Hershey: New museum needs Meshel to talk taxes

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By William Hershey, Staff Writer 11:26 PM Saturday, June 13, 2009

There was a brief calm in the state budget storm last week as more than 400 people gathered for a ribbon cutting at the $3.5 million Statehouse Museum, an interactive collection of hands-on exhibits geared especially for Ohio school children.

The basement museum features a large touch monitor that lets visitors explore the achievements of Dayton’s Wilbur and Orville Wright, space pioneer John Glenn and others designated Great Ohioans.

For those who like challenges, there’s a display that lets them construct their own state budgets.

If they have any good ideas, museum officials should rush them upstairs where legislators and Gov. Ted Strickland are scratching their heads over how to plug a $3.2 billion hole in the new state budget the governor wants to sign before July 1, start of the fiscal year, without, of course, raising taxes.

While they’re at it, museum officials could add another exhibit — a living one — by enlisting one of the guests at the ribbon cutting, former Senate President Harry Meshel.

Meshel, a good man with a quote, could enlighten school kids on a subject that probably gets ignored in their civics classes.

Push Harry and he’d be ready to roll on this topic:

Political pitfalls of raising taxes in Ohio.

Meshel is among the last of the larger than life, warts and all, preterm-limits figures who once dominated Statehouse politics. Most others in a group that includes Dayton’s C.J. McLin, Jr., Vern “Mr. Speaker” Riffe and Gov. James A. Rhodes have moved on to that great Statehouse in the sky. They had faults as well as virtues, but stayed around long enough to know more than the lobbyists who never get termed out.

At 84, Meshel, a Youngstown Democrat, still has some pepper along with the salt in his hair and a keen memory of what happened in 1983 when he was Senate president.

Meshel had grabbed control of the Senate Democrats in a backroom coup that left the ousted leader – the scholarly Oliver Ocasek of the Akron area – reciting Shakespeare to denounce those he considered traitors.

Anyway, Democrats controlled the Senate by just one vote, 17-16. All 17 voted for Democratic Gov. Dick Celeste’s so-called “90 percent tax hike” – a renewal of a temporary income tax increase plus an increase. None of the Republicans voted for it.

Senate Republicans used the tax issue to grab control of the Senate in the 1984 elections and have maintained that majority for 25 years. The way the Republicans told the story, every Democratic senator who voted for the tax increase and was up for re-election cast the 17th and decisive vote.

“It destroyed us,” Meshel recalled.

Meshel doesn’t think it’s just that vote and the political consequences that makes tax increases a taboo topic, even in tough times when the hungry need food and the homeless need more places to sleep.

“No, I just think it’s a basic reluctance on the part of people, a natural antipathy for taxes no matter what they want,” Meshel said. “It’s like everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”

Meshel has tempered his lifestyle and no longer orders adult refreshments two-at-a time as he did in his prime. If this year’s budget negotiators are driven to drink, he offers this advice for staying healthy:

“It doesn’t make any difference what you drink, it’s a matter of clean ice.”

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