News

Suspended juvenile court judge Tracie Hunter will not have to report to jail Monday morning,  thanks to a ruling late Friday afternoon by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The court, on a 4-3, said Hunter could remain free on her own recognizance while her felony conviction on a felony count of unlawful interest in a public contract is under appeal.

This election year was a relatively slow year for the Ohio legislature as lawmakers spent most of the year campaigning.  That changed in the last few weeks.

Several bills zipped through the lame duck session, but none in a more dramatic fashion than the last minute agreement on a way to change the process of drawing lawmakers’ district boundaries.

There were rumors of the resolution’s success and demise for days.  And after 17 hours of negotiations on the last day the Senate met, at 4 a.m. a vote was taken and it passed with only one "no" vote.  

It’s been a productive year for Ohio lawmakers, who passed bills dealing with redistricting, budget revisions and red light cameras. But many bills that got a lot of attention with the end of the two-year General Assembly didn’t pass.

Cincinnati officials report they are making progress cleaning up a now closed commercial food waste composting facility in Winton Hills.

The city is spending $300,000 to remedy the smelly situation at 5656 Este Avenue.  

Maybe the legislation needed more time for review or didn’t have quite enough support. Whatever the reason—this was the year those bills finally made it past state lawmakers.

The most recent example is the reform to Ohio’s redistricting process. For the past decade, critics of the process have said it creates maps that are aggressively gerrymandered, which is what happens when lawmakers redraw voting districts to benefit their political party.