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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 > August
August 2009
Editorial: Torture in Dayton-linked case might have worked, but bad idea
The big fight Washington has been having about torturing prisoners in the war on terror turned out last week to have a Dayton angle.
In 2003, when 9/11 was like yesterday, an Ohioan was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist. He lived in Columbus, but he drove a truck for a company in Moraine, and he had made deliveries to Dayton International Airport, a fact which got the attention of some local people.
Dayton didn’t figure into the charges against Iyman Faris, a transplanted Pakistani. The charges had to do, most memorably, with the Brooklyn Bridge, which he had been tasked by al-Qaida to case, to see if there was a way to blow it up. He reported back that there wasn’t.
He also performed other services. He pleaded guilty to providing material support . He was sentenced to 20 years. And he gave authorities the names of two other Columbus men who have since pleaded guilty to similar charges, Nuradin Mahamoud Abdi and Christopher Paul.
The Faris case returned to the news last week. A 2004 government report about Central Intelligence Agency interrogation techniques was released in censored form.
The report is harshly critical, calling some CIA techniques “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented.”
It specifically mentions extreme forms of waterboarding, threats against family members, mock executions, running electric drills next to naked, blindfolded people and more.
The report says the CIA’s detention and interrogation program resulted in terrorist arrests. But it said that assessing whether the torture itself worked “is a more subjective process and not without concern.”
However, it does suggest that torture might have worked, if not in other cases, at least on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. (He’s the heavy-set guy who was portrayed on Saturday Night Live as complaining that the most common photograph of him caught him at a bad time.) He didn’t give up much before he was waterboarded (183 times). But eventually he became valuable, naming Mr. Faris, among others.
So much of the report is blacked out that interpretation can be dangerous. But there’s enough there to give anybody pause. (The report is at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/comparison.htm.)
Actually, though, the FBI was apparently interested in Mr. Faris even before it heard from the CIA. The Columbus Dispatch reported in 2005, “On March 19, 2003, two (FBI) agents approached Faris in Cincinnati and briefly interviewed him. On March 20, they met again, and Faris allowed them to search his apartment. … Later that day, the FBI learned that Mohammed, who had been captured in Pakistan, had fingered Faris.”
Some will see justification for waterboarding in the arrest of Mr. Faris. But they should confront, too, the report’s concern that innocent people were tortured, and that such techniques endanger Americans who are taken prisoner, while making a mockery of the country’s word. (This country has promised to abide by international anti-torture standards.)
One needn’t be a naive outsider to worry about torture. Even some FBI agents refused to participate. After the report, CIA Chief George Tenet was disturbed enough to put a hold on waterboarding. It was later reinstituted as an option (with new controls), but was not used.
When he came into office, President Barack Obama prohibited waterboarding and other forms of torture, in favor of the accepted forms of interrogation that prevailed before 9/11 under an Army manual. His decision is supported by a lot of people in the intelligence field, who doubt the efficacy of torture, and who think the country must be better than its enemies.
In fact, the CIA inspector general who did the report says he undertook his investigation precisely because of concerns and complaints from within the CIA. One needn’t pretend that no good whatsoever comes from a particular policy to see that, on balance, it does more harm.
One old CIA hand told a reporter of the widespread view in the agency that “there’s got to be a better way.” Indeed, Iyman Faris or no Iyman Faris.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, terrorism
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Ohio terrorists not the most impressive enemies
Ever since Iyman Faris was arrested in 2003, he has intermittently been a poster boy for the Bush administration and some of its critics.
The truck driver with the Dayton connection (see the editorial above) was a symbol of everything that was right about the administration’s war on terror — or of everything that was wrong.
The first person to raise a fuss was Jimmy Breslin, the legendary columnist in New York. He was appalled that the media had treated the news about Faris matter-of-factly. After all, the news surfaced all at once that he had been taken into custody, pleaded and been sentenced. That is certainly not the official, normal American way.
Breslin referred repeatedly to his “kidnapping” by the government. He said the police had held Faris long enough to do plenty of torturing. Yet the media said nothing.
“It could be time,” he said, “for me to begin thinking about leaving this news business. It is not mine anymore.”
However, when Faris did get lawyers, they did not complain about him being kidnapped or tortured. They did say that he asked repeatedly for a lawyer before pleading and didn’t get one (which the feds deny).
But Faris seems to have wanted the secrecy himself, out of concern for his relatives in Pakistan.
The way the Faris story surfaced was suspicious. Newsweek reported that he had pleaded guilty, and it suggested that his whereabouts were unknown. At that point, the feds went to court to ask that the records of his case be unsealed, because the public impression was that he was at large. They wanted it known that he was in custody.
The judge said this is odd: the government asking for disclosure and the defendant opposing it. Usually in national security cases, it’s the opposite. But the judge saw no reason not to tilt in favor of the public’s right to know.
The suspicion is hard to avoid that the feds leaked the story to Newsweek in the first place because they wanted public credit for the arrest.
In 2004, President George W. Bush, seeking re-election, came to Ohio to highlight the case. He said the arrest was an outgrowth of the controversial Patriot Act, which he was trying to get renewed.
Now Faris is pointed to by former Vice President Dick Cheney and others as somebody whose arrest resulted from the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That’s the practice some call torture and Cheney calls a “no-brainer,” meaning its use is obviously legitimate, if the goal is to prevent other terrorist acts.
Besides the secrecy and torture controversies, there’s also the matter of wiretapping, specifically the Bush administration’s highly dubious claim that the war on terror gave it the power to tap without a court warrant.
Through wiretapping, the FBI may actually have been on to Faris before the CIA got on to him through Mohammed.
The controversies about methods notwithstanding, certain things about Faris are not being disputed. He did travel to an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, where he reportedly met Osama bin Laden. He did favors for al-Qaida, like buying sleeping bags. And he sent a message saying he didn’t think it would be realistic to attack the Brooklyn Bridge, a possibility he had been asked to check out.
In cooperating with the feds, he offered the names of two acquaintances in Columbus, Christopher Paul and Nuradin Abdi, with whom he apparently discussed various possible terrorist plans. They’ve pleaded guilty, too, after investigations by the office of southern Ohio U.S. Attorney Gregory Lockhart.
None of the three is connected to any violent terrorist act that actually happened. If you go back through the news clippings relating to the three cases, you get the impression of naive, feckless losers.
One went to Africa looking for a terrorist training camp but never found it. In one often noted incident, they met at a Caribou Coffee shop. One of them suggested blowing up an unnamed mall (or shooting it up; that’s in dispute). Another said that was an awful idea. Such was the sophistication.
They and their al-Qaida connections had no conception of the difficulties of various schemes, like blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge or messing with railroad tracks to send a train over a cliff. (That was reportedly the Hollywood-induced fantasy of one of their connections.)
One has apologized for everything, saying he was never anti-American, but was just furious about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and was talking dumb.
They might have done something terrible eventually. Who knows? You needn’t be competent to shoot up a mall. And, yes, conspiracies to do such things must be prosecuted.
Still, if these are the country’s greatest internal enemies, it’s a fortunate country.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, terrorism
TweetTerry Ryan: Kettering takes unfair hit in ratings
Judging schools based on student academic performance is more art than science.
This fact was never depicted more clearly than in the recent release of state report cards that gave the Kettering City School District a rating of “continuous improvement” — a C — even though it met 29 of 30 academic standards.
The state expects Kettering to get at least 75 percent of its students to proficiency or above on 28 academic tests, while also having an appropriate attendance and graduation rate. Kettering met all these goals except for one (achievement in 8th grade social studies).
Further, Kettering saw its overall student achievement results increase from 2007-08 when the district was rated “effective,” which translates to a B.
Justifiable anger
Not surprisingly, the rating has flummoxed and angered local officials. A C is hard to explain when one considers Kettering’s state rating is identical to far lower-performing districts like Elyria City School District (it met 11 of 30 indicators); and Cincinnati Public Schools, Columbus City Schools and Akron Public Schools, all of which met just six indicators.
So, what’s going on? Kettering took a hit because it failed to meet federally mandated Adequate Yearly Progress goals with two sub-groups of students — “students with disabilities” and “limited English proficient students.”
What this means in practice is that Kettering schools failed to deliver students with disabilities (which make up about 15 percent of all district students) and students with limited English (which make up about 1.5 percent) to proficiency targets in reading.
In fact, the district failed to meet these targets for three consecutive years. The district did, however, meet Adequate Yearly Progress goals with seven other subgroups.
Overall solid results
The district failed with a minority of students, but overall it delivered solid academic results for the vast majority, in the vast majority of subjects tested by the state. With this in mind, it is hard to say the district’s C is proportionate to its actual student achievement. Fair-minded people would have to say the district was given an unfair rating.
What should be done about this? Many will be tempted to argue that the rating for Kettering is evidence of a broken accountability system that needs to be thoroughly overhauled or even snuffed out. That’s a mistake.
My organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, has been analyzing the academic performance of schools in Dayton and in other Ohio cities for six years. We’ve witnessed the evolution of the state’s assessment system and have evaluated it along the way.
In fact, earlier this year we issued a report entitled the “Accountability Illusion” that reported “schools with greater diversity and size face greater challenges in making AYP.”
The Kettering City School District was punished for not succeeding with some of its most diverse students. The fact that the system makes it obvious that Kettering needs to do better by its special needs students and students with limited English is a good thing.
The state shouldn’t do away with metrics that enable this evaluation. Transparency and accountability are important for ensuring all students receive the best education possible.
However, the fact that Kettering received a state rating identical to school districts with far inferior academic achievement across the board is a genuine problem. The rating confuses parents, students, teachers, business and community leaders, and it could put the district at risk of losing students and the trust of voters and supporters.
Change the system
Ohio needs to improve how it rates its schools and school districts. The “continuous improvement” rating is far too encompassing and, as such, is largely meaningless. The state has put together a solid system of assessments, and it now needs a school and district rating system that does it justice.
It is time to right the accountability ship before it sinks in the shoals of faulty ratings.
Terry Ryan is vice president for Ohio Programs & Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Education, Guest Columns, Ohio government
TweetEditorial: Some Greene patients could be hurting
Kettering Health Network is significantly changing the hospital landscape in Greene County.
Though Beavercreek residents may be happy, Kettering Health Network owes patients in eastern Greene — who will have to drive farther in emergencies and to give birth — better answers about who’s looking out for them.
The network — which owns Greene Memorial Hospital in Xenia — could start by getting its stories straight.
At first, Greene Memorial President Greg Henderson said about half of the 1,000-plus workers associated with his hospital would relocate in 2012 to a new $135 million hospital campus planned for Beavercreek. Then Frank Perez, Kettering Health Network president and CEO, insisted 500 of the 572 people who are employed at the Xenia hospital would stay and argued that few of the 500 others jobs connected to the hospital would move.
Mr. Perez also said initially that an emergency room would stay in Xenia, while surgical services would move.
After concerns were raised about whether Greene Memorial could maintain its “level III” certification as a trauma center without full access to surgical services, Kettering spokesman Kevin Lavoie acknowledged that emergency services in Greene County “most likely” would be in Beavercreek.
Mr. Lavoie also now says the location of surgery services is “not decided” and declined to elaborate, saying that the hospital is playing its cards close to the vest to keep its competition guessing.
“They cannot definitively tell me what they are going to do with Greene Memorial Hospital,” Xenia City Council President Dennis Propes said.
Kettering Health Network must do better. What the network decides to do will have a huge impact on county residents who aren’t clustered in Beavercreek.
Consider the emergency room. Greene County’s trauma center is one of just three highly rated emergency rooms in the Dayton area that’s able to handle serious injuries and illnesses. It is centrally located in Greene County, providing easy access to its middle and eastern areas.
If, down the road, the nearest option for that kind of care is in Beavercreek, a trip to the hospital in an emergency — when minutes count — just got longer.
Beavercreek is the wealthier part of Greene County. The nonprofit Kettering network’s move, in part, is being driven by a chase for money with competitor Premier Health Partners, which just turned a health care center near the Montgomery-Greene County line off I-675 at Wilmington Pike into Miami Valley Hospital South.
It’s fair to ask if access to care for less well-off people and the whole of Greene County is being sacrificed in this hospital war.
A Beavercreek hospital also was not part of the deal many county voters signed on for last year when they passed a half-mill levy that raises $1.5 million annually. They were told the money — admittedly a tiny public subsidy in a hospital’s overall operation — was necessary to keep existing services at Greene Memorial Hospital.
Had voters known that Kettering was quietly inking a $14 million deal for land to build a hospital in Beavercreek just days before the vote, passing the levy might not have been so easy. (Fifty-eight percent of voters said yes.) The levy language was specific to Greene Memorial Hospital, with no mention of relocating any services.
Kettering’s argument that voters should have understood that it was fair game to offer key health care services elsewhere, as long as they remained in the county, is minimizing the public pitch that was made.
Based on the information he has, Mr. Propes believes Kettering’s story on jobs in Xenia doesn’t give the full picture. Greene Memorial may still employ 500 people in 2012, but if it is largely a nursing home and long-term care facility, the city still stands to see a major loss of revenue because the jobs will be lower paying, he said.
If major services like obstetrics — which is no longer being offered at Greene Memorial — and surgery move to Beavercreek, many medical operations that support those functions, but may not be physically located at the hospital, likely will move, too. The city estimates it could lose 500 workers, costing a half-million dollars in revenue annually.
Far too much spinning is going on. Kettering needs to be more forthright — and attentive to people who are wondering why their future emergency isn’t a concern.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Health Care, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetKevin Riley: Wright brothers captured world’s attention in 1908
It was early in 1908, just five years after the Wright brothers had first flown, and they had problems on their hands.
They had not been able to sell their flying machine, and because they insisted on keeping the technology behind their invention a secret, much of the world was skeptical of what they claimed to have accomplished.
After all, they hadn’t taken to the air for about two-and-half years after flying at Huffman Prairie through October of 1905. And the Huffman Prairie flights had been mostly observed by a local audience without much media attention.
And so in the spring of 1908, they headed back to Kitty Hawk for a critical period in the development of their airplane. They had hoped to do their experimenting in private, but instead created an early version of a media circus — complete with paparazzi, reporters hiding in bushes and exaggerated, inaccurate media reports.
But, in the end, the journalists catapulted the Wrights to worldwide recognition for their achievement.
This pivotal 11-day period is chronicled in a new book by East Carolina University professor Larry E. Tise, who is the school’s Wilbur and Orville Wright Distinguished Professor of History. “Conquering the Sky: The Secret Flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk” is scheduled for publication on Sept. 29.
During this period, the Wrights faced what Tise calls the “dilemma of inventors.” They wanted to get credit for what they had done, but had not yet figured out how and when to tell the world about it. And they were more than a little paranoid about someone stealing and replicating their ideas.
The Wrights had tried to sell their airplane to the U.S. and some European governments — and now a number of inventors in France were trying to take credit for figuring out powered flight. The brothers were getting ready to go public.
“The Wrights recognized that the time for secrecy was over,” said Tom Crouch, senior curator of aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum and a Wright Brothers scholar.
But they still wanted to perfect their plane in private.
They went back to Kitty Hawk in 1908, hoping that an inaccessible place would offer privacy. Crouch calls this time the Wrights’ “dress rehearsal” before the brothers had to demonstrate their airplane in Europe and the United States later that year. Those demonstrations required controlled flying, carrying a passenger and flying long distances.
And while the Wrights were confident, one of their big challenges was a new control system they had developed for pilots to sit upright, Crouch said. Before this point, they had always flown lying down.
“They hadn’t flown for two-and-a-half years. This is not like riding a bike,” Crouch said. Once the word got out that the Wrights were back at Kitty Hawk, a local telegraph operator began to send word out about it.
Inaccurate, oddly worded reports began appearing in newspapers — including the Dayton Daily News — about what the Wrights were doing, Tise said.
Tise said his research shows the reports were at first claiming long flights even before the brothers had gotten their plane assembled at Kill Devil Hills.
Eventually, New York and London newspapers sent reporters to Kitty Hawk to confirm what was going on. Unwelcome by the Wrights, they at first hid in trees, Tise said.
The Wrights were early risers, so the reporters, who stayed about seven miles away in Manteo, N.C., had to be up early and faced heat, sand fleas and chiggers as they sought to document the Wrights’ achievements.
“They were absolutely miserable,” Tise said.
A famous early photojournalist, James H. Hare, took a photograph that became the first published showing the Wrights’ plane in flight. (The famous and familiar Kitty Hawk picture of the Dec. 17, 1903, flight was not actually published until later.)
Tise insists these journalists did the Wrights a huge service because they confirmed for the world that they were actually flying. And Tise argues that the Wrights came dangerously close to not getting credit for their achievement.
But after the reports of their 1908 flights at Kitty Hawk, and their flying demonstration in France later that year, no one could dispute the Dayton brothers’ place in history.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Kevin Riley, Local History, Transportation, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetEditorial: Ohio pensions already cost enough
The August newsletter to Ohio’s teachers from their pension fund is sobering.
As upsetting as the news is, public school teachers still have a great retirement plan. But, clearly, it can’t be as great in the future.
Because of the stock market dive, last year the fund lost almost 22 percent of its value. That’s awful, but the number is low compared to what many individuals lost.
Over the long haul, the system banks on an 8 percent return each year to meet its obligations. Put another way, it will take some really good years to lift up the plan’s finances. And nobody thinks those exceedingly good years are coming soon or in quick succession.
So what to do?
The teachers’ pension fund, as well as Ohio’s other four pension plans, have to report to an oversight body in September how they’re managing their finances to assure that they can cover their liabilities. This week the police and firefighters pension fund said it wants the legislature to increase the rates paid both by workers and local governments.
The teachers’ fund may also ask for more from school districts as well as teachers themselves. There also are changes that would decrease benefits and increase eligibility standards that are on the table, too.
Two big points:
The legislature can’t increase pension costs for state and local governments and school districts. They’re already generously supporting retirees, and ordering them to pay more is out of the question. Taxpayers kick in a minimum of 14 percent of public employees’ salaries — and 24 percent for firefighters.
The pension funds are in a bad way because they also provide health care to retirees, a benefit they’re not required to provide. Of course, they’re not going to end that practice, but it’s at the root of the funds’ financial problems.
If President Barack Obama and Congress agree on health care reform, the pension systems quickly could find themselves in much better shape. The point is not that Washington should bail out public employee pension funds; rather, it’s that health care reform does matter even to people who currently have insurance benefits.
Some time back, when Republicans controlled the governor’s office and the legislature, the teachers’ pension fund proposed taking more out of teachers’ pay to cover retirees’ health care and upping the amount school districts pay the fund as well. The idea died quickly.
