The great debate
By Bob Rhoades 
November  2, 2011 

Well it won’t be long and the great debate will be over. We’re going to find out exactly what people think about SB 5 and ultimately what they think of John Kasich’s way of doing things. I’ll be happy it’s over with for sure. On the other hand this has been a learning experience for a lot of people and I hope that some have learned from it, I certainly have. 

SB 5/Issue 2: The major thing that I’ve learned is how much or I guess how little people know about a lot of things. First you can’t lump all unions into the same bucket. Unions are only as good as the people who are in them, the backing they get from their parent union, and the people they work for. I was told that all union people are thugs. In my working life, I belonged to two unions, the International Association of Fire Fighters while I was a firefighter here in Greenville and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees when I worked for the State of Ohio. But is this really about unions or just busting them? 

If you attended the debate held at the American Legion a couple of weeks ago, you saw a woman there named Kelly Kohls, Ph.D. with Jim Buchy and his aide. She is a member of the Springboro Board of Education. If you check a little further, you will find that the Springboro Board of Education has some really big problems. It seems that their big bad teachers union has talked them out of a whole lot of money and they aren’t very happy about it. If you look into SB 5 very hard, you’ll find that there is a Senator from Springboro named Shannon Jones. She is the sole author of SB 5. Sole author means that not one other senator would stick his or her neck out to help sponsor SB 5. Does that tell you anything? She’s going to fix those nasty teachers in Springboro for beating up on the school board and taking all of their money. Ms. Shannon is going to make sure that no school board is dumb enough, ever again, to give away the farm or pick-up the pension contribution of another worker. To do that, she and John Kasich decided that they needed a scape goat, so let’s blame the unions. When I first wrote about this, I said that there was one person in Darke County who had this perk. Since then, I’ve found out that there may be as many as 10. Guess what, they are all administrators. Not one of them belongs to a union. Bottom line is that because the Springboro Board of Education hasn’t had the intelligence to manage their school system correctly over the last few years, the rest of the state is going to pay for it. 

If you read Jim Buchy’s guest editorial on 11/1/11, he talked a lot about SB 5 and Issue 2. He is happy to announce that many school teachers have sacrificed. Well guess what, a lot of other public employees have too. This whole editorial comment mentions no one else but teachers. It doesn’t mention police, firefighters, street workers, school employees or anyone else. Just Teachers! There is a reason for this. It was all about teachers in the beginning. But they couldn’t single them out so they included all public employees. Well that’s OK; we’ll give you that one. 

Problem is that in the beginning, the lack of background information and research didn’t allow you to nail down any specifics. Let’s look at this problem of employees not paying their 10% pension. The ads on TV suggest that no public employees are paying their 10%. The truth is that somewhere around 2 to 8% may not be paying their 10%. The rest of the truth is that that bunch not paying is mostly administrators all over the state. I haven’t been able to completely nail down where all it’s happening in Darke County, but it looks like it’s about 6 to 8 people and they are school administrators and village and city administrators. NONE ARE UNION PEOPLE. Why is this happening you ask? It’s because whoever hired the administrator agreed to pay that administrator’s portion of the pension either as part of an offered pay package by the employer or because the employee asked for it as part of a pay package. Either way, it’s been misrepresented to you the voter. Not one union person in Darke County has the benefit! So what SB 5 will do if enacted is take away school boards rights, city councils rights to negotiate not only with employee groups but with good, qualified persons applying for Administrative jobs. What happened to Home Rule? Isn’t the State of Ohio a Home Rule State? 

Further down in the editorial, it says that Issue 2 will give more local control, but again over teachers, what about the rest of the employees. This is talking about teachers getting merit pay raises based on performance and testing procedures. It is sort of like what police and firefighters are already doing. So what is the local control that is gained? It’s going to give them the right to whack teachers because they think there is a problem there and in the bargain they get to whack all other public employees just in case there is a problem there. 

The last big ticket item is that SB 5 will mandate that all public employees pay at least 15% of their hospitalization. Greenville City employees are already paying 20%. So what are we gaining here or the rest of the county? Oh yes, we are gaining control. So if the Village of Arcanum or Versailles has the good fortune to get a business that employs a number of people and ends up with enough money to pay their employees medical insurance, they won’t be able to. As I said, doesn’t that do away with some part of Home Rule? 

The endorsement of all of the major newspapers in Ohio is no small surprise. They all hate unions and have lost money when the pressmen have gone on strike. None of that has anything to do with Issue 2. 

John Kasich’s mistake: It would appear that he doesn’t know what the word negotiate means. From all indications, he is pretty set on what he feels is best for Ohio. He did balance the budget because he had to; it’s the law, not magic. In doing so, all of the problems trickled down to local government. How about we get some of the industry back that left Ohio? Unfortunately, none of the money trickled down here with the problems. You see, when there are lots of people here working, they pay taxes and when they pay taxes, each political subdivision has enough money to run its business and provide to the taxpayers the services they’ve become accustomed to. That, my friends, is the only thing that is going to fix this problem. Here in Darke County our budget is where it is because we had a lot of industry here and a low unemployment rate for years. IT’S GONE! Unfortunately our bills are not gone, they are the same. We are running a budget built on an economy from 20 years ago. 

There are good union people and there are a few bad union people. Guess what? There are good politicians and there are a few bad ones. That’s just the way it is. It’s our job to sort that out. It can’t be done without the facts. SB 5 just isn’t the way to go, its bad legislation brought about by some well-meaning people who just don’t understand all the facts. Vote your conscious on Issue 2, but not until you have all the facts! ‘Because’ is not a reason. 

There are now around 350,000 union workers in the state of Ohio. The petition to repeal Senate Bill 5, which has now become Issue 2, was signed by 1.3 million people. That tells me that not just firefighters, police officers and teachers think its bad legislation. There are two things that need to be done about the issue. The first is VOTE NO on Issue 2. The second one is to write your representative and tell them that you can see where there could be some problems and they need to figure out a reasonable way to fix the problem. If you are reading this on line, Google Springboro school board, Kelly Kohl’s and Shannon Jones. You will be amazed at the problems they have had and at how they haven’t dealt with any of them in the right manner. It will take you from now till Election Day to read everything. The conclusion that you will eventually come to is that even though we have some problems here, we are pretty lucky to have administrators and employees who can at least understand what the word negotiation means. Now if we can teach that to John Kasich, we’ll all be winners. 

As far as the polls on whether Issue 2 will pass or fail, I guess you can make them say whatever you want. I’ve looked at three different sources and the polls I’ve seen say the opposite of what Jim’s say. A NO vote on Issue 2 will prove the polls I read correct.