Some of Today's State News Headlines
Today is Wednesday January 2, 2008
Hospital sues rival over alleged unfair business
CANTON (AP) - A hospital has sued its crosstown rival for allegedly trying to monopolize health care services in the city by using secret payments to insurance agents and other tactics to steal away patients from its customer base.
Mercy Medical Center says Aultman Hospital set out to destroy competition, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Stark County Common Pleas Court. The lawsuit names Aultman Health Foundation, parent company of the hospital.
Mercy alleges that Aultman Hospital made secret payments from its nonprofit foundation to brokers who negotiate with insurers on behalf of companies that offer health coverage to their workers.
Aultman said the lawsuit is frivolous.
(Refer to page 12 of today's Daily Chief-Union)
Snow, wind storm cuts power to 10,000 in Ohio
CLEVELAND (AP) - Remnants of a New Year's Day storm that dumped more than a foot of snow on southeastern Michigan cut power Tuesday to 10,000 northeast Ohio customers as it blew across Lake Erie, a utility spokesman said.
Outages from power lines pulled down by winds and falling tree limbs mainly were in areas east of Cleveland, though there were some problems within the city, said Chris Eck, a spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp.
The company called in extra crews to help restore power, but they were having difficulty keeping up with the storm, he said.
"As they're getting lights on, lights are going off. They're just fighting it as it happens," Eck said.
FirstEnergy expected to have power restored by midnight to all but about 1,000 homes, he said.
Firefighters blamed high winds for downed power lines that sparked a fire in the Cleveland suburb of Willoughby on Tuesday morning. Two cars and the roof of a parking garage were destroyed, authorities said.
(Refer to page 1 of today's Daily Chief-Union)
New state law expands lists of sexual predators
By The Associated Press
More Ohio felons will be classified as sexual predators under a new state law that went into effect Tuesday that also will require the state's sheriffs to notify more people about where offenders live.
The Legis-lature passed the law last year to comply with a federal one that requires states to increase registration requirements by 2009 or lose some federal funding. The federal law is named after Adam Walsh, a 6-year-old Florida boy abducted and killed in 1981.
The state has about 23,000 registered sex offenders under eight classifications. Under the new law, offenders will be classified under a three-tier system. It will require longer registration times for felons and mandatory community notification for some offenders once considered low level.
"This is going to increase the workload of sheriffs by 60 percent because 60 percent of the low-level registered offenders now have been put into the highest tier," said Robert Cornwell, executive director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association.
(Refer to page 1 of today's Daily Chief-Union)
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