What’s different today is that Ohio has a Democratic governor and a Democratic House, but the economy is way worse and school district finances are no more stable. Teachers — indeed all public employees — have to find a way out of this bind other than asking taxpayers.
None of the funds is without options.
Many private pension funds don’t provide cost-of-living increases, while the public funds do. The funds could increase the age at which people may start collecting benefits. (The 30-years-and-out practice is an anachronism, what with people living longer and with beneficiaries expecting their pensions will keep rising even after they quit, often in their 50s.)
They could calculate benefits based on, say, a workers’ last five years instead of three. They could simply reduce benefits. Some very long-time public employees get 88 percent of their old salaries in retirement.
They could eliminate the option of double-dipping, which encourages people to start collecting benefits earlier than they otherwise would. That practice milks the system and has become a symbol for what’s wrong with public pensions.
Lawmakers, who have to sign off on benefit changes, need to send a signal now, so there’s no confusion about what has to happen to get the funds back on sound footing.
Changes have to come in the form of reduced benefits — not what the public pays.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Ellen Belcher, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetJamie Davies O’Leary: Ohio needs Teach for America talent
The Aug. 17 editorial, “Ohio should bring Teach for America here,” was spot on, and not just because I’m an alumna of the program.
The article argued that not having an Ohio Teach For America program prevents many smart and talented educators from coming to the Buckeye State.
The editorial cited the necessary changes needed to create an Ohio Teach for America, including changes to teacher certification rules, funding for training and buy-in from teacher unions.
Not to gloss over the importance of regulatory changes (Teach for America’s entry here is impossible otherwise), but the bigger and better question is, “Why Teach for America?”
One common justification for allowing Teach for America to put down roots is the potential to recruit smart, energetic young people. In Ohio, we’re losing talent. Earlier this year, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute explored this trend in a report called Losing Ohio’s Future, which elucidated some of the causes.
But would the creation of an Ohio Teach for America program in Dayton, Cleveland or Appalachia promise to retain young talent?
Teach for America recently released a report illustrating which national universities and colleges sent the most graduates into the 2009 corps. Ohio is definitely losing talented college graduates to other Teach for America-friendly states.
Of the top 20 large schools (defined as 10,000 undergraduates or more) supplying the most graduates for Teach for America, two are in Ohio: Ohio State University and Miami University.
Although Ohio doesn’t make the list for medium-sized schools, three of its colleges rank in the top 20 small schools (defined as 2,999 or fewer undergraduates): the College of Wooster, Kenyon College and Oberlin College.
In fact, Ohio has more schools on Teach for America’s top 60 college list than any other state except Massachusetts and California. And we are the clear winner in the Midwest (Michigan had two schools; Indiana had two; Illinois had four).
Whether you think this exodus matters will depend on your opinion of Teach for America. First, there is the debate of whether Teach for America teachers are successful in the classroom.
Second, there is a broader question: To what extent do Teach for America alumni contribute to educational innovation and entrepreneurialism in the larger community?
The first debate has raged for a while, and I won’t go into it here, but there is plenty of rigorous evidence supporting the success of Teach for America teachers.
The second question is one that we in Ohio can’t afford to ignore.
The evidence on the positive impact made by Teach for America alumni is indisputable. Most notably, the program has produced the outstanding Michelle Rhee and David Levin types.
Michelle Rhee, an Ohio native, left Teach for America, went on to found The New Teacher Project, and is now the chancellor of Washington, D.C., Public Schools.
David Levin founded the Knowledge is Power Program charter schools. KIPP schools serve 20,000 students in mostly poor communities and consistently post extraordinary academic results.
But beyond the Rhees and the Levins, the impact made by the average Teach for America alum is still remarkable. According to Teach for America’s 2008 Alumni Social Impact report, two-thirds of alumni are working or studying full-time in education.
Of those alumni who are still working in schools, 91 percent are employed in low-income communities.
And many TFAers go on to significant leadership roles. Across the country, they fill 293 principal positions and 23 leadership positions as a district or charter superintendent.
Places like Dayton or my hometown of Mansfield would benefit mightily from this infusion of talent. Ohio’s achievement gap between poor, mostly minority students and their wealthier peers isn’t any narrower than in neighboring states.
But we are sorely missing part of the solution to close the gap. Teach for America types, with all of their tireless dedication, are funneled to other states. To be fair, Ohio is home to many brilliant, reform-minded educators who are already doing great work in schools like the Dayton Early College Academy and scores of others. But Ohio needs more.
Jamie Davies O’Leary is a research analyst with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. She taught kindergarten in Camden, N.J., when she was part of Teach for America.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Education, Guest Columns, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetGive students help, not just complaints
When state report cards came out this week, Kettering school officials were among the most disappointed.
The district met 29 of the 30 state benchmarks, had a “performance index score” of 100.2 — ranking in the top 40 percent among 60 Dayton area districts — and, for the second consecutive year, got extra credit for better than expected growth in test scores.
Even so, Kettering was rated “continuous improvement” — the fourth of six rating categories. That put Kettering behind four out of every five districts in Ohio, prompting Superintendent Jim Schoenlein to call the state’s ranking system “unfair” and “bizarre.”
Mr. Schoenlein’s reaction is a common one for superintendents in his situation. He and others are not completely wrong about the state’s approach to ranking school districts. It could be improved.
Even so, blaming the system is missing the most important point. Kettering and other districts dragged down by underperforming subgroups need to ask what they’re doing poorly.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, school districts are required to track the performance of any minority group for which they have significant numbers. (Ohio has defined that as 30 or more students.)
These “subgroups” may be ethnic groups such as blacks and Hispanics. But they also can be groups like poor children, those who need special education and those who are learning English as a second language.
If any one subgroup does not make the progress that is expected, the district loses big points. In Ohio, that can quickly knock a district down on the rating chart.
There was an important reason why this provision was included as part of No Child Left Behind. For years, high performing districts masked the low performance of these subgroups with the stellar scores of the majority of their kids. Subgroup tracking was strongly backed by liberal and civil rights groups as a way to force districts to pay attention to kids who need extra help, but in the past fell through the cracks even in good schools.
The two subgroups that failed to make enough progress in Kettering were both difficult groups — special education students and English language learners. But getting those kids to acceptable scores can be done with focus and effort.
Consider English learners. They make up a tiny 1.4 percent (99 kids) of Kettering’s student body, but their scores aren’t good. Just 58 percent of third-graders in this category were proficient in reading.
By comparison, however, English learners are about 2 percent of the student body for Northmont, another good performing suburban district roughly similar in size to Kettering. But in Northmont, 85 percent of third-graders in that category were proficient in reading.
For students in special education, 56 percent of Kettering third-graders scored proficient compared to 71 percent in Northmont. Again, the percentages of kids in that category districtwide are similar — 15.3 percent in Kettering and 13.8 percent in Northmont.
Certainly, Kettering needs to focus more attention on English learners and those in special education. The report card has drilled home that message for two years previously.
Maybe Ohio should not penalize districts so severely — knocking them down two pegs in the ratings — based on the performance of such a small percentage of students.
But districts also shouldn’t blame the rules when it’s clear they have work to do to help kids who — consistently — are being left behind.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Kennedy: Great partisan target was top bipartisan
It’s an odd thing about Ted Kennedy. No non-president in the politics of his time was more viciously, relentlessly reviled by voices on the other side of the political spectrum. In most of the years between 1968 and 1992, when the Democrats only held the presidency for four years — and when many other Democrats were in ideological retreat — he was the chief bull’s-eye of the haters.
He gave the targeters plenty of material, from the fact that he was elected to the Senate at an extraordinarily young age on the strength of his brother’s name; to his role in the death of a young woman passenger in his car; to his uncowed advocacy of the liberal agenda; to his difficulties in speaking off-the-cuff; to his drinking and carousing.
Bashing him proved irresistible for the right-wing warriors.
Yet, by the end, he was known — with good reason — as the great bipartisan, as the reigning grandmaster of legislating in a way that works for both sides.
His cooperation with Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine is noted elsewhere on this page. Perhaps even more interesting is his work with Rep. John Boehner, a stauncher conservative. They worked on No Child Left Behind, one of President George W. Bush’s big early initiatives. Today it’s widely trashed by the left.
Sen. Kennedy made headlines in Dayton when Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Hanscom Air Force Base were fighting over jobs. He stepped in forcefully on behalf of Massachusetts, to Ohio jeers.
He didn’t have a compelling case. And the project was really Republican Gov. Mitt Romney’s efforts to protect a much smaller base. Sen. Kennedy was doing his part as a member of his state’s team. He was the front man, because a senator has a role in defense policy, not a governor.
It would be stretching a point to say that the episode shows something about Sen. Kennedy’s bipartisanship. Anybody in his position would have done what he did. Bipartisanship in defense of local interests is one form of bipartisanship that hasn’t waned.
Sen. Kennedy’s characteristic form was much bigger.
He died in the middle of big fight about the great cause of his late career: the effort to provide health insurance to all Americans. Nobody knows if the fight would be going much differently if he were involved. He couldn’t help Bill Clinton win reform in the 1990s.
And yet the absence of the Kennedy legislative style is clear. The Democrats have made the decision that if they make many concessions to Republicans, they will lose Democratic votes in Congress without picking up any Republicans. So, for example, there is no “tort reform” (defined by supporters as the effort to protect doctors from frivolous lawsuits) in the major proposals.
Sen. Kennedy’s favorite conservative partner, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was the last person to leave the negotiations now taking place in the Senate. He has hinted that things might be different if Sen. Kennedy were around.
Whether Republicans have been largely absent because they’re being excluded or because they were never going to agree to anything resembling reform is a chicken-and-egg debate.
What’s clear is that hyperpartisanship is exacting a price and that Washington could use more people like Ted Kennedy, who know when there’s a way around it.
He was a flawed man who figured out how to make the most of his life. He leaves venerated by his allies — widely ranked as the most effective liberal of his time — and respected by his adversaries, even missed by some.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, National Politics, Ohio politics
TweetMike DeWine: Compassionate Kennedy worked across the aisle
While I didn’t agree with Ted Kennedy’s politics, I never questioned his compassion.
Our daughter Becky died in a car accident in 1993. Kennedy was one of the first people to reach out to Fran and me. I didn’t know him well, as I hadn’t been elected yet to the Senate. Still, he reached out with a very personal letter.
Kennedy understood tragedy. While most people only know his political side, I was fortunate enough to also know the human side. He was an extraordinarily compassionate man, who quietly looked out for people who were hurting — whether they were constituents, friends or senators.
When Republican Sen. Gordon Smith’s son, Garrett, committed suicide, Kennedy was one of the first people to offer support. Behind the scenes, he set up a memorial fund in honor of Garrett.
When a close Senate friend of mine found out that his nephew was seriously ill with cancer, Kennedy tried to find the best doctors in the country to treat him.
Though I vehemently disagreed with him about many things, especially his stance on abortion, Kennedy was the most influential legislator in the last 50 years. After 40 years in the Senate, he knew all the subjects, as he’d already fought all the battles at least once. His institutional knowledge was unmatched.
Kennedy was straight-up and honest. He would always tell you from the start what he could or could not do.
When putting together a piece of legislation in the Senate, you almost always need the support of both Republicans and Democrats. Because of the 60-vote requirement, I knew that if I wanted to get things done, I needed to walk across the aisle.
I also knew that if you got Kennedy on board, virtually all the Democrats would follow.
Several years ago, Kennedy asked me to be his Republican partner on legislation to regulate tobacco companies that were marketing their deadly products to children. He cared about children and knew I did, too.
Together, we worked our respective sides of the aisle, and we got our tobacco bill passed in the Senate two different times, but it never became law.
After I left the Senate, Kennedy continued the fight. Just a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama signed a version of our bill. Kids are safer today.
Kennedy used the Senate floor as a marketplace to talk to his colleagues and make deals. He had the philosophy of a serious legislator, with hard-core objectives and long-term goals.
He taught me persistence — not to go away, to keep coming back. You may only get one-third of the loaf in the first go-around, but that’s OK. You have to be in it for the long haul and come back the next year for another third.
Kennedy had an amazing sense of humor. When Ohio Supreme Court Justice Deborah Cook’s nomination for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was coming up for a vote, I walked across the aisle to get support from a group of wavering Democrats. Kennedy was nearby.
The Columbus Dispatch’s Jonathan Riskind was in the Senate press gallery watching. He heard Kennedy roar, “Sweet talker! Don’t come over here. You’ve done enough damage with your sweet talking!”
Cook’s nomination passed 66 to 25.
Ted was the consummate Irishman and story teller. When Fran and I traveled with a group of Catholic senators to Pope John Paul’s funeral, on the return flight, we stopped in Shannon, Ireland, to refuel. Kennedy brought all the senators into a room — Republicans and Democrats — where he regaled us with stories and served us Irish coffee and salmon on soda bread.
Kennedy was many things, and though we clashed on most issues politically, we found common ground. He was a legislator’s legislator — and that’s what set him apart.
Mike DeWine, a Republican Ohio attorney general candidate, served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives, was Ohio lieutenant governor and served 12 years in the U.S. Senate.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment | Categories: Guest Columns, National Politics
TweetEditorial: Trains can pick up speed with time
The passenger rail system that Gov. Ted Strickland wants for Ohio is not a high-speed system. Building an expensive high-speed system isn’t politically practical, given the widespread skepticism about how many people would actually ride trains.
Train advocates have been pushing for a foot-in-the-door system. The trains would have top speeds of about 79 miles per hour. This approach has worked elsewhere, producing political support for investing in a better system.
A second generation of trains could go 110 mph.
In Pennsylvania, a state-funded system has trains reaching at that speed from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, with a Pittsburgh leg planned.
Opponents of passenger rail service for Ohio argue that trains won’t generate much ridership, because the average speed wouldn’t be near 79 mph, and trips would actually take longer than car trips. Last week an organization pushing the “3C” train project — connecting Cleveland and Cincinnati via Columbus and Dayton, possibly with stops in Springfield, Middletown and Hamilton — admitted car trips would be faster.
The Ohio Rail Development Commission projected that a trip from Cincinnati to Columbus — downtown to downtown — might take three hours, which the rail commission said is about 40 minutes longer than the drive. Columbus to Cleveland might be three hours, too, as opposed to a two-and-a-half-hour drive.
Just keeping the train rides that short required ruling out some stops, such as at the Air Force Museum. Officials offered hope that stops might be added later.
About the longer times, two points beg to be made: (1) taking the train allows one to make better use of travel time; and (2) we’re talking about the first generation of trains. The first generation of highways was slower than interstates, too.
Nobody is saying trains will attract as many travelers as highways, only that there’s a substantial niche: people who don’t want to use gas, don’t like to drive, don’t have a reliable car, or who like the idea of getting something done while they travel.
Sadly, many Ohioans think of passenger trains as belonging to the past, or as only being useful in densely populated places like the east and west coasts.
In fact, however, not only Pennsylvania, but Illinois and Michigan have their own state systems. Michigan has a train going from Detroit to Chicago. Illinois has several routes in various directions from Chicago. All those states are looking to expand on what they have.
They want to connect with Ohio. Current connections are almost nonexistent. (There are Amtrak lines that run through Ohio, connecting Chicago with New York City and Washington, D.C., but they don’t run often.)
Michigan wants to connect to Toledo and Cleveland. Pennsylvania eyes connections from Pittsburgh. Illinois wants to greatly improve its tie to Cincinnati.
It would be amazing and foolish for Ohio not to relish the establishment of a vibrant Midwestern system.
However, just as Ohioans should not be under any illusions about how fast the trains will be, neither should they assume the trains will finance themselves through the fare box. Few passenger train systems do that.
There are other ways for systems to make money, of course: naming rights, advertising, concessions. But a public subsidy is typically necessary. That’s the norm for all modes of transportation, including highways. Yet transportation is central to the whole idea of a modern economy.
The 3C project may offer more for Daytonians than for Ohioans in other major cities. Dayton would have direct routes to Columbus and Cincinnati, whereas people in those cities would have indirect routes (through Dayton) to each other.
And, unlike Cincinnati and Cleveland, Dayton would have Ohio trains leaving in two directions. Columbus would, too, of course. But Columbus would benefit less, already having its firm niches as the state capitol and home of Ohio State University.
In the face of all that, the few minutes that would be lost relative to car travel is hardly a factor to get hung up on.
Permalink | Comments (23) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Transportation
TweetRichard M. Zimmerman: Bedbug warnings were ignored by officials
The emptying of the Biltmore Tower on account of a bedbug infestation should be no surprise to the Dayton Daily News, the City of Dayton, Montgomery County and the Montgomery County Public Health Department.
More than two years ago, a local pest control industry insider warned local governments of the impending bedbug epidemic. The warnings were cast aside for fear of inducing panic. Local officials were well aware of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’s war on bedbugs, as well as the efforts taken by both to combat the bedbug outbreak there.
So why didn’t our local governments make an effort to warn citizens?
An occasional story in the DDN or an occasional spot on a local television station hardly seems like the type of response our community deserves.
Dayton and Montgomery County have ignored recent complaints that residents with bedbug infestations have been selling their personal items at garage sales, knowing that the unsuspecting consumers are at risk of carrying bedbugs to their own home. Local courts also have turned a deaf ear on landlords trying to evict tenants who have infested their property with bedbugs, and instead have favored tenants who fail to comply with notices to have the property professionally exterminated within prescribed time frames.
Ignorant of bedbug biology and not realizing the risk being created for the community, a local magistrate has ruled that tenants can treat whenever and however they want.
The treatment of the Biltmore, which probably will cost six figures, will be paid for by taxpayers, as was the fumigation of an area for preschoolers at Longfellow School when it became infested with bedbugs.
The spread of an infestation can easily be accomplished by people with bedbugs transporting the bugs to bus stop benches, restaurants, movie theaters, their place of work, schools, courtrooms, etc. Because of the biology of the insect, it can live for more than a year without feeding, giving the bug time to wander around and allowing an unsuspecting person to unknowingly provide the bug a means to hitch a ride to their home.
For those residents not familiar with bedbugs, it’s in your interest to educate yourself to the early signs of an infestation. Should you develop an infestation, you should investigate the proper procedures for treatment.
If you need to hire a professional pest control company, ask the company how it treats for bedbugs and hire a firm that treats according to pest control industry standards. Hiring the least expensive business may only compound your problem by leaving you with the infestation — and less money.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture, Pesticide Regulation, is an excellent source of information, as well as the entomology department at the University of Kentucky. And beware of online ads that boast that their product “kills on contact.” My shoe and your shoe can do the same thing. Buyers beware.
