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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 > 23
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Ellen Belcher: Ready or not, government being reset
Lots of stuff in the news to be worried about. And there are connections not to miss.
A week ago, we published a story under the headline, “Kettering board OKs retire-rehire of superintendent.”
Coincidentally, on the adjacent page, another headline read: “School-levy foes back to work on new state group.”
The first story detailed the arrangement Kettering Superintendent James Schoenlein cut with his school board to take a pay cut and begin collecting his retirement. The idea came up last summer, but a decision was put off until after the November election when a levy was on the ballot.
Initially, the board said it wanted to delay the discussion, so it could focus on the levy. But that explanation was too convenient.
The levy passed, then the board took the heat.
With one in four school superintendents (as of last year) having retire-rehire deals, defenders have perfected their arguments. (Besides saving on salaries, they say, retirees are just collecting what they are due.)
But here’s the thing: If this is such a great deal for the public, why aren’t school boards giving the myriad retirement-eligible teachers this option?
Because voters would go crazy, complaining that they can’t afford to support a public-pension system that allows people to comfortably and routinely retire in their 50s. (Schoenlein is 60.)
What do you want to bet that if the pension system were swamped with early retire-rehire applications, the “it’s no problem” argument wouldn’t be being made.
A person’s pension is indeed his to claim. But if the pension rules encourage people to stop working — lest they forfeit too much of “their” money — the system is too generous.
The second story was about a new group called Educate Ohio that reportedly has local affiliates that are being organized by critics who think school boards are insufficiently concerned about taxes and school districts’ costs.
It’s not clear if the group has any traction. But its creation is evidence of a brewing backlash against, for instance, so-called “double dipping” and school boards telling voters they’ve negotiated “pay freezes,” even as many employees are, in fact, getting the automatic step raises that are universal in education contracts.
Though school levies always have had critics, the opponents may be becoming more organized, prompting harder questions for elected bodies that traditionally have enjoyed widespread public support.
As a class, are school boards too captive? That’s the question some reasonable (and some not so reasonable) people are trying to bring out.
The reasonable people should not be underestimated. Ohio has a new governor who very much believes that, as much as the state is to blame for running up costs for school districts, local elected officials who can’t say “no” are also a big part of the problem.
The legendary Tip O’Neill, a Massachusetts liberal who was speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, insisted, “All politics is local.” But the turmoil that’s going on in so many states and in so many localities as teachers, firefighters and police are being laid off — because government is running short — is winding its way to Congress.
On Friday, The New York Times online edition carried the headline, “A path is sought for states to escape their debt burden.” Some members of Congress apparently are quietly trying to figure out how states could declare bankruptcy.
Among the goals would be to get them out from under expensive pension obligations, and to let them start over with respect to union contracts. Right now, states are barred from declaring bankruptcy.
Of course, allowing that option has all sorts of implications for the municipal bond market, which historically has been secure and boring.
Just talking about allowing states to go bankrupt — raising the specter that investors might not get paid — could result in troubled states being shut out of credit markets or having to pay a premium to borrow money.
Ohio’s financial problems aren’t as severe as some other states — Illinois, California and New York, to name three. But the situation is not good. Meanwhile, the financial security of every local government and school district is inextricably linked to Columbus.
One way or another, the government landscape in Ohio is going to be reset. That effort has only just begun.
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Guest column: Shriver’s legacy was personal to early Peace Corps volunteers
This commentary was written by Hap Cawood, the former editorial page editor of the Dayton Daily News.
For those of us fortunate enough to have served in the Peace Corps in its earliest days, Sargent Shriver’s legacy is personal.
I got to meet him on April 15, 1963, nine months into my service as a Peace Corps teacher in Sierra Leone. Shriver was flying around West Africa in a two-engine prop plane that could land in remote places where we Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) worked. We had been invited to meet him at Sierra Leone’s little airport, but I was the only PCV able to get there to join the ambassador and Peace Corps officials to greet him.
(In those weeks, I was supervising workers in Sierra Leone’s first census, and my region included the airport.)
The times were still golden, with John Kennedy alive, five months after the Cuban missile crisis that caused us to wonder how we might get home and what would be left of it, and seven months before Lee Harvey Oswald would nearly rip our hearts out.
Shriver’s presence was palpably uplifting, but what touched me most was what happened on the ferry we took to the capital, Freetown. I went to the front of the ferry so he could talk with the officials, but he shortly left them to come to me, asking me about my work and the morale of the group.
That evening we PCVs attended a reception for Shriver. He gave us an overview, and then we just milled around and talked casually. One PCV called him “Chief,” which I thought was a good balance between too-familiar “Sarge” and too-formal “Mr. Shriver.” On a balcony porch, one or two of us at a time would joke with him, maybe chat about something small, then ask him this and that about JFK, and he would share little inside stories and glimpses.
I had to concentrate to grasp the subtle enormity of this. Somehow we had gotten into the room with American history, and it was an embracing and friendly place.
