On Wednesday, Senate Democrats performed as an opposition should. They put forward a concrete and practical alternative, one that deserves the attention of Ohioans, if not for every detail then for the sound direction it would give the state.

They would rework the priorities in the proposed state budget plan, shrinking the size of the 7 percent individual income tax cut put forward by the House. They would exclude from the tax cut the top two income brackets, or those households with earnings above $106,105 per year. They would redirect the resulting $508 million for the biennium to school districts and school transportation, using a formula that would drive increased resources to poor and disadvantaged schools.

Ideally, the state would go further in resetting priorities. School districts have been squeezing their budgets the past two years to cope with steep reductions in funding from the state. Districts have frozen salaries, curbed benefits, slashed staff levels and increased class sizes, among many steps to make ends meet. They also have gone to local taxpayers, the trend at odds with the Ohio Supreme Court citing an overreliance on local funding.

Policy Matters Ohio, a Cleveland-based think tank, has calculated that in two years, districts will be $1.2 billion behind where they would have been if funding had just kept pace with inflation.

Senate Democrats, led in this instance, by Eric Kearney of Cincinnati and Nina Turner of Cleveland, recognize political realities. They leave room for additional tax cuts pushed by Republicans. They simply and rightly ask: Isn’t a smaller tax cut enough, especially in view of the needs of schools, and lawmakers already having reduced income tax rates by 21 percent starting in 2005?

For his part, the governor has proposed an additional 20 percent reduction in tax rates, plus a 50 percent break for small business owners (the latter apparently the preferred course of Senate Republicans who unveil their budget plan next week). Recall that businesses as a whole have enjoyed a substantial tax cut the past seven years. Senate Democrats have countered constructively with the idea of striking a better balance. Ohioans still would have lower tax rates than a decade ago. They also would ease the burden on schools.

Last year, the House correctly assessed the need to crack down on the storefront operations, which law enforcement agencies regard as illegal gambling operations. The Senate stalled, and the ban died. In March, in a new legislative session, the House again passed the ban, but Senate leaders said they wanted time to study the parlors, even to review all types of gambling in the state.

What finally pushed the Senate to act? Persuasive testimony from Mike DeWine, the state attorney general, and others that the parlors create too many opportunities for money laundering and other criminal activities. That overcame arguments from the industry the storefronts are merely mom-and-pop operations, employing thousands and offering convenience to patrons not close to Ohio’s four casinos or seven horse tracks.

John Kasich will sign both bills, but, unfortunately, the governor’s signatures may not bring the matter to a final resolution. Although the ban passed the Senate on a vote of 27-6, it lacked an emergency clause. That opens a 90-day window for the sweepstakes parlors to gather signatures for a referendum. If a signature drive is successful, it would put the ban on hold until next year’s general election, when voters would get their say.

Keith Faber, the Senate president, argued that he didn’t have a two-thirds majority to pass the ban with an emergency clause, which would prevent a referendum. Lamely, he blamed minority Democrats, even though Republicans hold 23 seats. That leaves the distinct impression of a majority caucus trying to have it both ways.

Wednesday’s vote gives the appearance of getting tough on illegal gambling, but the lack of an emergency clause leaves the door open to the possibility, if the ban is rejected by voters, of regulating the parlors — and reaping contributions from a lucrative industry with more than 600 outlets. The better course would have been to muster the votes to end once and for all an unregulated, unvoted expansion of gambling.

A key element of the new law defines the procedure for allowing an athlete recovering from a concussion to return to play. It permits non-physician licensed health-care providers to give approval — if they have been working closely in consultation with or under the supervision of a physician.

Do chiropractors belong in the category of supervising physician, essentially with the authority to give the go-ahead to a young athlete? In a recent letter to Scott Oelslager, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, six leading health-care organizations answered with an emphatic no. They are the Ohio State Medical Association, the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, the Ohio Hospital Association, the Ohio chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Ohio Athletic Trainers Association and the Ohio Osteopathic Association.

They stressed that all of this had been discussed at length and resolved, chiropractors without the authority of physicians because they don’t have the same rigorous training and depth of expertise. That careful decision-making shouldn’t be mischievously overturned. The Senate should remove the House provision from the budget.

