From Business First:

Port Columbus International Airport had the busiest June in its history as passenger traffic surged 19 percent, boosted by new airlines.

The airport reported that passenger traffic topped 725,000 last month, compared with 608,890 in June a year ago. Port Columbus saw 3.6 million passengers in the first half of the year, a 12 percent increase over the same period in 2006. More than 60 percent of that traffic was just in June.

Airport spokeswoman Angie Tabor said the record-high passenger traffic can be partly attributed to the addition of JetBlue… in October 2006 and Skybus… in May 2007. Midwest Airlines… also added service to Hartford, Conn., in early 2007, months after Southwest Airlines Co. expanded to additional markets, Tabor said. She added that Southwest… is expected to announce additional flights in November.

Good news for Columbus, bad news for Gaia.

Ohio has some of the worst identity-theft protections in the country.

James Moyer, a privacy and identity-theft consultant who has testified before the Ohio Senate, said allowing searches by Social Security number is common in Ohio but not in other states. Yet Ohio lawmakers seem uncomfortable with telling court clerks how to control public information, Moyer said.

Ohio must simply stop publishing or releasing people’s Social Security numbers. I don’t care if a few court clerks get offended.

The Hamilton County clerk of courts began blocking online access to traffic tickets, which contain Social Security numbers, last year after a woman admitted stealing 100 identities and $500,000, often by logging onto the government Web site.

A big deal is made over a million SSN’s getting stolen, but until recently it was Ohio policy to just give that information away? That’s kind of insane, isn’t it?

Do you think maybe a bit too much is being made of a simple purchase of land from Ohio to Columbus? I don’t (just) mean the blogger.

“One of my favorite things about this project was how everyone came together,” said Senator Stivers (R-16), who sponsored the budget bill measure allowing the property to be sold. “We worked as a team for a common goal and walked away with a success. It’s a model of how bipartisanship can work, and work well.”

“This is an investment in public safety and we appreciate the State of Ohio for helping us find such a perfect, central location to make the new home of the Police heliport,” said Mayor Coleman. “By moving our existing heliport to the Hilltop, we are also making way for new investment and economic development at the Gowdy site, where hundreds of new jobs are coming into the City.”

“I want to thank everyone who was involved in identifying this site and helping the City of Columbus put it to good use,” said Councilmember Hearcel F. Craig. “This is a great example of inter-government cooperation that will benefit two of the City’s major priorities: public safety in the form of a new location for a modernized heliport, and economic development opportunities by freeing up space at the Gowdy site.”

I mean it’s nice that the transaction took place, but people buy and sell land every day without making it out to be akin to the second coming. But I guess it’s politicians’ natural instinct to look around for praise every time they tie their own shoes.

RetroMetro has a press release from Mayor Coleman’s office:

Based on the Steering Committee’s recommendation, the City is investing $150,000 to hire national streetcar expert HDR Inc. and Capitol South, who will produce a specific financing plan on how Streetcars can be built and operated using a mix of private sector funding with federal, state, and local investment. The plan expected to be completed in approximately six month. For more information on Downtown Streetcars, visit, www.downtowncolumbus.com and click on Streetcars.

Investment is a nice progressive word for taxes of course. Here’s HDR’s website.

Underducky at columbusING has a big post on streetcars today:

There is a great deal of debate about who should pay for a huge project like a streetcar system (not to mention a huger project like light rail). Shitloads of people who pay their Columbus taxes won’t get a whole hell of a lot from a dinky little streetcar like the one proposed for Columbus – at least according to the numbers. Rob from the ‘suburbs’, another responder to my previous rant about Bill Todd’s dickish behavior and flower hating, is profoundly concerned that the Short North is getting all the good shit from the City, and that the outlying areas are getting the shaft while being expected to foot the bill. Yeah, he’s right, but if no one pays for it, we’re all fucked.

Language. But it’s an interesting topic. Should taxpayers in outlying areas of Columbus shoulder part of the cost of this YP paradise the city wants to put in place, of which streetcars are a part? Property values within 2 blocks of the streetcar are supposed to go up. Should the working class pay taxes for this item and help the rich get richer? Or will the benefits that accrue to those who already own property downtown or in German Village and the Short North trickle down to those who don’t?

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sent out a bunch of demand letters to several universities, including OSU. The group asked the unis to forward the letters to the correct students, because the RIAA doesn’t know the names- they only have IP addresses. OSU forwarded the letters, which demand $3000 or promise a lawsuit. The RIAA didn’t send any to Harvard, though. Here’s OSU guy Corey Spring on why:

There is one university that was suspiciously and (apparently) deliberately left off the RIAA hit list: Harvard.

Why? Because, as Slashdot notes, Harvard told the RIAA to take a hike, literally.

Not particularly nice of OSU to cave to the RIAA and slap these demand letters on its students. Here’s NBC4i’s coverage, which misses all this.

OPENERS:

Ohio will lose two congressional seats when the [US] House of Representatives is reapportioned after the 2010 Census, National Journal magazine predicts in its current issue. The magazine says the redistribution of House of Representative seats will likely result in Republican pickups around the country, although the degree will hinge on whether Ohio is controlled by Republicans or Democrats in 2010.

Using the non-partisan data-gathering firm Polidata’s projections of population gains and losses in 2010, the magazine projects that Texas will gain four congressional seats, Arizona and Florida will both gain two seats, and Georgia, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington will each gain one seat.

How those two seats are gotten rid of depends on who controls the Ohio House and Senate in 2010. Also at Writes Like She Talks.

Business First has a report on Columbus’s unemployment rate:

The June unemployment rate for Columbus hit its highest point in two years, but stayed below all other major Ohio cities, new data indicate.

Statistics released by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services show Columbus had a 5.4 percent non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in June, slightly higher than Franklin County’s 5.3 percent, but below the state’s overall 6.1 percent, Ohio’s highest rate in more than two years.

Here’s my post on the state rise.

E.J. Dionne interviewed Governor Strickland for the Washington Post:

Substantively, Strickland says the economy matters most, although he has been a strong opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning. “The foreclosure problem is huge,” Strickland says. “The people are desperate for jobs.” He sees health care and education as central — they were the key issues in his recent budget. These questions “ought to give Democrats a leg up,” but only if they can “talk about these things in a way that gets people to believe you will do something about them.”

There’s the rub for Democrats in 2008. Voters want government to work but aren’t sure that it can. They want government to solve problems but worry that it won’t. This creates a strategic paradox: Democrats need to discredit Bush’s government without discrediting government altogether.

(Via Plunderbund.)

From the Dispatch:

Columbus kicked off planning this afternoon for its 200th birthday, a celebration Mayor Michael B. Coleman said will follow a 4½-year effort to improve virtually every aspect of life in the city.

At a news conference outside City Hall, Coleman named 31 members of a newly created 2012 Commission, which will host meetings in every part of Columbus before issuing a bicentennial blueprint next May.

City officials then plan to ask voters to approve a bond package in November 2008 to fund the projects aimed at improving neighborhoods, transportation, safety and other areas by the 2012 bicentennial.

“We must dream it, but we also must do it,” Coleman said.

“We are not a cow town, we are a great town; 2012 will be the first year of our renaissance.”

RetroMetro has the Commission and focus group members listed here.

Extra bonus: Columbuser.com’s 2012 Commission OhioWiki page.