Five things you need to know today, and our city's wonderful new gay rights rating

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Rob Daumeyer

Editor- Cincinnati Business Courier

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Good morning, Cincinnati! Apologies in advance today if I seem sad. I rarely have happy dreams, but even when I do there's a grim twist: I dreamt last night that my wife won the TV show "Survivor." Yea! Let's go mansion shopping! But … she wanted to give half of the $1 million prize to her mother and a quarter to her brother. I reminded her the taxman would take half, so the prize was $500,000. So after the lovely family gifts, the Daumeyer clan would take home $175,000. Great, but not really a life changer. But she was steadfast and I woke up.

(Sigh)

Here are the five things you need to know to help start your busy business day:

Portune floats plan to balance Hamilton County budget

It's dead in the water, but in an attempt to square Hamilton County's 2015 budget Commissioner Todd Portune wants to raise Hamilton County's sales tax by 0.25 percent for five years and eliminate two property tax levies. The county's family services and hospital property tax levies would be eliminated under the proposal. But the two other commissioners, Greg Hartmann and Chris Monzel, said they won't back a sales tax increase and that enough money can be scraped together to fund county services for another year without a tax increase.

5 Ways to Fit Exercise Into Your Day: A sponsored message from The Christ Hospital Health Network.

Assurex plans for new HQ

Fast-growing Assurex Health needs a new headquarters and will decide by the end of the year exactly where that will be. Now based in Mason, Assurex makes personalized drug testing products and expects to double it's workforce to about 460 within two years, thanks in part to a recent decision by Medicare to cover the cost Assurex tests. Where will the company end up? CEO Gina Drosos said it has proposals from four other states, but here's the money quote: "We are good listeners and open minded and have a lot of choices, but we are biased toward Mason."

Daumeyer oversees the Courier's editorial department.