By Lucia Walinchus
Broadcast version by Mary Schuermann reporting for the Eye on Ohio: The Ohio Center for Investigative Journalism-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

Meredith Broussard notes in her book, "Artificial Unintelligence," that "AI" is a bit of a misnomer. True artificial intelligence means computers have finally achieved consciousness. Scientists are a long way away - if that is even possible.

Why then has "artificial intelligence" become ubiquitous? Major companies and the state of Ohio refer to AI as vital to speech recognition, self-driving cars and web searches. It's essentially become shorthand for various machine-learning methods to solve a problem which a human can't easily solve.

For example: a programmer has to code image-recognition software to identify dogs in pictures. How can the programmer explain to a computer what a dog is? Chihuahuas are dogs, and so are Great Danes. But not wolves, which look a lot like dogs, or foxes.

The programmer instead could use thousands of pictures of animals hand-labeled "dogs" and "foxes" and have an AI algorithm learn which are which. The computer compares patterns of each animal's eyes, nose and snout to see which sizes and shapes are a "dog." The code tells the computer to decide a shape, such as a dog ear, is more likely a dog.

As François Chollet and J.J. Allaire wrote in their book, Deep Learning with R, from a geometric standpoint, the computer is trying to see how to fold a piece of paper so that the maximum number of data points can be included.

Counterintuitively though, extremely high accuracy is not an end goal because of "overfitting." A model that follows data too closely might not be good at making predictions in new data it hasn't seen before. If your dog dataset has too few Chihuahuas and not enough Great Danes, you might miss bigger dogs later.

Machine learning is powerful because it flips the script on computer programming: instead of telling the machine what's important, programmers study the data points that influence various outcomes to see what's important. Then they test for better outcomes.

For the past year, Eye on Ohio has been working on an AI project to see how cities and land banks choose to take over decrepit properties. This effort involved hundreds of public-records act requests, 5,225 lines of code and countless hours of planning, researching, programming, writing, fact-checking and editing.

Countless articles chronicle rising housing prices. Eye on Ohio wanted to look at the opposite end of the spectrum: What happens to the worst housing? How does that impact people who are struggling?

In Ohio, the county keeps delinquent property lists showing which owners did not pay taxes the previous year - and how much they owe. An auditor's website lets anyone see property value and payment history.

Most delinquent taxpayers eventually pay back their taxes. But Eye on Ohio started here for several reasons.

First, it would be impractical to study every property in a county to see which might be eligible for a land bank. The delinquent-taxpayer list is a public record which represents virtually all decrepit properties in a county.

Second, delinquent property owners are the biggest funders of land banks in the first place. County Treasurers and Prosecutors split 5 percent of delinquent tax revenue between them in a delinquent tax and assessment collection fund (DTAC). When a county establishes a land bank, they use those funds. County commissioners can authorize up to 5 percent more.

Third, one of the stated goals of most land banks is to take perpetually delinquent properties and turn them over to responsible owners who pay their taxes.

When a taxpayer becomes delinquent, the Treasurer usually will set up a payment plan. If that fails, the government will sell their tax lien to a third party. But sometimes not even that is successful, particularly for abandoned properties where it can be difficult to first find an owner's heirs or successors in interest.

Land banks get properties in a variety of ways. Someone can give them a parcel outright or deed property in lieu of foreclosure. But usually, they remediate properties that are way behind on their taxes in the first place.

The thrust of the project is: Of all delinquent properties in a county, which ones go to the land bank? Each has a policy that essentially says, "We try to do the best we can with our limited budget." What exactly does that mean, mathematically?

Land banks are a great but very limited program. How do officials choose which of the relatively small number of properties they will foreclose upon or demolish?

During the height of the mortgage crisis, many counties got federal funds to supplement their budgets. That money is now largely gone. How will land banks treat rusting properties with a smaller budget?

Click here to look at the code for this open source project.

First in the series: How do public officials make Land Bank decisions? Artificial Intelligence may seek patterns

This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


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The long-delayed Farm Bill could benefit Virginia farmers by renewing funding for climate-smart investments, but it's been held up for months in Congress.