Shriver said that on his way out of the country, he would fly up to see us and the folks thereabouts. Four or five of us PCVs came in our Jeeps. For the Sierra Leoneans, especially, it was a big event having an airplane land on a remote, grassy field.
After landing, Shriver asked me for tips. I suggested some greetings and comments in Temne, whispering them to him a phrase at a time. I thought, here I am, a little Kentucky mountain boy on the far side of the world, telling the president’s brother-in-law, a national power in his own right, what to say; how humble and kind this remarkable man is.
When I returned from Sierra Leone in 1964, I stopped by the Peace Corps headquarters before heading to Indiana University to help train a new Peace Corps contingent. When the elevator door opened, there was Shriver, between two assistants carrying briefcases, heading out. He was just as friendly as he had been in the bush.
For years afterward, I had to track him in black and white, on TV, taking over President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, then in hearings fighting against the tear-down of his work by the drain of the Vietnam War and the obstructionist work of senators like John Stennis, who resented and demanded the defunding of the successful empowerment of the black and poor in Mississippi. But Shriver withstood the test of time.
I last saw him at the Peace Corps’ 25th anniversary celebration, where he talked to hundreds of us at the amphitheater in Arlington Cemetery. On Sept. 23-24, I will be back in Washington for the 50th anniversary, but mostly to see the group with whom I trained and worked. We are less interested in the big events than in being together.
I guarantee you that we won’t be talking about what we accomplished. We will reminisce about the great adventure we had when we were young, and what Kennedy and Sargent Shriver gave us: the opportunity to appreciate and learn from a kind and generous people; the chance to represent and share in small ways the best values of the nation we love with heart and soul; and to have been able to do it in the empowering shadow of two men who radiated that spirit in a breadth and depth impossible even now to measure.
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Editorial: Art institute needs rich uncles and more
Publicity about the Dayton Art Institute’s financial problems can — and should — do more good than harm.
You can’t fix a problem that you don’t know about, and the fact that people are talking about a beloved and important institution is positive.
Of course, it would be better if they were raving about an exhibition or how well things are going for what is one of Dayton’s iconic places.
Defining the art institute’s problems is not difficult; finding the solutions is.
— Its endowment — $14.78 million — is small, meaning there’s not much in the way of investment income available for operating costs.
— The physical size of the museum and the size of its collection create fixed costs that are hard to reduce without neglecting the buildings or the art.
— The museum has staged a run of expensive so-called “blockbusters,” some of which didn’t make money or ended in the red, which was decidedly not the plan.
— Ramping up to put on the “blockbusters” was expensive and scaling back is wrenching.
— Governments, foundations and corporations have cut back hugely on their grants and gifts.
The question these circumstances raise is: Is the DAI too big, too expensive, for Dayton?
The museum’s passionate supporters insist not. Nobody should want them to be wrong. The museum doesn’t just have an important place on Dayton’s skyline. It’s important to the community’s sense of self and to the thousands upon thousands of Daytonians who’ve had their love of art ignited there. Future generations of children and adults in Dayton deserve the same.
Backers of the museum are confident that there’s a business model that will work, but they are the first to admit that they have struggles.
For instance, the full-time staff has been cut by a third since 2007, significantly improving the bottom line, but creating dissension in the ranks.
Of less significance financially, the museum is asking for a suggested donation to get in, and it will be closed on Tuesdays, in addition to Mondays. A lot of museums have made this move, but it’s a symbolic take-away.
The latter changes — netting maybe $200,000 annually — only matter at the margins of a budget that’s $4 million, give or take.
There’s also been an important change in course by the board and Janice Driesbach, the director who came on board in 2008. They’ve dramatically cut back how much they’re taking out of the endowment, which in 2007 was tapped for 15 percent.
The rule of thumb is to draw about 5 percent. Clearly, the practice of taking double-digit percentages (see the chart below) wasn’t sustainable — or good business.
Some people would argue that you have to spend money to make money — to grow membership, to increase admissions, to compete for important exhibits and prestigious and generous grants. But there’s no evidence that that expensive and — at least in retrospect — risky strategy was paying off.
Ms. Driesbach, who doesn’t have the flash of her predecessor, Alex Nyerges, has inherited the job of dialing down the operation. She has her critics for having done so, but she deserves to be supported. Until and unless corporate, foundation and government funding rebound, she has no other option.
Going forward, the museum has to identify even more money-saving decisions. To keep its programming strong, it will have to aggressively look for new and innovative collaborations.
At the same time, bolstering the museum’s finances in perpetuity has to be a priority. Even though there have been other funding drives, an aggressive endowment campaign has to be part of the plan.
Percentage the DAI drew from its endowment
2001- 8%
2002 -10%
2003 -12%
2004- 14%
2005- 7%
2006 -13%
2007 -15%
2008 - 6%
2009 - 5%
2010 -3%
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