Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.​

The Ohio Senate’s leaders want Ohio’s voters to sit down and shut up when it comes to what’s in (and what isn’t) in the pending state budget bill.

That cat leaped out of the bag last week when Sen. Jerry Cirino, the suburban Cleveland Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, told two women testifying on behalf of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials that they should support Senate Republicans’ proposed school funding plan, cleveland.com reported.

“I would suggest, for your members and for the two of you, that you do everything you can to support the Senate plan, because as we go into [a Senate-House budget] conference, there’s going to be other competing viewpoints on how to do this, and it only could get worse for you,” Cirino said — in Colums’, Ohi-a, Yew Ess Ay, not a puppet-show parliament in a Soviet-style “republic.”

So much for the Ohio Constitution, which guarantees everyone the right “to petition the General Assembly for the redress of grievances.” (BTW, that’s the Ohio Constitution that Cirino and every other member of the General Assembly swears she or he will uphold.)

Letter: Lawmakers’ sleight-of-hand for Browns not a good use of our money

Cirino, of Kirtland, apparently first entered public service in 1992, when then-Gov. George V. Voinovich appointed him as a trustee of Lakeland Community College. Cirino resigned as a trustee in 1997. More recently, Cirino was a Lake County commissioner and is said to be aiming to succeed term-limited Sen. Rob McColley, a Napoleon Republican, as the state Senate’s president.

Statewide, McColley may be best known for co-sponsoring 2021’s Senate Bill 52, signed that July by Gov. Mike DeWine, to hamper Ohio solar- and wind energy projects. Since then, “Ohioans and their elected representatives have killed enough solar development to roughly power the state’s three largest cities,” Jake Zuckerman, then of cleveland.com, reported earlier this year.

Attack on the libraries

McColley demonstrates the deafness that selectively strikes key state senators when there’s something they don’t want to hear.

Henry is McColley’s home county. Of Henry County’s four public libraries, voters have most recently approved levies for three of them, with the “yes” margins ranging from 59% to 70%. (Data for a fourth library weren’t immediately available.) And you’d think someone with political ambitions — maybe to be GOP gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy’s running mate next year — might listen to his hometown constituents.

Nah: State Senate Republicans’ proposed rewrite of the House-passed budget worsens the financial damage that House Speaker Matt Huffman’s budget rewrite does to Ohio’s nationally renowned public libraries, offer every Ohioan — rich, poor; black, brown, white; urban, suburban.

DeWine proposed allotting $531.7 million for the Public Library Fund for the year that’ll begin July 1, then $549.1 million for the year beginning July 1, 2026. Those represent a longstanding state law requirement that state aid to public libraries must equal 1.7% of annual state General Revenue Fund collections. For the year that’ll end June, the Public Library Fund will provide an estimated $504.6 million for public libraries statewide

Huffman’s House, and McColley’s Senate, junked the GRF earmark.

They instead directly allotted $490 million for Year 1, then $500 million for Year 2.  Those are steep reductions. This year, state Budget Office estimates, public libraries will have received $530 million from the Public Library fund.

But the Senate additionally aims to deduct from its library allotment $10.3 million each fiscal year for items previously budgeted separately, such as the State Library of Ohio and the Ohio Public Library Information Network.

According to Ohio Library Council data, the Senate plan would reduce state aid to public libraries to $479.7 million on July 1 for the new fiscal year.

If they allow themselves to be questioned, President McColley and Speaker Huffman might admit that the games they’re playing with library funding (and other vital services) are schemes to scrounge money to (a) fund skyrocketing private-school tuition and (b) cut income taxes for the wealthy.

Trouble is, if state income-tax cuts are the medicine for what ails Ohio’s economy, why was 1969 the last year that Ohioans’ per capita personal income was at least 100% of the U.S. per capita?

But — to protect yourself — please don’t ask the Ohio Senate’s Finance Committee about that. Why?

Because “things could get worse for you.”

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.​

The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.

Cheers for Ohio beer.

Ohio’s 442 craft breweries brought in $1.29 billion of economic activity in 2024, according to the Ohio Craft Brewers Association’s economic and fiscal impact of Ohio’s craft brewing industry. This is an increase from 2022, when Ohio breweries contributed $1.27 billion to the economy.

Ohio’s craft beer industry had 9,753 direct jobs and an additional 2,502 indirect jobs sustaining 8,095 Ohio households, according to the biennial report.

Beer was flowing in Ohio with 1.15 million barrels brewed. Ohio craft breweries generated an estimated $128.6 million of state and local taxes and $99.1 million of federal taxes in 2024, according to the report.

The number of craft breweries in Ohio continued to go up. There were 45 in 2011, 135 in 2015, 300 in 2018, 357 in 2020, 420 in 2022, and 442 in 2024, according to the report. 53 breweries are in planning around the state.

• The Northwest region had 41 craft breweries that brewed 17,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $78 million. 
• The North Central region had 37 craft breweries that brewed 10,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $36.1 million. 
• The Greater Cleveland region had 59 craft breweries that brewed 209,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $231 million. 
• The Northeast region had 49 craft breweries that brewed 26,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $71.2 million. 
• The State Line region had 46 craft breweries that brewed 9,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $34.8 million. 
• The West Central region had 39 craft breweries that brewed 16,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $60.7 million. 
• The Greater Columbus region had 56 craft breweries that brewed 159,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $184 million. 
• The Greater Cincinnati region had 50 craft breweries that brewed 669,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $495.6 million. 
• The Southwest region had 33 craft breweries that brewed 16,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $45.7 million. 
• The Southeast region had 32 craft breweries that brewed 19,000 barrels of beer for an economic impact of $52.4 million. 

Ohio breweries will likely see the effects of new tariffs on aluminum, steel and malted barley.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods and President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on aluminum and steel imported into the United States, and a 25% tariff on Canadian barley.

There were 9,796 craft breweries across the country in 2024.

Last year was the first year since 2005 that there were more brewery closing than openings nationwide — with 430 new breweries and 529 breweries closed, according to the Brewers Association.

The Ohio State Buckeyes basketball program has announced a new court design for Value City Arena at Schottenstein Center that will feature a grey floor surrounded in scarlet trim with an interchangeable mid-court logo. 

The midcourt logos include a traditional Block O and a script Buckeyes logo. For the first time in 20 years, the keys will be painted scarlet. Meanwhile, the boundary will feature a mosaic pattern comprised of interlocking Block Os.

“The newly redesigned Ohio State basketball court introduces a recognizable visual update that blends modern aesthetics with nods to tradition,” the program says on its interactive webpage exploring the changes. “The unique look will set the tone for a refreshed game day atmosphere at the Schottenstein Center.”

The website allows fans to look back all the way to 1956 at the many court designs the program has used over the years, as well as the success that came with those home courts.

“Once we landed on these concepts, everyone felt it was a good mix of no one’s going to walk into the building and be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even notice they changed the court,’” Ohio State’s lead graphic designer Joe Gemma said. “If you’ve come to a game every year for the past 10 years you’ll walk into the arena and immediately recognize that something’s different. I think that was an important part of it.”

The men’s and women’s basketball programs will begin play on the new court starting this season. Season tickets are on sale through the website linked above. Both men’s and women’s programs have not finalized a 2025-26 schedule just yet, so who their first opponents will be on the new court design will be revealed at a later date.