Dimora gets to stay on the job until year’s end

I’m trying to imagine the look on Tim Hagan’s face if Jimmy Dimora shows up for the commissioners’ meeting tomorrow. Head in hands? Disgusted grimace?

Yes, Dimora gets to stay on the job, as long as he abstains from voting on vast amounts of county business. Here’s the list of stuff Magistrate Judge Nancy Vecchiarelli barred him from deciding, courtesy of cleveland.com:

any issue involving: personnel; private contractors referenced in his indictment; the county's juvenile justice center; the county engineer's office; companies providing halfway house services; funding for the county courts; unions or union members; and matters related [to] Parma, Lakewood, Bedford, Solon and Berea. …

Oh, is that all?

In the brilliant system of county government we’re stuck with for 100 more excruciating days, there’s no real way to keep Dimora from showing up and collecting a paycheck. We can’t recall him, and it’d take 68,000 signatures just to start a separate misconduct trial in county court. He’d lose his job if convicted of a felony, but no way will he go on trial before the new year. Gov. Strickland could remove him for “official misconduct,” but given how the governor deferred to investigators in the McFaul scandal, he probably won’t.

For those of you waiting for Dimora to resign in shame, dream on. His paycheck is more valuable to him than ever. White-collar defense lawyers don’t come cheap!

Update, 9/23: Looks like Dimora can only vote on about half of the county's business. He showed up at today's meeting, voted on 14 items, and abstained from 14.

"It is terribly awkward," Hagan told reporters afterward, according to cleveland.com. "It's even hard to be civil. ... Who would like to sit next to someone who diminished the office where I've served for 22 years?"

Me on WCPN tomorrow: Mason, Power 100, and more

I'll be on 90.3 WCPN's Reporter's Roundtable tomorrow morning with host Dan Moulthrop, Plain Dealer reporter Mark Puente, and Joe Ingles of the Ohio Public Radio statehouse news bureau.

We'll be talking about Bill Mason, the Inside Business Power 100, Gov. Ted Strickland and challenger John Kasich choosing their running mates, and other stuff. The show starts about 9:06 a.m. and goes to 10.

Strickland, Senate Republicans reach budget deal

Gov. Ted Strickland just announced a budget deal that protects schools, libraries and social services from cuts to fill an $851 million funding gap. Sounds like the legislature gets to go home for the holidays after all. Strickland had threatened to call them back into session on Christmas Day if necessary to get a deal on the 2010 budget.

Instead, as state Democrats hoped, a planned cut in the income tax will be delayed.

The few Senate Republicans who were willing to hold off on the tax cut wanted, in exchange, to reform the state's century-old construction laws. Democrats were loath to do that. In a compromise, a pilot project to test construction reforms will allow three public universities to build projects under new rules.

The $851 million budget hole has needed filling since the state Supreme Court struck down the governor's plan for slot machines. This week, Senate Republicans pushed Strickland to make the cuts in the non-education parts of the state budget. Strickland refused, saying those other parts of the budget, such as social services, had already been slashed this summer. He claimed he'd have no choice but to cut education if the tax cut wasn't suspended.

For more background, here's the Columbus Dispatch's story from overnight, which anticipated the deal.

Here's the press release:
==
Strickland Statement on Bipartisan
Education Budget Compromise

Columbus, OH – Ohio Governor Ted Strickland today issued the following statement after achieving a bipartisan agreement on H.B. 318 with House Speaker Armond Budish, Senate President Bill Harris and Senate Minority Leader Capri Cafaro:

“Across the country, some states have chosen to slash education budgets in an attempt to make it through the recession. Here in Ohio, investing in education is the cornerstone of our plan to rebuild Ohio’s economy from the ground up. We have again overcome political differences to achieve a bipartisan agreement to balance the budget and protect our schools from devastating cuts.

“This compromise will avoid thousands of teacher layoffs, school building closures and the elimination of athletic programs in our schools. And we can now refocus our efforts on competing for federal Race to the Top resources that, along with our education reform plan, will improve our students’ ability to compete with students anywhere in the world.

“Nearly three months ago, a state Supreme Court decision opened an $851 million hole in education funding. We were faced with three options to fill the budget hole. One option was to raise taxes. A second option was to cut $851 million budgeted for Ohio schools. A third option was to freeze state income tax rates at the 2008 level, postponing the final 4.2 percent reduction while leaving in place the rate cuts made to date.

“I deeply appreciate the business and education communities, as well as libraries and human service organizations, for their vocal support of the common sense solution to temporarily postpone the last phase of income tax reductions. Ohio families and businesses will continue to receive a $1.8 billion tax cut this fiscal year because of the broad-based tax reforms we shepherded through the most difficult economic environment in 80 years.

“This compromise also advances several important initiatives. After we brought construction reform to the forefront, it will be undertaken in a demonstration capacity at three University System of Ohio institutions. We are also meeting our commitment to ensure needed mental health services continue to support Ohio’s most vulnerable citizens.

“With bipartisan cooperation, we are making steady progress toward a new, more competitive Ohio.”


Framework of the Bipartisan Compromise

Temporary Postponement of Tax Rate Reduction to Protect Ohio Schools
The legislature will postpone the last part of the scheduled income tax reduction by freezing income tax rates so they remain exactly the same as last year. Ohio taxpayers will continue to pay a tax rate 16.8 percent less than in 2004. Ohio’s schools will receive approximately $844 million in resources for the biennium.

