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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 > August
August 2010
Guest column:The real lesson of the statue selection: The will of the people was upheld
This commentary was written by Mark Wagoner, of Toledo, chairman of the National Statuary Collection Committee and a state senator for the 2nd District.
Re the Aug. 30 Dayton Daily News editorial, “Teachable moment about Ohio history has sad lessons”: What should be viewed as a celebration of Ohio history has devolved for some into politics as usual.
The National Statuary Collection Committee was charged with selecting an Ohioan to replace Gov. William Allen in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol.
Given that Ohio lays claim to eight presidents, world-famous inventors, civil-rights leaders, people who have changed the world with might, and those who have changed it with a stroke of a pen, that charge was not easy.
That is why the committee structured a process that allowed for orderly decision-making. Frankly, when the process began, many — including myself — were not sure how it would end. This was not too different than the beginning of any election with many worthy candidates on a ballot.
The committee spent several months holding hearings throughout Ohio. From those efforts, the committee then nominated 93 worthy candidates. That list was then whittled down to the top 10.
From there, the committee did something not done enough these days: It asked for the opinion of Ohioans and allowed Ohioans to have significant input into the final decision.
To be sure, this was not a complex issue of tax policy or education reform, but the selection of a person to stand for Ohio — something every Ohioan has the background and experience to answer.
Members of the committee were also aware that whoever was selected would represent more than 11 million Ohioans, not just the six members of our committee.
Rep. Richard Adams was a strong supporter of both U.S. Rep. Bill McCullough and the Wright brothers. Indeed, Adams invited our committee to Dayton to learn about the Wright brothers. The committee accepted his offer and had a wonderful trip. Adams continued to advocate for the Wright brothers throughout the process.
If the results of the public vote had been different, I question whether the DDN editorials would have urged the committee to follow the popular vote. Indeed, I do not recall any editorials from the Dayton Daily News disagreeing with our decision to hold a public vote. Quite the contrary, the DDN ran its own online poll and encouraged people to vote.
Every election has a result that some are disappointed with. For example, I am sure some Ohioans each election cycle wish that Ohio’s Electoral College would disregard the results of the public vote to instead support their preferred candidate.
But that is the real lesson to be learned by this process. All too often, those in power, or those sitting in editorial boardrooms, trust their judgment more than Ohioans. The current political environment shows us what can happen when that occurs too often.
The real “teachable moment” of this process is that elected officials listened and respected Ohioans’ judgment.
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TweetEditorial: Rivers bring out best in local governments
Even if you are never going to put a paddle in the water, the attention that the region’s rivers are getting is still something to feel good about.
Last week the state designated the Great Miami, Stillwater and Mad rivers as state water trails. Why is that important? What’s different this week than last?
The official designation’s most immediate result is that the rivers will be a recommended place for canoeing, kayaking, hiking and biking. Serious outdoor people take maps and promotional materials seriously. And their numbers are growing, as evidenced by permits being sold for watercraft and the growth in money spent on outdoor equipment.
When they’re looking for places to go, they want to know what awaits them, including where they can park, where they can put their craft in the water and what amenities — towns, restaurants, rest rooms, liveries — are along the hiking and water trails.
In addition, the designation also means that the region will be eligible for grants that it couldn’t previously qualify for.
Why this recognition hasn’t happened before is a mystery.
With 265 miles of rivers running through 11 counties — making the water corridor the largest water trail system in the state — you’d think the notice would have been sought and given before.
But even more significant than the official recognition itself is that the designation is a piece of a broader strategy. Along the stretch of the Great Miami from Sidney to Fairfield, communities are working to simultaneously outdo each other, and also to collaborate, on leveraging the Great Miami River.
Public officials, businesses and individuals are increasingly understanding that the more Troy has going on along its section of the river, the better that is for Dayton and Miamisburg downstream. That’s because people who use the rivers and the trails don’t stand still. They drink beer in one spot, sleep over in another and have lunch at yet another.
The trick is to make sure there’s something happening at lots of stops, so that people are never far from fun. Fun can be somebody else’s bread and butter.
So often creating jobs and new opportunities are seen as a zero-sum game. That is, if one community gets a restaurant or a new business, someone else didn’t. However, people trying to develop the river are starting from a different place. They’re increasingly convinced that one community’s gain is good for everyone. After all, activity begets more activity.
There have been all kinds of efforts and forces to get the Dayton region to see the value of approaching economic development from a regional perspective. Sadly, though, that’s easier said than done when everyone is so hard up for attention, money, new businesses and jobs.
But a regional approach and collaboration are actually occurring in the context of the rivers. Community leaders and mayors from up and down the Great Miami, for example, are eager to meet in downtown Dayton to celebrate the state acknowledging that they all share and are developing a special and marketable natural resource. No one feels upstaged or threatened because everyone has a piece of the action and is counting on all the others to make the length of it appealing.
Rivers are communal things, and they’re bringing out the best in local governments that sense and see economic connectedness on their river banks. Important as they are, successful office parks and bustling interchanges are important for certain kinds of commerce, but they rarely bring out that instinct between competitive jurisdictions.
Chock it up to another one of the powers of water.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Sports and Recreation, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: At risk kids suddenly getting help
No Child Left Behind might not be the most popular federal education law, and it certainly has flaws. But one hallmark forced a culture change that has helped kids who, too often, were being left behind.
Last week’s release of state report cards offered evidence of that, even if the results didn’t show especially eye-popping news on the surface.
By and large, most school districts scored roughly the same as last year. But two well-regarded area districts — Kettering and Lebanon — rebounded impressively from disappointing ratings last year to achieve the top grade of “excellent with distinction.” They got there by working intensely with kids who struggle academically and on the state’s tests.
Some background: Two years ago, Kettering and Lebanon saw their ratings begin to slip because of the No Child Left Behind requirement that students continually make “adequate yearly progress” on standardized tests. The law requires that districts ensure that students in subgroups considered at risk for failure — ethnic minorities and those in special education, for instance — keep making gains.
States get to decide how to “punish” those districts that don’t meet the required progress, and Ohio’s rule was especially tough. Districts that fail to bring up the test scores for three consecutive years are demoted by two rungs on a six-step rating ladder. For Kettering and Lebanon, that meant they went from the equivalent of an “A” to a “C.”
The districts complained, and they had a point. Overall, their students were scoring very high. While problems with certain groups of kids needed to be addressed, the “C” grade created the impression that the districts were failing students across-the-board.
State Rep. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, championed a change in state law that will penalize districts that miss the “adequate yearly progress” benchmark. But if they’re otherwise scoring well, they’ll drop no more than one “grade” beginning next year.
Even if Ohio’s grading scheme was too harsh, No Child Left Behind forced attention on a real problem. Far from being the right-wing attack on public education that its critics portrayed it to be, the law contained good ideas from both the left and the right.
Tracking subgroups was one of the elements that was pushed hard by liberal advocates for poor, minority and disabled children. They hoped that breaking out the data so at-risk students could be followed separately would force districts not to let those children fall through the cracks.
Before No Child Left Behind, many of these students were failing and dropping out, even in high-performing school districts. But that often was impossible to see or prove, because the data on how those kids compared wasn’t broken out.
For Kettering and Lebanon, it was a huge wake-up call to lose their top ratings. Kettering added staff to help students learning English as a second language, among other changes. Lebanon added instruction time, tutoring and teacher training to help Hispanic students.
It’s hard to imagine schools mobilizing on behalf of at-risk kids in this way before the feds required it. Today, schools look at data, they pay attention to all groups of kids, and they’re motivated to keep them all moving ahead.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
TweetKevin Riley: Coalition right to expand focus beyond WPAFB
The Dayton Development Coalition turned heads recently when it acknowledged it was launching its own initiative to keep companies in the Dayton region.
This “retention and expansion” effort, for which the coalition is aggressively raising money, comes in the aftermath of NCR’s departure, but it’s been talked about for years. Some might say “It’s about time” — and they are right.
But there’s something bigger going on here, too.
The coalition is finally asserting itself as the region’s primary economic development group. For some time now, it has had the lead on matters involving Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It, for example, rallied the community and helped win big victories for the region during the Base Realignment and Closure process.
But even as the organization’s reputation has grown because of that effort, and even though the region’s top business leaders have thrown their support behind it, the coalition has been satisfied to mostly focus on Wright-Patterson. Its leaders have been adamantly reluctant to take on other economic development roles.
That has to change. Supporting Wright-Patterson, while absolutely crucial to the Dayton region, is not alone an economic development plan. And while not without its problems and baggage from some blunders, the coalition is the best group to lead economic development initiatives.
To serve in this role, the coalition has to change some things. Specifically, there has been tension for years between the coalition and the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. The chamber is best positioned as an organization to help its small- and medium-sized business members, providing services to them that they struggle to buy (such as health insurance) or consulting with them. It’s also an important advocate and “voice” for small firms, but it really can’t lead economic development and, at the same time, provide members what they want.
The coalition needs the chamber’s buy-in.
Some other issues the coalition must address:
• Its operating style. Privately, other agencies, government officials and business people complain about the coalition’s approach. Routine communication is lacking. The focus on Wright-Patt and the fact that the coalition has hired former military people give it a command-and-control style. Also, the board needs a public official or two.
• Lack of trust. Downtown advocates aren’t convinced that the coalition looks out for the region’s central city. Suburban officials and county officials feel they get shortchanged. Somehow, the coalition has to convince folks that it will be sensitive to their needs while leading the bigger regional effort. (And critics need to understand that the coalition has to work for a greater good.)
The coalition can’t fix everything. For instance, it can’t be expected to solve the region’s historical problems with multiple cities and counties fighting about where companies will locate.
When it announced its recent retention and expansion initiative, not everyone was overjoyed. That’s because the City of Dayton has an “R&E” program, as does the Downtown Dayton Partnership and Montgomery County. So they wanted to know if the coalition is trying to take them over or duplicate their efforts.
But even these potential critics know that they’re focused on their niches, not the region at large. Someone has to be watching the broad landscape. When, for instance, the law firm of WilmerHale looked at bringing jobs to the region, it was shown options, including downtown. It ultimately picked Research Park in Kettering. That was a win for the wider community, even if Kettering got 185 jobs and downtown didn’t.
If the Dayton region is to have a bright economic future, there has to be high-quality leadership to get us there. The Dayton Development Coalition can provide that leadership.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Economy, Kevin Riley, Local Business
TweetEditorial: Teachable moment about Ohio history has sad lessons
The decision by a state legislative committee to put a statue of Thomas Edison — not the Wright brothers — in the U.S. Capitol is not the harshest blow to Dayton since the flood.
After all, just a few months ago, almost nobody knew that states even put statues of their stars in Washington.
Taking the real blows here were reason, factualness and the English language.
The committee put out a press release headlined, “Statuary Committee Recommends the People’s Choice: Thomas Edison for Statuary Hall.”
The people’s choice? This is a reference to the fact that 14,833 of “the people” picked Mr. Edison when all Ohioans were presented with a choice of 10 finalists. The Wright brothers came in second, with 13,815.
Ohio has about 11 million people, counting children, who were allowed to vote. Mr. Edison got little more than one thousandth of one percent of them.
Obviously, the real choice of “the people” was for the committee to do its own work: research the lives of the possible picks and choose one. Offered a chance to participate, the people said “No thanks,” not “Edison.”
Letting people vote was fine. But the committee rightly made clear from the get-go that it would not necessarily be bound by the outcome.
And yet state Rep. Richard Adams, R-Troy, who didn’t let Dayton-area ties prevent him from voting for Mr. Edison, said before the vote, “If you can’t go along with the vote of the people, then perhaps you shouldn’t even have had them vote.”
But if he wasn’t willing to exercise any judgment of his own, then perhaps he shouldn’t have accepted assignment to the committee. The committee made a big to-do about how it was going all over the state and hearing everybody so as to make the best decision. What was that all about? Photo ops?
The strange definition of “people’s choice” was not the week’s only assault on English. Committee Chairman Mark Wagoner said of Mr. Edison, “Not only was he the people’s choice, but his Ohio-grown ingenuity, intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit are worthy traits that….”
“Ohio-grown?” The boy left at 7.
Mr. Edison certainly did get engaged in science at a young age — his teens. If the statue is about where his admirable characteristics come from, maybe Michigan should put him in Washington. To say his traits were “Ohio-grown” is roughly like saying Wilbur Wright’s ingenuity was Indiana-grown. After all, he didn’t leave that state until he was 3.
Sen. Wagoner’s district includes the Edison birthplace. Unlike Rep. Adams, he did right by his district. Then he said what he had to say to justify it.
One might leave the matter at that. But when the statue issue arose, it was widely seen as a “teachable moment,” a fun way to engage young people in Ohio history. (That, by the way, was the best case for the public vote, in which, for the record, the Wrights carried the students.)
But here we have the adults on the committee refusing to learn their history, such as the fairly central fact that some finalists were actually Ohioans and some weren’t.
Then the students got the lesson that if they ever find themselves in a bind and have to explain their way out of it, they shouldn’t worry about what words actually mean. Just make them mean whatever you want.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Local History, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government
TweetEditorial: Controversy over ‘mosque’ built on lies
So how long do you think this slug fest about the “mosque” near Ground Zero can go on?
The politicians have irritated people with their opinions on the issue, for not having an opinion and for fudging or retracting their utterances. All the while, radio and television talk shows have had a field day.
Who knew you could have the same ill-informed discussion so many times.
The truth — that the project isn’t a mosque, that it isn’t literally at Ground Zero, that the couple who are behind it are anything but terrorist-loving people, to cite a few facts — is not setting anybody free.
The plan to build an Islamic cultural center — more akin to a YMCA than a house of worship, though there will be a prayer room — has been on the drawing boards since last year.
But it only became controversial after a blogger and a columnist for the New York Post decided that turning a former Burlington Coat Factory into a “mosque” was an affront to the people who died on Sept. 11.
A religious group’s redevelopment project for a dilapidated building that had been damaged by debris falling from the sky on 9/11 became a bonanza for those who find demonizing others good for their careers.
Does it matter in Dayton or Ohio? Certainly if you’re Muslim it does. But others, too, are banging their heads.
Anyone who believes we’re not at war with Islam, but with terrorists; anyone who treasures religious freedom; anyone who despises shameless stereotyping is appalled by the national conversation that’s been going on.
Then there is also the matter of West Chester’s John Boehner, the leader of the House Republicans who wants to dethrone Nancy Pelosi and be the next speaker of the House. He’s helped make it national Republican orthodoxy to oppose the New York City project.
