100 Days; 100 Kasich Lies

Kasich didn’t last an entire week without getting caught telling a whopper of a tale.  At the end of his first week in office, Governor Kasich called a press conference to declare that his new Ohio EPA director had resolved in a matter of a two days an air permit for an Ohio manufacturer that had "languished" due to bureacratic delays for twenty months.

The only problem was that people at the Ohio EPA got upset being thrown under the bus, when what had actually occurred was they were asked to give the Administration an air permit that was ready to be signed.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s PolitiFact would report that it was the company, not the Strickland Administration that was dragging its feet.

And so began Kasich’s war against truthiness (not a definitive list):

• Kasich claims his Administration was responsible for bringing the filming of “The Avengers” blockbuster movie to Cleveland from Michigan.  In reality, the deal was negotiated by the Cleveland Film Office.  All the Kasich Administration did was agree to provide State tax credits to the package the Cleveland Film Office wanted to offer Marvel.  A tax credit created by Governor Ted Strickland.
• Kasich says bond rating agencies threatened to lower Ohio’s rating without the passage of Senate Bill 5. They didn’t.
• Kasich promised JobsOhio would be fully funded with private money, then plans to securitize liquor profits to fund it.
• Kasich claims he cut taxes on Ohioans but the income tax cut he’s talking about was actually passed by the General Assembly under Taft and continued by Governor Strickland.
• Kasich says that he saved Bob Evans from leaving the state even though we know that Bob Evans told Columbus Mayor Mike Coleman that it "had no intention of leaving the state of Ohio," and the only State they had “considered” instead was Texas… where Bob Evans has no restaurants. In fact, it appeared that construction for Bob Evans new HQ was already underway before Kasich announced the deal.
• Kasich said he wanted to be "respectful of other people’s feelings" and not hold a public signing of SB5. He did it anyway:

• Kasich lied about not planning to consolidate school districts.
• Kasich lied when he said schools were getting more money under his budget, or that he’d “put more money into the classrooms.”
• And Kasich lied to the news media when he told them accurate school funding numbers didn’t exist.  The spin went absurd when Innovation Ohio released its analysis using figures it says it obtained from the Administration.  The Administration was caught trying to neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of numbers that they had public said didn’t exist.
• Kasich promised not to use one time money to balance his budget. Yet, one-time money from privatization and securitization is a cornerstone of his budget.
• Kasich claims young people are moving to Florida to find jobs but Florida’s unemployment rate is the second highest in the country.
• Kasich promised to renew Strickland’s executive order protecting GLBT state workers. Johnny intentionally left out the T.
• Kasich lied in reporting what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said regarding Ohio’s Race to the Top funding.
• Kasich claimed Ohio isn’t losing jobs to China even though he personally voted to outsource Ohio jobs to China.
• Kasich misleads Ohioans when he claims SB 5 won’t reduce folks salaries.
• Kasich lied about where Ohio’s population losses rank compared to the rest of the nation.
• Kasich lied when he said in his State of the State that there was nothing more than an informal agreement to build a mental health hospital in Cleveland Kasich is scrapping.
• Kasich lied when he claimed that Mark Kvamme has “clawed back” $900,000 from companies who didn’t fulfill the job creation/retention they promised in the past for Ohio Department of Development assistance.
• Fox News’ Bill Hemmer was stunned to hear that Governor Kasich talked about breaking the back of teachers’ unions during the campaign since Kasich had never admitted such a statement when he’s appeared on Fox News to promote SB 5.
• The Kasich Administration lied to the Cincinnati Enquirer when it claimed the millions in lost Medicaid funding for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital was “an unintended consequence.”
• The Kasich Administration used “creative” accounting in devising an “analysis” of SB 5 that concluded (without studying a single local government’s collective bargaining agreement) that it would save the State $217 million and local governments over a $1 billion a year.

I’ll say it again, John Kasich wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up to him wearing a name badge.