After years of increasing grumbling among some of the party’s rank-and-file members, Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Burke will face a challenger for his post later this spring.

Darren Tolliver, the party’s treasurer who also served as treasurer for candidate Brian Garry in his 2007 Cincinnati City Council race, told precinct executives this week he would seek the chairmanship.

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At least one person who used to be close to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her family believes he knows why the prickly ex-vice presidential candidate is resigning before her gubernatorial term is completed.

Levi Johnston, the former boyfriend of Sarah Palin’s daughter and the father of her grandchild, said the governor wants to cash in on the lucrative deals being offered to her, including ones for a book and a reality TV show. Johnston, 19, held a press conference Thursday to give his views on the situation, according to an Associated Press article.

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The New York Times is reporting today that Sarah Palin has been hired by Fox News to be a regular contributor to the cable news channel.

Uh, didn’t she work there already? This is like reporting “Dog bites man.”

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Local subscribers to Time Warner and Insight cable woke up today without access to WLWT-TV (Channel 5) after the station and companies failed to reach a new retransmission agreement. Instead, the cable companies offered Channel 2 from NBC affiliate Terre Haute, Ind. The Enquirer is all over the story, reporting that Todd Dykes and Lisa Cooney in the morning were replaced by someone named Dada Winklepleck in Wabash Valley, Ind. Don’t worry: 30 Rock will still be on your new local Indiana station. Visit mywabashvalley.com for further details about additional programming. Or you can just hook up an antennae and get WLWT in hi-def for free. 

Anyone in the market for a school building? Cincinnati Public Schools is adding four closed buildings to a for-sale list in an attempt to raise the capital necessary to complete an overhaul of its in-use buildings as part of its Facilities Master Plan. The new buildings on the list are Central Fairmount, Kirby Road, North Fairmount and Old Shroder schools. 

Ohio brought in $23.5 million during the first seven weeks of legalized gambling in the state. 

Mitt Romney says he’s not hiding anything in his offshore accounts. The proof: He doesn’t even know where they are, so they’re technically hidden from him, too.

Barack Obama is in Iowa apparently setting up an issue on which to debate Romney later this fall. Obama is pitching an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for households earning less than $250,000, while Romney wants to extend them for rich people, too. 

The FDA went against the advice of an expert panel, deciding not to require mandatory training for doctors prescribing long-acting narcotic painkillers that can lead to addiction. 

Three-hundred-square-foot apartments in New York City? Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked developers yesterday to try to make them work.

City planners envision a future in which the young, the cash-poor and empty nesters flock to such small dwellings — each not much bigger than a dorm room. In a pricey real estate market where about one-third of renter households spend more than half their income on rent, it could make housing more affordable.

Droughts in 18 states have made the price of corn go up, and the soybeans are hurting a little bit, too.

Sitting less adds two years to U.S. life expectancy. 

A new study found that babies are healthier when there are dogs in their homes.

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game will take place tonight in Kansas City. The Reds’ Joey Votto is a starter, while Jay Bruce and Aroldis Chapman are also likely to play. 

A new study has found high levels of arsenic in fruit juices that millions of kids are drinking because there's pictures of actual food on the label. Too bad government regulation is just a big waste of money that hurts the economy.

A full 10 percent of the juices tested by the magazine had arsenic levels higher than what is allowed in water by the Food and Drug Administration.

“What we’re talking about here is not acute affects,” Urvashi Rangan, director of safety and sustainability at Consumer Reports, told TODAY. “We’re talking about chronic effects. We’re talking about cancer risk. And so, the fact that 10 percent of our samples exceeded the drinking water standard underscores the need for a standard to be set in juices.”

Consumer Reports tested 88 samples of apple and grape juices sold around the country. Included among those tested were popular juices like Minute Maid, Welch’s and Tropicana.

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Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi TV news reporter, was sentenced this week to three years in prison for throwing his shoe at then-President George W. Bush during a visit to Baghdad in December.

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In the first of three debates for Ohio’s seat in the U.S. Senate, Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown and Republican challenger Josh Mandel agreed on little and clashed on a lot. Each candidate mostly focused on the opposing candidate's record, but the debate today did move to substantial differences in policy at some points.

The debate started with opening statements from a noticeably feisty Brown, who criticized Mandel for calling his vote for the auto bailout “un-American.” On the other side of the aisle, Mandel began his opening statement with a joke about shaving before he turns 36. The joke was the last time either of the men spoke with a light heart.

The candidates blasted each other mostly for their records. Mandel touted Ohio's and the nation’s higher unemployment rate since Brown took office in 2006, energy prices and the U.S. debt. He also said the Senate had not passed a budget in three years, although Congress has actually passed budget resolutions in that time.

Brown fired back with claims Mandel had filled the state treasurer’s office with cronies. He also criticized Mandel for running for four different political offices in seven years. In his closing statement, Brown said Mandel is “too concerned about running for his next job” to be trusted.

On substance, Brown and Mandel criticized just about everything about each other. Brown claimed Mandel signed away his “right to think” by agreeing to lobbyist Grover Norquist’s pledge to not raise taxes while in office. He said the pledge makes it so if Mandel does take office, he’ll never be able to close tax loopholes for big corporations.

Mandel defended the pledge by saying, “I’m proud to stand for lower taxes in our state and lower taxes in our country.” He added, “I will do everything I can to advocate for lower taxes across the board for the middle class and job creators as well.”

The term “job creators” is typically used in politics to reference wealthy Americans, who Republicans claim create jobs through the theory of trickle-down economics. The economic theory states that wealthy Americans will hire more lower-class Americans if they have more money and freedom, essentially creating a trickle-down effect on wealth from the rich to the poor. Although Republicans still tout the theory, some economists, including Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, say the financial crisis of 2008 and the deregulation that led to it prove trickle-down economics do not work.