Feeling compelled to respond to President Barack Obama’s support of the cultural center (which the president quickly and cowardly tempered), Rep. Boehner called the plan “troubling.”
“The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do,” read his statement. “That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding. This is not an issue of law, whether religious freedom or local zoning. This is a basic issue of respect for a tragic moment in our history.”
Rep. Boehner’s district is home to one of Ohio’s largest mosques, which is in West Chester and clearly visible from I-75. Though he’s been invited, he’s never visited, according to Dr. Inayat Malik, the president of the education council at the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati.
Dr. Malik, a Cincinnati urologist, says what he hears critics of the New York Islamic center saying is that Muslims are “not part of the American landscape or that you shouldn’t be.” He’s particularly saddened by the argument that the center shouldn’t be built near Ground Zero “out of respect for the victims.”
Sept. 11th made victims of Muslim-Americans, too, he said. They have been vilified because of the terrorist attacks, their religion was hijacked by extremists, not to mention that Muslims died when the planes were flown into the Twin Towers. To suggest that building the project is insensitive is to suggest Muslims who are American are something less.
The organizers behind the cultural center have been under a microscope because of the controversy, and they’ve shown incredible tolerance and patience in the face of shocking bigotry.
If they had a sinister side, the world would now know. Instead, what’s come out is that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, have long done important interfaith work in New York and been passionate advocates for this country abroad (done first at the behest of the Bush and then the Obama administration).
Can we be done with this ugliness?
Permalink | Comments (40) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, National Politics, Religion and Faith, terrorism
TweetEditorial: Military suicide rate reflects wars, not Pentagon failure
A Pentagon task force dedicated to deterring military suicides issued its report this week — mainly about all the things the military should be doing to deter suicides. But one member felt obliged to note that the task force had heard from troops who said they almost died of boredom from exposure to regular suicide-deterrence speeches.
Therein lies the problem: It’s not as if the Pentagon has never focused on this problem before.
And yet the military suicide rate has been increasing. In 2007, the number was 224; in 2008, 267; in 2009, 309.
Looking at the Army alone, the rate doubled from 2001 to 2006. (Most suicides are in the Army and Marines.)
From 2001 to the summer of 2009, more soldiers killed themselves than died in Afghanistan in combat.
The numbers take on clearer meaning when you look at specific bases. Fort Campbell, Ky., had 14 suicides in 2009, and 12 and nine in the previous two years.
Comparisons with civilian rates are tricky, because you’d really have to consider war-zone veterans to get a feel for the situation. And civilian rates for the last couple of years aren’t in yet, according to the panel. But the Army, having had a lower rate than the civilian world since Vietnam, recently surpassed the official civilian rate marginally.
Who are the military people committing suicide? A task force member said they break down into three groups: a third are in war zones; a third are back from war zones, and a third haven’t been deployed.
The task force seemed eager to fix the situation. It made 76 proposals. And it did some interesting things, including hearing from a panel of survivors of failed suicide attempts.
But most of its proposals aren’t very interesting. The report calls for a new office in the Pentagon to combat suicide, an increased emphasis on the overall health of troops — physical, emotional and spiritual — and more tolerance for troops who seek psychological help. That sort of thing.
On the last point, the panel said that some troops are badgered and humiliated if they seek help, and it admitted that some feel that seeking help will hurt their careers.
However, one panel member said that a study in the Air Force showed that those seeking help don’t do any worse in their careers than others.
Distressingly, the task force said that it could not develop a profile of a service member likely to commit suicide. Too many different sets of circumstances arise; it’s too complicated.
For a video of the task force presenting and explaining its study, go to www.c-span video.org and search for “military suicide prevention.”
Despite the eagerness of the task force for an enhanced anti-suicide program, those who hear it out might reasonably conclude that the military hasn’t really been doing much wrong, given how much the Pentagon has already been doing and given how undramatic the new proposals are.
The problem is elsewhere: Army Maj. Gen. Philip Volpe, a physician and panel co-chair, said the military has a “supply-and-demand mismatch.” He meant troops are being used too much.
The task force suggests either reducing the number of wars or increasing the number of troops.
Actually, the wisdom of making that choice grows out of any look at the suicide trend line alone.
The current generation of war-fighters is overstretched. These people are paying the price for Washington’s desire to fight current wars as cheaply as possible.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Health Care, Martin Gottlieb, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetEditorial: Ohio shouldn’t let politics take over
Judicial elections in Ohio have an identity crisis.
While the state demands the races remain officially nonpartisan — meaning something like nonpolitical — rivers of special-interest cash flow into judicial contests.
So in a way it’s odd that a federal court blocked a plan that would have allowed Ohio candidates for judge to openly state their party affiliations in political advertising.
After all, a recent study by New York University found Ohio Supreme Court races saw more spending on television ads than any other state from 2000 to 2009. More than $21 million was spent on TV.
Out of more than $29 million spent overall, $7.6 million came from the Ohio and U.S. chambers of commerce.
Besides, judges already go through a partisan process just to get on the ballot. Typically, they seek a political party’s nomination and often face off in a Republican or Democratic primary.
Yet, then, in the general election, those party affiliations are stripped from the ballot.
With that much political activism already going on, there is some sense to the argument that more overtly connecting party labels to candidates’ names can at least help voters get a sense of which interests are aligned with which candidates.
Voters often use party labels to help them identify candidates in low-profile races who match their personal political philosophies. A case can be made that party labels would be a voter service and would increase transparency.
But, at a more fundamental level, this is not the way Ohio should go when it comes to selecting judges. Rather than throw up its collective hands and embrace the total politicization of judicial elections, Ohio ought to instead take a step back and reconsider. There’s a better way.
That’s what the late Thomas Moyer, chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, was prodding the state to consider. Justice Moyer, who died in April and had been planning to retire at year’s end, sought to cap his impressive career by capitalizing on the bipartisan respect he had earned to get Ohio’s leaders to consider a new system for selecting judges based on merit rather than by election.
Other states use merit systems much like the one Justice Moyer envisioned. In Iowa, for instance, the governor picks a new judge from a list of three recommended candidates put forward by a panel of lawyers and laymen. After a year on the job, the new judge faces a retention election. The judge’s name appears on the ballot without an opponent. Voters simply chose “yes” to retain or “no” to reject. Retention elections are then held at regular intervals.
Ohio ought to do something like that. But without Justice Moyer, this is a cause without a champion. Even while he was alive, the state Supreme Court was mostly resistant to change. That was no surprise, Justice Moyer said at the time. After all, the electoral system was responsible for placing all of them in their jobs.
But they are themselves diminished by the money-laden, interest-group-dominated process they go through. Their decisions are brought under suspicion.
Judicial independence — and the perception of judicial independence — should prevail. Putting judges on the same ballot as politicians delivers a message. And keeping party labels off the ballot does absolutely nothing to soften the message.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
TweetScott Elliott: Airman’s case could break ground for gay civil rights
In his famous “letter from a Birmingham jail” in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. responded with irritation to calls for him to wait before holding more protests demanding an end to public discrimination.
“This ‘wait’ has always meant ‘never,’” he wrote. “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
By filing what could be a groundbreaking lawsuit, Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach was saying he could no longer wait for the U.S. Air Force to do the right thing.
An ominous sign came in late July, when Lt. Dan Choi — a gay army National Guardsman in New York and an outspoken critic of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” rule — got his walking papers.
Fehrenbach, who was born at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and who grew up in Huber Heights, soon learned his own discharge was imminent. So he played his ace.
“They’ve taken everything from me — my job, my pension — everything I’ve lived for but my sense of right and wrong and my honor,” he said in anticipation of being pushed out.
It makes no sense that the military is still discharging soldiers for being gay. The president, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense secretary all have said they favor dropping “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the law that allows gays to be expelled if their sexual preference becomes known. The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee have voted to repeal it. Public opinion polls strongly favor getting rid of it.
All that’s left is for the full Senate to vote, which could come as early as next month. (Ohio Sen. George Voinovich is among a handful of Republican fence-sitters who gay-rights advocates are trying to win over.)
Even if the repeal effort fails, “Don’t ask” could meet its demise in the courts. Other cases have been working their way toward the Supreme Court, but Fehrenbach’s case is viewed as a particularly strong example of discrimination, perhaps a better test case than the others. His lawyers think the case could be seminal.
“We are taking the Air Force somewhere they don’t want to go — acknowledging the law of the land in the ninth district,” said M. Andrew Woodmansee, lead counsel on Fehrenbach’s case.
Utah, where Fehrenbach is stationed, is among the western states under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 9th District, which in 2008 established what is known as the “Witt standard.” In the case of gay Air Force Reservist Maj. Margaret Witt, the court found the military must demonstrate that a gay service member’s presence constitutes a threat to unit readiness or cohesion.
Gay-rights advocates are convinced that cannot be proven, especially given Fehrenbach’s stellar military record. The Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran and elite aviator was cited for raising morale in his most recent performance review. In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was handpicked for a team that protected the air space over Washington, D.C. It’s not a stretch to call the guy an American hero.
Fehrenbach never had any intention of becoming a gay-rights icon. The Air Force learned he was gay after he was falsely accused of a sexual crime and the police tipped off officers at the base. Fehrenbach did everything he could to get the Air Force not to push for his discharge. Nobody in his unit knew he was gay, so none of the military’s usual justifications for dismissal applied, he argued. How could he be a disruption or harm morale if nobody knew? Instead of backing off, the Air Force blew his cover by moving to dismiss him.
Overt discrimination against gays, through laws like “Don’t ask” or bans on gay marriage, won’t last. It’s just a matter of time. The question is how much time?
Gay civil rights advocates are awaiting a tide-turning court case, one that banishes discrimination in a sweeping way, much as Brown v. Board of Education did for school segregation. Such a decision could accelerate change the way Brown did for black civil rights.
He may have started out simply fighting to keep a job he loves, but Fehrenbach could end up playing a part in hastening the arrival of a world where nobody has to hide who they are in order to live the life they want.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Columns, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: ‘Under-the-radar’ mayor having little impact so far
Dayton Mayor Gary Leitzell is not trying to impress you with how hard he works at City Hall. His decision to spend September pretty much away from his job symbolizes that.
He says he’ll go to city commission and other meetings, but basically he’ll be re-roofing his house. Pretty independent for a guy in his first year.
As mayor, he gets $45,000 a year, plus a few thousand dollars in expenses. That sounds like a full-time job to a lot of Daytonians, given that $30,000 is the round figure most often used about average pay among city residents.
But a lot of people at City Hall make much more.
After all, the mayor’s job is not supposed to be full time under the city charter, no matter that some mayors have treated it that way.
Former Mayor Rhine McLin was the commission’s public face and the city’s cheerleader. Predecessors Mike Turner and Paul Leonard — ambitious, young politicians — mastered policy details and projects and made themselves the center of the action. Clay Dixon, though, was not as out-front, and he worked full time for Dayton Public Schools.
Mayor Leitzell deserves credit for being honest about his time commitment. But what’s most striking about his low-key approach is that, so far, at least, it carries over into how he does the job when he is actually doing it.
Now into the second half of his first year, he has yet to make much of an impact. One possible explanation is a mayor really doesn’t have much formal power, just one vote on the city commission. And a new mayor who’s the only member of the city commission who isn’t a Democrat has a special problem having impact.
But let’s be honest: The job can be what you make it. It comes with a powerful bully pulpit, access to important people and the option of parlaying the role into being the region’s political and civic leader. Mayor Leitzell hasn’t shown the aptitude for that. Mayor McLin also struggled in that role. Mayors Turner and Leonard were more gifted, and they relished that profile and responsibility.
Mayor Leitzell’s decision to hang back isn’t all bad. Sometimes a new person can make trouble with personal attacks, divisive rhetoric or unrealistic proposals that tie up the professionals who are responsible for making the city work.
Mayor Leitzell has been collegial. There’s little of the tension that existed when Mr. Turner, the only Republican among Democrats, took office. And he works well with an able city manager.
Still, it’s reasonable to expect that he might, by now, be a leader of a specific project or cause.
But, describing his role, he says, “I fly under the radar.” He’s been working with community groups on proposals that have not yet surfaced, and his advisory council is exploring economic development initiatives, he adds. And he says he has inspired others to get involved.
He says he has made specific suggestions, such as looking inside the city government for a new airport director, rather than automatically going outside. He enjoys throwing out ideas — free RTA bus rides to downtown; an end to the practice of subsidizing the decisions of businesses to relocate from one spot in Dayton to another — without having done much spade work.
He relishes being seen as somebody who speaks his mind at the moment, rather than as “a politician” who has measured every word. Concretely, he has successfully pushed for the posting online of city commission schedules and for taking fewer actions through expedited “emergency” procedures.
In the absence of a major agenda, the mayor’s biggest role this year may be on the budget: what to do about the city’s ongoing, dramatic loss of revenue, even as the city is already near the high end in income tax rates. He has approached that issue carefully, having heard both City Manager Tim Riordan and residents.
Whether he does his own house repairs — and how long he takes — is the kind of issue that can shape a politician’s image. It’s a statement that people will remember, and it provides grist for humor.
Seriously, though, there are different interpretations of what the mayor’s role under the Dayton charter should be. Mayor Leitzell is so far putting himself unabashedly and unapologetically in the “this is not my only responsibility” camp.
He’s taking a political risk at the same time he’s trying to stay out of political trouble.
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Martin Gottlieb: ‘Buy Tea Party’ a sign of times, even if it failed
The Tea Party fellow who tried to encourage Tea Party members to do business with Tea Party members found that some businesses backed out when they came upon a down side: Some consumers will go out of their way not to spend money in a way that helps the Tea Party.
Whether that problem puts a long-term kibosh on the whole idea remains to be seen. Things happened awfully fast in this go-round.
Some merchants who withdrew might have been under wrong impressions. Maybe some of the people they heard from weren’t really customers, but were atypically political people who had seen the list of merchants someplace and were calling all of them.
Meanwhile, there were other problems with the specific project. For now, the identity of Dayton as the place where this bad idea died quickly is comforting, even if this is also the place where the idea arose. Somehow, so far, the death seems to say more about the state of the society than the birth. We’ll see.
Even the death isn’t all that comforting. The opposition to the idea seemed to have come from the left, from Democrats and liberals who didn’t want to be subsidizing conservative causes. Better if it had come from the center or the apolitical. Better if it had been a rejection of the whole idea of mixing business and politics. How political, after all, do we want things to get?
