Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Scaling back Senate Bill 5 would be better than a bloody ballot fight: editorial
By The Plain Dealer Editorial Board
Saturday, August 13, 2011 

There remains a faint chance that Ohio can avoid a nasty, divisive, expensive war at the ballot box this fall. But doing so will require activists on both sides -- some of them spoiling for a fight -- to do something they have rarely done in the seven months since Senate Bill 5 was introduced: Look for common ground, not battlegrounds. 

In particular, it will require Gov. John Kasich to back away from a victory that thrilled some of his most ardent supporters -- and to do what’s best to unite Ohio. 

We have said from the beginning of this acrimonious discussion that Ohio’s collective bargaining laws for public employees -- pushed through a Democrat-run legislature and signed by a very pro-labor Gov. Richard F. Celeste in 1983 -- should be changed to reflect new economic realities and to give state and local officials greater management flexibility. Ending the strict rule, now enshrined in Ohio law, that schools must use seniority in determining layoffs would, on its own, be a huge help to urban school districts that are betting on innovative schools -- often staffed by relatively new, creative teachers -- to lift student performance. That’s the kind of reform that Mayor Frank Jackson, new Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon and backers of the district’s transformation plan want and need. 

But Republicans in the legislature were not willing to stop there, or with needed provisions to bring the benefits of public employees more in line with those found in the private sector. 

Instead, they piled on provisions to cripple or even kill public employee unions by cutting their income, making it easier to launch decertification elections and outlawing strikes -- even though the nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s analysis of SB 5 noted that there have been only three public employee strikes in Ohio since mid-2008. 

That overreach was what so inflamed union members, brought thousands of protesters to the Statehouse last winter and prompted labor and its Democratic allies to begin laying the groundwork for a referendum on SB 5 even before it passed the legislature and was signed into law by Kasich. 

Amid the hullabaloo in the streets and galleries -- and the pressing need to plug Ohio’s gaping budget hole -- there’s been precious little discussion of ways to alter the status quo without a wild swing in the opposite direction. 

Recent belated efforts to broker such a compromise informally in Columbus -- first revealed by The Columbus Dispatch, which is supporting them editorially -- have gone nowhere. That’s true, in part, because Ohio unions are, frankly, mistrustful of GOP lawmakers and Kasich. 

It’s also because labor has collected a record 915,456 valid signatures to put Issue 2 on this November’s ballot. Early public polls give SB 5’s foes a substantial lead -- although they also show that elements of the new law are quite popular. Outside groups are preparing to spend tens of millions of dollars in Ohio, just as they have on recall elections in Wisconsin. 

Yet, in truth, neither side will win from a bitter campaign whose outcome will prove unsatisfactory to millions of Ohioans who like neither the status quo nor the toxins in SB 5. 

At a time when this state needs to present a unified, forward-looking face to global investors, a tong war to settle decades-old grievances would be disastrous. 

Kasich was elected not to settle scores, but to shake up a stodgy state -- and he has worked overtime at that. Now he needs to realize that an SB 5 ballot fight is like steering the Titanic toward the iceberg: Everyone loses if they collide. 

There is still time for Kasich, who has not been directly involved in recent back-channel talks, to extend an olive branch to his political opponents. If a deal can be reached by the Aug. 30 deadline to withdraw Issue 2 from the ballot, Kasich can alter this state’s image for the better. And if the governor asks, his adversaries will owe the voters whose support they seek a good-faith effort at compromise. So will his Republican allies in the General Assembly, who could render November’s referendum moot anytime they wanted by passing a less incendiary substitute for SB 5. 

Maybe the peace negotiations we envision won’t succeed, but Ohio should not go to war over SB 5 just because neither side was willing to try for something better. 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer