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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 > April
April 2010
Editorial: GM overhypes, sure, but trends aren’t bad
When General Motors’ top guy made a television ad saying that GM had “repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule,” he was immediately lambasted for leaving out some details:
That about 90 percent of the money the federal government put into GM was no longer in the form of a loan, but in stock ownership. And the taxpayers won’t get that money back until the stock is sold. And nobody knows when that will happen or how much money the stock will bring.
Pretty important details.
CEO Ed Whitacre also came in for another criticism, one that turned out not to be so fair.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said GM had merely used government money to repay the government, simply shuffling money around. Bloggers and newspaper editorial pages alike glommed on to the charge.
But when the non-partisan, fact-checking outfit Politifact checked with experts, it found they said that money is money. The fact that GM was willing to part with some had to be treated as meaningful, good news.
“It’s a genuine paying back,” said Lawrence J. White, economist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “It does reduce the federal government’s involvement.”
And it’s certainly a far cry from a call for more bailout money. That’s the kind of news that was always expected last year.
Even better news: GM, Chrysler and Ford are all saying they might actually make money this year.
The government has changed its projections about how much money it might lose on the loans it gave the auto and banking industries. Last year, the Treasury Department was saying the loss might be as much as $500 billion out of the nearly $800 billion spent. But many banks have been repaying their loans with interest. The projected loss is now $87 billion.
At about 1 percent of the output of the economy in a year, that wouldn’t be so awful, certainly not as the price for keeping the The Great Recession from turning into a new Great Depression.
Inevitably, the Whitacre ad was widely assessed in the context of the debate about whether the bailout was a good idea. That subject is still of interest to the public, of course.
But of even greater interest is the future of the American auto industry. On that, the repayment and the positive projections aren’t the only good news. There’s also the fact that the American people are apparently no longer committed to the notion that the cars of foreign-based manufacturers are better.
An Associated Press poll shows 38 percent of Americans rated American cars in general the best, and 33 percent said Asian cars. Four years ago, the respective numbers were 29 percent and 46 percent.
The poll doesn’t necessarily signal a new day, but it signals an opening. Obviously, Detroit owes some thanks to Toyota. That company’s multiple recalls and problems with gas pedals have had impact.
But Toyota’s problems are not the only ones in the news. It’s easy to imagine that the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler would be taken by consumers as evidence that American cars are inferior.
Worth remembering now is that the auto industry bailouts weren’t simply tide-us-over loans. They came with all kinds of strings attached and resulted in the abandonment of entire lines of cars, new arrangements with unions and more.
The idea was to foster a leaner American auto industry, focused on dramatic change (such as electric cars), toward the goal, one might reasonably say, of taxpayer recovery of most of that other 90 percent. That still might not happen, but there’s progress, which nobody would have assumed a year ago.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb
TweetGuest column: Did nearby buildings play role in fatal airplane crash?
This commentary is written by Andrew Sarangan, a pilot and flight instructor at Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport. He also is an associate professor at the University of Dayton.
Tom Hausfeld, the pilot of the ill-fated flight on April 1, might be alive today if not for the poor decisions to erect buildings on the approach path of incoming airplanes.
While fear and concerns have been raised about the possibility of airplanes falling out of the sky onto innocent people, the true hazard is actually the other way around. When Hausfeld lost engine power, he was required by the federal aviation regulations to maneuver the airplane away from persons or property on the ground. This is exactly what he did.
Not a single piece of metal fell on anyone outside the airport fence. It is also evident that he struggled to hold the airplane high enough to clear the roofs of the buildings that were on the approach path, which robbed him of the precious last few knots of airspeed that is so essential for staying airborne.
The foremost tragedy in this story is that we lost a fine citizen and aviator and his daughter.
The second tragedy is how the event is being spun to advance the interests of businesses and other groups.
The pilot and his passenger were the victims. The hazard was the building. How anyone can turn that story around is amazing to me. Monro Muffler built a shop at the very edge of the runway, and then complained to the news media about low-flying airplanes.
The fact that airplanes fly low just prior to landing is not a new phenomenon. This is how airplanes were flown since Orville and Wilbur. The Federal Aviation Administration and the laws of physics require airplanes to fly in a shallow 3-5 degree glide angle during approach. At Wright brothers airport, this means the airplanes have been crossing the fence at roughly 75 feet altitude for nearly half a century.
Several years back, I recall looking down, during a final approach, at the construction site where the gas station and the Monro shop now sit, wondering why in the world anyone would choose to build there, knowing the risk it poses to aircraft.
Residents are understandably concerned about the possibility of airplanes crashing into their homes. However, it can be verified from National Transportation Safety Board records that statistically this is an extremely unlikely event.
Nevertheless, public perception is still important, and communities and airports need to work together to create a mutually safe environment. But that is a two-way street. Erecting buildings with no regard to aircraft safety, and then accusing pilots of flying too close to those buildings, is not an environment that creates mutual trust.
Communities such as Settlers Walk should work together with pilots and airport committees before building on the land adjacent to the runway and resolve any safety concerns cooperatively.
After all, many pilots and aircraft owners are also residents of Settlers Walk. Airport operations are not regulated by city, state or residential communities. Airports are part of a vast national network and operate under federal regulations. Airplanes flying here from Florida or Texas or even just from Cincinnati cannot be expected to know about the covenants of Settlers Walk or the opinions of Monro Muffler.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Guest Columns
TweetEditorial: Beavercreek makes life harder for bus riders
The problems of bus service to the Dayton Mall, which have been around for more than a decade, could be headed for a solution.
Now, however, the Fairfield Commons Mall is a problem, largely because of a Beavercreek city ordinance.
A church coalition is charging that it’s unfair and unsafe to force low-income mall workers, the elderly and handicapped riders to trek long distances from where buses stop to reach a mall entrance.
The company that owns both the Dayton and Fairfield Commons malls, spurred by the coalition’s complaints, is in talks with the Greater Dayton RTA about locating bus stops on its properties.
At the Dayton Mall, the closest stop currently requires a 300-yard walk across a busy parking lot. RTA and the mall owners are close to agreeing about a safer stop that’s nearer to an entrance, but they’re still negotiating about how many buses and which ones will stop there.
(RTA Executive Director Mark Donaghy wants the major bus routes to have a mall stop, not just a couple of specialty routes. He wants to avoid requiring riders to transfer and wait for a second bus.)
In Beavercreek, a 2000 city ordinance makes placing a bus stop anywhere near or at the Fairfield Commons Mall a tough task, though the mall owners are open to having a stop on their property. Mr. Donaghy calls the law an “anti-transit ordinance.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
As things stand now, the best way to get to Fairfield Commons by bus is to walk more than a mile from a stop in Fairborn near Wright State University, across a bridge over the interstate along busy roads without sidewalks at some points.
Beavercreek is planing to build a pedestrian bridge that would cross over the interstate from near the Fairborn Holiday Inn by Wright State and connect to a site near Sam’s Club on Pentagon Boulevard. That would make the walk a little easier, but there would still be treacherous stretches.
Mr. Donaghy would not only like to see bus service to the mall; he also wants stops along the way for other Beavercreek locations, most notably the Dayton Regional STEM School. Students there currently must make a long walk from a bus stop near Grange Hall Road, following a route also not designed for pedestrians.
But Beavercreek’s law is standing in the way. Mr. Donaghy worries that the city could block bus access even if mall owners agree to a stop. Locating a bus stop requires getting a permit, as well as hearings before the city planning commission and city council.
Because Pentagon Boulevard — the most logical route to serve the STEM school, the mall and other locations — is a heavy traffic area, the city ordinance requires specially designed pull-off areas for bus stops. Mr. Donaghy says they could cost up to $50,000 each to build.
If such stops are really needed, the RTA director says he would advocate to his board that RTA build them. But he believes that, in most cases, buses can make do with more typical stops. There’s nothing peculiar about the high-traffic streets in Beavercreek, compared to any other cities in RTA’s service area — or any city in the country.
Beavercreek city Engineer Dave Beach says the elaborate bus stops are needed for safety reasons. But what could be less safe than the long treks bus riders are making right now on foot along these same roads?
If Beavercreek really isn’t “anti-transit,” and if its leaders truly want to prevent people from getting hurt, they should re-examine their bus stop policies and create a streamlined process that allows access to the mall — safely.
Permalink | Comments (58) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities, Transportation
TweetMartin Gottlieb: They won’t leave Jean Schmidt alone
2010 ELECTION
All three Ohioans who think U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt isn’t conservative enough are running against her.
There’s Mike Kilburn, the seven-term Warren County commissioner, the fellow who wanted President Barack Obama to keep his “filthy money.” That’s a reference to the stimulus, whereon more judicious heads ultimately prevailed in the county.
(By the time Kilburn announced for Congress, Republicans including Commissioner Pat South were trying to get Sheriff Tom Ariss to challenge him in a commission primary.)
Also running against Schmidt are political newcomers Debbi Alsfelder, a lawyer and CPA from Mariemont; and Tim Martz, an accounts manager from Indian Hill.
No one has mounted an expensive campaign.
Kilburn seems to be the strongest challenger, though only the southern part of Warren County is in Schmidt’s district. (The 2nd District is mainly eastern Hamilton County and the farther-east suburbs of Cincinnati.)
Kilburn’s “filthy money” crusade (“I’ll let Warren County go broke before taking any of Obama’s filthy money.”) got him national attention, not just regional. So conservative voters who care about the election know there’s a choice.
In one small but visible sense, Schmidt is actually the opposite of Kilburn. She has been blasted on liberal MSNBC as among the “stimulus hypocrites.” They are the politicians who go after stimulus money for their own districts, despite having voted against the stimulus.
What an odd criticism. The money is going to be spent; is she supposed to prefer that it be spent elsewhere?
Schmidt must be on the edge of a record for number of times challenged in a primary. The only new thing this year is the motive of the challengers. In the past, the charge against her has not been ideological. It’s been that she’s not quite up to the job.
When she was first elected in 2005, it was after a hot, multi-way primary. She beat much bigger names — a DeWine and former U.S. Rep. Bob McEwen — perhaps because the bigger names had destroyed each other with negative campaigns.
Then she just barely squeaked through in the general election, a humiliating outcome, given that the district goes almost 2-1 Republican in a close presidential election. Her opponent was a returning Iraq war veteran.
In Congress, she proceeded immediately to get into political trouble. (She questioned the courage of a former Marine who was in Congress as a Democrat. She didn’t know about his widely known military background.)
McEwen spotted weakness and challenged her in a primary, losing by five percentage points.
She ultimately survived an even more humiliating squeaker in a general election. That time her opponent was not a veteran.
Then she won another primary against a well-known opponent. Rough ride. But after 2008 she finally seemed to have been accepted as the party’s long-term choice.
Maybe if 2010 were a typical year she wouldn’t have a challenger. Or at least not three. At least not three complaining that she isn’t conservative enough.
In 2008, her voting record got a 100 percent approval rating from the conservative Family Research Council and a 94 percent from the Chamber of Commerce.
But she did bend to the pleas of Republican leader John Boehner on the bank bailout. After first voting against the proposal, she was among the Republicans who flipped, allowing the measure to pass on its second House vote.
In some eyes, that was enough to make her part of the establishment.
Kilburn also hits on the up-to-the-job issue. He told the Cincinnati Enquirer that “our people are tired of sending millionaire know-nothings to Washington to do nothing for us.”
But he promises to leave after three terms, a great way to limit his own impact. He wants to eliminate the departments of energy and education. He wants to eliminate the corporate income tax, impose a flat tax, and impose means testing for Social Security. Could take more than three terms.
Even if he doesn’t beat Schmidt, it’ll be interesting to see how he does in Warren County.
The small percentage of people who turn out to vote in a low-visibility Republican primary are presumed to be about the most conservative group that can be identified.
And we’re talking about a county known for its conservatism. So the question becomes, just how conservative?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Ellis delivers punch to Republicans’ solar plexus
2010 ELECTION
Joe Ellis’ punch felt around the local political world offers a political writer irresistible opportunities for wordplay, as the headline above attests. But let’s skip over them quickly in this consideration of his run for the state legislature. The designated word toy for today is, instead, “domino.”
When Republican candidate for governor John Kasich picked state Auditor Mary Taylor as his lieutenant governor running mate, he tipped over a political domino that extends to Huber Heights, Vandalia and Butler Twp. If the chain reaction keeps going, the possibility arises of something unprecedented.
The second domino-tipping was a decision by state Rep. Seth Morgan, R-Huber Heights: he would give up his House seat to run for auditor. He’s on the ballot in Tuesday’s primary in pursuit of that job.
To replace Morgan, the Republicans came up with Joe Ellis. He had served two terms as a Butler Twp. trustee before being defeated last November, and had run for the Montgomery County Commission in 2008, losing to incumbent Judy Dodge.
He has the time and money to put into a campaign. Those qualifications — combined with some name recognition — are important to a party chairman in a bind and a hurry.
Ellis says county Republican Chairman Greg Gantt contacted him about running, despite his Butler Twp. defeat.
Next in the sequence, Ellis was arrested in connection with slugging a guy, according to police reports. Ellis, a former Golden Gloves boxing champ and bodybuilder, says he was approached in a club in a menacing way by a larger man and was worried about his post-cancer stitches.
After that episode — but before any court ruled on the matter — the Montgomery County Republican Party decided not to endorse Ellis in the May 4 primary, after all. It went with political newcomer Mike Henne, who had put himself forth. He puts forth his lack of experience as a political advantage, something people like about him. It’s an often-tried tactic that seldom works.
After the party endorsement, some people were under the impression that Ellis wasn’t actually going to follow through with his run. But he is running a campaign now.
His pretrial hearing on a misdemeanor assault charge is on Election Day. He says he expects to be exonerated, but will run in the fall if he wins, even if he isn’t. He says people will understand that most guys have been involved in a fight at some point.
The party’s reaction to his punch isn’t the only political blow he has suffered. His defeat for township trustee happened after a big flap about the firing and suspending of a group of firefighters in connection with what they were downloading onto work computers. Ultimately, the firing decisions were overturned by higher authorities, in two cases because the firings were deemed to be, in some measure, punishments for union activism.
All the circumstances combined have given the Democrats unlikely hope. The Democratic candidate is Carl Fisher, longtime member of the Huber Heights school board and brother of the mayor.
But the House district, in its current form, has never gone to a Democrat.
It’s basically the northern suburbs of Montgomery County and the western rural parts, all the way down to the county’s southern border. Morgan got about 60 percent of the vote in 2008, which is the way the district was designed to go.
Look at it this way: Montgomery County has, basically, five Ohio House seats and two state Senate seats. The seven districts have existed in roughly their current form for 20 years, which have seen about 54 elections for them, not counting this year. All 54 have come out the way the map-drawers intended.
Even the huge Republican year of 1994 and the Democratic years of 2006 and 2008 failed to switch any districts from their assigned parties.
So the Democratic effort to carry Morgan’s 36th District still requires a lot. Try to picture dominos falling uphill.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
TweetEditorial: Third Frontier forces colleges to step up
2010 Election
When state lawmakers were trying to decide whether to ask voters in next week’s primary election to approve borrowing money for the Third Frontier economic development program, Republicans smelled a rat.
What if Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, used that campaign as a warm-up act for his own November re-election bid? He’d get all kinds of publicity for promoting — ironically, they reasoned — an idea that was conceived by former Republican Gov. Bob Taft.
So, to get Republicans to support the timing of the request — many in the party totally support the Third Frontier in principle — Gov. Strickland said that he wouldn’t be a hot dog. And, in fact, every time he even mentions the Third Frontier, he credits his Republican predecessor.
At the same time, though, the governor has been milking for all they’re worth announcements of seemingly endless new “centers of excellence” at universities around the state. Dignitaries come out for his press conferences, shake his hand and the media take note.
But these designations will mean nothing if Issue 1 — the Third Frontier bond issue — is voted down.
Why? Because the Third Frontier money is the only money the state is going to have to dangle before all the new research centers to get them to forge partnerships with businesses and to hire certified scholars in the hottest job-creating fields.
Once upon a time, the plan for Ohio’s universities was bigger — and more forceful.
When Gov. Strickland appointed Eric Fingerhut to be the czar over Ohio’s colleges, Mr. Fingerhut announced that Ohio’s public colleges would have to specialize and collaborate, that the state needed universities to stop competing with each other and instead spend their energy becoming preeminent in areas that create jobs.
To bring along the universities, Fingerhut said those that played ball with him and that could be judged truly excellent in specific fields would get rewarded with state support.
With the collapse of the economy, that promise is history. Everything that’s not essential — and much that is important — is going to be cut out of the next state budget.
The “centers of excellence” are still being created, though — and in abandon. In February, Wright State and UD were among 14 universities that got the designation in biomedicine and health care.
Recently, the governor announced that Ohio State, Kent State, Case Western Reserve and the universities of Cincinnati and Akron would be “centers of excellence” for developing polymers and sensor technologies.
Given the Dayton region’s investment in sensor technology, the fact that the University of Dayton wasn’t on the list was odd. Not to worry.
Another announcement is coming. UD’s work in sensors will be acknowledged when the governor recognizes it as a “center of excellence” in advanced transportation and aerospace research.
Having so much “excellence” was not really the plan. Initially, the idea was to be super-selective, which would help justify giving certain colleges and programs extra funding. Since the state isn’t going to have any extra cash, apparently every school can be excellent in name — at least in this campaign year.
Gov. Strickland isn’t doing any thing underhanded with all his honoring and designating. He’s just running for re-election by the book.
What’s important to understand, though, is that Ohio once was on a path to strategically leverage universities’ research in a way that none of them could afford to resist. That plan was designed to ensure that Ohio was a central player in the knowledge economy.
Hard financial times are limiting the leverage. And that reality explains why those who insist Ohio has to be known for having universities that are first-rate in their specialities are adamant that voters have to pass Issue 1.
They are right.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Tea Party candidates taking much on faith
In dealing with Tea Party people, I’m reminded of the hard-left end of the anti-war movement in the 1960s.
One debate about the Vietnam War was televised in prime time. This was big, because people only had a few channels to watch. On the anti-war side was Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y. But the discussion was carefully designed to include non-celebrities and non-experts.
One young fellow kept saying — in passing, matter-of-factly, as if everybody knew this — that American troops were making a policy of rounding up Vietnamese civilians and killing them en masse all over the country.
Kennedy was trying to give encouragement to the doves, of course, but finally he had to roll his eyes and say, no, in fact, the American soldiers were not making a policy of doing that.
The charge was the sort that was going around in certain circles. “Underground” publications performed the role of today’s Internet, distributing nonsense to the credulous — and being ignored by the knowledgeable.
Some people in the anti-war movement would simply believe anything if it reflected badly on the American side. And they believed that the mainstream media would hush up anything like that.
