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Campaign contributions The Daily Briefing Buckeye Forum Podcast

The Dispatchpublic affairs team talks politics and tackles state and federal government issues in the Buckeye Forum podcast.

After a huge toxic-algae bloom in the western part of Lake Erie contaminated Toledos public water supply this summer, environmentalists, politicians and scientists scrambled.

Summits were held. Money was allocated for research and infrastructure improvements. Bills were introduced.

But state lawmakers and agency directors have been reluctant to pass regulations that would limit farm runoff, one of the major contributors to phosphorus and nitrogen in watersheds. Both chemicals help create algae blooms in lakes worldwide.

In fact, little has been done to limit farm runoff despite years of blooms that have affected as many as 19 lakes in Ohio since 2010. Erie has endured even larger blooms than the one that forced Toledo officials to tell 500,000 residents to keep their taps closed for two days.

And despite calls from various groups, the state wont declare the Maumee River in distress, a designation that would allow tougher restrictions on farm fertilizers. That has some groups wondering about the agriculture industrys influence at the Statehouse.

The agriculture industry, including fertilizer manufacturers, has given nearly $3.1 million to political candidates, parties and ballot issues in Ohio since 2010, according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Follow the Money, which tracks campaign contributions and industry influence.

Of that $3.1 million, the Ohio Farm Bureau and the bureaus Agriculture for Good Government political-action committee contributed about $766,000 about one-quarter of the total agriculture contributions.

Environmental groups, by comparison, donated less than $112,000 over that same time period.

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Agriculture industry has history of making political donations

Utilities View Larger Local More Local Stories US & World More US & World Stories Local Stories from ThisWeek More Articles By Earl Rinehart The Columbus Dispatch Sunday September 21, 2014 10:55 AM

Diane Mays cant wait for the lines to be laid that will bring drinking water to her Mifflin Township home for the first time in 20 years. Shes worried, though, about something else that will flow to her home the highest water rate in the county.

Franklin County system users pay 84 percent more than Columbus residents pay for water, according to the county sanitary engineer department. Like most Columbus suburbs, the county buys its water from the city.

This is a very, very low-income community, Mays said of her Leonard Park neighborhood. She already has a lien of at least $8,000 on her $100,000 market-value home for the sanitary sewer line the county installed about three years ago.

Still, the waterlines would mean that her son, Matt Bowen, would no longer have to make three trips a day to fill a 330-gallon tank in a pickup truck at a faucet outside the township hall to top off the leaky 1,025-gallon water tank at her house. Mays well has never pumped clean water. It ran dry about five years ago.

And I raised five kids in that home, Mays said, standing outside the ranch home on Missouri Avenue.

The township water has always been free, township Service Director D.J. Tharp said.

On the other side of Columbus in Franklin Township, residents of the Mon-E-Bak Farms neighborhood have water in their wells but cant drink it because its contaminated with their own sewage.

Leonard Park, squeezed into a corner of I-670 and Stelzer Road, and Mon-E-Bak, nestled in the crook of I-70 and Wilson Road, top a list of 20 unincorporated urban pockets slated to get waterlines. Work begins next month in Leonard Park; Mon-E-Bak must wait until 2016.

The average quarterly water and sewer bill for a Columbus family of three is about $184. For a resident of Dublin, where the median household income is $144,000, its $225. In Mon-E-Bak, where the average income is $18,000, and other areas served by the county, the bill will be around $332.

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Franklin County water comes at a high price

Daily Big Cat 2014 09 22
Simba Leopard gets treats on a stick from Angie, Ginger Serval catches something in the ferns, Gale, Cody and Meredith remove a rotten limb and ants from Narla Cougar #39;s cage, check in on Mickey...

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Quitman, Miss. It's the first in the state of Mississippi and its home is Quitman Upper Elementary School. From fiber optics to now innovative reading, Quitman is leading the way when it comes to education. The school and members of the community welcomed the new addition of a Ben Carson Reading Room in a grand opening ceremony that was attended by countless individuals and thanks to the book "Gifted Hands", the room is a reality.

