Ohio Republican Party News Clips

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Table of Contents:

Strickland might delay naming '10 running mate

Gov. Ted Strickland said last week he might not be ready to announce a new running mate this month as he had planned.

"I'm thinking about it, but I have not reached a decision about any individual," the governor said. "I'm not ready to make a final decision."

Strickland needs a new running mate because Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher has announced that he will run next year for the U.S. Senate.

Last month, Strickland said he had a short list "somewhere in the vicinity of five" people that he's considering, but he since has "enlarged the choices."

The governor has not disclosed whom he is considering but has confirmed that U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Youngstown-area Democrat, is one person he has talked to about the job.

Strickland seeks campaign cash in Lone Star State

Gov. Ted Strickland is in Texas today and tomorrow for the latest in a series of "party building" trips for the Ohio Democratic Party and to raise money for his re-election campaign next year.

Strickland has a "handful of events" in Dallas and Houston, said Doug Kelly, executive director of the Ohio Democratic Party. The party, speaking for the governor, doesn't disclose other details about the trips.

Kelly said the governor and party have many supporters in Texas, and that many states are interested in the state party's model for operations.

Taking advantage of Ohio's prominent role in recent presidential elections, the governor has taken many other such trips out of state to raise money for himself and the party since taking office in January 2007.

Last month, Strickland went to Chicago and New York for "party building" mixed with some public business.

Lotto boss grilled over contract bloat

Ohio lottery chief Michael A. Dolan, the subject of some unflattering press recently, escaped this afternoon's meeting of the Ohio Controlling Board by the skin of his teeth.

Dolan came to the state's spending panel with a request for an additional $152,960 for a consultant to assist with the lottery's transition from one company to another to run Keno, Mega Millions, Pick 3 and other online games.

The additional money was needed in part because the lottery had to switch consultants due to the illness of the team leader for the original consultant, Dolan said. And the transition from vendor to vendor turned out to be a lot more complex than anyone had envisioned, he said.

Several members of the Controlling Board -- which normally approves expenditures with few if any questions -- grilled Dolan about the additional cost. They questioned why the item was coming up so late.

"Could that have been estimated in advance?" Dolan asked rhetorically. "Not without the loss of necessary time to do the work."

Ultimately, Dolan won a majority of Controlling Board members to his side, but the vote was unusually close: 4-3.

No fix, governor's critics say

Despite claims that they have fixed school funding, an education reform plan proposed by Gov. Ted Strickland and modified by majority Democrats in the House of Representatives is "fatally flawed," a Republican leader says.

Senate Finance Chairman John Carey, R-Wellston, said when the plan is completely phased in, several wealthy school districts will receive much bigger boosts in state aid than many poor ones.

Carey acknowledges that most school districts in his southeast Ohio district will receive increased aid but the amounts are "modest" compared to the amounts being received by some wealthy districts.

Carey also questioned claims by Strickland and House leaders that they will have established a constitutional system of funding education once the proposal is adopted despite a 10-year phase in.

"By phasing the governor's funding changes in over a decade, the House Democrat proposal has evolved into a low-growth continuation budget for education. The idea that this will solve school funding is far-fetched," Carey said.

The Democrats say they are doing their best in a tough economy but acknowledge that the decade-long phase in depends on the buy-in of future governors and legislatures as they will be forced from office due to term limits before their plan is fully implemented.

Kilroy invited to attend AmeriCorps bill signing

U.S. Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy will be on hand today at a Washington charter school when President Barack Obama signs the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act.

Kilroy, a Columbus Democrat, wrote an amendment that expands the scope of AmeriCorps VISTA, a federal program founded in 1965 as Volunteers in Service to America, to include more assistance to homebound seniors and participation in programs attacking childhood obesity.

Kilroy served as a VISTA volunteer in separate stints in the 1970s in Dayton and Cleveland, working on housing, poverty and after-school education issues, said Paul Tencher, her spokesman.

This is the freshman lawmaker's second bill-signing. The first was at the White House, when Obama signed into law an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

No money, so work on I-71 stops

After 10 years of construction, a project to widen I-71 to at least three lanes between Columbus and Cleveland is almost done -- and indefinitely on hold for lack of funding.

Even the availability of federal stimulus money for transportation projects won't put it back on track any time soon. The remaining 25-mile stretch hasn't been designed yet, although all bridge work will be completed by this fall.

Completing the job would cost about $86 million, which is not currently available, said ODOT spokeswoman Nancy Burton.

The project's fate is up to a state transportation planning committee that decides how to divvy up the transportation budget. That committee is made up of ODOT Director Jolene Molitoris and eight others, including the former mayor of Youngstown, the director of the Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce and the president of the General Contractors of Northwest Ohio, a construction trade group.

"The project was first submitted for funding in late 2005 or early 2006, and the next time it will come up again for funding probably will be 2012," Burton said. If it were to get funding at that point, design work would begin and completion would take years, she added.

