• Exceeds monthly tax revenue estimate by $41M
• Prepares to pay off the Unemployment Insurance loan

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has urged churches, employers, labor unions and other agencies to partner vaccine providers to hold closed-pod covid vaccination clinics, just as the state’s tax revenues exceeded the monthly estimate by $41miilion.

“Beginning Monday, April 12, 2021, vaccine providers may partner with other organizations, such as employers, labor unions, churches, etc., to hold closed-pod vaccination clinics with these organizations,” said Governor Mike DeWine.

“We continue to encourage employers and other organizations to reach out to their local health departments and vaccine providers to set up these vaccination clinics. Vaccine providers and local health departments should also be proactive in contacting local employers as well.”

Also, Governor DeWine promised to “continue to encourage health depts to reach out to local high schools to help set up vaccinations for eligible students who want to be vaccinated. This week we also began providing vaccines to providers that are partnering with colleges/universities.”

On the state’s economy, Governor DeWine said “a strong post-pandemic economy directly depends on defeating the virus. And as we are working hard to vaccinate Ohioans, we are seeing good signs in our economy as well.”

“Our state revenues are recovering as well. This month, Ohio’s tax revenues exceeded the monthly estimate by $41 million, or 2.6%, and remain 4.3% above the estimate for the fiscal year-to-date. This is a dramatic improvement from one year ago at the onset of the pandemic.”

“And using federal dollars strategically to shore up our unemployment system – along with long-term actions to stabilize that system – will continue our strong year of recovery.”

He recommended to the General Assembly that “we use a portion of our federal COVID relief and recovery dollars to pay off the Unemployment Insurance loan owed to the federal government.

This loan was caused by the global pandemic.”

“Paying this off now will free Ohio employers from this burden so they can instead focus on getting employees across our state back to work. This will help small businesses across our state and their employees.”

Meanwhile, Governor DeWine revealed that the coronavirus “variant counts jumped from 92 on March 12 to 797 today. That’s a doubling time of about every 9-10 days. Ohio remains in a very important race against the virus and its variants. We can win the race if we continue to press on with consistent masking and getting the vaccine.”