|
Cleveland
Plain Dealer...
Unions’
rejection of Kasich’s offer to
re-examine SB 5 was the wrong answer for a state facing serious problems
By The Plain Dealer Editorial Board
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Perhaps
not till Judgment Day will
anyone know whether the Senate Bill 5 negotiations Republican Gov. John
Kasich
offered public-employee unions last week was statesmanship or
showmanship.
The
unions -- expressing skepticism
about Kasich’s sincerity, given GOP arrogance in ramming SB 5 through
the
General Assembly -- declined.
So,
unless something changes by Aug.
30, the last day to yank an anti-SB 5 referendum from November’s
ballot, Ohio
is poised for a ferocious statewide fight, pro or contra Senate Bill 5.
The
only Ohioans sure to come out ahead will be campaign consultants and
advertising agents.
The
unions demanded, before they would
talk with Kasich, that the General Assembly first repeal Senate Bill 5.
Procedurally,
that was do-able, and
House Speaker William G. Batchelder, a conservative Medina Republican,
signaled
an openness to repeal if that’s where the negotiations led. But he was
not
willing to consent to repeal before negotiations began.
The
unions, which represent about
360,000 public employees, were burned by Republican legislators’ March
rush to
pass Senate Bill 5. Yet Republicans say (and the General Assembly’s
journals
confirm) Democrats failed to offer a single floor amendment when the
Senate and
House debated the measure.
If
there was theater on Kasich’s side
of the aisle last week, there was also theater on the union side.
It
would not have been unreasonable
for the unions to announce that repeal of Senate Bill 5 would be their
goal in
any negotiations, so as to start over with a clean slate. But making
repeal a
pre-talks condition made it a sure bet that talks would never take
place -- as
SB 5 opponents well knew.
Kasich’s
blandly imperial offer --
“Bring your grievances to us; we will look at them” -- undoubtedly gave
the
unions little hope for a sympathetic hearing. But their failure to take
him up
on it allowed him to wriggle off a hook he appeared to have voluntarily
mounted.
Ohioans
who had hoped for a negotiated
settlement to spare the state a campaign and election that will sow
divisiveness far into the future may yet hope that the union coalition
will
reconsider its dismissive response.
The
time for that, however, is quickly
running out.
Labor
thinks (and polls, at the
moment, indicate) the voters will kill SB 5, so talking with Kasich
might do
him an undeserved favor and sacrifice a chance to humiliate him in
November.
Human nature being what it is, that’s an entirely understandable
feeling.
But
Ohio’s problems being what they
are, that’s also an entirely shortsighted perspective.
Read
it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