Despite being talked about for a decade, the project isn't "shovel-ready," a requirement for the stimulus money, she said.

The work stoppage is an unceremonious postponement to what was once one of ODOT's ambitious long-term highway projects. Projected to cost more than a half-billion dollars, work initially was scheduled to conclude this year.

So weighty was the decision to widen the highway that a train was once approved to ferry passengers daily between Columbus and Cleveland to help relieve traffic during the construction. After cost projections for the train service increased, ODOT dropped funding for the train in 2000.

Most of the remaining work is in Morrow County, the responsibility of ODOT District 6, which oversees roads in Columbus and central Ohio.

When a new interchange at I-71 and I-76/Rt. 224 is opened this summer, I-71 will be at least three lanes from south of Mansfield all the way to downtown Cleveland.

"We expect everything to be pretty much done, and to the general public it will look pretty much done," said Brian Stacy, spokesman for ODOT District 3, which ran the project from southern Richland County north to the Cuyahoga County line.

I-71 between Columbus and Cleveland is a major freight route for trucks that can become backed up for tens of miles at the bottleneck where the highway narrows from three lanes to two, said Robert Lawler, transportation director of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

"I was one of those people who got caught in the Easter traffic" two weekends ago, Lawler said. "My experience is that it's mostly a holiday thing."

The commission, which does long-range transportation planning for central Ohio, including Delaware County, supports the widening project. But, he said, "There's only a limited amount of funds, so they fund what is the highest priority."

House Democrats to add some social-service funds

Majority Democrats in the Ohio House will restore some state aid for child welfare, adult protective services and hunger programs, but social-service advocates say it's not enough.

"We have gone from cautiously optimistic to panicked," said Joel Potts, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors' Association. "Frankly, there is a tragedy waiting to happen."

House leaders will unveil their version of Gov. Ted Strickland's two-year state budget today. It will include restoration of $12.5 million of the $62 million in federal welfare money for counties eliminated under the governor's plan, said Keary McCarthy, spokesman for House Speaker Armond Budish.

The House version also would add $1 million a year for the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks, for a total of $8.5 million annually, and $1.5 million a year for the Children's Hunger Alliance, McCarthy said.

The welfare money helps counties investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect and provide protective services to adults. Gayle Channing Tenenbaum, legislative director for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, said the 44 Ohio counties without local children services levies will be forced to slash staffing, undermining investigations and services for children.

"We're talking about 30 (percent) to 60 percent of their caseworkers being laid off," she said.

Strickland not following California's lead on lottery securitization

California has an issue on the ballot in May to "securitize" or sell bonds against future lottery profits to raise $5 billion in a lump sum now to help deal with the state's budget crisis, but Gov. Ted Strickland is not considering a similar move in Ohio, a spokeswoman said.

Ohio was one of many states that securitized payments from a 1990s settlement with Big Tobacco to pay for a property-tax break for seniors and to speed up school construction projects, and there has been talk about selling bonds backed by collections from the Ohio Turnpike.

But Strickland spokeswoman Amanda Wurst said today the governor has not considered securitizing any other state asset to raise cash now.

According to the National Governors' Association, California is seeking to securitize annual payments from lottery sales under Proposition 1C in the May 19 special election in that state to balance is fiscal 2010 budget.

Since California lottery revenues are currently earmarked for education -- as they are in Ohio -- the ballot proposal would increase state payments to education from the general fund to make up for the loss of lottery payments, the NGA said.

"If it succeeds, other states may well see it as a model for how they might tackle their own budget shortfalls," the NGA said in the April edition of its State Economic Review.

Brown unhappy with Obama trade stance

It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise at this point, really, but Sen. Sherrod Brown says he is "disappointed" by Obama administration trade representative Ronald Kirk that now is not the time to reopen negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Obama had said during the Ohio primary battle he waged against Hillary Clinton that he would reopen NAFTA when it came to labor and environmental standards, but seemed to back away from that stance as he headed into the general election. And during a trip to Canada earlier this year, Obama said that "now is a time where we have to be very careful about any signals of protectionism."

Still, Brown declared himself not happy with Kirk's comments today. The U.S. trade representative said that while Obama will examine all options for addressing concerns that lax labor and environmental standards in Mexico, in particular, harm U.S. workers by creating too cheap labor abroad, "I think they can be addressed without having to reopen the agreement."

“The president needs to understand there is strong opposition to more-of-the-same trade deals. There is pent-up demand for a new approach that starts with fixing what is not working, including NAFTA. I plan on working closely with President Obama and U.S. Trade Representative Kirk to fix this agreement and ensure the failed NAFTA model is not followed in future trade agreements. I hope it is as clear to President Obama as it is to Ohioans that our trade policy is not working and that it needs fixing.”

Parma's hiring of lobbyist no story, Democrats say

A lobbying firm employing the wife of the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party is paid $3,000 a month by the city of Parma, whose mayor is treasurer of the state party.

