People Before Profit blog

Election reform measures defeated in Ohio

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 02:00:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — Ohio voters roundly defeated four proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot on Nov. 8. Simply stated, the amendments dealt with absentee voting (Issue 2), campaign finance laws (Issue 3), how election districts are drawn up (Issue 4) and how elections are run (Issue 5).

The proposed amendments were promoted by supporters as reforms that would make elections fairer and reduce the influence of both money and partisan politics in elections. Opponents argued that the amendments were full of loopholes, poorly written and would take away voters’ voice and the power of their vote. The amendments, as they appeared on the ballot were thousands of words in length. Some were extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the average voter to understand.

Millions of dollars were poured into the campaign to try to sway voters one way or the other. In the end, a confused electorate voted “no” to all four amendments.

The Ohio AFL-CIO came out early in favor of the amendments. In contrast, the head of the Democratic Party in Cuyahoga County, Jimmy Dimora, did extensive radio announcements and voicemail blasts opposing the measures. The Dimora messages were paid for by Ohio First, the main group opposing the amendments.

Ohio First is identified by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce as largely Republican partisans who came together to defeat the reform amendments. Ohio First’s chief spokesperson is Republican state Rep. Kevin DeWine. According to the Nov. 7 issue of The Nation magazine, Ohio First ran a big-budget campaign to defeat the reform amendments, with most of the money coming from sources outside Ohio.

There are many lessons to be learned from this recent battle for voters’ minds, and proponents who led the campaign will no doubt be analyzing the results for many months.

One lesson is that an electorate faced with too many choices, written in complex language, will tend to vote no.

A second lesson is that extensive, clear public education usually takes a long time. Many regular voters never heard of the amendments as late as the week of the election itself.

A third lesson is that disunity among groups is a prescription for defeat.

A fourth lesson is that when you want to undertake anything this massive, you need to bring all of the key players to the table from day one to discuss the plan and get buy-in. This was not done.

Apparently, the originators of the campaign drafted the language of the proposed amendments on their own and then presented this language to labor and others as a fait accompli and asked them to support it. This incorrect way of working, led by middle-class forces, played a role in limiting the involvement and buy-in of others.

Finally, some voters, while they support election reform, did not think the route for winning it lay in taking the very serious step of amending the state constitution rather than passing legislation.

It would be a mistake to conclude that Ohio voters do not care about election reform. They do, many passionately. This issue is not dead in Ohio and will no doubt be revisited in the future. Ohio is, after all, the state which turned the tide for Bush in 2004.

Ohio to allow state investments in private firms

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 01:47:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — Hold onto your hats! Ohio’s recently passed Issue 1 could mean a lot of different things. Only time will tell exactly what Ohio voters did on Nov. 8. But voters across the country would be well-advised to study these developments carefully, as similar proposals are bound to show up in other states in future elections. Try not to fall asleep as you need on, as the issues are a little complex.

In the Nov. 8 election Ohio voters passed the ballot initiative known as Issue 1, a constitutional amendment allowing the state of Ohio, its state universities and local governments to become shareholders in private companies and to share in any resulting financial gains. The amendment also allows the issuance of general obligation bonds to directly aid industry, up to $500 million over 10 years.

The amendment overrules prohibitions against the state government or any local government investing public money in private companies, a prohibition that has been in place in Ohio for over 150 years. The amendment makes “public purposes” out of local government public infrastructure, financial support for research and development and the development of sites and facilities in Ohio that support industry and commerce.

The amendment included support for Gov. Bob Taft’s “Third Frontier” program, which was defeated by voters in 2003. It is widely believed that the amendment passed this time because it coupled a bond program for meeting infrastructure needs with money that, supporters argued, will stimulate research and development. According to these supporters, this could mean the creation of up to 96,000 jobs, earning roughly $55,000 per year. Ohio has been ravaged over the last four years by the loss of at least 200,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs.

The amendment was supported by business, labor, politicians, and many other groups, and it passed with 63 percent in favor, 36 percent opposed.

In a cautionary note, Policy Matters Ohio, a nonpartisan think tank which took no position on the issue, warned that the state will be obligated to meet its payments to bondholders no matter what the financial state of the state. “The risk of general obligation debt is that debt service will crowd out discretionary programs in difficult financial times,” said the Policy Matters report. Interest payments would equal more than one out of every four dollars of debt service over the life of the program.