The whole episode is of a piece with the ongoing story about General Motors and the Volt and Rush Limbaugh and his like. He is trashing the Volt, the car that will run for 40 miles using no gasoline, then switch to an internal-combustion engine. He complains that it is subsidized by a tax credit of $7,500 (for gas-efficient cars). He says the reason for the subsidy is that nobody wants the car. He says he turned down sponsorship by GM — Government Motors, as he says — because he saw the Volt issue coming.
One might get the impression that Limbaugh worries that if the Volt is a success and/or GM goes on to live happily ever after, he and his ideology are undermined, because the government role has been so central.
At any rate, some people have an interest in politicizing everything, whether it’s what kind of car you buy, who does your dry cleaning or where you get your news and “information.” That’s partly because they take politics too seriously themselves, and partly because if politics is inflated, they are inflated, being political people. Things are moving their way.
The “Buy Tea Party” effort, as it might be called, certainly wasn’t the first of its kind. Some years ago the idea surfaced of business phone directories that list only companies committed to the goals of the religious right. Such notions pop up from time to time.
It’s easy to imagine that, next time around, some businesses might try to stick with the “Buy Tea Party” idea despite any backlash. It’s also easy to imagine some similar effort — perhaps run by an organization less strident than the Tea Party — gaining a foothold in, for example, places where there aren’t many Democrats or liberals. And the principle could stretch, in reverse form, to liberal places. Then, who knows.
Lots of liberals already like to frequent business they see as “socially responsible,” whether on environmental issues or food issues or even charity issues. That’s not far from choosing businesses according to their politics.
The spread — or further spread — of politics into everyday life is the prospect worth pondering here, not the prospect that your money might go where you don’t want it to. You’re already supporting business owners who have different political agendas than your own. You just don’t always know exactly when.
Contrary to those who want to put politics front and center all the time, you’re better off not knowing. And this diverse society — so dependent on tolerance for the survival of social peace — is better off not being confronted at absolutely every turn by all the things that divide us.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
TweetEditorial: Investors took risk, but does UltraCell owe?
The private investors — national and local — and the governments that got behind UltraCell Corp. in 2006 and wooed it to Dayton thought they were banking on a sure thing.
At least the company’s position was as sure as things get in the world of new technology.
UltraCell was started in 2002 using technology developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The company has a product the military wants. In time, the Air Force, gave the company a contract.
UltraCell had collaborators at UD’s Research Institute, the Edison Materials Technology Center and Mound Technical Solutions Inc.
The Air Force contract was managed out of Wright-Patterson’s Air Force Research Laboratory, giving UltraCell a reason to want to be in Dayton and Ohio.
The state’s Third Frontier program was a funding resource for the firm’s research, and, through that competitive grant-making process, would be vetted by independent researchers.
Once the prototypes for the small battery packs that could power, for instance, laptops on the battlefield were put into volume production, Ultra Cell would be the sort of high-tech manufacturing operation that the region wants to locate here.
It all added up to so much. But, on Aug. 13, production was abruptly shut down and the operation was moved back to California. Fourteen people were working for the company in Dayton; the initial goal in 2006 was to have 360 by this time.
It wasn’t just money from Dayton and the state’s Third Frontier program that didn’t earn a payback. Venture capitalists also are feeling the sting. Still, public money is precious, and it’s never good when a private business gets a lot of government support and then doesn’t do well.
Back in May 2007, the company was promising to put $74 million in its Dayton operation.
In May 2009, it was billing its Dayton facility as “the first and only volume-production micro fuel cell facility in North America.”
As late as November 2009, an UltraCell executive was quoted as saying, “We’re building 100 percent of the XX25 (the fuel cell systems) here in Dayton. We also have transferred almost the entire supply chain from California and other places to Ohio.”
Now, of course, the questions become: Are any of the governments entitled to some of their money back? Is there any hope of seeing any of it? So far, everyone from Dayton to the Ohio Department of Development is saying that they’re exploring their options.
Critics will say that’s a euphemism for saying, a) no; b) we don’t know or c): here’s hoping everyone forgets about this investment.
Funding for these sorts of projects is always complicated. In this case, for example, not all the Third Frontier money went directly to UltraCell. Its research partners also benefited; they and their work remain.
But, one hopes, there were also commitments from UltraCell that it has to honor — or pay some financial penalty if its best-laid plans didn’t materialize.
The Third Frontier — especially because of the size of the multiyear, multibillion program — needs to be making a public accounting not just of its successes, but also of its losses. Everyone understands that losses will happen, but the ledger needs to be complete in spelling them out.
That’s as central to the integrity of the program as awarding its grants fairly.
UltraCell is an example of what can go wrong even when the state bets on an industry it has good reason to think can grow jobs. The loss is a disappointment, but as significant is how it’s dealt with.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Economy, Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Local Business, Ohio government, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetEditorial: Austin exit built, now comes the hard part
The Austin Road interchange had a long history even before the day it officially opened last week. Meanwhile, its future is far from written.
Dayton’s first new interchange in decades has been talked about literally for decades. Before prominent office parks, corporate headquarters and hospitals were clustering on the I-75 corridor between southern Montgomery County and northern Hamilton County, some local leaders understood that the Austin Pike area was primo real estate.
It has highway visibility; it is a greenfield; it is close to places that were, or could be, idyllic bedroom communities; and it is within a manageable drive of workers who are scattered from the Kentucky border to Miami County.
Still, it has taken years to build the $20-million-plus exit that Montgomery County believes can compete with developments like Union Centre and Liberty Way and that simultaneously is the antidote to the maddening congestion in the Dayton Mall area.
To get to this day, a special entity — the Montgomery County Transportation Improvement District — had to be created as a work-around to the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission. It was long opposed to the exit and, at other times, unable to push the levers to get the necessary blessings or money.
So, yes, a celebration is called for. But to think of the completion — which did come in ahead of the actual construction schedule — as a fine hour is to forget the myriad stops and starts.
The next phase will be even more difficult. Though planners say that in the next 10 to 20 years, the development could be home to 28,000 workers, that is predicated on recruiting a bunch of businesses. (Does anyone know where people get these numbers and how they can talk confidently about a timeline that is so far out and that has a built-in, decade-long fudge factor?)
Under the best of circumstances, attracting that number of jobs will take time. And we’re not living in the best of circumstances.
Of course, it’s significant that Teradata, the NCR spinoff, has located at the interchange and has signed a long-term lease. Yes, it’s important that Motoman Robotics will be locating there and wants to expand. Both of those firms could have gone outside Montgomery County or outside of Ohio.
But they are not new businesses to the region, and, given the tens of millions of federal, state and local government dollars that have gone into the entire project (not just the interchange), the real measure of success will be how many truly new businesses are brought in. If jobs just move from one local spot to another, there’s no net gain.
RG Properties, the developer that owns or controls most of the land around the interchange, is a local company. People who’ve worked on the Austin project are quick to say that Dayton is fortunate to have a local person involved. They say Randy Gunlock is a “patient” developer, intent on building something that adds more to the communtiy than the jobs associated with a gas station or an economy hotel.
How long he’ll be patient remains to be seen. The recession has set back his plans, and he’s scaled down his expectations more than once. Initially, the goal was to attract a top-drawer hotel and build a mega-office complex. Then he floated the concept of an entertainment complex with a hockey arena. Neither proposal worked out.
Mr. Gunlock and the Montgomery County officials who have rustled up the money to make the interchange a reality are in this venture together. They both need it to be successful, and success will be defined by the quality of the development and the number of genuinely new jobs that are on the grounds in five and 10 years.
But there’s something important that differentiates Mr. Gunlock and the governments that put up the money. The investment Mr. Gunlock has made is his own. He’s not just a custodian of somebody else’s cash.
That financial pressure can help Montgomery County it its efforts to land new jobs, because it has a supremely motivated partner. But, at the same time, Mr. Gunlock will want to see that he’s not totally on his own in identifying and wooing the sorts of companies that all parties adamantly say they’re holding out for.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Ellen Belcher
TweetVet Metro Parks’ new chief publicly
Five Rivers MetroParks is at a fork in the stream.
Its executive director, Charlie Shoemaker, has announced he’s retiring in February, 2011. After 33 years with the agency, nine years as the top executive, he wants to fish more and work less.
The announcement comes in the wake of the park system renewing its levy last fall with 71 percent of the vote. Especially in these times, that outcome was an impressive endorsement of the work of a system that insiders sometimes affectionately called Three Rivers and Two Creeks.
(Mr. Shoemaker’s predecessor, Marvin Olinsky, was once visiting Pittsburgh and liked its “Three Rivers” brand. He came home and dubbed Montgomery County’s park system Five Rivers, a formal recognition of the Great Miami, the Stillwater, the Mad River and Wolf and Twin creeks. A little hyperbole is not so awful.)
If the levy vote had gone the other way, Metro Parks would have been in a bad way. The organization operates 25 parks and oversees 15,000 acres on a $20 million budget. Almost $18 million comes from local tax dollars.
Given that the levy runs for 10 years, Mr. Shoemaker is picking a good moment to step aside.
People who’ve watched MetroParks over the years still speak glowingly of Mr. Shoemaker’s former boss, crediting him with having the vision that the park system is a regional amenity that has to be more than picnic tables and clean green spaces. Without that thinking, RiverScape, a lovely urban park that is a spectacular addition to downtown, for example, might never have happened.
Mr. Shoemaker has made sure that RiverScape has continued to blossom on his watch, including overseeing the addition of its striking new pavilion.
And he has continued to create new venues — Second Street Market, for example — and new programming designed to help people make outdoor recreation part of their lifestyle.
Going forward, Five Rivers has big questions to confront.
What is its next big thing? What is its role in supporting a budding local outdoor recreation industry that is critical to growing interest in bikeways, blueways and parks? How can it continue to be a force for encouraging business development along the Great Miami downtown and elsewhere along it?
How can it promote partnerships, for example, with the University of Dayton, which wants to have a side door to its campus on the river? What is its relationship with other county park districts going to be in a time when money isn’t growing on trees?
Mr. Shoemaker’s successor has to have thoughts on all these issues and more. And the park district’s three commissioners need to make sure that the public hears the applicants’ pitches. Specifically, the commissioners need to create a committee of stakeholders to help vet candidates. And there need to be opportunities for the public to put questions to the finalists.
The City of Dayton has had a lot of success with just such a process. It has followed this format when it has picked its police chief and airport director. Some applicants won’t like the drill, but the parks belong to the community, and many people care about this selection.
Montgomery County doesn’t have mountains, a seashore or canyons, and that puts a special burden and responsibility on Five Rivers. The burden is that the district has to be creative in making green spaces, trails and fishing spots extra special. The responsibility is that nature and its wonders, whether they’re one-of-a-kind or more common, deserve to be protected and leveraged.
To keep a good thing going, MetroParks deserves a special leader. He or she will be taking over an organization that can help set the community apart, while also making it a more fun, vibrant place to live.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Ellen Belcher, Sports and Recreation
TweetEditorial: Election loss is different than a layoff
A federal effort to give people thrown out of work by the recession a break on health insurance was a good idea. But some people who definitely shouldn’t be are benefiting.
It’s hard to imagine that Congress was thinking that elected officials who were tossed from their posts by unhappy voters should get a subsidy for what’s popularly known as COBRA health care payments. Those losses at the polls certainly weren’t on a par with the crisis created when companies were shutting their doors and workers were being laid off en masse.
Federal law requires most employers to offer continuing coverage under their health plans for laid-off employees under COBRA. The goal is to keep ex-workers who can’t find affordable insurance in the open market insured until they find a new job. The catch, though, is that they have to pay the full cost of the premium, which is pricey. When the workers were employed, their employer typically paid a part of the cost.
This means that losing a job can come with a double-whammy — loss of income and extraordinary new costs for health insurance.
“Almost nobody can afford COBRA without a premium reduction,” said Lucious Plant, a workforce development administrator at Montgomery County’s Job Center.
As the recession threw droves of Americans out of work, Congress moved to try to blunt the blow by subsidizing their COBRA premiums. An ex-worker could pay just 35 percent of the cost of COBRA, with the feds kicking in the rest.
Subsequently, the Internal Revenue Service decided that even deposed politicians qualify for the help as long as they were booted from office while the subsidy was in effect between Sept. 1, 2008 and May 31, 2010.
Among those who took advantage of the program was Dayton’s ex-Mayor Rhine McLin, who has since taken a job as a consultant with Gov. Ted Strickland’s re-election campaign. The mayor’s job is part-time and pays about $45,000 a year, although Ms. McLin argues she treated the position as full-time, typically working more than 40 hours a week.
Ms. McLin might fairly argue that her electoral defeat felt like a layoff, but it is different than being downsized.
Paying the subsidy for politicians who have decidedly less responsibility than a big-city mayor makes even less sense. Dr. Gregory McDonald, for example, had a full-time job as a Springboro dentist while also serving as a Clearcreek Twp. trustee, a job that required him to attend a couple meetings a month.
Dr. McDonald, who does not offer health insurance to employees in his dental practice, obtained coverage through the township while he was a trustee. (That perk is why there’s hardly ever a shortage of people willing to run for the position of trustee.)
When he was defeated, like Ms. McLin, he sought federal stimulus help to reduce the cost of COBRA.
The IRS’ rationale is that even elected officials who worked just a few hours a month are theoretically “on call” to perform duties any time.
This piece of the program is embarrassing, but it shouldn’t define Washington’s effort. Nobody has tracked how many former elected officials obtained subsidies, but it’s hard to believe the number is more than a tiny fraction of those who have been helped by the program.
Ohio was among the states hit hardest by job losses in the recession. The U.S. Treasury reports 89,000 Ohioans received subsidies in 2009 and part of 2010. That ranks 7th-highest among all states. Nationally, 2.1 million people participated.
Congress was trying to respond to a special and a spectacular economic crisis. The people who implemented the plan were the ones who compromised it.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Miami Valley Politics, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Xenia police, fire are out of line
Nobody in Xenia is out to hurt police and firefighters. Nobody wants to make that city less safe. All sides in the debate about Xenia’s charter amendment that would require a minimum size for the safety forces also recognize the problems that have been created by a collapsing budget.
But Get Alarmed Citizens of Xenia, a political action committee associated with the police and firefighters’ unions, is proposing an impossible idea. It wants to write into the city’s charter a requirement that the police force never fall below 45 and the fire department never drop to fewer than 43.
