If state and local governments want healthier populations, new findings suggest they should be more aggressive in tackling income inequality. A Nebraska organization feels that approach is on point.
A new study from Johns Hopkins University looked at obesity levels in more than 3,000 counties across the country. The places with minimum wages of at least $9 an hour had greater success in reducing obesity rates.
Christine Cary, who helps address economic justice with the group Stand In for Nebraska, said other data routinely show that healthier foods tend to cost more, so the connection made in this new research is pretty clear.
"Raising the minimum wage is obviously a way to increase access to healthier food," she said. "You just have more money to spend on it."
In 2022, Nebraska voters approved a gradual increase in the state's minimum wage, which is set to reach $15 an hour in 2026. At the same time, the state doesn't fare well in obesity rankings.
Cary said she sees a chance for numbers to improve as wages go up, but noted that not all communities have stores that sell healthy foods, potentially hindering that progress.
The study's authors also called for "place-based" interventions, such as urban farming initiatives and subsidies for healthy food retailers to go along with higher wages. Cary said that's an important step in tackling this issue.
"It's pretty well known among geographers that we shop at the closest place," she said, "meaning don't expect people who are already low income to seek these things out."
She said creating more awareness and options in underserved communities can help maximize the impact of higher wages from a public health standpoint. Cary said that's especially important in a rural state such as Nebraska, which has seen its food retail and health facility options disappear in smaller towns and cities.
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Just nine months into her tenure, Michigan state Rep. Mai Xiong, D-Warren, is ringing in the new year with new legislation. Now on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's desk, Xiong's bill allows public employers to increase contributions to workers' health plans.
A former Macomb County commissioner and the first Hmong American woman to serve in the Michigan House of Representatives, Xiong said she's passionate about helping people live better lives.
"With inflation and rising prices at the grocery store and the gas pump, it's just really hard," she said. "The cost of living has gone up - and so, whatever we can do as a government to help Michiganders, that's something that I want to contribute to doing."
Her bill also requires public employers to cover at least 80% of the total annual costs of the medical benefit plans they offer or contribute to, for their employees and elected public officials.
Xiong also has sponsored and supported legislation related to reproductive health data privacy, maternal care expansion and a resolution honoring Hmong soldiers who fought for the United States in the Vietnam War. Speaking on the House Floor in the Michigan Capitol last summer, she shared how her heritage and education have influenced her.
"My parents fought hard to bring me to this country because they knew how important education was," she said. "It is because of the teachers that I am here today - Miss Nolan, Miss Merriman and so many others - who shaped me into being who I am today."
Xiong started Mai&Co., a clothing business inspired by Hmong traditions, in 2017. She ran it from home while raising four young children, and said that experience helped shape her views on supporting small businesses and economic growth.
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As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, economists are weighing in on how his promised policies might shape what is ahead in 2025.
The economy topped the 2024 election, with gas and food prices a priority for many voters. Now, economists point to tariffs, the stock market, electric vehicles, agriculture and education as key issues for the new year.
Jason Miller, professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, predicted the tariffs Trump has promised will take center stage in 2025. However, he pointed to signs of a positive tailwind.
"Retailers have entered the holidays with inventory sort of in line with demand conditions," Miller pointed out. "November sales for motor vehicles were phenomenally strong for light trucks and SUVs; it was, on a seasonably adjusted basis, the third-highest month of all time."
Miller believes importers will stockpile Chinese goods to avoid tariffs but past tariffs failed to create jobs and instead drove up costs, raising prices for consumers.
Miller projected the first major supply-chain story of 2025 could unfold as early as Jan. 15, involving the International Longshoremen's Association. He noted the East Coast and Gulf port contracts are set to expire, raising the threat of a second round of port strikes.
"We may see port strike, Round 2," Miller observed. "No one is clear yet on how the incoming Trump administration would respond to that. Would they invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to end that strike, or would they let that play out?"
He added they are monitoring the potential for extreme weather events in early 2025, such as the polar vortex back in 2018, which could have a substantial impact on the economy.
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By Andrew Tobias for Signal Cleveland.
Broadcast version by Brett Peveto for Ohio News Connection reporting for the Signal Ohio-Public News Service Collaboration
Ohio’s property tax system is supposed to protect homeowners. It’s designed to prevent big increases in their home’s value from translating to big increases in their tax bills.
This is done by the “reduction factor” in the state’s current tax formula, which in most cases automatically reduces tax rates when property values go up in a given community. This reduction factor, or safety valve of sorts, is the heart of House Bill 920, a 1976 reform that established Ohio’s modern system of property taxation. Lawmakers passed it in response to an historic rise in home prices.
