Pre-election speculation relating to Ohio Senate Bill 5 (Issue 2) has both sides jockeying for voter support. Building a Better Ohio, a group supporting the fiscally responsible bill, and We Are Ohio, the group opposing taxpayer protection reform, are both counting potential votes and spreading their respective messages across the Buckeye State. The more accurate information Ohio voters are exposed to, the more likely they become to cast a ballot in support of sustainable spending practices.
We Are Ohio is banking on all the folks who signed the petition to get Issue 2 on the ballot to show up to the polls and vote against a measure designed to protect both Ohio's economic recovery and job growth. While 1.3 million Ohioans signed the petition, only 915,000 signatures were validated.
The figure is still more than was needed to get the issue on the ballot but does not guarantee a majority of support. Public employees fearful of their livelihoods by inaccurate public union rhetoric were dogged in an attempt to garner signatures. It is more than plausible that residents felt pressure to sign the petition when presented with it publicly by their child's teacher or a firefighter or police officer which protects their community.
"It (We Are Ohio projections) assumes everyone who signed the petition understands the issue, when we know that's not true. I think you'll see a disconnect between people who signed their petitions and those who will cast a ballot," Building a Better Ohio representative Jason Mauk told the Columbus Dispatch.
As Building a Better Ohio changes the tone of the date by offering honest facts about the pending law, residents are relieved of the guilt, making a vote in support of the issue more likely. SB5 does not end collective bargaining rights but removes health care and pension contributions form the discussion.
Local school districts and agencies will have the authority to deny contracts which exceed the amount of feasibly collectable taxpayer dollars. President Barack Obama's educational stimulus spending was not a saving grace for Ohio educators, but a bandage placed upon a leaky artery. The thousands of jobs President Obama's stimulus tracker claims to have saved or created in Ohio do not jive with the massive layoffs school districts experienced at the end of the 2010-2011 academic year.
Ohio journalists and political activist groups are discussing how the number of voters who exercise their right to cast a ballot will actually go to the poll. Mathematical speculation based upon off-year election turnout in previous years and the number of signatures on the anti-fiscal responsibility petition to repeal SB5 will likely fill newspapers and television broadcasts for the next two months.
Quinnipiac University Polling Institute Assistant Director Peter Brown feels a two-thirds voter turnout would offer a healthy voter pool margin for pro-SB5 supporters. The fact that getting 60 percent of eligible voters to the polls is noted as a difficult task is a sad statistic.
A Quinnipiac poll on SB55 conducted in the spring shows just a slight majority (52 percent) oppose the bill. Individual polling questions show support for specific fiscally responsible measures in Senate Bill 5. A total of 59 percent of respondents favored requiring public employees to pay 15 percent health insurance costs. The proposed 10 percent increase in employee contributions to pension plans was supported by 58 percent of those polled. Replacing automatic pay raises with a merit based pay system was supported by 57 percent of Ohioans polled.
Regardless of We Are Ohio petition signatures, overall support for sustainable spending and reasonable reform is growing.
Tara Dodrill is a political, eco-green and travel writer. She is a real estate agent and former elected official, public school employee and coach from Ohio also works as a newspaper journalist, editor and photographer for magazines and online media outlets. Follow Tara on Twitter.
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