Ohio GOP playing politics again

This past week the speaker of the Ohio House, Jon Husted, and the president of the Ohio Senate, Bill Harris, were caught doing what republicans in Ohio do best (no, not breaking the law, nice guess), playing politics and engaging in political gamesmanship.

According to a press release, they are reserving the "symbolic" first bills in their respective chambers for Governor Strickland's plan to fix Ohio's school-funding system.

Speaker Husted has been particularly disingenuous, stating that he expects Governor Strickland to include a new plan for school funding as a portion of the state budget proposal, due March 15 of this year.

After 16 years of Republican domination of state government, it is appalling to see these "leaders?" playing partisan games, instead of engaging in an honest, respectful, mature dialogue to deal with what could be the most important issue for the general assembly and Governor Strickland to work on.

But, instead of working toward a solution, Husted and Harris prefer to play partisan games, which does nothing to further progress in Ohio. Husted went as far as to say that he believes the republican legislature has made "significant progress" in fixing the school funding dilemma. Why doesn't he tell that to the districts which fail time after time to pass property tax levies which are made necessary by the failure of the general assembly to fully fund our public schools. Then, at the end of the Taft lame duck legislature, our geniuses in Columbus passed new standards for Ohio schools with no mention of how they plan to fund these new mandates.

All this going on in Columbus, and our own District 46 legislator has nothing to say, continuing his policy of adhering to the politics of the status quo, failing to exhibit any leadership on issues of importance to NW Ohioans. ( we know that you engineered the marvelous MUO/UT merger all by yourself, but the shine is fading on that major accomplishment which did nothing for the average citizen of western Lucas County)

Let's demand more of Mr. Wagoner than his policy of cozying up to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. Maybe he is afraid to make a move without consulting the numerous political action committees who have bought his votes during his tenure in the General Assembly( that would take a great deal of time). Or maybe his $10,000 contributor, Wayne Boich hasn't told him what to say yet. It's time to step up to the plate, Mark. We need leadership in Columbus from our NW Ohio "leaders". Maybe your plan is another two years of the status quo, and then spending half a million dollars on negative advertising to cover up your ineffective leadership. Oh, wait, you already played that game.

Unfortunately, what we're seeing is the political gamesmanship and protection of the status quo that we have seen over most of the last 15 years. And, Ohioans are simply tired of this group of partisans whose only agenda is to keep themselves in power.