Politically speaking, these people had been born yesterday. And, confused by a bombardment of contradictions in the mainstream media, they were rescued by people who made everything black and white and who, like cult leaders, told them not to listen to anybody else, because people on the outside were not their friends.
In 2010, the media are doing polls and interviews to figure out who the Tea Party people are. Some critics say too much attention has been focused on this question. They say that the “Tea Party” is just a new name for the right wing or base of the Republican Party.
However, at least one concrete difference arises: candidates are coming out of the movement, people who have never run before and who report that the Tea Party is their first experience with politics.
As a member of this newspaper’s editorial board, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with three Tea Party candidates, twice with their opponents present. A couple of those sessions led to follow-up conversations or e-mail exchanges.
Subsequent editorials dealt with the individuals. Let’s pause here over the group. Some people see racism as a force in the Tea Party, given the race of the president. But my sense is that if Hillary or Bill Clinton were president and pursuing the same agenda as Barack Obama, the backlash would be just as intense.
What’s at work fundamentally is honest ideology growing out of honest values about individual liberty and small government.
But there is this born-yesterday quality. The candidates seem to listen to certain people, and that is simply that. And the people they listen to are professional or avocational partisan warriors.
Ask the candidates where they get their information and they’re likely to first mention the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank in Washington, then talk radio and the Internet.
But one gets the impression that if they were being entirely straightforward, they wouldn’t mention the Heritage first.
So one hears a candidate portray gun control as a central reason that Hitler was able to accomplish his goals (a notion that comes from right-wing warriors, not Third Reich historians).
Or they say, with perfect confidence, that everything they call “big government” is unconstitutional, though little of it ever gets challenged in court, which is the system’s mechanism for deciding what’s constitutional.
Or they say that the new health care law has some sort of paramilitary force in it. We didn’t ask the candidates whether Obama was born in this country; maybe we should have.
Mainly, though, what we heard was the simplistic, absolute, perfect faith that if only government would get out of the way, all would be well. Extend unemployment benefits in a jobs crisis? No. Just cut government and watch the economy take off.
We heard this faith delivered matter-of-factly, as manifest, undeniable truth, available to anyone who’s open. It wasn’t like talking politics. It was like talking religion.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
TweetEditorial: Some good came from missing mom case
The search for Tiffany Tehan was a model for handling missing-person cases.
The effort began with the congregation of Patterson Park Church. They organized and then blanketed neighborhoods in a door-to-door awareness campaign after Ms. Tehan’s abandoned vehicle was found in a Kettering park. Xenia Police Captain Scott Anger said the church’s canvassing freed investigators to focus on chasing specific leads.
For Xenia police, this was a demanding case, and it came at a time when the city is so strapped for cash that its officers took no raise this year to help avoid deep cuts in the department. In fact, if a half-percent income tax on the May 4 ballot fails, Xenia faces more reductions in its police and fire departments.
This case cost the city $5,000 in overtime. Credit it for doing what had to be done even in hard times.
Captain Anger has high praise for other law enforcement agencies that offered assistance, most notably the sheriff’s offices in Greene and Montgomery counties, Kettering police, the U.S. Marshal’s Office and the FBI.
Meanwhile, citizens across the Dayton area called in tips and leads. Some tips were key to cracking the case, especially those from a convenience store that Ms. Tehan and Tre Hutcherson frequented and from the car lot where Mr. Hutcherson traded his car.
It would be nice to hear a word of profound thanks from Ms. Tehan on Thursday night when she and Mr. Hutcherson are scheduled to appear on the news and entertainment program, “Inside Edition.” (In a promo for the show, she says she is sorry).
The search for her is now closed, and her personal and romantic choices are her own business. But an awful lot of people put their lives on hold in one way or another in an effort to locate her and determine whether she was safe.
Wherever the pair’s lives go from here, they certainly owe those people who showed so much concern their gratitude and an apology. A lot of worry and heartache could have been a purely private matter had Ms. Tehan or Mr. Hutcherson simply called to alert someone that they were together, that neither was in danger.
The Greene County prosecutor’s office has issued subpoenas to the couple as part of its effort to determine if any laws were broken. But criminal charges are a long shot.
Some have said they want Xenia to bill the couple for the cost of the search. That, too, would be hard to do; public safety forces respond to a lot of emergencies and cases that could have been prevented if people had just thought through their decisions and choices.
However, if rumors are true that the one or both of them is seeking to cash in by selling their stories (Mr. Hutcherson has declined local media interviews, saying he is reviewing a “contract”), it would be nice to think that they’d first use any sudden income to reimburse the community.
At this stage, nobody can know all the issues that the players in this drama have been dealing with. What’s clear is that, for Ms. Tehan and Mr. Hutcherson and their families, there is much to figure out as the public portion of this story winds down.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Miamisburg should back school levy
2010 Election
Miamisburg schools asked for two levies in an unusual special election in February.
Voters passed a so-called “replacement” levy that was set to expire, but they defeated by 335 votes the proposal that would have increased their taxes.
In next week’s election, the district is trying again. Its request would cost owners of a $100,000 home about $225 more per year. If it is defeated, major cuts will be imposed.
For instance:
— 20 to 22 teachers at the elementary schools will be let go.
— as many as 20 teachers at the high school will lose their jobs.
— all extracurriculars, including sports, will be eliminated, as well as art, music and physical education.
— busing will be cut for high school students and only elementary and middle school students who live more than two miles from school will get transportation.
The reason to vote “yes” is that Miamisburg is looking at about $5 million in cuts, or more than 10 percent of its $45 million budget. Even if the levy passes, the district still will have to cut as much as $2 million.
During the past three years, the district has shaved almost $5 million in spending by imposing a hiring freeze and taking other measures. The staff also went without a raise this school year.
Like some other suburban districts, Miamisburg schools are being challenged by some residents who are taking their doubts about the district’s spending to the Web. The Web site openmiamisburg.com has information that voters may want to read, even if they don’t agree with the spin on it.
Especially in such difficult economic times, it’s naive to think that there isn’t going to be debate about raising taxes. When critics put their complaints in writing for everyone to see, at least backers of the levy and the administration know what misinformation they have to correct or, if complaints are legitimate, what they need to fix.
Miamisburg clearly is doing much right. It is rated “excellent” by the state, even as almost a third of its students are considered poor. (Most poor students come to school behind, and they often need extra attention.)
Class sizes, always a concern of parents, will have to go up if the teacher payroll is slashed. The state sets limits on how many children can be in each classroom, but most school districts try to stay below those numbers because they’re far from ideal.
If the levy fails, some sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade classes, for example, will have more than 30 students, with the average in the mid-30s.
The school district is targeting parents to get to the polls, believing they are the most invested in keeping the schools’ quality high. That’s a smart political decision; there’s nothing deceptive or unusual about it. But the strategy frustrates critics who don’t have such a direct connection.
This pitting of people against one another is one downside of relying so much on the property tax to fund schools. In Miamisburg, only 30 percent of the schools’ operating money comes from the state.
Miamisburg has good reasons to be proud of its schools. Keeping them at a high level isn’t cheap.
Permalink | Comments (43) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Education, Ellen Belcher
TweetEditorial: Payday lenders think they can ignore you
Ohio should be done with payday-lending scams.
Two years ago, lawmakers passed a law capping short-term loan rates at an annual percentage rate of 28 percent.
In November of that year, voters were asked whether they wanted to keep the new law. An overwhelming 64 percent said yes.
End of discussion, right? Wrong.
Within days, the payday people were back, setting up under different laws that were never intended to regulate their brand of lending. They zeroed in on loopholes.
One of them allows payday lenders to call themselves a “credit service organization,” which, in theory, is an outfit that helps people figure out how to get out of debt.
The payday lenders’ recommendations? Take out a ridiculously high-cost payday loan. How cynical is that?
The decision in Ohio to regulate this industry is not a fight between liberals and conservatives. Ohio’s law was passed by a Republican-controlled legislature that was decidedly business-friendly. After hearing both critics of payday lenders and industry representatives, Republicans concluded that the industry is peddling a destructive product.
Unsophisticated, low-income borrowers are coached into borrowing one loan after another, not grasping that every time they sign their name, they are paying more high-cost fees. Customers living paycheck to paycheck aren’t just delaying paying off debt; they’re spending money they don’t have.
Consumers have an obligation to know what they’re getting themselves into. But government also has an obligation to step in when it sees desperate people getting hosed. After all, if customers end up in the poor house, they’ll then be turning to the government for help.
For more than a year, critics of the payday industry have asked lawmakers to enforce the will of the people, to fight back against people who have mocked legislators’ decision to regulate them.
With just a few days left in the legislative session before the summer break, there’s a push on to pass a proposal that would do three things:
— Prohibit payday lenders from charging fees to cash the checks they sell to their customers. (Since they’re writing them, they know the money is there and that the check is not going to bounce; this is just another way to get around interest caps.)
— Limit origination fees and credit checks for loans of less than $1,000 to once every 90 days. (Currently, some lenders charge these fees as often as every two weeks, when borrowers pay one loan back and need another because there’s nothing left of their paycheck once they’ve paid back the previous loan.)
— Prohibit “brokering” of loans at the 28 percent cap, and then charging a fee for the service that can raise the real costs of the loan amount to as much as an annualized interest rate of 670 percent.
There’s no question that there are very many people who, now and again, need cash quickly to avoid costly overdraft charges, credit card late fees or cut-offs of their utilities. There should be a place for these people to turn in an emergency.
But these people are not really being helped if the assistance they’re getting locks them into loans that will eventually bring financial collapse.
When that happens, it’s the borrowers’ legitimate lenders and creditors who will get stiffed. The payday people will have been getting their fees and interest at every step along the way.
The Ohio House could — and should — vote on consumer protections as early as next week. Dayton’s delegation — state Reps. Terry Blair, Peggy Lehner, Clayton Luckie, Seth Morgan, Jarrod Martin and Richard Adams — needs to do what voters clearly thought they already did: rein in the payday people.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Mesaros best pick in strong field for Greene County judge
2010 Election
Voters in Greene County have a difficult choice with three strong candidates running for judge on the Common Pleas Court. The best pick is David Mesaros.
Mr. Mesaros, 51, an acting judge in Xenia Municipal Court, has had an impressive and varied career as an attorney. Recruited to the Greene County prosecutor’s office from northeast Ohio by former prosecutor Bill Schenck to be his top assistant, Mr. Mesaros handled numerous criminal cases.
He’s since worked in private practice — including a stint at the Rion, Rion and Rion law firm — handling business, government and domestic relations cases. His opponents also have strong resumes.
Mike Buckwalter is a magistrate in the probate division of the Greene County Common Pleas Court. He is active in the political and legal communities in Greene County. Mr. Buckwalter, 53, is on the central committee of the county Republican Party and served as president of the county bar association in 2009.
He also worked for the Greene County prosecutor’s office. In private practice, his specialty is civil litigation, including personal injury cases.
Raymond Dundes, 59, is a magistrate in the general division of Greene County Common Pleas Court, where he has worked since 2001. He worked previously in the Montgomery County prosecutor’s office and in private practice. As a magistrate who served under retiring Judge Timothy Campbell, Mr. Dundes has performed many of the duties of a judge in the seat he is seeking.
The race has become bruising politically.
Mr. Mesaros was briefly removed from the ballot for a clerical error on his petitions — the start of the judicial term was listed as Jan. 20, 2011, rather than Feb. 9, 2011 — after Mark Humbert, a member of the county Republican Party central committee, objected to the board of elections.
The board’s decision to remove Mr. Mesaros from the ballot was overturned by an appeals court, which said the error wasn’t legally significant enough to disqualify him. Mr. Buckwalter, who serves on the central committee with Mr. Humbert, said he was unaware Mr. Humbert planned to object to Mr. Mesaros’ ballot. But the tension is there.
Mr. Buckwalter says Mr. Mesaros is exaggerating his experience on the bench with a claim of having presided over 36 jury trials as an acting judge. Mr. Mesaros acknowledges that all but three of those cases were resolved before a jury got the cases.
Mr. Buckwalter’s campaign mailings, which list him as a “life member of the NRA” and a believer in “the sanctity of life,” were criticized by Mr. Mesaros as inappropriate for a judicial race where the candidates are supposed to avoid taking positions on political issues that could come before their court.
Overall, complaints the candidates have about each other are not serious and amount to political sniping. The differences among them are not huge. Each brings useful skills and a range of experience that would be assets to the court.
Any of the three could capably serve, but Mr. Mesaros’ significant legal experience in a variety of important cases tips the balance his way.
NOTE: Read support letters for all the candidates here.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Miami Valley Politics, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Conner only possible choice to face Austria for Democrats
2010 Election
In a weak Democratic field of three candidates hoping to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Austria this fall — and ultimately represent Greene and Clark counties in Congress — Bill Conner is the best choice.
Mr. Conner, 66, a former Air Force officer, has run for this office before and displayed a temper and irritability that suggested politics might not be a good fit for him. Whether he’s mellowed, as he says he has, remains to be seen.
But in this race, Mr. Conner has the best grasp on the issues. His views are strongly liberal. He likened his position on health care to that of Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who held out for a “single payer” system and only signed on to the final bill when it was clear that the Democrats’ plan could go down and the status quo could prevail.
Mr. Conner also advocates stronger bank regulations, rescinding tax cuts for the wealthy from the George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan eras and reducing military spending. He would have voted for the federal stimulus bill, but against the 2008 bailout of the financial sector, arguing troubled banks should have been forced into bankruptcy and broken up into smaller institutions.
The other two candidates — Olivia Freeman, 54, a customer service representative who also has tried selling a primitive solar energy product on the Internet, and James John Barton, 63, who says he starts and sells companies, can’t be taken seriously. Mr. Barton wants to change patent laws in a way that he says would help keep jobs from going overseas.
Ms. Freeman says existing government programs needed to be better coordinated. She says she favored a public option but would have voted yes for health care.
Mr. Barton and Ms. Freeman are total novices; neither could handle themselves in such an important office.
For Democrats, Mr. Conner is the only possible choice.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Miami Valley Politics, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: GOP should pick Yost for auditor
2010 ELECTION
A primary contest for state auditor doesn’t typically generate much political passion. If there’s a good fight, it might simply pit ambitious people against each other, representing nothing bigger.
But this year’s Republican primary is different. It offers the clearest test of the Tea Party movement’s strength in Ohio when everybody’s talking about the Tea Party.
The situation is odd: both candidates are staunch conservatives. Some months ago, one of them, David Yost, the prosecutor in Delaware County, was running for attorney general. He was complaining that Mike DeWine, the moderately conservative former U.S. senator, was too liberal on gun control, environmental issues, judicial nominations and more — the regular litany of the staunchest conservatives.
The other auditor candidate, freshman state Rep. Seth Morgan, of Huber Heights, was, back then, supporting Mr. Yost, despite the local roots of the DeWine family. That tells you where Rep. Morgan is coming from.
He’s been a Tea Party favorite all along, eager to separate himself from the big Republican names of the recent Ohio past.
When auditor Mary Taylor was tapped to be Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich’s runningmate, Mr. Yost switched to run for her job at the urging, he says, of state Party Chairman Kevin DeWine.
By then, Rep. Morgan had already jumped in, accelerating his plan to run for auditor in 2014.
The party’s role struck some people as mainly an effort to ensure that Mr. DeWine didn’t have a primary fight. That made Mr. Yost a symbol of the establishment in some eyes.
Rep. Morgan has been pushing that point ever since, insisting that his opponent caved to pressure. Caving is a constant worry that some in the conservative movement have about the people they support.
Mr. Yost says running for auditor is perfectly consistent with his long-term interest: promoting clean government. (And he grants that Mike DeWine has certain advantages as a candidate.)
Both candidates are simply pursuing the political paths they think right for them. If Rep. Morgan has been focused longer on the auditor job, it’s because he sees that job as his natural step up the political ladder, because he’s a certified public accountant, not a lawyer.
So what about qualifications? Rep. Morgan, 32, is in his first two-year term in Columbus. He’s been a very active member of the Huber Heights City Council. He’s worked in the private sector, and he ran unsuccessfully for Montgomery County auditor.
Mr. Yost, 53, is a county prosecutor. He has been Delaware County auditor and has worked for former Gov. George Voinovich and former Columbus Mayor Buck Rinehart. Before politics, he was a newspaper reporter.
His breadth of experience and his specific record in managing a county prosecutor’s office — with about 25 employees — trump the CPA credential. Mary Taylor is the only Ohio auditor to have been a CPA. The job entails running a large operation, not actually doing audits.
The two men don’t have dramatically different plans for the auditor’s office. But Rep. Morgan talks about farming more work out to private accountants. Mr. Yost doesn’t necessarily oppose that direction, but does respond that “privatization” in government work can sometimes go too far.
And Rep. Morgan talks about using the auditor’s job as a “bully pulpit,” whereas Mr. Yost minimizes that role.
Rep. Morgan’s conservatism extends even to the point of voting against the Third Frontier, which is endorsed by the Republican Party and got the vote, for example, of William Batchelder, the conservative leader of House Republicans.
Rep. Morgan says that people are looking for an alternative to the “muddy middle,” that they want stronger, more principled leadership. In effect, he’s calling for more polarization, exactly what the state and country do not need.
Mr. Yost’s mature demeanor is more likely to instill confidence in the good intentions of the office than the demeanor of the tightly wound, ideologically rigid, ambitious young politician.
For prudent, relatively non-political management of a position that should be non-political and non-ideological, the better bet is David Yost.
(Endorsement letters submitted by the candidates are here.)
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio politics
TweetKevin Riley: ‘There is life after NCR’
When NCR announced last June that it was leaving, things felt bleak around town, but even more so in the company’s headquarters at Dayton’s southern edge.
Just ask Wayne Reser. An NCR employee, he found out about the company’s decision through media reports and the rumor mill.
“You slump back in your chair and go, ‘wow,’” he said of his reaction.
The next chapter of Reser’s life won’t be in Georgia, where NCR bolted. As he tells his story, you feel a tingle of pride. The company asked the Dayton native to move, but the 23-year employee said no thanks. He found a good job here. Best of all, he seems to represent a growing group of NCR employees.
It has been difficult to find out what’s happening to the 1,200 employees NCR had in Dayton.
The company has been close-mouthed about how many people it has asked to go to Georgia and how many it has cut loose. And the employees themselves are afraid to talk for fear of jeopardizing severance agreements.
When the bad news came, several community organizations banded together and created a website called “ChooseDayton.com,” in an effort to link NCR employees to positions here. That effort sent a strong signal to NCR employees.
According to Reser, they took notice. He describes a copy room at NCR headquarters where someone posted an announcement about the ChooseDayton.com site.
We didn’t want a group of well-educated, professional people leaving Dayton — creating a brain drain with ripple effects that hurt the community.
And despite NCR’s headline-grabbing move that fed into Rust Belt stereotypes, wise people in Dayton knew that our region had a need and place for many of these people.
