U.S. Supreme Court sets date for ballot purge debate
Is it OK to take voters from rolls who haven’t voted?
The U.S. WASHINGTON — Supreme Court has re-scheduled oral arguments on Jan. 10 on whether Ohio officials violated federal law when they removed tens of thousands of people from the voting rolls simply because they had not cast ballots in recent elections.
A federal appeals court in Cincinnati in 2016 struck down Ohio’s purge of the voter rolls. The justices originally were scheduled to hear oral arguments earlier this month, but delayed them because one of the attorneys was on medical leave.
The justices will have to determine whether Ohio devised a system aimed at circumventing federal law by striking voters — many of them low-income — from the rolls simply because they hadn’t voted.
But the American Civil Liberties Union has argued that “every eligible voter has the constitutional right not to cast a vote — and the mere exercise of that right should not be the basis for removal from the voter rolls.”
Chabot goes after EPA
Rep. Steve Chabot called out the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week for once again not reporting how much it spends on small businesses, a requirement the agency may not meet for some time.
Chabot, R-Cincinnati, who chairs the House Small Business Committee, asked the EPA to explain by Dec. 6 how it will report its spending on research and development for small businesses.
Until then, Chabot will not know whether the agency is following a rule that requires federal agencies receiving over $100 million to support small businesses through R&D funding.
The Small Business Administration requires that federal agencies receiving over $100 million support small businesses through R&D.
Under this requirement, the EPA must spend a specified amount of its outside R&D budget on small businesses, but has yet to confirm this year if it has.
Portman, Brown back program to clean Great Lakes
Sens. Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown’s efforts to restore federal dollars for a program to clean the Great Lakes paid off last week when a Senate committee included the money in a spending bill to finance the operations of the Department of Interior and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The program, known as the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, is expected to receive $300 million in taxpayer dollars from the committee to continue maintenance of the lake system the senators say provides drinking water to 40 million people.
The amount requested equals the amount allocated to the program last year to fight pollution and ensure a habitat suitable to native wildlife.
Portman, R-Ohio, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, led a group of Great Lakes senators, including Brown, D-Ohio, to ask that the federal government continue support for the program.