Richard M. Zimmerman, of Dayton, is president of A-OK Exterminating Co.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Guest Columns, Montgomery County
TweetRichard M. Zimmerman: Bedbug warnings were ignored by officials
The emptying of the Biltmore Tower on account of a bedbug infestation should be no surprise to the Dayton Daily News, the City of Dayton, Montgomery County and the Montgomery County Public Health Department.
More than two years ago, a local pest control industry insider warned local governments of the impending bedbug epidemic. The warnings were cast aside for fear of inducing panic. Local officials were well aware of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’s war on bedbugs, as well as the efforts taken by both to combat the bedbug outbreak there.
So why didn’t our local governments make an effort to warn citizens?
An occasional story in the DDN or an occasional spot on a local television station hardly seems like the type of response our community deserves.
Dayton and Montgomery County have ignored recent complaints that residents with bedbug infestations have been selling their personal items at garage sales, knowing that the unsuspecting consumers are at risk of carrying bedbugs to their own home. Local courts also have turned a deaf ear on landlords trying to evict tenants who have infested their property with bedbugs, and instead have favored tenants who fail to comply with notices to have the property professionally exterminated within prescribed time frames.
Ignorant of bedbug biology and not realizing the risk being created for the community, a local magistrate has ruled that tenants can treat whenever and however they want.
The treatment of the Biltmore, which probably will cost six figures, will be paid for by taxpayers, as was the fumigation of an area for preschoolers at Longfellow School when it became infested with bedbugs.
The spread of an infestation can easily be accomplished by people with bedbugs transporting the bugs to bus stop benches, restaurants, movie theaters, their place of work, schools, courtrooms, etc. Because of the biology of the insect, it can live for more than a year without feeding, giving the bug time to wander around and allowing an unsuspecting person to unknowingly provide the bug a means to hitch a ride to their home.
For those residents not familiar with bedbugs, it’s in your interest to educate yourself to the early signs of an infestation. Should you develop an infestation, you should investigate the proper procedures for treatment.
If you need to hire a professional pest control company, ask the company how it treats for bedbugs and hire a firm that treats according to pest control industry standards. Hiring the least expensive business may only compound your problem by leaving you with the infestation — and less money.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture, Pesticide Regulation, is an excellent source of information, as well as the entomology department at the University of Kentucky. And beware of online ads that boast that their product “kills on contact.” My shoe and your shoe can do the same thing. Buyers beware.
Richard M. Zimmerman, of Dayton, is president of A-OK Exterminating Co.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Guest Columns, Montgomery County
TweetEditorial: School data means nothing if it’s wrong
Ohio Department of Education statistics show 295 Dayton Public Schools students were expelled last year — a shocking number if it were true.
In fact, the real number was just 11 expulsions, a worrisome, but manageable, figure for a district with slightly more than 15,000 students.
The fact that the official figure could be so far off says something disturbing about Ohio’s educational data collection system. Although the state’s system is considered good when compared with many other states, it has huge holes that allow for wild inaccuracies and also present an opportunity for fraud.
The Ohio Board of Education has to put safeguards in place.
Consider another disturbing example of data nearly gone wrong. Michael Pittman, former curriculum director for Fairborn schools, resigned and is being investigated by the district, the state and the police, in part, for allegedly attempting to alter the district’s test scores before reporting them to the state, Fairborn’s school board president has said.
School districts largely control the information they report, while the Ohio Department of Education has a laissez-faire approach to oversight. The system is built on trust and not much scrutiny.
This problem has been ongoing. The first time the state collected and released school violence data in 2002, errors were plentiful. That first report showed a terrifying 16 gun incidents at schools across the Dayton area. In fact, no one was threatened with a gun.
Most instances involved knives or other items being seized from students and being miscoded as guns. In a couple cases, they were toy guns. Seven years later, Dayton — and other school districts as well — is still struggling to accurately manage the same coding process.
In 2003, Richard Allen charter schools in Dayton mistakenly turned in state test results for the spring testing period only, not realizing it was their job to aggregate the spring and fall scores. Nobody caught the mistake until the wrong numbers appeared publicly, but, by then, the state said it was too late to go back and change the scores.
The schools just had to live with a wrong report card.
Local districts themselves report most of the data that the state tracks. They, for instance, are the keepers of attendance, graduation rates and expulsions. They enter that data into the state system, following the state’s coding protocols. If districts enter data incorrectly, it usually just stays wrong unless the district discovers the error itself.
For test data, scores are tabulated by a testing company and reported to the state, which sends scores to the districts. The districts then enter that data into the education department’s information system. Again, errors happen.
Or, as may have been the case in Fairborn, the opportunity exists for a district to fudge numbers. For security’s sake, it might be better to have the testing company enter data in the state’s system, even if it adds cost. For other reported information, some system of double-checking in which eyes outside of the local district find their way onto the data is needed.
Perhaps this could even be automated. Couldn’t a computer program, for instance, raise red flags when data significantly changes from the prior year?
One of President Barack Obama’s priorities for states calls for establishing good data systems so reliable judgments can be made about schools’ quality and progress with students. Ohio’s system generally gets high marks for its efficiency, but it still isn’t quite there.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Mixed economic stats offer some hope, even in Ohio
One thing there’s no shortage of these days is economic statistics. Or media reports about them.
You hear statistics about jobs, car sales, housing sales and housing permits; about salaries, stock prices, profits, consumer confidence. You name it.
And all the stats seem to be about comparisons. With the same month last year. With last month. With the same four-month period last year.
Some of the stats look pretty good. Some look bad. The result is a bonanza for spinners.
Want to argue that all that has been done by the government since the collapse of the financial sector last fall has been in vain? No problem. Want to argue that we were saved from a collapse into a full-fledged depression. Also easy.
And yet the spinning itself is a good sign. After all, a few months ago there was no spinning to be done. Things were just simply awful and getting worse by any accounting.
Now, though, for example, in the Dayton area, permits for the construction of new houses are up by almost a fourth, pitting July against June.
And there’s this headline: “GM adds shifts, boosts output.” You have to admit you didn’t expect to see that news for a while, if ever again. It came after the Cash for Clunkers program brought nearly half a million people in to buy new cars, with more apparently primed to do so.
Even though the biggest selling cars have been Japanese, the Detroit-based automakers have done well.
At the end of last week, the feds announced an end to the clunker program. But the automakers had already known it was reaching its limit.
Obviously, the clunker program provided an artificial, temporary boost. But, still, the fact is that people are spending money, are incurring new debt. That’s a decided change.
On the bad side, the official unemployment rate in Ohio rose from 11.1 to 11.2 percent in July. And yet the number of jobs grew marginally, by 9,800. This was the second time in three months that the number of jobs had not shrunk significantly. In the previous year, the drop had been about a quarter million.
National indicators are mixed, too, but stock market numbers suggest some confidence about corporate profits. Such confidence had once disappeared.
One way to take a shortcut through all the numbers is to check out what the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is saying. Not that he’s God or anything. But he does have the task of analyzing all the stats and reporting in a nonpartisan way.
On Friday, Aug. 21, Chairman Ben Bernanke said the economy is now “poised to grow,” an upgrade from his recent suggestions that it had “leveled out,” that the recession was ending.
Of course, he’s not talking about a lot of growth. But when you figure that he was worried late last year about an economic cataclysm — what with banks and investment houses collapsing almost daily — you have to feel a little better.
It’ll be a long road back, at best, with some stats continuing to look bad. Unfortunately, by nearly all prognostications, one of the worst will be the unemployment rate. For many individuals, the worst is yet to come.
Yet the feeling that the society as a whole may have made it through the roughest patch is worth savoring.
Someplace in between the society as a whole and the individual are the state of Ohio and the Dayton region. At those levels, much still depends upon the circumstances and decisions of specific industries.
Let’s just say the overall environment in which they operate has been worse.
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TweetEditorial: STEM school spreads choice beyond Dayton
Ten years ago, before the start of Ohio’s charter school movement, Dayton high school students didn’t have great options.
There was the acclaimed Stivers School for the Arts, but it requires a successful audition to get in. And there were the two well-regarded, but tuition-based, Catholic high schools — Chaminade-Julienne and Carroll — in the city limits. The rest of Dayton’s high schools were among Ohio’s lowest scorers on state proficiency exams.
Things have changed remarkably and for the better, thanks to innovative new public high school choices that were incubated both by Dayton’s school district and by charter school supporters.
Consider a few:
• Dayton Early College Academy. An experimental school begun by the district and the University of Dayton, it pushes high-schoolers to college-level work quickly and now rivals Stivers for top scores in the city.
• David Ponitz Career Technology Center. The district’s just-opened tech high school boasts state of the art equipment and a promising partnership with Sinclair Community College.
• ISUS. This charter school offers dropouts a second chance to learn job skills in construction and health care while finishing high school.
• Dayton Technology Design High School. A district-sponsored charter school for dropouts, it teaches entrepreneurial skills and has an impressive track record of getting kids to college.
The new options have been good for Dayton, offering students who were dissatisfied with, or failing in, low-performing traditional city high schools.
The latest new high school option in the region debuted this week with a twist: it’s open to any student in a three-county area. Bringing new and more good high school options to suburban and rural districts is an idea whose time has come.
The Dayton Regional STEM School launched in Beavercreek with 93 ninth-graders from 20 districts in Montgomery, Clark and Greene counties. The plan is to expand to 600 kids in grades 6 to 12 during the next few years.
The school, which couldn’t have happened without Wright State University’s support, resembles the early college model, but with a heavy science and math focus, including classes in conceptual physics and engineering design. It boasts an intimate, collaborative climate and a first-class list of education, business, industrial, community and government partners.
It looks more than promising.
Ohio made a good bet when it invested in STEM schools — public schools with charter-like funding redirected from the students’ home school districts, in addition to additional direct money from the state.
In many rural high schools, there is only one high-school option. There may not be nearby private or other public schools, and sometimes rural districts cannot afford to offer a wide variety of course work. A few of the STEM school kids are making long drives from New Carlisle, Cedarville, Brookville and Germantown, likely in search of more advanced instruction.
Some suburban districts do offer lots of course options, but, for some kids, their large high schools are overwhelming or they just don’t fit in. For them, changing schools generally requires shelling out money for private school tuition. Even in a top performing rural or suburban school district, some kids can’t find a niche that allows them to thrive. The STEM school now offers them another quality option.
Creating more places where educators can push the envelope by trying out new school models, and where students can seek out programs that are the right fit for them, is good for Ohio. It’s a trend that should be nurtured.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Rural Communities, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEllen Belcher: UD has good company on the river
Grant Neeley, a former Texan and an associate professor at the University of Dayton, spent two days kayaking on the Great Miami River this week. Afterward, he had lots of ideas about how Dayton should sell its rivers and almost limitless clean water supply.
He likes “Keep Dayton Wet,” but admits it’s too much of a rip-off of “Keep Austin Weird,” a slogan that has helped cement that city’s reputation for embracing eclecticism. A sometimes commuter cyclist, Neeley also likes “Off the road — on the river.”
Neeley, 42, is one of 10 adults and 45 UD students who, after their paddling trip from Taylorsville Dam to SunWatch, have a new picture of the Great Miami River — and Dayton. That was the goal: Experience the river and see where it takes you and your head.
This is the sixth year UD’s Rivers Institute has taken students on a field trip that’s designed to go beyond the teaching and learning that would naturally occur in the outdoors.
Sure, there’s the lecture about the glaciers creating the buried valley aquifer with their deposits and, the ice, which at its peak, was 10 times the height of Dayton’s iconic carillon.
There is an experiment immobilizing fish with electrical shocks. That allows researchers to collect fish without harming them, which reveals what aquatic life is thriving. The diversity or lack thereof represents a measurement of water quality.
And as good luck would have it, this year the groups spotted two bald eagles a stone’s throw from downtown.
But the trip is also designed to open the students’ eyes to what’s special about Dayton and how they might contribute while they’re here or after graduation, should they decide to stay.
None of the good times or teachable moments went to waste. A videographer was along for the ride. Now the post-trip assignment in marketing — though it’s not really presented that way — is to take the reams of footage and create videos for YouTube that speak about Dayton.
(Watch for a notice here when they’re posted.)
UD’s program is important not as an isolated event, even though its ongoing nature is cumulatively creating a passionate band of young people who, whether they stay or leave, are big on Dayton and its assets.
The larger significance is that the program is a piece of a picture that shows a growing appreciation for Dayton’s special natural resource — its liquid gold, above and below ground.
Besides this initiative, which leverages the river as a teaching tool while also marketing its recreational opportunities, the Dayton Development Coalition has its H2O Open for Business campaign. That effort, incidentally, is occurring at a time when 20 states are experiencing drought.
The coalition is targeting not just big water users, but also companies that want to go green. The region’s groundwater has a constant temperature of 56 degrees, making it a powerful source for geothermal heating and cooling.
There also have been two River Summits to spotlight riverfront development and, in a sense, to loosely coordinate riverfront projects. That coordination is not nothing in a fractious region that often sees development opportunities as a zero-sum game.
In this instance, the more there is happening and being built on the river, the better off everybody is. Development begets development.
Meanwhile, there’s also an effort — struggling though it is — underway to create a three-day progressive festival next summer for cities along the Great Miami. That event is designed to encourage people to paddle or bike from town to town.
Over and above the great work that continues at RiverScape, Miamisburg is energetically trying to develop its riverbanks, and Troy is going to town with programming and amenities on the river.
Finally, Five Rivers MetroParks is promoting the region’s expansive bike paths on the rivers and arranging programming that is bringing out people and actually getting them in the water.
As for the students, they’re waiting for the day UD is going to have a boathouse. In a place that for so long has stayed away from the water’s edge, this adds up to broad recognition of what’s in our back yards and that other communities can’t manufacture.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Ellen Belcher, Higher Ed, Sports and Recreation
TweetEditorial: On health care, compromising is not selling out
This was the week when the two sides in the health care fight turned to internal warfare.
President Barack Obama was trashed by liberals for softening on the “public option.” That refers to government offering insurance, in case people don’t like what private insurers are selling and charging.
He’s for it, but it’s been a tough sell. Republicans insist, among other things, that it would encourage private employers to drop their plans. Some moderate Democrats are worried about the costs and want to substitute nonprofit co-ops for the government.
So the president said he could live without the public option. Enter Jon Stewart,
Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Bob Herbert, Eugene Robinson, Robert Kuttner and Richard Cohen, among others.
A common charge: The president — their president — had sold out to the insurance companies (which oppose competition from government), whose opposition proves the merit of the public option. He’s turning his back on his campaign promises and betraying those who voted for him.
Phew. You’d think the guy had actually dared to disagree with them about something. In reality, he was just trying to deal with the possibility that he can’t get what he and they want.
Then there was House Republican leader John Boehner, playing the role of enforcer on the other side. He sent a “Dear Billy” letter to Billy Tauzin, the former Republican representative from Louisiana who is now the chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry.
A couple of months ago, the industry worked out a deal with the White House that resulted in the companies allotting $150 million for television ads selling the general idea of health care reform.
This was a coup. The drug companies had opposed Bill Clinton’s health care reform plan. And, spending hugely on campaign contributions and lobbying, they have generally sided with Republicans. But they have lately contributed more to Democrats.
The drug companies have a lot to gain from the Obama approach. If millions more people have health insurance, millions more will use prescription drugs.
The general understanding of the deal is this: The drug companies agreed to sell prescription drugs at half price to seniors in the famous “doughnut hole” in Medicare (where people aren’t covered until their costs reach a certain level). The industry also agreed to offer other savings, totaling $80 billion.
In return, the White House apparently led the industry to believe the president wouldn’t push to allow the importing of drugs from Canada; nor will it seek authority for the government to negotiate with drug companies on the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare.
Some Democrats think the drug companies are getting off too easily. Rep. Boehner has a different concern. His letter to “Billie” was scathing. Excerpts:
“Appeasement rarely works as a conflict resolution strategy.” (That is the first line.)
“When a bully asks for your lunch money, you may have no choice but to fork it over. But cutting a deal with the bully is a different story, particularly if the ‘deal’ means helping him steal others’ money as the price of protecting your own.”
The John Boehners of the world combine with President Obama’s critics on the left to create the no-common-ground politics of Washington. The presumption is against dealing with the other side, with the bad guys, the “bullies,” the people whose support for an idea demonstrates its venality.
But the health care debate needs constructive compromising, even if, in the end, Republicans won’t ever vote yes. The Democratic coalition includes legislators who legitimately worry about supporting a package of confusing major changes — when most people are already satisfied with their coverage — and a tax increase.
If the president can’t get the Republican politicians on board, he is right to go directly to their usual corporate constituents. And if those corporations compromise with him, rather than just give their proxy to John Boehner, they are being simultaneously smart and public-spirited.
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TweetScott Elliott: Sculptor’s life as facinating as his art
The shared experience of strolling the streets in downtown Dayton this summer was seeing a figure just ahead that isn’t quite right — unusually still, but seemingly alive. Coming closer, the man with the guitar or the woman on the park bench proves to be made of life-like colored bronze.
Last week, movers packed up 15 statues as the third summer of the City Life-sponsored downtown exhibition wrapped up.
For those who have been fooled or just mesmerized by the sculptures and found it a pleasurable experience — most people, by anecdotal accounts — you can thank a cranky uncle for the fact that the artist, J. Seward Johnson Jr., didn’t instead spend his life trying to build a better Band-Aid.
Seward Johnson is one of those Johnsons, as in Johnson & Johnson, the giant pharmaceutical company started by his grandfather that invented the Band-Aid. Johnson getting fired from the family business by his uncle at the age of just 32 turned out brilliantly for future fans of his Norman Rockwell-style statues of everyday folks.
The Johnsons happen to be one of the richest — and most dysfunctional — families in America, home-based in my hometown of Princeton, N.J. When I was growing up, the Dynasty-like Johnson family soap opera was an even bigger source of grocery store chatter than those strange bronze figures that began popping up all over town.
When Seward Johnson’s father died in 1983 at age 87, his six children found they had been entirely cut out of the will, with his $600 million fortune left solely to his 34-year-old third wife, a Polish-born former maid. It took more than 25 years before the courts finally settled a legal war with a $42.5 million judgment for the kids. The ex-maid now lives in Monaco, and the 140-acre family villa I passed on the bus everyday on the way to high school known as Jasna Polana (Polish for “Bright Meadow”), is now the clubhouse for a championship golf course.
