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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > June > 25
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Editorial: Targeting vulnerable is wrong budget fix
It’s a moment of truth for Ohio’s government.
The Legislature and Gov. Ted Strickland are supposed to agree on a two-year budget before Wednesday. The world won’t come to an end if they don’t; they can work out something temporary. But that would prolong the agony, foster a sense of dysfunction, further upset the people who set Ohio’s credit ratings and get Ohio compared to floundering California.
The task at hand is not easy. When lawmakers unanimously agreed upon a two-year, $52 billion budget two years ago, it was widely hailed as the most conservative in a long time. Yet it has been cut three times since then, by almost $2 billion, as state revenues have nosedived.
Meanwhile, though, demands on the state were increasing, as more people lost jobs, stopped paying taxes and started needing various forms of aid, such as Medicaid.
The federal stimulus has helped, but the fiscal problems are intense, not only here, but in states across the country.
When Gov. Strickland submitted his new two-year spending plan, he assumed more decline in revenues. The House and the Senate have each passed their own budgets. But now the governor’s budget people say another $3.2 billion must come out of the $54 billion budget, because of worsening revenue projections.
The governor proposes raising maybe $900 million by allowing slot machines at horse racing tracks. The rest of the shortfall would be made up with spending cuts.
The list of cuts is highly focused on whatever the governor hasn’t made big promises about. He has promised to improve higher education and hold down tuition. He’s promised to upgrade Ohio’s K-12 schools. So the cuts are generally elsewhere.
Libraries take a historic hit of 30 percent, on top of a recent 20 percent loss in state money. The impact is particularly huge for those libraries — most in the state — that get all their funding from the state.
There’s a 17 percent cut for the Department of Mental Heath. The state support for preschool education would be eliminated. The program to prevent abuse of seniors and children would be cut by 70 percent. A youth services facility would close.
Various scholarships would go away, with private trade schools being hit particularly hard. Medicaid would curtail paying for over-the-counter drugs. State money to fund public defenders would be reduced by 40 percent. There’s much more.
The list is appalling. The Legislature should be less concerned with the governor’s previous commitments and more concerned with protecting the most vulnerable people, who have already been hit hard by cuts in the current budget, as by changes in the economy.
Even libraries, to some degree, should be seen in that light. Some have excellent collections and facilities. But many are places for poor children to go to read, or for children whose parents won’t buy them books. And they’re places for people to go who need jobs. Job-seekers can use the computers and can search for information available about salable skills and how to attain them.
Clearly, too, the state needs to raise more money. However, the Strickland proposal on slot machines is a last-minute desperation concoction that ignores too much and is, some think, too optimistic about the money that would be raised.
If Ohio is to suddenly allow something that would be an awful lot like casino gambling after voters have turned down casino gambling four times, it ought not do so suddenly, under such pressure.
A far better way to raise revenue: suspend the last year of a phased-in 21 percent cut in the state income tax. That would raise about as much as the Strickland people project from the slots.
Too, a 75-cents-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes could raise about a half-billion, while leaving Ohio in the mainstream on such taxes (at $2 a pack, same as Michigan), and also reducing the number of people who smoke. (Studies are conclusive about that.)
The Legislature needs to be creative about both revenue and spending. A half-cent increase in the sales tax could raise more than $1 billion. It could be made temporary, for this economic crisis.
Serious tax increases could work against the impact of the federal effort to get people and companies spending — the stimulus. But a half-cent sales tax is not likely to affect many plans or decisions.
At any rate, spending cuts could undermine the stimulus, too.
The politicians in Ohio have to get past their silly game on taxes, wherein nobody wants to go first in proposing them.
Ohio has a combination of tough decisions to make. It does not have an insolvable problem. The right guidelines:
Flexibility; spreading the economic burden; sharing the political responsibility; and protecting the most vulnerable.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Higher Ed, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Social Services
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Map drawing reform could help local Democrats, though it should be a wash statewide
It looks like local Democrats could get a break if the state adopts a nonpartisan approach to the drawing of congressional districts.
By definition, of course, a reformed system would have to treat the parties equally statewide. Any break the Democrats got in what is now Republican Mike Turner’s district would likely result in the Republicans getting a break elsewhere.
Still, this seems to be true: if a reformed system had been in place in 2001, the district that includes Dayton would be more winnable for the Democrats (though maybe not enough for them to beat Turner, who is strong).
As it is, the district went slightly for John McCain in 2008, indicating it’s pretty seriously Republican.
Percolating in Columbus is an effort to radically change the system for drawing districts in Ohio. The current system leaves the politicians completely in charge, functioning under very few rules.
Sometimes that means that one party is in complete control; sometimes (only as to congressional districts, not state legislature districts), it means the two parties have to work something out. Either way, political calculations prevail.
Some reformers decided to see what happens if there are rules about how districts can be drawn, and if there’s a contest — open to all — to see who can score the most points under those rules.
The proposed rules: Districts should, ideally, be compact. They should embrace complete counties and cities, to the degree possible. They should be winnable for either party. And, as to those that favor one party, there should be equal numbers favoring each, given that the state is closely balanced.
(For details on the contest, see www.ohio redistricting.org.)
In dealing with the Miami Valley, the contestants had to start with the fact that Montgomery County is, like the state, roughly a toss up, though it’s gone Democratic in several straight presidential elections. The county isn’t quite big enough to constitute a congressional district. And just about any direction one goes from Montgomery County, one finds very strong Republican outposts.
