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Watch credit scores, be fiscally prudent

Some of us may have shied away from looking at our credit scores once we finished our holiday shopping, but WalletHub took a look anyway and found perhaps we’d better do a little work. In “States With the Largest Credit Score Decreases,” West Virginia ranked 11th. The average credit score in the Mountain State fell by 0.61% between the third quarters of 2023 and 2024. In fact, by the end of Q3 2024, the average credit score in the state was 647. Ohio is doing a little better, with a rank of 22nd. In Ohio, the average credit score fell by 0.58% in the same period, with the average ...

Public records should be accessible to all citizens

The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a years-long case in which state Attorney General Dave Yost has been trying to avoid complying with public records requests from the Center for Media and Democracy. The center is seeking records from a time period in which the Republican Attorneys General Association (which accepts corporate donations) put together a letter opposing clean air restrictions to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Center for Media and Democracy initially requested documents regarding the RAGA letter in March 2020. At the time Yost couldn’t ...

Do what you can to help locally-owned businesses

If it took you several days to dig out, clear your driveway and sidewalk, maybe even wait for the roads closer to your home to be safe enough to drive on, you’re not alone. The lousy weather was likely an inconvenience for you and your employer, with various levels of emergency being declared to keep as many people off the roads as possible. Now, stop and think for a minute about what the loss of those precious days has meant to many of our small, locally owned businesses — particularly retailers and restaurants. If you thought you were done worrying about whether to shop small and ...

Be vigilant in protecting animals from the cold

Weather-wise, the first full week of January isn’t a surprise. It is wintertime and most of us are acutely aware of what it can bring. Sure, we have had a good share of mild days through past winter seasons. But frigid cold with minus zero wind chills — like this morning — come with the territory. As does the ongoing snow accumulations expected tomorrow into Saturday. When such conditions set in, it’s time for us to bundle up and take some precautions to ensure we remain safe and healthy when we are outdoors. Our pets, however, cannot do that for themselves, so we need to be ...

Sharing needles creates outbreak in Appalachia

Whether it be willful ignorance for the sake of scoring political points or a genuine misunderstanding of the broad range of strategies necessary to tackle a dual public health crisis in Appalachia, elected officials and policymakers are handicapping efforts against one of the major dangers spawned by our region’s substance abuse epidemic. A KFF Health News report followed up on federal health officials’ effort a few years back to assess an outbreak of HIV in central Appalachia. The outbreak has been fueled by shared use of needles among those who inject opioids or ...

Students need to get to class before we can educate them

Ohioans deserve public schools in which students are educated to be informed, productive, critical thinking citizens ready to pursue the next step in their career or educational paths with confidence. Our children deserve more than barely meeting the lowest of standards on that front. But what about kids who aren’t making it to school at all? Think of how much more we are letting them down. According to data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, public school students in the state have an approximately 25.6% rate of chronic absenteeism. It is a problem to which many ...