Kevin Verhoff

Data + Observations

We Should have More State Legislators

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

Well, at least I’m pretty sure we should.

2020 is another census year, which means there will be some electoral shakeups around the country as fast-growing states gain members of Congress and slower-growing/declining states lose representatives. For almost 100 years now, we’ve had this fixed-pie system at the national level, where states could lose seats in Congress if they aren’t keeping up. But that wasn’t always the case. When the US constitution was adopted, the House of Representatives was meant to have 1 member for every 30,000 people. For today’s population, that would come out to more than 11,000 members of Congress. Sure, it might mean that we have 25 AOCs, but it would also mean 25 Jim Jordans! No thanks.

Clearly, capping the number of Congressional Representatives at some number is necessary. 11,000 members of Congress is probably untenable, and fivethirtyeight.com’s name would seem so quaint. There have been some calls to increase the size of the house, and there is some good research out there about what the optimal size of the legislature should be. TLDR: the number of representatives in the lower house should be the cube root of the entire population, so in the US, the House should have around 688 members.

But what about state legislatures? So much policy happens at the state level: healthcare, transportation, zoning, criminal justice, minimum wage as well as culture war issues like abortion, gun control, and drug laws. It seems like we should also consider what the right levels of representation is for our state legislatures is too.

I played around with the data, and found that some states have really high levels of representations (North Dakota and Vermont, but whoa New Hampshire!), while others have a lot of people per representative (California in particular, but also Texas and Florida). Others are just weird (why only one house Nebraska, and do you really think the state legislator is a non-partisan position?). Here in Ohio, I think there’s a decent argument for a larger legislative body but before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s dig in!

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Ohio’s Housing Crisis

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

Ratios of Housing to Jobs in parts of Ohio are as bad as the San Francisco Bay Area

Columbus homeowners have been celebrating news that their home values have skyrocketed in that last few years. The Columbus Dispatch in particular has been praising the local market, saying that homeowners are “sitting on a gold mine” as home values reach record highs. While praising current homeowners, the Dispatch had no problem blaming new home buyers for pushing up prices in affordable neighborhoods.

Honestly, I’m not interested in blaming anyone for the lack of affordability. It’s more important that we recognize that these soaring prices and lack of affordability are the first signs that we’re in a housing crisis. If we don’t address it, it will get worse. Lower-income folks are already feeling the impacts, and if we stay on our current trajectory, even more people are going to get left behind. The region will suffer for it. Before diving into the data, let’s take step back to examine why affordability is important and then take a look at just how bad it is here in parts of Ohio, particularly Central Ohio.

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How much should we pay public servants?

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

I’m suspicious of anyone who’s willing to do public service for well under the market value of their work. You should be too.

I got into an argument last week on twitter (I know, I’m really doing this wrong) about how much we should pay public employees. I had read about Mount Vernon’s Assistant Law Director who was making about $68,000 and how the city council was considering giving her a raise. She had received some better-paying offers in the private sector. Apparently she’s doing good work, because her boss wanted to give her the raise to ensure she stays around. Some of the members of city council were hesitant to pay her more though.

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Counterpoint – Let’s not Give Rich People a $30 Billion Gift

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

There’s been a lot of hype around the hyperloop here in Ohio lately. There are two separate efforts for a regional hyperloop between the Buckeye State and Chicago: in Columbus and in Cleveland. The effort in Cleveland is much further along in the process, having completed a feasibility study, and as a result, it’s getting a lot of attention (in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Chicago).

I’m not totally opposed to exploring hyperloop technology, and if Elon Musk and other private corporations want to spend money testing it out, I say, “go for it!”. However, I’m skeptical that the technology will be commercially viable, and for reasons I’ll outline below, I don’t think the state should spend a single dollar on it. At this point, the tech isn’t ready, and it may not be for another 20 years or more. Unfortunately, Cleveland is already investing money in it.

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What if the tea party had been blue?

