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Home > Blogs > Ohio politics > Archives > 2008 > April > 14
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sick Leave Advocates Call Hearing a “Sham”
Backers of a bill to require that Ohio workers be able to earn seven paid sick days a year say a hearing scheduled Tuesday, April 15, on the proposal is “little more than a sham.”
“I am very disappointed in Speaker (Jon) Husted,” said Dale Butland, spokesman for Ohioans for Healthy Families, the group backing the bill. “This is not the kind of good faith effort we expected out of him.”
Husted said the group was given just 24 hours notice of the 1 p.m. hearing before the House Commerce and Labor Committee. This didn’t give them time to prepare and arrange for key witnesses to testify, said Butland.
Karen Stivers, spokeswoman for Husted, R-Kettering, called the “sham” charge “not true at all.” Backers of the bill first complained that the House was moving too slowly and now complains that things are moving too quickly, Stivers said.
The group put the bill before the legislature by turning in petitions with more than the required 120,863 signatures from registered voters. If the legislature doesn’t act on the bill by May 8, the group can gather an additional 120,863 valid signatures to put the plan before voters in the November election.
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Grassroots group to DOE: Shame on you
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability - a network of organizations that opposes new nuclear weapons production and advocates a speedier cleanup - took the Department of Energy to task Monday, saying that when it sped up cleanup of the former Mound, Fernald and Rocky Flats nuclear sites, it broke a promise to spend extra money on cleanup of other former nuclear sites.
In 1998, according to Gerry Pollett, executive director of Heart of America Northwest Seattle, the energy department cut a deal with other nuclear sites to concentrate on the trio of sites - two in Ohio, one in Colorado - in exchange for the promise of additional federal expenditures when those sites were clean. Instead, he said, the Department of Energy spent that money on new nuclear proposals and “decelerated” cleanup of the other sites after they’d finished work on the three sites.
That decision helped to score the department an “F” on funding environmental obligations, according to the ANA.
The group is heavily critical of the Bush administration’s nuclear policies, including the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which Congress de-funded last year.
But it’s not critical of all Republicans: Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield, along with Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., the ranking member and chair of the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, will receive an award for their work bucking the administration’s nuke policies Tuesday night.
“They exhibited extraordinary leadership in challenging the DOE’s budget,” said Susan Gordon, director of the Alliance
