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Another Lawsuit Over Voting Settled, And Counting Down In Cleveland To The RNC

The lawsuits keep on coming in this election year in Ohio. This week state Auditor Dave Yost told members of Congress about an audit he did of the $2.5 billion food stamp program in Ohio. Yost’s review of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – or SNAP – found $31,000 of what he called questionable costs, including benefits used by dead people. When state lawmakers come back after the election, the leadership of the House will be slightly different. Rep. Barbara Sears is leaving the legislature to become the assistant director of the Office of Health Transformation.

After years of planning and anticipation, we’re finally just a few days from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. And for the last few months, the publicity and predictions leading up to the convention have ranged from eager excitement and cheerful optimism to panicked dread to terrifying visions of disaster. Dave O’Neil is the deputy press secretary for the 2016 Republican National Convention. He talked about the last-minute preparations from the studios of WVIZ/ideastream in Cleveland – just a few blocks away from where the convention will kick off in a little over a week.

It’s been announced that Cleveland police officers will be wearing body cameras during the convention. And cops in Ohio’s biggest cities are either already using or about to use body cameras. Experts are now talking about the policies that should be in place as these cities move forward. My Statehouse News Bureau colleague Andy Chow recently moderated a discussion before the Columbus Metropolitan Club on body cameras, and it featured two people intimately involved in the issue - Larry James, general counsel for the National Fraternal Order of Police, and Dennis Hetzel with the Ohio Newspapers Association. There is a proposed bill that would create some statewide uniform standards for the use of body cameras and its availability as public record.