Some of Today's State News Headlines
Today is Monday March 24, 2008
March already the snowiest on record for Cleveland
CLEVELAND (AP) - March still has a week to go but already it's the snowiest one Cleveland has ever seen.
The National Weather Service says Saturday's 7-inch snowfall pushed the month's total for the city to 30.4 inches, beating the old March record of 26.7 inches set in 2001.
Cleveland had a white Easter weekend to make up for the lack of a white Christmas. The city got just 9.6 inches of snow during December.
Weather service meteorologist Will Kubina says the last several years have seen a quiet start to the snow season, with the flakes really coming down in February and March.
Monday's forecast calls for a few more snow showers.
---
Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com
(Refer to page 5 of today's Daily Chief-Union)
Five years after law passed, falling insurance rates but fewer obstetricians
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS (AP) - When Bobbie Cameron became pregnant with her third child, she reluctantly chose a new doctor to oversee her care. Her longtime physician had dropped out of the birthing business because of soaring malpractice insurance rates.
Cameron's daughter, Avery, was born in February 2007. The experience just wasn't the same.
"We had to go to someone we didn't know, who didn't know my history, who didn't know how my last two births went," said Cameron, 31, a full-time mom in nearby Plain City.
Five years after a law trying to reduce the malpractice rates went into effect, Ohio has fewer doctors who deliver babies than at the height of protests about high costs.
Ohio had 1,327 doctors listing obstetrics and gynecology as their primary specialty at the end of 2007, a 5 percent decrease from 2002, according to an AP analysis of State Medical Board numbers.
The overall number of doctors in Ohio rose during the same time, from about 28,000 to about 30,000. Those figures represent all doctors and not just those in high-risk specialties.
(Refer to page 1 of today's Daily Chief-Union)
Voinovich on familiar ground working with Democrats
By JOHN McCARTHY
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS (AP) - Within four days in January 2007, U.S. Sen. George Voinovich went from working with fellow Republicans in the Senate and Ohio Statehouse to working with the Democrats who were sworn in as Ohio's junior senator and governor.
The change presented a challenge for Voinovich, but he's had to work with Democrats during most of his 40-year political career.
Voinovich spent eight years with Republican Mike DeWine as Ohio's other senator and Republican Bob Taft as Ohio's governor. However, the Democratic sweep of November 2006 ended 12 years of one-party rule in Columbus and six years of the same in the state's Senate seats in Washington.
Democrat Ted Strickland won Ohio's governorship and Democrat Sherrod Brown ousted DeWine from the Senate. So Voinovich had to look to his past to learn all over again how it feels to be in the minority among Ohio's top-three elected officials.
Democrat Vern Riffe was speaker of the Ohio House for Voinovich's first four years as Ohio governor. Voinovich's office was on the 30th floor of the building named for Riffe, who spent an unmatched 22 years as speaker.
(Refer to page 1 of today's Daily Chief-Union)
Pickup Your Copy Of The Daily Chief-Union Today For The Rest Of The Stories....