The lack of awareness — a general blindness to the growing distress in the suburbs — in part stems from a perception, increasingly false, that poverty is confined to urban centers and scattered rural communities. Another factor that makes suburban poverty largely invisible is that suburbs long have been perceived as providing a different and better life away from the problems of cities. Thus poverty (which federal guidelines in 2011 considered to be an annual income up to $10,890 for a one-person household) is not part of the popular conception of suburban life. The Brookings research demonstrates otherwise.

In the Akron metropolitan area during the past decade, growth in suburban poverty outpaced urban poverty 96.9 percent to 50.8 percent. More than half of the area’s nearly 114,000 poor live outside Akron. In each of Ohio’s metropolitan areas, suburban poverty grew more than 80 percent, except for Youngstown (39.9 percent).

The Brookings report makes clear that poverty today is a regional phenomenon. It observes that current approaches and structures that have evolved over decades to address urban poverty have not caught up with the reality.

For instance, in many metro areas, including Akron, the major cities have lost jobs and population, leading to rapid growth in surrounding suburbs. But for the new suburbanites lower down on the income scale, there has not been an equivalent increase in such infrastructure as affordable housing or mass transit access to the jobs. Smaller suburbs also are less likely to have the extensive support network that ease the sting of poverty, such as food pantries and community health clinics. Further, job losses and the foreclosure crisis during the Great Recession aggravated the plight of lower-income suburban residents.

Poverty is regionalized. The challenges in dealing with it go well beyond the capacity of individual municipalities and agencies to tackle effectively on their own. Therein lies the challenge the Brookings findings pose for metro areas: To collaborate in addressing the structural limitations that contribute to poverty in cities and suburbs alike, among them job education, the availability of affordable housing, access to mass transit.

DeVitis heard from the Summit County Foster Parents Association, its members highlighting what they view as increasingly complex cases proceeding more slowly through the juvenile court. DeVitis responded in what seemed a logical way: Add another judge to help carry the load.

The trouble is, that is one view. A decision to add a judge requires a more thorough assessment, and shouldn’t be rushed to enactment as an amendment to a massive budget bill.

In response, Judge Linda Teodosio produced numbers showing that her court has been moving cases at a pace that fares well by comparison with other courts. She has been widely applauded for the quality of her work. County leaders raised questions about the value in spending an additional $300,000 or more for a second judge, especially when budgets are tight.

With the withdrawal of his proposal, DeVitis has made way for all of the arguments to be aired, the county in position to weigh carefully the merits of adding to the juvenile bench.

What Jones has in mind is a sensible expansion of the current law on open meetings, which says the decision-making body of a public organization must take action or hold discussions related to the public’s business during a scheduled meeting that is open to citizens. Under her bill, unscheduled meetings of a majority of a public body’s members would be open if public business is discussed, even if a meeting is to gather information.

The Jones proposal also would tweak language on executive sessions, requiring more details to be included in the public motions that must be approved before a closed-door session may be held to discuss items such as personnel matters, pending lawsuits and buying property.

That change is worthy, too, preventing abuses by officials seeking to avoid controversy or hide embarrassing mistakes. In Greene County, a judge recently ruled that a now-defunct children services board committed 30 violations of the open meetings law during a series of meetings that led up to the termination of its executive director.

Larry Long, the executive director of the County Commissioners’ Association of Ohio, has raised objections, arguing the Jones bill worries members who fear two commissioners could violate the law by inadvertently attending the same community event. The public’s right to know easily trumps such concerns. Commissioners can avoid trouble by not discussing public business.

Vigilance long has been necessary to make sure the state’s open meetings and open records laws are carefully followed, an effort essential to the functioning of a democracy. At times, even well-intentioned officials can forget that they are working for the public, which has a right to know what is being discussed and done in its name.

The governor included a so-called circuit breaker in his proposal. If the feds renege, Ohio can opt out of the expansion. Of late, the argument about Washington welshing on the deal has weakened significantly. Consider the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the new budget plan put forward by President Obama in April.

On Friday, the budget office reported that the plan would reduce projected deficits by $1.1 trillion during the next decade, the annual deficit near 2 percent of the overall economy in 2015, or at a level many economists view as responsible, and remaining there in the years ahead. In that way, the overall national debt would gradually shrink as a share of economic output.

That isn’t to say the country has addressed its deficit problem for the long term. The retirement of baby boomers will add substantially to the burden of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Worth noting is that the budget office also has adjusted its forecast for Medicare and Medicaid spending from 2010 to 2020, putting the cumulative spending at $900 billion less than earlier projected. That’s a reduction of 10 percent and more savings than proposed by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction commission.

