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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 > June
June 2011
Editorial: Great Lakes need Ohio to honor pact
It’s almost never good to have politicians mediating scientific debates. But, of course, it happens all the time — on matters from abortion to air pollution.
After heated debate this week, the Ohio House of Representatives passed legislation designed to implement the Great Lakes Compact. That agreement requires the eight Great Lakes states to adopt rules protecting the water and the lake ecosystems by 2014.
Next week the Ohio Senate is expected to pass similar legislation.
The vote in the House was 60-37, with one Democrat joining all the Republicans in support. Science — which is at the heart the controversy — shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
Former Republican Gov. Bob Taft, who helped negotiate the compact and is now at the University of Dayton, appeared before the legislature for the first time since he left office in 2007. He said the legislation is flawed because it would not require a review of the cumulative impacts of water being withdrawn from Lake Erie, or of withdrawals that could impact the chemical or biological integrity of the lakes.
The pact Ohio signed — with seven other states, Ontario and Quebec — requires that.
The National Wildlife Federation, another critic of the legislation, said that other states have imposed stricter regulations on water withdrawals than Ohio is considering. In addition, businesses could design their own water-conservation measures, though, under the compact, state government is supposed to be involved.
Specifically, the bill would require businesses to get a permit only if they tap more than 5 million gallons of water a day from Lake Erie, 2 million from rivers or groundwater supplies, or 300,000 a day from rivers deemed “high quality.” Right now, permits are not required.
Ohio draws 3.5 billion gallons a year from Lake Erie, mostly for power plants, industry and drinking water. Managing how that occurs is important because Lake Erie is the shallowest and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes. If too much water is withdrawn too fast or at the wrong time, water quality and aquatic life can be damaged quickly.
Sponsors of the legislation say they want to make the lake area attractive to businesses. With cheap, clean, fresh water increasingly hard to come by, Ohio is touting its water resources.
The history behind the compact is telling. Negotiations began after, in the late 1990s, a Canadian company tried to ship Lake Superior water to Asia. The firm wanted to take a public resource and treat it as its own — with government approval.
The public outcry was as much about how easily the permit was awarded as it was about the principle at stake. Among compelling points Gov. Taft made is that there is time to make sure the rules are right. Ohio has two-plus years to write its regulations. Adopting them quickly — and dismissing people who are steeped in the science of the matter — makes no sense.
This issue isn’t a trivial one: The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water — 95 percent of such water in the United States.
Moreover, if Ohio’s rules aren’t consistent with the compact — which the legislature passed and Congress ultimately approved — that fact will invite a lawsuit.
Other states aren’t going to let Ohio break its commitment while they’re making the sacrifices necessary to ensure that the lakes are productive for future generations.
Water doesn’t recognize governmental boundaries. The way to keep it clean and to make sure it’s there for everyone is to honor science.
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Guest column: Nutrition program not beset by raging fraud
This commentary was written by Tina Osso, of Hamilton, executive director of Shared Harvest Food Bank.
At a time when more than 1.8 million Ohioans are receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, we cannot let our attention be transfixed by stories such as the one that appeared June 21 (“Is Ohio replacing food stamp cards being sold or traded for drugs?”).
Let’s focus on the fact that this program is meant to supplement an individual’s and family’s basic need for food when they have nowhere else to turn.
It is easy to use unknown “authorities” who believe that fraud and abuse are rampant in SNAP (formerly the food stamp program), and use quantifiers like “some” or “many.”
What is more difficult is to get real numbers. According to the GAO: The national payment error rate reported for SNAP has declined by 56 percent from 1999 to 2009, from 9.86 percent to a record low of 4.36 percent.
The government’s Food and Nutrition Service estimates indicate that the national rate of food stamp trafficking declined from about 3.8 cents per dollar of benefits redeemed in 1993 to about one cent per dollar during the years 2002 to 2005.
But let’s not let facts get in the way of appealing to our baser instincts.
After all, the three stories used to illustrate the reporter’s exaggerated point are all criminals, leading the reader to believe that all program participants must be of the same ilk.
What about the stories of real people who have lost nearly everything in the Great Recession and swallowed their pride to ask for help, only to be vilified in the press and by politicians who have no clue what it is like to be poor?
For millions of Ohioans, SNAP puts food on the table when jobs are scarce, wages are stagnant and unemployment benefits have been exhausted.
SNAP is now helping one out of every six Ohioans, making wholesome foods available for millions of our neighbors who might otherwise go without.
Instead of knocking a federal program that has shown success in reducing fraud and abuse, why not focus on the billions of dollars wasted in other areas of government?
Gosh, defense contractors come to mind.
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Editorial: ‘Racino” critics putting up good hurdles
Gov. John Kasich and the Republican legislature are rushing to pass legislation allowing slot machines at Ohio’s race tracks, including at Lebanon Raceway and at Beulah Park outside Columbus, which wants to move to Dayton.
They want a law passed by June 30 that would require the race tracks to submit their applications for up to 2,500 slot machines by Dec. 31.
Luckily, this race is probably going to take longer to run than the governor wants. (He’s counting on a quick $350 million in license fees paid over the next couple years, not to mention the 33.5 percent tax that the “racinos” would have to pay on their net profits.)
The conservative Ohio Roundtable, among others, is promising a court fight. It argues that the state can’t pretend that slot machines are the high-tech equivalent of lottery tickets.
Supporters of slots at the tracks argue that because Ohioans OK’d a lottery, that gives the state authority to expand into lottery-like machines.
The argument is a stretch, a legal absurdity.
Moreover, consider the context in which it’s being made. It took five tries to get Ohioans to change the Constitution and approve just four casinos. Before those complexes have even been built, the state’s policy makers want to expand the gambling options from four to 11, pretending that stripped-down casinos aren’t really casinos.
Does anyone think that this is what voters agreed to when they amended the Constitution in 1973 to allow a lottery, and then in 2009 when they voted to allow one casino in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo?
A secondary fight — one that could also go to court — will involve Penn National Gaming, which owns Beulah Park near Grove City, versus Lebanon Raceway. Penn wants to move Beulah to Dayton. It has rights to build the Columbus casino and doesn’t want that casino to cannibalize Beulah. (It also wants to move its Toledo track to Youngstown for the same reason.)
But Lebanon Raceway is asking why Penn should be allowed to protect Penn’s casino profits in Columbus, yet cut into Lebanon’s.
Lebanon also argues that the state racing commission has a rule that says race tracks can’t locate within 50 miles of each other, and, unlike Beulah, Lebanon must move because it can’t have slots at its track on the Warren County Fairgrounds.
Delaware North Companies, the entertainment and gaming firm that Lebanon Raceway has hired to operate the gaming side of things, says it would have to re-think its business plan — code for saying it might pull out — if Penn gets to move Beulah here.
The important thing that both Montgomery and Warren counties have to watch is this:
The “racinos” won’t be resort-quality. The state is only going to require the developers to invest $150 million. Just the VLTs — which are $20,000 a pop —will cost $50 million.
Additionally, in Lebanon’s case, building a new track could cost $20 million, according to Delaware North. That doesn’t leave a lot left that has to be spent on the “racino.” And the developer would also get credit for the value of the land in meeting the minimum capital requirement.
For comparison purposes, the casino complex in Cleveland is projected to cost $900 million. Just the first phase — a $350 million project in the former Higbee Building in downtown — includes 2,100 slot machines, 65 table games and a World Series of Poker room with 25 tables.
Anything that’s going to be offered locally is going to be low-budget relative to Ohio’s other casino options. As economic development ventures go, “racinos” are nothing to get excited about — and they are something to worry about if all they do is drain people’s wealth.
The questions about whether Ohio needs seven “racinos” — and if the Dayton region needs two of them — are far from answered.
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Editorial: Wal-Mart won; women didn’t necessarily lose
Wal-Mart’s win at the U.S. Supreme Court this week was bigger than the loss handed to the women who were suing the company.
In a unanimous decision, the court said that lawyers didn’t have the goods to bring a class-action discrimination lawsuit on behalf of up to 1.5 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees.
The court didn’t decide if the women had been treated unfairly. Rather, the question was whether the company could be sued on behalf of virtually all women workers who would have been affected by practices some women said resulted in their being denied promotions and paid less.
The justices split 5-4 — with conservatives in the majority and liberals in the minority — on whether the women deserved the chance to make their case that they had been victimized under another part of the law.
A lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said, “This is, without a doubt, the most important class-action case in more than a decade.”
A women’s-rights group said that the decision was “devastating” and would undo “the rights of millions of women across the country to come together and hold their employers accountable for their discriminatory practices.”
The situation is more complicated than either analysis. The decision will, indeed, make it harder to file large class-action lawsuits. But if there’s a pattern of egregious behavior in a small company, or a division, or even one Wal-Mart store, suing on behalf of a group is still doable.
What the court balked at was the possibility that Wal-Mart could end up liable for $1 billion in damages even though literally tens of thousands of women’s particular situation or circumstances would never be looked at individually. This case was the largest employment discrimination lawsuit in the country ever.
By their very nature, class-action lawsuits don’t attempt to establish the precise facts about everyone who is impacted. But this case took that reality to a wholly different level. Notwithstanding disturbing anecdotes from women employees, the majority said the plaintiffs hadn’t shown any evidence that the world’s largest retailer had a nationwide policy — at its 3,400 stores — of mistreating women.
“In a company of Wal-Mart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia.
