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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 > December
December 2009
Jon Husted: Ohio’s hyper-partisan redistricting rules can be changed
(State Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, who wrote this piece, is expected to run for Ohio secretary of state in 2010.)
To most people, this is not a very appealing reform. Rather, it seems like a partisan system that protects the interests of political parties over the wishes of voters. In fact, the above description is not a new reform at all — it is Ohio’s current system.
And it is considered one of the most partisan in the nation.
In the four decades this system has been in place, it has not served Ohio well. It has largely led to one-party control of state government for decades at a time and immunized many legislators from competitive elections.
Further, this system has contributed to the hyper-partisan atmosphere in state government (and in Congress) because the political leaders who run it can serve their partisan interests and arguably have more power in elections than the voters. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can reform the system. The time to act is now.
The Census, followed by the 2010 elections, will once again commence the redrawing of both legislative and congressional districts. Several constitutional amendments to reform the present system have been proposed.
I sponsored one proposal, Senate Joint Resolution 5, which has passed the Ohio Senate and awaits action in the Ohio House.
The reforms in this proposal would create a seven-member, bipartisan board that would require a supermajority vote for the drawing of new districts.
It would require bipartisan compromise for the drawing of legislative and congressional districts, and would limit the ability of map-drawers to gerrymander by including a requirement to keep communities together when drawing district lines.
The deadline for passing this idea is Feb. 3 if it is to be placed on the ballot for consideration by voters in May.
Instead of the current system that serves as a winner-take-all partisan power grab, Ohioans can speak loudly to demand bipartisanship and empower voters at the expense of the politically powerful.
Redistricting reform will return elections to the accountability system they were intended to be. By establishing more competitive districts, voters will be given a greater opportunity to voice their support or displeasure with their elected officials at the ballot box.
With the prominent place Ohio plays in presidential elections every four years, we should set an example for the nation by acting as a leader in redistricting reform.
If we want our public officials to cast aside partisan goals in favor of bipartisan cooperation, we must do more than change the people in public office. We must change the system.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Elections, Guest Columns, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Great decade for celebrity watchers
Sometimes it seems like the news in the first decade of the 21st century built to a crescendo, with the climax being the Tiger Woods story. That event was bigger even than the Jon & Kate-plus-8 divorce, the Obama family dog, Brangelina and Jennifer Aniston, and the decline and revival of Britney Spears.
At this time of a decade, the media pause to take note of the biggest stories of the decade. But maybe this time it’s also worthwhile to take note of the rise of a particular kind of story.
The current generation didn’t invent obsession with celebrity. By the 1930s, some of the biggest names in journalism — Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons — got rich by reporting tidbits about Hollywooders.
Some big thinkers back then said the public’s obsession with the lives of movie stars represented a desire to escape from the Great Depression.
And yet, when the bad times went away, the taste for celebrity gossip didn’t. In the 1950s, you might hear it described — by those big thinkers, again — as an escape from the humdrum existence of daily life.
But daily life doesn’t get described as humdrum so much anymore. Yet the celebrity-gossip thing just gets bigger. Now there are television programs that discuss the gossipy news that other programs — by the dozens, it seems — dispense.
Perhaps it’s all best seen as part of the “reality” television phenomenon, a newer phenomenon than celebrity fixation. Perhaps what’s at work is an interest in the individual lives of real people, as opposed to societal problems or fictional people.
Partly as a result of the reality shows, this decade became famous as the decade of people who are famous mainly for being famous; the Paris Hilton phenomenon.
Most likely, our fascination with the famous should be seen not just as a flight from reality — as the term was understood before reality TV — but as a flight from controversy. And not so much as a flight, but a respite.
We can talk about Tiger Woods with each other with little fear of stepping on toes, or of getting caught up in an argument, especially an argument for which somebody else might be better prepared.
Mr. Woods is somebody we all have in common, without being say, president of the United States. One unites, the other divides, even at best, even when things are going as well as they can go.
Those who worry about the public’s fascination with gossip often worry most about it crowding out more serious matters. But evidence is scant that the people who will watch a program about Tiger Woods would, if that weren’t available, dig deeply into the specifics of the health care legislation pending in Congress.
The heart of the explanation for interest in the Tiger Woods affair (so to speak) is, of course, that it is simply interesting. How can a person not take note when a guy who has it all — including a family and universal admiration — risks it all?
In some people, surely, the fascination with the “gossip” goes to extremes. But of what interest is that not true?
Like it or not, the fascination of people with the lives of people they’ve heard of is here to stay. Although the concluded decade seems to smack us in the face with its absorption in such news, a more remarkable development would be the waning of such fascination.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Offbeat
TweetEditorial: West Third Street needs ‘Roosevelt’
If there is to be a school at 2013 W. Third St., there is only one proper name for it: Roosevelt.
Alumni of the former Roosevelt High School are advocating to reuse the name, and they are right. Picking that name would pay homage to Dayton’s past and continue the fine legacy of learning that Roosevelt stood for in its 52 years as a school.
Roosevelt High School was razed in 2008 to make way for a new elementary school and city-owned recreation center. The all-boys elementary school that is planned for the site has no real name. Today it is called the Dayton Boys Preparatory Academy.
The school could easily be renamed the Roosevelt Boys Preparatory Academy.
The razing of Roosevelt was a long, tortured process and one of the Dayton school board’s toughest decisions of the last decade. The old school was a majestic building.
On its first day in 1923, Roosevelt was one of the very largest schools in the country. A 300,000-square-foot building was almost unheard of at the time. To Daytonians in the 1920s, it was a grand symbol of progress and prosperity.
As Dayton and the nation evolved, Roosevelt’s experience almost perfectly tracked some of the most important changes. For instance, the school was all-white when it opened in a white neighborhood on West Third Street. By the 1950s, demographics had begun to change and a third of the students were black.
School leaders struggled with the new reality, separating students by race for activities like swimming and sports until after the U.S. Supreme Court’s famous Brown vs. Board of Education ruling led to widespread integration.
Even so, black and white students from that era say they forged friendships across racial lines. Many of Dayton’s future leaders say their views of race relations were shaped by both good and bad experiences at Roosevelt High.
Eventually the school, like the school district, became majority black before it closed in 1975. In its later years, the building was primarily used as an administrative center.
The wisdom of the school board’s decision to demolish the building will probably always be debated. Several efforts to create a viable reuse plan fell short in the school board’s eyes.
In the end, board members felt the redevelopment for West Third Street offered by the joint plan with the city made more sense than trying to retrofit the old school.
Tearing it down broke hearts and brought tears. Of all the schools in the city, Roosevelt had the best argument that it was historically significant and worth saving as a link to Dayton’s storied past.
Roosevelt is a memory now and those links can never be completely restored. Reusing the Roosevelt name would simply be a symbolic gesture to the history that occurred on the site where the new school will stand.
But symbols do matter, and if the name is even the smallest nudge for the new school to explain to future generations the legacy they carry forward, then it is worthwhile.
Roosevelt still means something important in Dayton.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Civil Rights, Editorials, Education, Local History, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Laundromat gifts capture imaginations
Of all the Christmassy stories of the year, the ones that seemed to activate the most imaginations were those about people giving away money to random strangers.
In Dayton, people at a couple of laundromats found themselves with a hundred unexpected dollars when they opened an envelope handed out by a stranger. So did a fellow at a strip mall.
At least one woman at that shopping strip was reported to have lost a chance at free money when she didn’t respond to somebody who was following her with an envelope.
Maybe she was afraid. Maybe she didn’t want to get involved in somebody else’s problem.
Either way, how’s that for a Christmassy story?
The giveaways get one to thinking about whether this approach is really the best way to spread one’s wealth. After all, if you just pick random people, how do you know they really need it or will use it well?
Sure you can pick certain kinds of neighborhoods and stores as the sites for your generosity. But you’re still just guessing.
On the other hand, though, the gifts seemed to raise the spirits of a lot of people beyond the recipients.
The whole of idea of money falling from the sky — like Santa Claus — and of the Christmas spirit moving people to prodigal, unskeptical generosity, well, that combination just kind of gets us where we live.
Meanwhile, the giver is spared worry about whether the gift will really be what the recipient wanted. He or she can abandon the scene unconcerned about whether cash fits.
In recent years, Christmas gifts in the form of cash — or, at least, gift cards — have become more prevalent. The trade-off — between the romance of traditional gift-giving and the practicality — works for a lot of people.
When the givers and recipients are strangers, somehow some of the romance is back. The whole thing gets more interesting.
In the early days of television, there was a show called “The Millionaire,” in which an anonymous donor would give $1 million each week to a shocked recipient. The recipient wasn’t chosen randomly, but carefully, by the donor.
That was fiction. (Some people didn’t get that. This led the producers to make clear in each show that the donor was now dead, and these stories were about things that happened in the past. That way, nobody would write to the network asking for money.)
The popular show remained part of the American consciousness, the American vocabulary for decades after it disappeared. References to “The Millionaire” would come up in everyday conversation.
Meanwhile, of course, television has found all manner of ways to get viewers by giving money away, or allowing lucky people to compete for it.
Combine gifts, surprise, anonymity and Christmas — and make it all true — and you can get the attention of hordes, even if we’re back down to $100.
Up the ante a little, and surely there’s another TV show in the making, this time a “reality” show.
But when we get to that point — when people are giving away money to make money — the Christmas magic will be gone.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Police should be slow to shock suspects
The Dec. 13 death of 39-year-old Douglas Boucher in Mason after a Taser shock brings home troubling questions about police use of these electrical devices.
Tasers, which have proliferated during the past decade, are used to stun suspects into submission with an electrical jolt. Proponents say they are effective, safe, not lethal and an important tool that protects everybody’s safety.
But some are challenging that view.
A major study last year by Amnesty International reported 334 people died after being shocked by the devices between 2001 and 2008. That human rights group recommended curtailing their use. Several police departments in Canada stopped using older-model Tasers following a series of deaths and a Canadian news organization’s report that its tests showed the devices sometimes emit more powerful shocks than they are designed to produce.
What happened to Mr. Boucher is unclear. The Warren County coroner has not determined the cause of death. Whether he was intoxicated or had underlying health issues is not known.
According to Mason interim police Chief Mike Kelly, the incident began when a convenience store clerk asked two officers to speak to Mr. Boucher, complaining that he had been lewdly asking her for sex.
As officers Daniel Fry and Sean McCormick spoke with Mr. Boucher, he became uncooperative. The officers began to handcuff him, although Chief Kelly said it is not clear if they were arresting him.
Officer Fry was struck in the head by Mr. Boucher’s handcuffed hand as he wrestled free. Chief Kelly said the officer suffered a concussion.
Mr. Boucher then charged toward the clerk, but was stopped by Officer McCormick, who shocked him with the Taser on a second try after failing once. Mr. Boucher stopped breathing and was dead when he was brought to the hospital.
Investigators have much to sort out. But Mr. Boucher’s case is similar enough to other sudden deaths after Taser incidents to ask whether it fits into a larger pattern of possible problems.
It’s easy to think of Tasers as a replacement for guns, but they really are more often used instead of batons to get suspects to comply with commands. Critics argue they are used too freely and should be reserved as a “last resort.”
Mason police have a sensible policy on Tasers. Officers are required to follow a progression of actions when dealing with an unruly suspect. They move, in order, from asking questions to issuing commands, using a baton, handcuffing, warning of a Taser shock, using the Taser and then using force.
Chief Kelly said he believes the officers in this case followed those rules. In the two years the rules have been in force, Mason police have used Tasers on just seven suspects.
Some researchers worry that Taser shocks may interfere with heart rhythm. The company that makes the devices disputes that, but in September it issued guidelines advising police to avoid shocking suspects in the chest.
That guidance is so new many officers haven’t heard about it yet. Investigators don’t yet know if Mr. Boucher’s death was heart-related or how close to the chest the Taser hit.
Though obviously they’re not as lethal as guns, Tasers are still weapons. Police departments should have a healthy fear of quickly turning to them.
Permalink | Comments (34) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: UD move will help job growth
Expanding the University of Dayton Research Institute into a world-class facility at the former NCR world headquarters is a huge step forward as part of the region’s strategy to create jobs by supporting cutting-edge, high-tech study.
UDRI — with its connections to institutions — is crucial to that strategy.
Critics might believe the attractive property could have lured another major company, bringing big bucks and new jobs. But the building is so big, the private economy so weak and the competition for big employers so intense that that view is detached from reality.
Everyone, UD included, would have preferred that NCR stay in town and stay an active part of the community. But the danger at hand was that the building would stay empty and become a symbol of decline. Now, it will instead represent hope.
The community needs growing new companies that will care about Dayton — in a way NCR long ago stopped caring — to replace those lost jobs with better, more stable ones over time. UDRI is a prime vehicle to make that happen.
With this move, UD takes an even bigger step toward dominating the former NCR land at the south end of downtown Dayton, all the way from its front door to the Great Miami River. The university’s growth, especially given its commitment to the city and its great track record of productive partnering, is good for the region.
Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, even remarked at the announcement of the purchase that a bigger, more influential university and research institute might be as valuable to Dayton as a Fortune 500 company.
NCR’s departure was a painful example of how depending heavily on a large company can backfire. As much as Daytonians liked to think of NCR as inextricably bound to the city where it was born, executives for the last several years clearly didn’t view it that way. They downsized, moved their executive offices to New York City, stopped talking to local political leaders and, ultimately, blew out of town completely.
UDRI already has strong connections with Wright State University, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and many growing technology companies, not to mention UD itself. Plus, it isn’t going to be looking to move some day.
Now there will be more, stronger connections. Part of the vision is for research space to be set aside within UDRI, adjacent to the major labs, for commercial partners. Carefully chosen startups will be matched to specific research with the goal of transferring technology to products that can be commercialized. That approach echoes the successful strategies employed in Silicon Valley.
Dayton will boast a showcase research center highlighting the region’s connection to, and commitment to, the high-tech economy. That will help Dayton make an ever stronger case that it is a good place for innovators to be.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Economy, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: New year needs new political tone
In this season of peace to man, political compromise is in the news.
In Washington, the Democrats pushing President Barack Obama’s health care plans had to compromise so much with other Democrats — often called “moderates” — that they engendered a revolt on their left.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown got caught up.
From the time of his election, he has been seen as a darling of the liberals. He has supported not only the health care bill in general, but the public option, a federally run insurance plan that people who don’t have insurance at work could buy into.
The public option hit a political brick wall. At that point a lot of liberals turned against the broader health reform bill. Talk show hosts, bloggers and former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean left. But Sen. Brown, like the other liberal senators, stuck in there.
He’s right. The health care proposal is still historic and progressive. Moreover, the liberals simply don’t have control of Congress. And a senator’s job is to make things happen. To start all over now, as some have suggested, would almost certainly mean nothing would happen. (The part of the compromise that gave special gifts to Nebraska was unseemly, though, and should be rescinded.)
Meanwhile, in Columbus, five Republican votes were needed in the Senate to pass a budget-balancing proposal. The proposal made sense by any nonpartisan standard, but was identified with Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland. It entailed delaying part of a tax cut.