Construction Reform Demonstration Projects
The Chancellor of the Board of Regents will establish criteria to determine three capital projects at University System of Ohio institutions to utilize alternative construction management methods, to serve as a demonstration of construction reform.

All-Day Kindergarten
All-day kindergarten remains a requirement for every Ohio school district beginning in the 2010-11 school year. To support districts that may have fiscal or other challenges to successfully implement all-day kindergarten next year, a new requirement in law will permit districts to request and receive a waiver, but only if a resolution from the local School Board of the district provides a justification for a delay.

Evidence suggests all-day kindergarten benefits students, especially the most vulnerable and at-risk. In a recent Ohio Department of Education survey of Ohio’s school districts, only 150 respondents indicated that they would request a waiver to delay implementing all-day kindergarten.

Potential Additional Resources for Non-public, Chartered Schools
Non-public, chartered schools may benefit, up to FY 2009 spending levels, from lapses in the state budget. While the lapses may come from anywhere in the budget, the transfers to non-public schools cannot total more than the amounts lapsed in the GRF line items of the Ohio Department of Education’s budget.

Corrections from HB 1:

Mental Health Services Fix
The compromise will correct a legislative drafting error from HB 1, ensuring that $14.7 million in mental health funds are directed to the correct fund for community mental health services.

The Ohio State Employment Relations Board
In HB 1, the Ohio State Employment Relations Board (SERB) and the Personnel Board of Review (PBR) merged backroom offices without adequate funds to successfully complete the merger. The compromise will provide $2 million to SERB from the state administrative fund at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Interim budget signed; deal nears, but slots are sticking point

Gov. Ted Strickland just announced that he's signed an interim budget to keep the state going for a week while he and statehouse Republicans keep negotiating a budget deal.

This Columbus Dispatch article says Strickland and the Republicans are still at odds over slot machines in racetracks, but otherwise, the outlines of a two-year budget deal are taking shape.

How's this for a painful tradeoff?
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Statehouse leaders are expected to further cut higher education to help reduce proposed cuts to libraries, mental-health services and home and community-based services for Medicaid recipients.

More than libraries are at stake

I was wondering when the Plain Dealer would run a story that clearly dramatizes what's at stake in the state budget crisis: not just Ohio's libraries, but a huge part of our safety net for poor kids, the elderly, and the mentally ill. The story came yesterday: Brent Larkin's column, "Strickland doing an appalling job."

Don't call Larkin retired. His freelance column this week calls out the governor (pictured) -- and House Speaker Armond Budish -- with a clarity that's been missing from a lot of the state budget crisis coverage:
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If Strickland were a Republican, this state's many advocates for children would be burning him in effigy on the Statehouse lawn. ...

... In tough times, governors have to cut spending. But good governors don't:

Abolish funding for a program that provides preschool to 14,400 low-income children.

Eliminate state aid to food pantries, especially in a recession.

Whack deep into programs for the mentally challenged and the elderly.

Permit the plundering of funding for their most important accomplishment -- in this case, higher education, the cornerstone of Ohio's economic future.

--

The budget crisis is going into overtime, with Strickland and Republicans at an impasse over slot machines and other issues. If they can't agree on a budget by tomorrow night, they'll have to pass a temporary budget and keep negotiating. Here are the Columbus Dispatch's reports from yesterday and today.

Republican chair: Dimora, Klaiber should resign

Rob Frost, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Republicans, is calling for commissioner Jimmy Dimora and engineer Robert Klaiber to resign. Here is the party's press release.

Frost asks citizens to call commissioners Tim Hagan and Peter Lawson Jones, U.S. Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Marcia Fudge, Gov. Ted Strickland, and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, and demand that they call for Dimora and Klaiber's resignations.

The call for Klaiber to resign is interesting. The engineer has not been implicated in the corruption scandal. However, his former chief of staff, Kevin Payne, and former employee J. Kevin Kelley, were among those charged with bribery Friday. Klaiber held a wrenching press conference Monday. "I had trust and confidence in these people and that trust was, ultimately, betrayed," he said then. Klaiber announced he would not seek re-election in 2012.

Frost says Klaiber's press conference showed that "he has, at a minimum, failed as an administrator and manager and is not fit to continue as our County Engineer." He calls on citizens to attend tomorrow's 10 a.m. county commission meeting and call for Dimora's resignation.

Giant squirrel attacks ACORN

A man in a squirrel suit crashed Gov. Ted Strickland's press conference in Columbus this week to protest ACORN's voter-registration drives.

Strickland, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, and Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, standing on the Statehouse steps, denounced Republican attacks on Barack Obama. As Strickland complained that the GOP was scaring Ohio voters by threatening their right to vote, the squirrel chipped in the other side of the story with a sign: "Don't let ACORN + Obama steal Ohio."

I think the right's stolen-election charge is exaggerated and unfair, but this video is really funny.

"They even resort to things like sending squirrels to news conferences because they have nothing else to talk about," Coleman ad-libbed. "Well, I say to Sen. McCain and those who are backing Sen. McCain in the way they are doing now, is to stop being squirrelly and start being straight with the voters."

Some reporters chased the squirrel through the streets of Columbus. This reporter played it straight. Here's the squirrel's blog.