But Mayor Dean DePiero, although elected to be the party's treasurer, is not paid, so there is "no quid pro quo," said Chris Redfern, state party chairman.

"I suppose if (DePiero) was paid or compensated in any way, it would be a much better story, but he's not," Redfern said

Kimberly Redfern, the chairman's wife, is a lobbyist for the firm owned by longtime Statehouse lobbyist Richard L. Boylan, a Republican. In 2008, the city of Parma hired Boylan and Ms. Redfern to lobby for the city, paying their firm $36,000 last year.

The Redferns are friends with DePiero and his wife; last year, the Redferns gave them a $100 wedding gift.

"They were able to help us with some capital bill stuff and some of the (federal) stimulus stuff."

DePiero has been state party treasurer since Redfern became party chairman in late 2005.

Editorial: Better watchdog

The number of misconduct complaints about Ohio teachers jumped sharply in 2008, but the percentage of complaints that were substantiated dropped. Perhaps surprisingly, both outcomes are good.

The elevated number of referrals to the Department of Education's Office of Professional Conduct -- 7,351 in 2008, compared with 5,546 in 2007 -- indicates that school officials and the public are taking fewer chances with teachers who might not belong in the classroom. The fact that so few complaints are found worthy of investigation -- roughly 12 percent in each year -- shows that there's no alarming wave of teacher misbehavior.

Of cases investigated in 2008, 35 percent resulted in disciplinary action, compared to 40 percent in 2007.

Only a tiny number -- about half of a percent -- of Ohio teachers are disciplined for misconduct.

Ohio's system for monitoring teachers' backgrounds and public behavior is undergoing a significant upgrade, thanks to a law that took effect in September. House Bill 428 addressed several issues raised in the 2007 Dispatch series "The ABCs of Betrayal."

The bill mandates automatic revocation of a teacher's license, or denial of a new license application, for anyone convicted of any of the criminal offenses that disqualify anyone to be a teacher. In the past, the teacher or prospective teacher was entitled to an administrative hearing, even if he or she had been convicted in criminal court.

It also requires that any school employee who has been indicted on certain criminal charges be removed from contact with students; requires the education department to keep license applicants' fingerprints on file; and grants civil immunity and confidentiality to people who act in good faith when reporting problems with teachers.

An earlier law change, in 2006, laid the groundwork for better monitoring of teacher conduct by requiring any school district that investigates a teacher complaint to report that investigation to the state. Before then, many districts kept their investigations quiet, sometimes allowing bad teachers to resign or be fired with little public knowledge, making it possible for them to be hired by other, unsuspecting districts.

Just as important as the legal changes, the conduct office is developing new systems that should make it easier to discover past complaints about teachers as well as past or current legal trouble involving teachers and those who want to be teachers.

The office is working with consultants to create a single electronic case-management system that will keep track of investigations and provide automatic reports from a national teacher-licensing organization that would disclose discipline actions in other states.

The conduct office also is scanning its paper archives and eventually will be able to access old documents electronically, rather than taking weeks to search paper records in remote warehouses.

Good teachers are honest, law-abiding and moral, as well as effective. Ohio's improved system will ensure that teachers who fall short of those standards are quickly removed.

Rep. Josh Mandel considers run for state treasurer

COLUMBUS — State Rep. Josh Mandel, an Iraq War veteran viewed as a future star in Ohio Republican circles, is drawing close to announcing officially that he will run for state treasurer in 2010.

"I'm very seriously leaning toward running for state treasurer and will be making my final decision very soon," Mandel said in an interview Monday.

The 31-year-old Lyndhurst Republican has been working behind the scenes in recent months to line up support for a statewide run and has met with groups of Republican activists in a majority of the counties in Ohio by his own count.

If Mandel does get in the state treasurer's race -- and no other GOP candidates have surfaced thus far -- he will face another fresh face in statewide politics in Democrat Kevin Boyce, 37, a former Columbus city councilman who became state treasurer on Jan. 6.

Boyce was picked for the statewide post by Gov. Ted Strickland after then-treasurer Richard Cordray won a special election for the Ohio attorney general's office.

Mandel, who served a pair of combat tours in Iraq as a Marine, has racked up some impressive margins in winning a pair of legislative races despite running in a swing district that actually leans slightly Democratic. He is also sitting on an impressive pile of potential campaign cash for a second-term lawmaker -- his last finance report showed that he had squirreled away about $460,000.

Attorney General Cordray replaces consumer section chief

Ohio Attorney General Rich Cordray has replaced Nadine Ballard, the feisty head of his Consumer Protection Section. Susan Choe, who heads the office's civil rights section, will replace Ballard.

Ballard, initially appointed by Cordray's predecessor, disgraced attorney general Marc Dann, quickly earned the reputation as an ardent consumer advocate and creative legal thinker. She will remain in the attorney general's office as a staff attorney.