Critics of class-action lawsuits generally have a point when they complain that lawyers for victims can often make out better than those who actually were cheated in some way. The estimate for the average wage gap each year for each affected Wal-Mart worker was around $1,100. In the event of a victory, that number would have paled in comparison to the amounts the lawyers would have been due.
That reality rubs a lot of people wrong. Yes, lawyers should have an incentive to take cases where the damage may be small to single individuals, but still affect a lot of people. But clearly there are cases of windfalls that are out of proportion to the work that goes into a particular lawsuit and even to the loss.
Class-action lawsuits aren’t the problem. But the rules around them have to be fair, and those who are being sued have to have a reasonable chance of defending themselves. The Wal-Mart case was overreaching.
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Paul Leonard: Consolidating government inevitable, so let’s plan for it
This commentary was written by Paul R. Leonard, a former Ohio lieutenant governor and mayor of Dayton. He was chair of the State and Local Government Commission during his tenure as lieutenant governor.
I admit it. I am a “regionalist.” But not because I think regional government will result in a more efficient government.
Quite the contrary. If and when Greater Dayton adopts some form of regional government, public officials will have to work like they have never worked before to be seen as efficient, cost-effective and responsive to taxpayers.
The closer people are to their government, the greater the likelihood that that government will work. There is no substitute for being able to run into the mayor at the doughnut shop or the diner. That’s where voters have a captive audience with their community leaders.
I suspect that getting an appointment with the “regional mayor” to discuss a neighborhood problem will be less likely if you live in a remote neighborhood and don’t happen to be a regional bank vice president. (All the presidents are gone, off in some faraway headquarters.)
Here’s some advice for those advocating a regional form of government: Don’t insist that a larger government structure will operate more efficiently. Though it might turn out that way, virtually no one will believe you on the campaign trail.
Efficiency is in the eye of the beholder. It comes with time and with demonstrated proof — if you get the snow removed, keep the alleys clean and cut the weeds in the parks.
The default position for most voters is that government is incapable of operating efficiently, no matter its size. That will be the foremost challenge in any campaign.
So, why am I an advocate for regional governance? We have too much government in Ohio — too many elected officials at a time when politics between Republicans and Democrats is more divisive and personal than ever.
Meanwhile, the cost of government is becoming intolerable. The last school levy elections (where so many were defeated) were not a blip on the radar screen. People who have always supported school levies just can’t afford to pay more taxes.
Ohio has more than 600 school districts in 88 counties. We have more than 2,000 individual government entities. Although not at the top of the list, we are high in comparison to other similarly situated states when it comes to the number of governments, elected officials and bureaucrats we have. Every government entity has an executive and workers who have to be paid competitive salaries and benefits.
The question really is this: Do we want to enact a modern, streamlined form of government and have control of that decision at the ballot box, or are we going to do nothing — as local governments and school districts collapse under the weight of increased costs of services and less revenue?
As time goes on, there will be consolidations and mergers. The only unanswered question is whether that will that happen in an orderly, well-planned fashion, with a consensus of the electorate, or whether the community will lurch from one fiscal crisis to another as governments literally fail.
Do we want to get ahead of the curve or do we cast our fate to the wind?
The challenges cannot be minimized. There’s profound hostility between the central city and suburbs. Elective offices (aka politicians) will have to be eliminated. Tax revenues will have to be equitably invested in all participating entities. Public employees will have to join the same team.
What will the new entity be named? Dayton? Montgomery County? Day-Mont? Centerwood?
For years, “regional cooperation” has been the compromise approach. It has allowed us to pretend that we are all working together. The truth, however, is that “regional cooperation” does not substantively address duplication. Nor does it result in less government. It allows us to remain parochial.
Finally, in those few areas where communities are working together, we are not saving enough money to ward off future government/community bankruptcies.
Dayton has always been recognized as an innovative community. This is our chance, in modern times, to demonstrate that the spirit of innovation that has been our gift to the rest of the world is alive and part of our community makeup.
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Editorial: Dayton can’t be afterthought in gambling deal
The Dayton region has to keep a sharp eye on the casino situation, now that Gov. John Kasich has cut deals with the two gaming companies that are building four casinos in Ohio.
The region’s interests could easily be an afterthought — which would not be good.
Very soon after he took office, the governor decided that the constitutional amendment that allows full-blown casinos to be built in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo shortchanged the state. He also jumped on what he said was an ambiguity about how the casinos would be taxed, and he said the gaming companies needed to voluntarily pay more.
The casinos retaliated by stopping construction on their projects (putting a lot of people out of work) and negotiations began.
In the last week, Gov. Kasich has gotten both Rock Ohio Caesars and Penn National Gaming to turn over more of their profits.
Over 10 years, Rock Ohio and Penn each will pay $110 million more to operate in the state. Penn agreed to spend at least $700 million to build its two casinos in Columbus and Toledo, up from the $500 million that was promised in the 2009 amendment; Rock Ohio committed to $900 million for its Cleveland and Cincinnati casinos.
Experts say Ohio will be a wildly profitable market, so extracting a combined $20 million a year more is not a big concession. And the commitment just runs for 10 years.
Finally, the promises about bigger capital investments aren’t a big win. The $500 million pledge was a low-ball number; each company had more expensive plans for their complexes.
As part of the agreement, the governor agreed to support allowing video lottery terminals — slot machines that are known as VLTs — at Ohio’s seven racetracks. That’s where Dayton is affected.
Penn would like to move its Beulah Park thoroughbred track from near Columbus to Dayton because it doesn’t want its new Columbus casino and Beulah to be poaching each other’s gamblers. But, of course, Lebanon Raceway (a harness racing track), which wants to have VLTs, doesn’t want to compete against a track in Dayton and a casino in Cincinnati.
It’s going to vehemently object to state authorities, opposing transferring a license from Columbus to Dayton.
Meanwhile, Lebanon is looking to move its track to a site along I-75 in Montgomery County or Warren County. Penn’s preferred site is a former Delphi property near I-75 at Wagner Ford and Needmore roads.
The Dayton region wasn’t part of the casino amendment, so it was never in the running for a glitzy casino complex. If, at the end of the day, this region ends up with two glorified gambling halls — “racinos,” they’re called — that only exist to make sure two horse tracks are financially viable, that will be a raw deal.
The region will not get the economic benefits associated with real casinos, but it will get all the problems that come with expanded gambling. Neither track would be a destination for out-of-towners. There will be bigger and fancier places nearby. (Penn would have to invest $150 million in the new facility, but that includes the cost of the VLTs; and it could get a credit of $25 million for the land and existing facilities.)
By making gambling so accessible locally, problem gamblers who previously had to work at it to find a slot machine will be throwing away their money without even having to fill up their gas tanks. It’s easy to say that’s their problem, their mistake. But there are social consequences for the community.
And does this region really want to be known as a place with two racetracks with thousands of slot machines at both?
Gov. Kasich is right to be looking out for the state and taxpayers. But Dayton needs an advocate, too.
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Editorial: Richard Allen Schools backers owe public more
Richard Allen Schools have problems beyond the fact that the state auditor is doing a “special” audit, triggered by the fact that $90,000 in state money may have been misspent, an allegation Richard Allen officials strongly dispute.
The problems go beyond the fact that Richard Allen’s four charter schools, three in Dayton and one in Hamilton, are running a deficit of $234,000.
They go beyond the fact that the schools haven’t always made their required payments to teachers’ retirement plans on time.
And they go beyond the fact that large sums are being spent on management fees.
In part because Ohio’s charter school law isn’t being enforced, problems are piling up, even as the schools are getting comparatively good grades for how their students score on state tests.
Dayton Daily News Staff Writers Christopher Magan and Margo Rutledge Kissell showed in their June 12 story how Richard Allen Schools have an administrative structure that has been patently incestuous.
Policy Matters Ohio — a liberal think tank that has been critical of Ohio’s charter school law and has pointed a finger specifically at Richard Allen — is among the critics that say Richard Allen has no real independent oversight.
Charter schools in Ohio are supposed to have a sponsor that oversees the school’s board of directors. That board then runs the schools or hires a management company to take care of day-to-day operations. This setup is supposed to create two layers of oversight of how public money is spent and of the education children receive.
But at Richard Allen Schools, the governing board and the schools’ respective boards and two other entities that provide administrative support — one that’s for-profit, one that’s not-for-profit — have been tightly connected.
At the heart of it all has been Jeanette C. Harris, who last year earned $220,490. The bulk of that amount, she said, is for consulting services out of state.
Meanwhile, Ms. Harris’ daughter is superintendent of Richard Allen Schools and earned $133,422. Ms. Harris’ husband, the Rev. Earl Harris, formerly was the board chairman for the schools and still attends every board meeting.
The state auditor’s review of the Richard Allen Schools’ books came out just a few months before the Ohio House of Representatives voted to reduce oversight of charter schools, although the Senate rejected that idea. It’s not clear which side is going to win in the conference committee that’s taking up the conflict (and a million more that are larded into the state budget proposal).
That so much will be decided quickly is what makes the situation dangerous.
The state is spending $720 million a year to pay for 100,000 students to attend charter schools. The schools were created because many parents, mostly in cities, were dissatisfied with their local public school. Spending public money to give parents another choice — charter schools are public and families don’t pay tuition — was wholly appropriate.
But charters should be no less accountable and transparent than traditional public schools.
