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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 > 2010 > March > 01
Monday, March 1, 2010
Editorial: Dayton didn’t worry about SCLC race card
Maybe you have noticed that, in the list of programs connected with the Rev. Raleigh Trammell that have been funded and now defunded in the wake of scandal, you’re not hearing much about money from the City of Dayton.
Montgomery County, the feds and the state have all supplied money to operations run by the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Rev. Trammell. Not the city.
And perhaps you have also noted that the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, also associated with Rev. Trammell, didn’t endorse Rhine McLin for re-election as mayor last year.
You might reasonably wonder about a connection between the two facts.
The question is worth pausing over, because some people think the absence of an IMA endorsement for Ms. McLin might have been decisive, depressing black turnout.
With turnout down, the election was decided by about 900 votes out of 29,000.
Why would an organization of black ministers, which leans toward Democrats, not support the black Democratic incumbent over an unknown white challenger?
One popular theory is that Mayor McLin supported a gay rights ordinance that the ministers opposed. But so did Commissioner Nan Whaley, whom the IMA did endorse.
And the IMA has endorsed Joe Lacey for the Dayton school board; he’s gay.
There are those on and around the city commission who believe that Rev. Trammell and the IMA were less concerned about gay rights than money.
Dayton had provided money for SCLC projects before the McLin era. Just one example: Under Mayor Mike Turner, the city put up $10,000 for the SCLC gun buyback program, wherein citizens would get cash for turning in workable guns.
That SCLC initiative was revived in the McLin years, but didn’t get city money, in part because of skepticism that buybacks were getting guns out of the hands of criminals. There were also other occasions when the possibility of the city contributing to SCLC projects came up.
Commissioner Whaley says that when she screened for the IMA’s endorsement in 2009, she was asked why the city wasn’t supporting it.
She says the city had concerns about the organization’s accounting and records. If that’s the explanation, those concerns look pretty good now.
Whatever the political impact of the city’s arm’s-length relationship with Rev. Trammell, the important point to be made now is that Dayton did the right thing.
While other agencies are being rightly criticized for not knowing how money they gave to groups associated with Rev. Trammell was being used, the city deserves some props.
Montgomery County says it was afraid of losing Rev. Trammell’s and the local civil rights organizations’ support for the Human Services Levy, which is crucial to funding local social programs. That’s was a concern that the city didn’t have.
And yet it’s hard to miss another difference between Montgomery County and the city government: race.
While Rev. Trammell was carrying a big stick with white elected county officerholders (though not an all-white staff), he was stymied in dealing with a city with a black mayor, majority-black city commission, and, at various intervals, a black city manager and top police officer.
At the heart of Rev. Trammell’s MO was the race card.
The possibility always loomed that he’d blame racism for any decision he didn’t like, and some people would believe him. But that was a tougher card to play in Dayton.
Permalink | Comments (44) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Civil Rights, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Montgomery County
TweetEditorial: Train questions fair, but there are answers
The case for 3C passenger trains has, let’s face it, been underwhelming in impact.
One poll showed a tiny majority opposed to spending state money on passenger trains. Around the state, various commentators have been cold. Republican legislators generally are critical or unimpressed.
The federal decision to fork over the $400 million to build a line connecting Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati (3Cs and the D) didn’t resolve the issue. An odd entity called the state Controlling Board must sign off. And, under a deal made when the legislature decided to apply for the stimulus money, the “yes” voters must include Republicans.
The case for the 3C
basically is that the feds are putting up nearly all of the capital, that Ohio is behind other big, urban states as to intercity passenger trains, that adding a new mode of transportation can open up travel to more people, and that there are energy implications, especially when gas shortages or gas-price hikes hit.
The basic case against the 3C line: that the trains will be relatively slow (averaging 39 miles an hour, when you figure in stops), that the system won’t be self-supporting, that much money will be spent to serve few people, that the routes will be so few and badly timed that people will not be able to make day trips, and that buses can do what trains might do.
That’s about as far as the debate has proceeded. When the legislature decided to go after the federal money, it acted quickly and essentially put off the debate on the merits.
The time has come. Given that federal money is available and will go to somebody, the skeptics should at least be willing to listen to responses to their points.
Gov. Ted Strickland and other proponents of 3C need to get busy making their case in a high-profile way. The opportunity may not exist for the governor to make a whistle-stop train tour, speaking from the back of the train at all the stations, like Harry Truman running for president in 1948. But something.
And some leaders of Dayton should be getting on board, given how much this community stands to benefit from having 3C trains going in two directions. (If history had been a little different, Dayton might have been skipped. Most trains in the past included Dayton and Springfield in their routes from Cincinnati to Columbus. So, given the existence of routes, skipping the Miami Valley now would have actually made the 3C project more expensive.)
As the debate proceeds, people will hear:
• The 79-mile-an-hour trains (possibly averaging 39) are a phase. States that have faster systems have started with slower ones. Upgrading to a faster system might not be many years off, given the existence of a federal program to fund faster trains.
• The 3C system need not attract throngs to justify the conclusion of an Amtrak-funded study that a $17 million annual operating subsidy from the state might suffice to operate the line. (That’s well under one one-thousandth of the state operating budget.)
• College students, older people and families without enough cars to go around could provide much of the needed usage at first.
• When Ohio does upgrade to a faster system, that’s when the appeal to a more general audience would set in, if the history of other states prevails.
• Government subsidies for transportation are the norm, including for cars and trucks, which use public roads; trains typically run on privately owned land, with the attendant costs.
• Ohio and Hawaii are the only two densely populated states that don’t have state-supported or regional intercity trains. (“Ohio acts like it is an island,” says a pro-train group called All Aboard Ohio, the source of the information.)
• Some people who say they would travel by train don’t want to take a bus.
• Possible schedules put out by Amtrak are not set in stone. The state should fight for more convenient ones. Even the number of trains running and the average speeds could change.
• Improvements made to tracks in connection with the 3C project will be good for freight trains, a crucial part of the Ohio economy, and likely more crucial in the future.
The questions being raised by the skeptics are a legitimate part of the democratic process. The 3C project should not be shoved down anybody’s throat. And it need not be.
Permalink | Comments (66) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Energy, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics, Transportation
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