Ohio looks to direct $250M to enforcement
Money earmarked for violent crime, job stress
Republican Gov. Mike Dewine and state lawmakers said Monday they want to direct $250 million in grants to law enforcement and other first responders across Ohio.
The Dewine administration wants to earmark $175 million to combat a rise in violent crime and $75 million to help officers deal with job stress as well as employee retention efforts. The funds come from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
"Although we have done much to help law enforcement fight crime in Ohio, COVID-19 brought about new challenges for first responders," said Dewine at a news conference. "Challenges that further depleted their ranks and influences a troubling increase in violent crime."
The grants may also be used to decrease backlogs in crime labs and assist community police relations that have been limited due to the COVID-19 virus.
The funding plan will be included in House Bill 169, which previously proposed giving money to Covid-19-impacted businesses. The bill is sponsored by Reps. Al Cutrona, R-canfield, and D.J. Swearingen, R-huron.
Under the proposal, grants will be competitive and open to any law enforcement agency.
Supporters say the grants will have more flexibility than previous programs.
"I hear... many of these grant programs are so restrictive that they might need resources at their
On Monday, the Columbus City Council unanimously and without debate eliminated the director post and the entire city Department of Education, folding it instead under the mayor's office.
Council member Elizabeth Brown, who chairs the council's education committee, said the move was at the request of Mayor Andrew J. Ginther's office. She suggested that Matt Smydo, who was now interim director of the defunct education department, would stay on in a similar role, but as a part of the mayor's office and not a separate department.
“Education remains a top priority of the mayor, and the important focus, leadership and work of the (new) Office of Education will not change,” said Christopher Long, a deputy director in the city's budget department.
Long said the move was to create efficiencies by giving the education office access to “the larger mayor's office,” and its staff specializing in public relations, policy, fiscal areas and other issues.
“As such, we believe it's a good fit,” Long said.
It's unclear if the move also will result in cost savings. Ginther's proposed 2022 budget proposal called for the city Department of Education's budget to increase next year by about 44%, to just under $9.5 million, as a new 240-student early childhood center in the Hilltop comes on line.
When Coleman filled the first director's post with Johnson, she had just left her union post she held for a decade after having gone to bat for charter schools — not a popular position among her colleagues or Columbus City Schools. Johnson provided Coleman important credibility to his effort to bring major change to the union-heavy city school district.
Coleman said in 2014 that Johnson's hiring by the city would continue the momentum created by the his former city Education Commission and be the city's official liaison to the Columbus school board. Coleman wanted Johnson to be considered a nonvoting member of the Columbus Board of Education, but the seven-member elected body never gave her a seat at its board table — instead seating her at a separate nearby table next to the superintendent.
The new “Office of Education” planned by Ginther will be located within the mayor's office, and will consist of a director and one deputy director, and “other staff members as authorized,” said the ordinance making the change official.
In other business Monday, the council unanimously approved a $130,378 payment from a police seizure fund for the Division of Police's Digital Forensic
Unit to purchase cellphone decryption technology from Cellebrite.
“Currently, the Digital Forensic Unit cannot decrypt the newer IOS and Android phones with current forensics software, thereby making high-level evidence extractions unattainable,” the ordinance said. “The current method to gain access to the newer phones is to retrieve the pin code from the owner, suspect, or victim; which rarely happens.
“The equipment is an on-site solution that caters to both ios-apple and Android phones. It is currently the only software solution on the market that can access and decrypt a majority of locked devices.”
City Public Safety Director Robert Clark said that, in Ohio, police are required to get a judge to sign off on a warrant before searching someone's phone, which requires probable cause that the specific phone to be searched has been used in a crime.
“Not every state has that,” Council Member Rob Dorans said of Ohio's law, established by the state Supreme Court. “...So here we have a clear guideline.”
“We recognize the criminals that we're dealing with, that they are communicating on these platforms, and sharing ... strategic and tactical information,” Clark said.
In other business Monday, the council:
h Established a fund at the Columbus Foundation and designated more than half of the city's $4 million commitment for the “Columbus Promise” initiative, to provide free Columbus State Community College tuition for all new Columbus City Schools graduates.
h Appropriated $4 million to upgrade body-worn cameras, in-car cameras, and interview room cameras for the Division of Police.
h Approved $578,660 for the purchase of an electric-powered garbage truck, utilizing a grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The council also announced that it will hold a public hearing at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall to take public comment on the Council Residential Districting Commissoin's final proposed council-member residential district maps.
A charter amendment approved by voters in 2018 requires that all seven council seats effectively be canceled out and replaced by nine new seats in the November 2023 election. The unique new district system will require that each winner live in one of the newly drawn districts, although voters citywide will still elect them.
Residents wishing to provide testimony in person, via written testimony, or on Webex during the meeting regarding these maps must RSVP by email by noon Wednesday to Lucy Frank at ljfrank@columbus.gov. wbush@gannett.com @Reporterbush