From the monthly archives: April 2011
Last week Innovation Ohio issued a report estimating over twenty five thousand K-12 teachers and support staff could lose their jobs as a result of Kasich’s massive cuts to education. Kasich administration officials have dismissed the report and Republican operatives like Terry Casey have attempted to call IO’s numbers and methods into question.
While Kasich and his team may not be publicly admit the truth, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services seems to agree with Innovation Ohio.
According to a meeting notice I just received, ODJFS is starting a task force to handle the expected [...]
Full Story... →Kasich’s Office of Budget and Management says Ohio collected nearly a billion in more revenue in March than was projected due to strong economic growth in a recovery that has created jobs twice as fast in Ohio than Indiana or the rest of the nation. Thus, dispelling everything Kasich the Candidate said about Ohio’s economy last year.
Full Story... →As we dig deeper into the budget, more and more crazy stuff keep surfacing and much of it directly and negatively impacts teachers.
Greg Mild has identified one egregiously nasty section (starting at line 51883) that could require tens of thousands of Ohio’s teachers to retake up to 5 certification exams each year, costing them $6,000,000 out of their own pockets.
(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 [...]
Full Story... →So the guy that promised 8,000 Tea Party activitsts would “surround” the Statehouse to show support for SB 5 is now planning an Ohio state Tea Party convention. Although he doesn’t have a single ’12 GOP Presidential candidate confirmed, he’s promising to have them at his new PAC’s fundraiser. He has booked Dick Morris, though. Yea!
Full Story... →As Brian discussed a few days ago Senator Seitz has been kicked off the government oversight committee, which he chaired, for disagreeing with Governor Kasich on SB5.
While Senate President Niehaus has taken responsibility for Seitz’s removal as committee chair, everyone knows Kasich was the motivating force behind the decision, and everyone knows the reason why, including Seitz:
“I will not speak to the motivation behind it because it was not my decision,” Seitz said. “But having been removed from one committee weeks ago and now being removed from another, it brings to mind res ipsa loquitur, which [...]
Full Story... →The Canton Repository reports that Diebold’s CEO told Governor Strickland that his company had “a strong preference” to stay in Ohio. Is the ghost of NCR so terrifying to Kasich that he’s willing to give away the farm to even companies who are unlikely to leave Ohio? So glad we’re building a $100 milion global corporate HQ to keep a company here who already wanted to stay here. Sigh.
Full Story... →Conservative blog Third Base Politics celebrates an organization of “teachers” who support SB 5. Fails to mention that the organization is an out-of-state California organization that has no Ohio chapter, that refuses to disclose how many, if any, Ohio members it has, and is founded and lead by… non-teachers, and its funding base is the same rich conservative ideological institutional givers that fund anti-labor “right to work” organizations it regularly works with.
Maybe before citing an organization as representing Ohio teachers, TBP should find one Ohio teacher that belongs to it, first?
Full Story... →For the time being, the answer appears to be yes.
In 2008, John Kasich formed a PAC called Recharge Ohio that had three central policy platforms: 1) repeal Ohio’s income tax; 2) repeal Ohio’s estate tax (which Kasich called the “death tax.”); and 3) massive increases to charter schools. Kasich called the repeals of the income and estate tax necessary if Ohio was to ever climb out of its death spiral.
He went to Republican event after event, appeared on conservative talk radio all the way through election day, talking about how he was going to repeal these taxes. [...]
Full Story... →Diebold’s international HQ’s is presently located in Green, Ohio near Canton—a region where the company started some one-hundred and fifty-two years ago. It’s been at its present location since 1972. While Kasich dithers on making any decision on the casinos, thus delaying billions in construction and new jobs, he’s rushing to declare victory over keeping Diebold in Ohio.
Today the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Governor Kasich and Diebold will announce that the State is giving $55 million (what budget deficit?) in tax incentives to essentially finance Diebold’s planned new $100 million world headquarters (the company [...]
Full Story... →John Kasich’s JobsOhio and the $100 million liquor securitization that his budget seeks to fund it seem to be designed to turn Ohio’s Development Department into a semi-private venture capital firm. Given that’s Mark Kvamme’s comfort zone, and public economic development efforts are not, it’s not surprising. What is surprising is the utter lack of anyone objectively and critically examining such a worldview as a model for economic development.
A few weeks ago, the Dispatch reported that Governor Kasich was spitballing yet another half baked idea of attracting private venture capitalists by changing Ohio’s tax code so there [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
You call this progress? The 1st 100 days of the 129th Ohio General Assembly
The Ohio House Republicans ran in 2010 on job creation. They even had an entire platform of job-related bills they said they’d pass. As they self-congratulate themselves over their first 100 days in power, why is that 11 of the fifteen bills they highlight passing have nothing to do with jobs? And why did they spend more time on abortion than the budget or job creation?
Full Story... →