What the president’s budget and the budget office adjustment reveal is that small changes can bring considerable savings. For instance, the president proposed altering the inflation factor in calculating Social Security benefits. Such measures serve to reassure that the federal government will be in position to keep its commitments.

So do two other elements in the White House budget plan. As originally approved, the Affordable Care Act included one provision that would establish a “blended” rate for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and another that would limit states in their use of taxes on hospitals and other providers to leverage additional Medicaid dollars. Both promised to increase Medicaid costs for states. Neither now has a place in the president’s budget plan.

As Edwin Park of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently explained, the White House changed course after the U.S. Supreme Court made participation in the Medicaid expansion optional. Thus, the president has moved to reinforce the federal commitment to cover its share of the cost, eroding further the arguments of Republican state lawmakers that the feds won’t keep their word.

On Monday afternoon in Moore, Okla., the limits of preparation against extreme weather were all too evident. Described as an EF 5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, the most powerful category, the tornado that blew through the suburb of Oklahoma City is estimated to have been a breathtaking two miles wide at one point, with winds exceeding 200 mph. By Tuesday, 24 residents were confirmed dead, including nine children, seven of them in one school. Hundreds more were injured. Whole neighborhoods were reduced to rubble, including the hospital and two elementary schools.

For many, everything they have worked for vanished in a flash.

In the days ahead, the full extent of the losses, human and economic, will become clearer. As Moore confronts the challenges of mending broken lives and rebuilding, President Obama has given the assurance that the federal government will provide “right away” the necessary assistance.

It is early yet in the season. Chances are that other communities in the so-called tornado alley will confront varying degrees of severe weather. In the face of violence such as Moore has encountered, the swift deployment of adequate emergency resources can make all the difference in how quickly a community recovers.

If you are not among the victims, consider yourself fortunate. Such cyber attacks are part of our lives, the Financial Times reporting Monday that criminal networks of hackers pose a greater threat to multinational companies than state-sponsored cyber attacks. The New York Times led its Monday edition with a report on how a cyber unit of the Chinese army appears to have resumed attacks on American firms and government agencies.

An organization called Turkish Ajan is suspected of hacking into the Akron system, posting on a website credit-card and other financial information. These are not the kinds of strikes in which lives are lost. They do, nonetheless, cause disruptions, eroding confidence in information systems that increasingly are crucial to daily routines.

Thus, it makes sense: The security must be top-notch, and officials ever vigilant in seeking to stay ahead of the hackers and in having a response plan to aid those taxpayers who are victims. No one wants a city or any other public agency to spend excessively. Yet the resources must be sufficient to provide the necessary protection.

Republicans insist they do not have a problem with Cordray. Senators on both sides of the aisle have praised his work since he arrived in the position 16 months ago via a controversial recess appointment. Many in the financial community have been pleased with his openness, deliberation and care. That helps explain the altered thinking among bankers toward the nomination.

Yet the measure of the new agency isn’t just the presence of Cordray. The bureau has proved much better than its harsh critics advertised, bringing what its proponents promised, greater transparency and balance, or just what makes for a well performing market. Consumers of financial products are less likely to get caught in the flimflam that contributed heavily to the recession.

Among other things, the bureau has returned $425 million to roughly 6 million consumers cheated by credit-card companies. It has brought clarity and fairness to mortgage rules and student loans. It has moved to protect military families from foreclosure scams and other deceptive lending.

Yet Rob Portman of Ohio and other Senate Republicans refuse to support confirmation without structural changes to the bureau. They are holding Cordray hostage, neglecting the legislative process that created the office, Congress enacting financial reform after much deliberation and compromise.

Portman and allies want a commission to replace the single director in charge. They want a larger congressional role in funding the bureau. Yet the bureau hardly breaks the mold, its structure resembling other agencies given independence to protect against political mischief and worse. More, there is plenty of opportunity for overseeing the work of the bureau, including required hearings on Capitol Hill and consultation with affected industries and other regulators. A Financial Stability Oversight Council has the authority to review and overturn any bureau decision.

The bureau falls under the Government Accountability Office, the comptroller general and the inspector general of the Federal Reserve.

