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Republicans Change Voting Rules To Require Picture ID — LWV Warns Of Voter Disenfranchisement — Ohio Senate To Discuss HB159 Tomorrow

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Mike Bock

Interesting that Republican controlled state legislatures around the nation this year are pushing the same themes.

Nine Republican state legislatures have passed, or are considering passing, different versions of laws restricting collective bargaining for public workers.
Thirty states are in the process of make new requirements for potential voters to show a picture ID in order to be allowed to vote.

The League of Women Voters is opposed to Ohio’s HB-159, “The Fair and Secure Elections Act,” saying it is unnecessary and that HB159 will work to disenfranchise many eligible voters.

HB-159 was approved by the House on a 58-38 party line vote on March 23. It is now in the Ohio Senate and tomorrow, Wednesday, June 22, the Senate’s State & Local Government & Veterans Affairs Committee will hold hearings. Under the bill, only the following forms of ID will be accepted to vote: Ohio driver’s license, Ohio state ID, Military ID and US Passport.

HB159 would eliminate currently acceptable forms of ID, including out of state licenses, voter registrations cards, notices from the election authority, utility bills, bank statements or other government documents that can effectively verify identity. The League estimates that about 900,000 of Ohio’s 8 million registered voters lack a government issued photo ID to vote, and that racial minorities, the working poor, students, the elderly and people with disabilities are twice as likely to lack a photo ID.

A NYT editorial, “The Republican Threat to Voting,” states:

“Less than a year before the 2012 presidential voting begins, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young, the poor and African-Americans — groups that typically vote Democratic — to cast a ballot.

Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.”

Eight states already had photo ID laws. Now more than 30 other states are joining the bandwagon of disenfranchisement, as Republicans outdo each other to propose bills with new voting barriers. The Wisconsin bill refuses to recognize college photo ID cards, even if they are issued by a state university, thus cutting off many students at the University of Wisconsin and other campuses. The Texas bill, so vital that Gov. Rick Perry declared it emergency legislation, would also reject student IDs, but would allow anyone with a handgun license to vote.

A Florida bill would curtail early voting periods, which have proved popular and brought in new voters, and would limit address changes at the polls. “I’m going to call this bill for what it is, good-old-fashioned voter suppression,” Ben Wilcox of the League of Women Voters told The Florida Times-Union.

Many of these bills were inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-backed conservative group, which has circulated voter ID proposals in scores of state legislatures. The Supreme Court, unfortunately, has already upheld Indiana’s voter ID requirement, in a 2008 decision that helped unleash the stampede of new bills.”

Posted in Local/Metro | 10 Comments

Without Adequate Public Debate — Republican Assembly Rushes To Eliminate Ohio’s Long Standing Estate Tax

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Mike Bock

Ohio's estate tax applies to about 8% of Ohio's wealthiest families. Most family farms are exempted. (This chart is from the Policy Matters report cited below.)

Republicans in the Ohio Senate, by a strict party line vote, 23-10, have concurred with The Republicans in the Ohio House (House Bill 153) to eliminate Ohio’s estate tax, effective in 2013.

My search through Google this morning turned up some interesting information, but overall, my search revealed that there has been inadequate debate concerning this big change in long standing public policy in Ohio.

Both my representative to the Ohio House, Republican Jim Butler, and my Ohio State Senator, Republican Peggy Lehner, voted to repeal the estate tax, but I can find no record on Google where either have made any substantive statement explaining their positions on any of the Kasich agenda they have pushed through. It is astounding that the public tolerates such a lack of transparency from their elected officials.

Americans For Prosperity, a long-time proponent of eliminating this tax, boasts that this repeal was hastened by the intense activity of their members signing petitions and sending thousands of e-mails to Ohio Assembly members.

Here is some other information I found interesting:

Former State Rep. Seth Morgan, AFP State Director, condemned the tax as “immoral.”
Jim Butler, the Oakwood Republican appointed to represent the 37th District that includes Kettering, where I live, was quoted by the DDN as saying, “When we only tax one segment of population, it’s a tyranny.”
Charles Horn, former Kettering mayor, wrote a letter to the DDN in which he declared the estate tax a “clear detriment.” He said, “The tax encourages our most valuable citizens to establish residence in other states, taking their money — but more important, their knowledge, experience and business resources — with them.”
Columbus Mayor Mike Coleman was quoted in the Columbus Dispatch that eliminating the estate tax would benefit the wealthy at the expense of public services for the majority of state residents. “It’s immoral to cut taxes for the rich while cutting services to ordinary people,” Coleman said.

Ohio original estate tax dates back to 1893. Its repeal has been pushed by many conservative groups including the Ohio Christian Alliance who declared it “unjust.”

The estate tax applies to about 8% of Ohio’s estates and is both the lowest rate and applies at the lowest threshold of all states with estate taxes. About Ohio’s estate tax, Forbes reports,

“Estates with a net taxable value of $338,333 or less are effectively exempt from Ohio’s estate tax. A 6% tax rate is levied on estates with a net taxable value between $338,333 and $500,000. Estates with a net taxable value over $500,000 are subject to a 7% tax rate. According to the Ohio Department of Taxation, Ohio’s estate tax generated $333.8 million in fiscal year 2009—$64.4 million distributed to the state general revenue and $269.4 million to local governments (reflecting a state share of 20% and a local share of 80%)”.

Without income from the estate tax, many local communities will be forced to raise local taxes or lay off workers or reduce local services.

Tax justice writes: “In the end, state policymakers are simply passing the buck to local officials who will have to enact spending cuts or tax increases to make up for the lost revenue. Those measures will be probably be hugely regressive compared to the estate tax, which is among the most progressive taxes levied in Ohio.”

A editorial in the Toledo Blade says:

For reasons that have more to do with anti-tax political ideology than fiscal responsibility or economic efficiency, the Republican majorities in both houses of the General Assembly want to abolish the estate tax. That would compound the pain to local communities in the proposed state budget for the next two years, which also would chop the revenue-sharing Local Government Fund in half.

Adoption of both ill-considered proposals would make local property tax increases and layoffs of public employees nearly unavoidable. Even Gov. John Kasich, as red-hot a tax cutter as they come, kept the estate tax in his budget plan.

GOP lawmakers do not make a compelling case for giving a big, unnecessary tax break to a small number of the richest taxpayers in the state, at the expense of middle and low-income taxpayers and the communities where they live. Especially given the battered fiscal condition of local and state governments, there is no reason to scrap the estate tax.

Zach Schiller, writing for Policy Matters Ohio, explains, “WHY THE ESTATE TAX IS GOOD FOR OHIO“:

“The estate tax makes Ohio’s tax system fairer. Lower- and middle-income Ohioans pay a greater share of their income in state and local taxes than more affluent Ohioans do. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Ohioans in the top 1 percent of the income spectrum pay an average of 7.8 percent of their income in state and local taxes. By contrast, the fifth of Ohio families in the middle on average pay 11.0 percent.23 The estate tax is one of the few taxes partially offsetting a tax system that falls more heavily on less affluent families. Repeal of the Ohio estate tax would accentuate income inequality, greater now than at any time since the 1920s. This tax does not cut against hard work; on the contrary, it lies at the heart of our democracy and the idea that equal opportunity must be the foundation of economic success, not inheritance of wealth.”

Schiller quotes Bill Gates Sr., writing about the federal estate tax:

“A common, and misguided, criticism of the estate tax is that individuals who work hard and save their money should be entitled to pass on the fruits of that labor to their family. I am not against working hard, saving money, or taking care of your family.
“However we must acknowledge that the person who accumulates wealth in this country was not able to do that independently. The simple fact of living in America, a country with stable markets and unparalleled opportunity fueled in part by government investment in technology and research (something my family has plenty of firsthand experience of), provide an irreplaceable foundation for success and have created a society which makes it possible for some men, women and their children to live an elegant life.
“I attended the University of Washington under the G.I. Bill, and then became a lawyer enjoying a successful career that allowed me to provide well for my family so that they in turn were able to create their own wealth. So I believe that those of us who have benefited so greatly from our country’s investment in our lives should be asked to give a portion of our wealth back to invest in opportunities for the future.”

Posted in Special Reports | 6 Comments

Ohio’s System Of School Evaluation Will Become Part Of Debate To Repeal SB-5 — Has Collective Bargaining Hindered Educational Reform?

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Mike Bock

At Kettering’s Town Hall Meeting concerning Ohio’s SB-5 — the law constricting collective bargaining of public employees — I thought panelist Dave Parker, a union leader for Kettering firefighters, expressed the most compelling reason for repeal. As I report here,

“Parker indicated that with the expected reduction in pay and benefits from SB-5, many excellent Kettering firefighters will feel they have no choice but to leave the city’s force. He spoke of the positive effect collective bargaining has brought to firefighting, by giving firefighters a voice in their own work situation, and stressed that it is because of collective bargaining that the public enjoys a high standard of fire protection.”

Dave Parker, Kettering union leader

A reasonable public, I predict, overall will agree with Parker’s point of view and will see the benefit of collective bargaining for firemen and police. But, I’m betting this same public will question whether collective bargaining for teachers has been nearly so beneficial.

The public is painfully aware that the cost of education over the last 20 years has skyrocketed. The graph of the increase in per pupil cost shows a line with a much steeper escalation than the graph showing general inflation. And most of this increase has gone to increased pay and benefits for teachers and administrators. The problem is, this increase in expenditure has not paid off. We are far, far from enjoying an adequate system of public education, and it is reasonable to wonder if collective bargaining for teachers has helped. Have teachers’ unions obstructed needed educational reform?

Dave Parker sounds very convincing when he says that because of collective bargaining, the public enjoys a high standard of fire protection — because the public, in fact, does enjoy a high standard of fire protection.

A teachers’ union president would like to make the same case — that, thanks to the teachers’ union, the public enjoys a high standard of public education — but, unfortunately, reality is a slap in the face. The best a union president can say is something lame like, “Without collective bargaining, public education would be even worse than it is now.”

I can see how the SB-5 debate might call the entire system of school evaluation into question as the issue of “excellence” is raised, as some local groups will inevitably boast that because of the teachers’ union, their district is “excellent,” or “excellent with distinction” as deemed by state standards. But, what does it mean to be “excellent?” Ohio’s standards for judging school merit, in the big picture, are pretty trivial. Have teachers’ unions ever protested the fact that standards are too low? Teachers’ unions are mired in the status quo. One benefit of the effort to repeal SB-5 is that teachers’ unions may be forced to rethink their obligation to the long term well being of their members to make tough choices and to provide the leadership for the transformation of the system of public education that is so badly needed.