Even with the long wait for his inheritance, Seward Johnson has done OK. At age 79, 150 of his human sculptures travel the world for displays like the one in Dayton this summer. Sponsors paid about $45,000 to bring the sculptures here. They sell for between $65,000 and $500,000 to collectors. Johnson has made more than $22 million selling his art, and he is worth more than $100 million.
The dyslexic Johnson, who never finished college, told the Newark Star-Ledger in 2000 that he had no idea what to do after the uncle at Johnson & Johnson’s corporate office kicked him to the curb. Always art-inclined, he started spending all his time painting until his wife prodded him to try a local class that taught sculpting in Styrofoam that later was cast in steel. He was quickly hooked.
It seems the city fathers back home were, too. Suddenly, these odd figures began appearing everywhere — in parks, in plazas, in front of buildings. I mean everywhere. There was even a piece called “Playmates” that I almost literally stumbled onto in the bushes along the sidewalk in front of my parents’ bank while delivering newspapers. It featured three teen-aged boys huddled around a flipped-out Playboy centerfold, outfitted in unrealistically tasteful attire. It tells you something about how things have changed that this did not prompt some sort of ruckus.
The celebration of those sorts of scenes didn’t go entirely unnoticed. There have been plenty of sneers along the way from the mainstream art world, which mocks Johnson’s work as the worst kind of kitsch. The Washington Post’s art critic once called an exhibition of his statues the worst show he’d ever seen.
But Johnson appears comfortable in the outsider’s role. To get ideas for sculptures, he likes to sit alone and just observe as other people go about their lives.
“Once when I thought I had used up every idea — I’m now in my second hundred number of pieces— I thought I was run out of things and I just went on a spring day to Central Park in New York and I saw so many things I knew I would be able to go forever,” he told the Arizona Republic.
Watching people downtown this summer, there is no shortage of fascination for those life moments frozen in bronze. Whether critics like it or not, the Johnson name is now a famous brand in the world of art, too.
But you probably won’t find one of his people wearing a Band-Aid.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Columns, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: ‘Last Truck’ captures a story for our time
“GM’s messed up. We were one of the best plants.” — A Moraine assembly plant worker, in “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant.”
It was a remarkable scene at the Schuster Performing Arts Center on Wednesday night, Aug. 19. Not exactly a celebration, to be sure. But not exactly a wake either. But some of both.
The event was the premiere of the movie, “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant,” about the last days of the last real General Motors plant in metropolitan Dayton, as seen through the eyes of workers losing their jobs.
The movie was made by Dayton’s distinguished documentarians Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar. It was produced with HBO and will be shown on that network starting, appropriately enough, Labor Day. The workers and their families constituted most of the movie-goers in the packed house.
There were lots of tears and lots of laugh; lots of bad feeling and lots of good. What’s bad here hardly has to be noted — though the movie’s documentation of it in dramatic terms is an experience worth having for anybody. It is most certainly worth having for any resident of this old car town, for anybody who wants to understand the place and its history.
By the thousands, good people have lost their livelihoods and their work families, their homes away from home. Saddest of all, perhaps, they have lost a good part of their confidence in the American dream.
Many were dedicated workers with physically demanding jobs that paid decently but not as extravagantly as legend has it. (Figure $50,000 for a middle-aged person). They were full of pride in the jobs they did, fully aware of the importance of the workmanship necessary to turn out a safe family vehicle.
They are mainly high school graduates. They know that generations coming after them continue to include many people with similar educations, and that those people do not have the same shot at the good life as earlier counterparts.
The situation for these former workers at the Moraine assembly plant is even worse than it might have seemed during the making of the movie in 2008. At that time, the Dayton job market was already bad. But that was before the national collapse into the most severe recession in the lives of most Americans.
So what could possibly have been good about the evening? The fact that this story has been told well and respectfully and will be seen by millions of Americans.
Ultimately, it’s not just a story about Dayton. The same story has played out all across the country. That, surely, is why HBO was interested.
Often in its history, Dayton has served as a sort of symbol of what’s happening in the country as a whole. For better and for worse.
So it was good to have a story about Daytonians told by Daytonians; good that Wright State University has the film studies program out of which the project grew; good that HBO has now come to Dayton twice this year for premieres, the other being for “They Killed Sister Dorothy.”
“The Last Truck” is not the last word to be said about the GM workers. It’s about loss, not about the recovering and adapting and reinventing that must follow.
The movie-makers spare us the usual talking-head experts about how people cope with loss or should cope. They spare us judgments about individual workers and debates about whose fault it all is (though they capture some workers’ defensiveness on that score and some hard feelings toward management).
They tell what it’s like to be caught up in economic forces beyond’s one’s control, a story for our time.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Why let 18-year-olds gamble?
The problem with the state making money by promoting gambling just got clearer.
The Ohio Lottery Commission approved rules this week that will allow 18-year-olds to play slot machines that could be coming soon to the horse-racing track nearest you.
The reason the commission didn’t flinch at the proposal is simple:
Its job is to make it easy for people to buy lottery tickets and, in the future, to play the slots. Taking money from kids this young is like taking candy from a baby.
But don’t 18-year-olds have enough temptations already? What’s the government doing adding one more?
Moreover, 18 is so young. As one wag sarcastically asked, “What are they going to do? Go for the after-prom crowd?”
Imagining high-school seniors heading to a track is not ridiculous. “Racinos,” as the slot parlors are being called, will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Only four states allow 18-year-olds to gamble; most set the limit at 21, which, of course, is also the age requirement for drinking in Ohio.
There is still an opportunity to undo this decision. The lottery commission must hold a hearing on the raft of rules it wants for the slots. That’s set for Sept. 18 in Cleveland; if the commission gets an earful, it conceivably could reconsider.
Another interesting wrinkle affecting just the track nearest Dayton is this:
The new law relating to slots gives Lebanon Raceway a special dispensation, allowing it to move. (Lebanon isn’t named in the law; but this provision was written specifically for it.)
Warren County commissioners won’t allow slots on the county fairgrounds, where the track is now.
So, if the raceway wants to have 2,500 one-armed bandits, it will have to take its horses and go.
Meanwhile, the governor is requiring that the tracks that bring in slots invest $80 million in improvements in their facilities over the next five years, with $20 million of that coming in the first year.
The $80 million number isn’t huge as casino developments go. But Lebanon would easily be able to meet the figure, because it would be building everything from scratch.
The other six tracks in the state will be spending $80 million just on upgrades. That’s something area local governments need to watch if they decide to negotiate with Lebanon’s track owners.
(The track could be moved to Montgomery County or remain in Warren County. Wherever it goes, the county commission and the local jurisdiction where it wants to locate must give their approval.)
If elected officials care about the quality of any casino development, they’ll need to know how much would be spent on a new track (which won’t be cheap) and how much would be going for the area with the slots.
If a big portion of the required investment goes for the horses, that could mean a cheesier than cheesy casino.
Who wants a third-class gaming hall in their community, along I-75 and for all to associate with their town?
The decision to turn to slots to help plug the state budget — made at the insistence of Gov. Ted Strickland and his fellow Democrats — was a bad choice from the get-go.
Sucking in the kids and overlooking the fact that a minimum investment doesn’t amount to much as it relates to the Dayton area — that’s just the beginning of the mistakes that are likely to play out as this decision is hurriedly implemented.
Bet your firstborn on that.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Montgomery County, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Girls sports revolution bigger in ‘burbs
I never thought I’d live to see a time when, if you see somebody flexing biceps for a photograph, it’s likely to be a female.
People flying from home to office, propelled by backpacks, yes. Women flexing their muscles, no.
As recently as the 1980s, I knew an attractive middle-aged feminist — flaming Berkeley feminist — who was naturally muscular. She took pains at all times to hide her biceps, because she thought they were “ugly.” And nobody thought this was weird. As for the 1950s and 1960s, don’t even ask.
Now, it seems to me, we are actually a little past the peak of interest in female arm peaks. Something like 10 years ago, Goldie Hawn posed for a magazine cover that seemed designed to show that she was not middle-aged in the arms, at least. Katie Couric — before she felt the need to communicate gravitas suitable to a Cronkite heir — apparently got a personal trainer and took to the talk show circuit to show the biceptual results. Brooke Shields bodyslammed Hulk Hogan — and sold it pretty well. In 2009, the novelty value isn’t the same.
All these phases have come in the lifetime of a guy who, as a sports-obsessed kid, couldn’t figure out what girls did for fun. They were never on the playing fields, never on the streets, never on their bikes around town. (There were no organized sports, except Little League, which was for one particular gender.)
This kid once asked a couple of girls the question about fun. They said something about “window shopping.” He could have cried for them.
Now, of course, everything in sports is organized, the girls are right there from the start, and the fun is fully bisexual, right? Not entirely.
The Cincinnati Enquirer did a package of stories over the weekend about girls in high school sports. It said that, although the nation has a law — known as Title IX — mandating equal opportunity for girls in school sports, Ohio has no mechanism for assessing whether schools are complying.
Kentucky requires schools to report how many girls and boys are playing how many sports, but Ohio doesn’t.
So the Enquirer did its own look into the stats at various public schools in the region, up to Springboro. It found basically that, if you’re talking about suburban schools, girls have a lot of opportunities in sports. They often constitute 40 or 45 percent of the athletes at a school, even though football teams dwarf all others in sheer numbers of players.
At Waynesville High, 46 percent of the athletes are girls, and nine out of 19 teams are for girls. Lebanon High said 42 percent of its athletes are girls. Springboro didn’t provide stats as to numbers of female athletes, but said it offered 11 sports for girls, compared to 12 for boys. At Carlisle, 39 percent of the athletes are girls, and seven of the 16 teams are for girls. Middletown had similar numbers. Franklin provided no numbers.
Meanwhile, inner-city schools, if they reported numbers at all, showed girls at such percentages as 27, 31 and 35.
When you figure that the inner-city schools are likely to offer half as many sports for boys as suburban schools, you see that the city girls are way behind their suburban peers.
(Some people note, however, that, in the realm of physical activities at city schools, cheerleading and dance are often very popular for girls.)
Title IX does not flatly require equal numbers in sports. But it does exert pressure on a school to move toward roughly equal numbers or be ready to explain why it hasn’t if somebody complains.
It the stats aren’t even kept, there’s little or no pressure until a specific complaint is filed. But filing a complaint is a tough thing for a kid or a family to do, especially against a school district that is financially strapped.
To know that the numbers are worse in the city isn’t necessarily to know whose fault it is. Some city schools have found, for example, that they can’t interest city girls in softball, because the game isn’t played before high school the way it is in the suburbs.
And city kids are more likely to need after-school jobs. And the school systems have other drains on their money.
Still, it’s worth knowing that the girls-in-sports phenomenon has a class aspect to it.
Many’s the woman who, when she sees a Hollywood star with biceps also sees, in her mind’s eye, a personal trainer at work. Turns out the role of money goes even further than that.
Once upon a time we actually thought that window shopping was more fun for girls than softball; and surely more fun that showing off one’s muscles. But now we know what choices girls will make — when they actually have choices.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Sports and Recreation, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Who’s the right buyer for NCR’s Moraine Farm?
If you haven’t been inside Moraine Farm, NCR’s palatial guest house on Stroop Road, you are in good company.
Rarely open to the public — though a Dayton Opera Guild fundraiser was held there in December 2000 where 2,500 guests wore booties or went barefoot so as not to track on the rugs — the estate is on the market for $8 million.
Built by NCR’s longtime and legendary leader, Col. Edward Deeds, the 45,803-square-foot home will never fetch that price — even with its antiques and one-of-a-kind furnishings thrown in.
But that reality is a reason to watch what does happen to one of the Dayton community’s more historically significant properties.
Col. Deeds originally built a farmhouse, but added on, ultimately expanding to a stunning 50 rooms. Besides an indoor shooting range, it has an observatory that NCR says is worth $3 million.
Also the co-founder of DELCO, with Charles F. Kettering, Col. Deeds was instrumental in creating community assets that have stood the test of time — the Miami Conservancy District, Old River Park, Carillon Park and the carillon itself.
Now that it’s leaving Dayton for Georgia, NCR wants to unload Moraine Farm. The home sits on 8.6 acres and is valued at $2.9 million, according to the Montgomery County Auditor’s office.
Kettering Health Network, whose sprawling campus abuts the estate, has taken out a first option on the property. But it’s not prepared to pay anything near $8 million.
Kettering Mayor Don Patterson, who also is a commercial real estate agent, said he knows of another party that’s interested, but, again, not at that price.
The City of Kettering doesn’t want to own the property, and Dayton History, which owns Carillon Park and recently was hired to manage Old River, would love to have the home as another one of its assets. But it doesn’t have money for the purchase price or the endowment that would be needed to maintain it.
NCR has kept up the home fabulously, and has allowed the community to use it as a meeting place for companies that were being wooed and for important events like the Air Force’s Corona (where all of the service’s top generals come together).
Judging by the 16-page brochure NCR’s real estate agent has put together about the property, some people in the company understand the home’s historical significance to the community and to the company itself. The gushing is unrestrained.
The problem, of course, is finding the right buyer with the right use. The agent calls the home an “executive retreat center,” but, as logical as that idea is, the demand for that sort of thing in this economy is not great.
Meanwhile, the big companies that could pay to use the space are gone.
NCR gave Hawthorn Hill, Orville Wright’s home in Oakwood, to the Wright Family Foundation in 2006. The company would have looked horrible if it had put that genuinely historic site on the market.
Though Moraine Farm is positively lovely, it doesn’t have the national consequence of Hawthorn Hill. Maybe asking so much for it is the company’s way of trying to recoup some of the cost of gifting its other guest house.
There’s no reason to think that NCR won’t continue to be a good steward of Moraine Farm as it waits for a buyer. And it can afford to be patient.
When somebody with deep pockets does eventually make a move, all eyes will be on it, eager to see that something so gorgeous stays gorgeous.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Local Business, Local History
TweetEditorial: Tobacco tax better than raiding fund
Ohio has a seriously costly problem with smoking, which makes the state’s decision to liquidate its $230 million tobacco prevention fund a very bad idea.
The fund — in the form of an endowment, not an annual budget — is what’s left for smoking prevention out of the $10 billion the state won from tobacco companies in court.
Judge David W. Fais of Franklin County Common Pleas Court now says the state is not entitled to shift this cash to other things. But Gov. Ted Strickland — desperately trying to hold together a shaky state budget — quickly said the ruling would be appealed.
The budget slates the money for worthy causes. And the budget problems certainly are tough. Nevertheless, giving up on any serious effort at smoking prevention is a bad idea for a state ranked eighth-worst for tobacco addiction. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nearly a quarter of Ohio residents smoke.
In fact, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids estimates smoking costs the state more than $4 billion a year in health care expenses. The same study estimates 18,000 new youth smokers take up cigarettes in Ohio every year. If all those kids keep smoking throughout their lives, the diseases and health complications they assuredly will develop will guarantee that spending will keep going up.
The state has won praise from anti-tobacco activists for its ban on smoking in public places. But that does not address the core problem, which is the need to dissuade and prevent young people from picking up the habit.
On this front, Ohio falls short. A recent report on retail sales to youth found that Ohio was worst in the nation for the ease with which minors can get cigarettes, with 17 percent of stores selling to undercover inspectors who were younger than 18.
Coincidentally, one of the best ways to discourage new smokers is to raise the cigarette tax. Studies show a correlation between high cigarette taxes and low smoking rates.
Higher tobacco taxes would have the added benefit of bringing in new state revenue that potentially could fill the budget gap left by Judge Fais’ ruling.
Although Ohio has recently raised taxes on cigarettes, its $1.25-a-pack tax is less than some of its neighbors, such as Pennsylvania ($1.35) and Michigan ($2). It’s also far behind the most aggressive states, including New York ($2.75) and Rhode Island ($3.46).
Just by matching Michigan’s $2 tax, Ohio could raise half a billion dollars in new revenue.
Ohio should also extend the tax to dangerous non-cigarette tobacco products — a big growth area for the tobacco industry.
Some combination of all these strategies — including beefing up penalties and enforcement of laws against underage tobacco — are better strategies than appealing Judge Fais’ decision.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Health Care, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Ohio should bring Teach for America here
Ohio could be bringing dozens of the smartest college graduates into its most needy schools, but it has taken a pass.
That should change.
Teach for America, which trains top graduating seniors and places them in high-poverty classrooms for two years of Peace Corps-like service, continues to expand. This fall it will be serving six new regions and adding 1,000 teachers to the 6,200 it placed nationwide last year.
But none will be coming to the Buckeye State.
Some say that Ohio doesn’t need programs like Teach for America because the state has more than two dozen colleges with teacher training programs and actually exports new teachers to other states. Moreover, the number of new teachers who are turned out annually in the state surpasses the open teaching jobs, and this is true even when the economy isn’t in the tank.
Still, these facts aren’t acceptable excuses to pass on attracting a nationally respected program here. Many of the grads who go through Teach for America are on their way to successful careers, sometimes in education, sometimes not. Bringing them here gives Ohio a shot at benefiting from their ingenuity and energy, both while they’re teaching and maybe after their commitments are complete.
Consider a couple of examples:
• Mark Feinberg and David Levin founded the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and started their first successful charter school in Houston just after finishing their stints there with Teach for America. KIPP, which has a school in Columbus, is now considered one of the most promising school-reform models and charter school networks in the country.
• Ohio-reared Michelle Rhee is another Teach for America grad. She taught in Baltimore’s city schools and founded the New Teacher Project, another Teach for America-style post-graduate program. Now she’s the widely admired superintendent in Washington, D.C.
Their successors can bring fresh approaches to classrooms here. And who knows — this might be the place where the next generation of new ideas bears fruit.
To get Teach for America here, Ohio needs:
• Changes to its teacher certification rules.
Generally, Teach for America’s teachers majored in something other than education. Ohio needs a process that either speeds program participants through to a quick or temporary certificate or creates an exemption for them.
• Collaboration among school districts.
Teach for America generally requires a commitment to take 100 teachers. That is too many, for instance, for Dayton schools. But districts could make the commitment in partnership. Dayton could participate, say, with Cincinnati and other nearby needy districts.
• Buy-in from unions.
Where unions view Teach for America grads as a threat, their road can be bumpy. But generally the program puts its participants in the highest poverty, lowest achieving schools, which veteran teachers often try to avoid anyway.
• Funding.
To recruit, train and support 100 Teach for America teachers costs about $5 million to $6 million, the organization says. Usually about 70 percent of that cost is raised by the state, school districts and philanthropies where they’re placed. Even in an era of tight budgets, those figures aren’t insurmountable.