Of late, Republicans have pointed to a federal appeals court ruling overturning recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. Still, the connection to Cordray is neither exact nor certain. As it is, Portman and others have applied their pressure. Cordray has shown how effective the bureau can be. His confirmation now should go forward. If Republicans want to alter the structure of the bureau, they can win the legislative majorities necessary to do so.

The full-service hotel, announced by the Industrial Realty Group, is an integral part of the project to reuse the former Goodyear headquarters and Goodyear Hall. The promising concept calls for a mixture of offices, retail space and residential uses, in other words, a new urban neighborhood.

The hotel project will strengthen downtown as a whole by serving not only those doing business with Goodyear, but also those drawn by the city’s hospitals, the University of Akron and nearby businesses. Civic, government and business leaders long have pointed to the inconvenience of putting up guests at the Sheraton in Cuyahoga Falls or the Hilton in Fairlawn.

City economic development officials, ready to help developers interested in downtown Akron, project enough demand to fill another hotel of similar size to the Hilton Garden Inn. All along, putting the financing in place has been the chief difficulty. What helped the Industrial Realty Group, which specializes in turning around large-scale industrial properties across the country, is its ability to gain access to the necessary capital.

The city must pursue its options aggressively. Interest in a new downtown hotel has at times hovered close to zero, but that is no longer the case, says Bob Bowman, the deputy mayor of economic development. In the past year, discussions have been held with five developers, an encouraging sign of interest in a revitalized urban core.

Sites are available, including the existing Akron City Centre Hotel. The city can help with infrastructure improvements, and there are signals that access to capital is easing. As with the Goodyear redevelopment, it is important to see downtown as an urban neighborhood with a mix of uses, office, retail, entertainment and residential development all keeping the central city strong, which is indispensable to moving the region forward.

The email exchanges reveal the push and pull of the State Department and the CIA in crafting the talking points, designed to guide members of Congress in discussing the episode that resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. No surprise that the bureaucratic tussle involved compromises in language, each side seeking to exercise control over what was written. Neither is it surprising that just days after the attack, officials lacked sufficient information about what exactly happened.

Ultimately, the CIA began its assessment: “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo.” Or essentially what Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, repeated on the subsequent Sunday talk shows, her words triggering the charges of cover-up.

Today, practically everyone knows that assessment was wrong. Did the White House orchestrate an obscuring of the truth? Actually, it signed off on a version that cited al-Qaida and other terrorists or extremists, and noted CIA warnings about the potential for attacks. For the most part, the White House played the role of mediator, one Obama adviser stressing the need “to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, especially the [FBI] investigation.”

There was obvious political concern, at the State Department, in particular, about sharing incorrect information that would be exploited by political adversaries. No surprise, again. And that is precisely what has happened, some Republicans even making over-the-top comparisons to Watergate. More, the release of the full email chain followed inaccurate reporting of its content.

The temptation for Republicans may be to focus now on the State Department — and Hillary Clinton. The suggestion has been made that the department’s Accountability Review Board fumbled the job of reviewing the events in Benghazi. Even some Republicans have discouraged such a pursuit. They point to the credibility, smarts and independence of the two men who led the review, former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Admiral Mike Mullen.

Recall that the two were unsparing in their criticism of State Department officials for mismanaging the security needs at the Benghazi compound. Note also that Robert Gates, a secretary of defense for Obama and Bush the younger, plus a CIA director under Bush the elder, has rejected the notion that the Pentagon might have responded with armed force to the attack. He pointed to “sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities.”

What avenue remains for Republicans to explore? They would do well to join fully in a determined bid to find the right balance between security and engagement for diplomatic missions in unstable areas. The State Department and CIA made their share of mistakes. Now the priority should be protecting against the further loss of life.

Hard to believe Gov. John Kasich and Keith Faber, the Senate president, haven’t already jumped to make the investment happen. Are they worried about the money? Consider the budget surplus exceeding $1 billion, or their own words about the importance of education and opportunity. They mean what they say, right?

State officials project there will be 1,000 Utica shale wells by 2015, pumping out 7.2 million barrels of oil and 146 billion cubic feet of natural gas. For last year, the figures were 12.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas and natural gas liquids and about 636,000 barrels of oil.