One big area of need: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
While the base’s structure can be hard to penetrate and understand, one of its most important organizations, the Aeronautical Systems Center, is in a serious growth mode. Excluding people in its 88th Air Base Wing who run the base, ASC has about 2,500 employees who buy and modernize aircraft and weapons — with more than 90 percent of them at Wright-Patt. It has a budget of $23.1 billion.
The Air Force is under pressure to improve how it acquires planes and systems. And it has said it needs more and better employees to do that.
Which brings us back to Reser.
A University of Dayton grad, he grew up in Kettering. He and his wife have two sons and live in Centerville. Now 55, Reser thought he’d retire from NCR, as his grandfather had done. In fact, he still has the chrome-plated wrench his grandfather received upon his leaving “The Cash.”
In 2005, Reser temporarily lost his job for 10 months while NCR restructured. When the company announced it was leaving, he knew what he had to do. Among other things, he attended the ASC job fair held in August at the Nutter Center.
John Day, director of personnel for ASC, says the event helped the Air Force find people it needs, including Reser.
The Air Force doesn’t and can’t give preference to NCR employees, Day said, and he hasn’t tracked how many ex-NCR folks ASC has hired. But the organization plans to hire hundreds of people over the next few years in financial management, contracting and procurement, and program management.
(There has been some debate in the defense contracting world about how many such jobs would be “new.” The Air Force has acknowledged it is beefing up its acquisition workforce, both by converting some contractor positions to civil service jobs, as well as creating new civilian positions.)
Reser is now buying things for the Air Force’s C-130J program as a contract negotiator.
“I’m glad to be here, and I’m learning new stuff every day,” he said.
Reser said he has been running into old NCR colleagues at the base.
“Good to see you. Glad you made the jump,” he says to them.
The experience has made Reser optimistic about his and our region’s prospects.
“This is all good stuff, and, long-term, it’s going to pay off for us,” he said. “There is life after NCR.”
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment |
TweetEditorial: Turner only smart choice in primary
2010 ELECTION
If you come across U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, these days, and he seems even more self-confident than usual, it’s not surprising. Politically speaking, he’s sitting pretty.
Such is the nature of this political year that he does face a challenge in the May 4 primary from the political right, but it’s not serious.
The fact that he voted against the bank bailout, the stimulus and the new health care law is not enough for Rene Oberer, a challenger out of the Tea Party movement in Vandalia.
Add, for good measure, that Rep. Turner was so appalled when the feds saved General Motors by taking over much of its ownership that he proposed a constitutional amendment against such government ownership.
Ms. Oberer does not hold against him his terribly wrongheaded opposition to the efforts of both a Republican and a Democratic president to avoid a depression.
She is a rigid small government ideologue even to the point of opposing extensions of unemployment compensation during the recession, which Rep. Turner has supported. She says people don’t really try to get jobs — or even accept jobs — until their unemployment is running out.
So unbending is her antipathy to big government that she won’t acknowledge the rightness even of the civil-rights legislation of the 1960s, which said, among other things, that people must have access to stores, restaurants, hotels and the front seats of buses irrespective of race.
There is no question about whether Rep. Turner should be renominated.
He’s done a good job on a wide range of local issues. He’s been the go-to guy in the U.S. House of Representatives on matters relating to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, especially because he’s on the Armed Services Committee.
He’s been active on the “earmarks” front, bringing in federal money for worthy local projects. However, he supported the decision of House Republicans to suspend all earmarks for a year. He says that some earmarks going to other districts deserve the bad name that earmarks in general now have. He paints himself as a player in shaping a new approach.
He promotes the Dayton model. Here, earmarks are vetted for merit in a public process. He says earmarks should face hearings in Congress, which they typically haven’t.
Nobody knows how the earmark situation will play out in the long run. A new process? Cosmetic changes? Will all the action move to the Senate, because nobody there has taken even a temporary vow against earmarks?
It would be a shame if earmark money now flows only to House districts that are represented by Democrats just because that party hasn’t taken such a sharp vow against them.
Philosophically, Rep. Turner is a regular Republican. Actually, his biggest deviation was when he joined the conservative wing of the party to oppose President George W. Bush’s bank bailout, which did much to stabilize an economy in free fall, and much of which has been repaid with interest, especially by the bigger banks.
His representation of an urban area allows him, by his own account, to diverge from the party line occasionally without getting in trouble with the party.
For example, with an eye on the huge impact of the foreclosure crisis on Dayton, he has been one of the few Republicans to support “cram down,” the practice of allowing bankruptcy judges to force banks to renegotiate mortgages that homeowners can’t afford.
How well has he progressed in Congress through four two-year terms? He has not won a seat on the Appropriations Committee or another prized committee, much less a leadership position. But, as the ranking Republican on an Armed Services subcommittee, he has won attention as a Republican spokesman on nuclear weapons issues.
Sometimes Rep. Turner lives up to his claim that he’s not “much of a partisan.” He says he believes that Congress — and other bodies — work better when the two parties are working things out, as opposed to one dominating. He may get tested on that soon.
He has enough seniority to chair a significant subcommittee if the next Congress goes Republican.
(Endorsement letters submitted by the candidates are here.)
Permalink | Comments (20) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
TweetEditorial: Warren Co. commission needs Ariss
2010 ELECTION
In the crowded field running for the Warren County Commission seat being vacated by Mike Kilburn, the best choice is a familiar name — Tom Ariss.
Mr. Ariss, who served as sheriff for 17 years before retiring in 2009, knows the players in county government, is respected, has the trust of the community and understands the issues.
Tom Grossmann, an attorney who is Warren County’s Republican Party chairman and a former Mason mayor, also has strong credentials. But Mr. Ariss is a much better bet to work cooperatively with other county officials to solve problems.
Mr. Grossmann’s style is troubling. In a meeting with the Dayton Daily News editorial board, he was over-the-top domineering and unnecessarily aggressive in responding to criticism from his opponents. Some Republicans say privately they are wary of working with him because he comes on so strong.
Mr. Grossmann is heavily focused on Mason. The commission already has a Mason resident in David Young. Too much tilt in that direction might not best serve the whole county.
Mr. Kilburn, who is leaving the commission to run for Congress, has endorsed Chris Koch, 42, the president of the Union Twp. trustees. Mr. Koch, who says he is the most conservative candidate in the race, is simply unrealistic about the state of affairs in Warren County.
He opposes the county’s move to collect the full unvoted “inside” property tax millage — something most counties do routinely, but that Warren County had previously cut. But he has no plan for how to replace the lost revenue.
Mr. Ariss, who favors collecting the full amount, said the $15 million in revenue that otherwise would be lost would be tough to replace.
Mr. Koch also says the county should have rejected federal stimulus money in all cases. That would have been foolish. Rejecting stimulus funds would not have lowered federal taxes or reduced the federal deficit. It just would have sent money destined for Warren County elsewhere. Mr. Ariss supports the county’s decision to accept the stimulus cash.
Mr. Koch has personal financial troubles stemming from a failed business that have caused him to fall behind on his property taxes and other bills.
Sandra Tugrul, 72, a home-based travel agent who lives in Lebanon, says she’ll bring an “everyday” perspective to the commission. Her background in public affairs is mainly in Butler County, where she was on the Lakota school board.
A fifth candidate, embattled Carlisle Mayor Tim Humphries, did not respond to an invitation to meet with the editorial board. He has been accused of downloading pornographic material to his city-owned computer. He vigorously denies having done so.
Warren County has a fast-growing population that will inevitably require expanding existing services. There’s increasing pressure to create infrastructure to keep up with the growth. Of course, county leaders need to be vigilant about containing expenses, but they also have to be realistic about the need to spend on things that matter. Good planning will be a priority.
Mr Ariss, 73, has experience in county government, a solid track record of quality management as the sheriff and has a deep commitment to Warren County. He is the best choice for commissioner.
NOTE: Find letters of support for the candidates here.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Austria better for Republicans in Greene, Clark
2010 Election
It wouldn’t be an election without John Mitchel on the ballot.
The retired Air Force officer from Beavercreek has been running for something almost every two years since his first major bid for office in 1998, when he ran for governor as a Reform Party candidate.
(Remember third- party presidential candidate Ross Perot? That was his party.)
Since then, he has run, as a Republican, for the U.S. Senate, and also against former U.S. Rep. David Hobson — twice. Now this year will be his second run against Congressman Steve Austria, who represents Greene and Clark counties.
Give the guy credit for persistence.
But he’s still the neophyte that he was in 1998, when he had 20,000 copies of his school funding plan printed.
In 2004, when asked what he wanted to do in the Senate, he said:
“My first act if elected to the Senate would be to lobby the president to sign an executive order to declare the unborn innocent ‘persons,’ thus giving them the full protection of the Fifth Amendment.”
Mr. Mitchel, 62, opposes the Obama health care initiative, the Obama stimulus, the bank bailout under former President George W. Bush, and he supports the (unworkable) FairTax plan, which would eliminate the federal income tax, substituting a sales tax.
He also charges that Greene and Clark counties are steeped in cronyism that results in sweetheart deals for Republican insiders.
Congressman Austria is completing his first term in Washington. He was effectively handpicked by Rep. Hobson to replace him when he retired; Rep. Austria’s wife was on the congressman’s staff.
Previously, Rep. Austria served 10 years in the Ohio Senate.
As a freshman in the minority party, Rep. Austria could hardly be expected to make a big impact. In fact, though, he did get national attention for telling the Columbus Dispatch, in a discussion about his opposition to the Obama stimulus, that Franklin Roosevelt caused the Great Depression (which, of course, began way before the president was elected).
In talking about his job, Rep. Austria emphasizes constituent service, which, of course, does come with the position. But it is the most routine part of it.
He’s much less comfortable taking tough positions. He rarely diverges from his party, although he did vote for the administration’s Cash for Clunkers program.
He said he was persuaded by auto dealers that some of them would go out of business without this incentive.
On the other hand, Rep. Austria opposed the $787 billion stimulus program, without which unemployment would be immeasurably higher, and he is critical of the Bush bank bailout (that occurred before Mr. Austria went to Congress).
(Many economists believe that the bank and insurance failures that surely would have ensued without the Bush administration’s intervention could have pushed the country toward a Depression.)
Rep. Austria has refused to support earmarks, even though that was one way former Rep. Hobson made sure that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base got some of the improvements and commitments it needed sooner rather than later.
Rep. Austria was, for a while, reconsidering that position; then all the Republicans in the House said they wanted a moratorium.
It’ll be too bad if important advocacy for the base falls to U.S. Rep. Mike Turner and Ohio’s U.S. senators alone. That would be copping out, for political convenience.
Rep. Austria doesn’t face a serious challenge this year and is unlikely to any time soon unless he really fumbles. He’s cautious, so he’s not a disaster waiting to happen.
For the privilege of that job security, he really does need to seize the important platform he has. He has work to do to grow into an aggressive advocate for the region and for the issues he cares most about.
Letters candidates submitted from their supporters are here.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics, National government, Ohio politics, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetEditorial: Facing big year, Boehner best pick in primary
2010 ELECTION
By next year, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives might be a local guy. John Boehner, of West Chester, represents the western Miami Valley (the counties along the Indiana border) and Miami County and parts of east Dayton and Huber Heights.
He is leader of the House Republicans, who are expected to gain a lot of seats in November, perhaps reaching a majority. If that happens, their leader becomes speaker.
He will have come a long way from 1990, when he was first elected to Congress, insisting that he was not a “politician.”
Whatever one thinks of Rep. Boehner, having a speaker from here would be an important thing. How much good a speaker can do for his state is often exaggerated, and he long ago swore off bringing home federal “earmarks. Still, pretty cool.
Rep. Boehner faces a primary on May 4, but no real scare. His opponents have no background in politics, no support to speak of, no name recognition and no issues likely to play very well with the conservative primary voters in that conservative district.
Thomas McMasters, of Huber Heights, is a retired Air Force officer and father of five. He voted for Barack Obama in 2008. He has always wanted to run for Congress; there was nothing about Boehner or the district or this year that particularly beckoned him.
He has said he considered filing as a Democrat. Although he finally decided he has more in common with Republicans on spending issues, he says the party goes astray when it sticks with a Reaganesque approach to the issues. He has difficulty articulating a political philosophy that helps you to guess where he’d be on future controversies.
The third candidate is Manfred Schreyer, of Preble County, who grew up in Germany and has worked in telecommunications and as a pastor. He now owns a cafe.
He’s critical of Rep. Boehner’s alleged coziness with Wall Street and his support of the bailout and the North American Free Trade Agreement. He says the incumbent’s rigidity on health care led to bad legislation. He embraces the word “moderate.”
Whether the Republican Party in the 8th really has a non-conservative faction is doubtful. It if does, that faction needs to put up candidates with better credentials. Otherwise, John Boehner remains the party’s logical choice.
He has been known to do the right thing in difficult situations, most specifically on the unpopular but necessary bank bailout. Also, before he became speaker, he helped lead the effort to pass No Child Left Behind.
As a rule, though, he is hyper-conservative and too partisan. He eagerly stokes the partisanship that has become one of the country’s debilitating problems.
If Rep. Boehner does become speaker, things have to change. He and the Democrats need to constrain their partisan tendencies. That would be a heck of a challenge for both.
For the Republicans, the risk would be infuriating a base that seems on guard as never before against any sign of meeting the other side half way.
Rep. Boehner wouldn’t be any less likely to rise to the occasion than any other Republican who gets mentioned as a possible speaker. If somebody is to be put to the test, having that somebody be from Ohio wouldn’t be all bad.
(Endorsement letters submitted by the candidates are here.)
Permalink | Comments (28) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Locals in national affairs, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics
TweetMartin Gottlieb: April 15 not such a nightmare for most
April is said to put dread in the hearts of the American people, taxing them in more ways than one. The anger and frustration associated with April 15 used to be expressed by comedians and in social settings. Now it’s done in political demonstrations. This year, from Cincinnati to Dayton to Columbus, lots of Ohioans went to hear speakers decry the effect of taxes on freedom, on the American ideal. Complaints about taxes are the only thing more certain than death and taxes.
Here, however, after all the complaints have been heard again and again, are a few other points about how the federal income tax — and the process of paying it — affects actual Americans:
• About 47 percent of households don’t even have enough income to owe federal income taxes. This point, too, has come in for a fair share of attention lately.
Somehow, though, its existence doesn’t dent the consciousness of those who portray April 15 as a universally shared nightmare.
The exclusion of low-income people from this tax makes the overall tax burden fairer. Low-income people do pay state and local taxes, which can hit the poor hardest.
Think about sales taxes, for example. If you have to spend every dime you make, you pay the sales taxes on a bigger percentage of your income than if you can afford to put some money away. (And you hope to see that latter money grow.)
Or look at state and local income taxes. When Ohio “reformed” its tax code in 2005, the main idea was reduction in the income tax and in its progressivity. Progressivity — the degree to which rates are higher on those with more income — is considered a bad thing at the state level. That makes the progressivity of federal income taxes all the more important.
Low-income people also pay Social Security taxes, starting with the first dollar they earn. This hits them harder than the very affluent, who don’t pay on income above a certain point.
So, bottom line, those who don’t pay federal income taxes do pay as much of their income in taxes as any other class. (Citizen for Tax Justice, a liberal think tank, among others, has run the numbers.)
• A lot of people are trying to sell the notion that the federal income tax is out of control. Baloney. The stimulus that was passed last year entailed cuts for most people. The George W. Bush years saw repeated cuts. Even before that, the burden was falling as a percentage of income. Reported the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “The Treasury data show that in 1999, the typical family of four with two children was paying a smaller percentage of its income in federal income taxes than at any time since 1966.”
• For 2008, out of 155 million individual returns filed, 90 million were done online. The IRS says more than 70 percent of those were done by professionals doing people’s taxes.
It’s a shame the code is so complex that professionals are necessary. Still, these stats dispose of the image of a people burning midnight oil in a desperate effort to understand incomprehensible forms and bureaucratic rules.
Of those filing for themselves, many use simple forms. Software programs have made even moderately complex returns easy, allowing people to fill in the same blanks every year. And many people simply have confidence in their ability to handle situations involving math and rules.
• As April 15 was approaching, the IRS reported that 80 million Americans — about half of those filing personal returns — had received tax refunds. The average refund was almost $3,000.
That doesn’t tell you how much people are paying, of course. But it is another does big dent in the notion that April 15 is universally experienced as hell.
• Let’s end with a couple of polls, which are best used only as supporting material. At a time when public frustration with Washington is at a high, the IRS is an exception. A Pew study finds the IRS has a favorable rating, 47 percent, that’s up 9 points, more than any agency since 1997. For a tax agency, that’s remarkably high.
• Sixty-two percent of Americans say they are treated fairly by the tax code, another remarkable number, when you contemplate the special insight we all have into the universe’s tendency to victimize us more than others.
The same CBS/New York Times poll put the question to 881 people who describe themselves as Tea Party tax protesters. Even 50 percent of them say they’re treated fairly; 42 percent said no; 6 percent didn’t know. Surprising.
Submitted for the record.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, National government, Ohio government
TweetEditorial: Husted best GOP choice for Brunner job
2010 ELECTION
Sen. Jon Husted, of Kettering, is facing a challenge from the right in the Republican primary for secretary of state.
He has almost every political advantage: standing among Republicans, experience in state government, name recognition with the public, campaign money and very specific qualifications for the job.
But his opponent is the more conservative candidate, which is useful in a Republican primary. The people who feel most intensely are more likely to vote in a primary than those who are less committed to an ideology.
The party is wondering whether that may be truer than ever this year, when the Tea Party movement is pulling the GOP to the right.
Candidate Sandra O’Brien is a former auditor of Ashtabula County, in the northeast corner of the state. In 2006, she pulled off an upset in a primary for state treasurer over a moderate black candidate who had been appointed to the job. Ms. O’Brien is hoping to repeat the magic.
She insists that hot-button conservative causes — taxes, gun control, abortion — are legitimate campaign issues, though they have nothing to do with the work of the secretary of state.
She says voters she talks with raise those issues. The people decide the issues, she says.
In 2006, Ms. O’Brien was trounced in the general election by Democrat Richard Cordray, in part, perhaps because of her competency.
As county auditor, she was twice criticized by the Republican state auditor, Betty Montgomery, for not having good internal controls.
In an interview with the Dayton Daily News editorial board that year, she said she had safeguards on her top staffers, but they weren’t in writing because she didn’t want bright employees to know what her checks and balances were. A preposterous position.
Sen. Husted has been awkwardly trying to identify himself with “Tea Party Values” in his campaign literature. And he seems to be playing to the Republican base, for example, with his criticism of the Cleveland to Cincinnati (“3C”) passenger train project.
For several years, he’s been active on election-management issues, the main responsibility of a secretary of state (who also handles public legal paperwork for corporations).