The idea is crazy. Staffing levels of particular departments are not the sort of thing that belong in a city charter. No one would ever suggest that Ohio should mandate in its constitution how many state troopers are patrolling the highways. Or that the U.S. Constitution should spell out the number of FBI agents. City council is right to be rallying community leaders against the proposal.
Xenia is terribly cash-strapped, having been hammered by deep declines in tax revenue since the 2008 recession began. Unemployment has spiked to 12 percent. As a result, Xenia has closed a fire station and laid off nine firefighters and six police officers.
Supporters of the charter amendment admit that a 0.5-percent income tax the city council wants voters to approve this fall is desperately needed. If it passes, council has pledged to rehire the laid-off police and firefighters and open the closed firehouse.
But what happens if the income tax fails and the charter amendment setting staffing levels passes? The city estimates up to 29 layoffs elsewhere in the city bureaucracy might be needed to offset the cost of the required hiring.
And that’s just the problem that would be created today. Suppose Xenia’s population were to fall sharply in the future, necessitating fewer police and firefighters? The charter amendment would force Xenia to keep spending tax dollars in ways that make no sense, while limiting spending on other crucial services.
Once a charter amendment is approved, it cannot be changed by a vote of city council. Voters would have to repeal it. Managing by charter change is no way to run a city. Council and its professional managers have to have flexibility.
The city’s fiscal crisis is threatening to make it hard for its leaders to deploy enough police and firefighters so that everyone can sleep well at night. But the best way for Xenia voters to help the city maintain quality safety forces is to back the city’s income tax levy, not vote for a charter amendment that would tie city council’s hands.
Talks are under way between the city and the unions to come up with a plan that everyone can get behind. That’s a good sign. Part of the deal should include a pledge from Get Alarmed Citizens of Xenia to pull its charter amendment off the ballot.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials
TweetEditorial: Candidates should learn, not simply talk
As fall elections approach, voters will hear candidates talking a lot.
That’s why it was refreshing last week to see a room full of candidates and officeholders from the Dayton area listening instead.
People often run for office because they believe deeply in certain public policies, but usually their passion is devoted to a relatively small number of issues. Candidates can’t be expected to know everything, and, on some matters, even the most informed office-seeker may know little or nothing.
Serious candidates bury themselves in books and policy papers to get up to speed on issues that they’ll have to make decisions about and that are outside of their experience.
It’s a lot of work, and it requires being able to separate credible, thoughtful sources and interest groups from those that distort information or put their own specific (maybe selfish) interests above the greater good.
Organizations and people who have a reputation for getting their facts right and being honest brokers can get a leg up in advancing their agendas by getting to candidates while they’re still on the campaign trail, before they take office.
A prime example was a meeting co-sponsored by ReadySetSoar, a group that advocates for better early-childhood education, and Voices for Ohio’s Children, which promotes children’s health and safety.
Amy Swanson, executive director of Voices for Ohio’s Children, said her group got a private grant to organize the candidate briefing and modeled the event after one held by the United Way in Cincinnati.
About 15 candidates who came to the Montgomery County Educational Service Center heard presentations on improving child care and pre-school; streamlining the juvenile justice system; and improving access to health care. The presentations were followed by discussions among the candidates and local leaders working on those issues.
Ms. Swanson, who travels the state meeting with candidates and officeholders one-on-one to advocate for legislative changes, said the briefing is a better approach.
“This was local constituents sharing information with potential decision-makers,” she said. “They were making connections with their constituents and with each other and, hopefully, coming away armed with good information for making better decisions.”
Consider just one issue Ms. Swanson’s group is pushing: “express-lane eligibility” for uninsured children.
Ohio has about 110,000 poor children who qualify for health care coverage through Medicaid, but who don’t receive care because their parents haven’t signed them up. Paperwork, it turns out, keeps children from seeing doctors. Families must show proof of their income to document that it is low enough to qualify for benefits. That can be a hassle.
But, commonly, a family that qualifies for, but has not enrolled in, Medicaid is receiving benefits from other programs that also require proof of income, such as a school lunch program or food stamps. Those programs are also state-run, which means a different arm of government has the information needed to make enrollment in Medicaid simple.
Advocates for children want to standardize collection of poverty information and make it instantly available by computer to any poverty-related service. This would make signing poor kids up far easier and likely reduce the number of uninsured.
Gov. Ted Strickland has endorsed “express-lane eligibility,” and when Ms. Swanson explains it to legislators and candidates, they usually agree that it makes sense. But implementation is complex and potentially costly, requiring computer upgrades in state offices across Ohio.
Helping candidates understand the complicated problems they might one day be able to help fix is an investment in them and their educations. More often than not, they’ll learn — in advance — that nothing is ever simple and that there is plenty of work for them to do if they’re serious about doing their jobs.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Health Care, Miami Valley Politics, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Revolt against Tea Party card not a surprise
Business and politics can be a volatile mix. Donald Hutchinson, creator of the local Tea Party Exchange, found that out really quickly.
On Tuesday, Aug. 17, he closed down a Web site he had created to bring together a network of businesses whose owners had pledged to donate money to local Tea Party groups. Customers who don’t support the Tea Party threatened to vote with their purchases, causing some businesses to reconsider.
Then Mr. Hutchinson took heat for outsourcing work on his Web site to India, which critics said was hypocritical or betrayed the cause.
The Tea Party Exchange involved just a couple dozen businesses. But the backlash, which wasn’t surprising, may resurface on a grander scale as some companies choose to become more aggressive about supporting candidates for office. Thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision this year, corporations and unions can now spend unlimited amounts on advertising in support of, or in opposition to, political candidates.
Some firms are eager to jump into the political fray and help elect politicians who support their views. But many others also worry about being too aggressive and too generous with their money, lest they offend their customers. Shoppers, after all, come in all political stripes.
Mr. Hutchinson’s effort showed a certain entrepreneurial, if naive, zest. As a conservative businessman with like-minded friends who also own companies, he reasoned that a “loyalty” program could help increase sales while at the same time support a cause they all believed in.
Under the program, conservative customers would get a card much like the “rewards” cards that are common at retail stores like Kroger, PetSmart and Best Buy. For each purchase, participating merchants agreed to donate five percent of the sale to a local Tea Party affiliated group.
But Mr. Hutchinson and his network underestimated how people with a different political bent would react.
This can happen to big companies, too. The Minnesota-based national retailer Target is in hot water right now over its support of a conservative home-state candidate for governor who is viewed as anti-gay.
Company officials insisted the $150,000 contribution to a group supporting Republican candidate Tom Emmer was strictly in support of his pro-business agenda, not related to his positions on social issues. That wasn’t good enough for critics.
Despite Target’s strong record on gay issues — offering domestic partner benefits, sponsoring gay community events and earning a 100 percent score from a gay rights advocacy group’s rating of employers — the controversy got so hot that Target’s CEO made a public apology.
After the apology, conservative groups began mobilizing to boycott Target. Once you fall into this particular briar patch, it’s tough to get out.
Businesses have long had all sorts of advocacy groups that represent their views on all manner of rules, regulations and taxes. They have that right, and they deserve to be heard.
But the local Tea Party Exchange — and Target’s public relations debacle — suggest that consumers can be offended and they, too, aren’t afraid to take stands.
Permalink | Comments (59) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Miami Valley Politics, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Feds’ farewell to GM won’t be reluctant
Activism has characterized the federal government for a couple of years now, not since Barack Obama became president, but since Wall Street collapsed in the fall of 2008.
Consistently, the people in power — whether Republicans or Democrats — have decided that a national emergency must be met with energy and power. The banks had to be saved, via a bailout. The auto industry had to be saved. The economy had to be aggressively stimulated.
As a result, a canard is circulating: that the people who are taking these measures are motivated by the desire to expand government and its control over us. The charge is leveled mainly at Democrats, notwithstanding that the bank and auto bailouts predate their ascendancy, and that Republicans favored a stimulus too, just a smaller one.
Sometimes the previous president, a Republican, gets lumped in with the alleged government lovers.
If the federal government now moves quickly to get rid of its majority holdings in General Motors, that won’t silence the critics, of course. We’re talking politics here.
But it will help make the point to anybody whose mind is open even a little that saving GM wasn’t the seizing of an opportunity, but a recognition of the need to participate in a necessary evil.
General Motors announced last week that it had made a profit for the second consecutive quarter — this time for well more than $1 billion. It is adding factory shifts and boosting exports, bringing in needed foreign money at a time when other industries are bringing in less.
And now “new GM,” the company that emerged from bankruptcy, is readying a stock offering. That would be, among other things, a way for the government to unload its share.
The company says it doesn’t want to be known as “Government Motors.” The government says it has no interest in owning a car company. And, of course, the Obama administration relishes a big, symbolic demonstration of the fact that its decision to save GM wasn’t futile, that it “worked.”
With banks mainly paying back their loans, a certain campaign narrative does emerge. Accordingly, some people have worried that the stock sale might come too early, before the market is right for the best return.
That’s a welcome concern to have, given the concerns of last year: that the collapse of the auto industry, especially in this part of the country, could turn the sudden and frightening Great Recession into a depression.
The government has certainly had a role in shaping GM’s new direction, in such matters as the Volt, the new hybrid. But the point was never government control. Quite the opposite. The point is the building of an industry that doesn’t have to turn to Washington for a bailout again.
Nobody knows whether the new GM’s thrust will work in the long run. What’s known is that the company’s old ways weren’t working and that the public wasn’t eager to subsidize them into the future.
If GM — and Chrysler, another bailoutee — do become healthy again, that isn’t a happily-ever-after story. Too many jobs have been lost, too many pensions and health care plans impacted, too many communities devastated by the problems of the Detroit-based auto industry during the last few decades. And what’s emerging is a shadow of former American strength.
But nobody ever said that the government bailout could turn back three decades of history. The point was to deal with a crisis and to shape a plan for future success, a plan that made a lot of sense to people in the business world, not just politicians and bureaucrats.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEditorial: Dayton charting a path to more early learning
Ohio has had some bad press in recent months for its failure to support early childhood care and education. Now comes the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, an advocacy group for quality child care. It ranks Ohio among the worst in the nation for ensuring quality in day-care operations with six or fewer children.
Also, advocates of early education decried the elimination of funding in last fall’s state budget go-round for a program that helped poor kids enroll in quality early care.
Fortunately, other state and local efforts are helping to build a framework that eventually could vastly improve child-care options. And the Dayton area is leading the way.
Early care — including preschools, day-care centers and in-home care — is extraordinarily uncoordinated. Parents find professional centers with certified teachers; they find friends and relatives working out of their homes; and everything in between.
Figuring out what options are feasible and affordable, while also offering kids an enriching experience, is a huge challenge. There aren’t a lot of good places to go for reliable, useful and detailed guidance.
That’s why the national report is pushing for states like Ohio, that aren’t licensing small day cares, to get with the program.
Nobody’s talking about baby sitters or stay-at-home moms. The proposed licensing is for day-care businesses with six or fewer kids that may happen to operate out of a private home.
To get a license in most states, such operations meet bare minimums in health and safety standards. For instance, the operators may have to show they don’t have a history of crimes against children or that they know what to do in an emergency.
Licensing is a relatively simple step Ohio could take to protect kids in those settings. It also would help local advocates track providers who often fly under the radar and alert them to services they don’t know they qualify for.
Licensing also could connect nicely to another major state initiative focused on professional preschools and child-care centers — Step Up To Quality. Through this program, centers can volunteer to be rated by the state (one to three stars, with three as the best).
Through Edvention, a local education-focused collaborative, a real effort is under way to encourage local providers to volunteer to be rated and to assist them to achieve a top score. The initiative, known as ReadySetSoar, aims to increase the number of children who arrive for kindergarten ready to learn.
Thanks to ReadySetSoar’s encouragement, 39 centers have been rated, a big jump from just seven in 2008. But that’s still just 18 percent of eligible centers in Montgomery County.
By getting rated, child-care providers will be able to demonstrate quality to parents who are shopping around and, also, put themselves in a position to draw more state aid. Ohio awards “quality achievement” grants to centers that get rated. The average award is $8,800.
Participation also makes providers eligible for a higher reimbursement rate for the low-income children they serve.
Investments in early care are shown to bring tremendous returns in productivity as kids mature. Some studies predict a return of $7 to $16 for every $1 spent on early care, especially if it helps some kids avoid jail or dependence on social services later in life.
We all pay when kids don’t make it in school. And everyone benefits if efforts like licensing and star ratings raise the quality of programs.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Heating bill savings will require study
Local natural gas users probably have noticed a flood of mailings since the start of the year announcing new options for buying gas from Vectren Source (a subsidiary of the region’s primary gas supplier in recent years) or a handful of new competitors.
That’s a result of Ohio’s move toward deregulation. In January, new companies bid for, and won, a piece of the region’s natural gas business. For the first time, they are able to obtain customer information that allows them to market services directly to those customers.
Some consumers right now may be paying a new gas company and not even know it. (If you carefully inspect your Vectren bill, you can find the name of the company that’s actually supplying your gas.)
Your gas bill, in general, has gotten much more complicated, creating new challenges for consumers. But there is a plus side. Ohio’s new approach appears to be helping to drive down gas prices, which today are quite low compared to recent years.
For those motivated few who really want to get the very best deal on gas rates, competition offers a better chance than ever. But there’s a catch: It will require a lot of research just to understand the options and become educated enough to beat the market.
Everything began to change in January. Four national gas companies joined Vectren Source in winning a portion of the Dayton market. The bidding resulted in a very low rate for a portion of the gas bill related to transporting gas over pipelines.
In fact, that rate was so low a consortium of eight suburban Dayton cities canceled plans to try to negotiate further. In the past, the Miami Valley Cable Council — on behalf of Kettering, Centerville, Miamisburg, Germantown, Moraine, Oakwood, Springboro and West Carrollton — sought an even better rate. This year it threw in the towel early.
A second portion of the gas bill is market-driven. All sorts of factors — including weather — can affect the market price of gas. But, of course, when demand goes up, the price goes up.
Gas marketers seek to entice consumers to accept a fixed-rate contract, keeping the price level for an extended period. That can be a good deal for the consumer. Or not. It depends entirely on how the market moves.
Consumers who want to seek the very best rate, and are willing to study up on the natural gas market, can make an educated guess and essentially place a bet. If they think the price of gas will rise in the near future, a fixed-rate contract makes the best sense, even if they may pay a little more than the current going rate under most of those deals. If they anticipate a price drop, then it’s better to avoid getting locked in.
