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Public should be able to speak

Editorials

A group of Ohio lawmakers believes public bodies within the state should be required to allow public comment before decisions are made. It may come as a surprise to you that is not already the case, but state law requires only that the public be allowed to attend or listen to meetings. House Bill 609 would address that barrier to civic engagement with a revision “to require a public body to allow for public commentary and testimony before taking formal action on any item.” State Reps. David Thomas, R-Jefferson, and Meredith Craig, R-Smithville, are leading the bipartisan ...

Water quality must be priority

Editorials

Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency has extended the public comment period to Jan. 16 as it considers fast-tracking a general wastewater permit for new data centers in the Buckeye State. Right now, the state EPA’s draft permit includes “a lowering of water quality of various waters of the state associated with granting coverage under this permit necessary to accommodate important social and economic development in the state of Ohio.” But among the questions such a statement raises are why it is necessary. WCMH-TV in Columbus spoke with water quality advocate Amy ...

Rulli, Husted seeking answers

Editorials

Ohio’s elected representatives in Washington, D.C., are doing their best to understand and overcome a bizarre federal decision to suspend the state’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership award. U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, and U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, along with U.S. Reps. Max Miller, Michael Turner, Robert Latta, David Joyce, Mike Carey and David Taylor, all R-Ohio, recently sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, asking him to restore the flow of funds to the Buckeye State program. This is in addition to a letter Husted sent to Lutnick on Dec. 11 ...

History in the Hills: Looking back on new years

Local Columns

One of my favorite movies of all time is Woody Allen’s classic 1987 film “Radio Days.” This movie is a delightful blend of history, radio, music and nostalgia from the late 1930s and 1940s. It takes place in Rockaway, N.Y., in the outskirts of New York City on the Atlantic coast, not too far from where my wife grew up. I always loved this film because of the glimpse into the past and the great music that was popular at the time. That is my favorite genre of music, so that is part of the reason I like it. One of the last scenes of the movie shows many of the radio personalities ...

Some annual events

Local Columns

With the Christmas and New Year’s holidays behind us and the calendar having flipped to 2026, we can now turn our attention to the next events that are coming our way. And while the dead of winter doesn’t always lend itself to many activities, there still are plenty of things on the horizon. For example, Jan. 19 is set aside for a couple of important events this year. The first is the Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration. Weather often plays a part in local events surrounding that day, but it still offers a chance for everyone to reflect on the messages King shared. It’s also ...

A cabal of dunces

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: I owe MAGA an apology — though “MAGA” is really shorthand for something broader. I’m talking about the conspiracy theories that many, maybe most, MAGA voters have repeated for decades, long before there was QAnon and even before Alex Jones became a household name. Ideas once dismissed as fringe — muttered by tin-foil-hatted callers on late-night Art Bell radio shows — now appear less absurd than before. We’re discovering, it seems, that shape-shifting lizard people do, actually, control the levers of power. Or at least something close enough to them ...