At a time when states and localities all over the country are raising taxes, and when Ohio has already cut spending and payrolls sharply, it should have been the easiest of measures to get agreement on.
But getting the five votes took forever. And they turned out not to include Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering.
That’s a shame. He has courted the image of a get-it-done guy, rather than a rigid ideologue or partisan. He should have been there on this one.
(If Sens. Brown and Husted are being compared, perhaps it should be noted that Sen. Brown’s compromise was within his own party.)
After the first of the year, the general matter of compromise could move to center stage locally. After eight years of being wholly Democratic, the Dayton City Commission will be joined by a non-Democratic mayor.
City Hall has had a lot of problems this decade, but lack of cohesion hasn’t been one of them. Teamwork has prevailed. Some might say that the benefits to the city have been minimal. But people who have seen dysfunctional legislative bodies know how much worse things could be.
Federal, state and local politicians should make a general New Year’s commitment to compromise, meaning that they reject the politics of polarization that prevails in Washington, of playing primarily to their most fervent supporters.
President Obama, Sen. Brown and Sen. Husted need to let the fire-breathers in their parties breathe their fire at them. Dayton’s leaders need to focus on the broad community, not the loud voices.
The most important player is, of course, the president. He has not fulfilled the promise of his pre-presidential rhetoric about how the words “blue” and “red” don’t capture who the American people really are. He has not been a healer.
But 2009 was a peculiar year. He needed to pursue a bold economic stimulus and to finally make good on the pursuit of universal health care. There was probably never any chance of getting Republican support on either.
But not all issues need be so divisive along party lines. The time is near for him to turn a corner — and to be followed.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics, Ohio politics
TweetDaniel J. Curran: Expansion of UD can turn loss of NCR into solid gain
(This piece was written by Daniel J. Curran, president of the University of Dayton, a position he’s held since July 1, 2002.)
The University of Dayton’s purchase of NCR Corp.’s world headquarters and 115 acres of land is both a good investment for the university and an exceptional opportunity for the region.
This is a transformative moment.
Our acquisition of the landmark facility provides significant room for UD to grow, underscores our position as a national Catholic research university and ensures the facility will remain an asset and resource to the Dayton region.
While the departure of NCR is a significant loss, UD is pleased that our investment in the property turns that loss to something positive.
The region has had its share of economic challenges, but good news is emerging. Caterpillar Logistics Services Inc.’s plans to build a $65 million parts distribution facility in Clayton is a recent example.
In the past decade, UD has stepped up our involvement in the revitalization of the community. Working with many partners — and consistent with our Marianist heritage and commitment to community — we engage in some of the most important issues facing the region, including environmental cleanup, urban education and neighborhood revitalization.
Our purchase of the NCR property will help boost the region’s economic revitalization and can mark a new era of collaboration.
This region faces challenges that will require both leadership and partnership as never before. As a major community anchor and the largest independent university in Ohio, we look forward to working with our partners to leverage this opportunity.
As a private, Catholic university in a state with shifting demographics, we have had to think differently about how we recruit students and conduct research, becoming both more strategic and aggressive to diversify and bring resources into the region.
Those efforts are bearing fruit. Last year, we received a record number of applications and saw a significant increase in out-of-state students. Sponsored research has nearly tripled in the past decade to almost $100 million.
The University of Dayton Research Institute was just awarded the largest contract in its history to help develop jet fuels and combustion technologies for the U.S. Air Force. The former NCR world headquarters will house some areas of the expanding research institute and provide a home for new research partnerships.
It will give us needed space for graduate classes and, by establishing a new alumni center, give our alumni both locally and around the world a place to gather and celebrate their proud heritage.
Recently, the state designated the Dayton region as Ohio’s Aerospace Hub for Sensors and Materials. UD was named lead partner because of our strengths in aerospace-related research and technology-based economic development, as well as the success of the university-led Institute for Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology (IDCAST).
IDCAST will continue to lead the sensors work while much of the aerospace materials work will be centered in the new facility.
We’ll be seeking partners and opportunities throughout the region and beyond to accelerate the pace of innovation, building on our research momentum and reputation in areas such as high-performance materials.
Now is a pivotal time for the Dayton region, requiring innovation and bold action. We hope that our purchase is seen as a tangible renewal of our historic commitment to this community and its revitalization.
This is a time of great possibility. We have faith in this region’s future and its immense potential for economic growth, and we look forward to working together to seize these opportunities.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Guest Columns, Local Business
TweetEditorial: An unusually necessary Christmas season
By now, it is common to note that, even in the best of times, the holiday season is the worst of times for many.
The Corinth Presbyterian Church in east Dayton has decided to slate “Blue Christmas” services for those going through hard times, whether because of the economy or because the season is associated with personal traumatic losses, or whatever.
People who have reason to be sad during the holidays can easily get the impression that they are alone on that score, which only adds to the sadness. It’s good to see the local effort to combat that problem spread, rather than recede.
It seemed to be receding when the big, public Thanksgiving Day dinner lost its funding source, the Beerman Foundation.
At about the same time, news was coming that the local United Way was falling short, not only of past collections, but of a goal that had been adjusted downward.
Fortunately, local doctors and others stepped in to continue the Thanksgiving tradition. That sequence symbolized how a lot of people are not succumbing to the temptation to just throw up their arms in futility.
But the temptation is strong, across the country. A man in California named Evan Gutierrez summarized what a lot of people in economic trouble have been thinking lately:
“We grow up with the impression there’s a correlation between effort and the fruits of your labor,” he said. “To be honest with you, I have very little confidence I’m going to be able to turn this around. It just feels completely, completely out of control.”
He was, ironically enough, running a church’s goodwill fund when the economy collapsed at the end of 2008. He lost that job. Then he got one as a music teacher, but his charter school closed because of money problems.
That sequence, too, stands as a pretty good symbol of the year 2009.
Never before in our time have so many Americans seen such hard times.
The New York Times article that introduced Mr. Gutierrez featured a Times/CBS poll of people who have lost their jobs. About half said the loss was only a “minor crisis” or no crisis at all. About a third said they feel no more stress than usual. Slightly more than a fourth said their financial situations are still fairly good or very good.
But about half reported “experiencing a major crisis,” living without health insurance, having trouble sleeping, having more conflicts than usual with family and friends, being embarrassed or ashamed about being out of work and seeing changes in the behavior of their children as a result of being unemployed.
Three-fourths of those receiving unemployment benefits expect the benefits to run out before they find jobs.
One fourth said they had lost their homes or have been threatened with eviction or foreclosure.
The end of the year brings some signs of a slight turnaround. Meanwhile, the arrival of the holiday season itself helps, if not all individuals, at least the nation as a whole.
It might not lower the unemployment rate or bring world peace. But, the harder things get, the more we need it, the more we cherish it.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Religion and Faith
TweetEditorial: Your cell phone should be private
The all-Republican Ohio Supreme Court has ruled 4-3 that, when making an arrest, police may not search a suspect’s cell phone.
The court overrules the Dayton-based 2nd District Court of Appeals, specifically Judges James Brogan and Mike Fain, both Democrats. Judge Mary Donovan, a Republican, dissented, but she is not seen as a conservative.
The Supreme Court also overruled Greene County Common Pleas Judge Stephen Wolaver, in whose court the defendant was convicted. Now the case goes back to his court.
It’s a tough case. The police who made the arrest didn’t misbehave. They just ran into a murky legal area.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” It specifies that search warrants can’t be issued except for “probable cause.”
However, searching a person who is being arrested is allowed without a warrant, with an eye on the safety of the police officers and on making sure evidence isn’t destroyed. In 2007, Beavercreek police arrested Antwuan Smith, who eventually got a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking and related offenses, including possession of criminal tools: a cell phone. In the process, police took his phone and searched it over.
His lawyers say that was wrong, because the cell phone is not part of his person.
Defining what is part of a person’s person has occupied courts for years. It’s now generally accepted, for instance, that closed containers may be searched, but computers may not be. Searching a computer is considered more like searching a room, so getting a warrant is required.
It’s not established where a cell phone fits in.
The Supreme Court majority — Chief Thomas Moyer and Justices Maureen O’Connor, Paul Pfeifer and Judith Ann Lanzinger — said that a cell phone can contain so much information that is private and unrelated to a crime that police should have to get a judge to give them a search warrant.
The best criticism of their take is that the court is overreaching. In his dissent, Justice Robert Cupp (formerly a state legislator from Lima), points out that this particular phone was not a “smart phone.” It did have lists of phone numbers, but such lists, when written, can be searched without a warrant.
(The phone also had photographs, which prosecutors tried to use, but the trial judge said no to that.)
A court could rule this particular search was OK without blessing all searches of cell phones.
But the court majority said that police officers should not be expected to figure out what kind of phone is at hand and should simply have one rule about phones. That ruling would impose no great burden on police. They’ve always made arrests without accessing cell phones.
Greene County Prosecutor Steve Haller says the phone in this case helped police decide they had the man they were looking for; but he won’t say it was necessary.
Mr. Haller also notes that the record of certain calls might disappear from some phones before a warrant can be issued. Mr. Haller has decided to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. That doesn’t mean the court will hear it, though.
The Ohio court does point police in the right direction. As more phones become more like computers, getting a warrant should be required.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Area lawmakers sit out budget balancing effort
They’ll be home for Christmas. Ohio lawmakers, that is.
Last week, they voted to suspend the fifth installment of a previously passed income tax cut. Had they not come to some agreement — which required five Republicans in the Senate to side with Democrats — they might still be in Columbus.
The suspension of the tax cut is occurring because the budget is $851 million out of balance. Gov. Ted Strickland was counting on raising just about that amount from taxes on slot machines at race tracks. But the Ohio Supreme Court said the machines couldn’t be installed without a vote of the people.
Five Republican senators and two Republican House members voted for the suspension. State Rep. Ross McGregor of Springfield was the only one from the Miami Valley among them.
State Sens. Jon Husted, of Kettering, Shannon Jones, of Springboro, and Chris Widener, of Springfield voted no.
So did state Reps. Peggy Lehner, of Kettering; Terry Blair, of Washington Twp; Seth Morgan, of Huber Heights; Jarrod Martin, of Beavercreek; and Richard Adams, of Concord Twp. in Miami County.
In the House, Democrats have a majority. No Republican votes were needed.
In the Senate, Republican leaders were not going to supply one more vote than the minimum that was needed, even though they — and specifically Sen. Husted, who was a player in the pivotal discussions — knew the tax decrease had to be delayed.
They wanted this decision to belong to the Democrats, even as they had no better idea. Sen. Husted was not going to be asked — nor was he going to volunteer — to be one of the people who made a tough call. He will likely face a strident conservative next spring in his bid to be the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Better to be politically safe than politically brave.
Sen Husted explained his vote thus:
“It wasn’t a very good bill. I tried to be constructive, to get us to work on the short- and the long-term problems in the state. I couldn’t get the governor — or, more so, the House Democrats — to focus on that.”
Sen Husted said he objected to the fact that public construction reform and sentencing reform — both of which would save the state money in the long run — were not part of the package. (Both of those ideas have been pending for years, including when Republicans controlled Columbus).
He is not critical of the Republicans who broke ranks, saying said he understand the needs of the Senate leadership to resolve the stalemate.
Acknowledging a problem, while taking a pass on voting for the solution, does not count for much.
Sen. Husted notes that he “did not grandstand,” pointing out that he did not make a floor speech or send out a press release decrying the decision.
That stands in stark contrast to former U.S. Rep. John Kasich, who is expected to be Gov. Strickland’s opponent next year.
He pronounced that “after nearly a year of budget blunders, broken promises, erroneous revenue projections, flip flops, and timid leadership, Ted Strickland increased taxes on Ohio families and businesses.”
Furthermore, Mr. Kasich said Ohio is consumed by a “toxic culture of tax and spending.”
Wow.
Makes you wonder where he’s been for the last two years while the budget was being cut repeatedly and deeply.
Gov. Strickland is no hero in the settlement. Even when he knew he was probably going to have to take this route, he kept pretending otherwise, which gave permission to Republicans to bury their heads in the sand and stick their feet in cement with regard to a tax cut delay.
Meanwhile, the problem is fixed only temporarily. Ohio’s current two-year budget has something like $6 billion in one-time money in it; in 18 months, the state could be looking at a $8 billion hole in a $50 billion spending plan.
The state remains in trouble. Willingness to work together to confront the problem is hard to see.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetTed Strickland: Federal money needed to spur business lending
This commentary is written by Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland.
When you’re in a race, you go as fast as you can to try to win. That’s how we understand competition. But it doesn’t always work that way.
There are several tracks in the NASCAR circuit where competitors are required to use restrictor plates, a device that limits the maximum speed of all cars. You can see that the horsepower is there, the skill is there, the potential is there.
But the cars are slowed because an impediment holds them back.
When you have a superior product, you make as much of it as you can and serve as many customers as you can to try to maximize your profit. That’s how we understand the business world. But it doesn’t always work that way.
Lines of credit are the restrictor plates on our businesses, especially small and medium-sized manufacturers. You can see that the facilities are there, the know-how is there, and the leadership is there.
But our companies are slowed because of an impediment.
Across Ohio, business people have told me time and again that lack of capital impedes them from expanding and competing. According to The Manufacturing Council, its member businesses are echoing those concerns in every corner of the nation as sound companies face this credit crunch.
Credit is drying up because a sour economy has made bankers leery of being bankers. In Tuscarawas County, SUPERB Industries grew out of a family business started in a two-car garage 23 years ago. Today it offers precision stampings and injection molding for customers across the globe.
Sales for 2009 are up 15 percent, and orders for 2010 are up 45 percent. SUPERB has increased its workforce by 25 percent.
But company officials say they’re not sure they can secure enough working capital to sustain this rate of growth and job creation.
When U.S. companies cannot afford to grow, we have a problem. And if we don’t fix this problem, we might as well ask China how many more of our jobs it would like. Powered by relatively modest loans, we can strengthen industries in Ohio and across the country.
According to the Motor and Equipment Manufacturer’s Association, an auto supply manufacturer doing $100 million in sales annually needs about $5 million in flexible capital to cover costs.
Recently, President Barack Obama has spoken out on the need for banks to make capital available for small businesses. He has articulated a framework to revitalize American manufacturing.
Now we need to put a program in place to see that funds actually flow to job-creating manufacturers.
That’s why I’m calling on the federal government to dedicate funds from the TARP, or in the jobs bill being considered by Congress, to stimulate capital lending to small and medium-sized manufacturers. They need working capital to meet existing orders and to pay for the retooling and retrofitting necessary to increase efficiency and pursue new markets, technologies and products.
States would serve as the intermediary, identifying a network of banks and community lenders that wish to participate and assuring that federal funds quickly find their way to manufacturers ready to retain and create jobs.
Because they would be allocating federal funds alongside their own funds, banks and credit unions could make lending decisions without the overwhelming reluctance that guides many of their decisions now.
