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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > March > 05
Friday, March 5, 2010
Editorial: Ohio’s rebound depends on cities
In light of what you know about Ohio’s cities — their population losses, their troubled schools, their skyrocketing foreclosures — you might think they’re only a drag on the state.
Now comes a report saying Ohio has to tend to those places, and the concentrations of people in and around them, because they are the state’s future.
Researchers from the respected Brookings Institution and the Greater Ohio Policy Center have spent upward of three years taking stock of Ohio, drawn, in part, to the examination because Ohio has so many metropolitan areas.
The think tanks argue that in a global, information economy, metros are where the action will occur.
The reason? Those are the places that have roads, universities, cutting-edge hospitals, waterfronts, mature parks, museums and — most of all — the people.
“Today the seven largest metropolitan areas in the state house 70 percent of the state population and produce 80 percent of the state GDP,” researchers write in Restoring Prosperity: Transforming Ohio’s communities for the Next Economy.
If metropolitan regions are indeed assets, Ohio is looking good. It has more than any state except California, Texas and Florida.
Mixed in among the three dozen recommendations about what Ohio needs to do (and stop doing), the report also highlights assets you might not know about. For instance, given all the talk about the “brain drain,” it’s interesting that Ohio is in the top 10 among the states for awarding doctorates in science or engineering.
Of course, conferring the degrees is just half of the battle; ensuring that the grads actually take jobs and start businesses in the state is the other. But certainly having people who spend years doing graduate work here is an advantage.
In pursuit of improving schools, researchers say that school districts should be required to publicize their per-pupil ratio of spending on administration to classroom instruction.
Pointing to Montgomery County, the report says that the tiny Jefferson Twp. school district spends 68 cents on the dollar for administration, whereas Centerville spends just 13 cents.
The suggestion from the report that’s gotten the most media attention is that Ohio should reduce its number of school districts by a third.
Bruce Katz, of Brookings, said he thinks that idea is actually “modest,” that even 400 districts would be too many for Ohio. Mr. Katz argues that what citizens care most about is not who runs a school district, but the quality of schools their children attend. If reducing administrative overhead means more money can be spent in classrooms, he doesn’t think voters would object.
There are precedents in other states for districts to merge administrative functions, leaving individual schools, sports teams and even school boards intact.
For those who worry about consolidation being big government, Mr. Katz says that’s getting the recommendation all wrong. Consolidation translates to “leaner,” “more entrepreneurial,” “more market-oriented” government, he said.
School districts are not the only thing Ohio has in spades. It also has some 3,800 local government units, including 250 cities, 695 villages and 1,308 townships. The result is that “total local government payroll in Ohio is 10 percent above the national average and 17.5 percent above the peer state average,” according to Brookings.
None of this government is free, which leads to another finding: Ohio residents have the ninth-highest local tax burden in the country, compared with the 34th highest for state taxes. To know that fact is to understand that concentrating all the political fights about taxes in Columbus — as if state taxes alone define our competitiveness — is missing a big cost of doing business and living in Ohio.
Local government can be good government. But it’s also possible to have too much of a good thing.
Permalink | Comments (72) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Economy, Editorials, Education, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Suburban Communities
Martin Gottlieb: Boehner needs Voinovich help on debt
Let’s check back in on the Dayton area’s guy in national leadership, Rep. John Boehner, chief of House Republicans. And Sen. George Voinovich.
For several years, Voinovich has pushed this enormous idea: Appoint a bipartisan commission to make recommendations on the nation’s long-term debt issues. Those issues are monumental, and neither a Republican nor Democratic Congress — or a Republican or Democratic president — has confronted them.
This commission would make recommendations about taxes and about the big entitlement programs that are the heart of the spending problem. Congress would be required to either accept or reject the recommendations as a package.
(Allowing Congress to amend the package is universally seen as going back to square one, as willing nothing to be done.)
In January, a majority of senators supported the idea. But, the Senate being that bastion of democracy, it failed. It needed support from 60 percent. (It got 62 percent of the Democrats and 40 percent of the Republicans.)
Voinovich was angry at Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell for reneging on his past support and at President Barack Obama for not pushing the idea hard enough or early enough. Obama left the impression he wasn’t that into the issue.
Then, in his State of the Union speech — after a lengthy meeting with Voinovich — Obama announced that he’d create the commission himself. Unfortunately, though, his commission can’t have the enforcement mechanism, the requirement of an up or down vote. It can only recommend.
Voinovich would still like to see the commission-with-teeth idea revived in Congress. Enter Boehner. There was some uncertainty about whether he’d even participate in the presidential commission. But he has agreed to make his share of appointments. Good. To have refused would have broken records for partisanship.
