Youngstown seeks $10.2M for transportation upgrade
Funds would help complete downtown project.
Youngstown WASHINGTON —
State University President and former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel joined a group of Youngstown officials last week to lobby Congress and the federal government for $10.2 million to help complete a more modern transportation system downtown.
The group, which also included Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and Donald Kline, president and chief executive officer of Mercy Health, met with Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, Republican Bill Johnson of Marietta, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, as well as officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The federal dollars would add to the more than $600 million in private and public dollars spent during the past decade to reconstruct major streets downtown, build a hotel, and build student housing and affordable housing for a city where about 15,000 people work downtown and nearly 1,500 people live downtown.
“The infrastructure in Youngstown, Ohio — when it was created — was created for a different Youngstown — wider streets, more traffic, moving millions and millions tons of steel,” Tressel told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“We’re now a high tech area,” Tressel said. “We’re into the medical field,” adding the project will have “noticeable impact. You will see the difference made.”
Stivers now a target for DCCC
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last week said it would intensify its effort to defeat Columbus-area Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Upper Arlington, in a seat most analysts believe is solidly Republican.
By doing so, House Democrats are giving a political boost to Democratic challenger Rick Neal in the seat that includes much of the Columbus suburbs.
Stivers is the head of the House Republican re-election campaign committee.
J.D. Vance won’t run for Senate
“Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance is out of the Senate race — again.
Vance, who earlier bowed out of the race against Sen. Sherrod Brown, briefly considered entering again after Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel dropped out earlier this month for family reasons.
But Vance — who split time between Columbus and Washington, D.C., claiming his D.C. residence as a primary residence for tax purposes — ultimately decided not to run.
“Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to run, but it’s just not a good time,” he tweeted Friday, adding that his young family “that needs more of my time than a political campaign would permit.”
“Count me out of politics for now,” he wrote.