And as businesses repay these loans, the funds would be rolled back to provide capital to others to create even more jobs.
In Ohio and across the nation, more than nine out of 10 manufacturers are small and medium-sized businesses employing fewer than 500 people. These manufacturing positions pay 20 percent more than service-sector employment. And, each manufacturing job indirectly supports four to five additional jobs.
By taking these simple, but essential, steps, we will put capital in the hands of people who can use it to create jobs.
If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.
That’s not just folk wisdom; it’s the essence of how the economy should work. But today, if you don’t have access to capital, you can build a better mousetrap and still not be able to bring it to market.
In a federal and state commitment to lending capital to small manufacturers, there’s logic, there’s efficiency, and there are jobs.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment |
TweetMartin Gottlieb: ‘90-minute market’s’ day comes 25 years later?
When I got to Dayton in 1984, the first piece of vocabulary I picked up was “90-minute market.” Somebody mentioned it to me in describing the town. And it was splashed all over the cover of a phone book, something incoming journalists turn to often. It seemed to be important.
My first reaction was that these people have a strange way of using the language. First you have to understand the word “market.” It’s the capitalist’s word for place; as in city or metropolitan area. That much I knew.
A 90-minute market is not a place that’s within 90 minutes of an international airport or interstate crossroads. It’s not a place that takes 90 minutes to drive across.
Every place is a 90-minute market. The term doesn’t really take on meaning until you put an adjective in front of it.
A good 90-minute market is a place that is within a 90-minute drive of lots and lots of people. A bad 90-minute market is one that isn’t.
If this way of using the language had caught on, you would today be a three-octave singer and four-sport athlete, just not necessarily a very good one.
The reason the 90-minute-market thing was on the local phone book was that Dayton was a surprisingly good 90-minute market. It was the ninth best in the country. You wouldn’t expect that of a city so small and separate from other metropolitan areas. Dayton is not, after all, a high-ranking 30-minute market.
Particularly striking was this: of the 15 best 90-minute markets, only two did not have a Major League Baseball team. Having such a team is, of course, the official definition of “big city.”
The two were Dayton and Columbus.
The designation seemed like a great selling point for Dayton, at least when aimed at people who understood the concept:
Locate your business in a great 90-minute market which also happens to have interstates going every which way, but doesn’t have the regular 30-minute traffic gridlocks associated with bigger cities.
But the pitch never seemed to do much for Dayton, did it?
I used to wonder if maybe 90 minutes wasn’t the number that businesses wanted. Was the country full of 30-minute businesses and two-and-a-half-hour businesses? The governor at the time, Dick Celeste, thought in the same terms as those promoting the 90-minute-market idea. He declared Ohio to be “The Heart of It All.” He threw around some stunning numbers about what percentage of Americans were within 500 miles of Ohio.
He didn’t, however, call Ohio a 500-mile state. Maybe that was the problem: No coordination of slogans.
Or maybe the country’s businesses were looking for 200-mile states, or 750-mile states?
What we know is that being an excellent 90-minute market in an excellent 500-mile state didn’t keep Dayton from becoming a terrific “1,000-mile job market” (a possible designation for a place that seems like it’s 1,000 miles from the good jobs).
Now, however, there are signs that Dayton’s failure to thrive was all some sort of misunderstanding, and that location, location, location really does matter.
There’s the new Caterpillar deal in Clayton, involving a distribution center. There’s the Collective Brands (Payless and Stride Rite) distribution center that moved into Brookville last year after the company decided to close distribution centers in Canada and Indiana.
There’s the new GM warehouse in Trotwood, and a growing Honda warehouse presence in Troy.
Officials who are focused on economic development say this is the local future, or a big part.
Some of us might be destined to remain a little confused: why now?
Maybe the people who were pushing in the same direction in the early 1980s had something, but missed something else.
Dayton was a good 90-minute market back then, just not a good 5-year or 15-year market? That must be it.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Economy, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb
TweetUDRI gets new space, recognition it deserves
A half-century ago, a college math professor who saw an opportunity for research won a $10,200 contract to take raw military data and convert it to readable graphs.
The money supported the work of Charles Collins, who was a Marianist priest, paid a few student stipends and bought some magnifying glasses. It was the start of a research partnership between the University of Dayton and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that led to the creation in 1956 of the University of Dayton Research Institute.
Today the institute has 1,400 contracts, 414 employees and $96 million in sponsored research. Soon, it will move to the former NCR world headquarters. UD announced Monday that it has bought the complex for $18 million to house the institute and accommodate its continuing growth.
That news comes on the heels of UDRI landing a six-year Air Force grant worth $49.5 million. The money will support more study toward the goal of some day producing more efficient, heat-resistant and less polluting jet fuel.
The new grant, which builds on a similar 2003 grant for $31.5 million, is a big win for UDRI and for Dayton. Of course, it’s good news that the new money will be spent here, not somewhere else. But the community’s gain goes beyond today’s economic impact. The growth of UDRI is a model for long-term incubation of idea centers that could be the basis of Dayton’s future economy. If a breakthrough comes in an important area like greener jet fuel, the benefits of making that discovery here can ripple.
Meanwhile, being in the NCR building will give the research institute more visibility and cachet. Locating in this first-class environment is a statement about its role at UD and in the community.
The inventors who established Dayton’s reputation for innovation in the last century — the Wright brothers, Charles Kettering, John Patterson — started small the way the Rev. Collins did with UDRI. In time, industry giants like the Wright Airplane Company, Delco and National Cash Register emerged.
Now they are gone and Dayton is looking for its next generation of employers. Starting small still works, as UDRI’s growth demonstrates. The process can be repeated. The key is capitalizing on local assets like a workforce with high-tech expertise and a proximity to Wright-Patterson.
Consider the fuel contract. UDRI Director John Leland said the institute’s first government fuel contract primarily resulted from one person’s proposal 25 years ago. Now more than 35 people work on the project at least half-time. More will be added when the new money arrives.
Down the line, if the institute continues to beat a path forward in fuel technology, Mr. Leland said he could envision new companies sprouting, or established firms opening offices here, to be involved in the research.
In jet fuel, that day is still probably a decade or more away. But Mr. Leland said he meets smart innovators in high-tech fields every day who remind him of the Wrights, Pattersons and Ketterings. They’re dreamers with big ideas who need to try, to fail and to try again. UDRI gives them a chance to partner so they can chase those dreams by leveraging government money and the institute’s independent resources.
Success might not come in the form of the next high-tech giant like Google or Microsoft. Instead, it might look more like a collection of small and medium-sized companies that grow and expand.
A thriving local economy can be built that way, too.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Economy, Editorials, Education, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetStivers ranks high, but it’s not the only great local high school
Stivers School for the Arts just earned a silver medal in the annual U.S. News and World Report ranking of the nation’s top 100 high schools.
It deserves that praise, and Dayton and the region are again reminded that the school is an educational gem.
As it was hailing Stivers, the magazine passed over five other excellent local high schools that had been ranked last year. It did so even as nothing has changed in Oakwood, Centerville, Cedarville, Bellbrook and at the Dayton Early College Academy to warrant their being bumped off. They were excluded primarily because of a change in the way they were evaluated.
To be fair, they ought to be celebrated, too.
The explanation for how these schools were dropped is a good reminder about the weaknesses of school quality measures. Depending on which criteria are used, good arguments can be made that these schools — and others in the Dayton area never mentioned by U.S. News — also belong in any conversation about great schools. Stivers, a downtown public high school, is highly selective. Only about one in three applicants are picked each year to enter at seventh grade based on their artistic talent, not their academic records.
Unlike most selective schools, Stivers has a challenging population of poor and minority children, kids who often struggle in other settings. At Stivers, they thrive. Test scores compare well with any school in the area, and the accomplishments of Stivers graduates are a testament to the quality of education they get.
Stivers is an especially good example of the particular type of standout school that U.S. News seeks to reward with its list. The magazine judges schools not just by their overall excellence on tests, but also how ready their graduates are for college and, notably, on their success helping their most disadvantaged students to succeed.
The magazine does a service by pointing out great schools that help kids overcome sometimes staggering barriers to compete on a world stage. But U.S. News’ approach is only one measure of excellence.
Here’s what went wrong for the local schools left off the list this year. U.S. News looks at detailed test data to make its first cut, including how many kids at each school scored in each of five categories — accelerated, advanced, proficient, basic and below basic.
Schools that move students up the steps of that ladder, especially poor and minority kids, earn big points.
But this year, U.S. News didn’t have test scores in such detail when it prepared its list. It’s unclear why, since the data is now available on the Ohio Department of Education Web site. Instead, U.S. News used less detailed test data, focusing on how many kids had gone from failing to passing. Schools that dropped from the ranking may have looked less impressive by this measure than they might have with the more detailed data.
It’s likely the five schools dropped out of the top 100 for essentially a technical reason, not due to any significant change in performance.
But they aren’t the only great local high schools that are missing. It just depends on how “great” is quantified. Looking at total test performance? Springboro and Northmont were among the very best in the area. Neither made U.S. News’ list.
If average ACT college entrance scores were a primary measure, then Beavercreek, Tippecanoe and Franklin-Monroe in Darke County would be ranked. Greenview comes in right behind Oakwood if the percentage of graduates receiving an honors diploma is key.
All these schools are excellent in one way or another.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Rural Communities, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: This is no way to land cancer center
Right before the November election, Miami Twp. officials hurriedly announced — to the surprise of a lot of people locally — that a $170 million cancer treatment center was going to be built at the Austin Pike interchange.
That could yet happen. But the township took a bow prematurely.
Optivus Proton Therapy Inc., of California, runs one of six proton therapy centers in the country. The privately owned, for-profit company is eager to expand in Ohio.
Proton therapy targets tumors more intensely and precisely than traditional radiation treatment. It can be especially useful in attacking cancers on the brain, for example, or the spinal cord. Though the therapy doesn’t have the harsh side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, it’s not routinely used because it’s so expensive.
Optivus officials want to locate at the Austin Pike development because of Dayton’s proximity to both Cincinnati and Columbus. They’re seriously looking at building there, but the hurdles are significant.
A developer recently gave up on bringing a proton treatment center to Columbus because capital is so tight. (It also didn’t help that the local hospitals opposed the project.)
Miami Twp. is ecstatic that it has the chance to court Optivus. But it’s gone about the effort all wrong. It has kept its efforts under wraps, saying Optivus has insisted on a confidentiality agreement. But c’mon.
This project is expensive and wildly complicated. If it’s really going to come together, making that happen will require partners beyond the township.
What do you want to bet that Optivus could have been persuaded that it was in the company’s interest to have more people around the table — if Miami Twp. officials were willing to recognize their own need for wider support?
Might the township also be overly concerned about keeping the deal quiet because it wants to be certain that the company locates on the land it owns at Austin Pike?
Meanwhile, there’s this: Miami Twp. Trustee Deborah Preston took a $5,000 campaign contribution from the owner of Optivus, Jon Slater. When questions were raised about why a Californian would be contributing so much to a lowly township trustee, that’s when officials went public with their important news.
Then Ms. Preston gave the money back because, she said, she didn’t want the donation to be a distraction.
Though Mr. Slater and Miami Twp. Administrator Greg Hanahan say otherwise, this deal never would have been announced so early in the process if Ms. Preston had not had to explain the campaign contribution.
The project wasn’t cooked then — and still isn’t.
Developers normally don’t want to go public with their plans until they’ve talked to all the people whose help they’re going to need and until they have their plans in place.
When they’re trying to raise money from investors, it’s bad form to create expectations that you may have to back down from later.
Ms. Preston’s willingness to take such a big donation (and Mr. Slater’s willingness to give it) is another indication that decisions weren’t thought out carefully.
Certainly, after the problem in Columbus, you’d think Optivus would be concerned about Dayton hospitals’ reaction. If they’re hostile — for competitive or other reasons — that can complicate the company’s efforts.
The more people who are consulted early on about the effort, the less chance there is for it to fall off track for the wrong reasons.
Optivus’ initiative here has implications across the state. Mr. Slater wants to raise part of the capital he needs by using Miami Twp.’s bonding authority to sell tax-free bonds. The loans would be backed by levying a tax on the treatment patients receive.
That would assure investors of a revenue stream, provided, of course, the center is able to draw patients from a wide area.
Ohio law allows developers to take this route — effectively imposing a tax on themselves — in cities, but not in townships. Some developers and local governments are lobbying the legislature to give townships the same ability.
Optivus’ Mr. Slater says this financing option would help him get the center built, but he’s committed to going forward even without the assistance.
What’s not to like?
A high-tech cancer treatment center with perhaps several hundred high-paying jobs, drawing patients from hundreds of miles?
A first-class anchor at Austin Pike, just the sort that local officials have hoped to bring to one of the best undeveloped chunks of real estate in Montgomery County?
This would all be great news if Miami Twp. were working with the very people it needs and one of its officials hadn’t tainted the effort by accepting a campaign donation that she should have known would compromise her.
There’s an opportunity here that has potentially positive region-wide implications. But, as a community, we aren’t taking a regional approach to vetting the company or making sure it gets the attention it deserves.
This is not the way to create new jobs.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Health Care, Local Business, Montgomery County, Ohio government, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Boehner, Republicans have plan to do nothing
In evaluating President Barack Obama’s next efforts to create jobs, it’s useful to look at what his opponents propose. Enter John Boehner.
Nobody’s happy about the jobs situation. Jobs might have stopped shrinking dramatically in number, but they’re not rising dramatically, to offset recent losses. And they’re not expected to.
What the president wants to do isn’t entirely clear. But he’s talked of more infrastructure spending, tax breaks for small businesses, a version of “Cash for Clunkers” for home energy conservation projects and for using money that banks are paying back to the government for more stimulus.
He has also asked Republicans to weigh in.
Rep. Boehner, of West Chester, in his capacity as leader of the House Republicans, responded with a column printed by The Washington Post. He used the phrase “job-killing” four times to describe the president’s policies.
“Democrats’ job-killing agenda is making matters worse,” he wrote. “Americans are asking where the jobs are, but all they are getting from Washington is more spending, more debt and more policies that hurt small businesses.
“Republicans,” he said, “have offered common-sense solutions to break down barriers to economic growth … starting with a recovery plan focused on encouraging investment and allowing families and small businesses to keep more of what they earn.”
The column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121003436.html) did not get more specific than that. When you look at the specifics of the package he’s talking about (gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/GOPNoCostJobsPlan.pdf) you can see why.
The “Republicans’ No-Cost Jobs Plan” is mainly about what shouldn’t be done. It would “halt any proposed rule or regulation expected to have an economic cost, result in job loss or a have a disparate impact on small business.”
It would “eliminate job killing federal tax increases.”
It would ban increases in “domestic discretionary spending” (meaning it would exempt Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits, the bulk of domestic spending from the ban).
On the positive side, there isn’t much.
The plan would make changes in the unemployment compensation system and in tax rules relating to depreciation of property.
It would “remove unnecessary barriers to domestic energy production” and “provide an incentive for companies to repatriate earnings back to the United States.”