Many people who’ve been in the four Richard Allen schools say they like what they see. They’re persuaded that there are good things happening in many classrooms. Still, that doesn’t mean the schools can be allowed to have a tangled web of connections that limit meaningful and independent oversight of spending and more.
The board members of Richard Allen have to step up. Their allegiance is not to those who run the schools, but to the children who attend them and the taxpayers who pay the bills. They have fiduciary responsibilities.
And they don’t have to wait for the state auditor to finish his review to decide that the current arrangement is too cozy and to insist on some new faces and more transparency. Then the overseers should start asking hard questions about the amount of money being spent on administrative salaries and management fees.
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Editorial: Big LeBron win: united Kasich and Strickland
It’s a measure of just how tightly the LeBron James/Miami Heat story has gripped Ohioans that even Gov. John Kasich has joined the crowd.
Once upon a time, Gov. Kasich — then just a candidate — didn’t think Mr. James was worth the attention of a governor. And that was only a year ago.
Northern Ohio, along with much of the state, was frantic over the possibility that the superstar of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team might leave for Miami, Chicago or some other city.
A radio interviewer, Alan Colmes, on Fox, asked former Rep. Kasich if he would join “the chorus for keeping James in Cleveland.”
A member of the chorus in good standing was then-Gov. Ted Strickland. He had participated in a video aimed at persuading Mr. James to stay.
Mr. Kasich said, “I’m not singing in any chorus for LeBron James.”
The host was taken aback. Question: “You’re not?” Answer: “No, I’m not.”
Earlier in the interview, he had said, “Alan, we’ve lost 400,000 jobs out here, and the last guy I worry about is LeBron James…. We think we’ve got a great guy there that can turn everything around, but we’ve got some serious problems.”
Exactly who thought Mr. James could turn everything around — by simply not leaving — the candidate did not specify.
Since taking office, of course, Gov. Kasich has been involved in every high-profile situation that might involve jobs, as many people thought the James issue did. He got money for the Bob Evans restaurant company to move within the state, so that it wouldn’t move out. He has a list of such intercessions.
And now he’s willing to engage the James issue (though, in truth, that certainly isn’t going to bring any jobs to Ohio at this stage).
Specifically, the governor has issued a declaration making the Dallas Mavericks “Honorary Ohioans” in the wake of their victory in the National Basketball Association finals June 12 over Mr. James and the Miami Heat.
The declaration doesn’t mention Mr. James, but it’s all about him.
“Whereas the Dallas Mavericks displayed the loyalty, integrity and teamwork essential to victory … affirming that these admirable traits are as crucial as talent and athleticism” — a reference to the departed Ohioan — “the proud city of Cleveland and the entire state of Ohio share in the excitement of Dallas Mavericks fans everywhere.”
The governor also mentioned Mavericks’ star Dirk Nowitzki, who kept “his talents in Dallas, thus remaining loyal to the team, city and fans for whom he played his entire career.”
(For those who don’t follow this sports stuff: Mr. James had gone to Miami saying that he really wanted an NBA championship — or several — and that he didn’t see one coming his way in Cleveland.
(The lifelong Ohioan joined two other megastars on a vaunted team that has now failed to win the championship. His own play and on-court behavior have come in for a remarkable barrage of criticism.)
Rooting against people has always been part of the sports experience, here and around the world. It may not be the most attractive human characteristic, but it’s not the worst, either.
And if a governor wants to join in an emotional experience that’s unifying Ohioans, well, that’s as natural for politicians as was Gov. Strickland’s effort to get Mr. James to stay.
If Mr. James didn’t accomplish his most obvious goals, he did bring the last two governors of Ohio together on the gubernatorial relevance of basketball. Las Vegas would have given odds against that.
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Martin Gottlieb: Golfing through D.C. gulfs
If you were John Boehner, and you were playing golf with the president, and he was bringing Joe Biden, whom would you bring? Of course: John Kasich.
Boehner surely wanted to spare himself the thankless task of picking a golf partner from among his congressional colleagues; that would be a great way to tick off about 60 politician/golfers. And he certainly didn’t want to pick from among the presidential candidates. Who needs that grief?
And picking one of the big-business lobbyists he is known for golfing with would not have been quite the ticket.
Beyond all that, though, there’s just something sort of fitting, isn’t there, about the Biden-Kasich pairing?
No chance of the motor mouth of a vice president dominating the conversation with Kasich around.
Both Kasich and Biden have enjoyed reputations at various times and places for loving the sound of their own unscripted voices. And for occasionally being better off with a script.
One imagines Biden and Kasich going off into the woods in pursuit of errant golf balls and striking up a conversation characterized by the sound of two voices talking, in which nobody hears anybody. It’s a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
But, of course, that’s the sideshow in Saturday’s foursome. The real question is about Obama and Boehner: Will they hear each other?
Specifically, can they progress toward some sort of agreement on raising the national debt limit or perhaps some other conflict further down the road?
Everybody on both sides and in the media is saying not to count on it. This is just social, they’re saying. Maybe it’ll improve the relationship, and maybe that will someday matter somehow. But don’t count on anything concrete.
Everybody may be right. Truth is, Obama and Boehner are probably not even motivated by the desire to make headway, so much as by the desire to be seen trying.
The golf date didn’t just materialize suddenly as somebody’s inspiration. The idea has been talked about in the media, starting months ago.
Lots of people in Washington remember president/speaker relationships of old, wherein leaders supposedly had useful cross-party relationships. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. Dwight Eisenhower and Sam Rayburn.
Meanwhile, golf courses have a special place in tales of Washington relationships. This makes sense even to those of us who don’t golf: There’s so little action, there’s plenty of time to talk.
Obama is being praised for willingness to play with a much better, far more serious golfer in Boehner. Surely Obama would rather invite Boehner to a basketball court. But who’s going to buy that as a conversation venue?
Boehner said explicitly during the 2010 campaign that he and Obama had no real relationship.
After last year’s election made Boehner speaker, various aides were reported in The New York Times to say they “could not recall a single one-on-one meeting or substantive phone call” between him and the president.
Said Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf, “I’m surprised Obama hasn’t done more to develop; a relationship…. They both like to play golf. I’d invite him four times a year to play…. There’s going to be times when you’re going to need him.”
But little has changed. Boehner even turns down invitations to big White House dinners. It’s all business.
You have to wonder how much can change. Golf isn’t necessarily the solution to gulfs. The gulfs between the men are big, and Boehner doesn’t have a free hand, being under much pressure from the right. It’s a different kind of time than other speakers and presidents confronted.
If the two men can find major common ground, it’s most likely to be on some issue that isn’t bitterly divisive along party lines. They have agreements about foreign policy and education.
Boehner is known as the kind of guy you can have a beer with — or a smoke. Or a round of golf. Good. And surely it can’t hurt for for him to deal with Obama outside of tense negotiations.
But you get the feeling that mainly both guys just want to be able to say to the political world, “OK, we played golf. You happy now?”
SNL should be.
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Editorial: Culture, laws on pensions need to be reformed
Maybe the problems that ail some public employees receiving disability pensions are contagious.
Some places sure seem to have more than their share of police and firefighters getting a disability pension.
Dayton ranks highest among Ohio’s six largest cities for the percentage of active police and fire pension members who retired on disability between 2001-10. Its rate was 19 percent — almost one in five people. Cleveland was No. 2 at almost 13 percent, and Cincinnati was No. 6 at 6 percent.
The state police and fire pension fund, as well as Dayton, need to be asking why Dayton’s safety forces have more injuries or disabilities than their peers.
Meanwhile, Huber Heights had almost 25 percent of its active police and fire pension fund members receiving disability benefits; Trotwood was at 22 percent.
Whatever the explanation for the high numbers, there’s none the reflects well on the public employees. Are workers getting hurt because they aren’t following safety rules? Are they being injured because they’re out of shape for what their job requires?
Or, most concerning, are they seeing their fellow workers taking advantage of the pension rules and following suit?
A six-month Dayton Daily News investigation by Staff Writers Lynn Hulsey and Lucas Sullivan uncovered these trends and more. Besides disability pensions being given frequently, numerous individuals were receiving benefits even though they had been fired or were in the process of facing serious disciplinary action or criminal charges.
The seeming ease with which disability pensions are awarded is a problem police and firefighters — and their bosses — have talked about among themselves for a long time.
Many can name individuals who discovered an ailment only at the moment they found themselves in trouble on the job, or who, though they’re getting a disability pension, are fit enough to work in another field.
Police and firefighters do incredibly dangerous work. Beyond the stress they face, their bodies take a beating. That more of their ranks receive disability pensions than, say, teachers is not the scandal.
The scandal is that some individuals look for excuses to retire early on disability, in part, because, unlike regular pension benefits, on-duty pensions of up to 60 percent of average pay are exempt from federal taxation for safety workers.
Pension systems exist for the benefit of the people who pay into them. So it’s not shocking that pension administrators want to assume the best about those who come to their offices saying they’re too hurt to work.
But the administrators’ responsibility is to all the members — including the far larger number of people who don’t have an inflated sense of entitlement — and to taxpayers, who contribute handsomely to public employees’ pension funds.
Administrators say there are multiple checks-and-balances in place to ensure people aren’t malingering. They believe they have enough, but the record suggests otherwise.
Why should someone be able to put in for disability, for instance, after disciplinary action or a criminal investigation has been initiated? That’s like applying for an insurance policy after you find out that you have cancer — but at least the insurance company can say that your timing disqualifies you.
