Friday, February 18, 2011
COLUMBUS
Random thoughts following the circus at the Statehouse this week:
You have to give Gov. John Kasich and the Republicans who took the helm of state government last November this much credit: They’re driving a lot more citizen participation in the legislative process than the previous administration.
Senate Bill 5, which would implement sweeping changes to the state’s collective bargaining bills, is drawing larger and larger crowds with each committee hearing, capped by the thousands there on Thursday.
It was hard to walk down the hallway on Tuesday; it was nearly impossible to walk through much of the Statehouse two days later.
Most of the people I talked to who have been around state politics for a while can’t remember anything like it.
And it’s not just on collective bargaining. Hearing rooms are packed with people wanting to listen to testimony on other Republican-backed bills, including the estate tax repeal and abortion-related measures.
Rep. Matt Huffman, a Republican from Lima, had the quote of the week.
During a press conference unveiling legislation to expand the number of Ohioans eligible for school vouchers, he joked about lawmakers’ propensity for making public statements.
He put it this way: “It’s often said at the Statehouse that everything’s been said, but not everyone has said it.”
Along those lines, it’s interesting how much praise Republicans heaped on the state’s law enforcement and safety forces during the committee hearing on collective bargaining reform.
GOP members of the panel thanked police, firefighters and state patrol representatives for their commitment and sacrifices on behalf of the people of the state, and urged them to submit ideas for making the legislation better.
I’m not implying it wasn’t genuine — on the contrary. But such comments carry different implications during a week when Kasich had to apologize for calling an officer who gave him a ticket an “idiot.”
Jay McDonald, a Marion police officer and president of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio, didn’t pass up an opportunity to remind senators of that incident, either.
“We understand that enforcing the law does not always make everyone happy,” he said. “On occasion, we enforce the traffic laws. And some might even call a police officer an idiot. But that’s a topic for another day.”
There were votes this week on a couple of hot-topic bills in the House and Senate. The question in both cases is whether the results were bipartisan.
JobsOhio, the initial legislation to privatize the Ohio Department of Development, passed in the Ohio Senate on a vote of 31-2, with eight Democrats joining the majority Republicans in its passage. I think it’s fair to call that result bipartisan.
Not so in the Ohio House, on either the JobsOhio bill or on legislation that would undo Strickland-era education reforms, including the elimination of an all-day kindergarten mandate.
Only two Democrats voted in favor of the former, while only one joined the Republican majority on the latter.
Sorry, folks, but one or two token Democrats among nearly 60 Republicans — or vice versa, because both parties play this game — does not make something bipartisan. So stop insulting Ohioans’ intelligence.
Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse corespondent. E-mail him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.