Some lawmakers want this bill to expand funding for such programs as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, which gives financial and technical help to farmers and ranchers to make conservation a priority. About $250 million was allocated for the program, but more than 9,000 applications were submitted, bringing it to $475 million.

Gabrielle Walton, federal campaign associate with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said these programs' popularity proves their necessity.

"This money allows them not only to practice more efficiently - and to preserve the environment that they love so much and they're so attached to - but it also saves them money that they can devote to other concerns," she said, "and provides them stability for their pocketbooks going forward."

One issue with the new Farm Bill is a proposed increase in so-called "reference pricing," which critics have said only benefits large farming operations and would come at the expense of more widely used social and climate-smart programs.

Walton said she thinks political divisiveness and competing priorities have held up the new Farm Bill.

The previous Farm Bill was extended to this September, but lawmakers have said they aim to have a bill ready by Memorial Day. Along with climate-smart investments, the Farm Bill also funds social safety-net programs.

Geoff Horsfield, a policy director at the Environmental Working Group, said people don't always know how helpful nutrition programs are to families.

"There's a misconception that things like SNAP only benefit urban communities," he said, "and we just know that that's not true - that folks in all counties rely on nutrition assistance programs, some of these social programs, to be able to make ends meet."

SNAP and other nutrition programs received 75% of funding in the 2018 Farm Bill. More than 876,000 Virginians use SNAP and EBT benefits, since food insecurity has been a longstanding issue in the state.

Today, groups working with lower-income families in Connecticut are raising awareness about the state's "benefits cliff" with a day of action.

The benefits cliff is when a person might get a raise, have a kid with a part-time job, or some other income increase which then makes them ineligible for certain benefits. The changes can have severe impacts on communities and disproportionately affect families with children.

Stephen Monroe Tomczak, professor of social work at Southern Connecticut State University, said it is part of a larger workforce problem.

"People, particularly people of low income, are in a sense disincentivized to participate in the labor force and denied adequate jobs and income when they try to do that," Tomczak explained.

Several General Assembly budget bills could have dealt with the issue but most failed, which inspired today's action, a mock funeral procession to the governor's office to eulogize the bills, including the refundable Child Tax Credit, a housing voucher funding boost bill, and a bill eliminating the asset limit on the HUSKY C medical insurance program.

Social service advocates know the bills will resurface in next year's budget process.

Rose Ferraro, program lead of health justice policy advocacy for the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, said people are taking alternate steps like going to food banks or avoiding medical care to cover lost benefits.

"Folks will lose their rental assistance and then, they will sort of have to make some tough decisions," Ferraro noted. "'Do I put food on my table or do I make sure to pay rent?' And, so it becomes a sort of untenable position."

Ferraro added interwoven state and federal funding makes it hard to reach the core of the issues leading to benefits cliffs. One eulogized bill would have established a benefits cliff pilot program. For two years, it would have provided subsistence for people who've reached the benefits cliff.

New York towns are reaping many benefits since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed.

Along with funds for larger clean energy projects, the state was awarded $158 million for the IRA's Home Energy Rebates program.

Smaller towns and villages use these grants to implement their climate action plans.

Brighton Town Councilmember Robin Wilt said an IRA grant they applied for will help upgrade the town's HVAC system.

"We will be implementing geothermal and then use a solar array to make the system close to net zero, not quite," said Wilt. "I think we'll get 55% of our energy back with the solar panels."

The bureaucratic process to access the funding was challenging, but some groups are working with the Department of Energy to improve it.

Wilt said feedback on the clean energy projects has been positive. Future projects using IRA funding include increasing walkability and sustainable redevelopment.

Critics have said the IRA includes multiple provisions to increase fossil fuel production.

Towns nationwide are using IRA grants to bolster clean energy projects.

Joel Hicks is a council member for the Borough of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

They've just applied for a grant to work on energy efficiency and solar projects with Harrisburg. He said this will have positive impacts beyond establishing clean energy.

"We were really excited at this potential," said Hicks, "because we saw that the cost savings we would have for putting in substantial solar projects on our public property would actually fund many of our other public municipal goals."

These include purchasing an electric vehicle fleet and having more efficient solid waste programs.

One thing Hicks said he wants to see in future is state and local governments helping small towns and municipalities with putting together their IRA grant proposals.