Election wrap-up...
Well did we learn anything on November 8?
By Bob Rhoades  
November 16, 2011 

Schools: 

There were a lot of lessons to be learned, whether they were, only time will tell.  The first item of business locally was of course the school issue.  Since I was part of what I thought was the solution, I’ve tried to figure out just what went wrong.  Results of an unscientific poll on Darke Journal show that distrust of the school board was 33% of the problem.  It would seem that the other 2/3ds doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.  Tied for second place with 19% was “I can’t afford it” and “home owners shouldn’t have to carry the whole burden”. 

The school board thing will be fixed in time if people continue to feel that way.  Voters elected Fred Matix to replace Joe Payne and re-elected Jim Sommer because he did not vote to fire the coaches it seems.  If that pattern continues, in three years the school board will be completely new.  That will effectively remove one stumbling block.  There is a problem though:  the state funding mechanism is only good for three more election cycles. 

“I can’t afford it” is a huge stumbling block.  It has to be broken down into can you really not afford it based on the fact that you sat down and figured out the numbers or do you think you can’t afford it based on no rationale at all?  Only 2% of the people said that they believed that the need wasn’t there.  That 2% obviously hasn’t been in the buildings.  1% said they didn’t have enough information.  That seems hard to believe but it can be fixed if there is a next time.  Over 5000 people looked at the blog on the internet and new information was posted every week. 

“Property owners shouldn’t have to shoulder the whole burden.”  It seems that nothing can be done about that.  Well maybe there can be.  The Supreme Court of Ohio gave the governor’s office and the legislature a mandate to come up with a funding mechanism for schools a long time ago.  If that was you or I, we would have been held in contempt of court by now.  Maybe we need a letter writing campaign the size of the “kill Issue 2” campaign.  Write Mr. Buchy and Mr. Faber tomorrow.  You might also drop a line to the Supreme Court and ask if they have a follow up mechanism. 

Issue 2 

If anyone learned anything from Issue 2, it should be the governor and some legislators.  Not sure that happened.  Legislators are saying they still want to attack the “collective bargaining problem”, whatever that is.  It seems that Kasich’s folks did a pretty good job on some people making them believe that no one was paying the mandated 10% pension contribution when actually almost everyone is.  Around here the only ones that would affect would be administrators and since none of them are covered by a labor contract, the problem, if there actually is one, will still exist.   School boards, village councils and any other public body that hires people will still be able to offer the “pension pickup”.  The real question is if it is such a bad thing, why do these bodies continue to offer it to people they hire?  Because it’s a good thing for the employer and a very bad thing for the employee down the road.  That’s why very few labor contracts have it in the package.  If any employee has their 10% pension contribution “picked up” by the employer, it puts that money in your pocket.  Since you don’t make any more money, it doesn’t show on you gross earnings.  That means that when you get ready to retire and your pension is figured on your highest 36 month’s pay, it’s not figured in.  So too is it not figured in the next time a percentage raise is figured on a current pay package.  That was a lot of to-do about nothing wasn’t it?  So rest assured, all but a very few of your public employees are paying their fair share.   If our legislators spend 5 more minutes screwing around with this they should be escorted from the building.  It’s a bad practice for both employee and employer.  Legislating it one way or the other wont’ make it better or worse.  Kasich et.al.,  have said that they wanted to give employers more tools to deal with the monetary constraints of today when actually it would be taking one away from them.  These boards have used this tool to attract people into jobs for the most part.  Any labor contracts that have it in are really just time bombs waiting for a place to go off.  It will be traumatic for any employee, management or not, to give up this perk and equally bad for a board to ask for it back.  It was just a dumb thing to do in the first place and you can’t legislate stupid, it just sort of has to work itself out. 

Paying 15% for hospitalization is a negotiated benefit.  In Greenville, employees pay 20% now so that wasn’t a problem here to start with even though Kasich made it sound like no one was paying it.  In Jim Buchy’s recent letter he stated that the legislature would be tackling pension reform, capital improvements, continued job creation, and changes at the local government level to reduce high operation costs.   There is one more thing that you forgot, Jim, it’s that matter of the Supreme Court of Ohio mandating a better funding mechanism for schools.  In light of what just happened in the Greenville School District it should be number one.   I’ve never known of a group of people being able to ignore the mandate of the Supreme Court, but I guess there is always a first time.