He’s been a leading Republican monitor of incumbent Secretary Jennifer Brunner. And he has proposed, for example, legislation about corporate campaign spending in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing it. (He wants tough disclosure laws.)
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the race is that Sen. Husted has proposed eliminating the high-profile roles of the secretary of state. He says the secretary’s role in elections should be handled by a bipartisan board. That way there wouldn’t be charges of partisan manipulation every time a secretary does anything, as now.
Ms. O’Brien opposes this change, saying it would take power out of the hands of voters. But the notion is dubious that voters deeply prize their power to chose between Republican and Democratic candidates as to which can best handle a job that should be done in a nonpartisan way.
Also, Sen. Husted has long been the leading voice in the legislature for changing Ohio’s systems for drawing districts for legislators. Under the current system, all power goes to one party, at least in the case of state legislative seats.
Not shockingly, the politicians tend to take care of their party and eliminate any real political competition by concentrating voters of particular persuasions together.
Sen. Husted’s experience — including a genuine leadership role in the legislature as former speaker of the Ohio of Representatives — his competence and his relative moderation make him clearly the best choice.
(Endorsement letters submitted by the two candidates are here.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio politics
TweetGuest column: Fund nurtures ideas that can be potent job engines
This column was written by David R. Hopkins, president of Wright State University.
When I think about the Ohio’s Third Frontier program, I think about Nick Schroeder.
A few short years ago, Nick was working in a fast-food restaurant. Today, the Wright State University graduate is using lasers to make precision cuts needed to manufacture medical instruments.
Schroeder landed the job with the Mound Laser & Photonics Center, thanks to funding from the Ohio Third Frontier — an ambitious effort to grow new companies and new technologies in the state.
Voters will be asked May 4 to approve selling $700 million in bonds that would continue to fund the Third Frontier. That investment has helped create an infrastructure of buildings, equipment and people that is becoming the backbone of the new knowledge-based economy.
In a few short years, Wright State University alone has turned $24 million in Third Frontier funding into hundreds of new jobs. In addition, Third Frontier funding has provided a platform for schools like Wright State and the University of Dayton to work together.
A Third Frontier grant of $28 million helped establish the Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology, or IDCAST. Led by the University of Dayton Research Institute, this world-class center also includes Wright State, the Air Force and dozens of private companies.
We’re all working together to commercialize sensors, devices that receive and convert signals for such things as detecting chemical or biological agents.
In three years, more than 250 jobs related to the work at IDCAST have been created. And Photon-X, a company that is developing a lightweight, affordable 3-D camera, expects its new product to create thousands of jobs in coming years.
Third Frontier activities have created a powerful union of talent, pooling the strengths of the Wright State Research Institute, the Wright Brothers Institute, the Dayton Development Coalition and the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
One of the most visible creations of Third Frontier funding is daytaOhio. That center features the dazzling, virtual-reality Appenzeller lab that takes visitors on journeys underneath the Earth’s surface, past factory assembly lines and retail stores, and even through the human bloodstream.
About $12.6 million in Third Frontier funding received by Wright State was used to start daytaOhio. The money helped create visualization and other facilities at four other universities that are networked together and to launch programs with the Air Force Research Lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that use virtual reality to improve human performance.
To date, the Third Frontier funding managed by daytaOhio has also generated more than 230 new jobs, was matched by more than $40 million in research dollars from state universities and private companies, and has generated more than $16 million in new investments in Ohio.
It has also enabled daytaOhio to work with nine start-up businesses, the beginning of a “farm-system” that can take new technologies and turn them into commercial products.
Third Frontier money also helped create the LexisNexis Ohio Eminent Scholar position, which helped bring Amit Sheth, Ph.D., to Wright State. Sheth has founded two companies since his arrival, and his research has led to several commercial products.
Third Frontier funding has attracted Elliott Brown, Ph.D., a pioneering physicist and engineer from the University of California who is Wright State’s new endowed chair in experimental sensor physics.
Brown plans to build a center of excellence in sensors that will have applications in national security and counterterrorism as well as law enforcement and medicine. In still another area, about $1.5 million in Third Frontier money helped build and equip the Center for Genomics Research.
With the goal of better diagnosing and treating cancer, the center uses technologies that enable researchers to more clearly understand differences between human cancers or assess responses to various toxic compounds.
These powerful cross-disciplinary alliances of researchers, scientists and engineers are into everything from neuroscience to micro air vehicles.
The Third Frontier has given birth to a wonderful set of assets. If nourished, these assets promise to become powerful job-producing engines.
If we have the courage to continue the Third Frontier, the Nick Schroeders of the world and all Ohioans will have a brighter future.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment |
TweetEditorial: Third Frontier working for Ohio, Dayton
2010 Election
If you can’t explain the Third Frontier to people at work, that’s OK; it’s complicated. But that’s not a reason to vote against it.
Passing Issue 1 on May 4 would allow the state to borrow $700 million for the purpose of creating new jobs, mainly by leveraging research at Ohio’s universities.
The Dayton region, incidentally, has been a primary beneficiary of the existing Third Frontier effort, which began under former Gov. Bob Taft. More than $120 million has been awarded to local universities and ventures.
How does it work?
The state has set up a competitive process — using the prestigious National Academy of Sciences — for evaluating university research projects that typically have a business partnership. The aim is to commercialize inventions, products and processes — to get them from the lab to the market.
Making and selling things then creates jobs.
Research and development are hugely expensive in today’s economy. There are always more good ideas than there is money to pay for the tedious trial-and-error effort it takes to make the next big thing.
Yes. Orville and Wilbur Wright invented a plane in a bicycle shop; but even they would have trouble discovering, say, new kinds of environmentally-friendly jet fuel or composite material that won’t burn up in space without some pretty big money behind them.
Tinkers and lone inventors still are coming up with great ideas. But that’s not the typical way that discoveries are made. It is a more complicated world.
If the best researchers and most promising start-up companies can tap government money to get their projects going, that matters to them. It determines where their research teams will set up shop and where they’ll locate their companies. In this sense, the Third Frontier money is a recruiting tool, both of businesses and scholars.
How can taxpayers be assured that this isn’t a boondoogle?
Trust is involved, but the National Academy of Sciences experts rank the grant applications; their recommendations are public. There’s also a commission that must vote on the awards in public. These protections exist to ensure that only the best ideas are funded.
If the bond issue does pass, Ohio will have committed more than $2 billion over 10 years to a strategic, targeted effort to play to the strengths of its universities and to businesses that are committed to growing here.
Though currently there’s money for the program through June 2011, renewing the Third Frontier now tells renown researchers and venture capitalists that Ohio’s effort to help them succeed isn’t a fad.
Opponents of Issue 1 have no case except that government shouldn’t be in the business of trying to create jobs.
If venture capital grew on trees, if the best minds in academia and business were limited in where they could do their thing, if Ohio weren’t struggling so hard to transition from its blue-collar past, maybe we could afford to take that sort of hands-off approach. But that’s not Ohio’s reality.
Issue 1 is central to moving the state ahead. Vote for Issue 1.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Economy, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government
TweetEditorial: Fisher has credentials that Brunner doesn’t
2010 ELECTION
To some people, the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seems like a fight between an old guy who has been around forever, mainly losing elections, and a fresh young female face.
A few, however, might remember Lee Fisher as the 38-year-old hot shot who came out of the legislature to get elected attorney general over the better known Paul Pfeifer in 1990, which wasn’t any great Democratic year.
At 58, he’s opposed by Jennifer Brunner, 53, who announced for the Senate only halfway through her first term as Ohio’s secretary of state.
(Only Democrats have a choice to make. There is no Republican primary for the Senate contest.)
Their race is the sort that can end up revolving around trivia, because the candidates agree on the big stuff. The trivia shouldn’t obscure the fact that both have a lot to offer.
Lt. Gov. Fisher knows Ohio’s issues as well as anybody could. Besides having been attorney general, he’s been in the state legislature, the director of a wide range of community-service programs as head of the Center for Families and Children in Cleveland, and head of the state development department, while serving as lieutenant governor.
In the latter job, he has, as he notes, traveled to every corner of the state trying to bring and retain jobs.
Republicans enjoy pointing out that some of the these high-profile efforts have ended badly. (It’s not a point his Democratic opponent has been pushing, at least until now.) Think DHL, NCR and General Motors around here.
Wherever the blame should go for that, Lt. Gov. Fisher has come to intimately know the specific and general problems that businesses, community leaders and workers (and laid-off workers) are confronting everyplace.
When Ted Strickland chose him as his running mate in 2006, it wasn’t because Mr. Fisher was seen as a vote-getter. On the contrary, he had lost his last two elections and was, therefore, languishing in political banishment. Candidate Strickland chose him because he has an incisive, organized and practical mind, on top of all that experience. Having served only in Washington, Mr. Strickland needed somebody who knew state issues.
That he couldn’t have done better than Lee Fisher was the common judgment in Columbus.
Ms. Brunner doesn’t have the on-paper qualifications of Mr. Fisher, his command of a wide range of issues, his standing within the party or his financial support. But she has an edgy, upstart appeal that suits at least some in the current political atmosphere.
Jennifer Brunner is a pot stirrer. She brings energy and imagination to whatever she tackles.
One sequence typifies her style: When most elections officials around the state were exhausted after a period of turmoil and changes in voting equipment, she pushed for a study of the high-tech voting machines. That study concluded the computers can’t be trusted. She wanted to move away from them quickly. Many of Ohio’s local boards of elections stuck with them anyway. So she ruled that counties must offer voters a low-tech option, too.
She’s been involved in more controversies than can be counted, partly because that’s the nature of the secretary of state’s job these days. Most typically, she has a good case for what she does. That’s true of her recent decision to require all counties to challenge all voters who want to switch parties in the primary. (The law is murky, but there’s something to be said for statewide consistency.)
But the decision was made inexcusably close to the primary.
(This is the only issue on which Mr. Fisher criticizes her performance as secretary. He objects to both the timing and the decision itself.)
Ms. Brunner’s decision to run for the Senate is typical of her go-for-it style. The decision distressed Democrats who hoped to avoid a primary and who wanted her to keep the secretary’s job for the party. The secretary has a crucial seat on the board that draws state legislative districts after the national Census, which is occurring this year.
In the campaign, she’s been making charges that don’t stick, complaining, for instance, that Mr. Fisher “quit” his job as economic development director for reasons having to do with campaign contributions. Not true.
These sorts of attacks are fairly common for someone who’s running behind in the polls and who’s short on money. But they’re not confidence-inducing.
Philosophically, Secretary Brunner, at a certain point, seemed to be trying to get to Lt. Gov. Fisher’s left, highlighting her support for gay marriage, for example. But in a meeting with the Dayton Daily News editorial board, both candidates played down their issue differences.
(Both support the recently enacted health care law. Both would have liked it better with a “public option” — an insurance plan offered by the government. And she would like to consider extending Medicare to everyone.)
Secretary Brunner might be a more interesting senator. But she also could tick off a lot of people in ways that would undercut her effectiveness. She hasn’t served in a legislative body or in an executive office that needs to get legislation through a legislative body.
Which of the two would be the stronger candidate is not clear: the smoother, more credentialed one (to run against the smooth, well-credentialed Republican, Rob Portman), or the rough-edged upstart in what might be a good year for upstarts. What’s clear is that Lee Fisher is more ready for prime time.
(Letters the candidates submitted in their support are here.)
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
TweetEllen Belcher: River’s power hasn’t been tapped
Do all good things have to end, especially if they’re getting better?
On Thursday, April 15, the University of Dayton held another River Summit, a confab about leveraging the Great Miami River. Having gone to the previous two, I can attest that the growing number of attendees — upward of 200 this year — aren’t burnt out.
Quite the opposite. They’re still pumped, but they’re wrestling with what’s next.
If the event is ever going to rise above just being a morning briefing where people learn about the impressive, independent things that are popping up on the Great Miami from Troy to Dayton to Hamilton, the crowd needs to get organized.
Besides the participants’ reluctance to commit to another meeting, or to creating yet another regional something or other, there’s this complication:
Projects from amphitheaters and parks, to restaurants and liveries, to kayak races and canoe floats are happening without a strategic plan. Why mess with success?
Last year, the organizers, without asking anyone’s permission or calling a vote, decided to dub the 98-mile swath of the Great Miami River from Sidney to Fairfield as Ohio’s “Great Corridor.”
They argued that the soon-to-be-finished 100 miles of bike paths on the riverbanks, the downtowns along the way, and the existing community events and festivals add up to something bigger than the individual parts.
But the only people who know about that self-proclaimed designation and the things to do in the dozen river towns on this stretch are those who went to last year’s meeting.
No one is connecting the dots — not in the public’s mind, not even in the minds of the public officials and government employees whose job it is to know these things. And if no one’s telling the story, it’s hard to pick up momentum.
The University of Dayton deserves immense credit for bringing so many people and groups together. Its Rivers Institute has used a leadership vacuum as an opportunity to challenge its students to organize the grown-ups.
Its so-called “river stewards” — undergraduate students who spend three years learning about the river and its potential as an economic development asset, a recreational resource and more — have seen firsthand just how much energy it takes and how fun it can be to herd a community’s cats.
At this year’s summit, eight graduating seniors in the river steward program stole the show. They spoke about the science they learned. They talked about the transformative experience of getting out on the river. They preached about the Dayton region’s amenities. And they said we’re foolish not to point people to the water.
The students’ experiential learning — with the river as their focal point — had given them something they couldn’t get from textbooks.
Gene Krebs, co-director of Greater Ohio, was the perfect follow to the students.
A former Republican state legislator who is associated with the “smart growth” movement, he said that when workers only have a high school diploma, they go where the jobs are.
“When you have letters after your name,” he said speaking to the students, “companies will go where you (young people) want to live.”
Krebs jabbed at a recent Dayton Daily News headline, “Interstate 75 becomes area’s new Main Street.” He argued that the community better hope that’s not the case.
If it is, Dayton will be “Generica,” he said — precisely when the next generation of workers and entrepreneurs wants cafes, walkable communities, public transit and authentic urban experiences.
The future can’t be highways, he said, because their existence is predicated on lots of cheap gas being sold and taxed at low rates. Gasoline isn’t going to be inexpensive forever.
Krebs also said Ohio has to come up with incentives to reduce the levels and costs of local government if it expects to compete globally. Balkanized, redundant, expensive local governments are holding back regions like Dayton.
As evidence: Ohio’s state tax burden ranks 34th highest in the country, he said. But it’s 9th highest for local governments.
A “river corridor” that succeeds only if everyone along it succeeds — where development isn’t a zero-sum game — looks like a good meeting place.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Ellen Belcher, Rural Communities, Sports and Recreation, Suburban Communities
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Republicans’ dance with with Tea Party hard to watch
2010 ELECTION
If the Republican Party and the Tea Party were on “Dancing with the Stars,” their best dance would be about troubled, secret, unrequited and closeted romance. It would be too awkward for Judge Len.
The Tea Party people don’t like it when you say they are a dance partner of the Republican Party. Last year, after attending the first big Tea Party rally in Dayton, I felt I needed to describe what it was, given that the Tea Party was new. I referred to it as an “anti-Obama” thing, having no idea I was saying something controversial.
But many attendees took issue.
This isn’t about party, they said. We’re mad at the Republicans, too, most specifically, over President George W. Bush’s bank bailout, but also about other aspects of the Bush years.
Tea Party leaders insist they invite Democratic speakers to their dances (and get some acceptances).
OK. But the main organizer locally is a former campaign aide to J. Kenneth Blackwell, the most conservative big-name Republican in Ohio. And the only politician among the speakers at that first rally was perhaps the most conservative elected Republican in Montgomery County, Seth Morgan. And, after all, the event was promoted by likes of anti-Democratic Fox television.
Since then, the Tea Party and the Republicans have fought the new health care law in tight enough unison to please any dance judge.
In this primary season, the candidates coming out of the Tea Party movement are Republicans. Congressman Mike Turner’s opponent, Rene Oberer, is one. Meanwhile, it’s been hard to find a Republican candidate who isn’t eagerly asking the Tea Party to dance.
So the Tea Party must expect to be seen as basically Republican — at least until it decides to enter elections as a Third Party. The case against forming a third party is, of course, that it could hurt the Republicans.
Well, if hurting Republicans is the big no-no, what are people supposed to think? All that having been said, the Tea Party people do have a legitimate gripe about some Republicans using their name. This is where the dance gets intricate.
So Jon Husted’s a Tea Party Republican, huh? That’s the impression you would get from his Web site and from a party mailing that’s gone out in his behalf. Both have a red, white and blue picture of a tea cup at the top, with the label “Tea Party Values.”
One Tea Party leader said that Husted’s opponent in the Republican primary for secretary of state, Sandra O’Brien, might legitimately claim some support of some local Tea Parties. But “Husted has no business doing it. Period. It’s laughable. It’a joke…. (H)e has for the past 10 years been part of the destruction of Ohio’s economy.”
Husted is a regular Republican, conservative to be sure. But he voted for a sales tax increase under Gov. Bob Taft. He has generally presented himself as a problem-solver, not a warrior.
He consciously gives off a very different vibe from, say, Morgan or Ken Blackwell, the party’s nominee for governor in 2006. They are true “movement conservatives.”
Husted is also the leading legislative sponsor of an effort to reform the drawing of political districts so that not as many are absolute locks for one party or another. He says the current system fosters polarization.
Hard to imagine the Tea Party people having a problem with polarization. A reformed system would have fewer Seth Morgans.
Rather than be honored by Husted and the Republicans’ bow to their importance, the Tea Party people are angry. One presented the Husted claim as an act of “war.” The dance goes psuedo-violent.
Another leader, Rob Scott, head of the Dayton Tea Party, said the Husted claim is “not genuine” and “uncalled for.”
Of course Scott is also the spokesman for Morgan. (Talk about ties between the Republicans and the Tea Party!)
Morgan is legitimately touting the Tea Party’s support in his bid for state auditor, over Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost, who has been endorsed by the state party. Scott clearly doesn’t want any confusion about who the Tea Party thinks has “Tea Party Values” in that race.
For Husted, there’s no down side to trying to co-opt the Tea Party in the primary. Apparently he’s also decided there’s no down side in the general election either.
But if there are any moderates left in the Republican Party, and they’re watching this awkward dance, they’d probably rather be watching Pamela Anderson. Maybe even Kate Gosselin.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Jones the better choice for Warren Co. GOP
2010 ELECTION
The Republican contest to choose a state senator to represent Warren County (and eastern Hamilton County) has become something of a family feud.
Sen. Shannon Jones was appointed to the seat in August, following the death of Sen. Bob Schuler. She had done a short stint in the Ohio House, while her opponent for that appointment and in this contest, Michelle Schneider, had formerly been in the Ohio House.
Both women have represented parts of Warren County and were part of their party’s leadership. They have very similar conservative views. They once were friends and even roomed together in Columbus for a time.
You wouldn’t guess that by their campaign messages.
Ms. Schneider has painted her opponent as bought-and-paid-for by energy companies. Ms. Jones has fired back, portraying Ms. Schneider as a tax-and-spender. Neither characterization is fair.
In truth, both are good candidates with strongly conservative voting records and reputations for hard work. Either could do a good job, at least from the perspective of people who share their views. But the high-energy Sen. Jones, seen by some in the party as an up-and-comer, is the best choice.
In her short Senate tenure, Sen. Jones has spent time learning about the tough issues, worked to build relationships on both sides of the aisle and shown a strong work ethic.
She did, in fact, receive $31,000 in contributions traceable to an Akron energy company, but the Ohio Elections Commission found probable cause that Ms. Schneider’s claims that the contributions totaled $160,000 were false.
In response to Sen. Jones’ charges about her support of higher taxes, Ms. Schneider says, yes, she did vote for tax increases during her time in the Ohio House. She adds that she regrets some of those votes, including a temporary 1-cent sales tax increase, half of which became permanent.
But she argues that the big picture is broad tax reform that she credits with improving the state’s business climate. Some of those votes also came as a result of pressure from then-Gov. Bob Taft and Republican leaders during a fiscal crisis of the early 2000s, she says.
To some extent, this primary race was prompted by hard feelings about the way Sen. Jones was picked after Sen. Schuler’s death. She was selected by a committee of senators, though she had served less than two years in the legislature; that ruffled some feathers.
NOTE: Find letters of endorsement for these candidates here.
Before that, Sen. Jones had primarily worked as a political staffer, running former U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine’s Cincinnati office and managing U.S. Rep. Mike Turner’s 2002 primary campaign.
Ms. Schneider, by comparison, had worked in local government, including four years as mayor of Madeira near Cincinnati.
She argues Sen. Jones was only picked for the job for her fundraising prowess. Sen. Jones has a big money lead over Ms. Schneider.
In the Senate, Sen. Jones has paid attention to some of the bigger issues, including health care, energy, foreclosures and the budget.
She says she wants to help get a bipartisan budget planning commission off the ground, in an effort to get in front of a crippling shortfall that’s being projected for the next budget.
There’s not been a lot of bipartisanship being shown in Columbus, so, if she’s sincere, that would be a good thing.
Sen. Jones is the best choice for Warren County Republicans.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Scott Elliott
TweetScott Elliott: Unions missing chance to shape teacher evaluation
If you’re a fan of the way teachers are evaluated in most school districts today, you’re a rare breed.
So far, my informal survey of teachers, school administrators and policy makers has identified exactly zero people who think the process typically works well.
The usual methodology — an annual principal visit or two resulting in a generally benign review of the teacher’s work — has failed to improve instruction or address low performers with any significant success.
If there is, indeed, a consensus that change is needed, Ohio’s superintendents and teachers’ unions ought to be jumping at the chance to build new, better systems. But, so far, a majority of them have taken a pass.
Some local unions complain that the federal Race to the Top program — offering up to $400 million to Ohio — could force teachers to be evaluated solely on test scores. Those scores, they say, are affected by so many factors outside of the classroom that judging teachers entirely by student scores would be unfair.
If that’s what Race to the Top actually required, they might have a reason for concern, but it doesn’t. The federal grant — part of the Obama administration’s stimulus plan — merely requires that “student achievement” be a part of the evaluation process. How big a part is up to the local school district and the union to work out in collective bargaining.
Here’s what’s odd about union resistance to new types of evaluation — a big change is coming anyway because of revisions in state law. Through Race to the Top, unions could help shape new, better evaluation systems and grab some stimulus cash at the same time.
Gov. Ted Strickland’s signature education reforms, approved last year as House Bill 1, include a complete overhaul of teacher certification, which proposes a new process for evaluation of teachers coming into the profession beginning next year.
Not only is the new process built on good ideas, it just so happens that some of those ideas were incubated by none other than teachers’ unions themselves.
The basic framework looks like this: In 2011, new teachers will have to undergo a four-year “residency,” during which they are mentored by an experienced “lead” teacher. The resident teacher can progress through three other license levels: “professional” teacher, “senior professional” teacher and, finally, “lead” teacher.
Already, the law calls for a review — which will include student test performance as a factor — before a teacher can progress to the next certification levels during a seven-year trek toward tenure. The exact nature of the review is still being developed. Questions about the additional duties and responsibilities of higher- level teachers, and the possibility of extra pay, are being worked on, too.
Models for this system can be found in cities like Cincinnati and Toledo, where teacher unions helped invent the peer-review evaluation processes now in place.
Take Cincinnati. Reviews there are done annually and an extensive comprehensive review every five years. The district already has a career ladder with lead teachers reviewing less experienced peers who teach their subjects (as opposed to principals reviewing everyone, regardless of whether their expertise matches the teachers’).
OFT President Sue Taylor, former head of Cincinnati’s union, said data showed this system was more effective at removing underperforming teachers from the classroom than when administrators alone handled the task.
“A number of our locals are engaged in outside-of-the-box activities and we are anxious to move in that direction to bolster House Bill 1,” she said.
The two statewide teacher unions — the Ohio Federation of Teachers and the Ohio Education Association — both are supportive of House Bill 1’s teacher-evaluation reforms. They’ve also backed efforts by local unions to apply for Race to the Top. So it’s odd that many local unions have so far backed away. They should see Race to the Top as an opportunity to embrace and shape reforms that are good for teachers and that are coming one way or the other.
It’s just a bonus that signing on could lead to some federal stimulus money coming their way, too.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Lender can bring down neighborhoods
There are a lot of people today who don’t know the word “redlining.” That’s because the practice was exposed, criticized and made illegal.
In the 1970s and into the ’80s, it was a word that was much in the news. In some places, it was as understood as the phrase “driving while black” is today.
The word was shorthand for a practice by banks and real estate agents whereby they didn’t lend money for mortgages, or try to sell homes, in certain neighborhoods, usually black and/or poor neighborhoods. The offense limited home ownership, and it promoted segregation. And it was discrimination.
On Sunday, April 11, the Dayton Daily News published stories about an analysis of a half-million Ohio home loan applications. Staff writer Ken McCall did both shoe-leather and computer-assisted reporting to determine who is getting home loans and who is not, based on data that banks are required to submit to federal regulators.
The findings: Blacks are much more likely to be denied home loans than whites, and that finding is true even after accounting for income.
In fact, blacks were refused loans at a rate more than 10 percentage points higher than whites at every income level. Often the determining factor was where the home is situated.
Is redlining back?
Even those who have been denied loans said they didn’t believe someone was looking at the race of a applicant and rejecting those from blacks. In most institutions, there would be safeguards against that sort of illegal, repugnant behavior.
The better explanation is that many banking decisions are dictated by rigid formulas or computer programs.
From home loans to credit cards, lenders routinely make decisions that mystify customers. How often have you heard about people who can’t get a loan because they’ve never had debt (so the bank isn’t sure if they’ll make their payments) and others who can’t get credit because they owe too much, though they’ve never missed a payment?
The recent collapse of the credit markets and the attention that’s brought have exposed all sorts of reckless and nonsensical banking policies.
For example, even at the same time that subprime lenders have been targeting poor and minority neighborhoods for high-cost loans in amounts beyond borrowers’ ability to repay them, traditional banks (some of which have subprime affiliates) have driven hard bargains with those who could afford mortgages and refinancings. They blame the neighborhoods borrowers live in or want to buy in.
Even people with good incomes have been denied loans because of foreclosed on or dilapidated properties nearby.
Of course, banks want to know they can get their money back, should a homeowner decide to sell a property. But if their credit policies all but forbid loans in struggling or marginal neighborhoods, those neighborhoods might never rebound. Credit drives investment.
Appraisals play a big role, too, in determining what level of credit is available. There’s no question that, nationally, banks have, in the past, accepted ridiculously inflated appraisals for properties in well-off neighborhoods. But when it came to poor neighborhoods, they were more demanding about proof of a property’s worth.
That practice opened the floodgates to subprime scoundrels who were all too happy to overstate the worth of properties in low-income neighborhoods, which resulted in literally millions of foreclosures.
Now homeowners who have stayed put through all of this are being punished because abandoned houses are driving down the worth of their properties. If they want to get a new roof or windows, they can’t get a home equity loan; if they want to sell, buyers can’t get loans.
The indisputable point is that lenders can determine whether whole neighborhoods live or die. Bankers are not setting out to bring them down, but the unintended consequences of their policies can still ensure that the poor stay poor or get poorer.
Congress is trying to wrestle with how much to regulate lenders and how to make sure they aren’t allowed to run amok again. The influence they have over the viability of communities and cities has to be part of that discussion.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Predatory lending
TweetMartin Gottlieb: What to do if the folks next door vote wrong?
The next thing that happens in this country’s ongoing political disintegration — movement away from oneness — is that people start deciding what state they want to live in according to politics. Or, at least, according to the juncture of politics and culture.
We already see people picking communities -— if not states — by politics partly. Think Yellow Springs, the charming liberal bastion whose loss of lefty Antioch College hasn’t really changed the flavor much.
Or take Warren County. It isn’t precisely politics that draws people to such “ex-urbs,” the bedroom communities far from urban downtowns. But the fact is that places like it — including Delaware County, north of Columbus — are hugely Republican. John McCain beat Barack Obama in Warren County by well over 2-1. And that was the worst Republican year in a long time.
As these places grow, the central metropolitan counties, by contrast, become more Democratic. Franklin County — automatically Republican for so long — is suddenly Democratic. And Hamilton County is moving that way.
Montgomery County used to swing back and forth between the parties. Now it has gone Democratic five presidential elections in a row, if not by much.
So, apparently the people who like the wide-open spaces and the new communities are politically different from those who like to be in or near a city.
In 2008, Oakwood — that famously Republican bastion a stone’s throw from downtown Dayton — seemed to have more Obama than McCain signs.
Besides the geographical divisions, we see a lot people picking their media outlets according to politics. What’s next? Phone directories made up of good liberal — or conservative — businesses with which to deal?
Listen to the hyper-partisans. There’s a level of personal hatred that sounds like war. I once wrote that I often hear liberals portrayed as dishonest, lavishly-funded, arrogant, self-serving people who hate the American people and their values and hate the country, and are cutthroats in pursuing their goals. One e-mail I got said, “You left out hypocritical.”
One has to wonder what level of hatred is left over for characterizing, say, foreign enemies.
We see the country’s failure to land the Olympics celebrated by a political faction (the one that claims to be more patriotic) because the city in question was Chicago. In a time when hate speech about race and ethnicity is largely shunned, the venom is funneled into politics.
That a few violent acts happen after something like the health care vote is not surprising. What’s surprising is how little violence there has been so far.
So how long will it be before the people pick their states on politics? Then how long before we start seeing secessionist movements because the states have less in common?
After the 2004 presidential election, a few people on the left — noting the big swaths of blue across the top of the electoral map — started talking about joining up with Canada. It was mainly a joke. But not entirely. It was, with some, more like an instinctive response that collapsed upon thought.
More recently, the governor of Texas felt obliged to tell people in that state who flirt with secession that he hears them.
Neither of those phenomena was big. But both were pretty new; I hadn’t heard about anything like them in decades.
Then there was the Virginia flap. The governor issued a proclamation about celebrating the Confederacy, the Southern side in the Civil War. He didn’t mention that the war was largely about slavery and that the South was on the wrong side of that issue. Then he apologized.
Just guessing here, but the original proclamation seemed not a meaningless slip-up, but a reflection of something in the air these days: the bitter reaction in some quarters to “big government.” Some southerners hung on for generations to the notion that big government was what the Civil War was all about.
The Civil War — along with the century that followed it — is the first subject that comes to mind when one thinks about times when the divisions between Americans were more intense than now. “Yankee” may have been even a dirtier word than “liberal.” And there were certainly worse words in common use.
Instead of a civil war, we now have a cold war. The last one of those never became a real war because one side collapsed.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
TweetEditorial: Trotwood’s levy a good investment
2010 ELECTION
At first glance, Trotwood schools might not seem to have a very good case for their 7.5-mill additional levy on the May 4 ballot.
The community has been hammered by the recession and especially the foreclosure crisis. The levy is large. It will cost the owner of a $100,000 home $229 a year, raising $1.8 million annually for the district’s $41 million operating budget.
Voters soundly defeated two large levy requests from the district last year, including an identical issue in November.
Meanwhile, the district’s finances are not yet desperate. While expenses will outpace revenue starting next year, Trotwood’s projections show it could live off its reserve funds until 2013. The district also paid employees a 3 percent raise this school year, a nice bump at a time when many other employers have cut pay, frozen wages or given more modest increases.
But there is more to the story.
Trotwood’s stable finances are partly the result of aggressive moves, including tough cuts. Since 2002, the district has cut $5 million, or about 12 percent, from its operating budget. And while the employees are getting a healthy raise, their latest contract switched them over to a much higher $4,000 deductible for health insurance, with the district’s contribution toward insurance shrinking each year. The net effect is higher insurance costs for the employees.
The fact that Trotwood has not asked voters for new operating money since 1996 is also evidence that it has managed funds well. Very few districts can go that long without asking for a levy.
The district’s revenue has been badly hurt in the past two years. The foreclosure spike has caused tax collections for schools to plummet dramatically to 87 percent of the amount due, down from 98 percent in 2007.
At the same time, academic performance has actually improved, with the district moving from the lowest state ranking of “academic emergency” up two rungs to “continuous improvement.” That’s a good sign.
Perhaps the district would have been politically smarter to come back with a smaller levy this time. But Trotwood’s goal is to get beyond a patchwork solution. This levy should allow the district to establish long-term financial stability. Officials say they would be in the black through 2018 if the levy passes.
This a big chance for Trotwood voters to move their district ahead and perhaps set the stage for it to achieve long-term academic respectability. Rexann Wagner, a 19-year administrator with a reputation as the district’s best problem-solver, takes over as superintendent this summer.
The district’s school construction program (paid for by construction-only bonds approved by voters in 2002), is complete, giving the district state-of-the-art facilities.
A big levy is tough to swallow, but the community’s future is its kids.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Northmont deserves help with fiscal crisis
2010 ELECTION
Northmont schools are facing a tough financial road the next two years.
The district is asking voters to replace a 9-mill levy on May 4. Because of the vagaries of Ohio’s property tax laws, a previously approved levy that is expiring has been gradually rolled back to a lower level. If this request is approved, it will go back up to 9 mills, resulting in $130 in new taxes for the owner of a $100,000 home.
But the sacrifice does not end there.
School officials say even with the levy replacement, they face a deficit in 2011, which means an additional levy can be expected next year. The district then will likely be on the ballot next year for a bond issue for the local share of the cost to build new schools.
The state would pick up about half the tab of the district-wide construction project, provided the Ohio School Facilities Commission doesn’t run out of matching funds. School officials are worried that they have to get moving, lest they lose out. To make it easier on voters, officials are considering “segmenting” the project, which would allow smaller bond issues for portions of the project over time.
In 2012, Northmont will be on the ballot again for a renewal levy. The three operating levies in three years must pass for the district to avoid a fiscal crisis. In anticipation, Northmont has begun a series of cost-cutting steps.
The district’s big move was the painful decision to close Phillipsburg Elementary School last year, resulting in savings of $800,000 per year. It also cut $2 million from its $52 million budget last year. Another $2 million will be cut this year by reducing working hours for some employees, curtailing purchases of textbooks and technology, and a salary freeze for administrators.
Unionized workers, on the other hand, are getting healthy raises. Their contracts call for teachers to get a 2.95 percent pay hike and 4 percent for support staff. Superintendent Doug Lantz said those raises were negotiated before the recession began. Talks about potential cuts in medical benefits as a way to reduce costs as a cost saver are underway, but asking for a tax increase is made tougher when school district employees continue to get raises at a time when many voters have had their pay frozen, taken cuts or even lost their jobs.
For voters, lots of tough decisions lie ahead about what kind of district they expect and how much they are willing to pay for it. The district has a quality academic program, ranking among a small group of districts to receive Ohio’s highest report card ranking of “excellent with distinction.” That’s something for the community to be proud of.
This levy is the easiest choice among the difficult decisions ahead. The replacement levy doesn’t come with an unreasonable cost, and it will keep a fine academic program largely intact.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetGuest column: 3 things Ohio needs to do to win money for schools
This commentary is written by Terry Ryan, vice president for Ohio programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Ohio’s first-round loss in the Race to the Top federal education sweepstakes has resulted in angst and finger-pointing.
Some blame the teachers’ unions and school districts that didn’t endorse the state’s application. (Only 51 percent of Ohio’s 614 districts signed on.) Others point to the lack of legislative action showing bipartisan support for reform.
Yet, others note that the state’s application wasn’t all that reform-minded to begin with, especially when it came to supporting innovations in measuring teacher effectiveness, using charter schools and placing great educators in the state’s neediest schools.
There is truth in all these criticisms and, taken together, they explain why Ohio lost out. The question now becomes, what can Ohio do better in round two?
Here are three issues to tackle:
Get more buy-in from districts and the teachers’ unions
Gov. Ted Strickland has focused on this weakness of Ohio’s application, using a mixture of cajoling and warning. He told the Columbus Dispatch, “I think there needs to be an explanation from the systems that choose not to do it. … I think they owe their tax-paying constituents in those districts an explanation as to why they wouldn’t choose to participate, quite frankly.”
The governor may not like what he hears back. In January, the president of the Dayton Education Association explained the union’s refusal to participate thusly, “…Now, we see the teachers as being attacked for questioning a federal program that is very vague, offers little that is new and simply provides more high-stakes testing.” Such resistance will not be easily overcome, but it must be.
Show bipartisan support for the state’s application
This will certainly boost Ohio’s odds. Tennessee, which, along with Delaware, won Race to the Top funding in the first round, included in its application a letter of support from all seven Democratic and Republican candidates for governor. Based on recent polls, Strickland is an even bet for re-election in November, and similar odds apply to which party will control the Ohio House of Representatives. To make credible promises about the direction of Ohio’s education reform efforts demands bipartisan support.
The one area in Ohio’s first application that was supported by both Democrats and Republicans — the state’s commitment to embracing the “common core” academic standards — was by far the state’s highest-rated portion of its proposal. This is not a coincidence.
Improve the overall quality of Ohio’s proposal This is the most important thing to get right. Too much of the conversation around Race to the Top has been about getting the money, when the real issue is launching sustainable reforms that can make a difference in the lives of children.
The reviewers of Ohio’s application acknowledged the state’s educational gains during the last decade, but they singled out our persistent achievement gaps between rich and poor, whites and minorities. One reviewer wrote, “While the state is making overall gains showing progress, those within subgroups are not indicating the same. The application states that these achievement gaps are ‘unacceptable,’ but doesn’t sufficiently explain the connections between the data and actions that have contributed to those outcomes.”