Most consumers who don’t dig that deeply into their options will probably do OK for now. Experts predict prices will stay low this winter. So leaving the gas bill alone shouldn’t have a big downside.
Fortunately, there are reliable, independent sources of information that can help educate consumers. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (www.puco.ohio.gov), a government regulatory agency, has a “natural gas” tab at the top of its website that has lots of helpful information, including a tool that will show “apples to apples” rate comparisons.
The Ohio Consumer’s Council, a state consumer advocacy organization, also makes it easy to walk through the issues on its website (www.pickocc.org) including a useful “gas choice 101” page under the “natural gas” tab. The council also has a toll-free phone number: 877-742-5622.
Consumers have a good chance to save money. How much may depend on the amount of time they are willing to spend online.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Energy, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: Gates’ painful plan smart in long term
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has launched a “budget-cutting” effort that has a lot in common with the Iraq war: It’s a pre-emptive strike against potential enemies — this time of the domestic variety.
The term “budget-cutting” is in quotes here not to denigrate the effort, but because the secretary acknowledges that the point is not really to cut defense spending. He’s against that.
He wants to see modest increases. But he recognizes that even 2 percent or 3 percent a year is becoming a tougher sell in Congress.
Defense spending has nearly doubled in a decade, now reaching $700 billion a year, counting the wars, about $550 billion without them. The military has 100,000 more civilian employees than in 2003.
Secretary Gates feels that to keep Congress on board for the modernization efforts he thinks are necessary, he must communicate that he is himself taking a hard look at spending. He’s been on this tack for years, having already disappointed Air Force interests and others with his decision to halt production of the F-22 fighter. He has similarly cut 40 other programs.
Now he wants, for dramatic starters, to shut down an entire “command,” which is basically never done. It’s the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Virginia. Employing more than 5,000 people, spending a quarter billion a year, it was created in 1999 to facilitate coordination among the military branches.
He also wants to reduce the number of generals and admirals by about 15 percent, given that the number has soared since 9/11.
And he’s looking to cut the number of contract employees outside war zones by 10 percent a year for three years. By one study, contractor costs have risen from 26 percent to 39 percent of Pentagon personnel costs (outside of war zones). The new Gates plan continues and enlarges upon an effort the Obama administration has already started to move things in the other direction.
Between this and earlier initiatives, Secretary Gates is trying to redirect about $100 billion (over five years) into troops and weapons. That includes new weapons for an age of focus on rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea, as opposed to more traditional war situations.
His plan on contractors is, of course, a worry to many in the Miami Valley, given the importance of contractors at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. But if he succeeds in undercutting moves to actually cut defense spending, his effort could do more good than harm for the local economy in the long run. Wright-Patterson will certainly be important in the kinds of modern projects the secretary wants to protect.
“It is important,” he says, “that we not repeat the mistakes of the past, where tough economic times or the winding down of a military campaign leads to steep and unwise reductions in defense.”
Having worked in administrations of both parties, he has the respectful ear of most people in Congress. As a result, defense-spending debates have, so far, not become as mindlessly partisan as others.
Now he has to confront rising opposition to the Afghanistan war — especially among Democrats, but not exclusively. Add to that the soaring national debt, and the spending cutbacks on the horizon even in so popular a program as Social Security, and you see why he doesn’t want to be seen as a mere grasper for more.
He has come to terms with reality.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, National government, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetMartin Gottlieb: Wright brothers’ strong case has strong foe
It seems inconceivable that Ohio would allocate its space in Statuary Hall in Washington to “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” given than Menlo Park is in New Jersey.
But Thomas Edison does have some things going for him in his posthumous battle to occupy a site being involuntarily vacated by William Allen, a late Ohio governor who stood up for slavery. (Each state gets two statues. Ohio’s other is held by President James Garfield.)
For one thing,
Edison got more votes than anybody else when Ohioans were invited to let their views be known. The margin was only 14,833 to 13,815 over the Wright brothers; and Edison got only 30 percent of the vote (which was limited to 10 finalists suggested by a committee).
And the state had said all along that the vote would not resolve the matter; it would just be a big factor.
But still, the vote is there, and it’s an easy thing for Edison partisans to point to.
Then there’s the fact that the special legislative committee that will make a recommendation to the legislature is chaired by a senator from Edison country. Sen. Mark Wagoner’s Toledo-area district includes Milan where Edison was born, which now has an Edison high school. Wagoner is for Edison.
And there’s the fact that statue rules anticipate that one person will be honored, not two, such as the Wright brothers. Just honoring one of the Wright brothers seems kind of silly to anybody who knows their biographies.
There might be ways around this. The people running the program in Washington don’t seem to be personally insisting that honoring only one person is the right way to proceed. They seem to just be pointing to the rules. But if Ohio declares clearly that it wants the Wright brothers, the rules might be changed.
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, has been working the issue. He says that “if the state legislature chooses to honor (the Wright brothers’) legacy in Statuary Hall, I will work with my colleagues to ensure that happens and that any perceived potential challenge within current Statuary Hall rules is addressed. This is resolvable.”
Nobody seems to know what the members of the committee are intending, even the members, though they are scheduled to vote later this month. The committee hasn’t debated the issue formally, though it has held hearings around the state. None of those hearings has attracted all the members.
Rep. Richard Adams, R-Troy, is a member. He originally supported a former congressman from Piqua, William McCulloch, a Republican who was important in passing historic civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But Adams notes that the Wright brothers’ great-grandniece, Amanda Wright Lane, made a terrific presentation.
Now that it seems to be coming down to Edison and the Wrights, a lot of locals will be looking to him.
Every indication is that the advocates for the Wright brothers have put on the most aggressive campaign. They are fueled not only by local pride — a factor that has fueled others elsewhere — but by the sheer power of their case:
If it comes down to two choices of entrants to be honored by the state, and both are world renowned for historic inventions, and one entrant only lived in the state until he was 7, while the others were Ohioans, pure and simple, what question does that leave?
To put it another way, how many statues does Edison deserve? One from New Jersey and one from Ohio?
This issue is arguably not as important as jobs, government debt, declining wages, unaffordable health care, a budget crisis or others looming over Columbus and Washington.
But it does have one characteristic to recommend it: an actual solution, an unmistakably right course. Not many of those going around these days.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Local History, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government
TweetGuest column: Campaign to land space shuttle offers some important lessons
This commentary was written by Jim Leftwich, president and CEO of the Dayton Development Coalition.
There are lessons to be learned from last month’s congressional skirmish over retired space shuttles.
NASA operates three space shuttles. A fourth, used in tests, is on display in the Washington, D.C., area. When the shuttle program ends next year, NASA plans to select museums around the country to exhibit the retired shuttles.
A shuttle would become the centerpiece for any museum. Consequently, competition is intense. About 20 museums have asked NASA for one of the four shuttles. The only contender in Ohio is the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Some competitors are estimating that landing a shuttle could bring a state 700 or more jobs and $40 million to $70 million in direct spending tied to increased visitation and museum activity.
Texas, which is home to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Florida, where the space shuttles have been launched, are both particularly aggressive in the pursuit of a retired shuttle.
Earlier this year, a bill backed mostly by members of the Texas and Florida congressional delegations was introduced that would have required NASA to give the shuttles to museums in those states.
When that bill didn’t go anywhere, a provision turned up in a draft bill that ordered NASA to give “priority consideration” to museums that met certain conditions — and only museums in Texas and Florida fit the bill.
When the House Science and Technology Committee took up the draft bill, the two Ohio members of the committee—Charlie Wilson and Marcia Fudge—offered an amendment to strike the provision. Though Texas and Florida are well represented on the committee, the provision was removed on an 18-14 vote.
Lesson one: It pays to be vigilant.
Lesson two: We need to fight aggressively to stay in this competition.
Lesson three is that teamwork counts. Congressman Michael Turner lobbied members of the committee. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland organized other governors. Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich have been working with the House members to support the shuttle. The Dayton Development Coalition, Air Force Museum Foundation, and National Aviation Heritage Area have been working together.
Lesson four is that when a museum’s campaign extends beyond selling the merits and attempts to rely on raw political pressure, there is risk of a backlash.
On the merits, the National Museum of the United States Air Force has as strong as case as any museum. It is one of the best attended and best staffed. It has a strong education program and an existing collection of space artifacts to accompany and complement the new addition.
A shuttle in Ohio would honor the workers at Cleveland’s NASA Glenn Research Center, as well as acknowledge the current and historic links to the aerospace industry throughout the state.
The museum has one selling point that none of the other museums have — the Air Force Museum alone among the competitors represents the Department of Defense, which was a major contributor to the Space Shuttle Program.
The Air Force provided research — and much of that was done at Wright-Patterson. The Air Force backed the shuttle program when its fate was uncertain in Congress and provided billions of dollars to keep it going.
About 60 of the NASA astronauts who flew on the space shuttle had served as active or reserve Air Force officers.
As a community, we need to match or exceed the popular and political support of our competitors. We need to engage in all the techniques of bringing our state together behind this goal and demonstrating broad interest.
But we cannot count on that to win this competition. Ultimately, we need to make the case that the interests of the American people will be served better by landing a shuttle in Ohio than anywhere else.
We have a hand of aces — but so do some other museums. Our trump card might be the unique role of the Department of Defense.
In the end, the decision may be political. But only to a point. The lessons we learned show that we need to arm our elected officials with the best information to tell our story clearly, convincingly and aggressively.
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TweetEditorial: Immigration ideas getting worse
Some people — for example, syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg — present a new fight over the 14th Amendment as your typical-liberal conservative thing. (“Voters more likely than justices to guard Constitution,” on this page, Aug. 9. Read it online at DaytonDailyNews.com/opinion.)
But on this page today is Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson taking the position Mr. Goldberg ascribes to the liberals. Mr. Gerson was a speech writer for President George W. Bush. Not a liberal.
To their credit, a lot of Republicans are nervous about the anti-immigration proposal of the moment: to abolish the provision of the 14th Amendment that says people who are born in this country are automatically citizens.
Some Republicans see the post-Civil War amendments as a grand Republican contribution not to be tinkered with. (The 13th abolished slavery. The 15th guaranteed voting rights to all citizens.) That connection to history, and that willingness to dissent within the movement are good to see.
The first sentence of the 14th Amendment gives citizenship to those born here. The paragraph continues to say citizens shall not be deprived of rights without due process of law. The two provisions are the heart of the amendment.
Now some political voices are saying that Mexicans are trying to take advantage of the 14th by making sure their babies are born here. Sponsoring Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has spoken of people “dropping babies,” a phrase that has offended some.
Columnist Gerson’s references to Ohio make a point worth knowing about historic opposition to the 14th: it was based in racism. If he had wanted to push the point, he might have noted that southwest Ohio — home to the two modern legislators he mentions, U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner and former state Rep. Tom Brinkman — was a hotbed of opposition to the Civil War and the changes it brought.
Indeed, a Civil War-era congressman from Dayton, Clement Vallandigham, was the leading national figure in the most virulent anti-Abe Lincoln, anti-war movement in the North, the so-called Copperheads.
But such points really do not address the issues of today. One needn’t be a racist or stuck in the 19th century — and one needn’t be a conservative — to worry about the impacts of illegal immigration today. True, the harm of such immigration is often overstated. And the benefits are too often forgotten, benefits in the form of workers taking jobs that others won’t take and in the form of the country getting the kinds of immigrant citizens that have long been at its core.
But the very fact that many of the immigrants are here illegally is a problem. It leaves people with the sense that the country’s problems are out of control. It produces a system that nobody defends. It undermines support for legal immigration. It produces a generation in semi-hiding.
Changing the 14th Amendment does not hold much promise for deterring desperate people from coming to the United States. It holds promise mainly as a political issue, a juicy fight that will foster still more anger and polarization without accomplishing much.
It’s in a category that is already too big: bad ideas resulting from the immigration problem. Others in the category include handling the immigration issue at the state level, and discriminating against states according their immigration policies. (Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman moved to ban city employees from going to Arizona.)
The bad ideas seem likely to proliferate and take hold as long as Washington fails to do something real about the immigration problem. That’s easier said than done, or it would have been done. But the need to develop some system — in which illegality is the exception, not the norm — becomes more urgent all the time.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, National government
TweetKevin Riley: People paying attention to updayton’s successes
In this job, there’s no shortage of annual reports from community organizations that make it to my desk or e-mail “in box.”
But the “Year Two” report from “updayton” got my attention — and it should get yours. (You can download it at www.updayton.org.)
It’s impressive enough to just get through a second year and into a third — but the report proves the organization has also gained important traction, support and credibility.
And we should all hope it’s here to stay.
Updayton grew out of the Creative Region Initiative of a few years ago. That initiative was launched with the help of Richard Florida, an economist and best-selling author, who urges communities to develop a class of people who think and create for a living.
Updayton was one of several efforts that sprouted from that work. (Another is Film Dayton, an organization that promotes film-making in the region and now hosts a film festival.)
Updayton has become focused on retaining young talent in the Dayton region.
Ohio and Dayton have been experiencing a “brain drain.” Simply stated, we educate young people at colleges and universities, and more of them leave than stay. That’s no way to build an economic future.
Updayton wants to change the trend.
Skeptics immediately point to the need for jobs — and only jobs — if we want young folks to live in the region.
Of course, updayton acknowledges that need — and it has made strides to connect job-seekers with employers.
But updayton’s efforts go beyond that. It wants to advocate for young people, match them to the region’s amenities and foster community building.
By getting people connected to the community — and giving them a chance to shape and change it — updayton’s leaders believe that Dayton will become the kind of place where young people want to live. If we have plenty of talented young people living here, we should attract businesses.
These ideas and theories are important. But the organization’s credibility and reputation have grown because it has pushed well beyond the theoretical.
Its members are accomplishing things, showing up on the streets and getting things done. For example, the group decided at its annual “Young Creatives Summit” to focus on the Wayne Avenue Corridor. Members want to clean up the area and better connect the Oregon and Cannery districts.
Now the stretch of Wayne Avenue between Third and Fifth streets has been cleaned up and has murals painted.
A skeptic again might point out that turning around Dayton will take more than pulling some weeds and placing a few murals — and that’s true.
But updayton has gained the support of organizations like the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community at the University of Dayton because its members can make things happen.
And in its report, updayton cautiously points to an important positive statistic. According to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, in 2008 (the most recent year available) the Dayton region actually grew its population of 18- to 34-year-olds by 4,000.
Time will tell if that statistic holds up.
Updayton members have already played key roles in the development of the Greater Downtown Plan. As the downtown plan moves toward implementation, the community is seeking updayton’s young, talented members.
