SUDDES: With no population growth, Ohio needs to attract tax-paying workers – including immigrants

Credit: LARRY HAMEL-LAMBERT

Credit: LARRY HAMEL-LAMBERT

The Pew Charitable Trusts recently reported that 15-year population trends among the states show that, “aside from the states with [population] losses, population growth was the slowest in Michigan (0.06%), New York (0.12%), Connecticut (0.13%), Ohio (0.15%), and Pennsylvania (0.18%).”

And the Census reports that, as of 2022, Ohioans’ median age was 39.8 years; the national median age was 38.9 years, almost a year less than Ohio’s.

Ultimately, that means a long-term decline in number of Ohioans whose taxes – income, property and sales – finance public government services. Yet an aging population requires some critical services.

Key example: Medicaid, which funds health-care for more than one in four Ohioans, including older Ohioans in nursing home beds.

According to Ohio’s Legislative Service Commission, “Medicaid is the largest single state program and accounts for nearly 5% of Ohio’s economy [and] is the largest spending area of the combined state and federal General Revenue Fund budget.”

Bottom line: Given virtually no population growth, Ohio needs to attract tax-paying workers, including immigrants, to pay for state services.

Don’t tell that to the press-release king of Columbus, Attorney General David Yost. He tub-thumped about a surge in immigration to Clark County and Springfield by Haitians legally in the United States. That built on lies spread by ex- President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, of Cincinnati.

Here’s what the New York Times recently reported: “By most accounts, the Haitians have helped revitalize Springfield. They are assembling car engines at Honda, running vegetable-packing machines at Dole and loading boxes at distribution centers. They are paying taxes on their wages and spending money at Walmart. On Sundays they gather at churches for boisterous, joyful services in Haitian Creole.”

Even so, Yost ordered a “deep dive into [the] challenges of [a] surging migrant population.” His muddled gripe seems to be that the (conveniently Democratic) federal administration isn’t doing enough – if anything – to help Springfield and Clark County manage the population’s growth.

What Yost himself aims to do, besides grandstand, is unclear. Certainly, city leaders, as suggested by a Q&A on Springfield’s municipal web site, are taking a measured tone. Even though it’d be out of character, Yost might consider that.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine is highly knowledgeable about Haiti. That’s because of very generous support he and First Lady Fran DeWine give a charity that builds and runs schools to help educate impoverished children in Haiti.

DeWine is constructively marshalling state resources to help Springfield and Clark County accommodate newcomers. Yost, in contrast, is grabbing headlines.

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MEANWHILE: Voters who want to know what real political debates were like – in contrast to Tuesday’s – can repay their curiosity many times over by reading 1858′s Lincoln-Douglas debates.

That year, in seven Illinois towns, future President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, debated then-Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat, whose senatorial re-election Lincoln was challenging. (The Illinois legislature elected Douglas.)

The best book on the 1858 debates is The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition, superbly edited by Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson, distinguished Lincoln scholars at Knox College. Knox’s campus, in Galesburg, Illinois, was where Douglas and Lincoln held their fifth debate, on Oct. 7, 1858.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates helped frame arguments about the great issue – slavery –threatening to split the Union. On the Civil War’s eve, questions about America’s future were especially urgent.

They’re urgent today. But a bystander would be hard-pressed to claim that what now passes for political speech was as eloquent – and dignified – as it was 166 years ago, in seven Illinois crossroads.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.

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