08/25/10 HEADLINE NEWS…

The US Department of Education has awarded Ohio 400-million dollars in “Race to the Top” funds – with more than a 10^th of that slated for Northeast Ohio’s three largest districts. Ohio was shut out of the first round of the federal funding competition aimed at turning around failing schools, bolstering teacher effectiveness, and promoting innovative education. But it placed second highest in the second round. Cleveland’s public schools will get 28-to-30 million dollars over four years. The district is facing a 62 million budget gap, and spokesman John Hairston says the federal money will help in several ways.

Ohio’s Race to the Top award includes more than 9 million dollars for Akron and nearly three- million dollars for Canton schools. For a list of awards by Ohio school district, go to wksu.org.

The state is taking a suburban Cleveland bar to court over 49-thousand dollars in unpaid fines and what it says is the bar’s repeated refusal to abide by the state’s smoking ban. WKSU’s ML Schultze reports.

The Ohio Supreme Court has suspended the law license of former Cuyahoga County recorder Patrick O’Malley for two years. O’Malley’s trouble with the law predated the two-year-old Cuyahgoa County corruption probe and was tied to sex, not money. He resigned in 2008 after investigators found obscene materials on his home computers. He pleaded guilty in 2008 and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. The 2-year license suspension is twice as long as the high court’s disciplinary board had recommended.

A U.S. Senator and former Ohio attorney general who joined the Nixon administration has died. William Saxbe died at his home in Mechanicsburg, Ohio at the age of 94. President Richard Nixon picked Saxbe as his administration’s fourth attorney general in the aftermath of Watergate.

House Republican leader John Boehner is urging President Barack Obama to support an extension of tax cuts and fire his key economic advisers. In a speech Tuesday in Cleveland, Boehner also demanded the repeal of parts of Obama's health care law, arguing that some requirements hurt small businesses.

The attorney general from Ohio and 16 other states are demanding that the classified advertising website Craigslist remove its adult services section. The attorneys general say Craigslist is not completely screening out ads that promote prostitution and child trafficking.

The state says Akron’s water supply is safe from any concern about contamination by the toxic blue-green algae blooms that have shown up in area lakes and reservoirs.  Friday, the state issued an alert that untreated water from Lake Rockwell contained traces of the bacteria. The lake supplies the city of Akron with drinking water, so the state also tested the treated water as well. The results of that test were released Tuesday and the state says the water is safe to drink.

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic says he will try to move money from a school construction program to pay for safety forces, but only if the city’s police union accepts contract concessions. In 2003, Akron voters approved a quarter of a percent income tax for building community learning centers. Plusquellic says he will ask for November ballot issue that would divert a third of the money raised by that schools tax in each of the next three years to the safety forces.  Plusquellic says the action is necessary because the city’s budget situation is critical.

A third of the annual revenue from the school tax would amount to about four-point-three million dollars and that, says Plusquellic, would cover the city’s budget shortfall if the city’s unions, and the Fraternal Order of Police in particular, accept contract concessions. And, he says, he will only take the proposal to the voters if those concessions are made. Plusquellic also says that as an immediate issue, unless there are concessions by Friday layoff notices will go out to forty police officers and nine police management personnel to be effective September 13^th. 

Recent war veterans can now apply for the bonuses Ohioans approved on the statewide ballot last fall. Governor Ted Strickland says these bonuses are for Ohioans who are veterans of the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Veterans of their surviving families could be eligible to receive up to five thousand dollars in bonuses. To find out how to apply, log on to wksu.org.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is expected to decide in the next twenty-four hours on whether convicted felon and former congressman James Traficant will be on November’s ballot. Brunner’s spokesman Patrick Gallaway says she is reviewing the tie vote by the Trumbull County Board of Elections on whether Traficant collected enough valid signatures to be on the ballot as an independent candidate for the 17^th congressional district.

Traficant’s supporters say they are prepared to take the case to the Ohio Supreme Court if Brunner denies the former congressman a spot on the ballot. Gallaway says that would be interesting to see, considering that it’s Traficant’s supporters, not Traficant, threatening court action. The only one who would have standing to challenge the decision would be the candidate himself.

A trade group says Ohio home sales dropped last month as the market slowed following the expiration of government tax credits for buyers. The Ohio Association of Realtors says 7,840 new and existing homes sold across the state in July, down 35 percent from June.

Ohio's average sale price fell 7 percent to about $137,000.

Mixing trash with recyclables at the curb could be costly for some Northeast Ohio residents next year. WKSU’s Kabir Bhatia has more.