Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
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.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > August > 06
Friday, August 6, 2010
Guest column: Woman’s final wishes ignored in Warren County
This commentary was written by Terry Banker. She lives in Turtlecreek Twp., near the former Warren County Orphans Asylum.
Re the Aug. 1 story, “Old Mary Haven site has county in a bind”: The Warren County commissioners do not own the Mary Haven Home and its 53 acres. They hold the property in trust for the purposes set forth in the 1872 will of Mary Ann Klingling and the enabling legislation allowing for the establishment of an orphanage.
Mary Ann Klingling was not an eccentric. She was a German immigrant and a product of the post-Civil War era, who discriminated and was discriminated against. In the end, she generously gave her fortune for the benefit of children orphaned by the war and the harsh circumstances that followed.
The Warren County Orphans Asylum was to be supported by interest paid by the county at 5 percent per year on the balance of the Klingling funds, which in 1900 was $47,000. A Children’s Home attached to the Orphans Asylum by Warren County was to be supported by tax dollars. Together these two institutions provided a safe haven for hundreds of children, over many decades, under the care of dedicated couples acting as superintendents and matrons.
The Warren County commissioners began violating the purposes of the Klingling will in the 1960s. In 1966, the Orphans Asylum schoolhouse on the property was torn down and the county engineer facilities installed, with no compensation to the trust.
The April 18, 1977, Dayton Daily News reported, “In 1977, Mary Haven said goodbye to its last group of youngsters placed there by the Children’s Services Board. It welcomed a new group — all boys — placed there through the Warren County Juvenile Court system.” Again, no compensation was made to the trust. The county disbanded the orphanage’s board of directors. The county made no accounting, legally required, of the $47,000 Klingling fund.
Abandoned in 1996, the Warren County Orphans Asylum and Children’s Home is a very rare and historically significant building. It has been deemed structurally sound and the county has it insured for more than $1 million. At any time during the last four decades, the commissioners could have petitioned the court to authorize the property for other uses, but they have not.
A sale to the private sector, with the proceeds benefiting needy children, would likely have been allowed.
Instead there has been systematic neglect of the building, lowering its value to the trust. Offers by volunteers to stabilize and mothball the building to Department of Interior standards have been dismissed. The charitable law division of the Ohio attorney general’s office has requested the Warren County prosecutor start the legal proceedings to determine how the trust will be honored and what to do with the building.
I hope that the commissioners will step up to the plate, produce an accounting of their liabilities and move forward to avoid costly litigation. Mary Ann Klingling’s bequest to the children of Warren County should be honored by everyone.
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TweetMartin Gottlieb: Mapmakers can do the right thing; but it’d be a first
With Ohio having failed to reform its district-drawing rules in time for the once-a-decade redrawing in 2011 — because, after all, the reform effort didn’t start until 2005 — not all is lost. Well, not absolutely, completely, 100-percent all.
This might be a technical point, but the people on the existing state Apportionment Board are actual, flesh-and-blood people. They have free will. They can — theoretically — do the right thing.
They never do. Never.
They simply play their partisan roles. The majority party on the board comes up with new maps that serve the party’s interests, and all the board members who belong to that party vote for it. Period.
Near as anybody knows, however, that custom did not originate as a direct order from God to Moses.
And it’s not as if the board members have to promise party loyalty to get on the board. Most are members automatically.
Here’s the background, with apologies if you’ve heard it before:
In Ohio, districts in the state House and Senate are drawn every 10 years, after the federal Census, by a board that includes the governor, secretary of state and state auditor, as well as a representative from each party in the legislature. So control rests with the party that has two of the three statewide offices. All three are up for grabs this year.
That party has enormous leeway. It sets out to design the maximum number of districts that are absolute locks for its candidates, and the minimum number into which it can corral the bulk of the other party’s voters.
Now, just for fun, suppose that one party has a one-vote majority, and that somebody in the majority refuses to play. Here’s something that person could do:
Design a map in which districts aren’t gerrymandered, a map which is fair to both parties and maximizes the number of districts that are “competitive,” that is, might be won by either party. Then put that proposal forth.
Most likely, the minority party on the board would support it, as the best deal it could possibly hope for. That would make a board majority for a good map, and would result in adoption.
Could that happen?
Traditionally, it has been unacceptable in politically sophisticated circles to note that board members have free will. “Get real,” one would be told. Redistricting is for the political marbles.
It’s the most partisan moment in politics. It’s about partisanship and partisanship. You do your duty for the party. Then you look for someplace else to do the free-will thing.
But now more and more Ohioans are learning about the redistricting process that has prevailed behind closed doors. The more you look at it, the worse it looks.
And both candidates for secretary of state are strongly on record for reform. The Republican, Sen. Jon Husted, of Kettering, has pushed reform longer and harder than anybody in the legislature.
He has said that he would use his spot as secretary to try to leverage reform somehow. But he’s been vague about what he would do on the board. He certainly hasn’t committed to the nuclear option described above, or anything remotely like it.
His opponent, Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, of Columbus, took the occasion of the death of a reform compromise this week to issue a challenge to Husted (posted at her website).
She proposes an agreement among the candidates for the three statewide jobs on the board. She says, for example, “There’s no reason we could not insist on bipartisan agreement” before a map is adopted. (Requiring commission support votes from both parties was the heart of Husted’s original proposal.)
And she says we can agree to “an open competition.” (Letting the public enter a contest to see who could draw maps that foster real competition and fairness to both parties, while avoiding gerrymandering, was the heart of the Democratic proposal.)
But she doesn’t go to the point of saying that if she were in the majority, she would nevertheless act alone to come up with a balanced map and offer it.
In the past, such a stance would have been considered political suicide, unless one was planning to switch parties. Even now, it has the candidates nervous.
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