Mayor Wiehl has led the city ably; he deserves re-election

We support the re-election of Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl. While he can't cite a great deal of solid accomplishments during his first term, he has led the city ably, and has surrounded himself with a competent staff.

Wiehl also has – up to now, anyway – steered the city through the Great Recession nearly painlessly, though granted, Athens, being a college town, is insulated more than most cities from the ravages of persistent economic malaise.

Mayor Wiehl's opponent, Republican Randy Morris, is a hard-working and community-minded citizen with impressive credentials in the military (he's retired from the Air Force), higher education (professor of aerospace studies at OU and the University of California, Berkeley), and business (he currently serves as director of membership for the Athens-based National Business Incubation Association).

Morris is also active in the Athens County Republican Party.

We believe that Morris' public criticism of Mayor Wiehl is mainly off-base, however.

In general, Morris has suggested that Wiehl's a do-nothing mayor who does not provide strong leadership. Morris contrasts this with his own leadership experience in the Air Force and elsewhere.

Morris also suggests that Wiehl represents a constituency in Athens who are content to take a passive approach when it comes to jobs and economic development, and who reinforce the long-held idea that Athens is anti-business.

This would probably come as a surprise to the many city residents involved in entrepreneurial pursuits in and around Athens. Our community is considered a center for sustainable economic development and agriculture in southeast Ohio, and is also home to a wealth of business incubation and development resources, some connected to OU and some not.

In addition, during Wiehl's time as mayor, the business-industrial park out on the East State Street has filled up with tenants (and jobs). One would be hard pressed to give Wiehl special credit for any of these things. Yet, it's not accurate (or fair) to suggest that our city has somehow missed the boat on economic development under Wiehl.

The candidates also differ when it comes to the controversial S.B. 5, the Republicans' collective-bargaining reform bill that will go to the voters as Issue 2 in November.

Like the rest of his party, Morris supports S.B. 5, arguing that it provides municipalities like Athens with a way to save money on personnel costs. He acknowledges that the legislation has problems, and says those can be addressed later.

It's not clear what problems he's talking about, but the fact is that S.B. not only will substantially scale back the benefits and bargaining power of public-sector unions but also will make it very difficult for public-employee unions to survive with any power or leverage.

This plays directly into the hands of the Republican power structure in Ohio, who apparently were motivated to support S.B. 5 as much by its union-busting provisions as by a sincere desire to save money for local and state government.

Mayor Wiehl has argued that unionized city workers provide a number of essential services, and do so selflessly. S.B. 5 would penalize these people whom Athens residents depend upon for police and fire protection, and street and water repairs, among other important services. The city and its unions work cooperatively for the most part, and it's difficult to see how injecting punitive measures into the equation is going to help city operations.

When Wiehl first became mayor, we did express concerns that he would needlessly perpetuate friction between town and gown. He had been a chronic critic of OU, even while working there himself. While we still don't understand why the city continues to needlessly block OU's desire to open a needed access lane between OU's Baker Center and Richland Avenue, in other areas, the city and university appear to be working together.

For instance, in early October, Mayor Wiehl and OU President Roderick McDavis appointed members to a work group that will develop a memorandum of understanding to formalize several cooperative initiatives between the city and the university. They basically want to have a formal process to work together in areas that can be mutually beneficial to town and gown.

For all these reasons, we don't see a need to change horses in the Athens mayor's office at this time. While we would like to see Mayor Wiehl move more aggressively on improvements in parks and recreation, for instance, we think he has managed the city well enough to warrant re-election. Vote for Paul Wiehl for mayor of Athens.