Athens NEWS General Election endorsement recap

This is a recap of The Athens NEWS' endorsements for the General Election on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Athens Mayor

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, higher education and business.

However, we believe that Morris' public criticism of Mayor Wiehl is off base. A mayor's top priority is to manage the city competently, and Wiehl has excelled in this area. Morris and his supporters haven't presented a case for why or how Morris would do any better. While his military service is impressive, that doesn't say much about whether he'd make a good city leader.

We think Paul Wiehl has managed the city well enough to warrant re-election.

Third Ward Athens City Council

In a race with two solid candidates, The Athens NEWS endorses Michele Papai for Third Ward Athens City Council member. As a citizen, she has been active in numerous community and neighborhood groups, and has done a good job on the city's zoning appeals board.

Papai, a Democrat, looks to be a strong replacement for longtime Third Ward council member Nancy Bain.

Papai's opponent, independent R.J. Sumney, is also an impressive candidate, with ample involvement in the community and current service on the Athens Planning Commission.

In a race with two strong candidates, Third Ward voters can't go wrong voting for either one, but we'll give the edge to Papai, based on her active neighborhood advocacy and her involvement with a variety of civil improvement efforts, including a successful anti-litter committee.

State Issue 2

We strongly urge our readers to vote no on Issue 2 in the November general election. This up-or-down vote on the union-busting Senate Bill 5 will go a long way toward determining whether Ohio's a state that truly cares about a large segment of its middle-class workers and families, or one that sacrifices them to red-state, anti-union ideology.

Issue 2/S.B. 5 goes much further than its supporters' public argument — that it simply provides long-needed, good-government, cost-saving reforms to labor-government relations in Ohio. Much more than that, it's a Trojan horse that will break the back of public-employee unions in Ohio, and in so doing, further cripple the Democratic Party's ability to compete with Republicans.

A yes vote on Issue 2 will allow S.B. 5 to go into effect, negatively impacting 180,000 schoolteachers, 123,000 school district workers, 30,000 police officers and firefighters, 57,000 state workers and more than 300,000 general government employees.

A no vote on Issue 2, however, will keep our state from turning these hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers into scapegoats for our state's persistently sluggish economy, or being forced to pay the price for the reckless tax cuts that legislative Republicans pushed through five years ago.

Perhaps the most insidious provision of S.B. 5 also happens to be the thing that betrays the virulently anti-labor and political motives of supporters. The bill would prohibit government worker donations from going directly to union political action committees, without the worker's approval, and would ban imposition of "fair-share" fees on non-union members.

The latter change, especially, would make it difficult for public employee unions to survive as effective institutions in Ohio.

These provisions put the lie to the Republican/Kasich argument that all they care about is reducing costs for local and state governments.

One can be alarmed about this legislation, even while agreeing that in some respects, public-sector unions have benefited from too many sweetheart deals at the expense of taxpayers.

But Gov. John Kasich and his legislative Republicans could have addressed those issues without striking directly at the heart of public-sector employees' ability to function as unions. S.B. 5 supporters' fundamental hostility to unions – especially those representing government workers — betrayed itself in any number of provisions whose main effect is to cripple the public-sector unions, and indirectly hurt the Democratic politicians who benefit from their largesse.

This is why S.B. 5 involves much more than the benefits and wages of your neighbor who works on the police department, teaches at the local school, or has a job with the city street department.

If you support mainstream and/or moderate positions on public and higher education, health care, environmental regulation, the economy, social issues, and any number of other areas, then you can't support a ballot issue that will enhance the power of an Ohio Republican Party that's increasingly controlled by its extremist fringe, and that currently is on the verge of further consolidating its power through the redistricting process.

If you think about politics in broad terms, with every policy debate a battle in a larger war, then you should think of Issue 2/S.B. 5 as Gettysburg. This is a battle that we can't afford to lose.

Vote a resounding no on state Issue 2.

State Issue 1

We urge a no vote on state Issue 1, the amendment to the Ohio Constitution that among other things would extend the maximum age that a person may be appointed or elected as judge from 70 to 75.

Extending the current age limit would mean that a person elected to a judgeship at the age of 74, for example, would be 80 by the time his or her six-year term expired.

While many individuals manage to retain mental sharpness well into their 70s and 80s, many are not. According to ScienceDaily.com, a science research site, one out of seven Americans over the age of 70 suffers from dementia.

