- Ohio Senate Republicans pass budget bill without controversial drug testing language, By Aaron Marshall, May 16, 2012, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Ohio Senate Republicans dodged one fight Wednesday as they pulled back for now on a controversial proposal to drug test welfare applicants that had advocates for the poor and Democrats ready to rumble. But another showdown looms as GOP senators approved a $30 million pot of nursing home funding that puts them on a collision course with Republican Gov. John Kasich. As quickly as the drug testing language appeared Tuesday afternoon — slipped into a wide-ranging budget and policy bill — it dropped out of sight Wednesday after GOP Sen. Tim Schaffer of Lancaster offered to remove the it, according to Senate President Tom Niehaus, a Clermont County Republican. After the Senate passed the midterm budget review bill by a vote of 25-8, Niehaus told reporters that Schaffer retreated before questions on the proposal started to fly from Kasich’s office, including how it could be implemented in rural areas without drug testing facilities…”
- Welfare drug-screening bill is signed into Oklahoma law, By Michael McNutt, May 17, 2012, The Oklahoman: “Welfare recipients who test positive for drugs or refuse to be tested would have their benefits withheld under a bill signed into law Wednesday. The measure makes practices mostly already used by the state Department of Human Services a state law, an agency spokeswoman said. ‘The bill authors worked with us to understand our current process and what we were doing, and we worked with them to find out what the goals were that they wanted to achieve,’ said Sheree Powell, a DHS spokeswoman. ‘It basically puts into law our current practice…'”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty