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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 > May > 26
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Martin Gottlieb: Can ‘do the right thing’ prevail on redistricting
They say there’s still hope for redistricting reform.
“They” are Ohio legislators in both parties who recognize the indefensible absurdity of letting one party draw all the legislative districts, the current system.
The reformers say change might still happen this year.
For those who’ve been following the issue for half a decade, it’s a little hard to believe. So far, the fact that the case for reform is overwhelmingly strong has not proved important.
Most legislators continue — despite everything — to show little understanding and little interest in the whole issue.
The effort of reformers to get something on the ballot has slipped and slipped again. November is the last hope, because the redistricting process — which will draw districts to be used for the next decade — starts when the current U.S. Census is complete.
To get on the ballot, a measure must be approved by 60 percent of each house of the Legislature. Summer recess is around the corner. The House Democratic leadership is — belatedly — trying to get something passed so that a compromise might be worked out with the Republican Senate.
The Senate has approved a ballot measure pushed by Jon Husted, R-Kettering. Instead of leaving all power in the hands of whichever party holds a majority of certain statewide offices, it would set up a commission on which neither party has a majority. It would require that any new map be approved by a super-majority that includes members of both parties.
The Democratic proposal would go further. It would set up a contest in which the public is invited to submit maps, with entries getting points for, among other things, maximizing (1) the number of districts that are reasonably well balanced between Republicans and Democrats and (2) the number that are compact.
The Democratic proposal — bringing in the public — has the advantage of keeping the parties from colluding. Otherwise, they could agree to divide the state into a bunch of districts that are safe for one party or the other.
One possible compromise would entail using the Democratic contest and giving the commission in the Husted proposal some leeway to chose among the highest-scoring entries.
Absurdly, the Democrats want to exclude congressional elections from reform. (Under current law, congressional districts are handled between the Legislature and the governor, like a regular law. That is, the process is separate from the one involve districts in the state legislature. That would continue.)
There’s no good case for exempting Congress. But party headquarters, labor and some representatives from majority-black districts have had qualms about reform. This resulted in reformers settling for a half a loaf, as a way of getting something done.
A big problem now is simply getting legislators to focus, to learn the issue. Some are under the impression that reformers want to make all districts competitive. Not true. Not even possible.
Take, for example, in all the counties surrounding Montgomery County. The Republican districts there will remain Republican. There’s no way to change that without gerrymandering.
Montgomery County itself, though, is a classic case of where reform would matter. It leans slightly Democratic as a whole but has had three safe Republican House districts and two safer Democratic districts for 20 years.
Look at the district of state Rep. Seth Morgan, of Huber Heights. He gave up his safe Republican seat to run unsuccessfully for state auditor. If reform happens, that oddly shaped district would likely change a lot. It stretches westward across the northern suburbs, takes a left when its well west of Dayton, and goes to the southern reaches of the county. Non-partisans would have no motive to build such a district.
(Interesting to contemplate: Would a more competitive district produce somebody as conservative as Morgan, or would the Republicans look more to the center?)
As that case suggests, a lot of politicians have reason to worry about reform. But figuring out how their interests might be affected is complicated, partly because of term limits. House members are always looking ahead and thinking about Senate and congressional districts. Moreover, for those who want to stay in the House a while, reform would not eliminate the advantages of incumbency.
In that kind of murkiness, the reformers dare to hope that a lot of legislators might actually decide to simply do the right thing. Imagine.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio government, Ohio politics
Editorial: Family ties make county look too cozy
Some of Montgomery County’s elected officials are carrying the whole “family values” thing a little too far.
• Sheriff Phil Plummer should not have three relatives on his own payroll, having already effectively fired another from a contracting job, under pressure. They were all hired before he was sheriff, and he claims no involvement. But, when he was second-in-command, he was the sheriff-in-waiting, sometimes with personnel responsibilities. And his family certainly seemed to see the sheriff’s department as an especially good place to get a job.
• Juvenile Court Judge Tony Capizzi’s wife should be transferred out of his court, where she is a court reporter. Transcripts are important legal documents. Things could get ugly if somehow the relationship between the judge and the court reporter became an issue in a fight over a transcript. His step-daughter also works directly with him. That’s wrong, too.
• Judge Adele Riley, who handles cases in a county court that hears misdemeanors, told her daughter about a job opening, and the daughter ended up working for her and three other judges. Though the daughter is apparently qualified, it’s not a good situation.
• In 2004, Probate Judge Alice O. McCollum hired her son as a temporary file clerk. It wasn’t a big job, but it was an apparent violation of state law. Now he has a job in domestic relations court.
A Dayton Daily News investigation found that 19 county employees are relatives of 13 of the county’s 31 elected officials.
Not all the cases are outrages. Montgomery County is a fairly small town, so to speak, certainly as to the political and legal communities; some legitimate coincidences will happen.
When the clerk of courts took office, his father-in-law was already at work at the job. A second cousin of Prosecutor Mat Heck is an accomplished assistant prosecutor. County Commissioner Debbie Lieberman is certainly not responsible for the fact that her husband, Dennis Lieberman, is on the board of elections. (The former county Democratic chairman is a political appointee because the law requires that.)
But the overall pattern is relatively bad. County (and city) government long ago moved away from the old ways of local government, wherein patronage and favoritism were the norm. The county has tried to project an image of professionalism, and it has done a good job of it for the last quarter century, since scandal and corruption resulted in criminal prosecutions of elected officials.
It can’t allow itself to backslide now, or to be seen as backsliding. It has enough problems.
At a time when the county commission is completely Democratic and Democrats predominate elsewhere, the suspicion that one-party dominance is making the establishment lax will be hard to fight, notwithstanding Republican names among the 13.
Particularly striking is that most of the 13 elected officials with relatives on the payroll are somehow engaged in the judicial — legal — system. Eight are judges. Little that’s going on seems to be illegal. So the problem certainly should not be overstated.
But, of course, the public cannot be assured that everything that’s legal is kosher. The public sees officeholders as having a big role in determining what’s legal. The officeholders are people who make, interpret and enforce the law; and they are seen as having clever lawyers (not to mention actually being lawyers).
The Montgomery County judicial system has long had a good reputation statewide for competence, efficiency and integrity. This investigation shouldn’t endanger that, but it’s still embarrassing.
Montgomery County’s elected officials need to get off their slippery slope and rededicate themselves to the longstanding principles of professionalism and of being above suspicion.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Martin Gottlieb, Montgomery County
