Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Ohio newspapers:
Ohio budget prioritizes our children
The Canton Repository
July 21
Children first.
Well before he became governor last November, Mike DeWine said his administration would increase attention on and funding for our state’s youngest and most vulnerable. He reiterated it frequently on the campaign trail, and in a meeting with this Editorial Board last year he roughly outlined several ideas.
He made his priority clear again in his inaugural address in January, stating in the speech’s opening minutes: “We are united in our passion and commitment to ensuring that all of our children lead meaningful, fulfilling lives.” When introducing his budget in March, DeWine put forward a proposal emphasizing initiatives that would, yes, put children first.
But all that talk would be mere words unless the General Assembly followed DeWine’s lead and passed a budget that reflected the governor’s wishes for our state.
While there are several areas of the $69 billion biennial budget lawmakers finally passed last week and DeWine signed into law that we see as problematic - discussions for another time - we were happy to see near unanimous support for what was known as House Bill 166 and its many kid-centered measures.
“This budget will lead to healthier children, stronger families, safer communities, an enhanced workforce and a more prosperous Ohio, while also providing significant tax relief for every Ohio taxpayer and regulatory relief for Ohio businesses,” DeWine said Thursday.
The budget includes the House plan for $125 million in additional services in poorer school districts, a measure Speaker Larry Householder prioritized. That comes on top of DeWine’s request for $550 million in new spending to provide “wraparound” social services - mentoring and mental health care, as two examples - targeted at lower-income school children, with the goal of improving classroom performance.
That $675 million commitment alone kept some Democrats on board after other proposals the party was pushing, especially from the House, didn’t survive the conference committee. In the end, the budget passed 29-1 in the Senate and 75-17 in the House.
Democrats specifically mentioned investments in education (a 4.1% increase for the 2019-20 school year and another 2% for the 2020-21 school year); making college more affordable by increasing funding for Ohio’s College Opportunity Grants for low-income students; improving access to health care; and investing in other children’s services, including millions of dollars in additional funding for the Kinship Care Navigators Program as reasons the final budget retained their support despite their concerns in other areas, most notably business taxes.
“While this budget could have been stronger for working families, I believe it puts us on the right path forward to keeping our promise to Ohio’s families that they have the support and tools to thrive, not just survive,” said Rep. Thomas West, of Canton, who voted in favor.
Putting kids first isn’t only about money. Raising the minimum age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21 fulfills that goal, as does the revamping high school graduation criteria. We applaud both of those outcomes.
One kid-focused area where the General Assembly still has unfinished business: addressing state takeover of school districts that repeatedly receive “F’’ grades on the state report card. Lawmakers declared a one-year moratorium on takeovers and said the issue will be discussed outside of the budget process. Not a win, but not a loss, either.
Viewing the biennial budget through the lens of its education funding and increased opportunities for school choice, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said, “All in all, this was a really good budget year for kids and parents.”
We echo those words in looking at this budget in its entirety.
Online: https://bit.ly/30SYFPA
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GM’s Lordstown complex has earned a viable future
The Vindicator
July 18
As General Motors CEO Mary Barra and United Auto Workers President Gary Jones were shaking hands Tuesday to mark the start of labor contract negotiations, a television commercial being aired for the Chevrolet Blazer served as an exclamation point for what’s at stake.
Indeed, Jones’ comments during the opening ceremony in Detroit highlighted the irony of GM touting the redesigned and re-engineered iconic Blazer SUV.
“General Motors has the fastest-shrinking footprint in America,” the UAW president said. “We will leave no stone unturned. You put us on the block, our location on the block, we will fight to keep these plants open and allocate products here on American soil.”
One of the plants GM has “put . on the block” is its 53-year-old massive Lordstown assembly plant.
But as the giant automaker was pulling up stakes in the Mahoning Valley, it was rolling out the Blazer in an assembly plant in Mexico.
GM has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its Ramos Arizpe facility to build a vehicle that is as American as apple pie.
When asked why the SUV wasn’t assigned to the Lordstown complex after GM decided to halt production of the top-selling Chevrolet Cruze compact car, Barra and members of her inner circle offered explanations that were as unconvincing as they were convoluted.
The only credible explanation for selecting Mexico is that GM wanted to build the SUV as cheaply as possible.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the Blazer commercial that kept airing through the day Tuesday extolled all its virtues but omitted the fact that it’s not made in America.
However, if UAW negotiators are waiting for GM to justify the idling of four American plants, including Lordstown, while investing obscenely large sums of money abroad, they’re in a for a long wait.
CEO’s contention
Here’s what Barra, who has avoided the Valley like the plague since she pulled the economic rug out from under the region, had to say during the handshake ceremony:
“While this industry has always been competitive, we must admit it’s only getting more so. More than ever, we must be agile, decisive and disciplined. We must be proactive on all fronts because we are not here merely to survive. We are here to lead it and to win. To build a stronger future, we need to win, we must deliver vehicles customers want today to earn a chance to compete tomorrow, invest in the talent and technologies of tomorrow to win as our industry changes … .”