A look at the three highest-scoring entries:
• Stuart Wright, of Columbus, came up with a competitive Dayton-based district by cutting off the most Republican part of Montgomery County, the south (and the lightly populated west) and reaching into the southern part of Clark County for Springfield. Dayton and Springfield provide most of the Democrats in the district. Filling it out are Republican Greene and Miami counties in their entirety.
He lost points in the contest for breaking up two counties, Montgomery and Clark. But the district is fairly compact. He got points for that, as well as for the competitiveness. He leaves all the surrounding districts Republican. There’s no way around that. Rural and suburban southwestern Ohio is simply Republican.
• Tim Clarke, of Avon, created a competitive district around Dayton by lopping off the southern suburbs in Montgomery County and combining the rest of Montgomery with Greene County. He benefits in the scoring from breaking up only one county. And his district is also compact.
• Mike Fortner, a Republican state representative in Illinois, from West Chicago, combines the entirety of Montgomery County with northeast Greene County, which is to say, basically, Fairborn, a struggling area whose demographics are trending Democratic. This district, too, is competitive.
Important to remember: none of these maps will be adopted. They’re based on the 2000 Census and on Ohio having 18 congressional seats. After the 2010 Census — the next time the maps are redrawn — Ohio will have 17 or 16 seats.
But you get the idea.
Quite likely, the only way to have an intensely competitive district after 2010 will be to include Springfield.
Such a district would still be pretty good for Rep. Mike Turner, if he maintains his current political appeal. But it could make a race to succeed him wide open.
Or it could make for a juicy primary, throwing Turner and Rep. Steve Austria, of Beavercreek, who represents Springfield, into the same district.
Reform should not be either embraced or rejected because of what it portends for any local party or person. The point is the statewide situation. Why shouldn’t more competition be embraced as a good thing, if it can be accomplished without drawing weird looking districts?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Contest shows real hope for better elections
How would Ohio’s legislative districts be drawn if politicians didn’t control the process?
Answer: Much better. In every important way. No trade-offs.
That’s the only possible conclusion you can draw from an exercise just finished by advocates of reform, with some help from the secretary of state’s office. The exercise is one of the more creative efforts to come out of Columbus in a while.
Specifically, reformers — including the League of Women Voters — held a contest to draw congressional districts.
Under Ohio’s existing system, districts for the state Legislature are drawn by a commission that is completely controlled by one political party or the other, depending on which party holds what statewide offices at the moment. Meanwhile, congressional districts are drawn by the Legislature and approved by the governor.
Political calculations dominate in both cases.
The reformers said, let’s start by setting up some nonpartisan guidelines:
• Districts are better that have lines that don’t squiggle all over the place and are relatively compact.
• They’re better if they respect county lines and other jurisdictional boundaries.
• They’re better if they can be won be either party, rather than being so dominated by voters of a particular party that the other party doesn’t even make a real effort.
• And they’re better if the state ends up with Democratic and Republican officeholders in rough proportion to the votes the two parties get statewide in a given year.
Finally, the reformers said, let’s find a way to define each of these criteria precisely, in numerical terms, and let’s assign equal weight to each. Then let’s hold a map-drawing contest, letting the public participate. The idea would be to get the highest score on the four criteria when totaled.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s office agreed to administer the contest. That entailed holding a class about how to use a software program that is widely used for redistricting purposes.
Entrants were then asked to draw a congressional map based on the 2000 Census. By law, maps are redrawn every 10 years, right after the Census. The lines can’t be redrawn now. The idea was just to see how they might have been drawn in the first place.
Only 14 people actually submitted maps. Of those, only 11 complied with all the rules. But that was plenty to make the point:
Of those 11, all scored higher than the actual existing map, not only as to total score, but on all four criteria taken individually.
In other words, no criteria had to be seriously sacrificed in order to meet other criteria. Many skeptics of reform (and even supporters) have worried that making districts competitive would require making them weird and squiggly. Nope.
Reformers are highlighting the three highest-scoring entries (including one by a Republican state legislator from Illinois). These maps generally don’t have the oddities of the existing map: the gash in northeastern Montgomery County that was taken out of the 3rd District (Rep. Mike Turner’s); the skinny district that runs up the eastern border of the state; the division of Franklin County into three districts; the oddly shaped 13th District. All these things were drawn for political reasons.
(To see all the maps, and more detailed explanations of all the rules and outcomes, go towww.ohioredistricting.org.)
What happens now? The Ohio Constitution has to be changed. It should specify the criteria of a good map, much as the reformers have done.
(Reformers say that a state commission shouldn’t necessarily have to pick the single highest-scoring map, but should have to choose from among the highest or come up with one that matches them.)
Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, has a proposal pending to create a bipartisan commission. He and other reformers ought to be able work something out.
The following gets said every time redistricting reform is proposed; nevertheless, it does seem true now: The time is right. That’s because nobody can say which party has the most to lose from reform. Either party might end up in control of state legislative redistricting after 2010.
Any proposal must be thoroughly bipartisan, because 60-percent majorities are needed in both houses of the Legislature to put something on this November’s ballot. Nobody is attempting the other way of getting something on the ballot — gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures. That’s partly because all sides have concluded — from experience — that the redistricting reform goes nowhere if both parties aren’t onboard from the start.
What’s necessary now is wide distribution of the outcome of the contests, fast study and political leadership.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
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