Sen. Bernie Moreno 'slams' Columbus Mayor Ginther for Ghanaian nursing plan – WSYX

Sen. Bernie Moreno ‘slams’ Columbus Mayor Ginther for Ghanaian nursing plan  WSYX

U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno is calling out Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther on Wednesday, demanding the city pull the plug on an agreement to recruit healthcare workers from overseas so that the money may be re-allocated to American workers. At issue is the Ghana-Columbus Nursing Partnership Programme, signed Sept. 15 under the city’s sister-city relationship with the Greater Accra Region. Ginther backed the move as a practical fix for local hospital staffing shortages, but Moreno called it a misuse of municipal tax dollars. You were elected to serve the citizens of Columbus, not the citizens of Ghana,” Moreno (R-Ohio) wrote in a letter delivered on Oct. 28. “Increasing publicly subsidized foreign nursing recruitment programs will likely negatively impact American nurses’ wages.

Moreno criticized $225,000 tied to the program and alleged Ginther has funneled roughly $8.3 million toward noncitizens and overseas initiatives while in office. Pointing to local nursing pipelines at Ohio State, Capital University, Kent State, and the University of Cincinnati, Moreno argued City Hall should invest in expanding domestic classroom seats rather than importing talent from abroad. Instead of investing in Ohio’s domestic workforce, you and the Columbus City Council chose to direct $225,000 in public dollars towards recruiting nurses from overseas rather than expanding the capacity of Ohio’s own outstanding nursing programs," Moreno writes. "But this figure is only