Choe, a 1996 graduate of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, worked with various legal aid societies on housing issues before she joined the attorney general's office in 2007. The attorney general's office has been increasingly focusing on predatory lending and foreclosure rescue scams.

Cuyahoga County Democrats to elect a new sheriff May 2

They plan to hold an intraparty election May 2 to fill the vacancy left by Democrat Gerald McFaul, who resigned last month amid numerous scandals.

Party officers have not notified the approximately 1,300 precinct officials -- elected rank-and-file Democrats who represent neighborhoods across the county -- because they haven't settled on a location for the large, convention-style vote.

"We are looking at two or three sites," said Mary Devring, the county party's executive director. "Parking is an issue."

A smaller group of party insiders elected to represent each of the county's wards will screen the candidates on Saturday and probably endorse one of them.

The winner of the May 2 election will get to fill McFaul's seat until next year, when he will have to be elected by voters to complete the term that expires at the end of 2012. Interim Cuyahoga County Sheriff Frank Bova is not seeking the job.

The most serious candidates are actively pitching their credentials by campaigning at Democratic clubs and calling and sending letters to precinct members.

Literature from Anthony Jackson, a former Cleveland police district commander and former chief of police for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, hit mailboxes on Monday, according to precinct members who received his glossy flier.

Jackson -- a brother of Mayor Frank Jackson -- is also getting support from party insider Valarie McCall, a top aide to the mayor. McCall, a member of the party's executive committee, sent a message from her personal e-mail account Sunday to numerous party members alerting them that Anthony Jackson is a candidate.

Frank Jackson was unaware that his aide was doing this but supports the effort, said his spokeswoman, Andrea Taylor.

"It was a pleasant surprise," Taylor said. "The mayor and his brother support each other."

Key to winning any intraparty election is lining up support from party leaders who hold sway over rank-and-file members. But Taylor said the mayor has not done any lobbying on his brother's behalf.

Candidate and political novice Clayton Harris, who is police chief of Cuyahoga Community College, met with U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge and the Rev. Marvin McMickle. They are both active in intraparty battles.

"This is Politics 101 for me," Harris said. "But stepping into the sheriff arena, you can't move forward in the process without talking to them, and they are important."

Similarly, Bob Reid, Bedford city manager and the city's former police chief, is trying to navigate the politics.

In addition to visiting about eight ward club meetings, Reid attended one informal candidate screening led by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason and Parma Mayor Dean DePiero, who together command a large network of precinct members.

"I'm not naive enough to believe there isn't politics involved," Reid said. He has also met with his friend Jimmy Dimora, the party's chairman, who will run the election. Reid says Dimora is remaining neutral in the race.

Other candidates who said they are interested are Doug Burkhart, a chief deputy in the sheriff's office; Ken Kochevar, director of corrections in the sheriff's office; Lamont Lockhart, deputy chief of police for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority; Cliff Pinkney, a retired lieutenant in the sheriff's office; Daniel Pukach, a former deputy sheriff; and Andres Gonzalez, the current police chief of CMHA.

School finance: New shell game

House Democrats have devised a school finance plan, endorsed by the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, which they say will constitutionally bankroll schools -- but not until 2019 (and not even then if Ohio can't scare up billions more dollars in Columbus). So public school pupils will have to wait 10 years until they get the funding to which the coalition claims they're legally entitled.

Democrats' tweaking of Gov. Ted Strickland's plan would actually cut next year's school aid by $130 million, compared to this year's amount. The fig leaf on that naked truth is the federal "stimulus" money the Democrats would pump into schools -- money that vanishes soon after the 2010 election.

No slots for race tracks in budget

COLUMBUS - Gambling isn't in the cards for Gov. Ted Strickland's budget, as far as House Democrats are concerned.

Their budget bill, a revision of the governor's plan, doesn't include a proposal to put lottery-run slot machines at horse racing tracks, said Keary McCarthy, spokesman for House Speaker Armond Budish, on Monday.

A few lawmakers and the Ohio State Racing Commission have pushed for slots as a way to raise revenue in an very tight budget and to help out Ohio's struggling race tracks.

Budish has signaled he is open to gambling proposals but said this year that he wasn't sure revenue could begin flowing early enough to help the upcoming two-year budget.

Strickland, a Democrat, said this month that he would probably veto any gambling proposal that wouldn't need the approval of Ohio voters. Backers of the race track slots said their plan wouldn't need voter approval because it would be under the purview of the Ohio Lottery.

Reps. Lou Blessing, a Republican from Cincinnati, and Todd Book, a Democrat from Portsmouth, still plan to push the gambling proposal as a standalone bill. But its inclusion in the budget plan would probably have given it its best chance of passage.

"It seems to me that we're missing a golden opportunity to come up with several hundred million dollars to provide real reforms," said state Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican from Cincinnati.

