workers and equipment.”
The $15.4 million project “replaced bridge expansion joints, structural steel and deck repairs along with the installation of a new deck overlay and resurfacing on the elevated bridges,” IDOT said. It was a separate project from the three-year rehabilitation of the Kennedy Expressway that concluded last fall.
As the highly anticipated reopening comes, more work on the bridges is still needed, IDOT said, with concrete paving patching to repair both ramps to each bridge set to occur later this summer. That work will require a “full closure” over three weekends, alternating between Ohio and Ontario streets between the Kennedy and Orleans.
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