If someone is able to work and does so, shouldn’t there be a financial offset — in the name of encouraging people to contribute and to make sure the system can afford to give decent benefits to people who have lost their ability to earn the sort of living they once had?
The pension directors should be at the forefront of protecting the system against those who would milk it. But if they’re not going to do that, the job falls to employers and public employees themselves to put pressure on the pension boards to do the right thing — and on lawmakers to make sure the laws require as much.
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Editorial: There’s better way to pay teachers
The debate about how to pay teachers — what the law on that will be — is at a pivotal moment.
Senate Bill 5, the law that would limit public employees’ collective-bargaining rights in an effort to save money and give managers more authority, has a provision saying school districts have to stop giving raises based mostly on longevity. Most Ohio teacher contracts award raises based on length of service.
When critics said they were going to try to repeal Senate Bill 5, Gov. John Kasich put similar language in his budget bill. The House of Representatives kept the requirement, but also gave more specific direction about how teachers should be evaluated. This week the Senate nixed the House’s idea.
So where are we? How is this going to shake out?
Senate Bill 5 passed by just one vote in the Senate. Though many senators want to move away from paying teachers just for their years of service and degrees, some of them think the governor and the House are overreaching.
They say they won’t vote for a budget bill that requires a new evaluation system, because they don’t want to be accused of trying to thwart the will of voters in case the Senate Bill 5 repeal passes.
That charge is going to be out there even though SB 5 does more than just require merit pay for teachers. One way of avoiding that criticism would be to pass legislation that only speaks to how teachers are evaluated and compensated. Then everybody — legislators and voters if that idea were put to a referendum — would know more precisely what people are for or against.
But there’s more that adds to the confusion.
Ohio competed for and eventually won federal Race to the Top money. In its application, 300-plus districts committed to adopting some form of teacher evaluation that recognizes how students do on tests. So, with or without Senate Bill 5, and with or without a budget that ties their pay to the “grade” teachers are given, a lot of Ohio teachers are, in the near future, going to be compensated differently.
One of the things that frustrates even critics of the existing practice is that efforts to measure how much children learn in any given year are still primitive. Tests aimed at measuring whether a child has mastered a year’s worth of material are getting better, but making that judgment is not as simple as grading a spelling test.
In addition, these sorts of tests don’t even exist for many subjects and grade levels.
Though a lot of teachers are worried about tying their salaries to test scores, they’re more worried about an evaluation system that doesn’t have some objective measures.
Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, is chair of the Senate Education Committee, and she’s reached out to a group of people from Dayton and around the state who want to see a better system — but who don’t believe that tests given on one day capture what’s happening in a classroom all year. They don’t want to replace a bad approach with an equally bad one.
Meanwhile, districts like Vandalia, for instance, aren’t waiting. They’re coming up with their own plans for involving teachers in the evaluation process.
The current system isn’t going to survive. What’s up in the air is when and what will replace it. The new way can be fair and better for kids. But that’s unlikely to happen if lawmakers are too rigid or if they’re cavalier.
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Editorial: Tweaking of constitution could be good
History in the making?
Ohio voters will have a chance next year to call for a state constitutional convention. That sounds like something that could be really big.
The very idea causes a lot of people to imagine the worst: a constitution drawn up by the noisiest, most rigid political warriors, people doing the bidding of narrow interests and narrow views, the very opposite of the nation’s founders who drew up the national Constitution.
Perhaps for that reason, past voters have passed on this opportunity by large majorities. (The current Ohio Constitution requires that voters get a chance to call a convention every 20 years.)
If voters do embrace a convention, that gathering wouldn’t necessarily turn out a whole constitution, perhaps just a few proposed amendments. (To be adopted by the convention, a measure would need a two-thirds majority.)
Moreover, anything a convention proposes would still have to be approved by voters.
So history may not be in the making.
But a systematic look at the state constitution could be useful. After all, the Ohio constitution is not to be likened to the national one. The latter is an elegant, venerable blueprint for a society trying to combine democracy with minority rights. A constitutional convention to rewrite it would be an awful idea.
The state constitution, on the other hand, is a mess that lays out such things as how revenues from casinos will be distributed and who can get married.
Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder, a conservative Republican from the Cleveland area, has put forth a sort of alternative to a convention. His idea is not an effort by Republicans to take advantage of their current power in Columbus.
He wants a thoroughly, genuinely bipartisan commission — with some legislators, but also plenty of others — to meet and to make constitutional proposals to the legislature. Again, voters would have the final say.
The commission wouldn’t replace the convention, but it might take some steam out of the idea of a convention, if there is any steam. (If a convention were approved by voters, the commission would draw up the rules.)
Convention or no convention, the commission is a good idea. It might provide an impetus for good ideas, such as reform of the state’s redistricting rules. Any nonpartisan group should be able to agree on a plan to make the drawing of legislative districts a nonpartisan exercise instead of the celebration of naked partisanship it is today.
Merit selection of judges is another idea that might engage the attention of a bipartisan commission. Meanwhile, Speaker Batchelder would like to see some movement toward consolidation of local school districts, at least for administrative purposes.
The commission would not have to issue one big report. It could dribble out proposals over a period of years.
The last commission like this came up with the idea of electing candidates for governor and lieutenant governor together, like president and vice president, and it established an order of succession in case the governor and lieutenant governor die in office.
Particularly attractive about the commission idea is that it would be acting without a tight deadline. This season is seeing the state legislature rushing through subject after subject, to meet a budget deadline and to act while Republicans have all the power. Research, reflection and expertise on some of the biggest issues have been notably absent. Already, Gov. John Kasich has had to submit major amendments to the economic development plan (JobsOhio) that he rushed through the legislature earlier in the year.
A commission could do what the legislature should do: Hold actual hearings and have real debates, as opposed to partisan spinfests that result from partisan votes.
A constitutional commission won’t solve the problems Ohioans are most worried about. But any ideas it proposes would likely be worthy of consideration. A few might even be important.
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Martin Gottlieb: Pay cut for legislators misses big issue
Legislative salaries have always been a great target for people looking for a cheap political point, one they hope resonates with the public.
You’ve heard the pitches: How can we pay the politicians so much when the country is doing so badly? Let’s stop paying them until they balance the budget — or raise the minimum wage — or until the economy turns around — or something.
It’s fun for certain people. Now the Ohio Senate — repository of the politicians themselves — wants to join in the fun.
The Senate proposes to cut the base salaries of legislators by 5 percent from the current $60,000 (not counting extra thousands available to those with extra duties within the legislature).
That would save the state about $800,000 over two years. The legislature would only need 10,000 more such cuts to get to the $8 billion budget shortfall everybody has talked about — if we were talking about the same biennium, which we’re not.
A legislative salary may not be raised or cut during a term being served. And it’s worth keeping in mind that at least half the senators are in their last term, given that they may only serve two consecutive terms in that body.
(In the long run, if the politicians are serious about legislators needing to take pay cuts in bad times for the state government, they should change the Constitution so that, while pay increases can’t go into effect during a current term, pay cuts can.)
The proposed cut might be good politics. After all, the legislators have been acting to restrain the pay and benefits of all manner of other public employees.
And they’re beginning to sense that the public response is not good.
Of course, the public response to their pay cut might not be all that great either, given the widespread suspicion that the politicians never run out of ways to game the system.
In truth, the realm of payment in which legislators have a big impact on the state’s financial condition is not salaries. Think pensions. This is because the legislators are part of a state system that covers many other people.
Much has been written about the problems facing public pension systems. An article in the current Washington Monthly asks what states can do.
One author is Sylvester Shrieber, described as having written several books on aging, demographics and pension issues. The piece says unions aren’t the problem; politicians are:
“Government decision makers face an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to making pension policy for government employees, and so do their staffs. This is true whether or not unions are involved.
Beyond the enticement of self-dealing is the temptation to (political) self-aggrandizement that comes when politicians are allowed to take credit for delivering benefits whose full cost only becomes apparent after they are long gone. That all this can be done without the press or public taking much notice only further perverts the logic of decisionmaking.”
In Ohio, legislators’ self-interest in pension policy is heightened by the fact that many of them have served or will serve in other offices — state and local — which get them credit toward retirement in the same state system.
SB5 — the sweeping new law that goes after union power in the name of saving taxpayer money — hardly takes a glancing shot at pensions. Legislators say the pension issue is still to come.
Reforming the pension systems is a complex task, not to be dealt with blithely. And, as with other reforms of entitlement programs, the biggest changes probably have to be aimed at young people, rather than those close to collecting their benefits.
But if the politicians really want to be seen as going after the politicians, that’s the important way.
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Editorial: Tax breaks not free; they put drain on budget
For weeks now, the news out of Columbus has been about the budget — how big the cuts are going to be, who is going to be hit.
With a June 30 deadline to pass the next two-year spending plan almost here, and the House and Senate both having taken their turn at changing the governor’s proposal, the issue is heading to a small committee made up of House and Senate members. That’s where the real decisions will be made.
Though tax revenues have picked up, the hacking still will be severe, especially for schools, local governments and social services.
One idea that could mitigate the situation at least down the road is a requirement to take a look at all the state’s tax breaks. That good suggestion is in the Senate plan, but it needs more force.
The tax department has identified 128 “tax expenditures” — credits, deductions, exemptions or other breaks — representing $7 billion in value. By law, these expenditures have to be enumerated every two years for lawmakers, but there’s no requirement that the legislators then have to vote to continue them or even debate their merits.