And it would push for passage of three pending trade agreements.
The package is mainly a collection of long-standing proposals pulled off the Republicans’ shelves. Some of the ideas have always had merit, including the push for free trade.
But this is not an energetic response to a crisis. Can anybody really believe that the next year or two would be dramatically different — as to job creation — if this package alone were enacted?
What’s most striking is what’s missing: major tax cuts. For the last generation or so, when Republicans have turned to economic activism, they have called for tax cuts.
Now they are turning away from activism, if this list is any indication. What Rep. Boehner is really saying is that, in the short run, the government should just let nature take its course, unimpeded by government action.
That’s easy for the party that’s out of power to say.
The absence of major tax cuts is presumably attributable to the country’s astronomical deficits. But, after all, in the past, conservatives argued that tax cuts reduce the deficit by increasing revenues. If that faith is giving way to reality, good.
But the disappearance of major tax cuts seems to have left the Boehner Republicans lacking in big legislative ideas. These proposals are not much different from sitting still.
Permalink | Comments (35) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics
TweetEditorial: House Dems are slackers on redistricting
Even aside from the budget issue — and the long delay in getting something enacted — the Ohio legislature has been getting a reputation for slowness and inaction.
In defense, Speaker Armond Budish, a Democrat from near Cleveland, points to bills that have passed the House of Representatives, but have failed in, or aren’t being acted on by, the Republican Senate.
His litany starts with a gay rights bill. But there isn’t much else that grabs attention on the list of 38 items.
At any rate, the idea is to get things through both houses.
Toward that end, Speaker Budish should put some energy into the simultaneously arcane and politically juicy matter of redistricting, that is, how legislative districts are drawn.
This is one area in which the Senate has acted, and the House hasn’t. The issue is important because the current system allows the parties to make too many districts unwinnable by one party or the other, thus limiting the power of voters.
Among other things, the current rules foster polarization, because candidates worry more about winning primaries than general elections.
On the initiative of Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, the Senate has passed a bill that would basically do two things: create a nonpartisan commission to draw the districts — as opposed to the winner-draws-all system that prevails; and provide rules to guide the commission.
The House now needs to do the same.
The rules the House proposes would likely be different from those in the Husted bill.
That’s where the discussion becomes arcane.
Speaker Budish says that the Husted bill rules put too much emphasis on honoring county lines. He says that emphasis helps Republicans, because Democratic voters — while as numerous as Republicans — are concentrated in fewer counties.
The Democrats’ experts believe that compact districts — a goal of all reformers, to one degree or another — can be drawn without the restrictions the Husted proposal calls for.
It’s a debate that can wait until the Democrats pass something.
In discussing the current budget impasse, Speaker Budish emphasizes that the Republican Senate hasn’t passed anything. So he and his Democratic colleagues in the House can’t be considered the problem.
Fair point. But it also applies to the House on redistricting.
Truth is, just creating the non-partisan Husted commission, without new rules, would be progress.
(It wouldn’t be ideal, because such a commission might settle for balancing the number of Democratic and Republican districts, rather than seeking districts that could be won be either party. The rules need to encourage competitiveness.)
Any reform adopted by the legislature would have to go before voters, because the constitution would have to be changed. The schedule for doing that keeps slipping. Sen. Husted has hoped for a ballot issue in the spring. Speaker Budish is now looking at next November.
One might think the Democrats would be more eager for reform than the Republicans. After all, if the system is not changed, redistricting of the state legislature will be done after the 2010 Census by whichever party holds two of these positions: governor, secretary of state and state auditor.
The Democrats now hold two, but all three will be contested in 2010 and, as of now, few people see the year as shaping up great for the Democrats.
Furthermore, under the current rules, the Republicans could have complete control over redistricting as it applies to congressional seats. That map is drawn by the legislature and the governor, not by the commission that draws state legislative districts.
(There’s no way the Democrats could have complete control of the congressional districts, because they can’t pick up enough seats to take over the state Senate, now overwhelmingly Republican.)
And yet, enthusiasm has been hard to see on the Democratic side. The House bill doesn’t even reform the process relating to congressional districts. Speaker Budish says he has to limit the scope of the legislation if he is going to get anything passed. Not a good sign.
Somebody needs to light a fire under the Democrats. They have an opportunity do something important, concrete and long-overdue, without — near as anybody can tell — hurting themselves.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetMartin Gottlieb: In wake of conceal/carry, new stats worth a look
“Many states recently adopted looser gun laws,” a headline said this week about an Associated Press review.
“In the last two years, 24 states, mostly in the South and West, have passed 47 new laws loosening gun restrictions,” the story said. “Legislatures have allowed firearms to be carried in cars, made it illegal to ask job candidates whether they own a gun, and (more).”
Says the chief lobbyist of the National Rifle Association, “This is all a coordinated approach.…We’ll rest when all 50 states allow and respect the right of law-abiding people to defend themselves.”
Time was, the gun lobby presented itself primarily as a defensive force. It was a guardian against the allegedly “slippery slope” toward laws that would keep even hunters and collectors from having firearms.
But now the NRA is on the offense.
Ohio passed a law in 2004 allowing people to carry concealed weapons if they pay a fee and pass a safety course. The Republican legislature clearly felt under political pressure to pass it.
By the end of 2008, the state had seen 143,000 permits issued. That’s about 1.6 percent of adult Ohioans. After all that fuss!
The percentage says a lot about the ability of sophisticated political interest groups to generate the impression that a lot more people are, shall we say, up in arms than really are.
Legally concealed weapons haven’t turned Ohio into the Wild West. Nor, on the other hand, have they resulted in any great drop in crime rates.
A debate about their impact continues. Now a national organization called the Violence Policy Center (VPC) brings a new stat into the discussion.
It says, “Concealed handgun permit holders have killed at least nine law enforcement officers and 98 private citizens (including 12 shooters who killed themselves after an attack) since May, 2007.”
Kristen Rand, a VPC spokesman, says, “When the National Rifle Association launched its … campaign … it made this promise: ‘People who get permits… are law-abiding, upstanding community leaders who merely seek to exercise their right to self-defense.’
“To the contrary,” says Rand, “concealed handgun permit holders are killing people over parking spaces, football games and family arguments.”
She says that if people had known in advance about the police fatalities, the conceal-and-carry bills never could have been passed.
The VPC stats don’t indicate that the permit-holders are an exceptionally violent lot, not when you consider the millions across the country who hold permits. The numbers do suggest something about what happens when guns are around.
One shooter in Utah insisted his crime never would have happened if not for the permit. (Also, he was on seven prescription drugs.)
In July, 2008, a police officer in suburban Twinsburg in northern Ohio pulled over one Ashford Thompson for playing loud music. Thompson shot him four times in the head with a “pocket pistol,” killing him. Thompson had a permit.
In 2007, on the Fourth of July, a firefighter with a permit killed three people and wounded two in a dispute over fireworks the three were setting off. The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported the shooter being seen by acquaintances as a “ticking time bomb” before the shootings.
There was a case in Ohio of a 66-year-old man killing himself and his wife; a man killing himself and his girlfriend; and a 5-year-old accidentally killing himself with his father’s gun. (The last one is still pending in court.) All involved permits.
The VPC gathers its numbers from news accounts (and removes cases that result in acquittals). It’s not an ideal way. But nobody keeps such stats officially.
News accounts are far from all-inclusive. Sometimes news outlets look into — and report — whether the shooter had a permit; sometimes they don’t.
(The names of permit holders in Ohio are not released as a group. That’s another fight the gun lobby won. News media can, however, find out if a particular person has a permit.)
Toby Hoover, executive director of Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, a small operation based in Toledo, points out that the VPC numbers are just about fatalities. Nobody seems to have stats on how many non-fatal shootings might involve permits.
The stats coming from the VPC aren’t the last word in the debate about concealed weapons, of course. But they are worth keeping in mind when proposals come up for still more and more liberalization of gun laws.
Permalink | Comments (56) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetGuest column: Career colleges clearly serve Ohio students well
This commentary was written by R. David Rankin, the executive director of the Ohio Association of Career Colleges and Schools, headquartered in Columbus.
Each year about 37,000 Ohioans work toward associate degrees at career colleges. Hundreds of others receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
It’s disappointing to learn the Daily News believes “the vast majority of those seeking college-level programs would be better off at a traditional school” and claims some career colleges “are scams designed to grab cash while providing little of value.”
(“Financial aid too available to shady schools,” Monday, Dec. 7.) The facts are otherwise. Career colleges educate and place into jobs students who, for many reasons, have determined that traditional public and private colleges do not meet their needs.
No other colleges receive as much oversight and regulation as career colleges. Let’s please remember, too, that state and federal financial aid does not flow to any of these institutions, but is paid directly to students. All Ohio students should be able to choose whatever accredited college or university they wish to attend.
The Daily News’ undocumented assertion that students are better off at “traditional” schools simply doesn’t square with the facts. Statewide data shows:
• 80 percent of career college students begin earning wages and pay taxes within 90 days of graduation.
• Ohio career colleges enjoy a 60 percent retention rate compared to 53 percent for community colleges.
• They graduate students at a rate more than 2.5 times better.
• About a third of career college students enroll after having tried other colleges, often community colleges.
• While career colleges instruct only about 19 percent of Ohio students enrolled in two-year programs, they comprise about 40 percent of all Ohioans who earn an associate degree.
If “quality” is measured by comparing student retention and graduation rates, the Daily News’ assertion that Sinclair Community College is “better” is simply not true:
• According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, Sinclair retains 56 percent of its full-time and 42 percent of its part-time students, but actually graduates only 10 percent.
• Nearby National College retains 91 percent of its students and graduates 78 percent of them, while RETS college retains 82 percent and graduates 97 percent.
• To add more perspective, the statewide average graduation rate is 47.3 percent for career colleges; 17 percent for public colleges.
Students who determine a career college education is best for them should have the same access to financial aid programs like Pell Grant as other students.
Readers should understand Ohio career colleges have always been results-driven and outcome-oriented. They do not receive federal or state subsidies. They welcome full disclosure on outcomes.
Student success is paramount and they continually ensure their curricula meet the relevant needs of Ohio’s employers.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment |
TweetEditorial: Ohio’s GOP Senate to blame if cuts come
While you’re consumed by the holidays, the politicians who represent you in Columbus are doing nothing to solve a big, urgent financial problem.
They hope you will not notice.
They don’t see things this way, of course. But if they are doing something, it’s not getting the job done.
When the Ohio Supreme Court rightly said Gov. Ted Strickland couldn’t unilaterally put thousands of slot machines at racetracks, that created an $850 million hole in the current two-year budget. The governor was delusional in counting on that money, and doing so has cost him politically.
The court’s decision, however, came down Sept. 21. That means that for almost three months now, everyone has known that something sigfnicant and painful was going to have to be done. You don’t find almost $1 billion under a mattress.
That painful thing is suspending the last increment of a five-year, 21 percent cut in the state personal income tax. Doing so would raise almost exactly the amount that the state is short.
But the decision must be made by Dec. 31 or it won’t affect this year’s tax collections.
The Democrat-controlled Ohio House has voted in favor of a suspension. Gov. Strickland is publicly asking for it. In short, the Democrats went first and got behind the tough decision.
But the Republican-controlled Senate is in chaos.
Some senators don’t want to vote for what they’d like to label a tax increase. Some are worried about disqualifying themselves from being John Kasich’s running mate when he runs for governor against Mr. Strickland next year.
Some are willing to vote for the suspension, but only if they can exact one or more things from the Democrats.
(Five Republican votes are needed; you watch, in the end, if the suspension is adopted, there will only be five votes. That is, no one is going to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing.)
The stakes are this:
If the suspension doesn’t happen, the state will have to cut most of the needed money from schools. And public colleges will be looking at taking big hits, too.
Education in Ohio could be looking at cuts on the order of 10 to 15 percent.
It’s hard to exempt schools and colleges when they’re such a big portion of the budget and considering that other areas — libraries, prisons, mental health services and so forth — have already been clipped hard.
The people who have been intimately involved in the back-and-forth about what to do — including Kettering’s state Sen. Jon Husted — know there is only one reasonable way out.
If the Republicans knew of another path, they would have suggested it. They have not and that’s the outrage. If you’re not for a tax cut suspension, well, what are you for?
The things some Republicans are demanding as a condition of getting their votes — public construction reform and changes in Ohio’s sentencing laws — are not small matters. They deserve to be vetted, not crammed down the public’s throat.
If the changes are so good, they can be passed on their merits — not as a ransom.
Gov. Strickland was reckless in counting on slots for so much money when he knew the idea might not pass constitutional muster. In doing so, he put off hard choices for himself and for the Republicans, too.
The Democrats haved faced those facts. Now the Republicans need to do so.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Dayton’s school stimulus plan is sound, if not sexy
Dayton schools could be hiring 100 new employees to work with students to prevent violence, get parents involved with their children’s schools and to point kids toward college.
That’s what Cleveland is doing with a big part of its $24 million in federal stimulus money.
Meanwhile, Dayton is spending one of the biggest chunks of its $21 million on textbooks. It’s tempting to view Cleveland’s approach as bold, while Dayton’s seems more business-as-usual.
Cleveland is pushing a massive new program in hopes of jolting the district in a new direction. But Dayton’s more conservative approach likely will look smarter in two years when the stimulus money dries up.
Chief Academic Officer Eric Gordon told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer he views Cleveland students as desperately in need of better social and emotional support. Hiring 60 “family liaisons” is supposed to get parents more involved, connect families with services and help them navigate the school system. Many liaisons, who will earn $22,000 a year, live in the neighborhoods they will be serving.
Another 27 “coaches” will help students prepare for college and support a new district-wide reading program.
Mr. Gordon acknowledges that the district may not be able to keep them all employed when the federal money runs out. The total cost is about $4.5 million.
Dayton kids could use social and emotional support, too. Both districts have large numbers of children living in poverty and coming to school behind. But, for Dayton, a wide-ranging new program and a slew of new hires didn’t make sense.
Here the district plans to use a similarly sized chunk of stimulus aid — about $4.7 million — to buy textbooks. Book purchases were delayed during the past several years as Dayton fought its way out of a severe financial crisis that climaxed with a major levy defeat in 2007.
Treasurer Stan Lucas says administrators chose to spend stimulus money for one-time expenses wherever possible to avoid creating new programs, like the one in Cleveland, that would be hard to sustain.
Dayton did make some exceptions. The Challenger Center, a science program at Kiser Elementary School that allows students to execute mock space missions, is an example. One of a few dozen centers nationwide, it was founded in memory of the 1986 space shuttle disaster. Dayton’s facility opened in 1990 and was rebuilt in 2006.
The district was prepared to shutter the center when it lost grant funding, even though there is a good chance it could win money down the line. The stimulus money gives the center a two-year reprieve.
The hiring of three algebra intervention teachers was another exception. Mr. Lucas says Dayton couldn’t pass on the chance to provide special help to students in a critical math course, even if it’s a short-term fix and administrators will have to figure out how to keep the teachers down the road.
