The Ohio Public Transit Association is asking supporters to demand more state support for public transportation from their legislators.
The organization has launched fundohiotransitnow.org with links to legislators home pages’ and contact information. Just fill in your name and address, and the site will send a letter to all your elected representatives.

From their letter: “While the typical state provides 23% of the funding needed for their transit systems, Ohio provides less than 3%.”
Every major city in Ohio has been affected by budget cuts over the last few years. This is an …

USA Today is carrying an article about Declaration Detroit, an online campaign by a group of activists to revitalize the city.
The group has published a manifesto based on 12 principles, in graphic form below:

The group is asking visitors to sign a pledge to support these policies and get involved by helping spread the word. About 2,100 people have signed, according to USA Today.
-AS

Greater Ohio and the Brookings Institutional have released their long-awaited report, Restoring Prosperity: Transforming Ohio’s Communities for the Next Economy.
Among the findings, Ohio should consolidate local governments and school districts to reduce the local tax burden. The state should redirect manufacturing strength toward new technologies and maximize federal investment.
To compete, Ohio will need to reinvest in its metropolitan regions, which account for 81 percent of the state’s population and 87 percent of its GDP, the report states.
“Ohio’s seven largest metro areas concentrate slightly more than 75 percent of the state’s …

The Pittsburgh City Council voted unanimously yesterday to approve landmark historic status for the Iron City Brewery in the Lawrenceville neighborhood.
Earlier in the month, the city’s Historic Review Commission voted in favor of the designation, as the Post-Gazette reported.
The brewery currently sits vacant. Last year, Iron City Brewing Co. closed this plant and moved all operations to Latrobe.
Planners hope this compound and collection of historic buildings will become the sight of a mixed-use development.
The timing of this designation comes just weeks after a developer announced plans to infill neighboring Doughboy …

Good Magazine is reporting that four Detroit High Schools will begin training students to work at Wal-Mart.
Students will receive 10 credits for 11 weeks of job readiness preparation with the retail giant.
Advocates say it’s a good opportunity for students, given the city’s staggering unemployment rate.
Advocates for the poor say the students are being trained for dead-end jobs and lives of subserviance.

-AS

Isaiah Thompson, staff writer at Philadelphia’s City Paper, is reporting that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is considering authorizing the leasing of more state lands for natural gas drilling. According to Thompson, the Governor and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources are ignoring “warnings from former DCNR Secretary Michael DiBerardinis, who wrote in May that too much leasing would “scar the economic, scenic, ecological and recreational values of the forest,” and that “a rush to drill threatens the certification of our state forests as sustainably managed.””
Follow …

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the Obama administration has earmarked $400 million for Ohio’s plan to link Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Cleveland via high-speed rail.
From The Dispatch:
Ohio officials are banking on federal stimulus money for most or all of the estimated $517.6 million they say they need to improve existing freight rail to passenger standards and to buy trains.

“This is some of the best news we have had in a long time,” Senator Sherrod Brown said. “If I put my ear down to the rail I think I hear …

Youngstown residents have launched a campaign against the Department of Housing and Urban Development after losing out on grant money to help deal with the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis.
Local activists are circulating a petition protesting the region’s denial of the second round of Neighborhood Stabilization Funds–a program of the Stimulus Bill which provides funding for demolition, rehabilitation and landbanking efforts.
The denial came as a surprise after the Youngstown area was praised by the Brookings Institution for its application, which brought together city and suburban leaders.

-AS

Between 2000 and 2008, large metropolitan areas saw their suburban poverty rates grow at twice the rate of inner cities, according to a new report by the Brookings Institution.
For example, in 2008, 23 percent more people were living in poverty outside the city of Cleveland’s borders than inside it. That’s a 44 percent jump since 2000, for a total of 9 percent of the suburban population. Meanwhile the number of poor in the city of Cleveland decreased, WCPN Ideastream reports.
Similar trends were reported in Akron and Youngstown.
Also of note:
-Social service …

The Associated Press has conducted an inventory of the 128 auto plants closed by the Big Three since 1980 and the results are discouraging.
Only about three in five has been repurposed for a new use. Those that have been reopened are employing far few workers at lower wages.

“The cost is going to be borne by the next generation,” said James Rubenstein, a professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, who has studied U.S. auto plant closings and openings. “It’s the children and grandchildren of the laid-off workers. They won’t have …