" I was actually reading Ben Carson's book Gifted Hands and I saw the idea that he had for the reading rooms," Quitman Schools Finance Coordinator Elisa Mayo said. "I knew right away that that was something that God wanted us to have for the children here. It was the best thing we could provide for them, so I immediately came back and went to the Phil Hardin Foundation and the QSD Imagination Library with the idea and both of them sponsored the Ben Carson Reading Room for us."

The room is described as a place designed to encourage young people to discover the joy of independent reading in a warm, inviting atmosphere and to THINK BIG.

"What I hope that our children get from that is that they need to think outside the box and they need to think that there is nothing they can't achieve and that reading is the way to get them where they would like to be and the dreams they might have for themselves," Quitman Schools Superintendent Suzanne Hawley said.

While the room provides an atmosphere that encourages reading, Principal James Kelley says it's meant to be a way to get kids to enjoy a book.

"There is no expectations," Kelley said. "Just come in and read, bring your parents in and let them read to you. It's a fun time, nothing required."

Kelley says each teacher is allotted two thirty minute blocks to bring their students into the reading room. He says the only rule is to read for enjoyment.

The first Ben Carson Reading Room was founded in 2000 in Aberdeen, Maryland. It opened at Hall's Cross Roads Elementary school. To date, there are over 110 locations spreading 14 states, with this being the first one in Mississippi.

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Quitman Upper Elementary Debuts Ben Carson Reading Room

The prevalence of preterm birth -- the birth of an infant prior to 37 weeks of pregnancy -- is a significant health problem that has increased over the past two decades. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), preterm birth affects nearly 500,000 babies each year, or one of every eight born in the U.S. While medical care has improved survival rates for preterm infants, questions remain about ways to positively impact the neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants.

Research led by Barry M. Lester, PhD, director of the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and James F. Padbury, MD, pediatrician-in-chief and chief of Neonatal/Perinatal Medicine at Women & Infants Hospital and the William and Mary Oh -- William and Elsa Zopfi Professor of Pediatrics for Perinatal Research at the Alpert Medical School, entitled "Single Family Room Care Improves Neurobehavioral and Medical Outcomes in Preterm Infants," is published in the October issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The researchers found that a single-family room environment provides for appropriate levels of maternal involvement, developmental support, and staff involvement, which are essential to provide the kind of care that can optimize the medical and neurodevelopmental outcome of the preterm infant and lead to the development of preventive interventions to reduce later impairment.

As medical care has improved the survival rates for preterm infants, especially those born weighing less than 1,000 grams, nearly half of these infants still suffer long-term neurodevelopmental impairment and/or serious health consequences. Drs. Lester and Padbury led a research team that performed a prospective, longitudinal study to examine associations between the open bay vs. single family room NICU and medical and neurobehavioral outcomes at hospital discharge. They also examined, for the first time, factors that could help explain, or mediate, potential differences in NICUs.

"There are few studies that have compared the individual single family room neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with the traditional 'open bay' model of care. In particular, two critical issues have not been systematically addressed," explained Dr. Padbury. "First is the effect of the single family room NICU on neurodevelopmental outcome. The second is how and why positive or negative effects of the single family room NICU occur."

In September 2009, Women & Infants Hospital, a U.S.News 2014-15 Best Children's Hospital in Neonatology, opened what was at the time the largest single family room NICU in the country. Prior to that, approximately 1,400 babies each year were cared for in the hospital's open bay NICU. The single family room model also offered an opportunity to more comprehensively implement a family centered model of care, where families are now more actively involved in their baby's care and care team.

Dr. Lester explained, "We hypothesized that infants cared for in the single family room NICU would have better medical and neurobehavioral outcomes than infants cared for in the open baby NICU, as well as that medical and neurobehavioral differences between NICUs could be explained, in part, by developmental support, parenting factors and the adoption of family centered care."

Approximately 400 infants born weighing less than 1,500 grams were enrolled at Women & Infants Hospital -- 151 were cared for in an open bay NICU and 252 were cared for in the single family room NICU. The open bay data were collected consecutively over 18 months in 2008 and 2009 prior to the opening of the hospital's new NICU. After a three-month hiatus (no new patients were enrolled during the first three months in the new single family room NICU, and no patients were enrolled who were cared for in both settings), data were again collected consecutively over 31 months from 2010 to 2012 in the single family room NICU.