This year Teach for America had 35,000 applicants, including 11 percent of all graduating seniors from Ivy League colleges. The program hopes to add three to five more sites per year.
Ohio should be jumping to be on the list.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetBill Faith: Ohio’s foreclosure crisis isn’t going away soon
Optimism generally is a healthy attitude. But when it comes to Ohio’s foreclosure crisis, believing the worst is over is dangerous — especially for lawmakers who are being lulled into inaction by reports that Ohio has hit bottom.
Despite news in late July that slight dips occurred in foreclosure filings during the first half of 2009 in some metro areas, Ohio still is in a mess of trouble. Consider these myths.
Myth No. 1: The crisis is winding down.
Ohio’s foreclosure numbers have galloped to record levels for each of the past 14 years, so any sudden reduction raises more questions than answers.
Is the leveling off the result of temporary moratoriums adopted earlier in the year by lenders? Is it due to a surge in bankruptcy filings, which halt foreclosure proceedings?
Are the monthly numbers temporarily flat because Ohio is in a trough between foreclosure waves, with readjustable mortgages resetting in the coming months? Is the tiny blip all that can be expected from the Barack Obama plan to help homeowners facing the loss of their homes?
Likely, it’s a combination of all of the above.
Adding to this uncertainty is our unemployment growth — 11.1 percent and rising — which is like gasoline on the foreclosure fire. People without jobs can’t pay their mortgages.
Plus, one in five Ohio borrowers is “under water” in their mortgages, meaning they owe more than their homes are worth. Ohio has seen an additional 6.2 percent decline in home values from March 2008 through March 2009, pushing thousands more toward that fragile status.
Myth No. 2: Regulation is unnecessary. It restricts the marketplace.
Loose regulation of the financial services industry brought the world to its knees. What’s needed now in Ohio is regulation of the foreclosure process.
Not so long ago, the process worked effectively. Today, it’s collapsing under the weight of more than 400,000 foreclosures in the last five years.
The Bush administration’s Hope Now initiative and Obama’s Making Home Affordable plan have had, at best, uneven responses from only a fraction of people in need. Much more has to happen on a larger scale, which is why House Bill 3 deserves immediate action when legislators return this fall.
House Bill 3 would regulate servicers, the real drivers of the foreclosure bus, to give them an incentive to consider loan modifications.
Currently in Ohio, servicers are not regulated. They get their marching orders — and make their profits — from the investor/lender who gives them two options: collect the mortgage payment from the borrower, or foreclose ASAP.
Some homeowners could make their payments and stay in their homes if they weren’t being crushed by late fees or predatory interest rates. If some hefty charges were waived, if they were given a decent interest rate, they could make their payments. Despite good-faith efforts by the governor and the attorney general, new foreclosure starts continue to outpace loan modifications. Ohioans are about 20 percent less likely to receive a modification than the national average.
We must do better.
The continued “net” increase in foreclosures translates to more homes going up for sale and lower real-estate values. That vicious cycle has to stop.
HB 3 would also charge a filing fee to the lender, the proceeds of which will go back into communities for prevention counseling and foreclosure mitigation efforts. And it would call for a moratorium for qualified homeowners to enable them to pursue assistance under the new Obama plan.
Myth No. 3: I pay my mortgage on time; foreclosures don’t affect me.
The Center for Responsible Lending analyzed the most recent numbers from the Mortgage Bankers of America Delinquency Survey (a sampling of more than 44 million mortgage loans serviced by mortgage companies).
It estimates that Ohio will see approximately 87,500 new foreclosures in 2009. The nonpartisan research group found that 2.8 million neighboring homeowners would be impacted, and that home values would be lowered by an estimated $4.7 billion.
If you live anywhere in Ohio, foreclosures affect you. Ohioans can’t let naive optimism be one more excuse to do nothing about a foreclosure crisis that isn’t going away soon.
Bill Faith is executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Guest Columns
TweetEditorial: Boehner offers some truths, some nonsense
U.S. Rep. John Boehner had a piece in USA Today on Thursday, Aug. 13, about health care. To his credit, the column got beyond the ongoing fight about political tactics (those famous town hall brawls).
To his further credit, he didn’t mention the preposterous “euthanasia” complaint that he has raised before.
Because Rep. Boehner (whose district includes parts of Dayton and Huber Heights, as well as Miami, Darke and Preble counties, and part of Butler) is the leader of the House Republicans, his statements have to be taken as important.
He starts by insisting that “Republicans have stood ready to work with him to pass bipartisan health care reforms.”
In truth, though, many in his party have been in a “Just Say No” posture, to quote a chant from some town halls. All the political energy seems to be coming from the “Just Say No” people.
Rep. Boehner complains that Congress and special-interest groups want to “put Washington in control of Americans’ health care.” If that where true, they simply would extend Medicare to cover everybody. Instead, the reformers are bending over backward to maintain the outlines of the current system, while pursuing the goals of covering everyone and controlling costs.
Rep. Boehner also says “the more the American people learn about the Democrats’ health care bill, the less they like it.”
What’s really happening is that a small group of people spread false and outrageous alarms, and some other people do, indeed, become alarmed.
After these general points, Rep. Boehner makes four specific others, in response to points President Barack Obama made Tuesday in New Hampshire. The congressman says:
• Some people could lose their employer-based health insurance. “Experts at the Lewin Group estimate the number could be more than 100 million Americans,” he says. This is a reference to the “public option,” in the various Democratic plans, under which people could join a government-run insurance plan. The Lewin Group, funded by the health insurance industry, worries that employers would stop paying for health insurance.
Of course, people would actually have more options than they do now: not only the public plan, but new private plans that would be fostered and could compete for customers.
At any rate, the Lewin Group has lowered its figure a little, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office uses a number just a tenth as large.
The public option is a big idea that needs more airing. Serious debate of its potential flaws has been crowded out by irrelevant noise.
• The pending bills would worsen the deficit, despite the president’s insistence that he wouldn’t sign any bill that does that. On this Rep. Boehner is right. Democrats have not put forth a bill that meets the Obama standard.
And yet, standing still makes no sense. The deficit is on an out-of-control path, with health care being one of the big drivers.
• Democrats would cut Medicare “to the tune of $361.9 billion over 10 years. That means fewer choices and lower quality care.”
What the White House says it wants is more efficiency. Do the Republicans really want to insist that, in a huge government program, there’s no way to cut costs without cutting care?
• The Democrats plan would foster more “rationing” by creating a “Health Benefits Advisory Committee” to make decisions about what can be covered by insurance. Some advocates have said the idea is to mandate what must be covered — to set minimum standards for insurance programs. They say it’s not about rationing.
Rep. Boehner makes points that are worth debating in the shaping of a plan.
But in a time when tens of millions have no insurance, when scores of millions are on the edge of having no insurance if they lose their jobs, when costs are soaring to the point of driving employers crazy, and when the nation’s long-term fiscal health cannot be addressed without dramatic changes in health care, all efforts must be bent to passing something.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics, Social Services
TweetEditorial: Strickland’s new plan might prompt more levies
Gov. Ted Strickland’s new “evidence-based” school funding plan is supposed to ensure schools get the money that research says they need to educate children.
Perhaps it will. But, in the short run, it’s creating big headaches for school districts — and maybe the politicians who’ll have to defend the changes.
Gov. Strickland spent two years crafting a plan aimed at improving Ohio’s education system and changing the funding scheme. One major goal was to limit how often school districts have to ask voters for money.
Some of his changes are part the state budget that was passed last month. The Ohio Department of Education is briefing school officials now on how those changes will play out, but the best they can say is that the system will be completely different than the way the state allotted money previously.
What administrators need to know — how much money they will receive this school year and next — won’t be known until at least October.
This means that districts, which started a new financial year July 1, can only guess (and hope) that the funding will be roughly comparable to last year. This has put some school boards in a bind.
Consider Sugarcreek schools, which just passed two critical levies in May and August that are supposed to stabilize the budget and avert a deficit.
After this month’s levy win, Superintendent Keith St. Pierre remained cautious. Early projections showed Sugarcreek could actually see a slight decrease in state aid under the new model.
There’s also the question of mandates. Districts must, for instance, offer all-day kindergarten by the 2010-11 school year unless they’re given a waiver. But the state is still deciding the rules for getting waivers.
High-performing suburban districts like Sugarcreek think they can make a case for moving slowly to all-day kindergarten, which would phase in the costs of new classroom space and new teachers. But they don’t know if their argument will prevail.
Likewise, there are questions about how the state will adopt other features of Gov. Strickland’s plan, such as smaller class sizes. How will the state calculate student-teacher ratios? Will teachers’ aides, for instance, be factored in?
Those answers haven’t been spelled out and will affect hiring decisions and personnel costs.
Bob McClintock, business manager for Northmont schools, said he needs more information before he can deliver the district’s five-year forecast, which is normally due to the state by the end of October.
He also needs to inform the school board about the finances because the board is looking ahead to a renewal or replacement levy in 2010. About half the district’s revenue comes from state aid, so fluctuations can have a big effect.
“We need good information to make that choice,” he said. “This is so new and such a revolutionary, systemic change.”
West Carrollton Superintendent Rusty Clifford expects his district will be on the ballot in May with a 6.5-mill renewal levy last passed in 2007. But he thinks the district could need another levy soon thereafter, especially if new requirements aren’t funded by the state.
This is where it could get sticky for Gov. Strickland.
He’s said that the whole point of the coming changes are to limit the need for levies. But if districts are contradicting him, chances are good that voters are the ones who will think local school members have the story right.
Gov. Strickland’s school funding reforms are supposed to shift the burden for financing schools more toward the state, with the goal of reducing inequities between rich and poor communities. But with Ohio’s money tanking, any big step up in state aid won’t occur soon.
This is especially true for suburban districts — like Sugarcreek, Northmont and West Carrollton — because some extra aid in the new formula is being redirected toward poorer urban and rural districts.
Gov. Strickland is eager to say his plans are transforming education. Talk to school administrators who are trying to make the numbers work, and they’re not so sure the shift is for the better.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Husted, Brunner find agreement: Call in top court
As has been noted here before, the case of Jon Husted and whether he actually lives in Kettering or Columbus has certain fun elements to it.
One is that the matter has been in the hands of Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner even as Republican Husted has been planning a race for that job.
The case arose at a time when Brunner was putting together a run for the U.S. Senate; but many Democrats have been hoping she will, instead, run for re-election.
She could theoretically rule that Husted is not a qualified voter in Kettering, upholding the view of the Democrats on the county elections board.
However, she could not remove him from the Senate. That would be up to the Senate, which wouldn’t do it.
A candidate (meaning Husted) for the office that applies the laws about who can vote wouldn’t relish a finding that he’s not eligible to vote where he votes.
As to that, though, if such a finding were reached entirely by Democrats, it would carry about as much moral weight as the impeachment of Bill Clinton by the then-Republican U.S. House.
So Brunner seemed to be squirming as much as Husted. She does not want to be seen as a flaming partisan.
She took her time about coming to a decision. When the local elections board deadlocked 2-2 along party lines, the buck was passed to her. She said she didn’t have enough information. She sought some from Husted and ultimately sent the case back here.
Now Husted has filed a suit with the (all-Republican) Ohio Supreme Court, saying she had no right to seek more information or send the case back.
He says she was obligated to make a decision fast. On that ground and more, he wants the court to take control of the matter and preferably resolve it his favor.
Husted’s timing adds another little element of amusement here.
When Brunner came through Dayton a few weeks ago, she said she expected to have a decision right about now. She said the local board had a couple of weeks to send its second finding to her. (It deadlocked again, shocking everybody — with the exception of everybody.) She expected to act a couple of weeks later.
In fact, when Husted filed his suit, Brunner says, she was about to review a staff draft and hopefully make a decision that very night. The filing aborted that process. Now Brunner has three weeks to respond to the suit.
She says having the court resolve the case has much to be said for it. For one thing, she expected it to end up there anyway if she ruled against Husted.
Moreover, she says, there are three conflicting statutes about residency and how to determine it. She says there’s no case history as to which trumps which. So the court should decide.
Nobody is looking great here. An ordinary voter-residency case is supposed to be resolved in about 10 days. Blame for the delay can be spread around. Husted is seeing political motives in stringing him along. Brunner says Husted was slow about providing requested information. And, yes, the laws are less than crystal clear.
At this stage, there certainly is something to be said for getting the thing resolved fast. It’s been hanging around roughly all year.
Some might consider the whole issue frivolous. Husted was speaker of the House for four years, a full-time job. He married a woman in the Columbus area and has two children there. Obviously, he wasn’t going to be spending much time in Kettering.
Still, the state — through the county — did have to do an investigation after issues arose about which residence is his primary one, which affects what he pays in property taxes; about whether he ever spent significant time in Kettering; and about whether he plans to return to Montgomery County (which is one consideration in determining residency).
If the public has the impression that everybody so far seems to be acting as a member of his or her political party, the reason is that the law is murky enough to allow that.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio politics
TweetJim McCarthy: Judges should ensure homeowners are treated fairly
Montgomery County judges are making the mortgage foreclosure crisis worse.
Not by what they’re doing, but by what they’re not doing.
If they’d order lenders to negotiate with homeowners facing foreclosure, families’ homes could be saved, and the spiral of blight many neighborhoods are in could at least be slowed.
In January, the court started a tracking system of foreclosures with the goal of requiring mediation. But nothing is happening. Homeowners who have asked for mediation have been told that the court’s program isn’t funded.
Meanwhile, judges won’t insist that lenders negotiate. What’s wrong with ordering them to the table?
Judges in other Ohio counties are not taking such a hands-off approach. They’re insisting lenders and borrowers talk. Montgomery County courts are overwhelmed with foreclosure cases, but Franklin and Cuyahoga counties are facing the same crush of cases, and they’re working with borrowers and lenders.
Mediation is critical because borrowers often can’t get answers on their own from mortgage servicers about how much it would take to save their homes. Judges can force disclosure about what’s owed and how much has been run up in penalties and late fees (which often are horrendous and can, and should, be reduced).
Foreclosure is usually a losing strategy for a lender, borrower and the community. If a loan can be modified to allow a borrower to afford a new, lower payment, that keeps a family in their home and prevents the loan holder from taking a big loss. Meanwhile, neighborhoods aren’t left with a vacant property.
This is why judges have to become involved. And they should not wait for the state or federal government to declare a moratorium on foreclosures. Even if that happens, there’s a glut already in the pipeline.
If they dig into foreclosure cases, judges will see that the process is being manipulated by out-of-state lending-industry players. Most lenders do not keep their loans, but instead sell them in large bundles, perhaps several times over, to outfits that the borrower has never heard of and can’t contact.
Some of these entities then sell the loans at a large discount to debt buyers, who profit by throwing people out of their homes. These loan holders have no interest in negotiating. They make money by reselling discounted homes, not by keeping a homeowner in a property.
Another trick is to conceal who the real investors are, which prevents a borrower from talking to the party that has the authority to modify a loan. If judges adopt a local rule requiring that the real owner of a mortgage be disclosed, and that someone representing that party must participate in mediation, that would allow borrowers to make their case to a representative who can agree to a new — and workable — loan.
Judges also need to know that the federal government has established the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) to help stop the foreclosure crisis. Many loan servicers have agreed to participate, but recent news reports show that they’re playing all the angles:
• They have made it difficult for borrowers to get their loans considered and denied loan modifications for undisclosed reasons.
• When they have given modifications, they have not explained the costs and fees and often combined temporary rate reductions with longer loan terms.
• Contrary to the federal program’s guidelines, servicers have proceeded with foreclosures, while telling borrowers they were reviewing a loan modification request. At the same time, they’ve required borrowers to sign waivers that strip them of their legal rights.
To make sure that our local community benefits from this program — and that people aren’t actually victimized by it — judges can use the mediation process to ensure that servicers are following the rules.
Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration have always encouraged lenders, servicers and investors to be involved in loss mitigation or loan modifications before burdening the courts and resorting to foreclosure.
But that expectation has been lost and forgotten.
Judges can return fairness and sensibleness to court proceedings, but they have to get personally involved in foreclosure cases. They’re treating foreclosures filings as paperwork, not as disputes involving people who deserve to be heard.
Jim McCarthy is president of the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Guest Columns
TweetEditorial: Helping just NCR workers not enough
This week after hearing about ChooseDayton.com, Larry Dosser said he had three jobs he possibly could fill using the new Web site.
The president of Mound Laser & Photonics Center said he easily could see how some of NCR’s 1,250 employees — many of whom won’t follow the company to Georgia — have skills he needs.
Mr. Dosser’s response was one of two reactions that creators of the site are hoping for.
They want local businesses to recognize that NCR’s leaving is an opportunity to hire talent that could cost them tens of thousands of dollars in expenses if they recruited outside of the area. Headhunters are pricey, and so is relocating people.
More than a dozen companies have already registered at the free site, and the goal is to get dozens — if not hundreds — more.
The other reaction community leaders want is for NCR employees to register at the Web site.
It’s set up in a way that allows NCR people to post information about their experience without using their names. If an employer is interested in a particular profile, an automated response is sent to the employee, who then can decide whether to contact the employer.
Call it passive poaching of NCR’s work force.
Confidentiality was built into the system because some NCR employees want to stay in Dayton, but worry that they’ll be thrown under the bus if their bosses know they’re looking for a local job.
The site, which has been pulled together quickly by volunteers, is the Dayton community’s way of reminding NCR employees that they have a choice, and that many people’s talents are transferable to other companies or to the military.
At the Wednesday, Aug. 12, meeting where the site was unveiled, there was important discussion about how to connect with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s recruiters.
The base is in hiring mode (because of the Base Realignment and Closure process), but the military has its own application process.
The trick will be getting NCR employees and base personnel to talk the same language. Data management, for example, is fundamentally the same task no matter for whom it’s being done. But that fact can be lost on people reading — or writing — resumes too rigidly.
Some people are criticizing the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce and Sinclair Community College — the organizers of the project — for restricting the site to NCR people. They have a fair point.
Yes, some companies will only be interested in NCR workers. They’ll make an assumption about the quality of skills those employees have because NCR is a Fortune 500 global IT company.
But there also are talented out-of-work and underemployed folks who work outside the moat at that company’s former world headquarters. They deserve a place to advertise their abilities, and employers should know they’re here.
Doing something special for NCR workers makes perfect sense, because potentially 1,250 people are either going to be out of work or are considering leaving Dayton. Fairly quickly, though, their decisions will get made.