The stimulus money was a one-time gift. Confronting that reality and not getting overextended is smart.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Local cities right to question feds’ numbers
Piqua’s Bill Lutz just can’t quite buy the numbers he’s seeing in the latest Census survey, no matter how much he’d like to believe.
Amid mostly bad news for the 14 Dayton-area cities large enough to be included in the data collected from 2006 to 2008, Piqua was a bright spot. The survey found that income in local cities generally declined and poverty rose. Piqua, however, was the only city where the poverty rate dropped — from 12.2 percent in the 2000 Census to 10.1 percent in the new survey.
The data just does not match reality.
Mr. Lutz, who works in economic development for the city, said the survey data “flies in the face of what we are seeing.”
The data matters. Is Piqua doing something right on poverty that it should be doing more of? The data should help provide an answer. Moreover, Census numbers, whatever their flaws, are used by the federal government to decide policy and, in some cases, to direct funding.
The Census’ main mission is to collect demographic information every 10 years. But those numbers can become misleading over time. So in the 1990s the Census Bureau started doing interim reports called surveys.
The 10-year counts are known for being far more precise. In the survey estimates, on the other hand, small sample sizes mean wider margins of error. The smaller the community or the demographic group, the greater the chance of error.
And assumptions the survey-makers use to make educated guesses can be wrong.
Xenia, to take an example, successfully appealed its 2007 Census population estimate. The city proved some assumptions in the calculation were incorrect and got its official population raised significantly from 23,656 to 27,291.
Now Xenia is understandably miffed, with the latest survey estimating the city’s population at 24,674. Census officials explained the survey uses a different calculation method.
The city frets that demographic changes noted in the survey may paint an inaccurate picture, scaring away potential businesses or home buyers.
The survey methods may also explain Piqua’s phantom good fortune.
Intrigued by the possibility that poverty was improving, Mr. Lutz dug deeper into the data.
It showed:
• The percentage of residents with a college degree was up 17 percent from survey data collected from 2005 to 2007.
• The percentage with a graduate degree was up 20 percent.
• The percentage who were foreign-born was up 14 percent.
The big swings suggested something dramatic — perhaps a new business was attracting well-educated foreign workers to town. But Mr. Lutz isn’t aware of anything like that.
Piqua schools were equally baffled. Superintendent Rick Hanes said there was no decline in poverty-related needs of kids, nor significant growth in the number of kids learning English as a second language.
In fact, there is a good chance that Piqua’s demographics have not changed so much. The numbers that jumped off the page to Mr. Lutz are likely a fluke.
Big trends in the survey can be trusted. There is no doubt, for instance, that incomes have dropped in the Dayton area and that poverty is up in many local communities. But a critical eye and reality-checking are needed before too many conclusions are drawn.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Homeowners need help now
Ohio cannot afford to sit still while foreclosures wreck its already teetering economy, and neither can Montgomery County.
The Ohio Senate, which has been slow to act, must take up the issue. Two reform measures passed by the House last spring have been practically ignored ever since.
Meanwhile, Montgomery County — among the hardest hit places in the state — cannot continue to remain behind other large urban counties, which are using court-ordered mediation to try to dent the swelling pile of foreclosure filings.
A report Friday from a company called RealtyTrac showed foreclosures finally dropping here. And yet, look at some other statistics.
Statewide, just over the course of 2009, the percentage of the almost 1.5 million home loans in Ohio that are delinquent has jumped to 15.3 from 13, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
That is a huge bump in a short period. One out of every 6.5 homeowners with a mortgage is at least 30 days behind on payments or already in foreclosure.
Lots of good ideas have been proposed for how to help. The two House bills would create a six-month moratorium on new foreclosures and require 60 days notice to tenants when the homes they rent go into foreclosure.
Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Springboro, also is pushing a bill that would require mediation through courts for owner-occupied homes in foreclosure.
The best ideas from the various proposals should be wrapped up in one bill. The key components must include:
— Regulation of companies that manage loans, requiring them to be more responsive to consumers. Too many homeowners facing foreclosure who want to try to work out their problems with the companies can’t get any help. In many other states, these companies are required to do better.
The rules also should prevent them from piling on late fees and other expenses to run up the debts of those facing foreclosure, making the hole they’ve fallen into ever deeper.
— Funding for foreclosure- prevention counseling, paid for by a new fee on foreclosures. Among the most difficult problems is helping consumers and courts figure out the best courses of action for loans that are in trouble.
Some cannot be saved. Others should be fast-tracked to mediation; organizations around the state that employ counselors in this role have found it a good strategy. The state can rely on groups with proven track records of success to provide these services.
— Basic tenant protections. Renters deserve early notification that their landlords are in foreclosure so they can weigh their options. The rules also should allow tenants to stay in their homes at least on a month-to-month basis after the property changes hands.
Beyond changes to state law, local jurisdictions must do their part, and so far Montgomery County has fallen short.
It should model the program in Franklin County through which judges order mediation for home loans that are salvageable. These programs are showing promise in other parts of the state.
Montgomery County, which has been studying the idea, hopes to have a similar program in place in early 2010.
A big problem in this crisis is that homeowners have no leverage. If they are in trouble, and the companies that manage their loans refuse to help, there is not much they can do to fight for their homes.
Everything possible must be done to encourage lenders to modify loans whenever the homeowner is willing and able to make reasonable payments. This is good for the consumer, for the community and also for the banks.
Permalink | Comments (23) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Ohio government, Ohio politics, Predatory lending, Scott Elliott
TweetEllen Belcher: UD’s dean of getting things done retires
University of Dayton President Dan Curran said he has a running joke with Tom Lasley, who’s retiring at the end of the month as dean of UD’s school of education.
“I always tease him, saying, ‘What trouble have you gotten me in today?’ ” Curran said. “Of all my deans, he’s the one I have to hold back the most, and I’m a push-forward kind of person.”
Lasley, 62, is proud of having stirred the pot during his 30-year career at UD, including occasionally spilling the soup. His admirers say he leaves a legacy that is worth having been taken to the woodshed now and again by his bosses.
Judy Hennessey, the principal of the Dayton Early College Academy, isn’t exaggerating when she says that the nationally acclaimed charter school would not exist but for Lasley.
In its short seven-year life, the school — which has sent every student from its three graduating classes of mostly minority, low-income students to college — could have folded numerous times.
But Lasley was the champion who always made sure that the school got the money it was short and settled the political fights that could have doomed it. In tough conversations, “He can always disarm people with his humor,” Hennessey said.
DECA students, many of whom know Lasley, speak of “Las sightings” when he’s in the building. Hennessey tells the story of one student who acted on her teachers’ advice about the importance of networking and invited Lasley to her independent-study presentation.
Hennessey said she doubts Lasley, a classical music buff and the son of a minister, knew in advance that it would be an especially graphic and explicit discussion of breast cancer.
“There’s Tom, sitting in the room, taking notes, and then afterward giving her good feedback,” Hennessey recalled.
Frank DePalma, former Centerville school superintendent, said Lasley is a major force behind the effort to create “Air Camp,” an enrichment program for students that would promote Dayton’s heritage and also spur interest in science and math to students locally and from around the country.
When someone has an idea, DePalma said, Lasley doesn’t let the naysayers stop it from going forward. So many times, DePalma said, a suggestion has come up that has nothing to do with the school of education, but it “emobodies the Marianist spirit,” so Lasley runs with it.
DePalma joked that he admires Lasley’s ability to execute, but not his taste in clothing. “No one is ever going to call him Mr. Armani.”
Hennessey said she and Lasley were once preparing to speak about DECA in Washington, D.C., and Lasley spilled yogurt — he’s adamant about eating healthy — on his tie. Wiping the spot with a cleaning solution only made it more noticeable, so Lasley solved the problem by rinsing the whole thing in water. He gave his speech wearing a wet tie.
Lasley will continue to teach at UD and also will be the director of EDvention, a local group that is trying to improve education specifically in the area of science and math. EDvention (with Lasley among the point people) was behind the creation of the new Dayton Regional STEM School near Wright State University.
Lasley also was pivotal in the creation of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Sharon Rab, who conceived the idea, said Lasley had access to people she didn’t when she was trying to get the idea off the ground. (The prize, which was awarded this year for the fourth time, recognizes three authors with $10,000 awards each.)
“I could have gone to 12 other people in education, and they would have told me why it couldn’t happen, rather than why it could,” Rab said. “He’s not just a thinker who says, ‘Here’s my pie-in-the-sky idea.’ He lays the groundwork. He does what other people say they do: he always enables. He never throws up roadblocks, yet he’s cautious.”
Elizabeth Cameron, Lasley’s daughter and an English teacher at DECA, grew up seeing another side of her workaholic father. Dubbing him slightly obsessive, she says he goes to Dorothy Lane Market every week and weighs himself. If the scale tips the wrong way, he won’t allow himself a treat. If he’s in range, he’ll buy one dessert, which is all he allows himself for that week.
She said her father does all the housework “not because my mom is lazy, but because he thinks he can do everything.”
DePalma couldn’t agree more. “When Tom Lasley makes up his mind, something happens.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Education, Guest Columns, Higher Ed
TweetEditorial: Brown’s flexibility on public option is a good sign
Two headlines in different publications about the same event:
“Public option keeps toehold in Senate deal on health bill.”
“Democrats near agreement to give up public plan.”
You know it’s a compromise when people can’t agree on how to summarize it. U.S. Senate Democrats announced Tuesday night, Dec. 8, that five liberals and five moderates among them had reached an agreement about the public option. (Republicans are out of the picture; long story.)
Among the five liberals is Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a staunch supporter of the public option.
The term refers to a government-run insurance plan that would be made available basically to people who don’t have insurance at work. The idea is not only to provide those people a decent option, but to help bring down insurance costs generally by increasing competition.
It’s only one part of a historic overhaul of health insurance being pushed by President Barack Obama. With the Senate agreement, the Democrats’ death-defying run toward passage of the large bill continues for another day.
Sen. Brown didn’t commit flatly to the compromise. But he had good reason to like it.
The group of 10 embraced his long-held desire to expand Medicare to people under 55 who are willing to pay. That’s another kind of public option. (Truth is, to a lot of people, the best way to reform the American health system would be to extend Medicare to everybody.)
In lieu of the public option, the compromise would have private insurers provide government-negotiated policies for individuals. A public option would only kick in if the private insurers don’t deliver.
It’s good to see compromise happening and to see Sen. Brown participating. Though many of his supporters have long been wedded to the public option, his job is to make things happen, not to posture as the upholder of a cause.
The real liberal task at hand is getting many millions more people insured, which any version of the bill does, while trying to bring down costs.
Besides this excursion into compromise, Sen. Brown just took one into bipartisanship. Sort of.
Sen. Tom Coburn is the red-hot conservative from Oklahoma who says to seniors that if the Democrats’ health plan passes, “You’re gonna die sooner.”
That quote isn’t about the public option. But he’s against that, too. He proposed to require members of Congress to sign up for it if it’s created. His idea was apparently to embarrass the Democrats, showing their unwillingness to be covered by a plan they’re creating.
But, since they’re only proposing it as an option, it’s hard to see why they should be embarrassed.
At any rate, Sen. Brown immediately embraced the Coburn amendment, as did a few other Democrats. And, despite the inclusion of Sen. Al Franken among those few, nobody seemed to be kidding.
Sen. Brown long ago swore off taking the excellent health insurance plan that members of Congress get. He said he couldn’t justify that so long as tens of millions of Americans remained uninsured.
He was apparently looking forward to the public option as an improvement upon his coverage as the spouse of an employee of a newspaper up north.
So, when he compromised away the public option, you know he was doing serious work. Some might point out that he’d qualify for the Medicare buy-in. But, really, after all these years of sacrifice, he can hardly be accused of acting out of selfish economic concerns.
Permalink | Comments (30) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Health Care, National Politics, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: ACORN suit gets good result for Ohio voters
ACORN did a good thing.
Back in 2006, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now filed a lawsuit to get Ohio to really enforce a federal law. That law requires states to offer voter registration assistance to people who do business with state agencies.
At the time, the basic complaint of ACORN, a self-proclaimed advocate for the poor, was that Ohio agencies that serve poor people weren’t fully complying with the law.
The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services was a target of the suit, along with then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, whose job made him responsible for enforcing the act, ACORN said.
The Job and Family Services Department argued that the workers who come into contact with most clients are employed by counties, so the burden should be on counties.
The ACORN suit was thrown out of court at the time, but was reinstated by a federal appellate court a year ago. Now, with different people in state office, Ohio has settled with ACORN, accepting the thrust of its complaint.
The state promises to have front-line workers trained to help clients complete their registrations. The workers will be equipped with the necessary information in their computers. The registration forms will be included with other forms given to clients. ACORN says this could result in hundreds of thousands of new registrations. It bases that judgment partly on similar victories elsewhere.
How many of the new registrants would actually vote is another question. Perhaps not many, given that we’re talking about people who were not necessarily motivated to take the trouble to register. But in certain high-intensity elections — like the presidential one in 2008 — they might go to the polls.
Even as this case was being settled, Ohio was considering other reforms to its registration system — most important, making registration an automatic result of, say, getting a driver’s license. But that kind of change requires the legislature to act.
The ACORN settlement is about changes that can be made administratively.
ACORN has come in for a lot of criticism lately, some justified, some overblown. It has been widely portrayed by frenetic right-wing warriors as a menace to society. So when it does something useful, that should be noted.
Whatever the impact of the settlement, there’s no question but that the new arrangement is the way the federal law is supposed to work. The idea — referred to as Motor Voter — was never simply to allow registration at public agencies. It was to reach out.
Some people take offense at the idea of the state reaching out. They say citizens ought to take the initiative of getting themselves registered. In truth, though, the registration system in most states is unnecessarily burdensome. The whole idea of pre-election registration has been found by some states and other countries to be unnecessary.
The government certainly shouldn’t resist reform solely on the premise that burdens on citizens are a good thing. That’s the worst kind of big government: totally gratuitous.
Permalink | Comments (44) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Caterpillar’s new jobs give nice lift to area
Some people think Mother Nature isn’t on Dayton’s side. No mountains, no beaches, you know.
But, in addition to having a small ocean of clean water underground, the region does have location on its side.
And the forces of nature did have a hand in shaping the country’s geography.
This week, being somewhat in the middle of things worked out nicely for the community.
Caterpillar Logistics Services announced that it will build a $68.6 million distribution center at Commerce Park on Hoke Road in Clayton, not far from the intersection of I-75 and I-70, and Dayton International Airport.
The facility will have a $20 million annual payroll and employ 500 to 600 workers. The lowest-paid people will start at $11.75 hour.
There are a few take-aways from the experience:
— Clayton was competing against West Jefferson near Columbus. Outside the state, Caterpillar was considering sites in Indiana and Kentucky. The company will get a little more than $3.5 million in state and local incentives to put down roots here, but local officials believe that what really sold Caterpillar on the Dayton region is the united front that the community presented.