But today the formula is showing signs of breaking down. As a result, homeowners in a record number of school districts – mostly concentrated in rural and exurban areas – won’t get the full benefit of that safety valve on the taxes they pay to local schools.
That means homeowners in these communities – which have a lower tax base experts call the “20-mill floor” – are seeing bigger hikes in their tax bill compared to homeowners in some other parts of the state.
Last year, property values jumped by an average of 35% in counties that updated their values. For homeowners in communities where the safety valve was shut off, this would translate to a roughly 25% larger tax bill. For areas where it stayed on, the increase likely would be more like 5%.
Several state lawmakers describe rising property taxes as the single top issue for their constituents, especially for seniors and others on fixed incomes. So they have introduced various bipartisan bills meant to lessen the financial damage on homeowners. But none of the bills has gotten final approval, and it’s unclear whether any will before the legislature breaks at the end of the year.
“We’re going through something that’s pretty unusual, and it’s having this extreme effect,” said Howard Fleeter, a Columbus-based economist who studies and advises school districts on school-funding issues.
Why the safety valve doesn’t help all communities
Ohio assesses property taxes in units called “mills,” each one of which translates to $35 in taxes per $100,000 in property value. Local governments are allowed to charge property owners up to 10 mills, or $350 per $100,000 in value, in taxes without taking any special steps.
But voters must approve any property taxes beyond that. This is why school districts and other local governments commonly put tax levies on the ballot.
Setting up taxes this way could mean approved property taxes would rise indefinitely without another vote as home values rise. That’s why the state’s complex tax formula has a safety valve to protect homeowners. It automatically lowers tax rates for most voter-approved levies via the reduction factor when property values go up while guaranteeing the tax raises the same amount of money it did when voters first approved it.
The combination generally keeps a homeowner’s tax bill stable even if their property value goes up.
But if the tax rate drops to 20 mills, the state formula shuts off the reduction factor and locks in the rate. The technical name is “20-mill floor,” and it’s meant to make sure school districts get enough funding to operate.
In communities at or below the 20-mill floor, homeowners get no protection from the reduction factor on the portion of their tax bill that goes to schools – which is around two-thirds of most homeowners’ tax bills. So their tax bill would go up significantly if their property sees a significant increase in value.
Who is most likely to see the larger hikes on their property tax bills?
As of January 2024, 409 of Ohio’s 611 school districts were at the 20-mill floor, according to Fleeter, the Columbus economist who studies school funding.
That’s double the number from five years ago, and it’s likely to continue going up.
Fleeter said there’s one major reason for the increase: The ongoing process in which county auditors are updating property tax values for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic sent home prices soaring. Ohio updates its tax values at the county level, with one-third of counties doing so each year.
Updates done in 2023 are showing up on tax bills this year. Fleeter expects similarly large property value increases for the 2024 revaluation, which will include Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain and Stark counties and will take effect in 2025.
Fleeter said counties that updated property values in 2023 saw an average increase of nearly 35%. The reduction factor kicked in and lowered property tax rates in many communities, sending their rates to the 20-mill floor. But by hitting the floor, the safety valve shut off.
“There’s a problem in these districts where taxpayers are seeing large tax increases that House Bill 920 was supposed to prevent,” Fleeter said.
In high-tax communities, the floor is never hit
In areas where voters have approved high property taxes, like Cuyahoga County, tax rates are high enough that they’re unlikely to ever approach the 20-mill floor.
But it’s more likely to be an issue for communities where voters have approved fewer property taxes in general. These are usually found in rural and exurban areas.
There are some exceptions.
For example, the Cincinnati City School District, the state’s second-largest public school system, is at the 20-mill floor, according to state tax data. This is because the district gets a significant portion of its funding from an emergency levy. State law exempts emergency levies from counting against the 20-mill floor, which means the increased property values have a larger tax effect for homeowners there.
Other school districts with large emergency levies at the 20-mill floor include Willoughby-Eastlake combined schools in Lake County, Perrysville village schools in Wood County and Mansfield City Schools in Richland County.
In the other 202 school districts with the 20-mill floor, the reduction factor should still help prevent huge tax increases. These generally are in suburban and urban areas that pay higher taxes to begin with.
The particulars will vary by property owner, since the state’s property tax formula also factors in how someone’s property value changed compared to the average change in their community.
“This is a real question in many rural districts in a way it’s not in the same way in urban districts,” said Zach Schiller, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal think tank. “… It does still mean we have significant numbers of people who are in fact seeing a squeeze because their property taxes are going up. And that’s a problem that needs to be addressed.
Andrew Tobias wrote this article for Signal Cleveland. This story was produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.
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