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

In case you missed it, the rail map I made recently became somewhat famous. I’m calling that map draft #1 for now – there is more to come. Thanks again to everyone who shared feedback and support. For now I’m taking a break from transit to dig into another interest of mine: political maps. Who doesn’t love precinct-level data?

Gerrymandering is an incredible tool. It allows shrewd partisans to ensure that they don’t have to expend any effort convincing people that they should vote for them. It allows them to weaponize party loyalists to eliminate any influence of swing-voters (also known as people who can be swayed by good ideas and are trying to vote for the politician or policy idea that they think is best). Republicans have used gerrymandering across the country to ensure stable majorities in state legislatures and in the US House of Representatives.

2010 was a wave election year. Backlash against Barrack Obama and against the financial crisis led to historic gains for republicans everywhere. It was also a census year, which meant that political maps were being redrawn. Ohio swung from blue to red, giving republicans a once-in-a-decade opportunity to tilt the field in their favor until the next census. But what if it hadn’t happened that way? What if, instead, the democrats had the wave in 2010? What could Ohio look like?

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How to pay for awesome public transit

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

It’s not that we don’t have money for it. It’s that it’s not a priority.

Last week, I posted a fantasy transit map for the state of Ohio. The reception of the map on twitter was surprising. Honestly, I thought that like four nerds would be interested in it, but apparently it struck a chord. I was blown away by the comments, which were overwhelmingly positive. A lot of folks said things like, ” This is AMAZING. I’d move back to OH.” or “Greatest idea ever” (while I appreciate the sentiment, that can’t possibly be true – peanut butter and chocolate is clearly the greatest idea ever.). One of the responses that really stuck out was: “This would change my life.” There were actually quite a few of those.

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Crazy Idea: Let’s build a Rail Network in Ohio!

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

I generally don’t like the idea of cars. They are highly inefficient, they take up a ton of space, and they cost a lot of money. I’d much rather ride a bike or take a train or bus where I can read while traveling. Nonetheless, we have two cars in my family, and I’d really like to get rid of at least one of them. The trouble is, it’s basically impossible to do so in Ohio, unless you live in Cleveland, Columbus, or Cincinnati, and even then, you’d have to pay a pretty significant time price because of less-than-good public transit, although Columbus has been getting better. Ohio spends ridiculous amounts of money on highways, including the $153 million South Side Mega Fix (which I doubt will actually fix anything because it’s likely to induce more demand, but that’s a separate post).

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2020 Ohio Elections: The 2016 and 2018 Ohio Senate races

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

Welcome to part 2 of my little exploration of 2020 Ohio Elections. If you’re looking for part 1, which covers Ohio House races, you can find it here. Today, we’ll dig into Ohio’s 2016 and 2018 Senate races, and explore whether democrats will be able to win some seats in the upcoming 2020 races.

The map below displays Senate races for the last two Ohio Senate elections. Since Senators in Ohio have 4-year terms, half of the Senate is elected every 2 years. In 2020, 16 Senate seats are up for grabs and the Democrats hold 2, so the good news is that there are 14 seats that Democrats could potentially go after.

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2020 Ohio Elections: A look back to 2018 House races

Posted on by kevin.verhoff

With a year to go before the 2020 elections, it’s a good time to dig into what it will take for democrats to flip some of the seats in the Ohio General Assembly and more importantly why we should care about flipping them.

There’s been some ink spilled lately about whether or not Ohio is still a swing state. I think it is. Ohio definitely leans slightly conservative, but it wasn’t that long ago that Ohioans voted for a democrat for president and we had a democratic governor. In the 2018 election, just over 50% of Ohioans voted for current republican governor Mike Dewine, with just under 47% voted for democrat Rich Cordray.

But, looking at the state legislature, you’d guess that Ohio is more republican strongholds Alabama or Mississippi than our swing state neighbors Pennsylvania or Michigan. Check it out:

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