In the meantime, something good has been created, and it’d be a shame to see ChooseDayton.com disappear after the burst of one company’s departure is over and done.
There will always be businesses wondering if it’s time for the next hire, and employees thinking about the next move. This is a safe space where both sides can check out each other.
The site will only work, though, if both employees and employers populate it, making it a growing and dynamic offering. In this economy, employees will find their way there; it’s employers who will need to be sold on the idea.
Especially for small companies, especially for those that have to hire quickly, the portal is an easy resource — a good thing that’s come about because of a loss.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Local Business
TweetGM has the right goals even if it’s overselling
There’s been a lot of talk about how General Motors is now Government Motors, given the feds’ 60 percent stake in the company. GM is feeling heat to prove that it will not act like government, but, on the contrary, will be more entrepreneurial, more adaptable than it has ever been.
In that context, whose idea do you suppose it was to have the CEO hold a news conference on the Chevy Volt and stand in front of a great big sign saying “230 mpg”?
Kind of brings to mind “Mission Accomplished,” doesn’t it? Imitating a president’s mistake doesn’t seem like a great way to live down the Government Motors label.
And, after all, we are talking about a number that’s almost destined to be doubted and debated. It’s GM’s number, not the Environmental Protection Agency’s. And it seems fairly arbitrary. Truth is, if you have a 40-mile round-trip commute, and then plug the thing in overnight, you actually use no gas.
GM is referring to 230 as a city number, a sort of average based on how people drive in the city. (Unlike with other cars, highway driving yields lower mileage.)
But the car hasn’t been tested by average drivers.
It is being built at the rate of about 10 a week, with an eye on showrooms late next year, roughly the time when Nissan is expected to have something similar. (After the GM announcement, Nissan said its Leaf will get 367 mpg.)
Ideally, the 230 number should be in normal-size print, surrounded by qualifiers. After all, the number makes your eyes pop, no matter how big the print.
But GM is rightly eager to deliver the news that this is not your father’s GM, or even your older brother’s (and certainly not some bureaucrat’s).
A few days earlier, the big news was that GM is leading the world into the selling of new cars on eBay, heretofore used only for used cars. Another big splash.
To anybody who wishes GM well, the signs of life are good to see.
Dayton will have more than its share of such people for a long time, even beyond those who are still involved with GM projects or GM spinoffs and suppliers.
The people who run GM and who work there may be different people from the old days, but such changes in sports teams don’t prevent people from rooting for the team they have always rooted for. The same is true in business, to a degree, anyway. Beyond that, Dayton — with its empty plants and laid-off workers — will continue to have a stake in GM’s success.
The old world isn’t coming back. But new opportunities do arise. A company named Applied Sciences, in Cedarville, is working on parts that could one day double (from 40 miles to 80) the distance a Volt can go on one charge — that is, without having to use gas.
In siting manufacturing plants, GM is proceeding with an eye on Michigan, feeling an apparent obligation to create jobs in that state. Fair enough. But the next state in line has to be Ohio, if not for the Volt, for something else.
The Volt is expected to cost about $40,000 (and the Nissan Leaf reportedly $25,000 to $30,000). Buyers can also get a $7,500 tax credit for cars that use electricity. And the price is likely to come down with time.
It will apparently be a while, at best, before the Volt revolutionizes driving habits. Still, it’s good to see GM looking to the future, not the past; good to see it trying to justify the investment of taxpayers. And a little disconcerting to see it inviting skepticism and high-profile rebuttals by making eye-popping claims in eye-popping print.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Those town hall disrupters can serve good purpose
Something seems wrong about the fact that the Miami Valley is essentially missing from the great fight about health care.
We’re used to being at the center of things political. Let there be a national election, and all eyes turn to Ohio, most particularly to the parts that swing back and forth between the parties.
But this month we’re seeing something a little like a national election, in the realm of policy. President Barack Obama is pushing hard for dramatic health care reform. The fate of the issue might come down to what the members of Congress decide about public opinion after visiting home for the August recess.
But we’re really only talking about Democrats in Congress, of which there aren’t any from the Miami Valley.
Republican legislators are presumed to be hostile. While the foes of reform see some hope in targeting Democrats in Congress, proponents of reform see none in targeting Republicans.
You’ve heard how people are showing up at Democratic town hall meetings, often with the purpose of disrupting. This is causing the Democrats to reconsider holding such meetings.
Most politicians know better than to take the turnout at a meeting as a good indicator of public opinion. Truth is, the moderate legislators who are being targeted pride themselves on representing the kind of normal, moderate, open-minded people who don’t scream their heads off at public meetings. They typically don’t play to the highly vocal “base” of either party.
So they will be looking at polls, too. But the polls show a tough sell for change. Roughly, the same thing is happening this time as when President Bill Clinton tried to get reform enacted: With most people being satisfied with their own insurance, the opposition is successfully raising the alarm that reform will change things for the worse.
The drama is playing out in Ohio, if not through town hall meetings, then otherwise. This is partly because Democrats hold marginal House districts around Columbus and Cincinnati areas and in eastern and northern Ohio. The attempt to stack and disrupt public meetings is probably a good thing, all things considered. The resulting drama can focus attention on the issue. The more attention the better. Maybe, as a result, actual information will get out. As things stand, misinformation seems to predominate.
At this newspaper, I frequently get this rhetorical question: If the Obama health insurance plan is so wonderful, why don’t the politicians have to sign up for it?
The question makes no sense. There is no plan that anybody has to sign up for. The vast majority of people who already have health insurance through work could keep their plan.
That’s the most important decision the reformers have made: They are not proposing a whole new system.
One of their proposals is a “public option,” wherein some people could choose a health care plan run by the government. The politicians in Congress are already covered by such a plan. One of Barack Obama’s campaign points in 2008 was, if we politicians can have something like this — a great plan — why shouldn’t the public have access?
Another case I often hear against reform is that the Massachusetts plan for universal care is a failure. Actually, the more attention focused on Massachusetts, the better. That state has achieved nearly universal coverage quickly, and has done so without breaking its budget.
There have also been problems in Massachusetts, to be sure. But there are always problems in health care. How severe they are is a debate worth having.
It’d certainly be better than what’s passing for debate now.
The White House has put out the message that when its supporters hear something “fishy” coming from opponents of reform, they should let the White House know. In response, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., leader of the Senate Republicans, said this was appalling; he implied that it smacked of President Richard Nixon’s enemies list.
Nonsense. The White House was just saying, if you hear a charge that sounds like it might be untrue — like reform would facilitate killing old people — let us know; we’ll respond.
There are certainly legitimate qualms to be raised about the various reform plans. The reformers often seem to be overpromising when they insist that more people will have coverage even as costs are brought under control.
Such real issues get a lot of attention in Congress. Somehow, though, when the debate extends out into the country — the supposedly “real” world — the debate turns unreal.
Permalink | Comments (39) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, National Politics, Ohio politics, Social Services
TweetEditorial: Wayne, Wyoming might need a new dream
For more than four years, the City of Dayton has been trying to get a shopping development at the corner of Wayne Avenue and Wyoming Street in the southeast part of the city.
The land in question starts at the northeast corner of that intersection and stretches about 12 acres into a residential area that has seen better days.
At one stage, Kroger was signed up to build a modern supermarket. But the company pulled out.
The effort at redevelopment made perfect sense.
Located across from the South Park and Walnut Hills areas, the corner seemed to have great potential, as Kroger’s interest suggested.
But when Kroger pulled out, the city went looking for another project. It hasn’t found one. Other big stores aren’t interested.
Of course, this search has been taking place at the worst possible time for the economy.
But how much longer can it go on? The city has the property owners who are willing to sell lined up, but it had to pay them 3 percent of the proposed purchase price of their homes and lots to extend the options, at a cost of $150,000. The options expire at the end of the year.
The people in the neighborhood are deeply frustrated. They say normal upkeep has suffered because of the expectation of change. And upkeep is crucial in an old neighborhood that also has so many vacancies.
Now the Rite Aid drugstore across Wayne Avenue has closed.
Not all the news is bad. A lot of effort goes into keeping up the appearance of the commercial strip. Crime is down. The city is buying up vacated land and removing some blight.
And East End Community Services is about to begin construction of 40 homes just beyond the boundaries of the 12 acres. These homes, subsidized with state government money, will be offered at lower-than-market rates.
That ought to help stabilize the neighborhood — now seeing an influx of Hispanic and other immigrants — while perhaps making the area more attractive to businesses in the long run.
For the short run, the city may have to pull back on its dreams. Developing a reduced portion of the area might have to be good enough.
The city owns properties right at the corner. In approaching businesses, it has found more interest in the corner than in the broader site.
(It still has to get permission to demolish the dilapidated Ecki Building, which some see as having historic value.)
Many residents — especially east of Wayne — really, really wanted a big, modern, suburban- style supermarket. It’s a shame to give up on that dream, given all the work that went into overcoming obstacles.
(Unable to get the land by exercising the governmental power of eminent domain, the city had to get all the homeowners on board voluntarily, without paying exorbitant prices.)
But some good things are happening. The best bet now may be to move ahead with what can be done now and postpone the bigger dream.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb
TweetGuest column: Vibrant, creative cities are bicycle friendly
Bill Pote, who wrote this column, is an IT consultant who lives in downtown Dayton. He is founder of DaytonMostMetro.com.
Portland, Boulder, Madison, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Chicago. These cities are magnets for young college graduates and the “creative class” that so many places, including Dayton, are trying to retain and attract.
What else do they have in common? They are all bicycle-friendly cities, according to a city ranking by the League of American Bicyclists, which sets the standard for cities looking to capitalize on the growing popularity of the bicycle culture.
While Dayton must continue to work hard at attracting businesses that provide good jobs, we must, at the same time, be doing everything we can to make our city an attractive place to live. Bicycles can play a major role.
Columbus is the only Ohio city that ranks on the Bicycle Friendly Community list (bronze level). But Dayton has the potential to join, even surpass, Columbus as a bicycle-friendly community.
Our region already enjoys one of the best recreational trail networks in the country, with main trails converging at Riverscape in downtown, where a new bike hub is being built. We also have the new and popular MetroParks Mountain Biking Area.
Imagine if we capitalized on these recreational assets by integrating them with a city and region-wide transportation network that encourages more people to use bicycles for short trips and even commutes to work.
By transforming our streets to be more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly, we can:
• Provide low-cost transportation options to those unable to afford automobiles, as well as to those who simply want to drive less.
• Decrease traffic congestion and pollution.
• Lower obesity levels by increasing physical activity.
• Add vibrancy and safety to our streets.
• Allow people to spend less on gas and perhaps spend more in our local economy.
The City of Dayton is implementing the region’s first dedicated bike lanes and sharrows (shared lanes that are marked). You’ll see them once the downtown two-way street conversions are finished during the next several months.
(It is a nice nod to the Wright brothers that St. Clair Street will have one of these dedicated bike lanes, since it shares its name with a line of bicycles that the Wrights built and sold.)
Added to groups like Courteous Mass (a grass-roots urban bicycle awareness movement) and the Drive Less Live More campaign, we are moving in the right direction toward a comprehensive plan that aims to put Dayton on the map of bicycle-friendly communities.
This includes efforts as simple as expanding driver/bicycle education and awareness, and as complex as implementing bike share programs and “Complete Streets” plans that truly transform our streets from being designed predominantly for the automobile to being equally accessible to autos, bicycles and pedestrians.
We all know about the Wright brothers and how their invention has helped shape Dayton, though few would suggest that it is their prior work with bicycles that may represent the future for Dayton. However, in this age of rising transportation costs, traffic congestion, growing obesity rate, climate change and culture shifts, U.S. cities are discovering that the bicycle can play a pivotal role in the quest for economic prosperity.
Dayton should join this trend.
CYCLING SUMMIT
When: Aug. 14
Where: 300 College Park
More information: www.metroparks.org/MVCyclingSummit/
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Bill Pote, City of Dayton, Dayton Creative Class Initiative, Guest Columns
TweetEditorial: AFL-CIO wins, but workers lose
The decision by the Strickland administration to give the AFL-CIO’s United Labor Agency $2 million to help laid-off workers is a farce.
There’s an election around the corner — the governor’s — and the money is a gift to an organization that Gov. Ted Strickland wants revved up on his behalf.
The losers are laid-off workers who could have been helped if this money went instead for direct help — paying, say, for their re-training or college tuition.
The portion of the grant that’s being spent in Montgomery County is especially questionable, given that the area already has a well-oiled (though imperfect) program to get laid-off workers back on their feet.
The AFL-CIO just got a second contract for $1.2 million — up from the $800,000 that had been spent statewide in the previous 18 months — to train and pay union members to encourage laid-off individuals to get help.
The case for the union’s involvement is that laid-off workers are more likely to act on advice from their peers than from, say, company human resources staff or government workers who go to job sites where people have been let go.
But keep in mind that the union representatives aren’t doing anything specialized. They don’t have access to databases about job openings; they’re not teaching people how to write resumes; they can’t tell workers how much, if any, job retraining money they’re eligible for.
Rather, they’re emphasizing the need to visit the local job and family services department for help.
If you were laid off and had a family to feed, you might not want to go to your local welfare department or job center; you might be embarrassed or intimidated at that prospect. But sometimes there just aren’t a lot of choices.
Why AFL-CIO affiliates need to be paid to provide this sort of encouragement is hard to see.
Montgomery County has tried mightily to help workers who’ve lost their jobs. It has the one-stop job center, where there’s help on everything from resume writing to job searches to applying for food stamps and tuition assistance.
Since 2005, officials even have had a separate office in Moraine aimed mostly at auto workers.
Now, using federal Workforce Investment Act dollars that the state is giving to the AFL-CIO — some $140,000 — a third office is being created at the IUE CWA Local 755 at 1675 Woodman Ave.
In a state where unemployment has topped 11 percent, there’s no doubt that laid-off workers need help. The question is how to do that cost-effectively while getting the most return for the money.
This $2 million effort is political back-scratching masquerading as altruism. Federal job re-training efforts have faced heavy criticism. The complaint generally is that the programs cost a lot for a little. This is just the sort of effort that sparks ridicule and complaints.
That, in the end, hurts deserving people who want to help themselves.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Montgomery County, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Drive and type? That’s legal?
The practice of driving and texting is insane.
If there was a documentable trend of people tying their shoes and driving, or reading books while going 65 mph, or anything else that required them to take their eyes off the road for an average of five seconds at a pop, the outcry would be overwhelming.
How, then, texting and driving has become socially acceptable is hard to explain. Mostly, it tells you how ridiculously hooked on cell phones we are.
Several proposals have been introduced in the Ohio legislature to outlaw the practice.
The disagreements are not so much about whether a ban makes sense, but whether the law should allow drivers to be pulled over and ticketed just for texting, or if they have to be stopped for something else.
Waiting for an offender to hurt or kill himself or someone else is too forgiving. If an officer sees someone texting or dialing, that’s worth a stop, a citation and a fine. Too much is at risk.
Some studies have found that truckers who text travel the length of a football field while they’re typing on their telephones. Do you want to be in the car that a semi comes upon quickly and unexpectedly?
An AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety poll last spring found that 87 percent of people consider motorists e-mailing or texting to be threatening, which is just shy of the 90 percent who think drunken drivers are a menace. Nonetheless, 21 percent had recently offended.
That’s pretty compelling evidence that a law is necessary, that much-needed education campaigns won’t be enough.
Not shockingly, the number of self-confessing texters was highest among drivers between the ages of 16 and 24, about half of whom said they had sent text messages from behind the wheel.
Oh good. The youngest, least experienced drivers who are confident nothing will ever happen to them are glued to their screens the most frequently.
Maybe those who want to make texting only a “secondary offense” — requiring that the driver be stopped for, say, running a light or bobbing and weaving — will think twice about their reasoning if they can imagine young people picking up a habit that they may well practice all their lives.
Think of how dangerous the roads could become if texting and cruising at highway speeds increasingly becomes the norm.
Banning any form of texting is so much easier than regulating cell phones and driving. The great bulk of people who would draw the line at texting have before, or do regularly, drive and talk. Increasingly, though the research on even that is becoming more alarming.
Some studies have found that drivers using a cell phone increase their odds of crashing by four times; the loss of reaction time is equal to that of someone who has a .08 percent blood alcohol level, which, in Ohio, is the legal threshold for being intoxicated.
One safety researcher says:
“We’ve spent billions on air bags, antilock brakes, better steering, safer cars and roads, but the number of fatalities has remained constant. Our return on investment for those billions is zero. And that’s because we’re using devices in our cars.”
Seventeen states have banned texting. Ohio should do the obvious, too.
Permalink | Comments (25) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: New shopping outlet a good use of I-75 corridor
In the late 1990s, there was talk of a “mega-mall” just south of where the new Cincinnati Premium Outlet center is on Interstate 75 in Warren County.
An entrepreneur wanted to develop a mall that he said would draw four times the people that Kings Island draws. He had nearby government officials on board.
But the plan generated little public enthusiasm and some outright opposition. People worried about traffic, sprawl, pollution and a lack of planning.
Some also worried about the well-being of existing malls.
Also, there was much criticism of the call for an expensive new I-75 interchange a mile south of Ohio 63. The plan died.
Perhaps the same idea today would get a different reception, given the economy. People everywhere are slower to look into the mouths of gift horses.
True, that stretch of I-75 between Cincinnati and Dayton is still seen as having a great future, almost no matter what. Still, you don’t want to take too much for granted.
At any rate, now comes the opening of a new shopping center. It has generated more enthusiasm than it otherwise might, precisely because it comes in the middle of hard times.
The difficult times would not have been apparent to anybody noting only the big crowds in the opening week. But a lot of those people might have been looking for the bargains that come with big openings.
The opening is good to see. The project is of a scale that fits reasonably well into the prevailing approach to the I-75 stretch. It doesn’t redefine the whole area, as a mega-mall would have. It builds on the idea that the interstate strip itself is the best part of Warren and Butler counties to develop commercially. That leaves open the possibility of other parts of those counties retaining a fairly peaceful feel.
And if the strip is to be developed commercially, then retail itself is a particularly good use, serving so many people. An easily accessible shopping center can even attract people from outside the region and some who are just passing by.
What happens along I-75 is a subject the entire Dayton-Cincinnati region must focus on. In recent years, both Montgomery and Hamilton counties have lost population, while Warren County has been one of the fastest growing in the state. At least until gas prices go through the roof and stay there, the growth — the movement of assets — seems likely to continue at one pace or another.
Meanwhile, the people and authorities in the “bedroom communities” between the two metropolitan areas have a stake in the bookend urban areas that define their roles and identities.
