OLESLAGER "DEEP SIXES" ANTI-FRACKERS. BETTER HOPE THERE ARE NO FRACKING ACCIDENTS AFFECTING THE "DRINKABILITY" OF STARK CO. UNDERGROUND WATER SUPPLIES, NO?

 UPDATED AT 10:15 AM

Stark County has been in the economic dumper for a long time.

About the only exciting thing happening that suggests a local economic resurgence is the God-given blessing that Stark sits on top of what is called Utica shale deposits.

To get at the deposits in the most efficient, effective and productive way, the oil and gas industry came up with a new and improved method of what is called "fracking" back in 1998.

When Republican John Kasich took office in January, 2011 after having narrowly defeated Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland in the November, 2010 election, he jumped all over the potential economic benefits to Ohio to be gained from a dramatic increase in oil/gas exploration with the revelation that Ohio was within the  Marcellus and Utica oil and gas ladened shale deposits.

Stark County's elected officials were slower to jump on board.  But they have.  The SCPR (a top 10 list) ranks Stark's politicians in the following order in terms of their enthusiasm for fracking:

1. Democrat William J. Healy, II, mayor of Canton,
2. Republican Pat Fallot, mayor of Louisville,
3. Republican candidate for Stark County commissioner, Richard Regula (son of former 16th district congressman Ralph Regula),
4. Republican state Rep. Christina Hagan (the 50th), who as a 24 year old unelected (appointed) legislator has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry),
5. Republican state Senator Scott Oelslager (the 29th),
6. Republican state Rep. J. Kirk Schuring (the 51st, soon to be the 48th),
7. Democratic state Rep. Stephen Slesnick (the 52nd, soon to be the 49th).
8. Former Democratic mayor Francis H. Cicchinelli, Jr of Massillon,
9. Current Democratic Massillon Democratic mayor Kathy Catazaro-Perry, and
10. Democratic commissioner candidate Bill Smuckler.

 Moreover, the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce is "bananas" and "frothing at the mouth" about the prospects that fracking will solve everything economic that ails Stark County.

Notice the word "acquifer" in the graphic above.  Acquifer equals our drinking water. 

Well, that word is all one needs to focus upon to figure out that fracking was going to be a highly controversial procedure.

While being for fracking might well have good political spin-off for those who have lined up in support of the process, they had better pray each and every night that there is "no" fracking associated accident that pollutes Stark County's drinking water.

For  being on the Stark County Political Report's pro-fracking Top 10 List, in the event of a drinking water contamination, will not be a pretty sight to behold in terms of the political retribution that will take place.

The very first politician/governmental official to speak out against fracking was Plain Township trustee Louis Giavasis (here is a LINK to the SCPR's very first blog on fracking on 12/04/2010) who sponsored a two-part symposium emceed by Ron Ponder (Points to Ponder) of WHBC 1480 located in downtown Canton.

Giavasis stands in stark contrast (no pun intended) to his Plain Township cohort trustee Scott Haws, who, the SCPR perceives to be an ardent pro-fracker.

Giavasis has been joined by one of Stark's foremost opponent to fracking; namely,  Chris Borello who lives in Plain Township.

Chris is a long time civic activist in Stark County, having cut her teeth in civic involvement with her work to get a Superfund clean up of the Uniontown Industrial Excess Landfill located in Uniontown going back to the early 1980s.

In Giavasis' and Borello's work to curb (i.e. regulate) if not stop fracking, due to their multiple concerns that they and the group Stark County Concerned Citizens have about fracking, to wit:

• contamination of ground water (i.e. our drinking water),
• a degradation of air quality,
• gases and fracking chemicals finding their way to the surface through fracturing of the shale (also by triggering earthquakes),
• pollution of the under ground by the disposal of chemical wastes/by products in what are called "injection" wells, and
• surface contamination from spills from extracted oil products.

she has established allies across Ohio and, indeed, over the nation.

A major blow to the ability of the likes of Borello and Giavasis to put a damper on "the rush to frack" began back in 2004.

The Ohio General Assembly passed HB 278 (2004) and SB 165 (2010) which for all intents and purposes took local control of oil and gas regulation away from Ohio's counties, cities, villages, townships and boards of education.