The states that did better than Ohio on this front offered a new definition of “highly effective” teacher. No longer will seniority and credentials be the prime measure of teacher quality. Tennessee committed itself to having at least half of teacher evaluations based on student achievement measures.
Further, dealing with persistently failing schools — Ohio has identified 69 of these — means committing to closing some schools and forcing serious changes in others. President Barack Obama made clear by his strong support for the Rhode Island school board that fired all of the teachers in a long-suffering high school that he expects states to remove educators who aren’t getting the job done.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a gathering of school reformers in Washington that Race to the Top represents “a once in a lifetime opportunity” to move education reform in America. This is true. But for Ohio to take advantage of this opportunity requires new ways of doing things.
Tennessee and Delaware have risen to the challenge. Can the Buckeye State?
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment |
TweetEditorial: Anderson is better Greene County pick
2010 ELECTION
Virgil Vaduva has some ideas that are beyond the fringe. As pertinent, he’s running for the wrong office.
He’s challenging Alan Anderson in the Republican primary for Greene County commissioner.
However, his complaints, he said, are not with Mr. Anderson, but with Commissioners Marilyn Reid and Rick Perales. He suggests they have a special relationship with the Dayton Development Coalition that results in their campaigns benefitting, but he can’t explain what he means.
Mr. Vaduva’s views, which he characterizes as more Libertarian than Republican, are most intense about national and state politics. He says taxes are a “violent means” of taking people’s property.
The immigrant from Romania says he has been involved with some Tea Party activists and that he helped start the Xenia Liberty Group.
Specifically, he complains that property taxes in Greene County are too high, though the county commission gets little in the way of property tax proceeds; most of that tax money goes to schools. In an interview with the Dayton Daily News, it wasn’t clear whether Mr. Vaduva understands that.
Considering the issues he’s hottest about, you’d think a legislative office or even a school board seat would fit the Xenia resident who works in information technology better.
He also criticizes the Greene County Children’s Services Board as an example of a government agency that spends too much employing people as opposed to providing direct services. That characterization is bewildering because, of course, the bulk of that agency’s budget is going to go toward people — those who investigate abuse complaints, those who monitor children in foster care, those who screen and recruit foster parents.
Though he’s pleasant, Mr. Vaduva is the wrong person for this important job.
Mr. Anderson is completing his first four-year term. He is earnest, but unlikely to ever grow into the most knowledgeable commissioner. Nonetheless, he has carved out some interests.
For instance, he’s especially focused on the fact that much of Greene County — he says half of the county’s land mass — doesn’t have fast, reliable Internet service and is instead dependent on dial-up.
That’s horribly frustrating for those trying to work at home, for children trying to do school work and for anyone who wants to be part of the 21st century.
Whether Mr. Anderson is bringing together the right people or has found the solution isn’t clear. But he is paying attention to a vexing problem.
Mr. Anderson came into office after he knocked off Marilyn Reid in the primary four years ago. Ms. Reid had long been involved in the Greene County Republican Party and also represented the area in the legislature, though not without controversy. She has a long line of critics for her style and on substance; Mr. Anderson was seen as a more go-along-get-along kind of person.
With a term under his belt, no one would suggest he is going to be the person who leads any bold transformation of Greene County’s ways of doing business, and he isn’t politically courageous.
(Though he should have been defending the Dayton Development Coalition and what it does for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and especially for Greene County, Mr. Anderson was on the side of whacking the money the coalition gets to advocate for the region.)
Mr. Vaduva, who has never attended a county commission meeting, isn’t interested in the work of county government. Sticking with Mr. Anderson is the better choice.
To read two other views on this race, click here.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Miami Valley Politics
TweetEditorial: Columbus needs ‘yes’ on casino issue
2010 ELECTION
Do you get the feeling that our grandchildren’s grandchildren are going to be voting about gambling? Yet again, there’s a casino question on the ballot.
This time the issue is not whether to allow slot machines and blackjack, but precisely where games will be permitted in Columbus.
Issue 2 on the May 4 primary would allow a casino to be built on the West Side, near where I-270 and I-70 cross. If voters defeat Issue 2, Penn National Gaming instead will build a casino in the Arena District on the north side of downtown, not far from Nationwide Insurance’s headquarters.
How did we get to this place?
Last year voters approved one casino in each of four cities: Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Columbus. They did so via a constitutional amendment that specified precisely at what address the casinos would be built. Business interests in Columbus campaigned vigorously against the measure.
But voters statewide OK’d the idea, though Franklin County voters — all of central Ohio, actually — rejected the amendment.
The result meant Columbus was going to get a casino downtown whether it wanted it or not. People in Dayton and everywhere else in the state were picking the location for that city in addition to signing off on casinos generally.
Since the election, Columbus big-wigs and Penn National have buried the hatchet and identified a different site. But the casino can’t be built there unless there’s another vote and the people of the state agree that the casino can move.
(Yes, this is absolutely a ludicrous process.)
The new site is a former Delphi Corp. auto parts plant. It’s in a deteriorating neighborhood and the local businesses and residents are welcoming the project, which will likely cost well over the $400 million that was promised for the much smaller plot in downtown.
Columbus is set to annex the 123-acre site, and Franklin Twp., where the parcel is now, would share $8 million in estimated tax revenue with Columbus.
Penn says that it’s in a hurry, and if this amendment doesn’t pass, it will be back at the Arena District location and open for business in 2012.
There is no organized opposition to Issue 2, though the Ohio Roundtable, a conservative group that is adamantly opposed to gambling, is objecting to the site change. Among its criticisms, it says business groups are getting preferential treatment through what amounts to a do-over.
It’s a fair point. But here’s the better one: If the people of Columbus have come together and decided they’ll suck it up and take a casino they didn’t want in the first place — but at another spot — then the people of Dayton and Cambridge and Sandusky shouldn’t really have veto over that.
This newspaper opposed allowing casinos, but the voters disagreed. If Columbus is going to have to accept a casino, at least let it be in a neighborhood that wants the project.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetGuest column: Constitution not a chew toy for casinos
2010 ELECTION
This commentary was written by David Zanotti is CEO of the Ohio Roundtable, a conservative think tank.
It took casino consultants 22 years of defeats, and more than $100 million in wasted campaign spending, to figure out that the way to win in Ohio was to cut the number of players at the ballot box.
Casino gambling passed in Ohio because the amendment making it legal was placed on the ballot in 2009, an election off-year, where voter turnout was fractional.
Now the casino owners, with the help of the General Assembly, are placing a constitutional amendment on the May primary election ballot where turnout will be even smaller.
The casino “big dogs” got themselves into a jam in Central Ohio. The people there don’t want a casino. A handful of well-connected people there don’t want the casino near their business development — the Arena District in downtown Columbus — either. So, Penn National agreed to move the casino to “the other side of town” and a much larger facility.
Only problem is that the constitutional amendment Penn National wrote in 2009 prohibits the move. So now, Penn National is using a primary election vote to erase their mess-up and move their bigger casino into somebody else’s neighborhood.
The state constitution and the ballot box are now part of Penn National’s business plan. Even sadder, Penn has figured out that to expand its empire, all it has to do is place an amendment in a primary election when the majority of Ohio voters does not vote because they have no reason to vote.
Primary elections determine candidates for Ohio’s two anemic “major” political parties. The majority of Ohio voters are not Democrats or Republicans, but registered as “nonaligned” or independent voters. They can vote for issues on a primary election day, but if they don’t know an issue is on the ballot, there is no reason for them to go to the polls.
This is why you haven’t heard a word about Ohio Issue 2 this spring — even though early voting on the measure has already begun. The casino industry is happy to leave the majority of Ohio’s independent voters out of the decision-making process — even on their constitution.
What makes this really sad is we are not talking about a vote to change the zoning on the local corner property. This is the constitution being used like a chew toy by the biggest dog at the Statehouse. This document was supposed to be the covenant of “we the people,” creating the highest law in the state.
Now it is the convenient toy of a monopoly industry that always sets the odds in its favor.
The casino owners have painted Ohio into a dangerous corner. The General Assembly should forward a simple proposal to the voters to fix this mess.
Any amendments to the state constitution should only appear on the November ballot in a major election (even numbered) year. This is the best way to insure true majorities of Ohioans are included in the debate about constitutional changes.
If this change does not happen quickly, the casino industry will keep using the Ohio Constitution like an erasable white board. They will be back on the ballot over and over again to change the rules on casino gambling to their liking.
Legalizing casinos in Ohio will eventually prove to be a disappointment. Casinos never match their economic promise and leave a host of ruined lives in their wake.
Letting the casino industry use the constitutional amendment process on the cheap is an embarrassing insult to the rule of law.
A “no” vote on Issue 2 on May 4 will send a message to the Ohio General Assembly to re-think its role as an easy facilitator to the casino owners. We encourage all voters, especially those independents not aligned with either political party, to go to the polls and vote “no” on Issue 2.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Guest Columns, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetKevin Riley: Changes to March Madness could be good for Dayton
College basketball enjoyed its big finale last week. The annual “March Madness” has never been more popular, and the folks in charge of college basketball are looking to make it even more so.
The NCAA’s plan could be a good thing for the Dayton community, its basketball fans and our local universities. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a community where the changes could have a bigger positive impact than in Dayton — where so much of our community psyche is affected by basketball and our universities.
The proposal hasn’t been approved, but it looks like a done deal. With television rights to the annual tournament worth billions, the NCAA wouldn’t be messing with anything it’s not serious about.
Without getting into all the details, it comes down to this: the NCAA wants to put 96 teams in the tournament — 31 more than now.
With that number, the University of Dayton would likely make the “big dance” every season. (On paper, I think you could prove they would have been in the past three seasons, for sure.)
Wright State’s opportunity would dramatically improve, and the Raiders certainly would’ve had a strong argument to be one of the 96 this year.
When considering what this could mean for Wright State’s stature and to its many alumni in Dayton, it’s worth considering this:
Butler was the little school that got all the attention for reaching the championship game this year — the big story of the tournament that all the talking heads compared to the movie “Hoosiers.” The New York Times wrote about the school and its historic arena.
And admit it, if you watched the championship game, you were rooting for them against perennial powerhouse Duke. You were crushed when Butler’s last-second, almost game-winning shot just missed.
Well, Butler plays in the same league as Wright State, and the Raiders finished second to them. (I’d also argue Wright State gave them a tougher game during the season than a couple of the teams Butler beat in the NCAA tournament.)
Butler has built its program to be one of the higher-ranked teams in the country, but it started with opportunities in the NCAA tournament. Maybe, if Wright State got the chance, the Raiders could become a similar story.
But under the current system, only one team from their league typically gets a chance in the NCAA tournament.
The Dayton Flyers have enjoyed recent trips to the NCAA tournament, including in 2009 when they upset West Virginia in the first round. (West Virginia was a Final Four team this year.)
UD faltered late in this season and wasn’t invited to the NCAA tournament, although several teams from their league were.
It seems like each year, UD is one of the “bubble” teams — those that don’t know their fate until the last moment.
This year, fans were disappointed, especially when several teams the Flyers beat during their season made it.
(The Flyers brought UD and our community a lot of positive publicity with its run in the less prestigious NIT tournament, which the Flyers won. They beat some big-name schools along the way, including Illinois and North Carolina, on national TV.)
With an expanded tournament, UD would get off the bubble and could be expected to make the NCAA tournament almost every year. That would satisfy rabid Flyer fans, and, perhaps more important, enhance the school’s national reputation — a goal President Daniel Curran puts at the top of his list.
There’s nothing like being on national television. Just ask Butler.
The change might also improve the Flyers’ schedule, which fans love to gripe about. Typically UD has difficulty scheduling bigger-name schools at its arena. They worry about losing there to a “bubble” team — a loss that might haunt them when the tournament field gets picked.
If UD became an annual NCAA tournament team, a trip to the arena could be less risky.
In the sports world, the debate rages about whether the NCAA should expand “March Madness.” Your bracket sheet will be a lot more complicated with 96 teams. And many worry that the tournament will lose its prestige if more teams are allowed in.
But we’d like a little more madness every March in Dayton.
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TweetEditorial: Dayton needs Husted on board for trains
Sen. Jon Husted’s opposition to bringing passenger trains to Ohio is directly at odds with what’s good for Dayton.
He complains about the costs of a passenger rail system from Cleveland to Columbus to Dayton to Cincinnati. He points to both the federal debt and Ohio’s troubled budget.
Those are certainly real problems. But the Kettering Republican is being penny-wise and dollar-foolish.
His main point is that the system won’t be self-supporting. Like every form of transportation — from highways to airports to transit systems — it will need a government subsidy.
But the projected subsidy for the state is only $17 million a year. That was roughly the cost of the new Stewart Street Bridge in Dayton.
The $17 million estimate very well may be low; there are a lot of unknowns. However, that little bit of money wouldn’t rise to the level of public debate if it were inside the state of Ohio’s budget for roads, schools or prisons. It’s .005 of the state’s transportation budget.
For purposes of comparison, the interstate corridors between the affected cities will see about $7 billion in highway projects in the next few years. (That calculation is offered by All Aboard Ohio, a pro-train group.)
As for the actual construction costs, the money would come from the federal government. The $400 million that Ohio has been awarded is part of the stimulus that was a response to the worst recession in modern times. Even those who oppose the Obama administration’s efforts to prime the economy should see the case for including trains.
This country is way behind others in train service. Trains — including freight trains that will benefit from track upgrades — are well-suited to play a role in the modern economy.
Sen. Husted points out that the first generation of 3C trains will be slower than cars for some trips. Also, initially trains will run too infrequently to encourage day trips to, say, Columbus or Cincinnati — a big problem that the Ohio Department of Transportation needs to fix.
Also, legitimate doubts can be raised about how many people will use the trains and how much will have to be spent to improve the tracks so eventually trains can run faster.
But, in a time when Ohio is behind other populous states in the use of trains, when Columbus is one of the largest cities in the country to have no rail service, when our gasoline supplies are dependent on stability in one of the most unstable regions in the world, when consumers want to cut their use of gasoline, and when Ohio cities have been sprawling toward each other, the idea of rejecting the federal money is astounding.
The stakes are higher no place than in Dayton.
The point about the cost of the Stewart Street Bridge comes from Mike Ervin, the local activist who is heading up the effort to revive and redefine downtown Dayton. He is an enthusiastic supporter of the train project, seeing it as “huge for the city and region.”
On board, too, is the Downtown Dayton Partnership. So is the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.
In a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland, the chamber wrote, “As the State of Ohio and the Dayton area continue to successfully transition our economy to support the high growth industries of today and tomorrow, we must look toward innovative infrastructure systems that will support this growth. The Ohio 3C (&D) rail corridor will highlight Ohio as a state that is ‘open for business’ and an attractive location for employees to live and raise a family.”
The chamber, by the way, employs Sen. Husted. He describes his work there as “focused on recruitment, retention, education and training of the local work force.” Hmmm. The chamber needs to send its Jon Husted to lobby Sen. Husted. Sen. Husted says that he’s not the problem for 3C, that he’s not in a leadership position or on the state controlling board, which decides whether to spend the federal money.
But Sen. Husted is a leader of the opponents, some of whom will concede nothing good about this idea.
Moreover, he’s the most visible Daytonian in Columbus. If this project fails to happen in part because Columbus gets the wrong idea about how the leadership of the Dayton area feels, that would be a very special kind of shame.
Dayton is in a special position to benefit from 3C trains, because it’s in the middle of the line, not at one of the ends. It’s closer to two important destinations than are Cincinnati, Columbus or Cleveland.
The 3C is a start that Ohio has to make at some stage. It has risks, but what better time to take that risk than when somebody else is offering up so much start-up money (which, if it doesn’t go to Ohio, will go to somebody else)?
Sen. Husted should put the interests of Dayton before partisan politics.
Permalink | Comments (25) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Transportation
TweetEditorial: Ohio schools could still win stimulus cash
Don’t think of Ohio’s poor performance in the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” competition for hundreds of millions of dollars as a defeat.
In reality, the state is better off losing in the first round. Getting passed over now may help more Ohio school districts get money, including Dayton. And it could be put to more effective use in the long run, provided school leaders get a clue.
What Ohio’s second-round application will need most, if the state hopes to grab as much as $400 million, is much more buy-in from local school districts and teachers’ unions. Far too many of them balked at signing on for the first round, which proved to be a crushing blow.
Ohio was one of 16 finalists for Race to the Top money. A team led by Gov. Ted Strickland and Deborah Delisle, the state school superintendent, went to Washington, D.C., late last month to pitch their case. It didn’t go well.
After a half-hour presentation to judges, Ohio was one of just three states that actually saw its score go down slightly. In the end, the state finished 10th — much closer to the bottom than to the top among the finalists.
Just two states — Delaware and Tennessee — were awarded first-round funding. The other 39 that applied for the grants can try again this summer when $3.4 billion in federal stimulus money will be doled out.
The judges’ comments made it clear that Ohio’s first priority must be to rally more support for its application. That means superintendents and union leaders need to get on board.
In a meeting last week with the Dayton Daily News editorial board, Gov. Strickland was particularly critical of school superintendents, saying they need to step up. “We’ve got to change education and the way we do it in Ohio,” he said. “Some superintendents like the status quo.”
The problem is also local union leadership, a judgment the governor shares. For the first round, only 266 of Ohio’s 614 school districts had letters of support signed by the superintendent, school board president and teachers’ union president.
To be fair, this was a tougher task for a big state like Ohio than it was for smaller states like Delaware and Tennessee. (The two combined have fewer students and school districts than were represented by the 43 percent of Ohio districts that signed on to support the first-round application.)
The grant’s final rules were not available until just before the Christmas holidays, though they had to be approved in early January. That left little time for really exploring the grant’s potential impact on local districts. A staggering number of Ohio districts took a pass, leaving millions in potential funding on the table. There is just no excuse for that.
Union complaints that Race to the Top rules might force teachers to be evaluated on students’ test scores alone were overblown. In fact, both statewide teachers’ unions — the Ohio Education Association and the Ohio Federation of Teachers — supported Race to the Top.
Complaints from some superintendents that the grant’s requirements were too draconian or usurped too much local control were equally overwrought. Local schools need to understand that Race to the Top is their best shot at a financial boost. With the next state budget already facing a huge deficit and the federal stimulus program nearing an end, they should grab the money.
The good news is everybody gets a second chance to do the right thing. School administrators, school board members and union leaders shouldn’t be standing in the way of money that can only help kids.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Promote Judge Hall to higher court
2010 ELECTION
In the May 4 primary, voters across most of the Miami Valley will confront a vacancy on the court that is below the Ohio Supreme Court and above county courts of “common pleas.” Veteran Judge Jim Brogan is retiring after a long and distinguished career, having become the senior appellate judge in the state.