Concern about the new, close relationship between public and private funding was voiced by former Ohio state Rep. Bill Schuck. Shuck stated: “If some private companies in which the state and local governments invest grow and become profitable, public budgets will increasingly depend on direct corporate earnings rather than taxes. This is bound to change how government officials think and act.” Jon Honeck, author of the Policy Matters report, said, “A closer relationship between public and private interests in economic development policy will be the enduring legacy of the amendment.” The Ohio League of Women Voters supported Issue 1, with Linda Lalley, the group’s co-president, stating, “While we have lingering concerns about expanding ‘public purpose’ to include private-sector recipients, we are willing to risk it with this proposal to improve the economy.”

Schuck, in his analysis, asked: “If a government agency’s budget depends on corporate dividends, how willing will it be to impose environmental controls on, seek taxes from, or examine the labor practices of the company?” The examples one could cite are endless. “If,” he asks, “a local government invests in a local company, and the company’s stock ought to be sold or its management replaced, what will a county commissioner, township trustee, or mayor do when that action is opposed by managers who are community leaders or by a large number of employees who are voters?”

The president of Public Citizen, Joan Claybrook, was even more sharply critical, telling the Cincinnati Enquirer, “Government normally oversees and regulates industry. Here they’re integrated into one.” Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity told the same newspaper, “Government should not be in the business of picking stocks.”

According to the Ohio Committee on Corporations, Law and Democracy, the new amendment is very similar to a law passed in 1837, which allowed direct investment of public funds in private corporations. The state went into deep debt. The law was repealed in 1842, and a constitutional amendment was passed in 1851 prohibiting joint ownership or direct investment of public funds in private corporations. This constitutional prohibition has been in place ever since.

According to the Policy Matters Ohio report, “Whether the public sector uses its expanded authority successfully will depend on the vigilance of the Legislature and the appropriate state agencies in defining and tracking the public interest in economic development policy.”

Needless to say, public vigilance will be required to carefully watchdog and be ready to take action if the use of public monies turns out to primarily benefit private industry at the expense of the public good.

The new amendment also contains a requirement missing from the failed 2003 amendment that all of Ohio’s regions receive benefits, and that the state provide access to the program by economically and socially disadvantaged individuals and businesses.

Ed Roybal Presente

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:46:00 +0000

Ed Roybal, first 20th Century Mexican American elected to the Los Angeles City Council (1949-1963) and to the House of Representatives (1963-1992) was a progressive Latino politician long before there was something called a Chicano movement. His political contributions should be deeply studied by Latinos and progressives.

He was a New Deal Democrat with left of center politics all his life. He stood up against the loyalty oath of the McCarthy era, he was an early Congressional critic of the Vietnam War, and was a supporter of labor rights and put domestic need over militarism all his life.

He kept running for higher offices like Lt. Governor and County Supervisor and was a founder of the Mexican American Political Association well as the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. In his later years in Congress he held important committee appointments defending important programs against Reaganism.

The Los Angeles Times article says he voted against the Landmark Amnesty law, that is a distortion, he voted against the vicious employer sanctions provisions of the bill that also included the amnesty. Without the fight of Roybal in Congress against sanctions along with Latino, civil rights and progressive labor activists, the amnesty provisions would never have been written, much less passed. (Today we need to extend the “amnesty” and get rid of the employer and other sanctions.)

I remember the first mass Chicano demonstration I went to, it was in downtown LA in June of 1968 and was a protest of the conspiracy charge arrests of the LA 13, organizers and supporters of the student walkouts that year. I remember hesitating going fearing the police might attack, but hundreds and maybe thousands were there downtown including Roybal. A few weeks later I had the courage to help lead a protest to get UCLA cafeterias and vending machines to stop selling grapes during the farm worker called boycott. Having principled politicians around helps.

As an activist and also a writer for the Peoples World and Peoples Weekly World I had a chance to learn of and see Roybal in action at key points. At labor meetings I heard him speak how as a young child in New Mexico during a railroad strike he would join with the other “manito/a” children in throwing rocks at passing trains.

At a meeting with the establishment “LA 25” after the police attack on the Chicano Moratorium of Aug 29 1970 he told of how as a youth in Boyle Heights a siren would go off near sunset signaling a curfew for Mexicanos. At this critical time he told the LA establishment something like “police brutality was a top priority when I was first elected, and it is today as well”!. Just before the moratorium he had joined in a mass downtown demonstration protesting the police killing of the undocumented Sanchez cousins.

In the back issues of the Peoples World of the early fifties are articles about Roybal standing up to the loyalty oath, standing up against the elimination of rent control, protesting the Bloody Christmas police brutality, protesting the prohibitions on public housing projects, and much more. In one story, I believe it was on the abolition of rent control, Roybal was the lone “no” vote and his colleagues were mad. One of the council members came up with the canard that Roybal had threatened him with a knife”.

Yes like Rosa Parks, Ed Roybal was a pioneer who had to take heat. He was no radical, not a leftist but he came from the New Deal era, he was part of the CCC program that showed government could and should do much more for the working people. He benefited and joined in united front programs and issues and developed.

I remember an article critical of Roybal in La Raza Magazine that accused him of being an “arco iris” a rainbow politician who came out after the storm. Looking back on this I can see that article two ways, Roybal was a man of coalition who came out for well organized events and issues for progressive issues. As a left wing and communist activist there were many issues I worked on that Roybal did not speak out on, but I was always working in his district and never recall his “machine” trying to silence or punish me.

It is important to remember that in the 9th Council District where Roybal made his breakthrough in 1949 the largest voting group was African American and that his coalition went beyond Mexican Americans, Jewish and labor activists as is usually recounted. When Roybal finally moved on to Congress he did not insist that a Mexican American replace him as the biggest group in the district was African American. Roybal did however put energy and clout behind the formation of the Mexican American Political Association that fought for Mexican American (Chicano and Latino) representation as an independent progressive political group.

Ed Roybal went to UCLA in the thirties, a later alumnus, former L. A Controller Rick Tuttle tells me Roybal lived in student Coop housing there with Tom Bradley (later L.A. Mayor) and George Brown (a leading peace advocate in Congress). In the mid sixties Brown (who then represented part of East L.A.) was among the first two to vote against the Vietnam War, the next vote Roybal and a few others joined in. Roybal also was key in winning Latino Votes for Bradley’s successful mayoral campaign in 1973.

At one time I did organize a picket of Roybal. In a bill that added rights for immigrant workers he included provisions to use the Social Security card for I.D. purposes. A few of us in an immigration coalition protested. He responded with a meeting with us including broader forces. He also invited pioneer African American Congressman Augustus Hawkins to join in. In effect Roybal explained that immigration was one of the more racist federal departments and to get even small positive action took compromise, and that often usually perfunctory request for cooperation from him were ignored. Hawkins corroborated the discrimination. I still objected to the provision but recognized the context of his action.

Roybal was a very dignified person, “buen educado” (well educated)” socially as we say in the community, always impeccably dressed and very civil, his style helped win people over and when he showed emotion his emphasis stood out. I could see in his approach his background as a new deal social worker winning over a community theretofore denied and outcast to use new public programs. When he got into a fight his style became more that of an organizer in the style of Alinskyite Fred Ross who helped Royal in developing the Community Services Organization. Cesar Chavez, who also had Fred Ross as a mentor, had that seemingly low key approach as well.

Roybal had a sense of irony. In one of the Congressional sessions in the early eighties when House Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill was pushing hard for the passage of employer sanctions Roybal led a heroic successful blocking action with the passion of an organizer, despite the important committee assignments O’Neill had apportioned him. The next session Roybal put his name on a bill with moderate sanctions in it but did nothing to move it. It died early on and Roybal called press conference to point out that he had put out the bill at the request of “leadership” (ie Tip O’Neill, to make the point that it was community opposition not his personality that gave force to the anti sanctions. His sober demeanor at the CSPAN covered press conference was belied by a faint grin as he announced the defeat of the measure.

In these days when we face the vicious far right politics of Bush and Schwarzeneggar we need to keep in mind the correlation of the organization grassroots based coalition and the ability of progressive politicians to make principled stands. Ed Roybals career in politics is an important model of one style of such correlation. Latino and progressive activists and politicians have much to learn from his contributions.