Once a break is on the books, it’s likely to be there forever.
The breaks are given to businesses and individuals alike. They include, for example, the individual deductions residents get on their state income tax form and a sales tax exemption for prescription drugs.
Meanwhile, manufacturers don’t have to pay sales tax on machinery, equipment, supplies and fuel.
Also keep in mind that this tally doesn’t include the money the state kicks in to reduce the hit homeowners would otherwise take in property taxes. That subsidy program costs almost a whopping $1.7 billion last year.
No one is proposing to solve the state’s financial problems by eliminating all tax breaks. Some of them foster good things. Giving businesses a tax break for buying new equipment encourages companies to invest — and create jobs. Helping reduce the sting of property taxes — which are hard on people on fixed incomes — is good for schools.
But should manufacturers never have to pay taxes on equipment?
Should the state subsidize property tax payments for people who draw big salaries and own expensive homes?
The push to review the state’s tax breaks is coming from an unlikely trio — the conservative Buckeye Institute, the liberal Center for Community Solutions and the liberal Greater Ohio Policy Center.
They don’t agree on what should happen to the money that’s “lost” to tax breaks; but they do each say that tax breaks shouldn’t be guaranteed.
Policy Matters Ohio, another liberal research organization which was among the first to push this issue, and the state chamber of commerce also say a review is needed.
Gov. John Kasich hasn’t supported the idea, worried that eliminating any breaks would be portrayed as raising taxes.
“What one person describes as closing a tax loophole another person calls raising taxes,” his spokesman told one newspaper. “While in Congress, Gov. Kasich was well-known for taking on inappropriate corporate welfare, and that commitment continues. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find too many Ohioans right now who think their taxes are too low, however.”
Here’s the thing, though. Getting Ohio through this financial crisis has to be a shared burden. Just cutting spending — without asking if the state is giving away money it shouldn’t — is not smart.
What’s so awful about having sunsets for tax breaks?
What’s wrong with having targets for reducing the breaks, which is another way of evaluating which breaks result in the most good?
Making sure that Ohio is collecting what it has coming isn’t selling out. It’s showing fairness to the people who aren’t getting discounts on their tax bills.
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Martin Gottlieb: Liberals have avenues, even under Kasich
If you write a column that often deals with the political process, you are sometimes accused of loving politics. That ugly charge gets thrown around with remarkable abandon, as if words don’t hurt.
I prefer to think that the subject here is not politics, but democracy. How do we carry out the dream of the founders, make this experiment work? How do we keep it peaceful, work things out, solve problems. How do we honor majority will and minority rights simultaneously?
What determines who is elected and what policies are enacted? How can practices be changed in pursuit of better policy? What is the role of public opinion? What should it be? How is it shaped?
In some periods, these fascinations cause one to confront the question, why doesn’t anything ever get done. In others, the question becomes why is so much being done so fast that is so dubious and/or unpopular.
So here we have Ohio this week. Gov. John Kasich has submitted a bunch of changes to his own proposal about job creation — after the proposal has been enacted.
JobsOhio was enacted instantaneously after he took office. A Kasich slogan is that Ohio must act “with the speed of business.” Now a detractor says what’s at work is “the speed of error.”
In JobsOhio, basically a replacement of the development department, the governor serves as the head of a public-private entity that invests in new private-sector projects. The state would go beyond the traditional forms of state aid: tax breaks and infrastructure improvements.
Now that the legislature — so overwhelmingly Republican and docile as to be, in effect, an arm of the Kasich administration — has approved the original idea, the governor is saying the time has come to pause over that idea. This is not the ideal sequence, but better late….
He no longer wants to chair JobsOhio or even to sit on its board. And the chief financial officer wouldn’t be under his purview, but that of the board.
The administration is also modifying its original plan that lawsuits against JobsOhio must go first to the state Supreme Court. And it’s addressing the matter of the state absorbing financial losses if things don’t work out. (At this writing, people are still parsing exactly what the proposals are and mean.) There are 10 amendments in all, just on JobsOhio.
The question arises, why now. After all, a lot of people have been criticizing the JobsOhio plan all along. They’ve said it’s unconstitutional for the government to invest in private business. They’ve said that setting up Jobs-Ohio outside regular government was transparently phoney, because the governor would head it.
They’ve said that for a governor to have a second job is unconstitutional.
At one stage, even the Republican speaker of the House raised constitutional issues.
But the Kasich bus just kept going. (“Get on the bus,” the governor once said, in an injunction that resonates in Columbus, “or the bus is going to run over you.”)
The fact that the governor’s critics took him to court seems to be playing a big part here. Progress- Ohio, a liberal activist group, helped by research by Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal think-tank, teamed with a couple of legislators.
No court has acted. But keep in mind that Jobs-Ohio is one of the two major policy thrusts of the Kasich administration, setting aside budget cuts.
The other is SB5, the bill that sharply restricts union rights. Opponents of SB5 are apparently going to get a repeal of that measure put on the ballot in November, and polls are showing an uphill battle for the Kasich side.
The governor can hardly have both his signature ideas undone.
This is a story about the importance of non-government groups. It would be a mistake to say that Kasich is somehow being thwarted by unelected, unappointed people. Those people would be nowhere without the law, the state constitution and the courts. But still.
And I’m going to insist this story is about, not politics, but democracy. You know, the founders, checks and balances, and all that.
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Editorial: Glenn flight part of Ohio history
Ask most people who was the first American in space, and if a name comes to mind, it will probably be John Glenn’s. He looms in the American imagination as the pioneer astronaut, the symbol of an age that captured the imagination of the nation and the world.
Actually, if you ask people who was the first person in space, a lot of them might name him.
In fact, he wasn’t the first person.
The Russians were first. We were playing catch-up in a contest that seemed somehow at the heart of the Cold War death struggle.
The communists had taken Eastern Europe, had taken China and Cuba. The Soviets had nuclear weapons. Their leader had said they would bury us. And they had beaten us into space.
When the United States did get a man into space, it wasn’t John Glenn, but Alan Shepard. But he didn’t orbit the Earth, as Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had, a few weeks earlier.
John Glenn was the first American to do that, in the next year, 1962, when he became the fifth person in space. That’s the event of the pre-moon shot era that is most remembered today.
Having been judged by the space agency’s psychologists as the astronaut best suited to a public life, he did, indeed, emerge as a public figure, a national hero, as few before him or after. And he handled it with class, restraint and good humor.
Before becoming an astronaut, he had served in World War II and then piloted the first flight across the country averaging supersonic speeds (faster than the speed of sound).
After his astronaut career, he served in the U.S. Senate for a quarter century.
He returned to space at 77 for one more ride and a study of the effects of space travel on the elderly. That same year, wanting to encourage young people to pursue careers in public service, he launched what is now Ohio State University’s John Glenn School of Public Affairs.
Among some Ohioans, thoughts are now turning to commemorations next year of the 50th anniversary of the 1962 flight. With Sen. Glenn having grown up in Ohio, represented Ohio and returned to Ohio, much responsibility for commemoration falls to Ohio. The Ohio Aerospace Institute and the locally based National Aviation Hall of Fame both want to be part of the effort.
John Glenn, who will turn 90 next month, must surely have a bond with more Ohioans than anybody else now alive. His life has intersected in one way or another with untold millions over several generations.
Adulation of him, while widespread, has not been unlimited. Offered a chance to make him president in 1984, voters who took part in early primaries (and the Iowa caucuses) took a pass. (His only other problem with voters also came in a Democratic primary: He lost a Senate race to Howard Metzenbaum.)
But if you’re talking about the astronaut specifically — as in “Col. Glenn Highway” — you’re talking about somebody who unites Americans in their admiration for a good man.
Early 2012 should be seized as an opportunity to celebrate what’s best in the society, to honor “The Greatest Generation” as it says a long goodbye, and to impart a little Ohio and American history.
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Editorial: Obama did what was needed, but law must be faced
When President Barack Obama committed American air power to the war in Libya, he emphasized that his motivation was to prevent a bloodbath directed at civilians, something of huge proportions. That bloodbath didn’t happen.
Neither, however, did Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi fall. Now President Obama talks mainly of his desire to end the Gadhafi regime.
However, he’s intent on limiting U.S. involvement.
No American ground forces are committed, and other NATO members are doing most of the air strikes.
American forces are flying most of the reconnaissance, surveillance and refueling missions. NATO is pressuring Washington to use certain aircraft that are particularly effective in providing support for ground forces. The president is reluctant.
Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, criticized the president for timidity, saying the United States must go after Col. Gadhafi personally.
But Congress is pressuring the president in the other direction. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Cleveland, proposed a resolution to end U.S. participation. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, proposed declaring congressional opposition to U.S. involvement. Rep. Turner said he had 60 co-sponsors, some from each party.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester, was worried about undermine American troops and allies. But, in apparent concern that something stronger might pass, he offered a resolution that did pass, calling on the president to get in compliance with a law known as the War Powers Act.
It says that a president only gets 60 days to resolve a problem with military action that hasn’t been approved by Congress. The deadline has passed.
Such deadlines have passed before, under presidents of both parties. Nevertheless, it’s entirely appropriate for Congress to press the matter, to not let the law become a dead letter.
Some say the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. However, this White House has not said that, only that it feels it is in compliance. More than that is needed. The president has to report on his rationale and ask for support.
That said, Congress needs to keep a sense of proportion here. The president has not sent American ground troops to war. He responded to an explosive international situation in which he had come under pressure from prominent Republican voices to do something.
