Frick & Frack are back

Here’s a not-so-friendly suggestion for the advocates of the nonsensical proposal to ban fracking in the city of Youngstown: Track down some of the Vallourec Star workers who have been laid off and tell them why they deserve to lose their well-paying jobs.

Indeed, it would be fun to watch Dr. Ray Beiersdorfer, who has slopped at the public trough for many years, preach to those private- sector workers that their loss of income is for the greater good.

It’s easy to be a paragon of virtue when you have a cushy job as a professor at Youngstown State University, where the line between fantasy and reality is often blurred.

Ray Beiersdorfer and his wife, Susie, have long been the driving force behind the effort to push through a charter amendment that would prohibit the use of fracking to extract oil and gas in the city of Youngstown.

City voters have rejected the anti-fracking Community Bill of Rights charter amendment on five different occasions, but the Beiersdorfers and other members of FrackFree Mahoning Valley are undaunted.

Consider this comment from Susie Beiersdorfer last week after she submitted petitions to get the charter amendment on this year’s general election ballot:

“We don’t lose until we quit.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter how many times and by how many votes city residents tell these self-styled protectors of society to pound salt. They will continue to push their absurd campaign via the ballot.

Why absurd?

Unenforceable

Because the Beiersdorfers and their compatriots know that even if the voters overwhelmingly approved the charter amendment, it could not be enforced.

The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled in another case that only the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has authority over oil and gas drilling in the state.

In addition – and perhaps more significantly – there are no companies from the region, state or nation that have plans to drill for oil and gas in the city.

But that doesn’t faze the FrackFree Mahoning Valley adherents. They are determined to place an issue on the November ballot to ban fracking, injection wells and other shale-gas infrastructure.

And if you want to understand just how far they’re willing to go to scare the residents of Youngstown, consider this statement from Susie Beiersdorfer:

“ … voters want to keep our drinking water clean and want the right of local control over whether shale-gas infrastructure such as drilling, injection wells, pipelines, compressor stations, radioactive-waste streams can locate in our community. Who has the right to decide: the people in the community or drilling and waste-disposal corporations? Do the people have the right to self-govern to protect their health, safety and happiness or do the corporations have a right to profit no matter the cost to the people and the community?”

The residents of the city have answered that question loudly and clearly with their votes: twice in 2013, twice in 2014 and last November.

But proponents of the Community Bill of Rights contend that last year’s close vote is a reflection of the changing attitudes on the part of the voters.

The vote count in the 2015 general election was 6,152 against the charter amendment, and 5,852 for it.

In 2014, the mislabeled Community Bill of Rights was rejected by a vote of 7,323 to 5,373 in the November general election and 3,691 to 3,128 in the May primary of that year.

It also failed twice in 2013.

So if the petitions submitted last week to put the issue back on the ballot are deemed to contain the required number of signatures, city residents will have the chance to vote for a sixth time Nov. 8.

But before jumping on the Beiersdorfers’ bandwagon, Youngstowners may want to consider this reality: The city’s economic future is bleak, the prospects of income tax growth are slim, and Vallourec Star, which shined so brightly when the technologically advanced steel pipe-producing plant began operations in 2013, was slammed by the downturn in the oil and gas industry. Vallourec makes steel pipe for the industry.

In February 2015, Vallourec Star, owned by the French company Vallourec, went on a three-week shutdown and offered voluntary layoffs for interested employees.

In July the company announced it would cut 60 to 80 jobs.

In October, the company announced another workforce reduction.

Layoffs, pay freezes and even concessions have been the norm in the private sector since the Great Recession of 2008. But, the public sector, including local governments and universities, have generally weathered the national economic storm.

Thus, when the Beiersdorfers and others pursue their attacks on oil and gas exploration, voters should consider whether they have any inkling of what’s taking place in the real world, with real families.