Legislators hold Franklin County meeting

Franklin County's legislators, Senator Amanda Ragan and Representative Shannon Latham, participated in a virtual meeting on Friday, March 12 to speak with area residents.

Hosted by Newton Grotzinger of the Greater Franklin County Area Chamber of Commerce, the legislators virtually met with Franklin County residents for a post-funnel week rundown of their activities.

One bill of note that recently passed through the Senate and is on its way to the House is bill supporting telehealth, designed to enhance the way that people are able to receive health services over the internet.

Child care is another area being looked at by the legislature, looking for ways to support the availably of child care for working families.

"There's certainly been a need for that across the whole state," said Ragan. "We were seeing that before, but then we were seeing an increase in that when we had the pandemic."

"Whether or not you are a Democrat or Republican everybody knows that there is a huge need for reliable, affordable, child care as well as affordable housing and broadband," said Latham. "So those continue to be things that we are all working on."

There are currently several child care related bills making their way through the legislature touching on a variety of issues like tax credits and allowing providers to accept an additional child.

"I think everyone realizes that it's a problem. I think everyone is open to ideas as well," said Latham. "I don't think anybody disagrees that there's a situation here that we need to try to remedy."

While issues like expanding broadband and improving child care access are largely bi-partisan there are more controversial bills passing through the legislature that have raised concerns.

A bill that would eliminate the requirement for gun owners to have a carrying permit was brought up well as the controversial push to direct school district funds to charter schools.

Dennis Epley, a member of the Waverly-Shell Rock school board, thanked the legislature for their work on expanding budget flexibility, teleheath, and supporting pre-school expansion. However, the push for charter schools was less welcome.

"We already have a law in place where school district's board of directors need to be approving any charter that is founded within their district and I would certainly favor this staying that way," said Epley. "You have some outside interests coming in to form charter schools without any supervision, without any regulation. I think that's a call for a problem."

"The accountability issue is really what the problem is with charter schools," said Ragan.

Turning to areas of the state most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the legislators discussed the need for support for hotels and motels that saw major losses over the last year as travel was curbed.

"They certainly didn't see the traffic coming through the state and certainly didn't see the people staying in the communities," said Ragan. "All the events, all the small town parades that we attend weren't happening."

Nursing homes were also discussed. In addition to suffering major losses from COVID, Dr. Glenn Hurst brought up the deficiency in Medicaid reimbursement, which is currently paying $30 less per person than the cost of daily care.

"I truly believe that you get what you pay for and we need to make sure those facilities continue to exist," said Ragan.

As a freshman representative, Latham wasn't familiar with what mechanisms there are to at least provide temporary support through CARES Act funds, but did say she would look into seeing if that would be an avenue.

"I think that's something that I can ask in the appropriations committee," said Latham. "I think that's a question that's worth asking.

All of these issues discussed come at a cost though and both legislators recognize that even issues with bi-partisan support can face roadblocks when it comes to paying for them.

"We kind of have this double whammy because we have all these additional needs from the catastrophes that we've had, but at the same time state revenues are down," said Latham. "So there's more need and less money to fund those needs. … We'd like to fund everything but there's less money to go around."