Officials didn’t push just the fact that Clayton had a ready-made site. They also pitched that the Job Center could deliver the needed workers and would help screen them. RTA offered to be a partner. Sinclair Community College said it would help the company in any way it could.
Meanwhile, the Miami Valley Career Technology Center will be across the road from the new facility, giving the company a place to do ongoing training. And the students there will be a potential resource.
— Some of the Caterpillar jobs will not be especially high-paying, but today’s distribution centers are much more than forklifts and loading docks.
Supply-chain management is a science, driven by complicated software and tech-heads. Whether in the private sector or the military, logistics is not for dummies.
(This subject, of course, is something that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base happens to know a little about. Not coincidentally, Wright State University has a master’s degree program in logistics and supply-chain management.)
— Caterpillar’s operation, which will be its second-largest in the United States, is the second major distribution center to locate in the region recently.
Collective Brands Inc. opened its Payless and Stride Rite shoe distribution facility in February in Brookville.
The hope is that, over time, distribution operations are something the region can court. Having 1,000 workers engaged in this kind of work can catch other firms’ attention.
After all, there are plenty of sites along both I-75 and I-70, all of them with easy freeway access and great visibility. Having two major companies that could have located anywhere choose this region begs the question: So what’s special about Dayton?
Having the opportunity to tell that story to the curious can only be good.
Notwithstanding all the awards Ohio has received from Site Selection magazine, there hasn’t been a lot of great news in the state or region about companies moving here. Part of the problem is the economy, part of the problem is lousy marketing.
In this instance, Caterpillar liked what it saw, and the region sold itself well. The jobs couldn’t be more welcome.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Local Business, Montgomery County, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Gov. Strickland should change A’s to C’s
Gov. Ted Strickland should get real about the flaws with Ohio’s school report cards. He’s standing in the way of a change in the law that won’t fix all that’s wrong with the report card system, but that would correct a glaring, unfair flaw that penalizes good-performing districts by classifying them as serious underachievers.
A bill sponsored by state Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester, would prevent school districts that fail to meet “adequate yearly progress” on state achievement tests — but do well otherwise — from falling more than one rung on the report card rating scale. It’s intended to correct a flaw that in August hit several districts around the state, including Kettering and Lebanon.
Both of those districts would have earned the equivalent of an “A” from the state, but were dropped to a “C” because small subsets of students — such as those in special education or those who speak English as a second language — fell short of an expected test score gain.
The bill had huge support in the Senate, passing 32-1, with the only “no” vote coming from a Cincinnati senator who didn’t think it went far enough. The Ohio Department of Education and several education groups back the bill.
Now it moves to the Democrat-controlled House, where Rep. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, is its primary champion. She expects support from Stephen Dyer, an Akron Democrat and head of the Education Committee. Its prospects in the House look good.
However, even if it passes in the House, the bill will require Gov. Strickland’s signature, and he has consistently opposed making this change. The governor’s spokeswoman said he believes in rules requiring “adequate progress” for all groups of students in order to ensure “accountability for every child.”
Gov. Strickland is wrong if he believes this change harms that goal. Sen. Cates’ bill continues to ensure that schools must focus on struggling minority groups, and the report card system will continue to severely penalize those who don’t ensure those kids keep up.
Under the Cates bill, a district that has two subgroups of at least 30 kids falling short would be knocked down one rung on the rating system. So Kettering or Lebanon would still be dropped from an “A” to a “B.” That’s a big hit.
What Sen. Cates wants to prevent is driving them down from an “A” to a “C.” Keep in mind, Kettering met 29 of 30 state benchmarks; another state metric ranked that district in the top 26 percent in the state; and for the second consecutive year, it got extra credit for better-than-expected growth in test scores.
Even so, Kettering was rated a “C,” leaving the district only rated ahead of 10 of the state’s 610 school districts — the tiny handful of lowest scorers that earned a “D” or “F.” A district performing that well simply does not belong so close to the bottom.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Republican state senate changing the subject in budget crisis
The budget crisis in Columbus comes down to this: the Senate’s Republican leadership is trying to get something into the crisis-resolving legislation that has nothing to do with the crisis.
This is fairly odd behavior, particularly given that are other ways to get these items enacted.
And given that the state really does have to get the budget resolved this month or face dramatically new and worse circumstances.
There is some good news: The two political parties are not going in diametrically opposite directions. Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland has proposed suspending the last year of an ongoing, gradual cut in state income taxes. The leadership of the Republican senate is saying it will give him the five Republican votes he needs — if all Democrats stay in line —if he signs off on additional provisions relating to subsequent budgets. In other words, the Republicans are not proposing cuts in this budget.
The Republican add-on generating the most controversy is a plan for reforming the state’s regulations for awarding construction contracts. The state has antiquated rules that prevent it from dealing with one prime contractor. By all accounts, having to deal with “multiple prime” contractors increases costs by millions for major projects. Ohio State President Gordon Gee has been particularly vocal on the subject.
Gov. Strickland acknowledged the problem when he created a bipartisan commission to make recommendations. Those recommendations raised alarms in the legislature’s Black Caucus, the fear being that if smaller contractors are cut out, black-owned firms will suffer most.
But the Senate leadership wants to incorporate contracting reform into the budget. In response, Democrats say the plan hasn’t been through normal legislative processes, including public hearings. That’s a strong argument, because it’s a complex matter involving billions of dollars.
If reform is passed all of a sudden as a package, the public, the contractors and unions have every reason to wonder whether games are being played behind closed doors, whether ideas that couldn’t stand the light of day are being enacted.
Some say the proposal should have had hearings by now. But if the concern is that the legislature is stalling, the solution may be to win a guarantee from the governor and legislative leaders in both houses to take up the matter fully and quickly next year.
If the legislature does not pass the tax-cut suspension this month, it will not be able to apply the suspension to this year. Revenue will be forfeited. That will mess up everything, eliminating the least painful solution to the budget gap.
Also, failure to pass a budget this year could result in dramatic cuts in the schools. That’s partly because the existing budget shortfall results from a court ruling that cuts off money that was slated for the schools (from slot machines at racetracks).
And it’s partly because finding spending cuts elsewhere, on top of recent cuts, would be difficult and painful.
The governor is not playing games with the budget crisis. He has put forth a clean, commensensical solution that has been embraced even by the leading business organizations as the least painful available. The House has embraced it. The Senate needs to do so as well, and then move on, clearing next year for next year’s battles, not this year’s.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: GM has big opportunity for brave job-seeker
WANTED — Automotive executive.
World’s former largest company seeks proven leader for new era.
Must know how to bring change faster than anybody ever — and make it seem even faster.
Must be comfortable with debt. Have patience for politicians. Know enough not to fly company jet to Washington to beg for money.
Must be like that guy that Ford has.
Auto experience not a disqualification.
Are you willing to consider a package below $1 million? In Detroit? Let’s talk.
Good news for all the former auto industry people in Dayton: there’s a job opening at General Motors.
The top guy — the chief executive officer who was appointed during bankruptcy — is gone. Fritz Henderson, a company veteran, got the job when the Obama administration wanted Rick Wagoner out.
Mr. Wagoner was the fellow who used inappropriate transportation to get to Washington. But, more than that, he was associated with the company’s collapse. He wasn’t the image of change the politicians wanted.
Unfortunately, however, his successor looked like a government pick. That may be one reason the GM board decided to make a change.
Other factors have also been pointed to as explanations for his departure. Under him, the company had failed to sell Saturn and other brands it’s eager to unload. And his desire to sell Opel has been criticized by board members.
The public statements from the board about his departure were about the need for faster change. But that was predictable. “Change” is the magic word.
In truth, there had been a lot of change. A Detroit Free Press article on Nov. 29, begins: “At the new General Motors, the worst insult these days is calling somebody ‘old GM.’”
There are, reportedly, fewer meetings, quicker decisions and other changes, including a looser dress code.
What now? There’s been talk that GM wants to go outside the auto industry for a new chief. That’s what Ford did, and Ford is now profitable. And the chairman of the board that will be picking a successor is from outside. (He’s also the interim CEO.)
Initially there was talk of Bob Lutz, the high-profile 77-year-old insider, but he may now be history.
At any rate, a lot of Daytonians with auto-industry experience are both insiders and outsiders, having been outside for a while now. So an application might be worth a shot.
The winner would get quite a job.
GM has actually been making progress. The company is talking about starting early to repay its federal loans.
In November, sales were up 5.6 percent over last year for core brands — Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC — though not for the company as a whole. Buick was up 15 percent, and Cadillac 10.3 percent. Some new models were particularly popular.
This was all despite prices being at a high for the year.
Meanwhile, of course, there are high hopes for the electric Volt and a new compact. Beyond all that, the new CEO, especially if coming from outside the industry, will be free of the taint of having gone into bankruptcy and accepting the government bailout.
Still, the company did lose $1.2 billion in the quarter after emerging from bankruptcy. And nobody knows what the car market will be like next year.
And there are those unsold divisions. And there’d be those politicians breathing down your neck. And those hard feelings from decades of decline.
Whether to apply is a tough call. Might depend on whether your unemployment has run out.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Protect students from shady schools
As higher education evolves, there’s a place for for-profit colleges — provided they can compete with traditional nonprofit schools on quality.
Right now, quality isn’t a big enough consideration when it comes to handing out federal student aid. That’s a problem.
An Associated Press report last month found that the five schools receiving the biggest chunk of federal aid aimed at poor students all were for-profit colleges. This should cause Congress to rethink the rules of the Pell Grant program.
The AP reported the amount of Pell Grant money going to for-profit colleges is skyrocketing — doubling in the last decade to $4.3 billion and representing about a quarter of all Pell Grant money.
There are a wide range of for-profit colleges. Perhaps the best known is the enormous University of Phoenix, which offers classroom and online instruction all across the country.
But also in this category are smaller career and trade schools. They market themselves aggressively as a route for people to earn their way to better jobs.
For-profit schools, which tailor their instruction to people juggling full-time jobs and family obligations, are a good fit for some students. In fact, some for-profit schools have pioneered new approaches to teaching (especially online) that traditional colleges could learn from.
For-profit schools also argue that they’re needed if this country is serious about achieving President Barack Obama’s goal that everyone get at least some college-level training. Traditional colleges just don’t have enough space if everyone were to enroll at once.
Still, the vast majority of those seeking college-level programs would be better off at a traditional school. At their worst, some for-profits are scams designed to grab cash while providing little of value.
But even compared to the average legitimate for-profit college, a traditional public or private school is usually a better bet.
Locally, for instance, the programs at Sinclair Community College are often better quality and much cheaper than their for-profit competitors.
Something is needed to ensure tax dollars go to programs that make a difference. Unfortunately, the Pell Grant program doesn’t do enough to ensure the money it offers is spent at institutions — traditional or for-profit — with track records of success. Congress might consider following Ohio’s lead by working to strengthen the system for awarding financial aid.
Ohio is in the process of building performance measures into student aid. For students to keep receiving grants, they’ll have to show progress. The more they move toward a degree, the more aid they can receive.
The Pell Grant program also has some performance measures for students. What it needs to do is create incentives for all colleges to focus on student success by rewarding those that can demonstrate they are making a difference on quality measures like course completion and graduation.
It wouldn’t even be a bad idea if the program considered whether a school’s students had manageable debt levels compared to other schools. Some schools allow their students to load up on crushing debt before they finish their degrees.
Spending on Pell Grants was dramatically raised last year with the goal of making college more affordable for needy students. The AP reported the amount paid to for-profits in the first quarter of this year jumped by 67 percent over last year.
At the same time, the median graduation rate for for-profits is just 38 percent. Washington shouldn’t be subsidizing substandard college programs. Adding a few performance measures to the Pell Grants would help focus the money on schools that are in business to seriously benefit students.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Dayton’s pay plan sets wrong example
Maybe Dayton’s perks to its top-ranking managers made sense once upon a time. But those days are gone.
Recently, City Manager Tim Riordan suspended contributions to what’s called the “Executive Savings Plan.”
Currently, 17 managers are part of a program whereby they accrue money — the equivalent of a day’s pay for every month worked — in an account that is set aside and can be emptied out only when they leave.
There also are other deposits — an initial payment of a week’s pay upon becoming a manager, as well as a buyout of unused vacation pay and portions of unused sick pay if an executive is promoted from within.
Then, when the manager leaves, he or she receives a payout that may not exceed a year’s pay.
The benefit has resulted in significant checks being written to exiting employees.
Since 2005, a total of $1 million has been dispersed to 17 persons. Meanwhile, the city is carrying a liability that totals almost an equal amount for 17 other employees who will be due money when they quit or retire.
Mr. Riordan, who left a job with Dayton in 1998, received $87,019.
The reason to discontinue the plan is not that it’s ridiculously rich. Rather, the problem is that it masks what people are really being paid.
Transparency should be the operating principle in public employment. No, the pay plan is not a secret; all payments, in the end, are public. But who’s kidding whom?
This money is off-the-books in an important way because it isn’t reflected as compensation unless a person knows to ask about it.
It’s this sort of arrangement that makes the public suspicious of government, and public employee unions suspicious of their bosses. Both groups wonder what else isn’t apparent or being disclosed.
The practice is right up there with the retire-rehire gig that is becoming so common in public service, wherein public employees quit their jobs, begin collecting their pensions, and then are hired back to their old job or possibly a different public position.
Those cushy financial arrangements, too, might or might not be known.
At a time when taxpayers are being told that governments are hurting as never before, exposure of these sorts of deals breeds cynicism that’s corrosive to public confidence.
Incidentally, Dayton employees who aren’t considered executives also have their own generous exit payout plan. Upon leaving the city, they can convert portions of their accrued unused sick time and vacation they’ve carried over from previous years to cash.
It’s possible to walk away with six months of pay for sick time and vacation you never used.
There is, and always will be, a subset of people who will be against government — and taxes — no matter what.
But there are at least two other kinds of people who contest that view:
One large group believes government is good and necessary and is competent more often than not.
And there’s a third group that’s open-minded, willing to believe that when government officials say they’re financially pressed, they really mean it.
Ensuring that salaries are exactly as they seem is important to these open-minded people.
One of the justifications for Dayton’s executive pay plan is that other employees who have been on the job for long periods can get up to 32 days of vacation, while managers max out at 20.
It’s telling that that argument is being articulated. Of course, managers are going to want as much in the way of benefits as the rank-and-file receive, especially when there’s this kind of disparity in time off.
But if managers are going to justify their perks based on amazing deals they (or managers before them) have cut with unions, we’re in a deep and vicious cycle.
Nobody is going to be inclined to give up anything — even benefit packages and pay packages that are out of line with the private sector or simply unaffordable.
A suspension isn’t the right approach. The plan has to go — permanently.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Ellen Belcher
TweetEditorial: Shrinking income compounds jobs problem in Ohio
During the last six months, the number of jobs in Ohio has held pretty steady at about 5.1 million. The unemployment rate has ranged from 10.1 to 11.2 percent, because it’s a weird statistic.