Oddly, no Democrat is seeking the job on the 2nd District Court of Appeals, though Democrats have dominated the court. It’s a tough race to run, involving six counties (Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Clark, Darke and Champaign). Established judges at lower levels this year are apparently content to stay put.
A lot of judicial seats go uncontested, but that’s usually because there’s an incumbent who nobody finds major fault with. In the case of open seats, it’s more rare.
One reason for the lack of Democratic interest in this seat seems to be that Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Michael Hall, a Republican, made his interest known last year. He is respected in the tightly knit judicial community, having been elected administrative judge for the common pleas courts even though most of the other judges are Democrats.
Some might remember that he handled the high-profile case involving Erica Baker, the little Kettering girl who disappeared.
There’s been speculation that the Republican and Democratic parties made a deal: nobody would run against Judge Hall if nobody ran against Democrat Connie Price, who is seeking election to her common pleas seat after being appointed by Gov. Ted Strickland. However, it’s not true. Opponents just didn’t materialize.
Nevertheless, there is a contest for the appellate seat. It’s in the Republican primary. Greene County Chief Magistrate George B. Reynolds is also running. He ran last time, when Democrat Jeffrey Froelich was elected.
Mr. Reynolds has been chief magistrate since 2004. He hears some cases and motions for common pleas judges and writes his conclusions. (A magistrate cannot handle motions, trials or sentencing in felony criminal cases.)
Before becoming a magistrate in 2001, he had a respectable career as, among other things, an attorney for NATO. He’s an Annapolis grad.
Intense about the intricacies of the law, he might be well suited to the appellate bench, which is about interpreting the law and writing opinions, rather than running trials. He’d like to use a spot on the court to push for public defenders for people involved in civil trials — including foreclosures — not just criminal ones.
Finding philosophical differences between judicial candidates who haven’t done appellate work before is not easy. One clue: when asked to name a jurist he admires, Mr. Reynolds named Justice Paul Pfeifer, the liberal Republican on the Ohio Supreme Court.
Judge Hall named the more conservative Chief Justice Tom Moyer. (This was before Chief Moyer died last week.)
Both candidates are in the judicial mainstream. Neither presents himself as at odds with the current appellate court, which has a somewhat liberal reputation, as well as a reputation for competence.
Judge Hall is the more prudent choice. He has developed a fine reputation in a more visible, more responsible position.
This is one primary that isn’t really a primary. It’s the election, because whoever wins will be the new appellate judge.
(Letters of recommendation submitted by the candidates are here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
TweetEditorial: Beagle clearly best Republican in state senate race
2010 ELECTION
Mainstream Republican versus Tea Party Republican.
That’s been a recurring theme in primaries this year. It’s the situation in the 5th Ohio Senate District.
The district includes most of Dayton and extends south and east through Harrison Twp. It also includes Miami County. But, preposterously enough, it doesn’t include the suburban swath between Dayton and Miami County.
The Republicans who drew the maps designating districts decided to secure for themselves the 6th Senate District (a seat now held by Jon Husted), which is based mainly in the south suburbs of Dayton. So they attached the northern suburbs — also good territory for Republicans — to the 6th.
That left the 5th — represented currently by Sen. Fred Strahorn — angling from Dayton northeast to Huber Heights. It then turns back west to pick up all of Miami and part of Darke County.
The 5th is good for Democrats. The map drawers had some hope of Republican success someday if the Democrats split, most likely along racial lines. Hasn’t happened.
This year two Republicans are vying in the May 4 primary to take on low-profile Sen. Strahorn: William Beagle, a former city council member in Tipp City, and William J. (Joe) LeMaster, a pastor in Arcanum, in Darke County.
Mr. Beagle is the clearly superior choice.
He was appointed to the city council when a vacancy occurred, a sign of some standing among those who know who’s active in local affairs. He had been on the library board and the planning board before that. Later he won election to city council.
He has also been president of Tipp-Monroe Community Services, a sort of parks board.
Mr. Beagle has had the useful experience of helping to guide Tipp City through the recession. When he joined the city council, the big issues primarily involved growth. But eventually the concern was shrinking revenue.
The council proposed tax increases twice, but voters said no. One result was that the price of a road project more than doubled, because of the intervening deterioration. That’s a good experience to have been through.
Mr. LeMaster, active in the Tea Party, has no experience in governance.
He says he “never met a tax I liked,” even at the local level. He calls Mike DeWine, George Voinovich and Bob Taft “RINOs” (Republicans in name only), that is, way too liberal.
Though soft-spoken, calm and well-meaning, Mr. LeMaster is in the grip of nonsense distributed by the worst kind of sources.
For example, he says the new health care law has a provision creating some sort of new para-military or pseudo-military force.
Asked where he learned that, he forwarded this newspaper an e-mail from somebody who early on states that in the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama “called for a police state.” Incredible nonsense.
Retired from the Navy, Mr. LeMaster circulates a page labeled “Orders We Will Not Obey,” from a group called Oath Keepers. It says, for example, “We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the union.”
And “We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.”
Such stuff grows out of the paranoia that is eagerly fomented these days. That paranoia is destructive to public and civic life.
Mr. Beagle — grounded on earth, experienced and articulate — is the right choice.
(Letters of support submitted by the two candidates are here.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Defeat in Xenia would mean fire, police cuts
2010 ELECTION
The City of Xenia dodged one bullet last summer when voters passed a key property tax renewal. The good news is that it will help avoid a deficit in 2011.
The bad news is that the recession keeps on firing.
Xenia has been battered by the economic downturn. Residents are struggling and so is the city. It’s not an ideal time to ask for a tax hike, but city officials have shown they have cut spending to the point where voters must make hard choices about the services they’re willing to pay for.
To keep basic services largely as they are, voters will have to approve a 0.5 percent income tax on May 4.
Xenia has high unemployment, and, as a result, income tax revenue is way down. City Manager Jim Percival said he was struck by research showing that Xenia was among the most deeply affected communities both by the closing of GM’s Moraine assembly plant and DHL’s package delivery hub in Wilmington.
A lot of blue-collar workers live in the city, and they have been among the hardest hit in this economic downturn. At the same time that local income tax collections have been falling, Ohio has cut back support for cities. Mr. Percival said the money Xenia gets from the state has dropped 15 percent.
In the past year, the city has responded by cutting nine jobs, from clerical workers to managers, continuing a trend that has resulted in Xenia’s workforce declining by 10 percent during the past decade.
City workers also have made sacrifices. The fire department took a 5 percent pay cut this year, while police and other city workers agreed to forego a raise and suffer job cuts.
Without the proceeds from the proposed hike, the cuts will get worse. The city’s backup plan calls for fewer police officers and firefighters. The fire department cut would result in one of two fire stations being closed several days a week.
Mr. Percival says surveys show Xenia residents do not want to see services cut, especially in the police and fire departments. But he believes the city will have no choice.
It’s hard asking for more money in this environment. But Mr. Percival points out that those most affected by the down economy — the unemployed — don’t pay the city income tax. Neither will retirees and others who don’t earn income. Pensions and Social Security benefits are not taxed.
The choice is pretty straightforward. Voters who want more police on the street and two firehouses in operation should vote yes.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Academic Roll riding on West Carrollton levy
2010 ELECTION
West Carrollton schools have been a quiet success story.
The district has dramatically raised its academic performance since Rusty Clifford took over as superintendent 11 years ago. The district also has established a track record of managing its money efficiently.
On May 4, West Carrollton is asking voters to approve a new 3.25-mill property tax levy, which will cost the owner of a $100,000 home $99 a year, along with a 6.5-mill renewal that adds no additional taxes.
It’s a tough time to ask voters for more money, especially in a city like West Carrollton where residents have been buffeted by the recession and where poverty is rising.
But consider this:
Of the five area districts on the ballot seeking additional levies, West Carrollton is asking for the smallest amount. In fact, its levy is less than half of what any of the others are asking for.
Mr. Clifford says that’s by design. The district is on a three-year cycle of asking for new money. In anticipation of this levy request, the district made $3.3 million in cuts that helped reduce the budget and the size of the levy.
Even so, the district does not scrimp on its academic program. Despite reduced overall spending, it has added new technology, instituted a district-wide literacy push and launched all-day kindergarten.
The intense focus on student learning can be seen in the district’s test scores. A decade ago, West Carrollton was struggling, meeting few state standards (for test scores, graduation rate and attendance). It was ranked in “academic emergency” by the state. Its fortunes have dramatically reversed.
This year, the district is rated “effective” by the state, meeting 20 of 30 standards. The improvement in test scores has come at the same time that the district has faced a steep rise in the number of poor students, who now account for 49 percent of the district’s enrollment. There’s been an especially fast gain in poverty in the past five years, as working-class jobs have dried up.
That’s why West Carrollton was ahead of the game, instituting all-day kindergarten in 2008, well before the legislature passed a law requiring it. The goal was to get all kids — and especially those who are disadvantaged — off to a strong start in a community where not everyone can afford high quality preschool or to stay at home with their young children.
When people are struggling financially, as many in West Carrollton are, it’s not easy to support new levies. But the reason to vote yes on West Carrollton’s is that the district has demonstrated it will put the money to good use.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Moyer brought integrity back to top court
Tom Moyer spent 24 years in a job that can have incredible power and influence.
Yet most people wouldn’t know his name even during one of the election years he was on the ballot, when hundreds of thousands of dollars were being spent to elect him chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.
Such is the nature of judicial elections in Ohio. Obscene amounts of money are raised to elect seemingly anonymous people to a seven-member court that literally has the power of life and death over people charged with crimes and that can — with the swipe of four people’s pens — cost or save businesses and even individuals millions.
Mr. Moyer, who died suddenly Friday, April 2, didn’t aspire to his job because he wanted a public profile. Rather, he first ran for the court in 1986 because the then-chief justice, Democrat Frank Celebrezze, was a political partisan and out of control.
The impression was widespread that Mr. Celebrezze, who died last month, was using the disciplinary system to punish critics, while unions and his favored interests were getting preferential treatment.
When Mr. Moyer, a Republican, was drafted to run, it was an unlikely pairing. Here was a gentlemanly, cerebral court of appeals judge signing up to take on a street fighter. Newspapers’ editorial boards relentlessly lambasted Chief Justice Celebrezze and even Democratic lawyers backed the GOP candidate.
Mr. Moyer won, though it was a big Democratic year. Two years later, Mr. Celebrezze’s brother, who also was on the court, was ousted in another raucous election.
In the two decades since then, Chief Justice Moyer has restored the court’s dignity. It’s all-Republican today, but there’s no aura of the spiteful partisanship that once predominated.
Plenty of people disagree with the justices’ unmistakable conservative bents, but the difference is that the court is widely viewed as having integrity and being an honest broker of the law.
Probably the most liberal or activist decision Chief Moyer made was ultimately switching his vote and ruling that Ohio had not created a constitutional school funding method. It was a decision he did not take likely.
A chief justice has no real special power; he, in the end, has just one vote. But the person in this job can set the tone of the court and its priorities, and he can parlay his influence by creating committees to push for change. Other lawyers can be enlisted to advocate for causes, and a chief can make speeches promoting or objecting to things.
Chief Moyer used his bully pulpit to modernize Ohio’s courts employing technology; he backed using mediators instead of judges as a way to reduce conflict and save litigants money; he insisted on raising standards for judges, pushing for their continuing education; he believed in standardizing policies to rein in shoot-from-the-hip judges.
A critic of judicial elections, Chief Moyer believed that jurists should be appointed and then have to be elected to keep their jobs. This crusade — always controversial with the political parities — was one he was continuing to work on in this, his last year in office. (He couldn’t run for re-election because of the constitutional prohibition against judges being elected after they turn 70.)
The last time Chief Moyer ran, he toyed with the idea of refusing all campaign contributions — as a statement about how corrupt the system had become. But he gave up on the idea because he was persuaded that, notwithstanding his long tenure and accomplishments, he really could lose — political advertising being so necessary to elect judges.
Chief Justice Moyer’s contributions are many, but the most enduring is his example. Future chiefs and justices can’t ever say they don’t have a role model.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Freshman Martin best for 70th Ohio district
2010 ELECTION
There are some unusual doings this year in the contest to represent voters in Beavercreek, Fairborn and Xenia in the Ohio House of Representatives in Columbus. Freshman Rep. Jarrod Martin, of the 70th District, is being challenged in the Republican primary by a candidate who shouldn’t be written off.
Xenia City Council member Bill Miller is not drawing any particular philosophical distinction between himself and the incumbent. He grants that they are the same kind of conservative.
He does complain that his opponent has not initiated legislation on the major problems of the day: jobs and the economy. But freshman members of the minority party in the House are not typically the ones who drive major legislation.
Basically what we have here is a challenger who has long wanted to be in the legislature and was disappointed to lose in a crowded primary in 2008. Mr. Miller also didn’t come in second.
Now he hopes that public anger at incumbents — plus a one-on-one contest — might be enough to pull him in, against a first-term representative who, like most first-termers, is not exactly a household name.
All that is fair enough. But voters lack any compelling reason to change horses, to put a new freshman in and start over on the learning curve that all freshmen face.
The two candidates appear to be of roughly equal ability. They had similar political backgrounds before the 2008 primary. Mr. Martin was a member of the Beavercreek City Council.
Rep. Martin wants to allow local school districts to opt out of the requirement for all-day kindergarten, though he was, in an interview with the Dayton Daily News editorial board, fuzzy about how that would work, as on the details of other subjects.
Neither candidate is brimming over with ideas for dealing with the state’s looming budget crisis, though Rep. Martin suggests looking at sentencing rules, a proposal made by other Republicans last year.
Mr. Miller insists that spending is “out of control,” but offers little to support that, in the face of repeated and steep budget cuts. He does say that $1 million in federal stimulus money is slated for signs labeling various projects as stimulus projects, which he opposes.
Mr. Miller has the support of some local elected officials. He specifically touts the support of the mayors of Beavercreek, Fairborn and Xenia.
Rep. Martin cites a good many more endorsements, which is to be expected.
That there is some support for each reflects a certain tribalism in Greene County Republican politics, a matter of little relevance to voters.
The incumbent hasn’t shown signs of playing a major role in Columbus, that he will stand out as a party leader, or as a facilitator of inventive bipartisan solutions, or as a policy expert in some area. But he is only 30 and has time to develop. He has been a diligent and earnest lawmaker.
The challenger also has not demonstrated that he would be an exceptional choice, though, he, too, would presumably be responsible about the work.
The 70th District has legitimate reason for wondering if it is represented as well as it might be. But, in the choice it faces, it would do best to stick with the young incumbent.
(Letters of endorsement for the two candidates are here.)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Brunner causes own problems on party switchers
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has thrown a monkey wrench into the ongoing May 4 primary.
“Ongoing,” because early voting has already started.
She has issued a directive that any voter who wants to switch from one party to another must sign some paperwork. She says she’s just enforcing the law. In fact, she’s interpreting the law in a certain way. And she was awfully slow in getting her order out; some absentee ballots had already been mailed.
This story actually starts with Ohio’s sorry excuse for a law about voting in primaries.
It confronts an old debate: Should any voter be allowed to vote in any primary?
Some say — lamely — that primaries should be “closed” to non-members of the party, because it’s no business of theirs. Others say that primaries should be “open” because in some places primaries resolve everything, and because nationally the two parties have a duopoly that they can’t mess up no matter what they do. In return for those franchises, they should be required to open up.
Ohio’s law is a compromise. It says you can vote in, say, the Republican primary even if, last time, you voted in the Democratic primary. But you must be willing — if you are challenged — to sign a statement of beliefs in the views of the party you are switching to.
Most people who are confronted with the form sign it. No drama.
Still, the law should be changed. It fosters phony declarations, sometimes from people who just want to vote for a particular individual.
As Secretary Brunner’s commentary below suggests, some people have interpreted the law to say that poll workers may present the form to people who want to switch. Others have interpreted it to say that poll workers must.
Her office says that the recent growth in absentee voting required a new directive about what must be mailed to people who request an absentee ballot: specifically, the party-switching paperwork.
Montgomery, Warren, Greene and Miami counties all say that the Brunner order has caused no problems, that they were on the same wavelength with her all along. But Cuyahoga and Franklin counties have said her order, coming on March 23, with early voting starting on March 27, upset their plans and caused extra work.
In the abstract, the Brunner position has some appeal. Leaving the “challenge” decision up to poll workers makes no sense. Uniformity across the state is obviously desirable.
But her timing is bad. She should, as a matter of principle, get these things out earlier.
Her office says that she was busy with other things — not her Senate race, you understand, but secretary of state things. Not good enough.
The political stakes in this dispute are a little murky. Some say Secretary Brunner is trying to get some attention during a Senate primary campaign in which she has little money. Republicans say that minimizing the number of switches to their party reduces the size of their mailing lists.
(Most of the party switchers this year are going from Democrat to Republican. This may be partly because in 2008, Rush Limbaugh encouraged Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries, to keep the Democratic fight going. Truth is, though, those highly motivated people should already be on the Republican mailing lists.)
At any rate, Secretary Brunner is being widely charged with putting up roadblocks for voters (despite her effort to minimize them in other disputes). The fact that she issued her directive too late for it to be fought adds to suspicions that always surround voting-procedure issues these days. People think she must have an angle. She didn’t handle this right.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetJennifer Brunner: Challenging crossover voters is required by law
(Jennifer Brunner, author of this piece, is Ohio’s secretary of state. She is a candidate in the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat.)
As absentee balloting continues uneventfully in Ohio, counties are discovering that living up to their long-standing duties, required by what many consider to be archaic laws to challenge crossover party voters, involves more of a political outcry than an administrative hassle.
According to news reports, voters of Columbiana County in northeastern Ohio were greeted by headlines in the local news media proclaiming: “County not affected by party switch directive.”
In Hancock County in northwest Ohio, according to published reports, elections officials there say they have always enforced the challenge law.
Even in Cuyahoga County, the state’s largest voting jurisdiction with about 1 million registered voters, the elections director there said in a published report that the county had no problems adjusting quickly.
Many counties are finding little difficulty with a directive that comes from a state law on the books for decades.
This past week, a mini-brouhaha erupted, fueled by accusations of partisanship in a primary election that is, well, set up to help political party organizations nominate their own.
Ohio primary elections are “closed” primaries. Our law requires that voters be challenged if they change political parties. While some interpret the law as leaving the decision to challenge up to individual poll workers, the standard is a “doubt.”
Primaries are vulnerable to shenanigans if not all of the law is read together.
As one election official put it to me on Wednesday, what does “doubt” mean? She said she would rather uniformly enforce the law to eliminate gamesmanship than leave the process to individual voters to determine party ballot access.
Those who are protesting the loudest are also those who tried to get new Republican voters by using an absentee ballot form that enticed would-be party voters with the promise that they could get their ballots for two elections with just one application, a concept not permitted by law but proposed in pending legislation.