And so updayton’s most important role could be the leaders it’s developing.
The days of Dayton being led by a small group of corporate titans have gone away — just as such leadership has waned in most towns.
We used to grow leaders inside large companies, who then availed themselves of a larger community role. We still have organizations to do that. But meaningful involvement in community projects at a young age could provide our next generation of community leaders.
Updayton is doing a big job, and we could all benefit.
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TweetSheriff Phil Plummer: Criticism of sheriff’s office incorrect and misleading
This guest column was written by Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer.
This letter is in response to Ellen Belcher’s commentary (“How badly can we do law enforcement?” Aug. 8) in which several incorrect or misleading statements were made.
I am not at war with Deborah Feldman. I was elected to run this office and that is what I intend to do.
As it pertains to Belcher’s statement, “The most public problem was his botching of the region 911 emergency dispatch center.” In fact, AT&T claimed responsibility for this error and stated “Our extensive testing revealed that the problems experienced on March 26, 2009 were the result of a programming setting of the Nortel CS1000M” phone switch.
Belcher also stated, “When that system went live, calls weren’t getting through for hours.” In fact, 2,228 calls were received at our regional dispatch center on this date. Only five calls went unanswered due to AT&T’s error.
During my interview with Belcher, I stated that I would allow a consultant of my choosing to conduct an analysis of my policing contracts. This was omitted completely from her commentary.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office has held policing contracts with Harrison and Washington townships over the past 40 years. Over these years, billing for these contracts has increased.
The three-year policing contracts with Harrison and Washington townships expire December 2010. The three-year policing contract with Jefferson Twp. expires December 2012.
Section 311.29(B) of the Ohio Revised Code grants the county sheriff the authority to enter into contracts with townships, municipalities, and other political subdivisions to perform any police function, exercise any police power, or render any police service in behalf of the contracting (political) subdivision. Therefore, any future contracts will present a competitive and appropriate rate with services that my office provides.
Since 2008, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office has had a reduction of $3,048,866 from its general budget and has reduced staffing by 56 employees.
To offset these budget cuts, I have generated new and additional revenues from items such as inmate book-in and release fees, inmate video arraignment fees, fees from sexual offenders, housing of federal prisoners, etc., in the amount of $2,785,608.
The majority of this revenue is returned to the county general fund.
I have implemented additional savings of $103,737.15 from the reduction in command staff pay. Furthermore, my command staff has not taken a pay raise in two years. An additional $300,000 was saved from the inmate medical contract with NaphCare.
Implementing an additional $860,640.12 budget cut for 2011 will be challenging, but I will continue to move promptly to implement actions to balance our budget.
My primary goal is to protect the quality and integrity of our neighborhoods by working with our community and elected leaders in reducing violent crimes. Although our budget has been drastically cut and is continuing to be cut, violent crimes in Montgomery County are down. In the areas patrolled by my office, murders and rapes have decreased 25 percent compared to 2009.
With the confidence of police chiefs, the Regional Agencies Narcotics and Gun Enforcement Task Force has been implemented. This task force will soon consist of 10 police agencies working to combat crimes of violence as a result of increased gun and drug activity in Montgomery County.
Despite budget cuts and loss of personnel, the men and women of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office will continue to provide the highest level of law enforcement services to the citizens of this county under my leadership.
This service will be provided in a professional manner that the citizens both demand and deserve.
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TweetEditorial: Voters should be watching school race
For residents of four local counties, the usually invisible state board of education race is actually going to be one to watch this year.
The state board’s third district, encompassing Montgomery, Miami and Butler counties, along with part of Darke County, will have interesting candidates with different approaches to the issues.
Susan Haverkos is stepping down after one term, so her husband, Mark, can run for her seat. He will face Jeff Mims, the president of the Dayton school board, a surprise entrant. (Businessman Tom Gunlock, a former state school board member who filed to run, said Wednesday he has changed his mind and won’t seek the job.)
State board members influence everything from what kids learn in school to how they are tested to how much state money their districts get.
But a chronic lack of voter attention to the state board has led to some eye-popping election results. This is the seat that in 2002 was won by John Griffin. He was a longtime political gadfly who had run for (and lost) dozens of offices and was practically homeless when voters sent him to serve on the state school board in Columbus.
Mr. Griffin shockingly upset Carl Wick, a respected incumbent and well-known Centerville businessman who had been appointed by then-Gov. Bob Taft. Mr. Wick had purchased advertising and had run a professional campaign. Mr. Griffin had no money and an incoherent platform.
Did he win on name recognition alone? Perhaps. But his time on the board served neither the state nor the Dayton area well.
Last time around, in 2006, the results again caught anyone who was paying attention off guard. Ms. Haverkos, a mostly unknown PTA president and accountant for a home business in West Chester, beat Mr. Gunlock, another well-known, well-financed Centerville businessman, who was appointed to the seat after Mr. Griffin died in office.
Ms. Haverkos’ early comments were worrisome. (She expressed doubts about the theory of evolution and a willingness to consider reopening the tedious “intelligent design” debate.) But this time the unexpected proved to be a pleasant surprise.
As a state board member, Ms. Haverkos has diligently studied the issues and was a thoughtful voice in debates. She even launched a blog with another state board member (www. stateofohioeducation.com) that tracked state education issues, a great service for constituents.
As for this time, the candidates have very different perspectives on the issues.
Mr. Mims has spent a lifetime in urban education as a teacher, coach, administrator, union leader and school board president in Dayton. He said he is running because he believes the state board lacks insight into the issues and challenges of urban education.
Mr. Haverkos, like his wife, is a religious conservative. He is a small-business owner and parent with a child who just graduated high school in the suburban Lakota school district. He said his experience with the state board of education has taught him that parents are the one constituency that is rarely represented in the lobbying on state education issues. He wants to be a voice for parents.
The race should be competitive and interesting. Perhaps it will be more than a simple clash of urban and suburban interests. Checking it out and making an informed choice would be worth the time of voters.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetGuest column: Healthy rivers ought to be national and local priority
This column was written by Rebecca Wodder, president of American Rivers, a national nonprofit river conservation organization (www.americanrivers.org).
Thousands of citizens showed their support for river health last month when they turned out for the Great Miami Clean Sweep, an effort to clean up trash from the Great Miami River.
The annual river cleanup is one of the most successful in the nation. The spirit and energy surrounding this event is proof that the river is the city’s lifeblood.
As the Obama administration works to shape its new initiative, America’s Great Outdoors, it should take a lesson from Dayton and focus on river revitalization.
The administration’s initiative is aimed at promoting conservation and recreation nationwide, especially among children. What better way to do that than to prioritize river protection and restoration? Healthy rivers offer recreation for all ages, including fishing, boating, swimming and wildlife watching.
Nearly every community has a river or stream flowing through it, and rivers connect urban and rural communities to parks and other natural treasures.
Healthy rivers also give us clean drinking water — the number-one environmental concern among Americans.
The Downtown Dayton Partnership has put rivers at the forefront, recognizing the vital role they play in the life of the city.
The efforts to improve connections to the river and enhance RiverScape MetroPark offer lessons for cities across the country. But more can be done, and federal help can elevate the river revitalization effort to the next level.
That’s why the administration should include the Great Miami and rivers like it as a part of America’s Great Outdoors.
The administration should promote the creation of blue trails, also known as blueways or water trails, as an innovative way to protect rivers at the local level.
A blue trail is a dedicated stretch of river that enjoys special clean-water safeguards and is a destination for fishing, boating and other recreation.
Just as hiking trails are designed to help people explore the land, blue trails help people discover rivers.
Blue trails provide a fun, exciting way to get kids outdoors, connect communities like Dayton to treasured landscapes, and are economic drivers benefiting local businesses and quality of life.
Every American deserves a healthy river. By making rivers the centerpiece of America’s Great Outdoors, the administration will ensure future generations in Dayton and across the country enjoy all of the gifts that our rivers have to offer.
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TweetMartin Gottlieb: Outcome of House races could shape governorship
2010 ELECTION
Candidates for the Ohio legislature in November are seeking the thrill of cutting government spending or begging Washington or taxpayers for more money. Any option seems like pretty thankless work, except maybe for the people who have always hated government and now see a chance to mess with it.
One might wonder why others are even running. To limit the damage? Not a life goal one grows up with.
Unattractive as they may be, the legislative jobs could shape the next governorship.
In today’s paper, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson speculates that President Barack Obama will have a difficult time adjusting to a 2011 Washington, in a which a liberal legislative agenda will be out of the question, given that he’s a committed liberal. In fact, though, Obama is a committed liberal in the context of his party’s big majorities in Congress.
The decisions he’s made that seem to the columnist to suggest ideological rigidity are simply decisions that now is the time, that these majorities may never be there again, and that a different kind of Congress will require a different kind of approach.
Similarly, if Republican John Kasich wins the Ohio governorship in November, he will govern one way if his party has control of the House and another if it doesn’t.
(About the Senate, there is no question; Republicans will control it.)
What’s at stake is whether Kasich — more the ideological warrior than Obama, it says here — can come on like gangbusters, not whether he will find a way to function.
Democratic control of the House might mean less emphasis on cutting and more on approaches that might win some Democratic support.
Of course, if the Democrats have only marginal House control (about the best they can hope for), his problems will be somewhat smaller than if they have a big majority. And if he wins big himself, that might be enough to make some Democrats occasionally cooperative.
What a Republican House would mean if Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland is re-elected is murkier, given Republican control of the Senate. Gangbusters is out of the question.
So the question arrives: Who will control the House?
Hard not to predict the Republicans. The harder question is how big their majority will be. The Democrats now have 53-46 control.
Start the guesswork with the fact that 2010 will be a Republican year, to one degree or another. Add that incumbency doesn’t look like the kind of advantage this year that it is in most years. Add that the Democrats just won their majority in 2008; incumbents are most vulnerable after their first term.
Now add the big fact: The House districts were drawn by Republicans for Republicans. In the normal course of things, the Republicans should have a solid majority. The Democrats didn’t simply need a great year to take control. They needed two in a row — 2006 and 2008 — something that seldom happens.
Even if 2010 weren’t a Republican year, the Democratic majority would be in jeopardy. It’s a fluke, jeopardized by normality.
To understand how big a fluke, note this: Three House districts make up a Senate district. And after the Democratic tidal wave of ‘06/’08, the Republicans still have 2-1 control of the Senate. That fact shows the system working the way the map drawers wanted it to.
Although a few House districts can be won by either party — at least in extreme circumstances — all but one in the Miami Valley are locked in. (Republican Ross McGregor, in Springfield, has a district that went marginally for Barack Obama.)
I haven’t made a district-by-district analysis of House races. That exercise generally involves looking at polls (which can be misleading in low-profile races) and at money (which isn’t all it’s cracked up to be) and relying on other people’s judgments about candidates. Sometimes the big picture tells you more. The big picture is all Republican.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: 35 days of early voting is too much of a good thing
2010 ELECTION
When the idea of early voting start to take hold, the attraction was enormous. Why not let eager citizens pick their own time for voting? It might increase turnout. It would certainly increase satisfaction with the whole process.
The idea is a success, enthusiastically embraced across the country. In 2008 in Ohio, about 30 percent of voters voted early or absentee. (A recent law change had allowed people to vote absentee without having an excuse, such as plans to be out of town on Election Day.)
But how early is appropriately early?
For the November election, early voting starts on Sept. 28, both in person and absentee. That’s a Tuesday, five weeks out from the election.
Too early. Five weeks is about all there is to many election campaigns, other than those at the top of the ticket. Candidates plan for a lot longer than that, and they raise money earlier and try to get some public attention. But the attention typically only comes in October, if then.
It’s easy to say that if candidates want to get the early voters, they should start earlier. But finding either the money or the audiences to listen is not as easy to do as say .
Moreover, there’s something to be said for limiting the time that voters are subjected to campaigns. Given that we have elections and primaries every year, plus special elections, do we really want to be stretching campaigns?
Late-September voting works for some voters and some offices. A lot of people certainly have their minds made up about governor and U.S. Senator by then. And a lot are comfortable casting partisan votes in other races.
But the people trying to make the case for or against a school levy or the people running for an open seat, or a challenger trying to make a case that a low-profile incumbent needs to be unseated, all these need the kind of attention that is hard to achieve in late October, much less mid-September.
Anyway, much as everybody loves complaining about campaigns and the misinformation they generate, they do sometimes play a useful role. Candidates should be put through their paces — in debates and other public forums.
Even if those events aren’t televised or seen by many, word gets out. And the ads and mailings that candidates run should be scrutinized before people vote.
In 2008, the 35-day gap between the first and last votes made some sense because of the presidential election and the desire of people to avoid long lines. But the rationale in this election is hard to see.
After 2010, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner tried to get the gap shortened for this year. This was partly because early-voting overlapped with late registration, which caused some people to worry — somewhat irrationally — that it was all some sort of trick to eliminate registration as a separate process.
But the effort to change the dates died in the legislature.
So did the idea of allowing counties to have more than one physical location for early voting, so that people wouldn’t have to come downtown, an idea that had worked outside Ohio in 2008.
The way to encourage early voting is to open more voting centers for shorter periods, perhaps two or three weeks before the election.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government
TweetEditorial: Too much moving hurts children and the schools
Students from poor households often face loads of special obstacles to learning. That’s long been known. They might have fewer books to read at home, get less attention from parents burdened by long work hours, and see the doctor less often. All these can lead to problems at school.
Yet another symptom of poverty gets less attention — frequent upheaval.
Moving is a part of American life, of course. About four in 10 U.S. fourth-graders now have changed schools at least once. But for the poorest kids, more than one transfer in a single school year is not uncommon.
Constant changes in students’ living arrangements, often driven by parents’ work needs, can have a big impact on high-poverty schools like those in Dayton. And those schools don’t always have policies in place that account for the fact that close to a third of kids, on average, are new to a school each year.
Frequent moving is known to have a detrimental impact on kids’ test scores. Dayton Public Schools’ data, for example, shows that the longer students have been at any single school, the better they score on standardized tests.
The mobility issue has only attracted limited research, though, partly because tracking kids’ moves is a challenge.
Even if we did know more about student mobility, though, is there anything schools could do to diminish its ill effects?
People at the Dayton office of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a national think tank focused on school choice and high standards, have done Montgomery County a favor by putting the student mobility issue on the table and funding a study.
