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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 > July > 19
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Editorial: Ohio finally has budget but no plan
After the prolonged dust-up about Ohio’s budget, the dust hasn’t settled. This is very much an ongoing story.
In some ways, the dust should not be allowed to settle. Take the spending cuts that were made. Rather than just make them and move on, Gov. Ted Strickland should put somebody in charge of measuring their impact, precisely quantifying what’s being lost.
Will the actual harm be as intense as spokespeople for safety-net programs predict? Or worse? Will people go hungry, lives be lost, families be devastated?
The cuts were as last-minute as the ridiculous gambling proposal that was enacted.
The cuts reflected last-minute revenue projections. Neither legislators nor journalists nor anybody else had time to get an authoritative feel for their impact.
State government makes decisions that affect people in direct, dramatic ways. Often the politicians talk about the potential indirect, subtle impacts of their policies, as in stimulating economic development. They can overstate their influence.
But their impact is clear in determining whether mental health care is available, whether seniors can avoid nursing homes, and whether people who lose their jobs can turn to food banks for sustenance and public libraries for a way back to a job.
Things might get worse from here. Many people believe the Strickland administration and lawmakers are wildly optimistic about future revenue; they worry there will have to be more cuts before the next budget is written in two years.
The projected money from the slot machines that the new budget authorizes at racetracks, for example, might not materialize. The gambling might not even start very soon.
The economy might still worsen. And the next budget won’t have this year’s $5 billion in federal stimulus funds to fall back on.
One estimate is that the next shortfall will be $8 billion. (The current two-year spending plan is $50.5 billion.)
True, the recent news out of Columbus could be worse. The overwhelmingly Republican Senate did give the Democratic governor enough votes (just barely) to get something enacted. As a party, the Republicans took the opportunity to pin all the bad news on the Democrats, but only to the degree that was consistent with getting the deed done.
Gov. Strickland lost substantial public standing during the ugly fight. But he does get to run for re-election as the governor who resisted a tax increase even when many in his party thought a tax increase — or a delay in planned tax cuts — was necessary. That seemed to be what he wanted.
And the spending cuts could have been worse, if the governor had gotten his original way. The final version of the budget cuts libraries by less than half as much as the governor proposed (but still by an awful lot). Food banks, mental health service and child care were also cut less.
The burden was spread a little to higher education (which also gets to raise tuition, as a trade-off), hospitals, nursing homes and non-public schools. On balance, that was the right direction.
But to take much comfort in the good news would be to miss the big picture and what’s likely yet to come.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Social Services
Ediorial: ‘Creative class’ is living up to name
You probably could guess that a phrase like “Don’t dog Dayton” wasn’t conceived by people over 50.
For more than a year now, a growing group of “young creatives” (not all of whom precisely fit that description with respect to age) has done more than just talk about what Dayton lacks. The good thing for Dayton is that they keep rolling out new work for themselves and the others they’re infecting with their passion and energy.
“Don’t dog Dayton” is one of the latest projects. The plan is to sponsor a video contest about goofy, serious, or important things going on Dayton, with an eye on what will catch on on YouTube. The hope is that when people Google Dayton, maybe they’ll stumble on something other than Forbes.com’s computer-generated, comically oversimplified, decidedly frustrating list of dying cities.
Over a year ago, local universities (mainly, but not exclusively) took up the cause of organizing a group to do something to hang on to workers and students who are popularly known as the “creative class.”
Lots of research shows that communities that have an abundance of entrepreneurial, talented free spirits are having more luck attracting the next generation of workers that companies are hungry for.
The Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education put out a call for volunteers who would show up at a bunch of meetings and promise to act, not talk. That was the genesis of DaytonCREATE, which has rounded up and deputized still more people committed to finding out what young creatives want.
One group organized a summit last spring where two hundred or so people showed up to mull over what to do first. What could have been a boring, discouraging gripe fest was a mass brainstorming session that wrapped up with participants settling on four big things to tackle.
