Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
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 > 2011 > June > 10
Friday, June 10, 2011
Editorial: Tweaking of constitution could be good
History in the making?
Ohio voters will have a chance next year to call for a state constitutional convention. That sounds like something that could be really big.
The very idea causes a lot of people to imagine the worst: a constitution drawn up by the noisiest, most rigid political warriors, people doing the bidding of narrow interests and narrow views, the very opposite of the nation’s founders who drew up the national Constitution.
Perhaps for that reason, past voters have passed on this opportunity by large majorities. (The current Ohio Constitution requires that voters get a chance to call a convention every 20 years.)
If voters do embrace a convention, that gathering wouldn’t necessarily turn out a whole constitution, perhaps just a few proposed amendments. (To be adopted by the convention, a measure would need a two-thirds majority.)
Moreover, anything a convention proposes would still have to be approved by voters.
So history may not be in the making.
But a systematic look at the state constitution could be useful. After all, the Ohio constitution is not to be likened to the national one. The latter is an elegant, venerable blueprint for a society trying to combine democracy with minority rights. A constitutional convention to rewrite it would be an awful idea.
The state constitution, on the other hand, is a mess that lays out such things as how revenues from casinos will be distributed and who can get married.
Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder, a conservative Republican from the Cleveland area, has put forth a sort of alternative to a convention. His idea is not an effort by Republicans to take advantage of their current power in Columbus.
He wants a thoroughly, genuinely bipartisan commission — with some legislators, but also plenty of others — to meet and to make constitutional proposals to the legislature. Again, voters would have the final say.
The commission wouldn’t replace the convention, but it might take some steam out of the idea of a convention, if there is any steam. (If a convention were approved by voters, the commission would draw up the rules.)
Convention or no convention, the commission is a good idea. It might provide an impetus for good ideas, such as reform of the state’s redistricting rules. Any nonpartisan group should be able to agree on a plan to make the drawing of legislative districts a nonpartisan exercise instead of the celebration of naked partisanship it is today.
Merit selection of judges is another idea that might engage the attention of a bipartisan commission. Meanwhile, Speaker Batchelder would like to see some movement toward consolidation of local school districts, at least for administrative purposes.
The commission would not have to issue one big report. It could dribble out proposals over a period of years.
The last commission like this came up with the idea of electing candidates for governor and lieutenant governor together, like president and vice president, and it established an order of succession in case the governor and lieutenant governor die in office.
Particularly attractive about the commission idea is that it would be acting without a tight deadline. This season is seeing the state legislature rushing through subject after subject, to meet a budget deadline and to act while Republicans have all the power. Research, reflection and expertise on some of the biggest issues have been notably absent. Already, Gov. John Kasich has had to submit major amendments to the economic development plan (JobsOhio) that he rushed through the legislature earlier in the year.
A commission could do what the legislature should do: Hold actual hearings and have real debates, as opposed to partisan spinfests that result from partisan votes.
A constitutional commission won’t solve the problems Ohioans are most worried about. But any ideas it proposes would likely be worthy of consideration. A few might even be important.
TweetGo to our facebook page and Like us to comment.
Martin Gottlieb: Pay cut for legislators misses big issue
Legislative salaries have always been a great target for people looking for a cheap political point, one they hope resonates with the public.
You’ve heard the pitches: How can we pay the politicians so much when the country is doing so badly? Let’s stop paying them until they balance the budget — or raise the minimum wage — or until the economy turns around — or something.
It’s fun for certain people. Now the Ohio Senate — repository of the politicians themselves — wants to join in the fun.
The Senate proposes to cut the base salaries of legislators by 5 percent from the current $60,000 (not counting extra thousands available to those with extra duties within the legislature).
That would save the state about $800,000 over two years. The legislature would only need 10,000 more such cuts to get to the $8 billion budget shortfall everybody has talked about — if we were talking about the same biennium, which we’re not.
A legislative salary may not be raised or cut during a term being served. And it’s worth keeping in mind that at least half the senators are in their last term, given that they may only serve two consecutive terms in that body.
(In the long run, if the politicians are serious about legislators needing to take pay cuts in bad times for the state government, they should change the Constitution so that, while pay increases can’t go into effect during a current term, pay cuts can.)
The proposed cut might be good politics. After all, the legislators have been acting to restrain the pay and benefits of all manner of other public employees.
And they’re beginning to sense that the public response is not good.
Of course, the public response to their pay cut might not be all that great either, given the widespread suspicion that the politicians never run out of ways to game the system.
In truth, the realm of payment in which legislators have a big impact on the state’s financial condition is not salaries. Think pensions. This is because the legislators are part of a state system that covers many other people.
Much has been written about the problems facing public pension systems. An article in the current Washington Monthly asks what states can do.
One author is Sylvester Shrieber, described as having written several books on aging, demographics and pension issues. The piece says unions aren’t the problem; politicians are:
“Government decision makers face an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to making pension policy for government employees, and so do their staffs. This is true whether or not unions are involved.
Beyond the enticement of self-dealing is the temptation to (political) self-aggrandizement that comes when politicians are allowed to take credit for delivering benefits whose full cost only becomes apparent after they are long gone. That all this can be done without the press or public taking much notice only further perverts the logic of decisionmaking.”
In Ohio, legislators’ self-interest in pension policy is heightened by the fact that many of them have served or will serve in other offices — state and local — which get them credit toward retirement in the same state system.
SB5 — the sweeping new law that goes after union power in the name of saving taxpayer money — hardly takes a glancing shot at pensions. Legislators say the pension issue is still to come.
Reforming the pension systems is a complex task, not to be dealt with blithely. And, as with other reforms of entitlement programs, the biggest changes probably have to be aimed at young people, rather than those close to collecting their benefits.
But if the politicians really want to be seen as going after the politicians, that’s the important way.
TweetGo to our facebook page and Like us to comment.
