In Crain’s Cleveland Business, The Buckeye Institute’s Rea S. Hederman Jr. looks at the $350 billion earmarked for bailing out state and local governments included in the newest COVID package that the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress are about to finalize, writing, “[T]he state bailouts, however well-intended, are flawed — giving far too much money to states that don't need it and rewarding other states that have mismanaged their own finances. The price tag, earmark formulas and disincentives are all wrong.”

The Buckeye Institute released an analysis using data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to estimate the impact of a $15 an hour minimum wage proposal included in the Raise the Wage Act of 2021. The analysis found that nearly 18,000 West Virginia workers would lose their jobs if the federal wage hike is imposed.

The Buckeye Institute released an analysis using data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to estimate the impact of a $15 an hour minimum wage proposal included in the Raise the Wage Act of 2021. The analysis found that nearly 116,000 Ohio workers would lose their jobs if the federal wage hike is imposed. 

Thirty-nine renowned public policy organizations have filed amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court in support of The Buckeye Institute’s case, Thompson v. Marietta Education Association, which calls for an immediate end to laws that force public-sector employees to accept a union’s exclusive representation. Robert Alt, president and CEO of The Buckeye Institute and one of Mrs. Thompson’s attorneys noted, “The sheer number of groups asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear this case demonstrates the depth and breadth of the constitutional problem of forced exclusive representation.” 

The Buckeye Institute filed its amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of itself and 34 other public policy organizations in the combined cases of Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra and Thomas More Society v. Becerra. The brief calls upon the Supreme Court to protect the privacy and First Amendment rights of individuals who donate to charities and other nonprofit organizations.

On February 24, The Buckeye Institute joined the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center for a panel discussion on the future of criminal justice reform and drug sentencing reform in Ohio. In addition to Andrew J. Geisler, a legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute’s Legal Center, panelists included Sara Andrews, executive director of the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission; Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist at the ACLU of Ohio; Micah Derry, state director for the Ohio chapter of Americans for Prosperity; and Kyle Strickland, deputy director of race and democracy at the Roosevelt Institute and senior legal analyst at Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

The Buckeye Institute released a new policy report, New Hampshire’s Economic Recovery: Better Than Expected, by its Economic Research Center in partnership with the Josiah Bartlett Center. The new report found that “[c]oming out of 2020, New Hampshire is in better financial shape than many other states thanks to a sound revenue structure, relatively restrained spending, a strong economy, and good management.”

The Buckeye Institute submitted written testimony to the Ohio Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee on the policies in Senate Bill 44, which would eliminate the taxpayer-funded subsidies included in the “notoriously flawed” House Bill 6 from the 133rd General Assembly. In his testimony, Greg R. Lawson, a research fellow at The Buckeye Institute, told lawmakers that eliminating the “notoriously flawed” taxpayer-funded subsidies included in House Bill 6 was an “important course correction” that would end one of the worst examples of crony capitalism. 

State budgets didn’t suffer the fate that was so widely predicted as COVID-19 began spreading throughout the U.S. Logan Kolas, economic policy analyst at The Buckeye Institute and Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies and editor of DownsizingGovernment.org, join Cato’s Caleb O. Brown to discuss why.

In a new piece, The Buckeye Institute looks at D.C.’s state and local bailout package with Logan Kolas, writing, “As part of Washington, D.C.’s spending bonanza, House Democrats outlined a proposal to send state and local governments in Ohio more than $11 billion—more than half of which would go into state coffers. This aid is on top of the roughly $400 billion in pandemic relief, which included aid for schools, that the federal government sent state and local governments in 2020, and as we recently learned, this taxpayer-funded windfall is not necessary.”