Richard Stock, of the University of Dayton, looked at three years of data on where kids go when they change schools in Montgomery County. His work was made possible by a new Ohio Department of Education system that allows for the removal of private information in the tracking of data for individual students.
Among his findings:
• Students generally moved most in poorest districts, but some low-income suburban districts (Jefferson, Trotwood, Northridge and Mad River) had more moving than Dayton.
• Kids are leaving Montgomery County school districts (presumably moving out of the region) altogether at an increasing rate.
• Kids who leave schools that have high poverty rates and poor test scores tend to move to other schools that also are high in poverty and have low scores. In other words, parents don’t appear to choose new schools based primarily on test scores.
• There was more movement within Dayton schools and within the charter school sector than from one to the other.
The study is just a start. Mr. Stock suggests Montgomery County create its own system to track student data to make future study easier. That’s a good idea.
Ideas that Fordham proposes — such as “performance bonuses” for schools with high test scores despite high mobility or busing changes — should kick off a much-needed community conversation.
Home is a very unstable place for many Montgomery County kids. That makes the roles of schools all the more important — and their challenges all the tougher.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
TweetEditorial: GM plant is not scrap; don’t raze it
The interest of real-estate developers in the old General Motors Moraine site is a welcome sign that Dayton and Ohio are seen as having a future in manufacturing and other kinds of business that need a lot space.
The interest of another kind of buyer, however, is not so welcome.
Turns out that some businesses are interested not in the plant, but in the steel and other materials that comprise it. They want to raze the plant and sell the parts. Not only can that be profitable, says Moraine City Manager David Hicks, but the companies that engage in it can afford to pay more up front, because they realize a profit faster than developers.
What might happen to the land after the scraps are sold?
It might still be redeveloped, either by the company that sells the scraps or by another buyer. That’s speculative.
Meanwhile, however, City Manager Hicks says several companies are interested in using what’s there. They want to rent out the existing facilities.
Motors Liquidation will be selling the site. It’s a for-profit operation that was set up as a subsidiary of an existing company (not GM) for the purpose of disposing of property that GM is dumping as part of its bankruptcy.
Motors Liquidation is not formally tied to GM. But apparently part of the deal with GM is that Motors Liquidation will try not to cause GM major political problems. So one might gather from the fact that Motors Liquidation says it won’t necessarily accept the highest bid for the property. The company says it wants to work with the local community and take its wishes into account.
The wishes of the Dayton region are — and have to be — to see the existing plant redeveloped. Moraine and Montgomery County are united in wanting the sale to go to a real-estate developer. And U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, chimed in last week. He sent letters all the way up to President Barack Obama, on the grounds that the federal government owns much of GM.
That was an ironic twist. Rep. Turner was so passionately opposed to the government having ownership in GM that he proposed a constitutional amendment barring the government from ever owning part of another company again. But now it turns out that government ownership is giving him a lever he sees as worthing pulling on behalf of his community.
(Nevertheless, he is certainly right that government ownership is to be avoided where possible. Both GM and the government say they are eager to end their connection. They need to be held to that.)
Modifications will have to be made in the Moraine plant, of course. The vision of the developers is not that one auto company will come in and use all the space, as is. The idea is to have multiple tenants in multiple businesses and to rearrange the facilities to suit them.
Getting an existing building occupied fully or partly looks a lot more promising than leveling the structure. Indeed, one of the appeals to prospective buyers and tenants is that the property is roughly ready.
With an eye on all the people who need jobs, the community needs the approach that holds the strongest promise for bringing jobs — and for bringing them fast.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb
TweetEllen Belcher: How badly can we do law enforcement?
Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer and Montgomery County Administrator Deborah Feldman don’t want anyone to think they’re at war.
But they’re at war.
It takes some doing for Feldman to go public against an elected officeholder, even one who’s not officially her boss. But that’s what happened last week.
Plummer has been giving Feldman heartburn from almost the moment he took office after Dave Vore retired. The most public problem was his botching of the regional 911 emergency dispatch center. When that system went live, calls weren’t getting through for hours, and dispatchers didn’t know that the calls were lost in the ether.
The embarrassment was humiliating to Feldman who had burned political capital, arguing that a consolidated dispatch system would save money and improve service.
Since then, there have been other disagreements, too, generally about money.
This week Feldman matter of factly told the commissioners in a public meeting that Plummer didn’t increase his charges to Washington, Harrison and Jefferson townships for providing police protection, as they had counted on him doing. She was banking on $1 million in new money.
Feldman did not chastise Plummer. She just included him in a list of reasons why the county is looking at a deficit of $800K. Besides his refusal to charge more, the county’s money from the sales tax is coming in lower than anticipated and investment earnings are in the tank.
Not shockingly, Plummer feels singled out. He points to a long list of things he’s done to bring in money. He argues that he shouldn’t be expected to renege on contracts with his customers.
Meanwhile, though, the other county elected officeholders are supporting the commissioners and Feldman. They think the sheriff should be taken to task because, as they see it, he’s making sweetheart deals that are draining them.
Told you: all the makings of a war.
By law, sheriffs are only required to run the county jail and provide court security. But many sheriffs do actual police work, which many voters mistakenly think is their main job. To justify their role in actual law enforcement, the sheriffs cite their legal responsibility to “preserve the public peace” in unincorporated areas.
When money wasn’t a concern, sheriffs didn’t always bill townships for full-service police protection. But that’s gradually changed. Now the fight — not just here, but in many urban counties — is over whether they charge the true cost and whether, in places like Montgomery County, the sales tax that all county residents pay is effectively subsidizing police protection for a few.
Feldman is adamant that, in fairness, an independent consultant should be brought in to do an analysis of the sheriff’s operations and identify where his money is going. Plummer has said no.
This isn’t just a county fight. The question of whether wealthy Washington Twp., for example, is getting a subsidy is a hot issue in Centerville, where the city council wants to merge with the township. The township trustees have campaigned against a merger, saying Centerville has higher costs than the township.
But Centerville believes Washington Twp. is getting subsidized policing — and other services, too — from the county.
It’s not hard to understand why Plummer objects to a consultant’s evaluation. If he’s not charging the full freight, and he is pressured to charge more, he could lose the contracts that increase the size of his operation and get him on TV when there’s a drug bust.
Washington Twp. will never contract for policing with Centerville, but — if prices rose — it could start its own department. Harrison Twp. has toyed with that idea, too.
If we were starting over, no one would create 26 jurisdictions in Montgomery County, almost all of which have their own police department. The sheriff’s office would be the logical place to consolidate law enforcement, provided that the public could have confidence that that individual would be a consummate professional. (In Ohio, sheriffs are elected; not all of them should be in charge of people with guns or multimillion-dollar budgets.)
But today things are going in precisely the opposite direction:
Montgomery County needs to save money, so it wants the sheriff out of police work. Area cities and townships that are paying dearly to have their own police forces are opposing some communities taking advantage of economies of scale because they don’t want the county helping others, but not them.
Meanwhile, Phil Plummer doesn’t command the confidence of people who know that a strapped, mostly urban county is approaching police work in a way that stopped making sense decades ago.
Permalink | Comments (137) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Ellen Belcher, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Miami Valley Politics, Montgomery County, Suburban Communities
TweetEditorial: Grand Lake St. Marys deserves better
Gov. Ted Strickland made a splash at the dead Grand Lake St. Marys — not in the water, of course, lest he come down with something deadly.
Just politically speaking.
He brought high-ranking state officials with him, and he promised there’d be new regulations on farms that are fouling the water with the phosphorous that spawns toxic algae blooms.
The day after his July 30 visit, U.S. Rep. John Boehner also met with residents and local officials. He promised he’d ride the U.S. Agriculture Department about contributing money to help mitigate the environmental debacle that has forced people off of the water and is literally destroying a local economy.
You might ask: If this is all it took to get things on track, why weren’t these things done sooner?
Well, this isn’t all it’s going to take, and actually there wasn’t anything of significance accomplished by the politicians stopping by.
The regulations that Gov. Strickland touted aren’t scheduled to take effect for two years. That means that farmers can keep spreading manure on frozen crop land, sending phosphorous-laced runoff into the creeks that connect with Ohio’s largest inland lake. They will be encouraged to adopt practices that control the runoff, but they wouldn’t be ordered to — not yet anyway.
Rep. Boehner’s support for $1 million in emergency funding didn’t take any special effort, and, anyway, that’s not even a down payment on what it will cost to clean up the lake.
It’s an amazing thing to have a lake die and to have an entire community living with the smell of death. This is not a noxious pond that we’re talking about. It’s a 13,500-acre reservoir that has been supporting an estimated $200-million annual tourist industry.
It’s just Gov. Strickland’s bad luck that he’s in charge of the state when this happened. Of all of Ohio’s contemporary governors, he’s been in office the shortest amount of time during the period that this problem has been building. Literally, the state and its regulators have been on notice for years, even decades, about the threat.
While to blame him would be ridiculous, the governor can’t ride into town and suggest he wants to help, but then give in to pleas by agri-business and farmers that they need time to figure out how to install filters and store their animals’ manure.
They have known that this day was coming. They’ve known that nationally the pressure is on to prevent agricultural runoff because it’s threatening the water quality in rivers and oceans. Time’s up in Ohio.
One good thing that’s going on is that people are proposing ideas and reaching out to experts. There are debates about massive chemistry experiments involving alum and other concoctions to counteract the phosphorous. People are challenging the state’s notion that dredging is out of the question (because it’s too expensive), suggesting that it might be part of the solution. Good, hard questions are being asked.
Because people are so angry and scared about the jobs that are drying up, the drop in their property values and the possibility that a stunning resource could be destroyed for decades or even forever, there’s finally a sense of urgency.
But let’s be clear: While the Grand Lake St. Marys community has to do its part to understand the options, to identify technical experts and to have the conversations that promote public education, it doesn’t have the money to pay for any remedies. That will have to come from the very governments that didn’t want to push the farming operations in Mercer and Auglaize counties to stop harming others’ livelihoods, property and possibly their health.
Wait two years to stop the practices that fouled this lake? Allow people to keep doing the very thing that is costing taxpayers money that they shouldn’t have to pay in the first place?
The governor, agricultural lobbyists and the farm owners can’t be serious.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Rural Communities
TweetEditorial: Senate bickers while businesses lose
Partisan bickering in the U.S. Senate about a bill designed to offer help to small business is beyond frustrating at a time when companies that could benefit are living on the edge.
The $30 billion bill is modest in size and mostly offers tax cuts and the creation of a new fund that would allow small banks to extend more loans to small companies stifled by a credit freeze.
The bill isn’t the solution to all the problems facing small business, but it is a useful tool that can help them invest and hire. It has wide support on both sides of the aisle, but Senate leaders are about to shelve the whole thing over inane disputes such as how many amendments are allowed.
Democrats say that many of the bill’s existing provisions were actually authored by Republicans, who tend to favor tax cuts and programs that support business. But Republicans object to some of the bill’s spending.
On that, though, the Congressional Budget Office says the bill would not add to the deficit because of revenue generated by closing tax loopholes for foreign companies. Republicans are blocking it by threatening a filibuster. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, supported the spending as recently as last month, but so far is honoring the call for a filibuster. Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown backs the program.
It’s time for both sides to come together and move the bill to a vote.
Nationally, the lack of access to credit for small business is a real problem. When the economy rebounds, small business expansion will be an important part of the equation.
But many small businesses are stymied by lending standards that have gotten stricter. They can’t get loans, forcing some to turn to so-called “hard money” lenders — high-interest deals with wealthy individuals or investment groups that critics compare to payday lenders.
When small businesses want to expand, but are shut out of credit or must spend their cash instead on huge interest payments, that prevents jobs from being created.
Sebastian Melluzzo, president of Citizens National Bank of Southwestern Ohio, said he’s not sure how much the loan fund would help in this area because demand for loans is way down. Companies hurt by the downturn aren’t looking to expand, he said, until they see more signs suggesting sales are coming back.
But Steve Budd, president of the CityWide Development Corp., the city of Dayton’s development arm, said he has seen good businesses with solid track records get turned down for loans.
“These are top-notch owners who have done a great job, and the bank will tell you so,” he said. “But banks are afraid to lend money.”
Banks are under pressure from regulators, he said, who consider what formerly were rated good loans as too risky. Often borrowers’ assets — property and portfolios — aren’t worth as much as they once were.
“There’s not as much demand for new credit as there has been at other times,” Mr. Budd said, “but the needs that are out there are not being met.”
The Senate isn’t helping the tentative recovery.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, National Politics, Scott Elliott
TweetGuest 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.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Guest Columns
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.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Legislature’s flop on districting just ludicrous
The arguments that leading Ohio legislators make for continuing to allow one-party domination of the drawing of legislative districts are striking.
Take Senate Democratic leader Capri Cafaro, of Hubbard, speaking after hopes died this week for a bipartisan, House-Senate compromise reform measure.
“The concern of our caucus,” she said, “was not the content of the plan, but rather the concept of putting something into the constitution that hasn’t been tried in another state.”
In fact, though, the only way to change the map-drawing process is through the constitution. So Sen. Cafaro is saying Ohio should not be a national leader.
And, anyway, the compromise that she finally rejected did not have the truly bold, innovative idea that the (Democratic) House had passed. Its fundamental measure held simply that no future map may be adopted without bipartisan support.
The compromise did also instruct the map-drawers to try to create many districts that might be won either political party; and, given that some other districts must inevitably be dominated by one party, the map should have roughly equal numbers of Republican and Democratic districts, reflecting the political nature of the state.
That’s not much to be afraid of.
Or take the criticism by Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati. For technical reasons, the compromise also included language that would give the mapmakers more leeway to break up townships and counties than cities. This was a compromise Sen. Husted had to agree to because Democratic techies had concluded that competitiveness and statewide balance between Republican and Democratic districts could not be achieved otherwise.
Sen. Seitz said, “I think this would work mischief.”
State Sen. Tim Grendell, R-Chesterland, said that the compromise could hurt rural Republicans.
Mischief? Any mischief in the context of a system that requires bipartisan votes and specific nonpartisan criteria would be tiny compared to mischief under the current system, which will now be in place for another decade. Now, the party that has two of three offices — governor, state auditor and secretary of state — is simply in charge. “Mischief” does not begin to cover what it can do.
The failure of reform is absurd, like something out of Alice in Wonderland. Support for reform came mainly from the House Democrats and Senate Republicans. What possible sense does that make?
Sen. Fred Strahorn, D-Dayton, expressed only the vaguest concerns about the compromise measure, saying he hadn’t quite focused on it. He said earlier versions worried him because of the nature of the tie-breaking mechanism, if maps couldn’t be agreed upon (something that the compromisers addressed).