The candidates also debated their positions on the auto bailout. Mandel said he would not have voted for the auto bailout if he was in the Senate in 2009. In his defense, he cited the experience of Delphi workers, who lost part of their pensions as part of the deal auto companies made with workers after the federal bailout. Mandel then said, “I’m not a bailout senator. He’s the bailout senator.”

Brown responded by saying, “These are real jobs and real people.” He then cited examples of people helped by the growing auto industry. Brown’s arguments are backed by economic data, which has repeatedly credited the growing auto industry for the nation’s growing economy. In the first quarter of 2012, the auto industry was credited for half of the nation’s economic growth.

When he was asked about higher education, Brown established the key difference between the candidates in terms of economic policy. Brown said his policies in favor of government investment in higher education are about supporting the middle class to create growth that starts in the middle and spreads out, while Mandel supports tax cuts that emphasize a trickle-down approach. Mandel did not deny the claims, and instead blamed Brown’s policies for the high unemployment rate and debt issues.

The men continued to show similar contrasts on the budget, taxes and economy throughout the entire debate, but there seemed to be some common ground regarding energy independence. When the topic came to hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — Brown said becoming energy independent would have to involve all possible energy sources. In substance, Mandel agreed, although he also praised fracking regulations recently passed by the Ohio legislature and Gov. John Kasich.

As far as energy issues go, the agreement stopped there. When Brown was asked about President Barack Obama's alleged “war on coal,” Brown said there was no war on coal and claimed there are more coal jobs and coal produced in Ohio than there were five years ago. Mandel disagreed and claimed there is a war on coal. He added if Obama is the general in the war on coal, Brown is Obama's “lieutenant.” Brown previously supported federal regulations on mercury that some in the coal industry, including the Ohio Coal Association, claim will force coal-fired power plants to shut down. The regulations go into effect in 2015.

On abortion, Mandel proudly claimed he was pro-life, while Brown said, “Unlike Josh Mandel, I trust Ohio women to make their own health care decisions.” Brown also criticized Mandel for not establishing exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother in his anti-abortion stance.

Many more issues, from term limits to Middle Eastern culture, were covered in the debate. The candidates drew sharp contrasts in all these areas with Brown typically holding the liberal position and Mandel typically holding the conservative position. But despite the feisty language and deep policy contrasts, when the debate ended, the candidates smiled, shook hands and patted each other on the back. They will meet again in Columbus on Thursday and Cincinnati on Oct. 25.

A plan proposed by a Cincinnati City Council majority to avoid job layoffs in exchange for concessions has been approved by two out of three labor unions.

The two unions — the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and Cincinnati Organized and Dedicated Employees (CODE) — have accepted the deal. Members of a third union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), are still voting and expect a decision later today.

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Rising gasoline prices, and not political ideology, is the reason that area United Dairy Farmers stores stopped carrying The New York Times, a corporate spokesman insists.

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Ohio’s inspector general released a report today criticizing the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) for improperly reimbursing federal stimulus funds to hired organizations that did not follow rules.

In a statement, Inspector General Randall Meyer’s office said ODJFS “failed to adequately oversee federal grant funds applied to the Constructing Futures jobs training initiative for Central Ohio.”

The report released by Meyer’s office today, which focused on stimulus programs in central Ohio, outlined a few instances of ODJFS failing to oversee proper standards. In total, the department, which was put in charge of carrying out job training funds in Ohio from the stimulus package President Barack Obama signed into law in 2009, wrongly reimbursed companies it hired for $51,700.81.

In central Ohio, ODJFS hired two organizations to carry out the job training program, or Workforce Investment Act: Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (ABC) and Construction Trades Networks (CTN). At ABC, the inspector general found limited problems with faulty reimbursements involving a newspaper subscription, travel and mileage totaling less than $100. The money was not accounted for as a questionable cost since it was so small.

However, at CTN, the faulty reimbursements piled up. The organization was reimbursed $560.61 for phone calls made prior to being hired as part of the federal grant. It was also reimbursed $1,613.62 for its invoices, even though documentation was not provided to link phone calls as necessary to the grant program.

Under the federal stimulus rules, CTN was required to provide 25 percent of its own funds for the program. CTN planned on using $91,800 of in-kind funds — payment that isn’t cash — by paying for trainee wages. The organization paid $60,927.70 by the end of the grant period, and the organization was reimbursed for $49,526.64 by ODJFS, even though the charges were supposed to be carried by CTN. The inspector general requested CTN give the money back to ODJFS.

When the inspector general contacted the organization to explain the findings, CTN attributed the requests for faulty reimbursements to confusion caused by multiple administrative changes at ODJFS.

“In addition, monitoring visits by ODJFS were not conducted until after the grant period expired, even though the partnerships were told the visits would occur as grant activities were underway,” the report said.

Meyer’s office concluded ODJFS should review the questioned costs, work to keep consistent guidelines through administrative changes and monitor grant funds during the grant period.

The full inspector general report can be found here.

A report was released for northwestern Ohio was released on May 10, and it also found wrongdoing. It can be found here. A report for stimulus programs in southwestern Ohio will be released later.

ODJFS could not be immediately provide comment on the report. This story will be updated if comments become available.

UPDATE (3:28 P.M.): Benjamin Johnson, spokesperson for ODJFS, provided a comment shortly after this story was published.

“As the report mentions, these were expenditures by local entities, not by the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services,” he says. “We appreciate the inspector general bringing this to our attention, and we'll work to resolve the matter.”