He went in the same direction as our European allies, but limited the American role as never before in one of these joint operations.
The United States does need to be able to act quickly to prevent human catastrophes, most certainly when it can do so without committing troops.
The criticism coming the president’s way is happening because Col. Gadhafi hasn’t fallen, though he has faced widespread defections, lost the support of Russia and lost family. He’s been on the run. But he hasn’t fallen.
The White House seems to have been hoping that his fall would obviate the policy debate. Time to give up on that.
Still, a little congressional patience is called for.
Rep. Turner emphasizes one point: that no one has a good fix on the rebels, on what they believe in, on who supports them. It’s a fact that has been widely acknowledged. Rep. Turner worries about a “vacuum” in Libya being filled by bad forces.
That’s possible. But sometimes action has to be taken before all facts are clear.
Rep. Turner’s discomfort with that brings to mind his opposition to the financial-system bailout under President George W. Bush. The congressman felt that things were moving too fast, that too few questions had been answered about the nature of the bailout. But others saw that speed was of the essence and something had to be sacrificed.
The idea of deposing Col. Gadhafi has an awful lot of surface appeal. He’s been a notorious player for many years.
Certainly the move against him is a risk. But that move is fundamentally internal. In helping, the United States government has not risked what it has in Iraq or Afghanistan.
That Washington was not frozen into place by uncertainty was a good thing. But the investment does have to be limited.
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Editorial: Creating jobs important, but not at any cost
It’s ridiculous to say skeptics and critics of Gov. John Kasich’s plan to lease the state’s liquor sales operation are opposed to creating jobs.
If there’s one thing that everybody can agree on, it’s about the need to bring new jobs to the state.
Last week, the Center for Community Solutions, a Cleveland think tank that leans liberal, said that the governor and legislature would be shortchanging taxpayers if they sell a 25-year lease for the state’s increasingly profitable liquor monopoly for $1.2 billion to JobsOhio.
JobsOhio is the governor’s new private economic development agency.
The plan is for that agency to sell bonds to pay for the lease and then pay back the loans using liquor profits. The profits would be big enough that there would still be money left over to invest in new start-up businesses and provide incentives for companies to expand or locate in Ohio.
Profits on the state’s monopoly on liquor sales were $228.8 million in 2010.
The governor’s spokesman told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer this in response to complaints: “For those who really understand that job creation is Ohio’s greatest need right now, then the right focus is on making sure JobsOhio has every resource it needs to help create jobs and revive Ohio’s economy. Ensuring a fair transaction on the liquor enterprise is a given, but a preoccupation with that to the detriment of JobsOhio’s success is just another example of people failing to realize that creating jobs is more important than growing government.”
That response is a non-response.
The Center for Community Solutions and other critics are worried that in the rush to find a revenue stream for JobsOhio, the administration is undervaluing a lucrative resource.
The center says that even after accounting for inflation and assuming a “slow growth scenario” for liquor sales, cumulative profits over 25 years will be $6.5 billion.
Researcher Jon Honeck asks why should so much money go to JobsOhio; shouldn’t some go to the state general fund, which currently gets a nice piece of the liquor profits?
The complaint really is that a growing source of revenue is being locked down to provide breaks in one form or fashion to private enterprise — even as the future looks strapped for all the other things the state pays for, from public education to social services.
The legislation “permits, but does not require ‘annuity payments’ to be made to the state,” according to the Center for Community Solutions. But why not insist on a share?
Meanwhile, liquor profits also are currently being used to pay back bond money that has been spent on cleaning up brownfields.
That’s important work in an industrial, urban state — and an initiative that has been of particular benefit in Dayton. Will that work continue, and, if so, where will the money come from?
The mission of the governor’s JobsOhio is not what serious people — including some from Gov. Kasich’s own party — are questioning. It’s the details of his 25-year proposal.
The questions are important. They are not nit-picky.
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Guest column: Lawmakers conjure ways to discourage Ohio voters
This commentary was written by Ellis Jacobs, senior attorney at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality in Dayton. Since 2004, he has been counsel to the nonpartisan Miami Valley Voter Protections Coalition.
Recent news stories describe proposals in statehouses around the country that will make it harder to vote. Two such bills are being hastily pushed through the Ohio legislature.
While they make some positive, noncontroversial, administrative changes, they also erect unnecessary obstacles to voting and are likely to reduce voting, particularly by low-income citizens.
Here are some of the biggest problems with House Bill 194 and Senate Bill 148:
Both bills significantly limit the actual time allowed for in-person, absentee voting from the present 35 days to six days (the House proposal) or 11 days (the Senate proposal).
They also prohibit counties from sending all voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications, as has been the practice in many counties.
While these changes will make absentee voting more difficult for all Ohioans, they may cause serious problems in Montgomery and other counties that have recently reduced their number of precincts.
Since Ohio adopted no-fault absentee voting in 2005, it has exploded in popularity. Montgomery County absentees grew from a negligible number to 71,955 voters — 26 percent of the total — in 2008. Statewide, 30 percent of voters voted absentee in 2008.
Once it became clear just how many voters wanted to vote absentee, the Montgomery County Board of Elections responded by consolidating precincts and polling places.
In 2009 Montgomery County dramatically reduced the number of precincts from 548 to 360, a 34-percent decrease. The county also reduced the number of voting locations from 352 to 176.
The board figured that fewer Election Day voters required fewer places to vote on Election Day.
Other counties figured the same. Between 2008 and 2010, a total of 14 counties reduced the number of precincts they had by more than 15 percent. Included are Cuyahoga, which reduced by 26 percent; Hamilton which reduced by 23 percent; Lake by 27 percent; Lucas by 28 percent; and Sandusky by 19 percent.
These 14 counties accounted for 31 percent of the total votes cast in Ohio in 2010.
By imposing severe restrictions on the ability to cast absentee ballots in person and by mail, these two bills would, without question, substantially reduce the number of absentee voters.
The effect in counties that have consolidated precincts and locations could be dramatic. In a busy presidential election year, these counties could see long lines at polling places, more provisional ballots, and many frustrated and angry voters.
Election professionals see the problem. That’s why the Ohio Association of Election Officials has advocated for 21 days of early voting.
The Senate bill (SB 148) will also affect the ability to register voters. It requires that voters lacking a driver’s license or other documentation give their full nine-digit Social Security number (instead of the last four digits, as presently required) when registering or changing address.
Public registration drives will be frustrated because voters will not want to give their full Social Security number to a stranger or leave it in a public place.
Boards of elections will suffer, since half the registrations collected are actually address changes and they provide a low-cost way for boards to update their records.
Finally, voters who forgo updating their addresses will be required to cast provisional ballots, increasing the number of those ballots, many of which will not be counted.
There is more.
The House bill (HB 194) inexplicably removes the existing requirement that poll workers direct voters to the correct precinct to vote.
That requirement exists because votes cast in the wrong precinct are not counted. Wrong-precinct voting happens more often than you might imagine, because many voting locations have multiple precincts.
It is easy for someone to mistakenly stand in the wrong line. Shouldn’t the poll workers be required to send that voter to the correct line so their vote will count?
Both bills, as presently written, would do harm to the election process. Because the two bills need to be reconciled before either can become law, there is still time to avoid the problems described here. The legislature should keep the parts that solve administrative problems, but get rid of those that needlessly make it harder to vote.
Lurking in the background to these two bills is a proposal, passed by the House but not considered by the Senate, to restrict the type of identification needed to vote.
Presently voters can show a driver’s license, state photo ID or, for the 11% of people who have neither of those, a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck or other government document.
The House bill would eliminate all but the photo IDs, giving Ohio the most restrictive voter ID law in the country. This limitation would disproportionately impact the elderly, minorities, the poor, people with disabilities and students.
It would be expensive to implement, would do nothing to protect the integrity of the voting process, and the secretary of state does not support it.
This bill was rightly put on the shelf by the Senate. It should stay there.
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Martin Gottlieb: Public opinion on unions a surprise
“Americans Love Unions. Who Knew?”
So reads the headline this month on a piece by the editor of a magazine called the Washington Monthly.
Paul Glastris, by name, broke the first rule of punditry: Never admit to being surprised by anything, unless, of course, you’re saying that somebody you oppose is even more egregious than you thought. That kind of surprise is acceptable.
Otherwise, what you’re supposed to say is this: “What just happened is yet another demonstration of what I’ve been saying all along.” That’s what we have opinionizers for. People who can be surprised by political events are obviously not qualified for the job.
But what Glastris was writing about is, indeed, a fascinating thing to anybody willing to admit it.
Here we’ve been hearing all these years that unions are waning, that union members constitute a smaller percentage of the American population all the time, certainly of the Ohio population.
We hear unions blamed for the decline of the American auto industry. We hear that people believe teachers can’t be fired almost no matter how bad they are (because of unions), that people resent the pensions and even incomes of workers supported by taxes. We see the news and the commentary saying that public pensions can’t be sustained, and that taxpayers are the victims.
So, naturally, when Republicans take over state governments around the country, they see the chance of a lifetime. Everything has come together in a certain way.
The one thriving part of the union “movement” — the public employee unions — the part they consider their nemesis because of its contributions to Democrats, happens to be the part they have the most power to thwart.
And the people will be with them; the public is in its most anti-union frame of mind at just exactly the right time.
And, yes, of course, many Republican legislators honestly believe that public employee unions are a problem for the state and that curtailing their power sharply is simply the right thing to do in this time and place, if not in every time and place.
And they do it. It’s their most high-profile action. And look what happens: The political situation goes south. One poll shows Ohioans saying they’d vote in Ted Strickland over John Kasich by 25 percentage points today.
In Wisconsin, when some people got mad over what they saw as anti-union governance, they moved to recall a bunch of Republican state senators. In response, Republicans moved to recall a bunch of Democratic senators on the charge of shirking their responsibility by fleeing the state to prevent the legislature from acting.
The recent news: The pro-union people have succeeded in getting six recalls on the ballot, and the other side has so far succeeded in getting none.
I have no idea how long public opinion will be like this. I’d have to guess that Ohio’s likely November ballot-issue fight over SB5 — as the new collective bargaining law has come to be known — will be competitive, not the blowout the polls now show.
But then I’m surprised that things are the way they are now.
If I absolutely must argue that what’s happening confirms what I have already said — and, after all, certain obligations do come with a newspaper column — I would point out that this column has long said that people don’t like major initiatives that are partisan in the sense of being almost universally opposed by the other party. Look at “Obamacare” or “Ryancare,” the Republican plan to replace Medicare.
OK, you got me saying I’ve been right all along. Just another know-it-all opinionizer.
Still, I have to admit, I was even more right than I thought I was.
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Editorial: New look at drug sentences is only right
When the crack-cocaine epidemic was overwhelming many cities in the 1980s, Congress came down like a ton of bricks on users and sellers. It passed mandatory minimum prison sentences that resulted in a lot of people going to prison for long periods.
But there was a problem. Under a 1986 law, people who were caught with 500 grams of powdered cocaine — often a drug of choice for whites with money — got a five-year sentence, which was the same sentence for someone found with just five grams of crack. Blacks are more commonly busted for crack.
In addition, offenders with 50 grams of crack would get 10 years, the same as those with 5,000 grams of cocaine. As the crack epidemic waned, people started questioning the fairness of such a disparity, particularly when there was no question that the 100-1 ratio meant that blacks with drug problems were not getting the breaks or consideration that whites were.
Those who were around when crack dealers and users were taking over neighborhoods and killing each other and innocents will remember, though, that conscious or unconscious bigotry was not the driving force behind the tough law.
Many blacks who saw their families threatened were demanding that authorities come down hard. Crack was seen as so addictive and as making users so violent that no one could figure out what to do with users except to lock them up. Some 91,000 people were sentenced under the law.
In 2010 with prison costs rising and crack being used less, Congress voted to ease up on the mandatory penalties, which many judges have never liked because invariably they could point to offenders who weren’t a threat, but had to be sentenced to a decade behind bars. But the new law didn’t provide for revisiting the previously imposed sentences; it said a federal sentencing commission could take up that issue.
Attorney General Eric Holder testified this week before the commission that the Obama administration supports reducing the sentences of about 5,000 of the 12,000 prisoners who were punished under the old law. Those offenders, who could get out about three years sooner (on average) if their punishments matched the new law, don’t have long or violent records.
Mr. Holder said those who have bad records shouldn’t get any special consideration.
The sentencing commission can pretty much rule the day. If it acts, Congress would have to reverse the commission’s decision and President Barack Obama would have to agree — which is unlikely.
The motives for acting are at least twofold. The fairness consideration has gotten a lot of attention, and for legitimate reasons. The racial disparity is just a fact.
Meanwhile, running federal prisons is expensive, and, like many state prisons, they’re increasingly crowded. Making judgments about who’s likely to be a repeat offender and who deserves a second chance — before 5 or 10 years pass — is something judges get paid to do, and society needs them to do.
The sentencing commission may act as soon as next month. What makes sense for future defendants makes sense for people already convicted.
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Editorial: Senate needs skepticism on consumer cut
The Ohio House and Senate have developed a little good-cop/bad-cop routine.
The House passes a bill that goes so far to the right as to cause jaws to drop. The Senate comes in and eliminates the most bizarre stuff, but leaves the provisions that the Republican leadership really wanted in the first place. Cooler heads seem to have prevailed, and the resulting product looks measured, by comparison.
This sequence happened in the bill on changing election rules. The House, among other things, reduced the period for in-person early-voting by a week. The idea had hardly even been proposed before.
Everybody had been celebrating how early voting made life easier for voters and elections officials.
The Senate took the period back up to two weeks and looked moderate, fostering a certain trust about the rest of the bill, which had provisions more complicated and debatable.
Now this same process is happening on the sweeping budget bill. The Senate is proposing reducing some House cuts because of an unexpected uptick in state revenue.
More to the good-cop/bad-cop point is a provision about the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. That’s the agency that represents consumers before state and federal regulators on energy prices and such matters. The Kasich administration proposed cutting the consumers’ counsel’s $8.5 million budget in half, even though doing so would do nothing to help balance the state’s budget. The agency is funded by a charge on utility bills of about $1 per-year.
The proposal seemed to reflect hostility toward the agency. That hostility is strange because if the consumers’ counsel succeeds at its job of keeping utility rates down, it presumably helps make Ohio a more attractive place to live and do business. The governor is always talking about the need to keep costs down in Ohio.
But the House passed the cut, and wasn’t content at that. It added a provision to keep the consumers’ counsel’s phone number off utility bills, and another to ban it from opposing deregulation of natural gas.
The latter provision — popular with energy industry lobbyists — had no known sponsor. It apparently materialized through spontaneous combustion.
The pending Senate version of the budget, the phone-number provision and the gag order about natural gas are gone. And the bill gives the consumers’ counsel $1.5 million more than the House did. The new money is said to be for managing the costs of downsizing.
The Senate changes are in the right direction, but are obvious. Now lawmakers need to get beyond the obvious.
The Kasich administration says the consumers’ counsel’s call center is redundant with that of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), a regulatory body. Janine L. Migden-Ostrander, who heads the consumers’ counsel, says it isn’t.
She also suggests that before the legislature makes such dramatic cuts, it should have the state auditor look into her operation and see what waste is there. She points out that her budget has already dropped while the office’s workload has increased.
The consumers’ counsel says it has saved Ohioans billions since its creation in the 1970s. Whether one buys that or not, having a consumer advocate involved in the regulatory game is obviously desirable.
Utility issues are complicated fights that take place in a courtroom-like setting, with PUCO as the judge. Utilities should have to worry about an expert, well-funded voice on the other side.
Given all the work the legislature confronts on balancing the budget, the consumers’ counsel fight is an unnecessary diversion.
But if there is to be a cut, the task of figuring out how big it should be falls to the Senate.
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Editorial: Senate needs skepticism on this cut
The Ohio House and Senate have developed a little good-cop/bad-cop routine.
The House passes a bill that goes so far to the right as to cause jaws to drop. The Senate comes in and eliminates the most bizarre stuff, but leaves the provisions that the Republican leadership really wanted in the first place. Cooler heads seem to have prevailed, and the resulting product looks measured, by comparison.
This sequence happened in the bill on changing election rules. The House, among other things, reduced the period for in-person early-voting by a week. The idea had hardly even been proposed before. Everybody had been celebrating how early voting made life easier for voters and elections officials.
The Senate took the period back up to two weeks and looked moderate, fostering a certain trust about the rest of the bill, which had provisions more complicated and debatable.
Now this same process is happening on the sweeping budget bill. The Senate is proposing reducing some House cuts because of an unexpected uptick in state revenue.
More to the good-cop/bad-cop point is a provision about the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. That’s the agency that represents consumers before state and federal regulators on energy prices and such matters.
The Kasich administration proposed cutting the consumers’ counsel’s $8.5 million budget in half, even though doing so would do nothing to help balance the state’s budget. The agency is funded by a charge on utility bills of about $1 per-year.
The proposal seemed to reflect hostility toward the agency. That hostility is strange because if the consumers’ counsel succeeds at its job of keeping utility rates down, it presumably helps make Ohio a more attractive place to live and do business. The governor is always talking about the need to keep costs down in Ohio.
But the House passed the cut, and wasn’t content at that. It added a provision to keep the consumers’ counsel’s phone number off utility bills, and another to ban it from opposing deregulation of natural gas.
The latter provision — popular with energy industry lobbyists — had no known sponsor. It apparently materialized through spontaneous combustion.
The pending Senate version of the budget, the phone-number provision and the gag order about natural gas are gone. And the bill gives the consumers’ counsel $1.5 million more than the House did. The new money is said to be for managing the costs of downsizing.
The Senate changes are in the right direction, but are obvious. Now lawmakers need to get beyond the obvious.
The Kasich administration says the consumers’ counsel’s call center is redundant with that of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), a regulatory body. Janine L. Migden-Ostrander, who heads the consumers’ counsel, says it isn’t.
She also suggests that before the legislature makes such dramatic cuts, it should have the state auditor look into her operation and see what waste is there. She points out that her budget has already dropped while the office’s workload has increased.
The consumers’ counsel says it has saved Ohioans billions since its creation in the 1970s. Whether one buys that or not, having a consumer advocate involved in the regulatory game is obviously desirable. Utility issues are complicated fights that take place in a courtroom-like setting, with PUCO as the judge. Utilities should have to worry about an expert, well-funded voice on the other side.
Given all the work the legislature confronts on balancing the budget, the consumers’ counsel fight is an unnecessary diversion. But if there is to be a cut, the task of figuring out how big it should be falls to the Senate.
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Martin Gottlieb: Parties let go of their inhibitions in this season
If this decade or so is the era of berserk partisanship, then this season — right now, today — is the season. All across the country, levels of partisan fervor that are normal for our abnormal times are being topped, left in the dust.
That’s because now comes redistricting, the drawing of legislative districts for the next decade.
Take Illinois.
A summary from Politico, a publication that follows these things:
“The Democratic-controlled Illinois state legislature is on the verge of passing a radically redrawn congressional map that has the national party basking in the prospect of ousting as many as six GOP House members — likely to be the Democrats’ biggest redistricting gain nationwide.”
It’s a partisan bacchanalia, a celebration of release from inhibition. The drawing of the maps is, by common consent among politicians, an all-out embrace of partisanship. Pretense largely disappears.
You do what you have to do. Then you defend it, and if you can’t, well, nobody has ever lost an election for that reason. This isn’t Medicare, and it isn’t the economy. It’s the politicians’ own domain.
Illinois, which is acting early, is worth looking at. In 2011, it’s a political mirror image of Ohio. Both houses of the state legislature are controlled by Democrats, as is the governorship.
In Ohio, of course, the Republicans have everything. But there’s one other difference: The situation in Illinois is new. This is the first time in four decades the Ds have had everything. That means, it’s the first time in the computer age, when high technology has come to the aid of the partisan partiers, those who want to make the maps come out to the advantage of their own party. Now it’s so easy.
Going into the 2010 election, Democrats controlled the Illinois congressional delegation 13-6. But Republicans gained five seats, giving them an 11-8 majority. Now the Illinois Democrats want to overturn the election.
This would be accomplished by, as summarized by the Chicago Tribune, pitting “Republican incumbents against each other, (moving) them into largely unfamiliar territory or (forcing) them to face Democratic colleagues in districts drawn to favor Democrats.”
Worth noting about what the Democrats are doing: The map that prevailed in 2010 wasn’t drawn by Republicans, but through a process not fully controlled by either party. So the Democratic partisans can’t say they are just undoing the work of Republican partisans.
However, the old map was, according to the nonpartisan “Almanac of American Politics,” “a nightmare for those who believe redistricting plans should have compact and competitive districts.”
The map was what usually results when the parties compromise: an incumbent protection plan, “and the resulting district lines are grotesque,” said the Almanac.
The Democrats might make this point in their favor: At least Illinois really is a Democratic-leaning state. In a close presidential election, Illinois will go Democratic; Ohio will be up for grabs.
What the Democrats are trying to do to Illinois’ remaining 18 congressional seats is leave only two that are solidly Republican and only eight or nine that the Republicans have shots at.
Nationally, the Democrats won’t have many chances to play such games, because the Republicans took so much power in 2010. Moreover, the Democrats’ beloved California has been taken from them. Former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger led a long and admirable fight to get voters to adopt a nonpartisan system, and he finally won.
But Republicans who draw Ohio’s maps are likely to be more influenced by Illinois than California.
What they come up with may not make the kinds of headlines that Illinois has made, because Ohio already has
Republican-drawn maps. There simply aren’t that many Democrats to unseat. But the Republicans will be trying to lock in what they’ve got. They now have 13 of the state’s 18 congressional seats. They want to limit Democrats to only a few districts in the future, swing state or no swing state.
And if they want to, they can. Redistricting is the party without any hangovers.
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Martin Gottlieb: Parties let go of their inhibitions in this season
If this decade or so is the era of berserk partisanship, then this season — right now, today — is the season. All across the country, levels of partisan fervor that are normal for our abnormal times are being topped, left in the dust.
That’s because now comes redistricting, the drawing of legislative districts for the next decade.
Take Illinois.
A summary from Politico, a publication that follows these things:
“The Democratic-controlled Illinois state legislature is on the verge of passing a radically redrawn congressional map that has the national party basking in the prospect of ousting as many as six GOP House members — likely to be the Democrats’ biggest redistricting gain nationwide.”
It’s a partisan bacchanalia, a celebration of release from inhibition. The drawing of the maps is, by common consent among politicians, an all-out embrace of partisanship. Pretense largely disappears.
You do what you have to do. Then you defend it, and if you can’t, well, nobody has ever lost an election for that reason. This isn’t Medicare, and it isn’t the economy. It’s the politicians’ own domain.
Illinois, which is acting early, is worth looking at. In 2011, it’s a political mirror image of Ohio. Both houses of the state legislature are controlled by Democrats, as is the governorship.
In Ohio, of course, the Republicans have everything. But there’s one other difference: The situation in Illinois is new. This is the first time in four decades the Ds have had everything. That means, it’s the first time in the computer age, when high technology has come to the aid of the partisan partiers, those who want to make the maps come out to the advantage of their own party. Now it’s so easy.
Going into the 2010 election, Democrats controlled the Illinois congressional delegation 13-6. But Republicans gained five seats, giving them an 11-8 majority. Now the Illinois Democrats want to overturn the election.
This would be accomplished by, as summarized by the Chicago Tribune, pitting “Republican incumbents against each other, (moving) them into largely unfamiliar territory or (forcing) them to face Democratic colleagues in districts drawn to favor Democrats.”
Worth noting about what the Democrats are doing: The map that prevailed in 2010 wasn’t drawn by Republicans, but through a process not fully controlled by either party. So the Democratic partisans can’t say they are just undoing the work of Republican partisans.
However, the old map was, according to the nonpartisan “Almanac of American Politics,” “a nightmare for those who believe redistricting plans should have compact and competitive districts.”
The map was what usually results when the parties compromise: an incumbent protection plan, “and the resulting district lines are grotesque,” said the Almanac.
The Democrats might make this point in their favor: At least Illinois really is a Democratic-leaning state. In a close presidential election, Illinois will go Democratic; Ohio will be up for grabs.
What the Democrats are trying to do to Illinois’ remaining 18 congressional seats is leave only two that are solidly Republican and only eight or nine that the Republicans have shots at.
Nationally, the Democrats won’t have many chances to play such games, because the Republicans took so much power in 2010. Moreover, the Democrats’ beloved California has been taken from them. Former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger led a long and admirable fight to get voters to adopt a nonpartisan system, and he finally won.
But Republicans who draw Ohio’s maps are likely to be more influenced by Illinois than California.
What they come up with may not make the kinds of headlines that Illinois has made, because Ohio already has
Republican-drawn maps. There simply aren’t that many Democrats to unseat. But the Republicans will be trying to lock in what they’ve got. They now have 13 of the state’s 18 congressional seats. They want to limit Democrats to only a few districts in the future, swing state or no swing state.
And if they want to, they can. Redistricting is the party without any hangovers.
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Editorial: OSU’s mistake was moving too slowly
One reason Jim Tressel is special (and was treated accordingly) is that sports attract a lot of talented people who aren’t so likable or impressive. You know their names, their offenses and their phenomenal arrogance.
Ohio State University’s Tressel cut a different image and, in very many ways, lived up to that reputation. He genuinely cared for his players; he was sincerely interested in giving back; he showed class and humility.
None of these qualities, though, excused his failure to turn in his players and go immediately to authorities when he was alerted that they were violating NCAA rules by selling or trading OSU football memorabilia for cash and tattoos. That decision led to another fateful decision, lying to the NCAA on a form in which he attested that, to his knowledge, his players were clean.
With the NCAA investigating media reports that there is a culture among players of accepting discounts and being treated to favors, the accumulation of mistakes became too damning. What Coach Tressel knew and didn’t address amounted to an indictment of his leadership; and what he didn’t know — or turned a blind eye to — was piling up.
Given the public scrutiny that players are under and given the hand holding that colleges impose on athletes in order to keep them and their schools out of trouble, it’s pretty hard to believe that somebody didn’t know, for instance, that star quarterback Terrelle Pryor was driving cars that he deserved to be questioned about.
A lot of critics of Ohio State — and there are many — have good points when they say that the scandal has been handled badly by persons above Mr. Tressel. After all, it was not he who initially meted out just a two-game suspension when his players got busted and several were going to have to sit out five games. It was not just Mr. Tressel who was charged with keeping an eye on the players and their off-the-field behavior.
Moreover, both Athletic Director Gene Smith and OSU President Gordon Gee have been exceedingly deferential to Mr. Tressel, with President Gee going so far as to say early on that he stood behind Mr. Tressel and hoped that Mr. Tressel wouldn’t fire him. In April, Mr. Smith said that, as part of his punishment, Mr. Tressel was supposed to apologize publicly for his actions at a press conference and that he only did so after he was pressed to do so.
Over the course of events, the impression OSU officials have left is that they have been afraid of losing their spectacularly winning coach, that holding him accountable for his dubious decisions was a secondary consideration. (Mr. Tressel said that one reason he didn’t tell his bosses about the players’ infractions is that he was worried for their safety. The tattoo parlor owner was being investigated by the feds.)
The alternative theory put forward by critics is that Mr. Tressel didn’t want to jeopardize his winning record by having players ruled ineligible.
What’s unmistakably clear is that the pressure Ohio State came under to sack Coach Tressel has come from outside the college and the state. The national sports media have been totally unforgiving and have fairly noted that in other instances where a coach has lied or been this tainted, he’s almost always been fired. And then there was the NCAA’s investigation, which has been informed by impressive reporting by The Columbus Dispatch.
The take-away from the truly sad embarrassment is that, at some point, a spiral happened. It took too long to pull out of it.
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