Anyone remotely connected to political reality should have known that there is no way newly appointed Ohio House representative Christina Hagan (Republican - Marlboro - the 50th) was going to buck Ohio Speaker of the House Billy Batchelder and vote no on a bill of the importance of Senate Bill 5 which severely curtailed the collective bargaining rights of Ohio's public workers.
Though he is not a new representative - hardly - ditto for Kirk Schuring (Republican - Jackson - the 51st).
And even when there is no party factor present, Schuring often feigns doing this thing or that thing knowing full well it is an exercise in futility. A prime example is his offering of a constitutional amendment to cure the school funding problem as he was gearing up to run against John Boccieri for Congress. It was all a political sham. He knew the bill was going nowhere, but he cruelly raised the hope of Stark Countians that he may actually be going to show leadership in getting something "substantive" done legislatively. Something he has failed to do over his many years in the Ohio General Assembly.
By playing a modified musical chairs game with fellow Republican Scott Oelslager (Republican - 29th Senate District - for the second time; notwithstanding term limits) in which they each get a seat, just a different seat, Schuring and Oelslager have been in the Ohio General Assembly upwards of 50 years with very little to show for it. If readers haven't checked lately, Ohio and Stark County are continuing their slide downward.
The SCPR is not convinced that Scott Oelslger would have bucked his partisan leadership had his vote been the one to sink SB 5. Because of the district he represents, the Republican leadership appears to have arranged for a "pass" to Oelslager on this particular piece of legislation. At the very least though, Oelslager deserves credit for mulling the matter over.
Obviously, Democrats Mark Okey (Ohio House - 61st), Steven Slesnick (52nd) and Senator Joe Schiavoni (33rd Senate District) in voting no were also following party marching orders and there was virtually no chance they would vote yes on the bill. However, in their pre-vote pronouncements they made no bones about what their votes would be.
For Hagan and Schuring to suggest (reference: With final vote looming, four Stark lawmakers oppose SB 5, 03/29/2011, Robert Wang) that they were having a difficult time determining how they were going to vote on SB 5 was disingenuous at the very least or, outright deceitful; if one wants to think the worse of them.
Such is not helpful to their personal political credibility.
The problem is they used reconciliation(as a Schuring told me it is concurrence-there is a difference-though you are just accepting House changes without a conference committee-It is reconciliation). There were things the Senate did not even put into their bill(30% vote to decertify a union-what happened to majority rules?) Yet they approved anything so their re-election bid would not be on the same ballot as Obama, Brown and SB5.
ReplyDeleteChristina Hagans remarks that the bill has blemishes that need resolved, but she still voted yes. This is what is wrong in Columbus and Washington. Why did she demand it go into Conference Committee and fix. Why, because as you said she was not going to buck the establishment.
Until we have people willing to do so, we will never rescue ourselves!