It's nothing to be ashamed about; it's a fact of life, and many of us have beloved relatives and friends who acquired dementia as they aged. But just as nobody would want a heart surgeon who suffers from dementia, few of us would want to have our most serious life situations, whether criminal or civil, decided by someone with less than full mental functioning.

While voters can take care of this issue with most elected office-holders, we feel that judges — with their near absolute authority in the courtroom, and shielded by staff members who serve at their pleasure — are more likely to remain on the bench long after they've lost their effectiveness. Moreover, the person in the best place to gauge a judge's effectiveness — the judge him- or herself — likely loses that ability once the ravages of dementia start setting in.

Even with the 70-year limit for judges currently in effect in Ohio, retired judges are able to serve on assignment until they're 80. Presumably, if they've shown signs of losing their abilities and judgment, they won't be appointed on this basis.

Issue 1 has two other relatively minor components unrelated to the age issue that should be addressed separately.

Keep the integrity of Ohio's judiciary by voting no on Issue 1

State Issue 3

If citizens had the ability to exert extra emphasis when voting no on wrongheaded and dangerous ballot measures – for instance, lighting the ballot on fire or ripping it to shreds — Ohio Issue 3 would deserve such treatment.

Advanced by intractable foes of President Obama's health-care reform, Issue 3 would amend the state constitution to state that no law or rule can force anyone to obtain health insurance or otherwise participate in the health-care system.

The specific motivation behind Issue 3 it to defy federal health-care reform, specifically the individual mandate that requires nearly everyone to get health insurance, and larger employers to offer it to workers or get penalized.

This has become a bugaboo among Republicans and Tea Partiers, who basically assert that any federal government intervention advanced by Obama and the Democrats is unconstitutional. Never mind that ample precedent exists for the individual health-insurance mandate through Congress' constitutionally granted authority to regulate interstate commerce.

The fact is that unless this country wants to continue to let private insurers set the terms and costs of health-care, the only way to reduce costs while handling the issue humanely is to spread health-care costs among the widest population possible.

The fact that health care is unaffordable and unattainable for so many Americans is a huge problem facing our nation, and fundamental health-care reform is the only way to address it. It's difficult to imagine that our nation's founders intended the Constitution to hamstring our ability to solve huge nation-crippling problems like health care.

While these and other arguments are sufficient to blow Issue 3 out of the water, they're not even the best reasons for opposing it.

Notwithstanding the benefits of federal health-care reform, it's important to realize that Issue 3, if passed, would have no effect on so-called "Obama-care." In this country, a state law, whether in the form of a state constitutional amendment or not, cannot trump a federal law. Moreover, the legality of congressionally approved health-care reform will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, not by Tea Party-crazed state legislatures or voters.

Issue 3, in effect, is intended as a symbolic act of defiance against a serious and substantial effort to address a national crisis.

But it's not just symbolic, in that even though it wouldn't stop federal health-care reform, it would play hell with many aspects of health care in Ohio.

A study conducted by Maxwell Mehlman and Jessie Hill of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, on behalf of Innovation Ohio, a progressive think tank headquartered in Columbus, found that Issue 3 is "so sloppily and ambiguously worded that it would threaten a wide range of already-existing Ohio health programs, practices and policies enacted and supported by Republican and Democratic office-holders alike."

The report also found "that the multiple ambiguities contained in the amendment… would lead to such a 'litigation nightmare' that the proposed amendment might reasonably be subtitled 'The Lawyers' Full Employment Act of 2011.'"

Vote a resounding no on state Issue 3. As with state Issue 2, Issue 3 is a blatant example of ideological over-reaching and in no way promotes good government in our state.

Athens County Issues 15 and 16

We strongly recommend a yes vote for two countywide levies on the Nov. 8 ballot — one is Issue 16 for mental-health services, and the other is Issue 15 for senior citizen programs.

Issue 16 is a 10-year, one-mill replacement levy for the local 317 board, a community-based system of multiple entities working on alcohol, drug addiction and mental-health services.

Issue 15 is a five-year, .75-mill renewal proposed by the Athens County Commissioners to support local senior citizen services and facilities.

Both the mental-health and senior citizen programs offer essential services in our community. These tax replacements and renewals will allow them to continue operating. Vote yes for Issue 16 (mental health) and Issue 15 (seniors).