Strickland's school-funding formula uses a heavy infusion of one-shot federal stimulus money. Republicans say the plan will be unsustainable in years when lawmakers have to rely only on state resources.

Seitz said he will push for the budget in the Senate if it succeeds in the House.

"I think there's a small number of people in the legislative body who are completely sold on this idea and are creating mischief," said David Zanotti, president of the antigambling Ohio Roundtable. "I don't pick up that there's real momentum."

Ohio voters have rejected proposals to expand gambling four times in the past 20 years, most recently voting against a casino in Clinton County in southwest Ohio.

Democrats are expected to release their revision of Strickland's budget plan on Tuesday. It contains an overhaul of Strickland's school funding formula that funnels more money to the poorest districts.

The plan also increases a new fee on hospitals Strickland had proposed to help balance the budget, but channels federal Medicaid money back to hospitals to alleviate most of their losses. Hospitals stood to lose about $410 million under Strickland's plan, but Budish said they would lose only about $127 million under his plan.

The House Democrats' budget also removes prison sentencing reforms proposed by Strickland to shrink the prison population and save the state money, and moves them into a separate bill.

COLUMBUS: A new energy law designed to avert large price spikes is getting mixed reviews from Ohio's consumer advocate and regulators as new utility rates take effect.

Ohio Consumers' Counsel Janine Migden-Ostrander said the law, which legislators have praised, has resulted in higher increases than expected.

''My guess is that folks didn't expect this kind of increase,'' she said, referring mainly to a proposed 20 percent average increase over three years for Ohio customers of American Electric Power. ''They knew they were coming, but didn't quite expect the magnitude of them.''

But Alan Schriber, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, said the law was maintaining stability in rates that would have ballooned had no changes been made.

Last year, lawmakers and Gov. Ted Strickland approved the new law to undo a previous law that would have removed regulatory rate caps and enabled power companies to set their rates on the open market. They pointed to skyrocketing rates in other states that had gone to the market approach.

The new Ohio law gives companies the choice between regulation and the market. If the market rates are determined to be lower than regulated rates, they can go to the open market.

The major utility companies have initially elected to keep regulated rates under the new

FirstEnergy Corp., the Akron-based parent of Ohio Edison, Toledo Edison and Cleveland Electric Illuminating, had asked the commission for a 5.3 percent rate increase in 2009, a 4 percent bump in 2010 and a 6 percent hike in 2011. The average bill would have gone from about $94 to $109 over the three years, representing a 16 percent increase overall.

But the commission knocked those increases down to a level the company found unacceptable.

The new law gave utility providers the right to reject the commission's rate plan, which FirstEnergy did. The two sides have now agreed to let the utility select its generation rate through a competitive bid process in May.

''It's like a defendant coming in and saying, 'Gee, judge, I don't like the sentence' or 'I don't like the guilty verdict so let's do this over,' '' Migden-Ostrander said.

But Schriber and FirstEnergy said the competitive bid process is likely to lead to no increase from current rates, and perhaps a decrease.

''What we've tried to do with our plans we've proposed is figure out how to bring the price customers pay for electricity on par with the costs it takes to produce it,'' said spokeswoman Ellen Raines.

Overall, FirstEnergy operates the nation's fifth-largest investor-owned electric system with 4.5 million customers in New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

AEP Ohio, which serves about 1.5 million customers in 61 of Ohio's 88 counties and in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, originally asked the utilities commission for a 52 percent increase over three years but was denied. Instead, the increase would be about 20 percent, or about $15 a month on the average bill of $80 by 2011.

The Consumers' Counsel said it will file an application for a rehearing of the rate increase in the coming weeks. The AEP plan was the only one of four rate agreements with utilities that Migden-Ostrander didn't sign on to.

But Schriber and AEP said the company's rates have historically been too low and it now needs to recoup its investments.

''AEP was particularly difficult because that particular company hadn't had a rate increase for ages, and even after their increases they are still the lowest-cost utility in the state,'' Schriber said.

Largely because of decreased fuel costs, Duke Energy Corp.'s Ohio customers saw a modest rate decline in the first quarter of this year under the new energy plan. It remains to be seen what will happen over the rest of the year.

State Sen. Jon Husted, the Kettering Republican who had a big hand in the energy bill as House speaker, said it has largely maintained the status quo.

''The law avoided what the doomsday crew was saying,'' Husted said. ''It remains to be seen what the future will hold.''

Husted turns over some records, complains of treatment

DAYTON — Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, submitted some documents requested by the Ohio Secretary of State in her residency investigation of him, although he did not provide water, phone or tax records and he blacked out information on most of what he gave her.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s office released the documents on Monday, April 20, after Husted submitted them on Friday.

The documents include a single Dayton Power and Light bill from April 2 showing his monthly usage as 197 kilowatt hours at his home at 148 Sherbrooke Drive, Kettering.

