Sunday, October 20, 2002
Before the start of the Youngstown State University-Indiana State football game earlier this month at Stambaugh Stadium, YSU President David Sweet told a Vindicator reporter that he was looking forward to spending some time with Gov. Bob Taft to discuss the funding crisis in higher education in Ohio.
Talk about being out of touch with political reality. The last thing the governor, who is seeking re-election next month, wanted was to be drawn into the still bubbling controversy in the Mahoning Valley over the pay raise and hefty housing allowance that the board of trustees gave Sweet last month.
So here's what Taft did when he visited Youngstown on Nov. 5: He spent about an hour in YSU's parking lot glad-handing with the tailgaters and then high-tailed it out of the city.
No, the Republican governor, who is hoping to do well in this Democratic region, didn't go up to the president's loge, and he certainly didn't give Sweet the kind of time YSU's chief had hoped for.
Why the arm's length treatment? Simple. Taft and his circle of advisers know that the pay raises for not only Sweet but the faculty, classified employees, professional staff and police have ignited a firestorm of protest on and off campus and have kept the spotlight on the overall issue of state funding for higher education.
The idea of folks on the hill fattening their wallets at a time when YSU's allotment of state dollars from the Ohio Board of Regents has been slashed would be laughable if it weren't so egregious. It reveals a blind spot on the part of the trustees and the Sweet administration that opens them up to criticism and ridicule.
By the president's own admission, YSU is having to overcome a $1.8 million operating deficit. Now view this budgetary crisis against the backdrop of hundreds of Valley residents being laid off or losing their jobs entirely and tuition being raised more than 8 percent this semester and what you have is a political minefield that Taft, to his credit, refused to venture into.
Criticism
The Republican governor is acutely aware that he and the Republican controlled General Assembly have been blasted by the presidents of the state universities and colleges, including Sweet, over the reduction in state funding for higher education. He also knows that YSU is one of several institutions trying to win back some of the money they lost.
Taft's Democratic opponent, Tim Hagan, a former Cuyahoga County commissioner, has been scoring points with the issue and has been endorsed by the faculty union at Youngstown State -- the same union that threatened to go on strike a day before the start of the fall semester if it didn't get the ridiculously high pay raises in the three-year contract it had demanded.
Faculty members now have the temerity to complain about how the cuts in state funding have put higher education at risk when their negotiators refused to go along with Sweet's request that they accept a one-year contract with a small pay increase. By agreeing, they would have demonstrated that they are genuinely concerned about the future of the Mahoning Valley and would have forced the trustees to reassess the compensation package for the president.
But they obviously have no shame, for not only did they put the university under the gun, but turned around and tried to deflect criticism aimed at them by suggesting that the Republican governor and the Republican Legislature are to blame.
Even Hagan, who has been embraced by the union, and his brother, Robert, a state senator from Youngstown, are bothered by the avarice of the people who work at YSU.
It is obvious that the decision by the president, the faculty, the classified employees, the professional staff and the police to grab theirs off the top is not sitting well with the governor.
Why?
Appointees
Because he and his predecessor, George V. Voinovich, also a Republican, are being blamed for the actions of YSU's board of trustees. Sen. Hagan pointed out that all seven members of the board were appointed by either Voinovich or Taft and they were ones who approved the 6 percent pay raise and the $50,000 housing allowance for Sweet.
No wonder Taft didn't want to be seen in the president's loge.
It would have been tantamount to an obscene hand gesture -- the governor wining and dining with Sweet in the glass-enclosed room, while the masses in the stands contemplated another tuition increase.