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Cleveland
Plain Dealer
Bad time for Senate
staff raises
Editorial
Ohio Senate President Thomas Niehaus appears to have a blind spot.
He was among the Statehouse Republicans who voted for Senate Bill 5,
aimed at curbing the bargaining clout, pay and benefits of public
employees in the state.
Then he ladled out pay raises to 19 Senate employees.
Ohio voters, who will have the final say on SB 5 in November, must
wonder what Niehaus was thinking.
First things first, though: The Plain Dealer’s Joe Guillen reported
from Columbus on Friday that the Senate’s Democratic leader, Capri
Cafaro, of suburban Youngstown, supports the raises. And some of the 19
employees are Democrats.
Moreover, history proves that Niehaus, of suburban Cincinnati, is right
to claim that senior legislative employees are prime hire-away targets,
not only for Ohio’s executive branch but also for Capitol Square’s
galaxy of nonprofits and lobbies. These are gifted and dedicated men
and women. Their work is more needed than ever, given the institutional
and policy amnesia that term limits inflict on legislators.
But the raises Niehaus gave were retroactive to January. And the raises
range from 4 percent to 33 percent, Guillen reported.
Yes, functionally, many of these employees are researchers. They and
their Ohio House counterparts help Ohio’s 132 legislators write budgets
and frame public policy. In fact, the caucus staffs are to policy what
the Legislative Service Commission’s equally dedicated employees are to
law.
And caucus staffs are unclassified public employees. They have
practically no job security. It is also a fact that among the
legislatures of the 50 states, Ohio’s has been among the least costly;
according to a 2008 ranking by the National Conference of State
Legislatures, Ohio’s per capita spending on its legislative branch
($4.16 per Ohioan) ranked 49th. The only state that spent less was
Georgia, at $3.89.
But no matter how bipartisan or justified the Senate raises are, the
timing and appearance are bad.
Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
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