The average residential user consumes 940 to 1,200 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, depending on whether the home is heated by gas or electricity, said Kelly Millhouse, spokeswoman for Dayton Power and Light.

Husted did not submit his water bills, but records obtained from Montgomery County show his usage at the Kettering home since 2002 was far below the 1,600 cubic foot average for his Castle Hills residential neighborhood.

Average quarterly usage at his property was 500 cubic feet between 2002 and October 2008.

The investigation centers on whether Husted lives in Kettering, where he is registered to vote. Husted, who was speaker of the Ohio House until January, has said his legal residence is Kettering but his state job frequently keeps him in Franklin County, where he stays with his family in his wife’s Upper Arlington home.

In a letter addressed to Montgomery County Board of Elections Director Steve Harsman, Husted objects to how he is being treated in the investigation. “I must strenuously object to the unprecedented manner in which my situation is being handled and the extraordinary length of time this has taken,” Husted wrote in the April 17 letter, which he also sent to Brunner.

Husted also said he is “offended” that Brunner asked for documentation of his residency, rather than accepting his sworn testimony on the matter. The documents submitted by Husted include his driver’s license, a bank statement, vehicle registration, a variety of letters, retirement fund documents, pay stubs and a bank statement, all showing his Kettering address, but with financial information, such as the amount on his electric and cable bills, blacked out.

Brunner’s spokesman, Jeff Ortega, said most of the information was already redacted when Husted submitted it. Brunner’s office only removed a small amount of information, things like as Social Security or account numbers.

Ortega said the office is reviewing the documents, drafting a response to Husted and writing a letter to the county board of elections.

Brunner had been asked to break the board’s February tie vote on the residency question but told the Dayton Daily News that she would be referring the documents and residency question back to the board for further review. The board has not been formally asked by her to reconsider the matter.

A congressional fundraising roundup

In our focus on the open U.S. Senate race in 2010, we were remiss on rounding up how our local congressional delegation has fared in fundraising during the first quarter of this year. Our bad. Let’s catch you up:

U.S. Rep. Steve Austria, R-Beavercreek, raised $99,980 in campaign contributions during the first quarter. He spent $47,866. He had $65,661 on hand as of March 31.

Political donors gave U.S. Rep. Mike Turner’s campaign committee $49,190 between Jan. 1 and March 31. The committee spent $35,118 and had $163,658 on hand and had $6,996 in debt. Turner is a Centerville Republican.

House Minority Leader John Boehner -Â who also has a political action committee that raises funds for fellow Republicans - raised $319,932 in contributions. He spent $195,604 and had $314,564 in the bank.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, received $54,753 in campaign contributions between Jan. 1 and March 31, spent $67,361 and had $565,833 on hand.

And U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, received $91,887, spent $30,509 and had $88,900. She also had $277,150 in debt - the most of any candidate.

Voinovich handing back the campaign cash

Sen. George Voinovich, who is retiring at the end of his term, is returning campaign contributions to those who gave before he decided to retire.

Voinovich, R-Ohio, is complying with Federal Elections Commission guidelines, which require retiring candidates to hand back donations for the general election. Garrette Silverman, a spokeswoman for Voinovich, said that sum comes to about $330,000 from individuals and $106,000 in political action committees. Any additional money in Voinovich’s campaign coffers, she said, will go to help other Republican candidates or the Republican party or be used for official business.

Boyce wins union endorsement

Democrat Kevin Boyce won the endorsement of the Service Employees International Union District 1199 in the state treasurer’s race but the union made its pick before knowing who the other candidates are.

Ohio Republican Party spokesman John McClelland said state Rep. Josh Mandel, R-Lyndhurst, is “seriously considering” running for treasurer in 2010 but he has yet to announce his plans.

Gov. Ted Strickland appointed Boyce state treasurer in January after Democrat Richard Cordray moved from the treasurer’s office to the attorney general’s seat.

SEIU District 1199 represents 35,000 social service, health care and public sector workers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

Next Frontier

As the state's unemployment rate creeps toward 10 percent and worries about General Motors and Chrysler weigh heavily, much attention is rightly focused on efforts to kick-start the economy. Moving on large-scale infrastructure projects has become a top priority, the paychecks for workers essential to stimulating recovery in the short run.

Yet the larger context, as noted recently by Cleveland labor economist George Zeller, is that the state's economy has underperformed for a record 157 months, its rate of job creation lower than the national average. The number underscores the need to craft a new Third Frontier program, the $1.6 billion economic-development initiative started under the administration of former Gov. Bob Taft.

What's important about the program, the largest of its kind ever tried in this state, is the long-term goal of transforming the state's economy by funding research and the commercialization of high technology. It is about changing the fundamentals of Ohio's economy by creating new, high-wage jobs.