But, of course, he couldn’t go along without trashing the president. He trashed him for his budget policies. He questioned whether the commission would have a genuinely bipartisan staff. He insisted that its meetings be before cameras and be announced early.
He also called for moving up the deadline for the commission report to Oct. 1, from Dec. 1, so that its proposals can be part of the 2010 political campaign, rather than presented to a lame-duck Congress for action. (Truth is, some promoters of the commission like the idea of a lame-duck, post-election Congress; it would be politically freer to infuriate.)
One news outlet characterized Boehner as “dissing” the commission. But by the prevailing standards of Washington, he was restrained.
But if, indeed, Boehner is worried about a presidential commission, a solution beckons. How about taking up the Voinovich cause: a congressional commission?
Boehner hammers the president over the head incessantly about the national debt, portraying it as a grave, immediate threat to the nation and everybody in it. But he knows that the presidency will be in Democratic hands for three years.
So what could possibly address his concerns about the debt better than a mandated bipartisan solution? The Republicans are complaining about being ignored. Suddenly they’d be given power.
If Boehner pushed for a commission with teeth, he’d be taking up the president on his call for bipartisanship. The president could hardly oppose him.
As a political bonus, Boehner would get the fun of putting the Democrats on the spot and driving a wedge between them, given that some do and some don’t support a congressional commission.
Of course, that division exists among Republicans, too. And congressional leaders don’t love dividing their own supporters. Therein lies the crunch.
But, at some stage, both parties have to get realistic about the political realities surrounding the debt, about what’s doable and what isn’t. It’s either compromise or nothing.
Even the creation of a commission with teeth isn’t a magic answer. The commission could fail to reach agreement on dramatic changes. Indeed, congressional leaders could almost guarantee that by appointing hardline conservatives and liberals.
But if you sat down, say, George Voinovich with Joe Lieberman (another sponsor of the commission-with-teeth plan), they could likely work something out.
It might include something that would irritate Boehner’s conservative, tax-obsessed base. But, given that there’s no way he can get the government to confront the deficit his way (if, indeed, he has a way), he has to decide if he prefers the possibility of doing nothing. Maybe the debt problem isn’t that big a deal, after all, but, instead, just something that’s fun to talk about.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Locals in national affairs, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, National government
Editorial: Five Oaks kids the losers in school fight
The children of Five Oaks are the clear losers now that Dayton Public Schools has decided to abandon its plan for a school at the site of the former Julienne High School — or anywhere near the neighborhood.
As a battle that lasted almost three years has come to an apparent close, nobody really won. Still, everybody got something except the kids.
Neighborhood activists and alumni who sought to save the Julienne building from the wrecking ball saw their wish fulfilled. But those who fought to save the school also repeatedly said they wanted the building to be active, not to just sit and rot. Prospects for reuse now are dismal, with the school district moving on.
Julienne has been for sale for two years without any offers. There is no reason in sight to believe the building’s long-term future will be anything other than sitting empty. By passing on the Julienne site, the school district failed to keep a big promise to Five Oaks. Consistently, school officials have said a school absolutely was needed in, or very near, the neighborhood because of the high concentration of children who live there and attend the city schools.
The district even crafted a back-up plan to build a school about a mile away at the former site of Colonel White High School. But now that won’t happen either. The millions the school board won’t spend in Five Oaks will instead be committed to the board’s new priority — building high school additions so grades seven and eight can be added to those buildings.
Six months ago, a clear signal from the city would have saved Five Oaks from this situation. The question went before the Dayton City Commission: should the district be allowed to build a new school or must the Julienne building be preserved? School officials and the neighborhood group eagerly awaited a final resolution.
The commissioners punted. Rather than make the tough call, they asked for more discussion, delaying a vote by 90 days. That vote never came.
Had the city commissioners given the school district a go-ahead, construction of a new school at the Julienne site might already be underway. Had the commissioners said no, the district likely would have moved ahead briskly with construction at the nearby Colonel White site.
By ducking the question, the commission, in effect, put the issue on the back burner, ultimately leading to the worst possible outcome for the neighborhood.
Five Oaks, hit hard by the foreclosure crisis and struggling with crime, desperately needed the multimillion-dollar investment that was part of the promise of a school at the Julienne site. It’s sad to see the district take that money somewhere other than where it is needed most.
Most disappointing is the way this debate became totally focused on adults — school officials, city officials and activists — and what they wanted. Hundreds of Five Oaks kids, who would have benefited most from a school within walking distance, were the one constituency that nobody spoke up for.
There is no credible argument that the kids will be better off going somewhere else. But the final resolution of the debate over Julienne will leave them out in the cold, waiting for a school bus.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
