From the monthly archives: April 2011
Today, the Director of the Ohio Department of Administrative Services sent a letter out to every State employees regarding SB 5. Amazingly (or not), the letter seems to be virtually lifted from the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee’s pro-SB 5 website, SB5Truth.com.
Because it’s unusual to see an Administration lobby its own employees on legislation on a path to a referendum, we feel it necessary to fact-check some of the Administration’s own claims.
Full Story... →Welcome to Kasichistan, where even members of the General Assembly can’t get information about the budget they’re being asked to vote on from the government.
Frustrated by the inability or unwillingness by the Kasich Administration’s hearing witnesses to provide basic answers regarding the Administration’s school funding formula and education budget, two Democratic members of the General Assembly tried another route: ask for the information by making a public records request. Traditionally, when a Member of the General Assembly makes such a request, even if the information sought was not within the strict confines of public records, the information would [...]
Full Story... →It looks like Innovation Ohio’s latest “Taxpayer Rip-Off of the Week” Award has ruffled some feathers over at the House Republican Caucus.
According to IO, the Ohio Workers’ Comp Council (WCC) does “virtually no work” and “the Council pays its sole employee—Director Virginia McInerney—over $100,000 annually.” The council, with a budget of nearly $1 Million in the biennium budget, used to have 3 additional employees, but Virginia (who authors Christian books in her spare time) fired them all at once. The former employees sued claiming, among other things, religious discrimination. According to the staff members:
McInerney declared [...]
Full Story... →Conservatives like John Kasich tend to believe that Ohio’s economy would be doing just fine if we didn’t have a progressive income tax, didn’t have organized labor, and had more venture capitalists operating in Ohio.
Now that we’re roughly a year and half after the recession officially ended, we take a look at how those States who already have these things are doing compared Ohio’s unemployment rate. Take a look.
Full Story... →The Dispatch is reporting that Columbus City Schools and the Columbus Education Association have come to an agreement that will save the school district $8 Million dollars in salary next year. They have also projected a total cut of $22 million from next school year’s budget.
The salary savings was accomplished with existing collective bargaining rights and the current step-based pay system in place, and without Kasich’s merit-pay changes to teacher salary.
pay scales, which determine how much money a teacher makes based on how long he or she has worked for the district, will not increase for the [...]
Full Story... →Another achievement John Kasich has listed in his 100 days of achievements is keeping Goodyear from moving to another State:
Keeping Ohio Companies in Ohio—American Greetings, Bob Evans, Diebold and Goodyear saving more than 5,500 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue are saved.
And for once, Kasich is talking about a company that was seriously considering leaving Ohio and had multiple economic development offers to lure it away. And it’s also true that if it were not for the efforts of the Ohio Department of Development and local officials, Goodyear might have left.
The problem for Kasich is this all occurred in 2007, not 2011.
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So far we’ve explored Tea Party hypocrisy on Special Interests and the Government’s role in the “Free Market”. We turn our attention now to healthcare. Part 3 of this week’s Tea Party Discovery series reveals how Billionaire Koch funded American’s for Prosperity (known Tea Party astroturfer) sponsored a Town Hall meeting in which the GOP through SB5 injects more government control over healthcare. The Tea Party protests of this intrusion upon the people’s civil liberties never materialized…
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Last week, I posted about Governor Kasich’s budgetary plan to require all core subject teachers in low-scoring school districts to take licensure tests. The text of this newly created section of Ohio Revised Code reads as follows:
Sec. 3319.58
(C) Each year, the board of education of each school district in the lowest ten percentiles of performance index score shall require each of its classroom teachers teaching in a core subject area to register for and take all written examinations prescribed by the state board of education for licensure to teach that core subject area and the [...]
Both the PD and the Dispatch decided to run reader polls today to gauge their readers’ feelings about Kasich’s first 100 days in office. Both polls showed nearly the same results.
The Plain Dealer asked: What do you think of the job Kasich’s doing as he nears his 100th day in office?
Over 76% of the nearly ten thousand respondents have chosen “Disapprove” so far.
The Dispatch phrased the question a little differently, but the results are actually more telling. Central Ohio’s paper asked: What grade would you give Gov. John Kasich for his first 100 days [...]
Full Story... →Yesterday we explored the basics of the stated Tea Party values and I made the first of many “discoveries” that point to the movement being more about opposing Democrats and less about any true ideals. We continue our look at the ways in which the Tea Party’s hypocrisy begins to show with Part 2 of this series by looking at the stated beliefs versus actions relative to Government and the “Free Market”. We also consider whether the size of the “movement” is shrinking due to disillusionment and ponder whether the Tea Party itself is dead.
Full Story... →Budget Watch
