Thursday, July 23rd, 2026

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On this day in 2021, Cleveland's Major League Baseball team announced it would become the Cleveland Guardians, retiring the "Indians" name it had carried for more than a century.

A second filth-ridden home tied to the family of 16 rescued children turns up in Gallia County, and expiring work permits for Springfield's Haitian workers could trigger a labor shortage. Read both in the Top of the Fold.

Plus, Grove City voters will get the final say on big developments this November, and we look at what the charter amendment would actually change.

GALLIA COUNTY — The Siders family, charged after 16 "almost feral" children were removed from a Vinton County house, previously lived in a Gallia County home that a renovator described as covered in human and pet waste, with children's clothes stashed in the attic as if someone had been living there. 

The four family members each face 16 counts of endangering children following the June 30 warrant in Hamden that led authorities to the children, most of them confined to a cramped, feces-littered room.

SPRINGFIELD — Federal work authorization for Haitian immigrants with Temporary Protected Status is expiring this month, after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to wind down the program. 

Employers and community leaders in Springfield, home to an estimated 12,000 Haitian residents, worry the change will hit the city's manufacturing and warehouse workforce hard.

valid signatures it needed to reach this November's ballot, so organizers say they'll keep collecting and aim for 2027. 

Local leaders warn that scrapping the tax, which brings in about $24 billion a year for schools, police, fire and roads, would leave townships in a bind because they can't charge income or sales taxes to make up the difference.

GROVE CITY — A charter amendment requiring a citywide vote on large industrial projects has qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, the Franklin County Board of Elections confirmed, after backers turned in 1,581 valid signatures — above the 1,138 required.

Protect Grove City organizer Jen Belt, whose group formed to fight a roughly 300-acre data center proposed off Rensch Road, says the goal is to give residents a say before big projects move forward. "It's not blocking growth," she said.

Belt lives outside the city, so isn't a Grove City voter. At the city's May 4 council meeting, she gave her home address as being in Orient, in Pleasant Township — meaning she can't cast a ballot on the measure she's helping put before Grove City residents.

The amendment would also change how the city handles new development. Today, council can approve a big project on its own. Under the amendment, any rezoning, annexation, or development request would face a threshold test, and a project of 50 or more acres, more than 20 megawatts of peak power, or more than 500,000 gallons of water a day would be flagged "heavy industrial."

From there, no zoning or permit could follow until voters approved it at the ballot. The developer would fund that election, and a "no" would block a similar project for two years. Approved projects would face permanent noise, light and vibration limits, quarterly reporting and fines up to $500,000 a day.

Protect Grove City says the measure blocks nothing — big projects can still go forward; voters just get the final word. Existing businesses are grandfathered, though a future major expansion, at a site like Walmart's distribution center, would trigger its own vote. The group says the Mount Carmel hospital campus, though larger than 50 acres, is exempt as a medical facility.

Big Ten media days open next week, which means millions of Ohioans will soon turn their attention back to the Buckeyes. What they're returning to is a sport still arguing over its own rules, regulations and a bunch of unanswered questions — one that dominates fall Saturdays but can't quite govern itself.

Since name, image and likeness pay arrived in 2021, athletic spending has taken off. Football coaching pay alone jumped more than 18% in NIL's first year, and schools have been forced to hand over a slice of revenue directly to players.

In Washington, the fix keeps stalling. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas — who's called the transfer-portal churn gutting rosters "an absolute crisis" — teamed with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, on the Protect College Sports Act, which cleared the Senate Commerce Committee 19-9 and awaits a full Senate vote. An earlier House bill, the SCORE Act, died first. 

Continue reading the editorial here.

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