The arrival of a shopping center isn’t necessarily the greatest kind of economic development news. It brings new jobs, of course, but they aren’t particularly well-paying. A shopping center doesn’t have the kind of positive impact of, say, a manufacturing center or big high-tech company, which brings in money from outside the community.
There’s also the reality that consumers have only a certain amount of money to spend, especially in a stagnant overall economy. So new stores may end up undermining old stores (and old jobs).
Still, quality of life matters. If the I-75 strip develops in a way that improves the attractiveness of the region as a place to live, that can’t hurt.
Anyway, these days, it’s good to see any kind of new economic activity.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Voinovich does his thing at his speed
Ohio Sen. George Voinovich was apparently the last U.S. senator to decide how to vote on confirmation of now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor. A couple of hours before the vote, online outlets counted him as undecided, while everyone else was in one camp or another.
He eventually voted for confirmation, saying. “Judge Sotomayor’s decisions, while not always the decision I would render, are not outside the legal mainstream and do not indicate an obvious desire to legislate from the bench.”
On the latter point, he diverged from his party majority.
It insisted the opposite, but so lamely as to lose the votes of six Republican senators generally considered more conservative than Sen. Voinovich, if only a little:
Indiana’s Richard Lugar, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, Florida’s Mel Martinez, Missiouri’s Kit Bond, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and New Hampshire’s Judd Gregg.
(Sen. Voinovich was also one of seven Republicans to vote Thursday to extend the Cash for Clunkers program; he was an original sponsor.)
It would have been odd for Sen. Voinovich to side with the fire-breathing conservatives. Indeed, it’s a little hard to understand why he needed to wait until the last minute to make up his mind, given how long Judge Sotomayor was under scrutiny. But that’s his way.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, National Politics, Ohio politics, Short editorial
TweetEdtorial: RTA’s universe is fantasy land
When someone can seriously suggest that it makes sense to have a $100,000 bus driver in Dayton, Ohio, that’s a pretty strong signal that the debate has gone off the rails.
Last week, a Dayton Daily News story reported a bus driver for the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority racked up nearly $28,000 in overtime pay on the way to earning $98,700 last year, just short of six figures. He was one of 13 drivers who made at least $20,000 in overtime. Ten of those had yearly earnings of at least $75,000.
Yet, RTA Executive Director Mark Donaghy defends the situation. The RTA, he says, has made a sensible choice to keep a smaller stable of drivers, knowing that decision will result in significant overtime. If a few drivers volunteer for a lot of overtime, they may run up their annual wages, but RTA still saves money by not hiring more people, who would get costly benefits, he argues.
Mr. Donaghy makes a compelling case that he’s right — as judged by public transit custom and tradition.
But that only demonstrates what a fantasy land this realm of public employment has become. If you were building a transit authority today, nobody would create RTA’s staffing system, and it cannot continue like it is. The sales tax money that sustained RTA in good times and made the agency flush has stopped growing. Those days are not coming back, at least not anytime soon.
At a time when bus service is being significantly curtailed and riders — including some of the most needy people in our community — are being asked to pay higher fares, the administration and employees must readjust to that reality.
RTA can curb unnecessary costs, without sticking it to drivers. The core problem that pushes up driver overtime is absences. When drivers are off for vacations, personal time, sick leave or other reasons, routes still must be covered.
It’s challenging enough to schedule fill-in drivers when absences are expected. But if employees unexpectedly don’t show, there’s the potential for chaos. Drivers are on standby to grab the overtime when this sort of thing happens.
Mr. Donaghy points to significant improvements in driver absenteeism in recent years through cooperative efforts with the bus drivers’ union and careful management. Even so, off time for the drivers under their contract is more than generous.
Consider some perks:
• Drivers get 12 sick days a year and are guaranteed their birthdays off or extra pay if they work on their birthdays. This is on top of eight paid holidays.
• They can bank up to 160 sick days. When drivers retire, they can claim cash for theses days: a half-day’s pay for up to 100 days, or a maximum of 50 paid days.
• A driver with 30 years of experience gets six weeks of paid vacation per year. These sweet deals can’t continue, especially now when RTA is telling its customers to accept less and pay more. Sanity has to be injected into the rules.
The RTA is in contract negotiations with its drivers. Talks are more than three months past the contract’s expiration date, suggesting they have been tough. The RTA board and management can’t bend on the fact that they need concessions.
Even though some overtime has to be allowed for, RTA drivers have too sweet of a deal.
Permalink | Comments (89) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Montgomery County, Scott Elliott, Transportation
TweetKevin Riley: As usual, Hal McCoy had it first
This column from editor Kevin Riley will run in Sunday’s Dayton Daily News.
If you follow the Cincinnati Reds, you don’t need me to tell you that Hal McCoy consistently comes up with the freshest, most insightful stories about the team — and always ahead of everyone else.
He’s looked out for Reds fans, whether reporting on the games or on the latest manager to get fired. Last week I got a strong dose of Hal’s instincts to give readers hot information as soon as he had it.
On Thursday, he announced on his blog at DaytonDailyNews.com that he was retiring.
Of course, these things are usually done in a different way — like letting the boss know first and planning an announcement. But Hal’s loyalty is to his readers, so he told you what he knew as soon as he knew it.
I admit it; I was taken aback. But, after I thought about the situation a while, I realized this was vintage Hal. He talks straight and doesn’t bury the news. If he finds out a player is retiring, he doesn’t wait for the press conference.
Earlier in the day, Hal and I had talked and I told him that, in the future, we wouldn’t be traveling with the Reds or sending anyone to spring training. Hal, who’s eligible for a voluntary early retirement program we’re offering employees, deserved to know the newspaper’s plans.
Obviously, he was disappointed.
Hal, who’s nearly 69, has been at his craft for 37 years. Covering a major league team is thrilling, but grueling, work. He, however, always focused on the exhilarating, not the hard parts. That was true even after his work became all the more difficult because of a problem Hal developed with his eyes that left him legally blind.
The tenacity and courage Hal has shown in dealing with that struggle humbled all of us who worked with him, as well as the players and coaches he covered.
Hal’s announcement was a hot item on the Internet, and media outlets were in a frenzy to catch up. Some — including a local television station that reported he was fired — got the facts wrong.
Many newspapers have cut back baseball coverage, and the Dayton Daily News is among the last to cover a major league team with a full-time writer even though the team is from a nearby city. Times have changed in the newspaper business, and with today’s economic realities and exploding media landscape, the expense is too great to have a person devoted just to the Reds.
That, of course, doesn’t mean you won’t get Reds information and coverage. You’ll learn about the games on our pages and at our Web site, but we’ll be providing it to you from multiple sources.
In response to the firestorm about his decision and the confusion about it, Hal was quick to set the record straight:
“It is MY choice to retire … I was not forced, coerced or threatened,” he wrote Friday on his blog.
I’ve had preliminary discussions with Hal about continuing to contribute to the newspaper and our Web site in his retirement. We’re hopeful about getting that worked out over these next few weeks.
Hal’s legendary work and career are nothing but remarkable, and his retirement is unquestionably the end of an era.
One of the dozens of commenters on Hal’s blog may have put it best:
“I’ve always enjoyed your insights, your excellent writing and especially your honest reporting of the Reds with your personal opinions/perspectives without the coach-speak or company spin. And I kept learning and learning about the game with each ‘Ask Hal’ column that you wrote.”
Permalink | Comments (28) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Kevin Riley, Local History, Sports and Recreation
TweetEllen Belcher: Dayton has star power in Amanda Wright Lane
Amanda Wright Lane wears the Wright brothers’ legacy on her sleeve.
At dress-up affairs, she pins a tiny sterling Wright Flyer to her shoulder. When she’s in jeans, she sports a Wright brothers national park pin.
Then there’s her dandelion-yellow Volkswagen Beetle with its “Wil n Orv” license plates.
After the death of her father, Wilkinson “Wick” Wright, in 1999, Lane and her brother Stephen Wright inherited the role of Wright family representatives. The great-grandniece and great-grandnephew weren’t exactly reluctant ambassadors, but family history hadn’t consumed them the way it had their father.
In the 10 years since his death, the siblings have embraced what they see as both a gift and a responsibility. But Lane is the most public face of the Wright family.
She has become Dayton’s celebrity booster, traveling across the country and around the world — meeting with members of Congress, foreign dignitaries, generals, high-powered executives, astronauts and, of course, pilots and third-graders.
And can she connect. In words that border on poetry, she recounts the story of two unpretentious, geeky bachelors who changed the world. In the process, Amanda Wright Lane is has become Dayton’s biggest and potentially most valuable advocate. But history is repeating itself.
Just as her ingenious uncles were celebrated more enthusiastically outside their hometown, Lane is woefully underappreciated and underused in a place that undervalues star power.
A ‘non-science girl who fell far from the family tree’
Lane, 55, lost her mother to cancer when she was 19. She saw her for the last time on Mother’s Day 1973, when she was 19 and a freshman at Miami University studying art and theater. A few days later, Suzanne McGuire Wright died.
In 1997, when Lane learned her father had cancer, she vowed not to miss the time they had left together. Almost every day for two years, she drove to Dayton from Wyoming, outside Cincinnati, where she lived with her husband, Don, and their teenage daughter and son.
It was during her father’s illness and after his death that Lane says she discovered her passion for Wright family history.
First she learned to appreciate the revolutionary technological contribution Uncle Wil and Uncle Orv — as she calls them — had made to the modern world; then she came to understand what that past could mean for her hometown; and, at last, she said, her eyes sparkling with tears, she came to understand her father.
A “non-science girl who fell far from the family tree,” Lane has immersed herself in all things flight and space related. She speaks knowledgeably about wing warping and Apollo missions, although she was afraid to fly until the day her father died, when the fear, she said, inexplicably lifted.
She writes all of her own speeches, said David Lightle, a marketing and aviation consultant who in 2007 traveled with Lane and others to the Paris Air Show, where she and a replica of one of the early Wright planes attracted throngs. The Wright name, though often not associated with Dayton, is internationally recognized.
The Dayton Development Coalition’s Michael Gessel says of Lane:
“She has that credential. She can get meetings with people, she can open doors other people can’t.”
When Lane testified before Congress in 2003 in support of establishing a national heritage area in Dayton, Gessel said committee members listened to her with an intensity that’s uncommon when communities trot out their advocates.
“They don’t all carry that stature,” he said. “She aced it. She glittered.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner remembers the time when he introduced Lane to Congressman Lacy Clay Jr., and she launched into an anecdote about her uncles. Clay, he said, was so enthralled by Lane’s storytelling and her command of details that he asked, “Were you there?”
‘The world is so ready to come see us’
The routine that began after her father’s cancer diagnosis continues. Lane still comes to Dayton almost every day. Most often you can find her at the National Aviation Heritage Alliance’s office in West Dayton, and sometimes at Hawthorn Hill, Orville’s home in Oakwood. Though strictly a volunteer, she works virtually full time on projects promoting the history of the Wright brothers and Dayton.
Lane was at Dayton’s air and trade show every day in July, and she hosted a Brazilian industrialist, Fernando Botelho. A powerful figure in his country’s business circles, he and Lane have become good friends, and he’s pursuing business deals in Dayton.
A week later, Lane was in Oshkosh, Wisc., for five days at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s fly-in, where she worked at Dayton’s National Aviation Heritage Alliance exhibit and was a featured speaker.
In June, she was in the Netherlands, celebrating the first flight in that country 100 years ago. The city of Etten-Leur commissioned a stainless-steel sculpture of the Wright Flyer similar to the one at RiverScape. Lane and the highest-ranking Dutch air force officer were there to dedicate it.
She has traveled frequently to France, promoting Dayton at the Paris Air Show and forging close relationships with officials in Le Mans, where Wilbur stunned Europeans in 1908 with their first glimpse of a flying machine.
This fall she will be a guest of the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary. She’ll carry Orville and Wilbur’s gold medals — the first prizes the renowned organization awarded.
Last year she received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ public service award, an honor that in 1990 went to Walter Cronkite.
In Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Brazil, and from coast to coast, Lane has recounted Dayton’s history while networking with business magnates, scientists and people who are fascinated by her family.
Lane laughs when asked how she pays for the travel. “The Don Lane Foundation,” she quips, a reference to her husband, who is president of a precision manufacturing company in Mason.
What’s in her work for Dayton?
“The world is so ready to come see us if we just put out the invitation,” Lane said. Dayton’s history is “eye candy” to connect with the modern aerospace industry and can draw attention to the groundbreaking aviation work and research that continues here and especially at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The hard thing, Lane said, is that she is the “one voice” who reports a business opportunity to business leaders and local economic development officials when she makes a contact.
“Until more people are engaged (in events like the celebrated Paris and Farnborough air shows) and have the opportunities I’ve had, they’re not going to be believers,” she said.
Larry Blake, the recently retired director of Dayton’s Wright brothers national park, who traveled to Farnborough with Lane in 2008, said Lane is especially effective in building long-term relationships and giving companies “a reason to look at Dayton.”
“(At Farnborough), you have the opportunity to meet with hundreds of companies from around the world,” Blake said. “It’s not a meet-and-greet and quick handshake event. You can have meaningful conversations, and people leave remembering Dayton. But there has to be follow-through. You can’t just send Amanda out by herself.… More effort is needed to back her up.”
Mike Heil, chief executive of the Ohio Aerospace Institute, said that he, too, has seen Lane pitch Dayton and Ohio and the aviation industry’s rich presence in the state. He’s not surprised, but still impressed, by the entree she has because of the reverence for the Wright family name.
We talk “like engineers,” he said. Lane, on the other hand, provides the inspiration.
Heil has enlisted Lane to help push Ohio to buy exhibit space at the 2010 Farnborough air show, with the intent of selling the space in parcels or at a discount to companies that couldn’t otherwise afford the cost.
The biggest draws for companies will be the Wright B Flyer simulator, which allows visitors to take a turn at piloting a Wright plane — and Lane, he said.
‘This is aworld-class story’
Lane couldn’t be more eager to promote the region and use her family’s cachet to benefit Dayton. She knows relationships are everything and isn’t afraid to leverage the Wright name.
In the process, you can count on her to be downright evangelical about promoting the area’s aviation attractions. Too many people, she said, are leaving the Air Force museum never knowing about the interpretive center in West Dayton dedicated to the Wright brothers and Paul Laurence Dunbar or the first practical airplane at Carillon Park or Huffman Prairie, where the Wrights mastered steering. Dayton, she insists, has to be more passionate, creative and collaborative about marketing its one-of-a-kind treasures.
“This is a world-class story, one that’s continuing to be made every day because of what happened in Dayton,” she said.
And there are Wrights still eager to tell it.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Ellen Belcher, Local History, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetEditorial: Baseball pitcher got what was coming to him
What happened at Fifth Third Field on July 28, 2008, was not part of the game.
The concussion suffered by Middletown’s Christopher McCarthy after he was beaned in the stands by a thrown baseball was not the sort of injury spectators should have to accept as part of the risk of attending a professional baseball game.
The offense was serious, dangerous and deserving of the criminal charges that ultimately were brought against Julio Castillo, a 22-year-old Peoria Chiefs pitcher.
Mr. Castillo, who is from the Dominican Republic and speaks little English, was convicted of felonious assault this week in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, but avoided major prison time when he was sentenced Thursday, Aug. 6, to 30 days in jail and three years of probation by Judge Connie S. Price.
The case attracted national attention and saw a Baseball Hall of Famer — former Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg — take the stand to testify on Mr. Castillo’s behalf.
What Mr. Castillo did that night was doubtlessly reckless. As players and coaches were milling around on the field during a heated argument, Mr. Castillo, who throws fastballs that travel more than 90 miles per hour, touched off a brawl by suddenly firing a baseball toward the Dayton Dragons’ dugout.
He missed.
But the ball sailed into the stands and struck Mr. McCarthy in the head. He was taken to the hospital, and he suffered headaches for days. He received an out-of-court settlement from the teams.
It could have been worse. A baseball thrown directly toward people might have caused a permanent injury. Baseball batters wear helmets for a reason — players have been killed by hard throws from professional pitchers.
Apologists for Mr. Castillo argue he had no intent to harm Mr. McCarthy or anyone in particular. His actions were merely part of an ugly side of professional baseball — a brawl — and the injury was simply a product of bad luck.
That’s absurd rationalizing. The fact that Mr. Castillo was participating in a game does not excuse his actions. Whether he was wearing a baseball uniform or not, firing a baseball directly toward a crowd of people when you have a professional pitcher’s strength is nuts, and it is a crime.
Judge Price found Mr. Castillo guilty of felonious assault. She might have sentenced him to as much as eight years in prison, but instead ordered a month in jail. She showed compassion for a young man who made a very big mistake.
There may be more consequences for Mr. Castillo. His baseball career is in doubt, and the conviction may force his deportation. He’s definitely paying in more ways than one.
But his sentence sent the right message.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Scott Elliott, Sports and Recreation
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Absurd lies move to the center of things political
Truth, they say, is the first casualty of war. And politics, some say, is war by other means. So you know where that leaves truth in politics.
It’s a sad thing to say, especially to young people, who should be seeing politics as a way to make their society better.
Some hold out the view that politics in a free society can be about truth, because all the lies get aired and get rebutted, and the truth emerges. In some degree, in the long run, there’s some, uh, truth to that.
Meanwhile, though, a lot of people just listen to voices that lie habitually, while telling listeners that they must not trust anybody who’s not on the team.
The late Sen. Pat Moynihan, D-N.Y., said we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own facts. And yet the sense of entitlement is rampant.
No one can keep up with all the political lies and misstatements coming from so many directions. Occasionally, however, attention must be focused on those that get repeated — and repeated and repeated.
John Boehner, the congressman from West Chester who leads the U.S. House Republicans, has had to confront two particular absurdities lately, one on the birthers and one on the killers. Let’s look at the record.
The birthers are the people who somehow manage to believe there’s a legitimate question about whether President Barack Obama is eligible to be president, with the main issue being where he was born. The state of Hawaii says he was born in Hawaii and says the document it puts forth is its version of a birth certificate. The newspapers from the time of his birth confirm the time and place. There is simply no doubt. The issue has been investigated to death by nonpartisans (see FactCheck.org or politifact.com, for example).
But the birthers pretend that every answer just raises more questions, and they go on and on. And talk show hosts on radio and television — and Web sites — have found an audience that they believe wants to hear anything negative about the president; they give it to them.