Worth noting are the more cautious responses from industry leaders and analysts. Ohio’s new oil and gas drilling is just getting started, they point out, with the average production time for the state’s 87 horizontally drilled wells about four months. Oil production rated lower than expected, and the total for natural gas and natural gas liquids was fairly modest, Ohio not in the top 10 of states.

What will be telling as the industry develops is how production declines over time. That will indicate how long the energy surge might last. Another key variable is the price of energy, current low prices discouraging the development of expensive horizontal wells.

Meanwhile, environmental issues must be resolved, among them how to handle waste from hydraulic fracturing. Keith Faber, the Senate president, said last week that a severance tax increase could be considered, even though the House stripped the idea from Gov. John Kasich’s budget plan. Ohio’s current rates are low, with the potential that oil and gas drillers, not the state as a whole, will reap an outsized share of the benefits from a one-time resource. As welcome as the rising production numbers are, Ohio must proceed with caution, both in terms of economic projections and the environmental impact.

Reaching those unfamiliar with the system requires much education and outreach. Unfortunately, Congress has failed to put up the necessary resources. And states, too, including Ohio have skimped in getting the word out and helping people navigate through the often complex maze.

All of that landed Kathleen Sebelius on the idea of rattling the cup. The secretary of health and human services confirmed last week that she has made calls to executives in the health-care industry seeking donations of $1 million or more to help spread the word. The administration argues such fund-raising merely amounts to support for private nonprofits promoting public health.

That probably is true about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, long committed to the cause, giving to an organization such as Enroll Health, a nonprofit aligned with the goals of the Affordable Care Act. A big insurance company or similar player? They have a huge stake in decisions about the details of health-care reform. No matter how important to the cause, their donations carry too much the flavor of buying influence.

As employment rates continue to lag the economic recovery, the projection is the number of people who need food assistance will remain high. Agriculture committees in the U.S. House and Senate last week cleared farm bills that would sharply reduce funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal food assistance program previously called food stamps.

The deep cuts proposed for SNAP will greatly compound the hardships facing both households that lack the means for adequate food and the support structure of foodbanks, pantries and soup kitchens already stretched to the limit. The House bill is exceptionally harsh. It would cut roughly $40 billion in farm spending over the next 10 years. More than half of the cuts, $20.5 billion, would come out of SNAP. By comparison, the Senate bill would cut the program by $4.1 billion.

Among the House cuts to SNAP is a provision legislated in 1996 that permits states to provide food benefits to households with monthly gross income up to 130 percent of the federal poverty line and disposable incomes below the poverty line. The beneficiaries who would be harmed are the working poor. The bill also would cut funding for nutrition education and incentive payments that have motivated states such as Ohio to greatly improve efficiency, reducing errors in payments and increasing outreach to needy households that are not otherwise eligible for welfare programs.

The House bill does include modest increases in funding for foodbanks and community food projects. Still, an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concludes nearly 2 million people would lose SNAP benefits due to the House cuts. About 210,000 children who qualify for free school meals because of their families’ SNAP eligibility also would lose the benefit.

Why take the hatchet to a program that helps working-poor families stay afloat? The claim is that it has grown out of control, encourages dependence and adds to the federal deficit. To the contrary, reviews of SNAP show it is functioning more efficiently and accurately than ever. Besides, its use closely tracks the economy, rising in recent years with the Great Recession and weak recovery.

One impact of the proposed federal cuts would be greater demand for local assistance. Ohio’s foodbanks and the networks of pantries and kitchens they support help fill the food gap. State funds are a crucial source of their revenues. Lawmakers should meet the request for $34 million in the two-year budget to help put food on the table for 2 million hungry Ohioans.

No doubt lawmakers will explore why Miller in early 2012, serving as deputy IRS commissioner, told Republican senators that the agency wasn’t singling out such groups. Documents now show that he was aware of the problem.

Lois Lerner, the head of the office overseeing tax-exempt organizations, also has fudged on when she knew. Such lapses suggest the management deficiencies at the agency identified in the report of the IRS inspector general released this week. At one point, Lerner thought she had put a stop to the practice. Yet the report found she and others did not follow up sufficiently.

Eric Holder, the attorney general, has pledged an aggressive investigation. Such a course is required. The safe bet is, Republican lawmakers will examine under every rock. What shouldn’t be missed is that the IRS has been positioned more effectively since the dark Nixon years. The commissioner of the agency as conservatives came under close watch was an appointee of George W. Bush. So there are protections against partisanship.

