Ohio cuts expected costs for ballot issue printing

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An offi­cial says it will cost Ohio less than expected to adver­tise the three statewide bal­lot issues in news­pa­pers this fall because of a change in the process.

The Colum­bus Dis­patch (http://bit.ly/pGebhY ) reports the state con­sti­tu­tion requires the full bal­lot issues to be printed in daily news­pa­pers three times ahead of the election.

The chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at the Sec­re­tary of State’s office told a spend­ing over­sight panel that the state turned to an affil­i­ate of the Ohio News­pa­per Asso­ci­a­tion called AdO­hio instead of nego­ti­at­ing with each pub­li­ca­tion. He says that means dis­trib­ut­ing the 60-page insert will cost $2.1 mil­lion instead of the esti­mated $4.5 million.

Most of that is for print­ing the new 300-page law that lim­its col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing for pub­lic work­ers and is the focus of Issue 2.

Posted by AP News on Sep 30 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.