In 2005, the Third Frontier received a big boost when voters approved a bond issue, $500 million flowing to the high-tech development effort. Of the $1.6 billion generated from the bond issue and other sources (some dwindling), $900 million has been awarded. The program is due to expire in 2012. Officials in the administration of Gov. Ted Strickland are looking hard at what a new Third Frontier program might look like and considering another bond issue, perhaps as early as this November.

Renewing and improving the Third Frontier program was a key point in the economic-development plan unveiled last fall by Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, who also serves as director of the state's economic development department and chairman of the Third Frontier commission. He hinted at a ballot issue in 2011 or 2012, and a shift toward assisting start-up companies. It's none too soon to work out the details.

Advocates for the biological sciences, who also receive funding through a separate economic-stimulus plan squeezed by a lawsuit over tobacco-cessation money, argue convincingly for a fast-track approach. They correctly see the need for steady funding from a Third Frontier bond issue to help make up the difference. Last week, the governor's energy adviser, Mark Shanahan, pointed to the need to avoid even a temporary lapse in Third Frontier funding, which could damage projects such as Akron's BioInnovation Institute. In all, the Akron-Canton area has received $70 million for 30 projects.

Sadly, it took two trips to the ballot to get the first Third Frontier bond issue passed. Whatever the timing of the next attempt, voters must be repeatedly reminded of how effectively Third Frontier funds have been used, $1 in state money leveraging $9 in private and federal funds and helping launch 466 new companies. Ohio must find the will to accelerate its economic transition, sparking new jobs and turning the state around.

Husted on top of legislation

Most Ohioans recognize the need to remove partisan politics to allow for the sensible drawing of state legislative districts. We are all too well aware of the problems created when legislative districts are drawn for the convenience of legislators and not in the best interests of Ohioans.

To address this, Sen. Jon Husted introduced Senate Joint Resolution 5, which would essentially remove partisan politics from the drawing of state legislative districts. I am proud to be a co-sponsor.

Mr. Husted is sincere in his efforts on SJR 5. Indeed, he has consistently worked on redistricting issues for more than 3 years. As a member of the Ohio House, I was present in May 25, 2006 when then-Speaker Husted brought to the floor a similar proposal, House Joint Resolution 13, to take partisanship out of district line drawing. At the time, Ohio had a Republican Governor, Republicans had strong majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, and it was nearly three years before Mr. Husted announced for Secretary of State.

Speaker Husted called HJR 13 for a vote. The Resolution failed because of a lack of Democrat support. Not deterred, Speaker Husted then amended HJR 13 to identically mirror House Joint Resolution 6, a similar resolution that would remove partisan politics from line drawing and that had been drafted by then-Democrat Representative (now Congressman) Steve Driehaus. HJR 6 was co-sponsored by 39 Democrats then in the Ohio House. Sadly, the vote to adopt HJR 6 also failed, because – remarkably – many Democrats’ refused to vote for a resolution they co-sponsored only a few months before.

As these facts show, Mr. Husted has not recently come to the issue of how to reform the way Ohio draws its legislative districts. He has been pushing it for years

Panel fines Dann $1,000; grand jury probe continues

COLUMBUS — Though the Ohio Elections Commission declined to refer Marc Dann for criminal prosecution — at least for now — it doesn’t mean the ex-attorney general’s legal concerns are over.

A Franklin County grand jury is investigating potential illegal activity at the attorney general’s office during Dann’s 17-month administration.

“Anything ongoing would still be there,” said Ron O’Brien, Franklin County prosecutor.

“I’m not sure what effect, if any, the decisions by the elections commission would have on election law issues in the ongoing inquiry,” O’Brien said.

There are issues about how Dann used his campaign fund. Among the key questions raised by the Ohio Ethics Commission is payment of about $100,000 from the campaign to Leo Jennings III, a political consultant who also worked for Dann as his communications director in the attorney general’s office.

At the center of the grand jury investigation is allegations of criminal misconduct by Anthony Gutierrez while he served as director of general services under Dann at the attorney general’s office.

Gutierrez is cooperating with the investigation by providing information on others who may have committed illegal acts during Dann’s administration, three sources close to the investigation have said.

Dann said Thursday he is considering whether to appeal a state panel’s decision that he and his campaign broke the state’s election laws.

The former Democratic office-holder also continued to vehemently deny criminal wrongdoing and vowed to fight to clear his name.

“I’m entirely confident that neither I nor anybody in my family or my campaign committee committed any crimes,” Dann told reporters.

Dann was in Columbus Thursday for preliminary hearings on complaints brought against him and his election campaign committee by the secretary of state and Ohio inspector general.

The secretary of state questioned the legitimacy of Dann’s use of campaign funds for more than $40,000 in security systems for his home and $4,300 for cellular phone expenses.

The state argued Dann should have paid for the expenses out of pocket, then sought reimbursement for the costs, a method outlined by the elections commission. Reimbursements are granted for expenses proven to be legitimate... necessary and incurred in connection with the duties of a public officeholder.

