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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 > 2011 > January > 08 > Entry
Editorial: Region needs to get ahead of state cuts
In some ways, the Dayton region has its act together when it comes to collaborating on things that are good for the community.
Eric Fingerhut, for example, oversees Ohio’s colleges and is effusive about how Dayton-area colleges have worked together to compete for research grants and to create programs that easily allow students to move from Sinclair Community College on to a four-year school. He says the cooperation that exists here is not the norm around the state.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown insists that when Dayton people ask him to help get funding for something, or to fix a problem originating in Washington, he doesn’t get conflicting messages about what needs to happen. He is adamant that other regions aren’t as good about speaking with one voice.
Executives of General Electric and WilmerHale, two companies that have recently made big investments in Dayton, have said publicly that local officials put up a united front when the companies were scouting places to land. That allowed them to do one-stop shopping and spared them the headaches of having to deal with multiple jurisdictions eager to outdo or undercut one another.
There are, of course, plenty of other instances where jurisdictions and institutions do engage in mindless competition, go it alone or reject opportunities to work together, combine services or put aside turf.
Some of those decisions, in the future, are going to be more costly.
With the state staring at a potentially $8 billion budget deficit, Gov.-elect John Kasich and the Republican-controlled legislature are signalling that the money that has historically been passed on to local governments probably will be reduced and, in addition, some amount will be competitively awarded to those that reduce spending through cost-saving, joint efforts.
What would really be smart is for local officials to get ahead of that decision and start identifying initiatives now that they know can catch the state’s eye — because they represent new ways of doing business and can be replicated elsewhere.
Waiting to see if the state cuts money from the so-called Local Government Fund — which provides $30 million to Montgomery County local governments alone — is not a smart choice. Cuts are coming, and the sooner people start planning for how to deal with that, the better everyone will be.
And the plans can’t just be to raise local taxes and cut services, while blaming the state. Taxpayers expect local officials to figure out how to do things more efficiently, even if some of those things are complicated or don’t sit well with some employee or interest groups.
Even if the economy does pick up, that’s not going to happen quickly or robustly enough that local governments can avoid scaling back and finding other ways to approach how they deliver services. Putting off those discussions, pretending that they won’t be necessary, is believing the world hasn’t changed.
It has.
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