Interestingly, when summits were convened after the 2008 presidential election to change Ohio election laws, political party voices were strangely silent about changing the crossover challenge law that is now the subject of controversy.
Until the legislature changes the law, or a court gives me direction that required challenges for party crossover voting are unconstitutional, I must follow the law, even if it is outdated or unpopular.
In Ohio’s “closed” primary system, citizens who want to vote for a particular candidate at the primary must choose that candidate’s political party’s ballot. When they do this, they become affiliated with that political party. If they change parties, they must be challenged. This has been Ohio law since the 1950s.
As secretary of state, I have worked to ensure fair and accessible elections. I believe many Ohio laws should be changed to make “accessible” more achievable. Ohioans continue to await the desired bipartisan cooperation in the Ohio legislature, so desired changes for accessibility become law.
Unless or until the crossover law changes, I must continue to carry out my duties as the law is written and require boards of elections to do the same. With the increasing numbers of Ohioans voting absentee, this directive keeps in-person and absentee voting consistent.
The best way to run a successful election is to follow the law.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Elections, Guest Columns, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEllen Belcher: Us vetting candidates might help you make choices
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me they wanted my job, I wouldn’t need to work.
That doesn’t happen so frequently when elections roll around. Not many people relish the idea of spending hours and hours with politicians.
It’s not so bad. More candidates than you probably think run for office because they want to give back. Sure, there are plenty of people with big egos running for big offices. But there are many, many more who run for city council or school board, knowing they’re committing to late-night meetings, tough decisions and dinners that are fun only if you like hard rolls and iceberg lettuce.
One task we on the editorial page take seriously is making judgments about people who run for office. Maybe that sounds arrogant. But think about it: How many people have time to make it their job to look into the qualifications and backgrounds of the individuals who decide our tax rates, make our laws and even send people to jail for life?
Do you have time to do that?
Voting requires a certain amount of homework if you’re serious about making informed choices. I’ve made decisions about whom not to vote for based on commercials. But I can’t think of a 30-second spot that has sold me on somebody.
Every election season the Dayton Daily News editorial board makes recommendations about selected races and issues. With the May 4 primary coming up, we started running our recommendations Friday; more are coming. We’ll be commenting on 18 races and issues.
Not an election goes by where we don’t get requests asking us to take a stand on a contest or issue because someone is doing something dastardly — at least in the opinion of the caller. But we also get complaints that we should stop telling people how to think.
There are scoundrels out there, and newspapers have a long record of exposing them. We like to think that one way to keep corrupt or inept people out of office is to shine a light on their views, ask them tough questions and dig into their backgrounds.
To those who think we should keep quiet, our response is easy: We offer our recommendations not because we’re trying to rule the world, but because judgments have to be made. Our views are just one source you can turn to.
Whether you’re buying a car or choosing whom to vote for, you invariably consider others’ opinions. If you think those opinions make sense, if you’ve come to trust someone’s thoughts, you’re likely to see that information as helpful. It’s certainly not a threat.
So how do we choose candidates and issues?
There are always more contests and issues than we can investigate. We consider things like the number of people who will be affected and the responsibility associated with the position; whether there’s been controversy about the office; and whether there’s a real contest.
Who decides whom we’ll recommend?
The editorial board includes Kevin Riley, our editor; editorial writers Martin Gottlieb and Scott Elliott and myself.
How do you decide?
We invite all the candidates to a question-and-answer session that can last well over an hour. We ask questions, we watch them interact, we read their resumes, we contact others who know them.
The process isn’t scientific, but you’d be surprised how much you can tell about a person in this setting. Candidates often say they’re grateful for the give-and-take.
Regarding issues and levies: We interview proponents. We check out their claims. If there’s organized opposition, we invite critics to the table, too.
How much do you pay attention to a candidate’s political party?
A person’s political party will tell you something about him or her, but certainly not everything. Plenty of elected officials diverge from their party’s positions on issues. We’ve recommended Republicans whom we didn’t agree with because they were the best qualified; same for Democrats.
Competence, intelligence and experience count for more than party affiliation.
Don’t you just endorse Democrats?
At the state level, we recommended Republican Bob Taft for governor in 1998 and 2002 and Republican George Voinovich in 1990 and 1994. In U.S. Senate races, we recommended Republican Mike De-Wine in 1994, 2000 and 2006; and Voinovich in 1998 and 2004.
At the local level, the Republicans we’ve recommended are way too numerous to even begin to list.
In presidential contests, we have consistently sided with Democrats.
In the end, our votes don’t count any more than yours. But we hope you’ll find our opinions and research helpful and worth your time.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Ellen Belcher
TweetEditorial: Flyers’ win is right good-bye for NIT
Chris Johnson was the perfect Dayton Flyer to hoist the Most Valuable Player trophy Thursday in the wake of a championship victory over North Carolina.
Three years ago, Johnson was a mostly overlooked, skinny senior at Columbus’ Brookhaven High School. University of Dayton Coach Brian Gregory saw in the now quickly maturing sophomore the primary attributes he seeks for his players — athleticism, basketball skills and heart.
With whispers growing louder about Johnson’s professional basketball prospects, he won’t be overlooked anymore. Ironically, the impending demise of the just-conquered National Invitation Tournament means Dayton won’t be overlooked anymore either.
It was fitting that the Flyers should win what was almost certainly the last NIT title. The legendary event, with its showcase championship game at Madison Square Garden, first propelled Dayton basketball to national prominence.
In the 1950s and ’60s, the Flyers were fan favorites for New Yorkers as almost annual contenders for the title at a time when the NIT, not the tournament run by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, was the dominant college basketball championship.
But the NIT is now owned by the NCAA, which later this month will consider a plan to expand its championship basketball tournament. ESPN and other national media are reporting that expansion to a 96-team NCAA tournament, and the demise of the NIT, is a certainty.
The expanded NCAA tournament is a win for Dayton and other local college basketball programs like Wright State and Miami.
As a consistently good, but usually not first-place, team from outside the power conferences, the Flyers are perpetually on the bubble for selection by the NCAA. Too often, including this year, the Flyers have been good enough to make the field, only to be edged out by middling teams from major conferences. That won’t happen with an expanded field.
Perhaps the fantastic run of the past few weeks — during which the Flyers beat good teams from four major conferences — will happen on the big stage next time.
Still, many fans think the NCAA is making a mistake. The 64-team bracket has produced magic since the field was expanded in 1985, propelling the tournament to become a national obsession. The NIT, which evolved into a consolation bracket for those left out of the “Big Dance,” at least offered the excluded teams a real banner to shoot for.
It’s easy to feel a touch of nostalgia for the NIT after witnessing Dayton’s triumph. The team’s seven seniors include five key players — Mickey Perry, London Warren, Rob Lowery, Marcus Johnson and Kurt Huelsman — who together pushed the program to a higher level by playing hard, never giving up and sticking together.
After last year’s NCAA success (defeating now Final Four-bound West Virginia in the first round), hopes for a repeat performance this year didn’t work out. This year’s squad lost too many close games.
But the brand of basketball the seniors brought to Dayton — enthusiastic, relentless and high-flying — re-energized the program.
Watching them celebrate a well-deserved championship was a treat.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Higher Ed, Scott Elliott, Sports and Recreation
TweetEditorial: Without levy, cuts coming to Kettering
2010 ELECTION
Kettering schools face an increasingly tough challenge: How do you afford an academic program that ranks among the area’s best even as the number of poor kids, who invariably need special help, keeps growing?
In an effort to stick with things that have kept achievement high, the district has so far taken off the table painful possibilities for saving money.
It could, for instance, close Moraine Meadows Elementary School, which has just 160 kids, compared to 300 or more at the other elementary schools. That would save the district about $400,000 to $500,000 a year. But doing so would upset a neighborhood school tradition that school leaders believe is a key part of the district’s success.
The school board could also cut things that are not required, such as its successful alternative school, which nurtures kids in danger of dropping out to successful completion of high school. The program, with its excellent 90 percent graduation rate, costs about $200,000 annually.
School leaders have resisted moves like these. Instead, they’ve relied on strategic cuts — such as trimming $7.6 million from an $82 million budget over the past four years. That has included not replacing 57 people and slowing hiring to just a few positions a year.
The district has not been adding many new programs. School officials say those that have been added — such as new International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement classes or programs for children who are learning English as a second language — are crucial to ensuring students of all abilities have challenging work.
But keeping the district’s wide-ranging academic program intact is expensive. The district is on the May 4 ballot asking voters for a 6.9-mill additional levy, which would raise $9.1 million annually and cost the owner of a $100,000 house $211 a year. Without the new money, the district projects a $4.3 million deficit by 2012.
Voters last passed a 4.9-mill additional levy in November, 2007. Kettering is back on the ballot early. School officials pledged in 2007 not to ask for new money again for four years. But, they say, the reality of a deep recession, which has driven down property tax revenues and kept state aid flat, has forced a return after just two and a half years.
Still, this levy is not terribly out of line with the common school district practice of asking for new levies about every three years.
Kettering has, indeed, been hurt by the recession. GM’s assembly plant in Moraine is among the many employers that have cut back or even closed. Poverty in the district has risen fast — 35 percent of Kettering kids are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced lunch, up 12 points from just five years ago.
Despite the increasing poverty, Kettering schools have continued to rank among the best local districts as measured by state tests. That’s an achievement.
If the levy fails, school leaders say they’ll try again in November and that by then, they’ll be considering more drastic cuts.
Kettering voters should want to keep high-quality schools. The district has a strong case that its kids are getting the fine education they deserve.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Democrats have bigger November problems than health care
A tale of three polls, out on the same day, Thursday, April 1, though nobody seems to be fooling around:
• One poll of Ohioans was introduced in the Columbus Dispatch: “President Barack Obama and other Democrats suddenly got a lot healthier in Ohio once the health care bill passed, a new poll shows.… Overall, the Quinnipiac Poll results (out of a university in Connecticut) … give Democrats hope — but nothing close to certainty — that their health care votes won’t result in political disaster.”
Specifically, the poll reported improvement in President Barack Obama’s approval rating, as well as small new leads for Ohio Democratic Senate hopefuls Lee Fisher and Jennifer Brunner against Republican Rob Portman, and a 5-point lead for Gov. Ted Strickland against Republican John Kasich.
And it showed more people supporting the reform plan (43 percent) than before, though still fewer than oppose (50 percent).
• A Gallup Poll is characterized by Gallup as “rais(ing) the possibility that the health care bill had a slightly negative impact on the Democrats’ political fortunes in the short run.”
It shows slightly more people (47 percent) saying they support a Republican for Congress than a Democrat (44 percent), a change in the positions of the parties.
• Another, the lead story in USA Today, shows, “Attitudes are reminiscent of those in 1994 and 2006, when control of Congress switched from one party to the other.” In other words, look out, Democrats. The poll was done by the newspaper and Gallup.
This poll highlights the number of people who are negative about the economy, the direction of the country, the political parties and the politicians generally.
All these polls were taken with the same purpose: figuring out how the passage of the Obama health care plan will affect the November election.
Aren’t you glad we have polls to sort these things out for us? Nothing like hard data. Given the confusion prevailing elsewhere, you have, no doubt, come here for the final word.
The final word: The health care vote will not spell disaster for the Democrats. But disaster may not need health care to make an appearance.
The health care debate divides people along party lines, mainly. True, Republicans have generally opposed it more solidly and fiercely than Democrats have supported it. But there’s movement in those numbers; and the approach of the election will likely harden the partisan divide.
Independent voters — or, anyway, people who call themselves that — have generally been more likely to oppose than favor the law. But, again, there’s movement, and, anyway, history suggests that real swing voters are not the kind of people to vote on the basis of policy issues. That, in fact, is why they swing back and forth between the parties.
At any rate, the Democrats have bigger problems with swing voters than health care.
One is that such voters tend to use midterm elections to clip the wings of a president, to sort of balance off their vote in the presidential election.
Another is the economy. And another is the bitterly partisan atmosphere in Washington, which presumably puts off nonpartisans most. They are most likely to hold it against the majority party (just like the economy and other problems).
Passing health care put the Democrats in a better position than if they had lost on the president’s main initiative. Losing is bad. The success gives rank-and-file Democrats something to believe in, a sense that electing Obama and his supporters made a difference, and that subsequent elections might, too. That could give people reasons to get involved, or at least vote.
There’s never been any doubt that the Republicans will be energized for the campaign. They can’t wait. The doubt has been about the Democrats. The Republicans could go a long way toward relieving that doubt by campaigning for repeal. What clearer message to Democrats that the election matters?
When Obama, invited the Republicans to “go for it” (repeal), he wasn’t playing the statesmanlike, non-partisan role he sometimes likes to assume. Wasn’t the time. He was looking for something to get his people fired up and ready to go — again.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Health Care, Martin Gottlieb, National Politics, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: DeWine wrongheaded on health suit
The new health care law requires that most people buy health insurance if they don’t get it through work.
The law rightly puts much of the burden on government to pay for the insurance if you can’t afford coverage. The law also limits the impact of the requirement by extending Medicaid to more people at lower income levels. And it allows young people to stay on their parents’ insurance to age 26, to avoid imposing a burden on people just starting out. And it tries to spur employers to provide insurance. (Small businesses get tax credits if they offer insurance; larger businesses get penalized if they don’t.)
Still, any individual burden like this should not be imposed lightly. The justification includes these two points:
(1) People who can afford to buy insurance, but refuse to do so, are essentially sponging off everybody else. If they get injured or become seriously ill, they will be taken care of somehow. That reality sends everybody else’s insurance rates up. (Some of the early supporters of a mandate were Republicans who saw getting insurance as a matter of personal responsibility.)
(2) The new law prevents insurance companies from refusing to sell insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, among other new regulations on the insurance companies. To be able to afford these new requirements, the companies need a bigger pool of customers. They particularly need customers who are least likely to get sick: the young adults who are least likely to buy insurance if there’s no mandate.
So those who oppose mandating the purchase of health insurance are undermining the kinds of insurance reforms in the bill that many Republicans support (even as they are saying that people who can afford insurance should be allowed to freeload).
Republican opponents of the health care law are going to court. Mike DeWine, Republican candidate for Ohio attorney general, wants the state to join others whose attorneys general have decided to sue. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, a Democrat seeking re-election, says the suit has no merit.
What Ohio decides to do is largely a symbolic issue at this point, because the suit will go forth one way or another.
The opponents of health care have a constitutional case worth pausing over. (See Mike DeWine’s commentary below.) But it has been convincingly rebutted.
Jack M. Balkin, of Yale Law School:
“The individual mandate, which amends the Internal Revenue Code, is not actually a mandate at all. It is a tax. It gives people a choice: they can buy health insurance or they can pay a tax roughly equal to the cost of health insurance, which is used to subsidize the government’s health care program and families who wish to purchase health insurance.
“What the opponents are really claiming is that it is unconstitutional to make Americans pay taxes.”
Abbe R. Cluck, of Columbia Law School:
“Congress unquestionably has the power to tax for the general welfare and regulate activity that affects interstate commerce, and it should be beyond dispute that health care (as well as the failure to have it) affects the national economy.”
There’s substantial irony in the complaints of the law’s critics. Congress was trying to move toward a system in which all Americans have coverage, just like the citizens of all other advanced democracies. But it rejected the true “big government” approaches to universal health care. It didn’t want to just give everybody insurance and tax people accordingly. It wanted to preserve a role for the marketplace, in part because the current market-based, insurance-through-employment system does work for a lot of people.
When Congress confronted the constraints it faced, there weren’t many options. To get 30 million more people covered without busting the budget required insisting that those who can pay do pay.
Unconstitutional? Hardly.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Health Care, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetMike DeWine: Unconstitutional law must be blocked
(Cedarville’s Mike DeWine, writer of this piece, a Republican, is running for Ohio attorney general.)
The attorneys general of 13 states are right to file lawsuits to block President Barack Obama’s health care law. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray is wrong to refuse to join them.
The legislation is riddled with flaws; it will impose costs we cannot afford; it was jammed down the throats of an unsupportive American people.
The attorney general of Ohio took an oath to support and defend the constitutions of the state of Ohio and the United States. The law is unconstitutional. Defending that oath requires active efforts to block Congress’ infringement upon the rights of citizens.
Ours is a national government of defined and limited powers. It has been a bedrock principle of American law that the only powers that Congress possesses are those outlined in the Constitution. For a law to pass constitutional muster, there must be some provision in the Constitution giving Congress the power to act.
Our Founding Fathers understood that such limitations on the powers of Congress are necessary to protect individual liberties and the independence of state governments.
A core component of the legislation requires all citizens, individually or through your employers, to purchase a health care policy that the government deems appropriate. Failure to comply will subject you to potential penalties, including a fine totaling up to 2.5 percent of household income.
This “individual mandate” represents an unprecedented expansion of federal power at the expense of individual liberties. Never before has the federal government forced citizens to purchase a product or service just for being a citizen.
Proponents of the law claim that the “commerce clause” of the Constitution, which allows Congress “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among several states, and with the Indian tribes,” somehow authorizes this individual mandate. Such an argument stretches the Constitution in ways that our Founding Fathers would have found deeply disturbing.
While the Supreme Court has shown deference to Congress in defining the limitations of the commerce clause, the court has, as a minimum, limited Congress’ commerce powers to matters somehow involving commerce.
Under well-established precedent, Congress may regulate under the commerce clause the channels and instrumentalities of commerce and activities that substantially affect commerce. In the case of the new law, however, Congress is seeking to regulate people who are not involved in commerce at all — but those who choose not to purchase health insurance.
How can a person’s choice to not purchase something be considered commerce?
The Supreme Court in recent years has made clear that there are limits on Congress’ powers under the commerce clause. The court has invalidated a law that sought to regulate gun possession near schools and a law that provided civil remedies for victims of gender-related crimes.
It is sad that we are at this point when lawsuits are necessary to protect our individual liberties and constitutional principles. In the 12 years I spent in the U.S. Senate, I never saw the reconciliation process used to pass such significant social legislation.
The majority of Americans opposed the bill. It didn’t get a single vote from the minority party in the House or the Senate, and, quite simply, it would not have passed under normal legislative channels. Such partisan maneuverings are a blatant disregard for the will of the American people.
Fortunately, when a law that is passed exceeds the power of Congress, there is one final check and balance.
Federal courts are not roving policy-making bodies, and they should not assess the misguided policy judgments of the health care bill. As Marbury v. Madison reminds us, however, courts are duty-bound to say what the law is as set forth in the Constitution:
They must not ignore the checks and balances and limitations on power that our national charter explicitly establishes.
The lawsuit initiated by the 13 state attorneys general is our last, best chance to protect the American people from this unconstitutional legislation. It is time for Attorney General Cordray to show leadership and join with his fellow attorneys general in seeking to block this unconstitutional takeover of our health care system.
If he doesn’t act, I will file suit on my first day in office.
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