Implicit in that maze of a statement is this painful fact: GM has no intention of reopening the Lordstown assembly facility.
Thus the question: Will the United Auto Workers go to the mat for a plant that for more than a half-century produced some of the finest vehicles in the history of the auto industry?
The union, both locally and nationally, has insisted that GM will have a fight on its hands if it fails to allocate a new product for the Lordstown complex.
However, the reality is that many workers have taken jobs in other plants.
In addition, CEO Barra has publicly announced that GM and Cincinnati-based Workhorse have been in talks over the sale of the Lordstown complex.
Interestingly, the deal depends on UAW approval.
Workhorse, designer and builder of high-performance battery-electric vehicles, would buy the plant for a reported $300 million. But as The New York Times has noted, the small company, which has yet to turn a profit, must raise the money for the purchase.
Indeed, the company had to secure $25 million in financing to fill orders that were on the books.
Nonetheless, Republican President Donald Trump, who had warned GM not to shutter its American facilities, has hailed the Workhorse deal - even though the company does not now have the financial wherewithal to proceed.
It is noteworthy that Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has cautioned against premature celebration because the Lordstown project depends on the Cincinnati company winning a contract from the U.S. Postal Service to build delivery trucks. Several other major automakers are vying for the agreement.
Given that uncertainty, we believe the best bet for the Valley is for GM to assign one or more of its planned electric models to Lordstown.
A contingent of UAW members from this area traveled to Detroit for the opening of the contract talks, and their message is one that should guide union negotiators: The Lordstown facility has earned a new GM product.
Online: https://bit.ly/2Gp8YTk
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We all benefit from a greater appreciation of science at work
The Columbus Dispatch
July 22
In the vein of conducting a scientific experiment, COSI President and CEO Frederic Bertley sought to answer a question: How can we get local individuals and families more comfortable with science?
The hypothesis he constructed to answer the question was something like this: Make it easier for people to see science at work in familiar locations and they will be more receptive to welcoming the science inherent in all aspects of their lives.
Happily, the four-day communitywide experiment that Bertley and COSI conducted in May exceeded expectations as it attracted more than 40,000 participants to about 100 science-themed events in Columbus and 16 other municipalities.
With that result and support already committed by Battelle - $850,000 for the inaugural year and two more - COSI announced recently that its science festival will be back - and bigger - on May 6-9 next year.
Six more cities in contiguous counties - Circleville in Pickaway, London in Madison, Marysville in Union, Delaware in Delaware, Heath in Licking and Pickerington in Fairfield - are on board to offer locations for the first three days of the 2020 festival. The event culminates on the fourth day with activities along the Scioto Peninsula Downtown around COSI.
Payoffs for extending the reach of central Ohio’s science museum into neighborhood schools, bars, businesses, libraries and other locations are limitless.
Whether it is making the study of science less scary and more appealing to youth or enabling parents to be more encouraging of their children’s interests in science, there are no losers in COSI’s admirable stewardship of the discipline for young people, old folks and everyone in between.
The more we all understand about how things work, the better we will each be in taking care of our surroundings and in pursuing facts and scientific inquiry to help understand what still puzzles us.
In a world where too many act or speak out too quickly on too little information, a little more science and objective testing of our own hypotheses might be just what we need to break through barriers that keep us apart.
Online: https://bit.ly/2YjMTzL
___President Trump needs to know the limits of acceptable in America
Cleveland Plain Dealer
July 16
After Republican President Donald Trump tweeted last Sunday that four U.S. members of Congress — all women of color, all U.S. citizens, three of them U.S.-born — should “go back” to the countries they “originally came from,” condemnations started pouring in, including from fellow Republicans in battleground Ohio.
Among the critics: GOP Gov. Mike DeWine and Sen. Rob Portman.
At least five of Ohio’s 12 Republican members of Congress also weighed in with criticism Monday, including U.S. Reps. Anthony Gonzalez of Rocky River and Dave Joyce of Geauga County.
But a majority remained silent — including U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs of Holmes County, whose district includes parts of Lorain and Medina counties.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana in southwest Ohio, whose district snakes up to Oberlin, appeared to defend the president, quoted in The Dispatch of Columbus saying, “The President is frustrated by the ridiculous and dangerous positions of the Left .. of course he’s not racist!”
That’s not good enough. Who we are as Americans is at stake. How we function as a democracy is at stake.
President Trump should understand from those in his own party that a racially charged attack on four sitting members of Congress cannot stand. Not now. Not ever.
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, a Republican from the Dayton area, said it most powerfully Monday, calling the president’s tweets “racist” and saying he should apologize. Rep. Gonzalez said the president’s tweets were “wildly inappropriate” and Rep. Joyce labeled them “wrong.”
Cleveland.com reporter Sabrina Eaton also cited critical comments from GOP U.S. Reps. Steve Stivers of Columbus and Troy Balderson of Zanesville.
Bob Gibbs, Jim Jordan and others in Ohio’s GOP delegation who have yet to condemn Trump’s reprehensible attack on four lawmakers of color should step forward to do so. It is the right and honorable thing to do.
Online: https://bit.ly/2Go39pA
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