Last week, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted validated a small mountain of signatures collected for a referendum on SB5, Ohio’s controversial collective bargaining law, meaning that the issue will indeed appear on ballots this November.
In early polling by Quinnipiac, SB5 is just about as unpopular as the unpopular Mr. Kasich who pushed the unpopular bill on Ohio. According to the PD, when asked “Do you think this new law [Senate Bill 5] which limits collective bargaining for public employees should be kept or repealed?” 56% of voters said repeal and 32% of voters said keep it.
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2011.
It’s well and good there may be a piece here and there worth supporting — and, of course, are appropriate topics FOR collective bargaining if the law is overturned. Reality is, voters don’t get to pick and choose. It’s all or nothing, thus should be repealed.
To overturn SB5, do they need a simple majority, or 66 2/3, or something else? I would imagine that if they only need a simple majority, every law could be easily repealed.
John in Cincinnati said:
“It’s well and good there may be a piece here and there worth supporting — and, of course, are appropriate topics FOR collective bargaining if the law is overturned. Reality is, voters don’t get to pick and choose. It’s all or nothing, thus should be repealed.”
Yes, I agree. It’s an all or nothing vote for a poorly written bill that may very well be upheld by the politics of envy and schadenfreude. In my opinion, it is unfortunate that the legislature and Kasich have hurriedly cobbled together a bill that even as a referendum offers the citizens a Hobson’s choice. People yearn for reform so badly that in a sense, Mr. Hobson offered the citizens of Ohio the choice of taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all. I am voting NO on the referendum. Hopefully, the legislature and Mr. Kasich will get the message that “Haste makes Waste,” and that Ohioans will make them go back and craft a law that isn’t rife with too many items.
To me, SB5 is a quack prescription leaving the public service sector mixing medicines with known contraindications for each other. For instance, SB5 will institute a dubious merit pay tied to testing results, coupled with evaluations by parents and STUDENTS, along with evaluations by Administrators who are attempting to cut costs in a district trying to pass a levy all at a time when the same governor siphons off even more funding via granting “gift certificates” for charter schools. It hamstrings the teachers for having input about their jobs in districts that do not have evaluations of administrators by teachers. So, we ensure that the students be stamped with a barcode along with the teachers under surveillance to teach to a test geared to feed a RTTT database. Something is wrong here. SB5 is a bad mix of medicine. Don’t swallow the pill! The medicine is worse than the malady!
Be sure to bring YOUR tracking device—your Ohio’s Driver License—so that your vote can be counted. Here’s hoping you vote NO on the SB5 horse nearest the door. There are other horses in the stable of choices for meaningful reform.
Thanks for reading.