For a comprehensive picture on the votes of members of the Stark County delegation to the Ohio General Assembly on HB 278 and SB 165 go to an October 7, 2011 SCPR blog (LINK).

Apparently, for some reason Borello and her allies thought state Senator Scott Oelslager would be open to their entreaty to work to strengthen regulation of fracking both at the state and local level.

The SCPR has learned that Borello (Stark County Concerned Citizens) ally Alison Auciello of the Columbus-based Food and Water Watch organization obtained a meeting with Oelslager on October 1st at his North Canton condominium.

She had with her four Oelslager constituents:  a film maker, a Vietnam veteran, a retired teacher and a MIT educated engineer.

Summing up her take on the hour long session, Auciello says:

".... throughout Sen. Oelslager was not open to hearing or lending any legitimacy to what we all see as valid concerns about the impact of fracking in his district" and "[my]y overall impression of him is that, at least at this point, he is not movable. He has fully ingested the oil-aid and has his mind closed to any other perspective."

 Hmm?

"[H]e is not movable," and "his mind [is] closed," and "he has fully ingested the oil aid."

Interesting, no?

More specifically, Auciello made the following points on Oelslager:

• Oelslager believes that we are entrenched in a fossil fuel economy and wouldn't hear that investment in fracking is standing directly in the way of a transition to renewable,
• He assumed we all knew that renewable energy would be inadequate anyway. He believes that fracking will be an economic windfall for Ohio and refused to hear that it would only be for the lucky few and the rest of us would be left with the cleanup bill,
• He was throwing out key phrases like "energy independence" and "investment in infrastructure" (which he somehow thinks will still be useful when the gas runs out).  
• He's also under the impression that Kasich solved the earthquake problem.  
• We made it clear to him that we'd like to see his support of moratorium legislation in the beginning and he tried to lay a "ground rule" that there will be no moratorium. He wanted us to give suggestions on improvements to regulations.
• We pointed out that regulations haven't been effectively enforced, and they can't make the process safe to begin with, but all he was doing the whole time was waiting to pounce on any point he had the counterpoint to go along with.
• One thing that I thought was really telling about his position is his reaction to the local control issue. He said that if it were up to local municipalities, we'd have no "progress", so what he is essentially saying is that he knows local communities don't want fracking, and that's why the state needs to decide- so we can do it anyway.

Chris Borello may be even tougher on Oelslager, to wit:

• Love Scotty's response on "local control'....Wow.  Incredible...   More blatant hypocrisy. on supposed "core beliefs, eh? 
• We can never forget how Ralph Regula indeed, deferred to "local control" - the Lake Twp. Trustees, on IEL's Plutonium issue!
•  Regula indeed, deferred to "local control" - the Lake Twp. Trustees, on IEL's Plutonium issue!  We have the letter he sent to CCLT [Concerned Citizens of Lake Township] to prove it.
• We believe Scott Oelslager, Kirk Schuring and other reps. agreed with the Congressman's position on this...I think Sen. Voinovich's staffer told us it was called being  "Federalist".  ... .
• Frankly, I am quite sure there are still many residents in our area who would like to ask Scott, Kirk Schuring, Christina Hagan, and especially our former Congressman, Ralph Regula,  about this extremely serious double standard regarding local control, the Plutonium and IEL, and now, fracking..... .
• The newspapers have a copy of that letter from Regula to CCLT re.  how local officials are the most appropriate officials to make such determinations.... We gave it to papers two years ago, when we first learned about HB. 278 stripping our rights away! 

It appears to the SCPR that the die is cast on fracking in Stark County.

There is no doubt that it has the enthusiastic support of most Stark County's elected officials, led by the SCPR's Top Ten List.

Stark County's everdays are much more circumspect about the issue of fracking than are many of if not most of Stark's elected officials.

Let us "hope and pray" that these officials have made the right call.

For if they have not and the drinking water supply gets contaminated, we all will regret that fracking was ever engaged.

And, we will be likely looking at a long list of ex-Stark County elected officials!

"DEJA-VU ALL OVER AGAIN!" SCHURING MAKES REPOSITORY DE FACTO CAMPAIGN PRESS AGENT. THE MARKS OF AN AWARD WINNING NEWSPAPER?