John Boehner, the House speaker, leaped ahead in asking: Who will go to jail? His question actually invites the warning: Don’t lose sight of the larger trouble. No question, IRS officials put at risk what are essential: the integrity and credibility of the agency. Yet the agency also faced a huge task, processing the avalanche of groups seeking tax-exempt status, the door opened by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Citizens United ruling.

The tax-exempt status isn’t so much about a tax break. It really involves groups gaining the ability to engage in “social welfare” activities and to a lesser extent the rough-and-tumble of elections — without having to reveal donor lists. So it makes sense for the IRS to look closely. It just must be done fairly, preserving political neutrality.

To an extent, the IRS met the mission, liberal or progressive groups also facing the gantlet, one even failing to get its tax-exempt status, something that did not happen to conservative groups. Yet the most glaring error involves all the attention paid to small tea party groups when the greater worry stems from large organizations, such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads outfit or Priorities USA, driven by Obama allies. They appear all about winning elections and little about “social welfare.” Yet the IRS has shown scant concern.

If Washington wants to get serious about this mess, it will bolster the law to ensure the tax-exempt status goes to those truly deserving.

Legislation to implement the “reading guarantee” was approved last summer. Lawmakers have been tinkering with it since to address the concerns educators have raised. On Wednesday, the House approved several amendments to Senate Bill 21, which would update the current legislation.

There is no disputing the rationale for a reading initiative. Students who cannot read have very limited prospects in a literate society. But one concern with the current legislation is that it makes unrealistic demands regarding how schools provide the necessary help for the students held back. For instance, educators note that under current law regarding who is eligible to teach struggling readers, only 4,200 of the 34,000 K through 3 teachers in Ohio would qualify to provide reading intervention. No surprise, then, that lawmakers have hastened to address the predictable shortage. The new legislation eases the qualifications, significantly expanding the pool of eligible teachers.

The priority on reading proficiency in the primary grades is by no means misplaced. Yet the House action this week highlights a continuing and fundamental problem with the mandate: Schools and ill-prepared children have too few of the resources they need to do the job well.

What the National Transportation Safety Board has in mind is lowering the allowable blood-alcohol level from the current standard, 0.08 percent, down to 0.05 percent, a reduction of more than one-third. To be sure, social drinkers would be affected. At the lower level, it has been estimated that a 180-pound man could legally consume three drinks in 90 minutes; a 130-pound woman, two.

Still, at that level, driving is impaired, according to studies cited by the board. Government statistics show people with a 0.05 percent blood-alcohol content are 38 percent more likely to be involved in a crash than those who have not been drinking.

Opposition quickly surfaced from the Governors Highway Safety Association, a national group representing highway safety officers, and from the American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association. They argue the focus should be on heavy drinkers and repeat offenders.

They have a point. In that way, the transportation safety board has recommended ignition interlock devices for those convicted of drunken driving, which would not allow a vehicle to be started without the driver passing an alcohol test.

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimates that more than 7,000 deaths would have been prevented in 2010 with a blood-alcohol standard below 0.08 percent, a significant reduction in the 10,000 annual alcohol-related fatalities. European countries have reduced traffic deaths attributed to drunken driving by more than half by using the 0.05 percent standard.

By comparison, there are about 10,000 gun homicides a year in the United States, a figure that has triggered impassioned calls for stricter gun controls. The National Transportation Safety Board rightly questions our tolerance for the same level of fatalities due to drunken driving.

John Kasich proposed expanding the health-care program for poor families, indigent seniors and the disabled much as the federal government has defined. The House stripped the expansion from the governor’s budget, setting up a working group to explore other options for reform. Keith Faber, the Senate president, says Medicaid expansion as proposed by Kasich is dead. The Senate also has a panel exploring alternatives to expansion.

Meanwhile, Rep. Barbara Sears, who was a leader in the House budget discussions on Medicaid, has shared with Gongwer News Service her optimism that Medicaid expansion language could reappear during the conference committee process.

But with the Affordable Care Act about to go into full effect in January, Rep. Ron Amstutz, chairman of the House Finance Committee and a member of the House working group, appears to be seeking a reassessment of public assistance itself, encompassing the welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the food stamp program. It’s enough to make you wonder whether there is any urgency at all to clarify how more than 300,000 low-income, uninsured Ohioans can ever get health coverage.