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State of State: ‘We’re a powerhouse’
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Ohio Gov. John Kasich delivers his State of the State address at Wells Academy in Steubenville on Tuesday.
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By Marc Kovac
STEUBENVILLE
Gov. John Kasich plans to launch an all-out attack on human trafficking, push a faster state-run broadband network to accommodate education and private business and honor Ohioans who display courage in extraordinary ways.
Those were among the plans he outlined in a historic State of the State nearly 150 miles from downtown Columbus on Tuesday, with lawmakers, agency heads and other invited guests making the trek to Jefferson County.
“I love the people of Steubenville,” Kasich said at the outset, speaking before more than 1,000 people in a high-ranking public elementary school.
Kasich covered familiar ground in an address that stretched nearly an hour and a half, recounting themes and topics from dozens of other speeches in recent months.
He touted reforms long debated by state officials but implemented since he took office, covering Medicaid, prison sentencing, school vouchers and other issues.
He outlined the jobs lost under the former administration and the efforts that he says have reversed those trends — JobsOhio and the Common Sense Initiative.
“Where are we today?” he asked. “Ohio is the No. 1 job creator in the Midwest today ... We’re the No. 9 job creator in America. From 48 to nine in one year. It’s about time, because we’re a powerhouse in Ohio.”
Kasich said manufacturing is coming back in Ohio, particularly the automobile industry, with Ford, Chrysler, Honda and General Motors expanding their operations in the state.
They have a continued commitment to Toledo, Defiance and, of course, Lordstown,” Kasich said. “Chevy Cruze, baby. It’s selling. And it’s working.”
Kasich also spotlighted V&M Star Steel, which is expanding its presence in Youngstown and creating hundreds of jobs in the process. The company is expanding its steel-tubing operations to accommodate the growing oil and gas production activities in Eastern Ohio.
“The unemployment rate in Youngstown [area] has gone from 11.5 to 8.3 percent in the last year,” Kasich said. “The Mahoning Valley’s alive again, and they deserve it.”
He added, “We’re alive again. We’re out of the ditch. We’re growing. It’s happening in our state. It’s not me, it’s all of us and it’s the people of our state.”
In what likely will become a regular feature at future speeches, Kasich presented three Governor’s Courage Medals, honoring a woman who started a support group after her son died under the influence of prescription pain killers, the family of a U.S. Army specialist killed in action in Afghanistan while shielding others with his body, and a human trafficking victim who uses the experience to counsel other girls who have been trapped in forced prostitution.
“We’ve got to have a war on the slave-trade business in Ohio,” he said on the subject of human trafficking. “We’ve got to snuff this out in our state. It is a scourge.”
Kasich praised plans by the Ohio Board of Regents and other state officials to expand the bandwidth capacity of the Ohio Academic Resources Network, or OARnet. The move, he said, will make the state more attractive to medical, research and other companies that could access the system to transmit high-volume data at faster speeds.
Kasich was interrupted with chants by opponents of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, after he said the industry needed to be regulated — but not to the point that it drove energy companies away.
“We cannot let our fears outweigh the potential.”
Lawmakers offered mixed reactions to the speech.
The Republican leader of the Ohio House called it one of the greatest State of the State speeches he has ever heard.
“It was a very definite look at a whole lot of things that are going in the state of Ohio, that have been going on,” said Speaker Bill Batchelder.
Senate President Tom Niehaus said he looked forward to working with the administration on work- force training development, determining the types of skills businesses need and matching those needs with degree programs.
But Democratic leaders said the speech was long on self congratulation and short on substance.
Rep. Ronald Gerberry, a Democrat from Austintown, criticized Kasich for taking credit for adding $250 million to the state’s rainy-day fund, given the cuts made in the last biennial budget to local governments.
“Is it maybe true? Yeah... it is true,” Gerberry said. “But the reality is the local governments took a hit, schools took a hit.”
“It seemed to me that Gov. Kasich’s remarks, while very exciting in his delivery, was more of a retrospective rather than a prospective speech,” said Sen. Capri Cafaro, a Democrat from Liberty.
“We have come to judge these kinds of addresses ... as an opportunity not only to reflect on and showcase what has been accomplished but ultimately what is the plan for the future... I did not get a lot of that.”
Sen. Lou Gentile, a Democrat from Steubenville, complimented the governor for bringing the addressto his home community.