The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
The Ohio Poverty Law Center is praising a bill passed in the lame-duck session of the Ohio General Assembly that is intended to reduce the huge number of Ohioans whose driver’s licenses are suspended because of unpaid debts or drug offenses. The bill awaits Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature.
In a state so poor that a fourth of Ohioans are on Medicaid, 1 million have suspended licenses because of debts from things such as a lack of insurance, unpaid fines and court costs, according to a 2022 analysis by the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland…