Gov. Kasich should renounce Republicans’ extreme agenda

When the clock strikes mid- night tonight, Gov. John R. Kasich will take the oath of office for his second four-year term — with a large number of Ohioans solidly behind him. Kasich’s landslide victory in the 2014 November general election was an endorsement of the agenda he laid out during the campaign.

It was, and is, a comparatively moderate one — considering that some legislators in the GOP-dominated General Assembly are already talking about such politically incendiary issues as right-to-work.

During the campaign, Kasich, whose name is often included in the list of potential Republican candidates for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, was asked if he intended to follow in the footsteps of several states, including Michigan and Indiana, and push a right-to-work law.

The governor was consistent in his response, especially in meetings with newspaper editorial boards: Right-to-work is not on my agenda.

However, last month The Washington Post quoted Greg Lawson, a policy analyst at the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, as saying that he expects the measure to be resurrected in the General Assembly this year. Two versions died on the legislative vine in 2014.

Republican Kasich, who, along with Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, will be sworn in publicly Monday and then attend an inaugural gala Monday night, has the opportunity to send a clear message to members of his party: The road to Ohio’s economic recovery should not be littered with political landmines.

Kasich and the Republicans are well aware of the public’s repulsion to ideological overreach. In 2011, the GOP-passed collective bargaining reform act that was signed into law by Kasich triggered a referendum campaign by the state public employees unions and their organized labor allies and the Ohio Democratic Party.

Political blow

They secured more than 1 million petition signatures to place the law before Ohio voters. The referendum brought out a huge number of voters who delivered a major political blow to Kasich and his Republican allies in the General Assembly.

The defeat of the collective bargaining reform law made national news.

The governor must know that resurrecting another issue that is viewed as the GOP’s attack on labor will destroy the goodwill he was able to build among Democrats and even union members.

There are too many other pressing issues that the governor with a mandate should be tackling in his second term. The biennium budget tops the list because it not only addresses the needs of state government, but provides funding for local governments and primary, secondary and higher education.

Each took a financial hit in the last two-year budget cycle, and local officials are hoping that the governor will have a change of heart.

He won’t. Kasich has made it clear that his priority is to provide more tax cuts, especially for small businesses, and to pump more money into the state’s rainy day fund. That means continued belt-tightening by the public sector.

That’s bad news for institutions like Youngs-town State University, which is dealing with a $10 million budget shortfall brought about by state funding cuts and a significant decline in enrollment.

But the university will get no sympathy from the governor, who is demanding that all the state’s public universities and colleges cut spending by eliminating the duplication of academic programs, reducing employee costs and building enrollment by rolling back tuition increases imposed over the last several years.

Charter schools

The other education-related issue the governor promised to deal with is the lack of regulations, standards and oversight of charter schools. Although he continues to support charters, Kasich conceded during the campaign that the industry, which is being rewarded by the General Assembly for its campaign-finance support of Republicans, has gone too long without being policed by the state in the same way as public schools.

We have long opposed charters because they have generally failed to live up to the hype of their supporters that they’re a viable alternative to public schools that aren’t making the grade. We also have questioned how state government can permit private operators, some from outside Ohio, to spend taxpayer dollars without demanding accountability. Billions of dollars have been redirected from the public schools system to charters.

We have urged the governor to persuade the General Assembly to pass legislation to bring charters under the control of the state Department of Education, so the Ohio Auditor’s Office can audit charters the way it does public schools.

There are a slew of other issues, including severance taxes on oil and gas exploration, fracking, Medicaid expansion required by the Affordable Care Act and energy mandates.

Kasich should not be distracted by Republicans with ideological agendas.