One of the things that political candidates try to do is to make the media (newspapers, television outlets and the like) unwitting (?) allies in the candidates try for office.

Within political campaigns, the manipulation of the press is called "earned media."

For incumbents, the task of using the media is simplified because they have the ability to orchestrate seeming "news events" to finesse a non-discerning news outlets into providing coverage that is not earned but rather is contrived.

Democratic Canton Mayor William J. Healy, II is the grandmaster of doing such and during his recent campaign against Republican A.R. Conde played the folks at The Repository (Stark County's only countywide newspaper) "like a fiddle" on this score.

A close second is Republican state representative Kirk Schuring (R - Jackson, the 51st running for the newly configured 49th House District).

Next is state Senator Scott Oelslager (R - Plain, the 29th Senate District) and quickly learning the technique is state Rep. Christina Hagan (R - Marlboro; the 50th House District).

The inability of the folks at The Rep to discriminate between "real" news and "press release - get me elected - re-elected" concocted news gives incumbents an unfair advantage over their challenger opponents.

Yours truly remembers vividly the campaign between Schuring and Democrat Jan Schwartz in 2002 for the 29th Ohio Senate District.

Remember that Schuring and Oelslager have this "tag-team" thing going in which they exchange the Ohio House and Senate seats when each is respectively term limited out of their existing elected position.  It is kind of an musical chairs exercise with the exception that in the Schuring/Oelslager version each ends up with a seat; just a different seat.

Back in 2002, it was interesting.  During the run up to the May, 2002 primary candidate Jan Schwartz got lots of Repository ink.  Probably as much as Schuring.

However, once the general election season took hold the ink dried up for Schwartz, but the spigots at The Repository remained full throttle for Schuring and it was hard to know (from reading The Rep) who his opponent was.

So it was no surprise that Schuring trounced Schwartz in 2002.  Schuring was likely going to win anyway, but once he was able to co-opt the presses at The Repository, then Schwartz had no chance whatsoever.

It is well established, in the SCPR's view of things, that the Schuring technique is an ensconced a la Yogi Berra "deja vu all over again" pattern that is unbecoming of a news outlet of the supposed sophistication of The Repository.

One can't blame the politicians for trying.  But who is the discerner-in-chief at 500 Market Avenue South?

Apparently, nobody!

Of late, there have been a spate of articles picking up on Christiana Hagan's legislative efforts in the Ohio House in anticipation of her seeking election for the first time  (November 6th) against Democrat Sue Ryan (a Alliance City Council councilwoman-at-large).

Obviously, she has picked up on the well-honed Schuring practice.

Yours truly has wondered as to the timing that we would be subjected to a Schuring-himself plying The Repository exercise?

Well, pretty much "like clockwork" Schuring surfaced this past weekend, to wit:  Boards and Ballots: Schuring introduces 10th bill, May 5th, Robert Wang.

What's interesting about Wang's piece that he does not mention once that Schuring has an opponent (Democrat Amanda Trump).   Of course, voters wouldn't want her reaction to Schuring's legislative record?

It was nice to see that a commenter (going under the Internet name "slimjim" took a critical look at the significance of Schuring's legislative record, in part, to wit:

And like most legislators, Mr. Schuring considers himself successful when Obie gets a license plate, or another blank can be added on the tax return (like we can't give to a cancer fund ourselves - we need the government's help).  ...  These examples of law changes that apply to an ever decreasing number of constituents are what passes for legislation these days.

The heavy lifting is left to others - or simply ignored for another year - or ten.

Here, here! (reference:  "The heavy lifting is left to other - or simply ignored for another year - or ten.")

The SCPR has done quite a lot of work going through the campaign finance reports - "Follow the Money" - of local (village, city, township and board of education) candidates.  One of the differentiating factors between locals and statewide (state reps, state senators, governor, et cetera) on reports is that locals do not have to indicate the vocation/organization that of contributors in excess of $100 as do the statewides.

The Report asked Schuring in 2009 as 29th District state senator (which includes Lake Township, home of  the SCPR) to match up the local requirement with that of state candidates.

Surprise, surprise! He responded in introducing SB 191 to require that local candidate campaign contributions over $100 identify donor's employer/vocation on the campaign finance report.

