I was surprised to see that voters in Centerville  defeated Centerville’s 5.9 mill school levy —  17,177 voters, 52%, said, “No.” For Centerville to defeat a school levy is surprising.

Active local opposition to school levies is always bad news for schools seeking to increase school taxes.  Looking around the web, I found a web-site that was in active opposition to the levy.

The message from the web-site is that much of the income from the proposed level would go to Centerville’s teachers and administrators, and that teachers and administrators already are making plenty.  The web-site lists the salaries of teachers and administrators in various income categories.

The web-site says, “Vote YES if you want school employees who work 180 days a year, and have their health and dental bills paid and make more than you do to get another raise and unlike you can’t be laid off or let go.”

The web-site said, “One of the reasons that are school costs are so high are salaries paid to employees. Now everyone understands that teachers should be paid a reasonable amount. But we need to keep in mind that teachers work 180 days per year while you, the tax payer, works 270 days per year. Oh and by the way a teacher can’t be fired after three (3) years without cause unlike you. You can be let go at your employers will at any time. There are 136 teachers and others paid over $70,000.00 per year. How Much are you Paid?”

It would be impossible to know what effect this opposition group had on defeating the levy.  I wondering if a bigger factor in the defeat of the levy was skepticism from a lot of Centerville voters as to whether a new levy was actually needed.  If I’m reading the Centerville’s Treasurer’s Report accurately, it seems that the School Treasurer, regardless of the failure of the levy, is projecting a cash balance of over $8 million for July, 2009.

According to the District’s web-site, regardless of the outcome of the levy, teacher salaries are determined through 2011 by a contract already negotiated.  The current contract increased base salaries by 4.0% for 2007-2008; 2.0% for 2008-2009; 2.5% for 2009-2010; and 3.0% for 2010-2011.

Centerville is a top rated school in Ohio.  Centerville Superintendent, Gary Smiga, in the fall’s school newsletter wrote, “On Tuesday, August 26, the Ohio Department of Education announced their ‘School Report Card’ results for the 2007-08 school year. We learned for the 10th consecutive year the Centerville City Schools would again receive Ohio’s highest rating. Since the inception of this state report card only 13 of 614 Ohio public school districts can make this claim and we are in very good company with districts like Brecksville, Granville, Mason, Oakwood, Solon, and Wyoming.”

In Montgomery County, once again gerrymandering trumps democracy. In this election, Democratic candidates for the county’s five Ohio House seats cumulatively beat their Republican opponents by over 1500 votes. But, regardless that the Democrats got more votes, Democrats didn’t even come close to winning a majority of county House seats. Democrats won two of the five contests. And Republicans easily won the other three.

Thanks to the reapportionment of 2001, all five Ohio House Districts in Montgomery County are “safe” seats — Democrats always win the 39th and 40th House Districts by large margins, while Republicans always win the 36th, 37th, and 38th Districts by large margins.

The fact that all five Ohio House Districts in Montgomery County are “safe,” is an insult to our democracy. Compounding this insult to democracy is the fact that local political parties use gerrymandered districts to leverage their own power. Local political leaders shamelessly suppress primary competition in these “safe” districts, in order to reward party regulars who have “paid their dues.” This practice of local Republicans and Democrats to deliberately suppress primary competition, I believe, should infuriate any voter who is paying attention. (I wrote the following articles last year about the local primary races. See: The Montgomery Democrats Decide to Suppress Democracy — Just Like the Republicans And also see:  How Gerrymandering Defeated An Outstanding Candidate And Sent a Weak Candidate To Columbus.)

Here is this year’s results for Montgomery County’s Five Ohio House Districts:

• 36th Charles Morton (D) 21488 40% Seth A. Morgan (R) 31944 60%
• 37th Andi Eveslage (D) 17955 35% Peggy Lehner (R) 33526 65%
• 38th Susan W. Lienesch (D) 21417 39% Terry Blair (R) 33340 61%
• 39th Clayton Luckie (D) 27029 81% Joshua S. Smith (R) 6523 19%
• 40th Roland Winburn (D) 31570 72% Ann E. Siefker (R) 12494 28%

Totals
119,459 (D) 50.3%
117,827 (R) 49.7%

In 2005 Ohio voters had a chance to vote for “Issue 4” and to reform Ohio’s gerrymandering procedures. A group called “Reform Ohio Now” poured a lot of money into advertising, promoting this issue. But anti-reform groups, including the Republican Party, also spent a ton of money in advertising, degrading the issue.  When the votes were counted, amazingly, all 88 of Ohio’s counties voted against the issue, many by huge margins.

One part of Issue 4 that was hotly opposed was the provision that reapportionment would happen immediately, in time for the 2008 election. Had Issue 4 passed, no doubt, in this 2008 election, Montgomery County would have sent more Democrats than Republicans to the State House.

In 2006, after the defeat of Issue 4, Republicans in the State Assembly proposed their own legislation to change the reapportioning procedure. Only one Democrat in the State Assembly — Dixie Allen of Dayton — eventually supported the Republican proposal. All other State Assembly Democrats opposed the idea.

According to a May, 2006 article in The Columbus Dispatch, Republicans Kevin DeWine and John Husted were attempting to advance a good proposal, but were shot down by Democrats. The newspaper said, “Groups such as Ohio Citizen Action and the League of Women Voters of Ohio have given high marks to the Republican-crafted measure, though they wanted to fix some details. Top officials with Reform Ohio Now, a Democratic-leaning coalition that unsuccessfully pushed for redistricting reform last year, also favored it.”

The paper said, “It (The Republican Plan) called for the creation of a seven-member, bipartisan panel to draw state and federal lines. Currently, the legislature draws the congressional maps, and the State Apportionment Board, consisting of the governor, auditor, secretary of state and two lawmakers, draws state legislative lines.”

Under current law, the five member State Apportionment Board has one Republican and one Democrat from the State Assembly. So the statewide election in 2010 of the governor, auditor, and secretary of state, will determine which party has the upper hand in the reapportionment that will follow the 2010 census.