The real numbers to look at when trying to get a feel for whether employment is really picking up — the big question of the day about the economy — are those relating to numbers of jobs.
By that score, Ohio isn’t doing all that badly — at least relatively speaking. Nationally, the total number of jobs continues to decline, although the drop in November was only 11,000, which is essentially flat.
According to a government report, from September to Oct. 21, states lost jobs. New York led with 15,300 lost. Florida lost 8,500. Georgia might be gaining NCR, but it lost 7,500 jobs net.
Ohio gained 1,400. That’s not to be taken as a sign of a turnaround; another marginal gain in recent months was wiped out by a subsequent drop. Still, it’s better than constantly dropping.
The report that had those figures has now been revived to show fewer lost jobs nationally, but it is still useful for comparing the states.
Meanwhile, there is other economic news on the positive side. The stock market is up. Big banks are paying back their government loans. Cars are selling. Home sales have been up sometimes.
One even hears of people actually landing jobs occasionally. And, yes, some people are buying Christmas presents.
Most important, the fear of last winter that the economy was crumbling into a full-fledged depression is gone.
Still, there’s a fear that good times aren’t coming back, not soon, anyway.
Everybody keeps saying that the last thing to improve as the economy grows will be the job situation. Actually, the last thing may be the salary situation.
Things have been so bad on the job front that little attention has been paid to how much people are being paid if they are fortunate enough to have a job.
Just before the financial collapse in the fall of 2008, median household incomes in Ohio had dropped by about $5,000 (9 percent) in this decade (according to a Cleveland Plain Dealer analysis of U.S. Census data).
The median was down even in states that didn’t used to have a lot of big auto factories. But it was particularly down in Ohio.
Wages generally fell in real value in Ohio in the 1980s, then rose through the 1990s. By the beginning of this recession, they were back down to where they were in the mid-1990s.
They must still be going down, given furloughs, salary cuts, hour cuts and staff cuts. The very fact that more people are unemployed tends to push salaries and wages down, because it’s an employer’s market.
The recession has also brought some prices down, which has helped consumers. But when prices turn back up, it’s a good bet that wages will be slower to do so.
President Barack Obama called a jobs summit for this week (and Newt Gingrich held his own in Cincinnati). The political leaders are saying that jobs are the big issue in the economy. They want to make sure that nobody sees them as too excited just because the stock market is up. And, yes, they make a good point.
But the truth is that a focus on jobs alone understates the problem.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb
TweetGuest column: Early detection of breast cancer saves lives, money
This commentary is written by Paula Termuhlen, medical director of the Miami Valley Hospital High-Risk Breast Cancer Center and chief of surgical oncology at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine.
During a recent week, it occurred to me that three of the breast cancer patients I met with had something in common: each will very likely receive a shorter course of treatment for their cancer because of self-examinations and subsequent mammograms.
None of these women has a family history of breast cancer. Two were under the age of 45. One was under 35.
Their experience contradicts the recent U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommendation that the majority of women should not receive routine breast cancer screenings or conduct self-examinations until the age of 50.
The vigilance of my three patients should allow them to receive care that is less prolonged and considerably less invasive than if they would have heeded the advice of these new guidelines.
As a surgeon, I welcome the opportunity to have a thorough and robust discussion on this topic. In particular, I seek out ways to improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.
New input is always important in a country that has the world’s highest incidence of breast cancer diagnoses among Caucasian women. However, the task force made little or no effort to identify areas where investors and researchers should direct their efforts to develop technology that would help make prevention and testing more accurate and effective.
Though a “one-size-fits-all” approach may not be the most optimal way to control initial costs when it comes to early detection, it remains the most successful tool that we currently have for improving and ultimately saving a patient’s life.
It is also important to understand that detection at an earlier age and phase of the disease yields a significant reduction in the tremendous physical and financial impact that comes from treating the cancer at a later stage.
This is something I have witnessed first- hand as I have successfully partnered with numerous patients who proactively sought treatment after receiving a positive cancer diagnosis.
For every alleged dollar that is saved by delayed detection, there is a daughter, a wife, a sister, a mother, a friend whose very life hangs in the balance. Not only did the task force neglect to account for the full financial burden of this short-sighted approach, but it also sought to repair a process that was never truly broken in the first place.
Early detection saves lives and money. We should never lose sight of this fact, no matter where the debate over health care may take us.
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TweetGuest column: Beavercreek had ample time to contest covenants
This commentary was written by Tom O’Diam, who is a lawyer with O’Diam & Stecker Law Group, Inc.
I have never commented on a pending transaction involving a client, but the Dayton Daily News’ Nov. 30 editorial (“B-creek board in charge of school design”) requires a response. I do so with the blessing of my client, the Nutter family.
It is a disservice to Beavercreek that the editorial board interjected its opinion about a matter on which it had incomplete facts. The editorial even misinterpreted the facts that it does claim to have.
The March 19, 2009 contract between the Nutters and the Beavercreek school board clearly stated that Stonehill Village is a planned unit development with covenants and design controls. The contract specifically states that all proposed improvements would be subject to design review board approval.
If that condition was problematic, the appropriate time to object was before the contract was signed last March, not six or eight months later. Common sense dictates that the school board should not spend taxpayer dollars on design, engineering, zoning and preliminary site work, and then complain that it does not like the contract requirements.
Design approval is not a veto power. The contract requires both parties to develop mutually agreeable design standards for the school buildings so that they would be compatible with the surrounding development. Those design standards only relate to exterior appearances.
If future improvements meet these standards, the design review board will not have any legal means to stop the improvements. That is exactly the “formal advisory role” that the editorial proposed as a solution.
The editorial failed to mention that the design standards on the draft supplemental declaration was a blank page. We had not even begun to discuss the standards.
We offered to meet with the board to discuss specifics, but the board unilaterally decided that the whole concept of design approval is unacceptable and illegal. It was acceptable and legal to the school board when it signed the contract in March.
The editorial was misleading when it stated that Stonehill Village does not have so many kids that building a school there is necessary. The northeast section of Beavercreek Twp. is the fastest-growing area in the district. Last March, the board announced that the Stonehill locations would save the district more than $70,000 a year in transportation costs alone.
Although in its infancy today, Stonehill Village was approved in 1993 to consist eventually of nearly 2,000 homes, most within walking distance of the proposed elementary school. The long-range transportation savings would be substantial.
The Nutters have been waiting since August for the school board to decide how it wants to proceed. In early November, the board indicated that it wanted to amend the contract to eliminate the elementary site, but still purchase the 50-acre site without any Stonehill covenants. The Nutters agreed to that request.
Now, the board objects to a deed restriction requiring the property to be used as a school. That requirement is also in the March contract, and it is the same restriction that exists on the board’s Indian Ripple Road property.
The only reasonable conclusion that one can draw from these recent events is that design covenants are not the real issue. There is something more that the board is not telling the newspaper editors, the public or us.
Speculating about why the Nutters contributed to the new school board candidates is reckless and untrue. Their support was due to their disappointment that the current board would not reinstate Denny Morrison as superintendent, not for some underhanded reason relating to this transaction. It is insulting and unfair to the newly elected board members to imply that their integrity was for sale.
Finally, the editorial implies that my family and I have tainted this real estate transaction. Our disagreement about the removal of a drama director was settled months before the board entered into the Stonehill contract. Unfounded, disparaging insinuations such as that are not remotely relevant to the school transaction.
Such irresponsible journalism fuels controversy rather than fostering solutions.
If you want to review a summary of this transaction, go to www.oslawgroup.com, click on link to Stonehill Village in the left margin.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment |
TweetKevin Riley: Book about Reds might find new home team
Mark Donahue continues to pursue his dream of making a movie in southwest Ohio about a fictional Cincinnati Reds player. He’s recently taken a big step forward. His novel, “Last at Bat,” has been published, and he’s doing local book signings.
The captivating story is about Dylan Michael, a baseball player who falls from grace as a young star and then earns redemption. It’s is built around Donahue’s beloved Cincinnati Reds — although that part of the story could change.
Donahue is a Kettering resident and 1971 Wright State graduate. An athlete who became a successful real-estate developer in Florida, his hobby is writing fiction.
A friend of his got “Last at Bat” into the hands of a Hollywood producer, who is interested in making it into a movie.
Donahue produced a screenplay, and started picking up support, including from the Reds. Phillip J. Castellini, chief operating officer of the Reds, has offered to make the team’s stadium available to the film’s producers.
According to Donahue, potential investors like the idea of a published novel as a precursor to making the movie. He hopes that the project could be part of larger efforts to bring more movie-makers to Ohio.
The novel is a good story, whether you’re a baseball fan or not. It’s easy to see why people would see it as a great movie.
Donahue says his local book signings are a way of testing how the novel is received — and will influence decisions by his publisher about a national effort. He’s getting a lot of interest, and was at Wright State for a couple of events on Friday.
Many of the details in the book revolve around the Reds and southwest Ohio locations.
But the state has a couple of strikes against it when it comes to pitching the idea that the movie should be made here.
The first relates to cost. While the state recently created a tax incentive for film producers, investors tell Donahue that it still would be less expensive to make the movie in other states. That raises the specter of making the story about another team.
“If the book and screenplay generate some interest locally, we are more than willing to talk to local investors,” Donahue said. “However, unless there are ways to reduce costs to match the incentives other states are offering, even local investors would likely want to film the movie somewhere else, even if the Reds remain the team in the book and movie.”
Donahue, a die-hard Reds fan, doesn’t want that to happen.
He said he doesn’t want to be called a “sell-out,” “carpet-bagger,” or “money grubber” if he has to change the story.
Donahue wanted to release the book in southwest Ohio first, “so at least Reds’ fans could hopefully enjoy the first edition of the book with their team in it before it possibly morphs into a story/movie about a Cub, Cardinal, Red Sox, Dodger, Philly or Met.”
“I have been counseled by each of these groups to avoid using the Reds as the team in the book or the movie,” Donahue said. “The logic being there are more Cub fans, Yankee fans, Mets fans, Phillies fans, etc, than there are Reds fans and, therefore, an immediate big draw at the box office.”
Donahue has his own strong feelings, and key details of the story make it ideally suited to a “small-market” team.
“The investors look at demographics, not loyalty to a team, in doing their math,” he said.
Donahue is convinced that his story will get made because of the passion he sees in some investors.
“There has been an interesting and consistent dynamic in these meetings,” he said. “We talk about the finance aspect for 10 minutes, and then an hour on why the investors’ favorite team should be the team in the movie.”
Let’s hope it ends up being our team.
Area book signings for “Last at Bat”
Dec. 7: 6-8 p.m., New Bremen Coffee and Books, New Bremen
Dec. 12: 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Browse Awhile Books, Tipp City
Dec. 12: 3-5 p.m., Around About Books, 8 West Main St., Troy
Dec. 16: 7-8 p.m., Books and Co., The Greene
Dec. 17: 1-3 p.m., Ole Book Nook, Urbana
Dec. 19: 12:30-3 p.m., New and Old Pages Book Shoppe, Englewood
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment |
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Bosnia agonies becoming bigger threat to ‘Dayton’
Last month, some Dayton- area people paused in connection with the 14th anniversary of the Dayton peace talks on Bosnia — sort of.
They attended one or more sessions associated with the annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which grew out of the talks. That was entirely appropriate.
But there was little talk about Bosnia itself, or, at least, about Bosnia today. It wasn’t the subject of the books being honored.
If there’s not much talk about Bosnia even in Dayton — a city whose name is linked with Bosnia throughout the world — even on an anniversary, that underlines a point being made by Bosnia watchers: the country isn’t getting the attention it needs from the world at large, especially from world powers.
Hotter spots crowd Bosnia out of public and official attention.
When you do check back in with Bosnia, you find bad news. The bitter divisions between religious groups — the cause of war in the 1990s — are still the primary political characteristic of the place.
The country is dysfunctional. On that, there’s little disagreement among outside observers. Whether renewed violence is in the air is more open for discussion. In the years immediately after the Dayton talks, Bruce Hitchner was the most visible Daytonian on matters Bosnia. The University of Dayton professor would convene annual conferences attended by big players from the Balkans and the U.S. State Department.
He’s now at Tufts University in Massachusetts, but he’s still engaged on Bosnia, promoting a new constitution.
In an e-mail, he says, “The anniversary of the Dayton Agreement (is) not even commemorated throughout Bosnia, only in the Republika Srpska (the ‘Serb Entity’). The situation in the country is not good, though no outbreak of violence is likely.”
In a paper for a Hungarian think tank, he writes, “The Dayton Agreement’s creation of a multi-layered, ethnically-based governmental system may have been a necessity for bringing peace,” but the structure “has proved to be deeply dysfunctional, expensive, often corrupt, and thus incapable of providing essential services.”
The national government, he says, “is devoid of legal supremacy and powers of enforcement, both of which now reside in the increasingly weak OHR.” That’s a reference to the Office of the High Representative, the international agency still overseeing the country.
Richard Holbrooke, the father of the Dayton accords, far from taking offense at such criticisms, makes similar points and complains about “a distracted international community.”
Until this year, he complained about a distracted Bush administration. Despite distractions, though, the “international community” has poured enormous amounts of money into Bosnia, easily topping per-capita spending to rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II.
But now that form of attention is starting to dry up, as fatigue sets in. The money has failed to produce the self-sufficient economy that has been the goal.
For those still hoping that the Serbs, Muslims and Croats might eventually start to let loose of old grudges, Hitchner notes, “Political conditions have deteriorated since 2006.”
He laments the absence of “a shared sense of nationhood.” He’d like to substitute, at least, loyalty to a new constitution.
European countries have offered an incentive to Bosnia to get its act together: membership in the European Union — along with its trade and travel possibilities. But that hasn’t been enough.
George Will wrote in these pages in September that the Bosnia story shows the futility of nation-building in Afghanistan. If it’s been so hard in Europe — with so much money coming in — imagine how hard it would be in “remote, mountainous, tribal Afghanistan.”
Maybe that’s why we didn’t hear much nation-building talk in President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan speech this week.
To lament Bosnia isn’t, Will acknowledged, to criticize what happened in Dayton. What happened here brought 14 years of peace, at least. And nobody had any better idea.
But future events could still tarnish the international word “Dayton,” could still make it a symbol of dashed dreams.
The Dayton talks have not turned out to be a model for resolving other world conflicts. Others haven’t lent themselves to the technique of knocking heads together over a negotiating table.
But “Dayton” has become a symbol in some circles of American power. Washington stepped in where European capitals had been flailing for years.
Now, once again, the European option — the promise of EU membership — is failing. And now Holbrooke is back in government — if somewhat distracted.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Dayton Peace Accords and Other Peace Initiatives, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Dayton still counting on Third Frontier
As much as any area in the state, Dayton has a stake in what the legislature does next with the Third Frontier program.
That $1.35 billion effort seeds high-tech research and pays to bring renown scholars (and their research contracts) to Ohio’s universities. Earlier this year, a state-funded analysis said that $681 million in Third Frontier spending has leveraged $6.6 billion in new investment and created 48,000 new jobs.
