(VIDEOS) WILL HEALY BE A DIFFERENCE MAKER AS OHIO MUNICIPAL LEAGUE PRESIDENT?

 VIDEOS

CANTON COUNCIL PRESIDENT

ALLEN SCHULMAN

CHARGES
OHIO GENERAL ASSEMBLY

WITH

"SCREW" URBAN AREAS

BIAS

********************************

IDENTIFIES

MAYOR HEALY

AS

NEXT

OHIO MUNICIPAL LEAGUE PRESIDENT

============================

HEALY

ON

URBAN ISSUES

AND

THE OHIO GENERAL ASSEMBLY 

At the November 18, 2013 Canton City Council meeting, council president Allen Schulman announced that Canton mayor William J. Healy, II is to be president of the Ohio Municipal League (OML) come January 1st.

As the SCPR sees it, becoming OML president presents an opportunity for Healy to rescue his floundering political career.

He started off on January 1, 2008 with a splash having defeated Republican Janet Creighton (now a Stark County commissioner) in her bid for reelection in November, 2007.

On graduating from the New York University Stern School of Business with an MBA, and - according to him - being a highly successful business entrepreneur, he says he felt compelled to come back to his hometown of Canton and rescue the city from the economic doldrums.

He likes to point to the leadership deficiencies of his immediate predecessors, mostly Republicans, as being the reason for the decline of Canton.

One of his very first ventures as mayor was his attempt to form a Stark County Mayors' Association with himself at the helm.

Six months later it was kaput!

From then on, it has been largely hard times for Healy.

The SCPR believes that many if not most of his problems have been self-inflicted.

That Canton has continued to slide even with his being mayor, Healy likes to blame the nationwide economic downturn due to the 2008 national financing industry crisis.

Beyond the national thing, he blames the state of Ohio and its gutting local government funding beginning with the Republican governor John Kasich administration elected in November, 2010.

And there is something to these claims.

But from the beginning of his reign, he has been impossible to work for because of his out-of-control ego.

In January, 2009 he fired his service director and chief of staff and fellow Democrat Tom Bernabei (now, also with Creighton, a Stark County commissioner).

Bernabei was a former long time Canton law director who performed very well as director.  Moreover, he moved on from Canton government to provide splendid leadership with the SARTA (Stark County's regional transit authority) before becoming commissioner in 2010.

As commissioners, Creighton and Bernabei, are light years ahead of Healy in effectiveness.

Since Bernabei's firing, just about every key Healy administration official (at least those with any backbone) have left.

Recently (July, 2015), Warren Price, who served four tortured years with Healy in varying capacities (service director, chief of staff, safety director and annexation director)  gave up the ghost and left.

And there there have been other "key" administration officials who have left.

Healy refuses to square up with his own deficiencies and his mammoth ego.

Here he is on the 18th going after the Ohio General Assembly.



Again, there is something to Healy's complaint about the anti-urban bias of the Ohio General Assembly.

Despite the troubles that William J. Healy, II has had as mayor (i.e. the 2008 federal thing, the 2010 state of Ohio thing, and the current Ohio General Assembly thing), the SCPR believes that the main problem in getting Canton turned around is the mayor himself and his inability to keep quite able people in his administration.

While Healy is "on a high" about becoming the OML president, the SCPR thinks he will not be able to be a difference maker for Ohio's urban areas much in the same fashion that he has not delivered for Canton.

The SCPR thinks he has been a "smoke and mirrors" mayor and he will prove to be the same as president of the OML.

Healy is long on style and politics but consistently comes up short on substance.