Divisive measure has roots in deficit strategy

By Marc Kovac

news@vindy.com

Third of a five-part series

COLUMBUS

Republican lawmakers and Gov. John Kasich came into office in January with a list of policy changes they hoped to implement.

They wanted to privatize the job-creating programs of the Ohio Department of Development via a new nonprofit called JobsOhio.

They wanted to require performance audits of state agencies, hoping to identify potential cost savings.

They wanted to cut back on the number of unnecessary regulations hampering small business.

And they wanted to eliminate Ohio’s estate tax.

All of those efforts were codified early in the session, either in separate bills or as part of the state budget.

Senate Bill 5, the controversial collective-bargaining law affecting some 350,000 public employees, also was near the top of GOP lawmakers’ legislative priority list.

Sen. Shannon Jones, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, said she worked on the legislation long before the start of new session.

“In order to get the state’s budget and consequentially local budgets in a place that was sustainable, we had to look at what some of the major cost drivers were,” Jones said, adding, “This wasn’t the only issue that needed to be looked at.”

Many of the Republican-led initiatives were aimed at reducing government spending. As the logic goes, government spends less, thereby allowing reductions in tax rates, thus making Ohio more attractive to businesses that have been choosing other states with lower taxes for expansions and relocations.

“If you can’t control your costs, then you’re in a position where companies just say, ‘I’m not going to locate there,’” Kasich said. “It’s a fact.”

SB 5 was introduced by Jones in early February. Less than two months later, Kasich was adding his signature.

In between, the legislation garnered more negative attention than any other bill considered by lawmakers, drawing thousands of protesters and prompting an unprecedented referendum effort.

Opponents believe SB 5 has less to do with reforming government spending and more to do with reducing the ranks of Ohio’s labor unions.

They say SB 5 went too far.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” said Jay McDonald, president of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio. “If they wanted reform and they had things they wanted to do, they probably could have got them. But this is too much. It’s an overreach.”

Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, added, “It certainly looks to be a politically motivated attack, and it’s going to end up hurting all workers.”

The Bill

Republicans continue to remind people about the economic circumstances leading up to the introduction and passage of SB 5.

Last session, lawmakers and former Gov. Ted Strickland struggled through what the latter called the worst economic circumstances facing the state since the days of the Great Depression.

In addition to pushing many Ohioans into the ranks of the unemployed, the climate took its toll on the state budget, leading to the postponement of the final year of a planned income-tax cut.

It also prompted extended discussions and concern about a potential $8 billion budget hole, attributed mostly to the disappearance of federal stimulus and other one-time funding used to shore up the previous two-year spending plan.

Lawmakers created a special commission to review the budget challenges and offer recommendations. Jones was one of the members of that group.

Late last year, that commission offered separate reports, one written by Democrats and one written by Republicans. Among the GOP suggestions was collective-bargaining reform.

According to the report, “Ohio’s collective bargaining statute, in place since 1983, must be reviewed. The state and its political subdivisions need flexibility to deal with personnel expenses, and workers should have the ability to be promoted/retained based upon their work product.”

It wasn’t just the Republican-written commission report, backers of Issue 2 say. GOP lawmakers said they heard from local officials in their districts who wanted relief from labor agreements that were costing too much.

SB 5 — and it’s more than 300 pages of provisions — was an attempt to allow local governments to rein in their costs.

It would allow public employees to negotiate their wages, hours, safety-equipment needs and other working terms and conditions.

But it would block consideration of other issues — staffing levels, classroom sizes or an increased employer share of health insurance or pension costs, for example.

It would require public employees to pay at least 15 percent of their health-insurance premiums, and it would block employers from paying any part of their workers’ required pension contribution.

Pay rates and layoff order would have to be based on employee performance, not solely on how long someone has been employed.

The bill would cap vacation, sick and other paid leave and limit what employees could cash in from those benefits when they leave their positions.

It would ban all public-employee strikes and would require increased public notice of contract provisions, outlining what public employees are paid and what benefits they receive.

‘FAIR AND REASONABLE’

“When you look at what is in the bill as opposed to the myths surrounding the bill, what you have is a structure that allows our public employees to continue to bargain [on wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment],” Jones said.

She said the bill’s health-insurance requirements are “fair and reasonable, when you consider the average private-sector worker in Ohio pays 31 percent toward their health-insurance premium.”

In the end, proponents of SB 5 say the new law will preserve public employees’ ability to bargain for contract terms, enable local government officials to better control their costs, and provide more information to Ohioans about what public employees are being paid.

Under the bill, “I think [public employees] have equal weight at the bargaining table with the public managers, because also at the bargaining table for the first time are taxpayers,” Jones said.

She added, “There are a lot of public employees that don’t have the ability to [collectively bargain], not just in this state but other states and the federal government. This idea that you have to have collective bargaining to have the public treat you fairly and reasonably I think is a wrong assumption.”

‘BUSTING UNIONS’

McDonald is confused by that reasoning, however.

On the one hand, he said, SB 5 proponents believe local government officials will act in the best interests of their employees. But on the other, they want to control and limit how those officials negotiate contracts.

“The other side says that we should trust city councils and mayors. They’re not going to send you out there with bad equipment ... they’re not going to get rid of people through layoffs based on age discrimination or who uses too much health care, we should trust these locally elected officials,” McDonald said. “And in the same breath they say we can’t trust them to negotiate a contract, we can’t trust them to treat their employees fairly or the citizens fairly in these contract negotiations.”

McDonald and others also question how public employees can collectively bargain if they don’t have any leverage in negotiations. Without the ability to strike or a binding-arbitration process, management has nothing to lose by ignoring the requests of employees.

“Both sides don’t have an equal stake,” McDonald said. “Collective bargaining requires give and take, and both sides need to have some kind of power in the negotiation. And this bill makes it so that instead of playing on a level playing field, we’re at the bottom of the valley.”