The results showed that the infants cared for in the single family room weighed more at discharge, had a greater rate of weight gain, required fewer medical procedures, and had a lower gestational age at full enteral feed and less sepsis. In addition, these infants showed better attention, less physiological stress, less hypertonicity, less lethargy, and less pain.

"What we found was that the single family room provides more opportunities to do things that improve outcomes, such as increased maternal involvement and increased developmental support," said Dr. Lester. "If you build a single-family room unit and do not change how you care for the babies, it would be unrealistic to expect to see any significant improvement."

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Research evaluates neurodevelomental, medical outcomes in single family room NICU

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Representatives of the Tumbleweed restaurant at Waterfront Park have been summoned to appear before a judge next week to answer its landlord's claim that the restaurant is $17,000 behind in rent.

The hearing set for Tuesday, Sept. 30, in Jefferson District Court -- is required before the landlord, Waterweed LLC, can force the restaurant to vacate the property.

UPDATE: Late Monday afternoon, Tumbleweed released a Sept. 16 letter from its attorney, Dennis Murrell, claiming that the restaurant has actually overpaid some $470,000 in rent "mistakenly" since 2009.

Tumbleweed has not been issued an order to vacate and the restaurant continues to operate as normal, said Rick Schardein, a spokesman for Louisville-based Tumbleweed, Inc., which has 29 restaurants.

Only a judge's order can force a tenant out of a property, said Deputy Ray Kaelin of the Jefferson County's Sheriff Office, which handles evictions in metro Louisville.

According to a petition filed Aug. 29 in district court by WaterWeed and CJ Austin LLC, Tumbleweed owes $17,000 for the month of August, plus $850 in late fees. The Aug. 29 petition resulted in the scheduling of the Sept. 30 hearing, according to the document.

Negotiations are ongoing, Schardein said Monday. Tumbleweed has made their position known to Waterfront (Development Corp.) and the attorneys for Waterweed.

As WDRB reported Sept. 9, Waterfront officials say Tumbleweed missed its quarterly payment to Waterfront for the April-June period. The restaurant pays a fixed amount to Waterweed its lender in the 2004 construction of the building and an additional 3.5 percent of its gross sales to the Waterfront agency.

Tumbleweed says the lease is too expensive and that the restaurant is not profitable. It wants better terms.

The alleged over-payment of rent stems from a 2009 adjustment in the lease that said the restaurant would only have to pay a percentage of any sales above $4 million annually, according to Burrell's analysis. The restaurant's sales have not exceeded $4 million in any year since the provision went into effect, yet the restaurant has been paying "percentage rent" by mistake, he wrote.

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Tumbleweed eviction case to go before judge next week

Robert Irvine. Yes, he really is that beefy. (Courtesy)

Theres another restaurant getting a makeover in our neck of the woods via Robert Irvine and his team behind Restaurant Impossible. This time around, Knife & Fork Gastropub (20626 Stone Oak Pkwy, Ste 103) will get a $10,000 makeover and there are ways you can be a part of it.

The grand re-opening is slated for Sunday, October 5 at 7 p.m. (although fans who witnessed the remodel of Mama Lees Soul Food at 6060 Montgomery) will remember the remodel ate up several hours into the evening). The general public can make reservations by calling Knife & Fork Gastropub @ (210) 497-7111.

But if youd rather be more hands on about change, Food Network has put out a call for volunteers to help remodel the space. Here are the deets on that:

We are looking for individuals to help with the renovation of the restaurant within the two days. Volunteers will be painting, crafting, construction, remodeling, cleaning, decorating etc. (depending on your skill set). Always looking for skilled contractors, electricians, plumbers and painters to help out and donate their time. The volunteer schedule is as follows:

Shift #1 Saturday, October 4: 1-8 pm

Shift #2 Saturday, October 4: 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Shift #3 Sunday, October 5th: 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Those interested in volunteering are encouraged to email associate producer Jayson (Rivolunteer@shootersinc.com, subject line FN 1002 TX Volunteer) by Friday, September 26th, 1:00pm, with preferred shift or shifts, full name, email address, cell number and skill set or related profession (ex: plumber or painter). Only those with an email confirmation can volunteer.

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Restaurant Impossible Returns to SA

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