They voted for reaching out to Dayton’s high school and middle school kids; growing downtown (these people are trained on downtown); fixing up the Wayne Avenue corridor; and creating a one-stop online space where people can find out what’s happening at bars, with bands and around Dayton generally.
The fact that the group has a soft spot for doing something for others — the young people in the community — tells you something about its interest in giving back. That they see the need to link the Oregon District to the Cannery and the area around Fifth Third Field — by making Wayne Avenue more walkable — says they understand the need to connect the dots among Dayton’s bubbling entertainment spots.
And speaking of getting connected, give them credit for valuing efficiency and accessibility for recognizing that you can’t know what’s going on if your options are scattered at Web sites whose names you might not know.
As for growing downtown, the “Don’t dog Dayton” contest is a diplomatic nudge that Dayton’s marketing of itself and the community is pretty awful. Here are some people who acknowledge that fact and aren’t afraid to have some fun and to engage those beyond the self-proclaimed professionals.
The DaytonCREATE initiative is working on so much more — maybe you made the three-day film festival in May or have heard about the “walk on water” contest that’s coming up next year.
But the most important take-away is that there really are young people committed to the region and who are powerful sales people for it.
Dayton is lucky to have them.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Economy, Editorials, Ellen Belcher
Editorial: DECA is a success story, so why not fund it?
There are at least two good ways the state has been trying to deal with the fact that not enough kids are getting from high school to college.
Up until the recent budget debate, Ohio had been both nurturing programs that are showing success in getting young people to go to college and also investing in new programs that seem likely to make a difference.
But with money as tight as it has been in decades, lawmakers ended up making a bad move. Evidently feeling they couldn’t afford both strategies, the governor and lawmakers junked a program they know is working, while at the same time authorizing new money for ideas they hope will help.
What this means in Dayton is that the highly successful Dayton Early College Academy — where students take college courses and simultaneously complete high school work — will lose nearly a quarter of its funding, making its long-term future shaky.
Smart planning and support from the University of Dayton mean there is no immediate danger of the school closing. The same can’t be said for the other eight early college high schools in the state. As many as half of them may close before school starts in the fall because of this budget broadside, according to their backers.
Collectively, early college academies have done their job — demonstrating that they can get kids who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to college to both go and succeed. They’ve done that by identifying talented, if sometimes underachieving, students who would be the first in their families to go to college. Then they push them hard with challenging, college-level work while still in high school.
The bulk of the kids are minority and low income; many have a host of disadvantages. Every one of DECA’s 2008 graduates went on to college, and 93 percent report they will return for a second year. That is a phenomenal return on the state’s investment. Typically, first-in-the-family college students drop out after their freshman year at a rate of 50 percent or better.
Yet, in the course of the budget crunch, the $12 million in annual special funding that helps these schools evaporated completely.
That didn’t help much to balance a $50.5 billion budget. Meanwhile, there’s no suggestion the money will ever be restored. If that were the plan, lawmakers would have kept at least some special funding, even if only a pittance.
At the same time, Ohio pressed ahead with new spending on other, untried experiments in education. Consider one example — STEM schools, which emphasize science, technology, engineering and math.
The state is hot on the idea that extra study in STEM could make kids more college-ready. So it wants to start special schools built around that theme. One of those schools will open this fall in Fairborn, with financial support from the state.
Dayton’s STEM school is a promising, needed venture, with Wright State University, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and lots of good people involved.
But it’s fair to wonder why Ohio would pull funding from DECA, which has a five-year record of producing college-ready students from a high-risk population, while at the same time throwing new cash at a STEM school that hasn’t held its first class yet and, by design, is more likely to serve kids who are already college bound.
With strong support from UD, DECA should be able to survive. But if the other early college schools don’t, Ohio will be moving in the wrong direction at the same time other states — most notably North Carolina and Texas — are spending generously to expand early college programs.
In the long run, this seemingly small budget cut could harm Ohio’s big goals for work force development.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
