Where to live; where to work

It's no secret that the Ohio Supreme Court is going to have to decide the validity of a new state law giving municipal employees the right to live outside the cities where they work.
In the meantime, some cities and some employee unions have filed suits aimed at getting the issue to the Supreme Court. That will take anywhere from nine months to two years.
Now, one Youngstown police officer appears to be daring the city to fire him. Patrolman Daniel Tickerhoof, 32, has notified the city that he has moved to Canal Fulton.
Tickerhoof's case may turn out to be one of the more interesting tests.
"Mapquest" places the distance between Canal Fulton and Youngstown's City Hall at 64 miles and estimates driving time at an hour and 15 minutes. That's assuming no orange barrel back-ups on I-76 through Akron or I-77 through Canton.
A threat to efficiency
How is a city to operate if it can't be confident that its firefighters, police officers, salt-truck drivers or water and sewerage employees will respond to an emergency call in less than an hour?
The court is going to have to discern what the General Assembly was thinking when it passed this law. In Youngstown's case, the court will also have to consider, among other factors:
UYoungstown's residents voted in 1986 to require employees to live in the city.
UEvery employee who has been hired since (including Tickerhoof) has taken the job with the understanding that he must live in the city.
UAs a charter city, Youngstown residents-- not politicians from one end of the state to another -- should be deciding how to run its affairs (absent a finding that the city is behaving in an unconstitutional manner -- and municipal residency requirements have been found to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court).
The city should take its time and conduct a thorough investigation of Tickerhoof's circumstances. Let him drive 130 miles a day using $3-a-gallon gas, adding more than two hours to his work shift. Maybe he'll find living in Canal Fulton is worth it. Maybe he won't. And maybe he'll have to decide which he likes better -- his home or his job -- when the eventual firing notice arrives.
If he likes his home better, he'll have to decide how much faith he has in the ability of his union's lawyers to convince the Supreme Court that the Ohio General Assembly should be able to tell the people of Youngstown that they can't decide that their employees should also be their neighbors.