The truth is unavoidable: The Senate Democrats associated reform with Sen. Husted and had no interest in helping his campaign for secretary of state by allowing him to claim an achievement. They provided not a single vote at any stage, though several expressed support for the general idea of reform.
And yet there’s blame to go around. The House Democrats who pushed reform did so belatedly, resulting in a special legislative session being required.
Even the most enthusiastic supporters deserve blame for not working on the Senate Democrats, whose numbers are so small (12 out of the 33 members), they frequently get ignored. But when a super-majority is necessary, as in this case, they can be crucial. Throughout this fight, they seemed to be on an island all to themselves.
The trip toward passage was always sharply uphill. Legislators were being asked to change rules that had worked for them, as individuals. Enthusiasm was always limited to a few, as was understanding of the issue.
The ending was sad.
But the issue has achieved higher visibility than ever. The next redistricting commission will include the next secretary of state. Both candidates — Sen. Husted and Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, the Democratic — are committed to reform. They can behave in that spirit on the commission, rather than as partisans, the way all other members have in past decades.
That could change things. But, still, the path is sharply uphill.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Counseling can get women killed
Jeff Bedinger is a tragic reminder that couples counseling isn’t right for everybody.
If you can believe what Mr. Bedinger told police after he was apprehended for allegedly killing his 22-year-old stepson, it was hours before at a counselor’s office that he realized that his wife, Kim, was not going to reconcile with him. Faced with the fact that she was leaving him — and that he couldn’t stop her — he got a gun and killed Brandon Haskins because he wanted his wife “to hurt the way I’m hurting.”
Mrs. Bedinger told police that her husband had threatened to shoot her on four prior occasions.
Mr. Bedinger will have his day in court, but the circumstances line up perfectly with classic lethal domestic violence cases. Those signs are important for counselors, clergy, divorce lawyers, police, relatives and friends to know if they know, or suspect, someone is being abused.
Going to counseling together in that situation is dangerous. If the victim — invariably the woman — is honest about why she wants out of the relationship or what has to change, telling an outsider can get her (or someone close to her) hurt or killed. She’s publicly exposing her abuser if she explains the problem, or if she doesn’t, there’s no chance of getting to the heart of her fear or unhappiness.
(It’s not just abuse victims themselves who are endangered when the truth comes out. Researchers are finding that batterers often target stepchildren in the home, too.)
Well-meaning people — including educated professionals — often provide or recommend counseling for a couple whose marriage is disintegrating. With rational people, the therapy can be helpful. But before couples counseling is tried, it’s important to know if violence is occurring or threatened. If abuse is going on, there’s a victim who needs help, not someone who needs to understand her partner’s needs or anger.
Seeing this and taking a side is hard for people who instinctively believe there are two sides to every disagreement. And it can be especially hard for clergy if they feel their loyalty is to both people because both are active in their faith. Still, there is only one right thing to do.
Invariably, at least some outsiders are stunned when domestic violence happens. They can’t imagine someone they know, and maybe like, hurting or killing another person; they often never saw “that side” of him.
But at the heart of every abuser’s behavior is his profound need to be in control, and when that power is threatened or taken away, irrationality can set in and the violent behavior ratchets up. The smart thing to do is to never underestimate a person who has been violent in the past or who is threatening to hurt a partner. They too often mean what they say.
In Montgomery County, judges, police, prosecutors and social workers come together periodically to review the circumstances in domestic violence cases, with the goal of discovering how the death could have been prevented.
The Montgomery County Domestic Violence Review Committee doesn’t look at cases where the appeals are pending or where someone is acquitted or never was charged, so not every death is dissected. But of 25 cases in the last decade or so where a male murdered a female partner, 18 occurred at the time the woman was trying to leave. This percentage mirrors the national rate, where 75 percent of such deaths occur when a woman tells her abuser she wants out.
Leaving a batterer is the most dangerous time in that couple’s relationship, and anyone contemplating that needs to do so from a safe place where she and those around her can be protected.
No one can predict when an abuser is going to go off, but what experience shows is that people who punch and hurt the people they love can also kill them.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Law Enforcement and Public Safety
TweetEditorial: Airport garage helps Dayton keep edge
Next time you fly out of the Dayton International Airport, parking will be different. That could be good or bad, depending on your perspective.
Travelers who want close-in covered parking (and are willing to pay for it) will be pleased. Those who liked the cheapest economy lot the way it was will have to get used to a new setup.
For Dayton, the new $35 million parking garage is a key step in a thoughtful, long-term strategy designed to give the airport an edge in competing for more flights and lower fares and even the effort to attract businesses to the region. Yes, a parking garage can help do all those things.
Parking is commonly a big moneymaker for airports. In Dayton, parking income will be close to half the airport’s $26 million in annual revenue. The new garage is expected to increase parking income by $6.6 million.
The airport’s plan is to use that money to reduce even more the amount it charges airlines per passenger for each flight. Former Director Iftikhar Ahmad (who just left for the top job at New Orleans’ airport) made driving down the airlines’ enplanement costs his top priority.
Dayton now charges airlines just $3.50 per passenger per flight, down from $14 in 2006. Interim Director Walter Krygowski said the goal is to get below zero — to actually allow airlines to earn a small amount back for every passenger who passes through Dayton. If the airport can achieve that, it will be one of very few in the country to do so.
Dayton is on a mission to maintain a reputation for having cheaper flights than nearby airports in Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. A quality airport with low fares makes the region more attractive to businesses that depend on transportation.
Many travelers are willing to pay extra for a garage. While the structure technically is a “short-term” parking area, you can park all day for $18. That’s three times what the cheapest airport parking lot cost, but actually cheaper than the highest daily rate of $25 for the short-term lot that used to be where the garage now sits.
Considerably more of the airport’s parking areas will be in the higher cost range, from $12 to $20 a day. But the economy lot remains $6 a day and is still close enough that many customers will walk or take a shuttle to the terminal.
To generate more non-airlines revenue, Dayton also wants to attract retail stores and restaurants to the airport concourses. And it’s developing outlying areas of its property for commercial tenants.
Holding down costs for airlines has been working so well that competing airports, especially Cincinnati’s, have been complaining about Dayton stealing business. On top of that, Cincinnati has seen a dramatic reduction in flights from what was once a thriving Delta Airlines hub. The result has been a closed concourse, raising alarms. Officials there have resolved to make new investments to make that airport competitive again.
The new parking garage might not seem like a big deal, but it helps protect Dayton’s reputation as a convenient, inexpensive place to fly from.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Scott Elliott, Transportation
TweetEditorial: The Netzley phenomenon can’t happen again
State Rep. Robert Netzley used to complain about reporters in Columbus, insisting they should have to take a course in state budgeting to learn what determines how much money the state has, and the like.
But now, in the age of term limits, the members of the House of Representatives are more likely to be trying to figure out how things work than instructing others. They find themselves knowing less than senior staff members, bureaucrats, lobbyists, party leaders and sometimes even the occasional journalist.
Rep. Netzley, who died Thursday, July 29, at 87, was a phenomenon that can’t happen again, that has been outlawed.
Representing mainly Miami County, he spent 40 years in the legislature, more than anybody ever. He was chairman of the Miami County Republican Party for 42 years.
He was a thorn in the side of governors of both political parties. In a time when even the recurring Republican governor, Jim Rhodes, and, later, George Voinovich, were relative moderates, he was a staunch anti-spending, hard-right conservative.
More than most right-wingers these days, he seemed to be just a man being himself, rather than playing to organized groups such as religious fundamentalists, the gun lobby, the anti-abortion people, the talk-radio crowd or any forerunner of the Tea Party.
His basic politics reflected the conservatism of the world from which he came. But he took that conservatism further than most. His world view made few concessions to Ohio’s urban nature. He was often wrong, sometimes appalling. (He famously pushed for sterilizing parents on welfare; talk about big government.)
But unlike some other politicians on the edges of the political spectrum, he managed to carve out a role, something beyond casting votes.
He sponsored legislation to allow school districts to levy income taxes — not just property taxes. He made state officials sweat from his position on the state controlling board, a body that has to sign off on spending certain state money. He proposed big ideas, such as imposing income taxes at the county level, rather than the state; and earmarking the entire state income tax for schools (in part, because, in his time, it always grew).
He was known to sometimes find common ground with ideological foes. He had a good relationship with Democrat Rhine McLin when she was the state senator representing his House district. He worked with Democrats on welfare-reform legislation.
He came from the part of the political spectrum that was strongest in its support of term limits. But he became a victim of term limits, and was replaced by somebody just as conservative but never as effective, Diana Fessler.
One reason term limits were enacted was that a lot of people have the sense that there are a lot of Robert Netzleys, that a lot of old legislators have been around forever. It was never true. In Congress — the real target of the term-limits campaign, though term limits don’t apply there — the average House member has about nine years in; about one in seven members have been around 20 years or more. From there, the numbers drop off.
Government benefits from having a few people around who know all the games, all the predictions that have not come true, all the cycles of opinion that have come and gone. And who know that being on opposite sides doesn’t necessarily mean becoming enemies.
Some political activists today who would have liked Bob Netzley are the type to worry that if a man spends too many years in a capitol, he is likely to go soft, to become too friendly with the wrong kinds of people, to mellow. Not Bob Netzley. For better and worse, his longevity just made him a legend.
For some, of course, it’s a good thing that he couldn’t happen again. But they aren’t the people who pushed term limits.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio government, Ohio politics
TweetEditorial: Ohio can’t prosper if it doesn’t export
Ohio is a perfect place to have a debate about increased trade and the value of exports.
The timing is right, too, what with a fierce U.S. Senate race in the making, and the two candidates coming from different places on trade.
Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, a Democrat, knows that U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown won election in 2006 after adamantly opposing major trade treaties. Mr. Fisher is taking a page from that book. Not that he wants to be seen as anti-trade: just for “fair trade.”
Former Congressman Rob Portman, a Republican who was the first Bush administration’s trade representative, is a free-trader, but he doesn’t want voters to think he’s oblivious to the job losses in Ohio that have occurred because so much manufacturing has gone overseas. Into this political environment, the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C., recently dropped “Export Nation,” a study looking into which areas of the country are exporting the most.
The researchers argue that, if the country is to prosper, it has to ramp up the export business.
The case is simple: To create jobs, businesses need new customers, and the potential to find them in India, China, Brazil and elsewhere — not just in Canada and Mexico — is huge.
Moreover, competing globally keeps companies at the top of their game. It’s a big world, and a lot of places and people are getting good at things this country has been a leader in.
Arguably, Ohio, which last year was the seventh-largest exporting state, has an advantage in the export game. It has seven major metropolitan areas in the top 100 exporters in the country, and Brookings says it’s the metros that are producing far and away the most exports.
A troubling thing, though: Ohio’s metros are running behind other areas in turning out patents. That is at least one important measure for calculating the sophistication of work being conducted.
Inventiveness matters in a knowledge economy. Fortunately, Ohio Republicans and Democrats have generally both been behind the Third Frontier program. It provides grants for research and development, and links universities with private companies to do R&D.
According to Brookings’ numbers, Dayton ranks 56th among the top 100 metros in total exports annually; 47th in export-related jobs and 16th for the share that exports represent in the total local economy.
That suggests a pretty good connection to the future economy. Unfortunately, though, the numbers are based on data from 2008. Because of problems at Delphi and General Motors, the region is presumably not doing as well today.
There’s no question that Ohio, more than some other states, knows the downside to foreign competition. But it also has experienced the upside, what with more than 350,000 jobs linked to exports. That represents almost 8 percent of the state’s private sector.
Brookings’ pitch that the country has to understand the potential from exports is the right one. That’s especially true for a place like Dayton, which is trying to re-invent itself as an innovator and producer of sophisticated products such as sensors, nano-materials and aviation-related equipment.
The world over is ripe for those sorts of products.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Ellen Belcher
TweetEditorial: Cheating kids early on costs Ohio later
Parents are forever in search of educational elixirs to help point their kids toward a life of good health, stability and financial security.
Moms and Dads find activities, tutors, schools, test-prep courses and more, hoping the experiences will have a positive impact. Meanwhile, policy makers try to pinpoint what investments (class size? computers? charter schools?) will do the most for kids.
It’s a complicated puzzle of choices, but a big piece may be simple.
What if a child’s future success could be enhanced just by spending the first year of school with a great kindergarten teacher?
That’s the conclusion of an impressive new study by a team of economists who looked at the lives of 12,000 kids when they reached their 20s and found a great kindergarten teacher can have a measurable impact on a child’s life as demonstrated by future earnings. In fact, they estimate the future value of a great kindergarten teacher on a single class of 20 students translates to $320,000 in additional future earnings for the group.
While the research is just one study and it hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, the results are in line with other long-term examinations of the life outcomes of children who get high-quality early education. Kids in quality kindergartens and preschools tend to go to college more often, make more money, have less trouble with the law and even be healthier than peers who did not.
Ohio, which is behind other states when it comes to supporting early childhood education, should be pushing more of its education dollars to younger children. Instead, it’s giving them less.
The study, the subject of a front-page New York Times story this week, examined data from a Tennessee education experiment that tracked test data for children with comparable demographics in different kindergarten classrooms. In some classes, student test results at the end of the year were much better than at the beginning when compared to kids with other teachers — a trademark sign of good teaching.
Compared to kids in classes that made fewer gains, kids from the classes with the biggest kindergarten gains were doing the best in their 20s and making more money.
Studies like this are rare because they take so much time and can be costly. But the conclusion that quality early education can permanently make a big difference, especially for poor kids, is common to a growing pile of research that has convinced many states to shift education aid toward younger children.
Ohio is on the wrong side of this trend. Preschool funding, for example, took a bigger hit in the 2009 state budget in Ohio than in any other state, according to a study by Pre-K Now, a national group advocating more spending on early childhood education. Ohio eliminated a key preschool program for poor kids as part of an $11.5 million funding cut. An estimated 12,000 Ohio kids were kicked out of programs that helped them attend preschool.
Now some critics of Gov. Ted Strickland’s school-funding reforms say the state should drop a new mandate that eventually will require districts to offer full-day kindergarten to all students. That would be a mistake that would rob kids of a chance at a good start in life.
Ohio is right to prioritize kindergarten. The focus should be on ensuring as many kids as possible are learning from great teachers that first year in school. Every extra minute with those teachers can mean a better chance at being a successful adult.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
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