“Campaign money simply cannot be converted for personal use,” said Melinda Osgood, an assistant attorney general representing the secretary of state’s office.

Osgood said the Dann campaign should have sought an advisory opinion from the elections commission or guidance from the secretary of state before paying the cell phone bills or installing the security system instead of doing both and then asking the commission to allow them.

But legal counsel for Dann countered that the expenditures were legitimate, given threats and security concerns.

Atty. Donald McTigue, representing Dann, said the home security system replaced state-provided officers providing security to the home. The detail was authorized by the governor following a June 2007 telephone threat.

McTigue added that Dann was informed that state funds could have been used to pay for the security system, but he declined.

McTigue said Dann and his wife paid the cell phone bills about half the time, and the campaign paid them directly at other times. McTigue concluded, “All of this was publicly disclosed. Nothing was hidden. There were real threats, and candidates’ committees have wide discretion in determining how to use campaign funds.”

The elections commission ruled that Dann’s actions did not rise to criminal misconduct and declined to refer the matter to the county prosecutor.

But commissioners did fine Dann for using campaign contributions to pay for a security system at his home.

Dann and his campaign were each fined $1,000 for the security system payment. Both also received public reprimands but no fines for the cell phone complaint.

The commission dismissed complaints against former campaign treasurer Bruce Lev.

It denied Dann’s motion to dismiss a complaint brought by the Ohio inspector general and will hear that case at a full hearing at a later date.

In a report released in late December, the inspector general alleged cronyism and “hiring missteps,” sexual harassment and other improper activities and wrongdoing under Dann’s leadership. The report also raised questions about Dann’s use of campaign finances.

McTigue argued that the inspector general did not have the authority to bring a complaint to the elections commission. The commission disagreed.

Editorial: Political sniping won't get job done

In large part because of the recession, Gov. Ted Strickland’s ambitious reform plan for public schools never could have survived the budget process intact this year. It calls for huge long-range expenditures that neither state government nor local school districts are healthy enough to absorb.

But political sniping has to be making this bad situation — among others — worse.

Parts of the plan, such as issues involving charter schools and teacher salaries, were bound to cause friction along party lines. But was this rhetorical overkill necessary? Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, while telling an audience in his district last week that the plan is “dead in the Senate,” said: “Calling something an evidence-based plan doesn’t make it so, just as calling the emperor’s new clothes ‘glorious’ doesn’t account for the fact he’s buck naked.”

On April 9, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern, who’s a former state representative, challenged Ohio Republicans to offer constructive solutions instead of “nothing but partisan attacks.” Redfern went on to say: “In Ohio and the nation at large, we have a stark choice: A choice between a Democratic Party of opportunity and hope, a Democratic Party that believes we can face our challenges head on and defeat those challenges, and a Republican Party that is increasingly characterized by reflexive negativity.”

So perhaps he’d also like to tackle the reflexive negativity in his own party. Ohio Democratic Party Executive Director Doug Kelly said this in response to Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s announcement April 2 that he plans to run for secretary of state:

“Putting Jon Husted in charge of Ohio’s elections would be like putting Bernie Madoff in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The only ‘fix’ Husted would bring to this important office is to fix the system against free, fair, open and honest elections.”

Kelly was alluding in part to questions about whether Husted really lives in his district or in Columbus — questions similar to those raised about Gov. Ted Strickland, Kelly’s fellow Democrat, when Strickland ran for the state’s top political office in 2006.

Between the budget challenges facing state government and the financial and other challenges facing Ohio’s public schools, the state’s political leaders have a host of important decisions to make in the next few months.

How in the world can a spirit of sensible compromise penetrate such an atmosphere of “reflexive negativity”?

Strickland representative outlines stimulus money opportunities

An overflow crowd of more than 250 jammed the atrium of Glickman-Miller Hall at Cleveland State University Monday to hear about federal stimulus package opportunities available in Ohio.

Wade Rakes, director of public liaison for Gov. Ted Strickland, told the group of business people and nonprofit and government executives about the opportunities presented by $1.8 billion in stimulus money that will flow through Ohio via a variety of programs during the next several years.

At the top of the list is $774 million for 149 highway and bridge projects, $280 million for drinking water and pollution control efforts, and $266 million for home weatherization assistance.

Mr. Rakes noted, however, that the state already has 20,000 ideas for spending stimulus money on the state recovery web site totaling more than $1 trillion — and that those ideas are vying for $787 million in stimulus money that has not been directly allocated by the state.

In a small-group session for business people after the introductory session, Iris Cooper, director of the entrepreneurship and small business division of the Ohio Department of Development, said while the stimulus package includes no new direct loan money through the state for small business, it now should be easier to secure loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration. She said SBA now will be able to guarantee up to 90% of loans of up to $1.5 million and that many loan fees will be waived.

Another similar-size crowd was expected for an afternoon session. Much of the information discussed at the outreach sessions is also available on this portion of the state recovery web site.

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