For a while anyway.

For once he got some opposition, he faded fast.

And definitely was nowhere-to-be-seen on SB 191 when, with the election of November, 2010, he "musical chaired" back into the 51st House District which yours truly is not a constituent of.

Apparently, he is not willing to fight for facilitating Stark County citizens having the right to know who the $100 and up contributors to the likes of Mayor Healy are and what interest groups they may be tied to.

For all of The Repository's picking up on self-serving press release material put out by candidates, it is interesting how the staff misses things like SB 191.

Interesting in light of the newspaper's annual hullabaloo about "Sunshine Week."

"Sunshine Week is defined, in part, by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) a being:

...  a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information,

Just how committed are "the powers that be" at The Rep. to the free flow of information in that it could not see fit to holding Schuring feet to the fire on SB 191.  The bill died with the expiration of the 128th Ohio General Assembly on December 31, 2010.

Nor has The Repository followed through on Schuring's promise to get results for Stark County officials on eliminating a specific list of  burdensome "unfunded mandates" that needed to be eliminated by the Legislature.  (See LINK to prior blog on the meeting).

Commissioners had called him and other area legislators (only Christina Hagan failed to show)  to a April 22, 2011 meeting with Stark County officials specifically to discuss the "unfunded mandate" problem.

A last report, Schuring has only gotten action on a item or two on a laundry list of items submitted by a task force of county officials headed by Stark County Court of Common Pleas Judge Taryn Heath.

Now that the county sales tax has passed, the "unfunded mandate list" is no longer important to The bigs at The Rep, the county commissioners and other county officials?

Hmm?

And, of course, we all remember the political ploy by Schuring on contemplating a run for congressional seat of then-retiring Congressman Ralph Regula (the 16th) against Democrat John Boccieri.

Ploy? (See this LINK to prior blog)

Yes.

He made a big to-do about pushing the Ohio General Assembly to solve the Ohio Supreme Court ruling (DeRolfe - four times over) by placing a amendment to the Ohio Constitution on the ballot.

Once the election came and went with Schuring losing.
Not a word from him about about keeping up the fight to solve the persisting public school funding problem.

But he can write a press release about 10 bills of questionable significance to the well being of Stark Countians/Ohians and have it picked up by The Rep without any questions being asked about his past legislative failures.

Hmm?

And The Repository is an award winning newspaper?

Standards sure are slipping these days, aren't they?

GOP STATE SENATOR SCOTT OELSLAGER "SKEPTICAL" OF KASICH NEW FOUND BIPARTISANSHIP?

One expects Ohio's Democratic Minority Leader Armond Budish to say:  "He (Republican Governor John Kasich)  asks us to put aside partisanship and yet he rams through the most extreme radical agenda in quite a long time."

One does not expect a Republican  lawmaker to say:  “... the proof will be in the pudding. The next 12 months will he be reaching out to try to bridge that gap? There were gaps the first year of the session. There was no question about that. ... we’ll just wait to see and give him the benefit of the doubt.”  (Stark area legislators react to State of State address, Robert Wang, The Repository, February 7, 2012).

That is unless the lawmaker is not a consummate Republican politician.

Although state Senator Scott W. Oelslager (the 29th - Stark County) certainly qualifies as a loyal Republican, he has proved periodically over his more than 20 years in the Ohio legislature that he will take on "over-the-top" partisan political positions.

Oelslager did exactly that when he voted no on the Kasich administration overreach in presenting Senate Bill No. 5 (SB 5) as its marque piece of legislation designed to gut Ohio's police, fire, educator and other public worker unions in order to weaken the unions' ability to support Democratic candidates.

Kasich et al tried to convince the Ohio public that SB 5 was for the public good.  But the Ohio electorate wasn't buying.

Ohioans saw that the real underlying motivation of Kasich was partisan politics and was having none of it.

Ditto for Scott Oelslager.

While his Stark County delegation Republican colleagues were voting for SB 5, Oelslager was voting no.

It is apparently dawning on Governor Kasich that there is no way he and the Republican dominated state government is going to be able to pull Ohio out of the economic dumping grounds of America without all out "across-the-political-isle" support.

But as Senator Oelslager's skepticism highlights:

"the proof will be in the pudding ... ."