Boehner dismisses the birth nonsense, saying it is not an issue for the House leadership. Does he have any doubt that the president was born in Hawaii? “No.” Flakes can play one role in politics that might be seen as positive: They make other partisan warriors look moderate and sensible by comparison. Boehner owes the birthers one.
Some people have been circulating the phenomenal, paranoid view that the Democrats who are pushing health care reform want to “put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government,” as one congresswoman said.
The charge results from a provision in pending legislation that says that if Medicare patients want a consultation about end-of-life issues, Medicare would pay (but not for more than one in a five-year period). The issues discussed in the consultation could include whether to go into a hospice, whether to create a living will or whether to name a loved one to make decisions if the patient can’t. That sort of thing.
AARP, the largest organization of seniors, supports the idea. (It has received thousands of calls from people who have been frightened by the lies.) So does the American Medical Association, whose president says “it’s plain old-fashioned, patient-centered care.”
Yet Boehner said (in a written statement, not off the cuff) the policy “may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia” (the act of causing death painlessly so as to end suffering).
So the Republicans have embraced this flaming nonsense as a political tactic against health care reform. That they have raised a false alarm so enthusiastically raises the question: Do they feel that false alarms are the only ones that will scare people sufficiently?
The political warriors know that some people are hyper-primed to believe the worst about the other side. That’s true partly because polarization is a huge industry in this country, making the likes of Rush Limbaugh rich many times over. And polarization is at a peak because the president has embarked on a boldly liberal course in a country where powerful forces equate liberalism with insanity or worse.
Still, when we get to point where many people actually believe that a major political party is out to kill off the old people, it’s time to take a breath.
Permalink | Comments (32) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics, Social Services
TweetEllen Belcher: A heads up about Sunday’s paper
I’m writing a profile for Sunday’s newspaper about Amanda Wright Lane, the great grandniece of Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Here’s a short and interesting interview she recently did from Oshkosh, Wisc. at the EAA Airventure.
Scroll down to the middle of the page. Click on her name and wait for it to load.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Ellen Belcher, Local History
TweetEditorial: Director’s firing made no sense
As much as possible, decisions like how to build schools should be made on the local level.
That has been a prime lesson from Dayton’s experience, but one that Gov. Ted Strickland isn’t concerned about.
Last week, Gov. Strickland unceremoniously dumped Michael Shoemaker — a champion of local decision-making on school construction projects — as director of the Ohio School Facilities Commission. Gov. Strickland isn’t saying much about why.
That’s led to speculation. Was Mr. Shoemaker too outspoken in noting how Gov. Strickland’s school reform plan would complicate local districts’ lives? For instance, he warned that lowering class sizes could require more classroom space than just-completed new schools could offer.
Of course, Mr. Shoemaker was making an obvious and valid point.
Other observers wonder if the move wasn’t also done to appease construction unions that were frustrated that Mr. Shoemaker wasn’t pushing school districts to require “prevailing wage,” or union scale wages, on their building projects.
The removal of Mr. Shoemaker is disturbing. A former southern Ohio lawmaker and longtime political ally of the governor, Mr. Shoemaker was doing a fine job. He played a personal role in solving problems and had taken a particularly sensible tack on prevailing wage: he said each school district could do what made sense for it because the law gave them a choice.
Dayton is a prime example of his effectiveness and the pay-off of his approach. In the early days of Dayton’s $627 million, 10-year construction program, school leaders were deeply frustrated with the construction commission. To facilitate a major goal — ensuring local construction workers and small and minority-run businesses get a share of dollars spent building the city’s new schools — the district wanted to hire a local company, Dayton-based Shook Construction, to manage the project.
School officials felt Shook would use more local workers and subcontractors, but the commission nixed that plan in favor of a different management group.
The school board also wanted to require that the local workers they hoped would build the schools earn union-scale wages. But under the Taft administration, the commission also wouldn’t permit that.
Enter Mr. Shoemaker, Gov. Strickland’s appointee. When Dayton went looking for a new construction manager, the commission this time gave Shook a thumbs up. Shook urged the district to require union wages, arguing that more union-affiliated local companies would bid for the district’s work. The commission did not stand in the way.
With Shook and the wage requirement, the district’s progress toward its goals improved. In the construction program’s first phase, just 27 percent of the work was done by local companies. That percentage jumped to 45 percent for phase two and 35 percent for phase three.
Economically disadvantaged small companies performed just 7 percent of phase one work, a number that climbed to 32 percent in phase three. Minority-owned business were 2 percent of the workforce in the first phase and 10 percent in the third phase. John Carr, who heads the district’s construction program, said the district has seen more bids on its projects in the past two years, and he believes it’s at least partly because of the change in direction. At the same time, the schools have remained on budget.
Working with Mr. Shoemaker, Dayton was able to follow a plan that made sense here. In other cities, districts preferred not to require union wages, and Mr. Shoemaker backed those decisions, too.
Before Mr. Shoemaker, prevailing wage requirements were kryptonite under an administration that was less union-friendly. Perhaps labor leaders feel it’s payback time, that with a political ally as governor, prevailing wage should now rule the day. But a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t serve the best interests of local school districts, or the state.
Mr. Shoemaker did his job well and cared about the needs of local communities. That shouldn’t get you fired.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
TweetMartin Gottlieb: One memory says Turner has come a long way on his role
Rep. Mike Turner has been strikingly active in foreign policy matters lately.
He’s been appointed a member of the NATO parliamentary assembly, which brings together legislators from member countries; the idea is to foster coordination.
He has traveled to Norway, Brussels, the Mideast and Bosnia. He showed up on Fox News discussing Iran during the turmoil in that country. He’s been particularly involved in missile defense issues.
This is all entirely appropriate. On Bosnia, he brings something special, growing out of the Dayton connection to that country.
And he has a major Air Force base adjacent to his district. Also, he serves on the Armed Services Committee and has been on Veterans Affairs.
And, after all, it’s not as if he’s giving short shrift to local issues.
Still, what he’s doing is interesting to me because of a conversation I remember having with him before he was in Congress or a candidate. In about 2000, when he was mayor of Dayton, he once said that he wasn’t so sure a member of the House of Representatives should play a role in foreign policy.
He said he thought a case could be made that foreign policy should be left to the Senate, whose role in foreign policy (in ratifying treaties) is actually mentioned in the Constitution. Maybe, he said, a House member should stick to the domestic.
That’s my memory of what he said. Through aides Tuesday, Turner said he doesn’t remember the conversation and that it doesn’t seem to make sense, given that he engaged in international matters as mayor. (He went to Bosnia; he worked with the sister cities program, and more.)
I have no difficulty believing he doesn’t remember the conversation. He was toying with an idea, and it was a brief talk. And I can’t prove he said it.
At the time, he was presumed to be considering running for Congress. He was in a better position to take on then-Rep. Tony Hall, a Democrat, than any other Republican. Hall had an international reputation for his role in international affairs, most specifically in humanitarian issues. He looked into the most horrific situations, brought them to light, and got the word out about what could be done, sometimes at strikingly minimal expense.
Some Republicans were frustrated and angry about the press accolades Hall received for stuff that had nothing to do with Dayton (though Hall, too, stayed engaged in local affairs).
By the time Turner ran for Congress in 2002, Hall had left the job.
At any rate, my take is that Turner has come a long way.
It’s a natural path. Service in Congress in general, and on the Armed Service Committee in particular, naturally brings one into contact with the big foreign policy issues. To sit them out would be odd.
The temptation to become involved must be intense. Anybody who has enough interest in current affairs to run for Congress must be interested in the big international issues. And involvement gets one a chance to travel to fascinating places and meet important people.
I know all that seems obvious. That’s why I was so struck by what I heard Turner say way back when.
It’s good that the Tony Hall phenomenon didn’t turn his successor into some sort of insular, provincial non-player in the big issues. The Dayton area — by virtue of Wright-Patterson, indeed, by the virtue of the sheer nature of modern times — is as outward looking as anyplace in the Midwest. It’s aware of the interlocked nature of the world.
Anyway, whatever anger some people might have had about Hall’s internationalism is not transferable to Turner, because the anger was mainly partisan, and Turner is of their own party. They’ll say, well, at least our guy is not focused on giving away American money, and they’ll be fine.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Dayton Peace Accords and Other Peace Initiatives, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetEditorial: NCR layoff stats incomplete or wrong
The notice that NCR filed last week saying it is laying off 598 of its 1,250 local employees as it moves to Georgia is not the whole story.
That paperwork — required by federal law when a company with 100 or more employees lets go of a large number of workers — can be revised. Companies can change their mind and lay off fewer or more people, or change the layoff dates.
Moreover, this number doesn’t include those who’ve been offered a position in Georgia and have decided, or will decide, not to accept a job there.
Consider also that the company repeatedly has declined to say how many employees it’s offering to take with it when it pulls up stakes. An official told state Sen. Jon Husted in an e-mail that this information is “commercially sensitive.”
But think about it this way: If 598 is really the total number of layoffs, why wouldn’t NCR just say that and that it’s offering approximately 650 others transfers? In light of its silence, reasonable people can only conclude that the company’s public filing is incomplete.
Another math issue is this: NCR is getting more than $109 million in financial incentives from Georgia, much of which is dependent on creating 1,800 or more jobs in the state. If you add the jobs that NCR created in Georgia last year at a customer service center — 916 — to the projected number at its new ATM manufacturing plant — 870 — that’s 1,786 or just short of the threshold to qualify for Georgia’s money.
In other words, NCR doesn’t have to move large numbers of people from the headquarters in Dayton and still get its tax breaks. Now does 598 seem low?
Meanwhile, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is still trying to get $4.5 million in federal stimulus money for an NCR manufacturing plant. After U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, among others, went nuts over the possibility that stimulus money could be used by one state to poach jobs from another (and Vice President Joe Biden seemed to put the kibosh on that possibility), Gov. Perdue apparently felt the need to defend the indefensible.
He has fired off his own letter, saying the manufacturing plant would bring jobs from overseas to the states. Problem is, NCR has publicly said that the work that is being diverted to Georgia is being done in Columbia, S.C.
One would expect Georgia to be looking for any and all ways to minimize the cost of the tax breaks it’s giving NCR, but, if it’s going to work the angles in every conceivable way, it really shouldn’t do so in a manner that is so easily controverted.
NCR expects to have some decent number of employees in Dayton through 2010. In the interim, the data that it is putting out may just be numbers to it, but to Dayton and the people affected by its move, the information represents people’s lives.
Some people might remember that it was Ohio’s U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum who pushed through the federal legislation 21 years ago requiring companies to file paperwork warning workers and communities when they were shutting plants or laying off large numbers of people.
He was fiercely criticized for being too demanding, and the final rules that NCR has to abide by were significantly watered down from his original goals.
The intent then was to protect blue-collar workers and communities mainly. But today white-collar workers are also finding that it’s nice to have 60 days’ notice that you’re going to be out of a job.
That protection only can be of help to communities, though, if they’re getting accurate, timely and complete data. Dayton has good reasons to suspect that’s not happening with NCR.
Permalink | Comments (24) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Local Business
TweetEditorial: Clunker offer wrong stimulus effort to stop
That perpetually full parking lot outside a new supermarket in Kettering last week and weekend wasn’t the only highly visible sign of consumer spending — of life — in the local economy.
There was also the “Cash for Clunkers” program.
The federal government’s offer of $3,500 to $4,500 to people who will part with low-mileage “clunkers” — and buy a more efficient vehicle — succeeded so well as to approach failure. Government computers were overloaded, and frustrations rose to a peak.
In less than a week, the program had consumed its allotted $1 billion, which was supposed to last more than three months.
In this part of Ohio,
the president of the Jeff Wyler Automotive Family said even before the weekend, “I’m sitting on $1 million receivable from the government,” meaning that’s how much the government owes him for clunker deals. Beau Townsend Ford Nissan in Vandalia had done 50 deals as of Friday.
When the clunkers program was enacted, some people said it wouldn’t attract consumers. The Washington Post editorial page approvingly quoted “analysts” at Edmunds.com who insisted that clunker “owners are either not looking for an increased car payment or cannot afford to purchase a new vehicle.”
But the evidence is that about a quarter-million people moved quickly to take advantage.
How many of them had been actually using their clunkers before — as opposed to just letting them sit there — is not clear.
If they were driving them, then the program serves the purpose of getting the clunkers off the road.
If they were not driving them, the exchange still seems to serve the other purpose of the program: stimulating the auto industry, whose troubles are near the heart of the economic troubles of many communities.
Some people insist that the money that people are suddenly spending on cars would be spent on something else, resulting in a similar stimulus to the economy. In fact, though, consumer spending is dramatically down.
The clunkers program has serious flaws. Some of the cars that qualify are not old and are not really clunkers.
And the mileage improvement the government demands are awfully low: 4 miles per gallon for passenger cars, and as low as 2 mpg for larger vehicles.
But some people are still against the whole idea.
Opposing the approval of more money, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said, “This is crazy to try to rush this thing through again while they’re trying to rush through health care.”
He complains too that the clunkers deal is “helping auto dealers while there are thousands of other small businesses that aren’t getting help.”
But lots of stimulus money is going to other private businesses, including those involved in construction, highway and bridge work, and making buildings more “green.”
Whether the federal government should be borrowing money to stimulate the economy is a subject upon which reasonable people can disagree. But the stimulus policy was debated and passed last winter.
It will be in place through next year, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. In that context, the government should not back off now from one aspect — involving a few billion at most — that, unlike some, is clearly working to get money moving right now.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Dayton wins big, at least for the time being
Dayton City Manager Rashad Young hoped the U.S. Justice Department would save him from laying off 11 police officers. He got stimulus funding for 21 officers.
This is a huge deal for the city. Winning $5.6 million for police was not automatic. Other cities — New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Houston — got nothing. In Ohio, Dayton got a bigger share of the amount it requested than Cleveland and Columbus.
Dayton made a strong case that it truly needs the aid and that it’s committed to community policing, an Obama administration priority. This stimulus aid will help keep the streets safer for the next four years.
Still, there are downsides to taking the money.
“It’s really good, on one hand, because we can really use the funding to add to the force and avert layoffs,” Mr. Young said. “But the likely impact of this award, given the timing, is that the conversation we’ve been pressing with our unions — on structural financial issues in the city that haven’t gone away — loses the compelling argument to bring them to the table.”
The Justice Department, which evaluated more than 7,000 requests for a share of $1 billion in stimulus funds, rejected about 6,000 applications.
Meanwhile, last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced $4.35 billion in stimulus-funded grants to support innovative state education programs. Some of the grant requirements — that states have sophisticated data-tracking systems for students and their progress, for instance — may prevent big states like California and New York from competing. (Ohio believes it can be in the game, but may first have to change some laws.)
The common thread between these two stimulus initiatives is the competition, the insistence that not everyone will make out. Rather than simply pass out a little money to everyone who asks, President Obama is requiring that applicants show they will use federal money in ways that have a good chance of making a difference.
Though it’s a winner now, is Dayton just putting off tough decisions? Will the bite be worse when the federal money runs out, and Dayton is left to support the larger force on its own? That’s a concern for every state and city that’s accepting the money.
Dayton has to use this gift — of money and time — to reshape the city’s budget for the long haul. That may even include a smaller police force, but there have to be other savings that can be achieved before it comes to that. Nothing good, though, can happen if the administration, the officers and their union aren’t working together.
“We decided to take what is much needed money that can have a community impact, even if it makes decisions harder in the future,” Mr. Young said. “The long-term prospect is we still need those concessions. They (the police department) are still the largest cost center.”
In planning and bargaining, the city and its labor unions can’t relax.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Layoffs not only option for government
Gov. Ted Strickland keeps saying that he thinks there will be a second federal stimulus.
His hope for another bailout comes up a lot because Ohio would be insolvent California today if it weren’t for the $5 billion-plus that Washington has sent to the state. This one-time money creates the illusion that Ohio’s budget is balanced.
Without another injection of federal aid, Ohio could be $8 billion short in two years. The coming shortfall will exist in spite of multibillions being cut from the current budget.
Put another way: If you’re unhappy now about cuts to libraries or programs that keep seniors in their homes, just wait.
Moreover, that’s the best-case scenario. The belief is widespread that more slashing will be required to get through the next two years and that it will begin again soon.
Ohio — from state government to school districts and townships — can’t pin its hope on a federal government that is awash in red ink. Moreover, there’s no way that, as the state keeps cutting, local taxpayers will fill in the losses that roll down hill by approving more and more levies and tax increases.
The stimulus gives Ohio — and counties, cities and schools — a window. They can use it well or squander it. But there isn’t a local government or school district in the region that can keep doing what it’s always done the way it’s always done things.
And because so much of any government’s costs are tied to personnel, there’s no way to reduce costs without cutting spending on employees.
This is not a call to war with public employees or their unions. That said, the hard fact is that if government is going to reduce its expenses, buying fewer paper clips will not do it.
Voters should not let their elected officials off the hook by passively accepting that laying off people is the only answer. Communities should not be held hostage to the argument that mass layoffs — and punishing service cuts — are the only option.
In fact, there are myriad changes in contracts, practices, work rules and state law that can reduce government spending without destroying the fabric of public services.
For instance:
• The “step system,” wherein public employees and teachers for many years and in quick succession get two raises annually — one for time on the job, one as a cost-of-living adjustment — is horrendously expensive and masks the increases employees really are receiving. (Moreover, in hard times, when salary freezes are imposed, the freezes don’t always apply to the step raises.)
• Public employee pensions are phenomenally generous, and they reward people with cushy deals at ages that are unheard of in the private sector.
In addition, the pensions discourage natural turnover once a person has any significant time on the job. Creating what amounts to “golden handcuffs” results in a work force that is generally older and more expensive.
• The state law that requires binding arbitration when police and fire unions can’t reach agreement forces managers to make offers they can’t really afford in order to appear reasonable. Arbitrators can’t modify either side’s last and best offer; they have to pick one’s side proposal.
• Overtime is a racket, especially in police and fire departments because of holiday pay and contracts that allow too many first-responders to be off at the same time, resulting in others being called in and paid premium wages.
• Some governments let employees cash out large amounts of unused sick leave when they quit or retire.
Public service is important, even dangerous, work. Communities need talented and exceptional people choosing it as a career.
But Ohio is not the rich state it once was, and that’s true for local communities, too. Perks that were affordable once are not any more.
Some of the unavoidable changes can only come from the state — pension and collective bargaining reforms, for example.
But other savings will require local elected officials and administrators to speak truth to workers and to their communities about what each can expect in a new day.
Bailouts are not forever. Some problems we created ourselves and have to fix on our own.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Ohio government, Ohio politics
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