The program is mostly funded by borrowing approved by voters. The first time out, Ohioans rejected the idea. On the second try, they embraced selling bonds for this purpose.
Since then, businesses, colleges and almost all the politicians agree that the Third Frontier initiative has been a phenomenal success.
The big reason for the support is that grants are awarded in a competitive process that is judged by technical people.
Equally significant, getting an award requires serious collaboration among businesses and researchers. Nobody gets financial assistance to go off and do their own thing.
The Dayton Development Coalition estimates area businesses and universities have benefitted to the tune of $120 million. For example, $28 million in Third Frontier money helped fund the University of Dayton’s IDCAST, which is researching and identifying commercial applications for remote sensors.
daytaOhio, a non-profit housed at Wright State University, also received funding. It specializes in visualization technology.
And businesses at the National Composite Center and the Mound Advanced Technology Center also have won awards.
The Third Frontier is funded through June 2011. Some Democrats and the Ohio Business Roundtable want to ask voters to renew the funding next spring. They want to assure businesses and universities that the program isn’t going to go away.
At the same time, the Strickland administration wants to ask for $1 billion, doubling the amount that was borrowed last time.
Some Republicans are in a snit because they say they’ve been cut out of the decision-making. They question the timing of the renewal. (If it passes next spring, the governor will be touting that fact in his fall re-election campaign.) And they worry that $1 billion might be going too deeply in debt.
There are important details to iron out, but there is nothing to fight about here.
The Third Frontier program is one thing Ohio is doing right. The initiative is attracting scholars and companies to the state; it is creating jobs in advanced and high-tech industries.
Ohio’s borrowing capacity isn’t infinite. But Chancellor Eric Fingerhut, who shepherds the awarding of the Third Frontier money, says that even with Ohio’s financial struggles, it can afford doubling the program.
As good as that is to hear, he should have to justify that to the legislature, and lawmakers are entitled to challenge him.
Though interest rates are low now — making borrowing cheap — that could change.
The most worrisome thing, though, is that Ohio will be hurting for money in the next two-year budget because it won’t have the benefit of a federal stimulus.
The state likely will be faced with making more big cuts, meaning lawmakers have to be concerned about how much they’re running up in interest costs.
Chancellor Fingerhut counters that he can show that the borrowing expense will be more than offset by money generated through new economic development.
If the politicians use the Third Frontier to try to score political points against each other, they will confuse voters and they will create doubt about something that the state and Dayton need.
The Republicans are entitled to answers to sincere questions.
The Democrats shouldn’t be pretending that they invented this idea.
And the business community, which is 100 percent behind the initiative, needs to take a stand against either political party playing politics with a program that is helping Ohio’s economy.
A renewal won’t pass if voters don’t believe in the integrity and soundness of a program that is working.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Local Business, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Obama must keep Afghan goals limited
“Like many, we wonder what happened to Mr. Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, who established a bureaucratic fiefdom at the State Department but has been neither seen nor heard from during this critical period.” — Washington Post editorial, Oct. 21.
You know Afghanistan is a tough place when Richard Holbrooke goes over there and disappears.
Not normally one to disappear, the father of the Dayton peace accords on Bosnia has been unable to bring any magic to bear in his newest assignment.
In truth, he has made some changes. And, of course, he has been in on the big policy discussions. He sided with the generals in calling for more American troops, a policy that President Barack Obama has now embraced, in the absence of magic.
The president has always favored more aggressive prosecution of the war in Afghanistan. He made that clear in the 2008 campaign. He sent 20,000 more troops early on. He’s now sending 30,000 more, while saying he will start withdrawals in less than two years.
The president took his time about making the decision. That resulted in criticism, of course. (Dayton-area Rep. Michael Turner: “The president’s delay has caused our allies and Afghanis to question his commitment and resolve to fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban.”)
But the difficulties of the decision he faced are clear to any fair-minded person. Afghanistan was the training and organizing site for the 9/11 terrorists. Now, the main force fighting against the government is the very force — the Taliban — that hosted al-Qaida.
But Afghanistan turns out to be hellaciously difficult to pacify.
One of the lessons of the Iraq war is that sometimes there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about a task like that. The president had to sort through a lot.
He’s decided on something like the “surge” of the Iraq war. Like that increase in troops, this one is designed to be temporary.
The president’s critics are pretending he has announced a deadline for withdrawal. (U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, responding to the president’s speech: “Our goal is to win, not to announce to the enemy the date we are leaving.”)
But saying when the withdrawal will be begin is saying next to nothing. It’s a political statement designed to quicken the step of the government of Afghanistan toward becoming more self-sufficient and to reassure the American people that the commitment is not open-ended.
The real doubt to be raised about the president’s plan is simply whether it will work. If it will, it should be undertaken, because Afghanistan really is directly relevant to American security, even if Iraq wasn’t.
Anybody who lived through the Iraq experience should be chastened about expressing certainty about what will and won’t work. Just about everybody was wrong at one stage or another.
What can be said is that this time a very smart president took his time, got advice from military and foreign policy people who have become, by now, pretty knowledgeable about that part of the world, and decided to give it a shot. He made a decision that largely reflects the views of the foreign policy establishment.
Yes, the surge is smaller than the one in Iraq, but, as in Iraq, the military is getting roughly what it asked for (especially if additional troops are forthcoming from NATO).
The president must keep his goal limited. It can’t be to pacify Afghanistan completely or turn it into our kind of democracy. The idea is to combat international terrorism.
The burden on American troops will be substantial. People in units stationed locally that will or might be affected have generally indicated to the media that they are ready, that they know the risks, that they see the need, and that they know they volunteered at one stage or another.
Still, they will need a lot of moral support from back home.
The reason there has been no Holbrooke miracle is that Afghanistan simply isn’t ready for peace. A lot of Americans will be doing good work in trying to move it in that direction.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Dayton Peace Accords and Other Peace Initiatives, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Anti-Obama backlash is problem for Ohio Republicans first
After a meeting of the Ohio Republican Party in September to slate candidates for 2010, John Kasich, who got the nod for governor, said, “I think (President) Obama has performed a miracle: He’s united the Republican Party.”
But then, in New York, the Republicans managed to lose a Republican congressional district in a Republican year by turning to internal war. The division in that race — pitting the Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/“tea party” super-conservatives against the merely conservative party establishment — is now turning up everywhere.
In South Carolina, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has been harshly censured by the Charleston County Republican Party after such infractions as insisting that the party must not be too conservative in some sections of the country, and voting for a Barack Obama nominee for Supreme Court, and working with Democrat John Kerry to put together a proposal on global warming.
Big ideological splits are developing over statewide primaries in Florida, California and elsewhere. The pattern is that big names or established politicians with proven records as vote getters are being challenged by smaller names with big appeal to the party’s famously conservative “base.”
All of which is not to say that Kasich was completely wrong in seeing Obama as an asset to his party. If he had used the word “energized” instead of “united,” he would have been completely right. And that’s important. The best bet is that anti-Obama energy — passion, determination — will prove important next November.
For now, though, it has Republicans taking aim at Republicans. Look at Ohio. Under some circumstances, one might expect Mike DeWine to be a consensus candidate for attorney general, given that he has won multiple statewide elections (before losing a Senate re-election bid in 2008). In truth, he still might breeze to the nomination.
But he’s being challenged by a prosecutor from Delaware County, Dave Yost, who’s getting support from people who have always found DeWine insufficiently rigid in his conservatism.
Yost has been endorsed by the Butler County Republican Party. The chairman of the party in Clermont County told the Cincinnati Enquirer he expects the same result there. Warren County conservative activist Lori Viars acknowledges that DeWine is acceptably conservative on abortion, but she’s still mad about his stand against a gay-marriage constitutional ban a few years ago. (The fight was over wording.)
DeWine’s moderation on gun issues is another problem for him.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race, Rob Portman — a consensus candidate of the party establishment if there ever was one — is being challenged by Cleveland-area car dealer Tom Ganley.
Ganley is also coming from the right, though there isn’t much room over there on the other side of Portman. And Ganley has his own money to spend. He has already started running television ads.
State Sen. Jon Husted also faces a challenge from the right in his bid to be the Republican candidate for secretary of state. His opponent is Sandra O’Brien, who upset the appointed Republican state treasurer to win a primary in 2006, only to lose the general election.
Then there’s the case of U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, of the 2nd District. In a congressional career marked by embarrassment, her big selling point in her overwhelmingly Republican district has always been her staunch, unquestionable conservatism. It’s carried her through.
But now Warren County Commissioner Michael Kilburn — he of the “filthy money” complaint about the federal stimulus package — is opposing her in the primary. He thinks it’s about time the district was represented by a conservative.
None of these races may represent the tea-party people at their most potent. The establishment certainly should be able to hold off the challenges.
But that doesn’t mean the party establishment will be unaffected. First of all, there’s the question of how far to the right the challengers will be able to pull the established candidates during the campaign. Conventional wisdom holds that the most conservative candidate has an advantage in a Republican primary. Who will be scared by that, and how scared?
And what about the future? An incumbent hates nothing more than a primary. How far to the right will the incumbents go to avoid such challenges?
These are bigger questions than whether the Republicans themselves will be hurt by these primaries. That’s seriously unlikely. The New York case was peculiar, involving three parties and three names before the voters during the campaign.
Typically, primaries do not harm a party unless the party remains divided afterwards. That’s unlikely to happen to the Republicans so long as Obama is on his current course.
But that’s speculation. What’s known for sure is that the conservative backlash against Obama is, first on the calendar, a problem for Obama’s opponents.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Local educators deserved voice in funding talks
Gov. Ted Strickland’s education reform plan, passed by the legislature during the summer, sought to add a new step to the school funding process. The idea was to force the state to consider the cost of educating kids when it begins the funding debate.
Ohio’s school funding level has typically been devised every other year as part of the state budget debate, a process that critics have derisively called “residual budgeting.” In other words, whatever is left over after other spending levels are set goes to schools.
Instead, the state has now created a committee known as the Ohio School Funding Advisory Council, whose members were appointed over the last month. The council begins meeting in January to develop recommendations to the legislature for the 2011 budget.
With 28 members on the council, one might expect that some key players from the Miami Valley would be included. But the big names in education mostly are not there, including University of Dayton education dean Tom Lasley; Thomas B. Fordham Foundation vice president Terry Ryan; and Dayton school Superintendent Kurt Stanic. Another possibility might have been former Gov. Bob Taft, who is now working on education policy at UD .
Also not included are Wright State University education dean Greg Bernhardt; Montgomery County Educational Service Center Superintendent Frank DePalma; and Dayton Early College Academy Principal Judy Hennessey.
The Miami Valley is not completely unrepresented. Among Gov. Ted Strickland’s seven appointees are Dayvenia Chesney, Chief Operating Officer of the Miami Valley Child Development Centers; and Robyn Essman, budget director for Columbus Public Schools and a Dayton resident.
Ms. Chesney is the only appointee chosen to represent the interests of pre-school children — an important role, given the state’s recent cutbacks in aid for early childhood education.
Ms. Essman previously worked for Dayton public schools, where she helped devise a better system of tracking charter school students and ensuring that the correct amount of aid is flowing to those schools. Interestingly, she was appointed to a council slot set aside for “community school sponsors,” since the Columbus school district sponsors charters. She has a good grasp of those issues.
One of Senate President Bill Harris’ appointees is John Scheu, the superintendent of Hardin-Houston schools in southern Shelby County. Mr. Scheu is thoughtful about school funding and has been critical of Gov. Strickland’s education reform plan. He laments added costs through new mandates, such as a new requirement that all districts offer full-day kindergarten, without funding them. He’s the only school district superintendent on the council. He is not representative of superintendents in his views on the Strickland plan.
For two slots that were set aside for teachers, Gov. Strickland appointed key leaders of the two statewide teachers unions — Ohio Federation of Teachers President Sue Taylor and Bill Leibensperger, vice president of the Ohio Education Association.
The name that has come in for the most discussion is Nathan DeRolph. It was Mr. DeRolph’s father who sued Ohio almost two decades ago, when he was 15, claiming schools were inadequately funded and sparking a decade-long battle that resulted in four Ohio Supreme Court decisions.
The council has some strengths, including diversity of experience. But the absence of the most experienced, thoughtful people who are familiar with the issues facing Dayton area school districts is disappointing.
The commission has an important role. It needs all the credibility it can get. It could use more.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Local Fort Hood survivor, other reservists deserve hearing
Consider the case of Col. Kathy Platoni of Beavercreek.
In September, she spoke at a forum in Virginia — where top brass was also on the program — on “Coping with Unseen Injuries: From the Battlefield to the Homefront.”
She was there in her capacity as a doctorate-level psychologist and Army reservist who leads soldiers through a seven-step process in handling stress.
She’s been pushing the military to improve its handling of post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological problems resulting from war experiences.
Less than two months after that forum, she found herself being put through an interview and screening to see how she’s dealing with the trauma she’s been through.
What happened in between was Fort Hood.
Col. Platoni was there in preparation for being sent off to Afghanistan. She was going in the same unit as the alleged shooter in the massacre that took many lives. At the time of the shooting, she was in a nearby building. She heard people screaming about shots being fired.
She found herself at the side of a friend who died from the attack. She knew five of the soldiers who died and several others who were wounded.
So the Army thought she should be screened, like other survivors. After the screening, her deployment proceeded as scheduled. The answering machine at Col. Platoni’s Centerville practice says she’ll be gone for at least 14 months.
The 30-year reservist has already served in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Now she will be heading a small unit devoted to controlling stress that stems from combat — which sounds about as easy as pacifying Afghanistan.
In the circumstances of her own story — a woman reservist called up repeatedly to help the military deal with psychological trauma, who then experiences it herself, stateside — lies a lot of what separates current wars from past American wars: more women, more reservists and more awareness of the psychological impacts of war.
A measure of how far things have come: A 2009 prime-time dramatic television series, “Mercy,” deals with a nurse who has returned from Iraq and has difficulty readjusting, difficulty talking intimately with others who don’t share her experiences.
The need for veterans to talk with others is near the heart of Col. Platoni’s concerns. She says the main necessity now is to “remove the stigma that prevents people from accessing mental health services.”
“We’re sending broken people,” she says, a reference to the multiple deployments she is so familiar with.
As the nation settles into a continuing effort in Afghanistan, with more troops than ever, there’s some good news: This country has the experience of almost a decade of war in that region.
In confronting the problems of veterans, the military needs to listen particularly to the reservists of whom it has made so much use. They know the American civilian scene particularly well, as well as the war scene.
Col. Platoni says it was a remarkable experience to find herself being psychologically screened after the tragedy at Fort Hood. It was like nothing she had been through. The experience is certainly a relevant addition to a resume.
The fact that the alleged shooter at Fort Hood is a psychiatrist will not increase the credibility of the mental health professionals as a class.
Nevertheless, some of them do have special qualifications for confronting war-zone stress.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, terrorism
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