Comments

• On the article New Year Brings a New Approach to Business in Ohio

  Ohio Teacher Tales

  7:34 pm on Tuesday, January 24, 2012

  I would like to point out that the event depicted in the picture was not an open community forum meeting. At this meeting many public employees showed up to object to Senator LaRose's support for SB 5 (this was before the Referendum). The event was carefully orchestrated by the Senator's staff so only one person could speak per interested group. There were many people in attendance upset with the Senator's vote on SB 5 to bring it out of committee. The staffer said under no circumstances should anyone bring up SB 5 at the meeting. One public employee who decided to speak his mind on the topic was then told to stop.

  While Senator LaRose may continue to believe that he is doing good work, his votes on SB 5 and HB 153 (the biennium budget) will cost the Copley-Fairlawn community jobs and increase taxes on the people of our communities. Governor Kasich's budget decimated public education and caused our schools to lose over $1 million in annual funding, which may necessitate returning to the voters sooner to support the quality of education expected in the district. Senator LaRose, who sought and received the endorsement of some public employee unions, sold them out in interest of his GOP bosses.

  Shame on Fairlawn-Bath Patch for choosing to run a picture with the Senator's op-ed piece that actually was chocked full of angry citizens who were very vocal on LaRose's failure to adequately represent the voice of the people who elected him.

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• On the article Analysis: Examining Senate Bill 5

  Ohio Teacher Tales

  1:50 pm on Monday, April 25, 2011

  It's important to note that while some public employee unions tend to support democratic candidates, not all do. Firefighters and police officers many times support Republican candidates. More importantly, the membership of all public employee unions are of the full political spectrum. There are Tea Party members who are public employees who hate this bill, because it is big government and more regulation and removal of true local control. Tea Party leaders themselves have said this issue is of lesser importance to them. Small businesses are fast parting ways with SB 5 because it will impact their businesses from loss of income of clients who are public employees.

  There are only a handful of people who support SB 5. Anti-tax citizens (who are rightly angered at taxation issues) and the Governor. Even his own party is splitting over SB 5.

  There doesn't have to be much digging here... local governments have already been successfully bargaining with their employees to keep costs manageable. The bigger picture problems are state monies that have been left short because of the recession. Already Ohio's recovery is estimating that the $8 billion shortfall will now be closer to $7 because of economic growth over the past year.

  This isn't about the budget... it's about politics.

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