These are grim days in the once-Great State of Ohio -- Gov. Bob Taft is earning the lowest approval rating of his interminable tenure in office, the state's population is projected to dwindle and the Reds are battling the Pirates to stay out of the NL Central Division basement. The General Assembly, rather than doing the peoples' business, is wasting its time on provisions that, like ancient texts recovered from the sea floor, will disintegrate as soon as they see the light of day.
(To wit: Working its way through the House now is a bill that would outlaw abortion in Ohio, a law legislators know would be unconstitutional but want to pass anyway to make a point. They'd be better served by finally making the pawpaw Ohio's official state fruit, a proposal backed by Athens' own Republican Rep. Jimmy Stewart. Reasons: They'd have passed a real law, local pawpaw growers would benefit and the state would get some badly needed cred in official state fruit circles.)
Things are getting so bad Ohio can't even throw its full weight behind the snake-oil panaceas Taft has been doggedly pitching over the past few years. The governor and many statehouse Republicans are convinced that Ohio's future is in technology startups --firms like Athens' Diagnostic Hybrids -- which, after a little chicken feed from Columbus, they hope will make Ohio boom into an enormous new Silicon Valley. But voters in 2003 rejected the keystone to that program, a bond issue that would've enabled the state to sell a half-billion dollars' worth of bonds to finance the small new companies.
The governor has blown the dust off that old proposal and will slip it onto the ballot this November, but has swaddled the wolf in Grandma's shawl -- what voters will see is a $2 billion bond issue for road and bridge improvements that, oh yeah, happens to include $500 million in bonds for the second Third Frontier.
But somebody in the governor's office needs to check the wires that go across High Street from the Riffe Center to the Statehouse, because long before the Third Frontier could receive its potential cash infusion, lawmakers are already deciding what it can't do.
Last month, the House grafted an 11th-hour addendum onto its version of the state budget, prohibiting Third Frontier grants from funding embryonic stem cell research. While many scientists think embryonic stem cells could yield immense medical benefits, some conservatives liken the research to killing children and harvesting their organs. Whichever view you take, what's irrefutable is that Taft's high-tech dreams for Ohio just got even harder -- not only are voters skeptical of his scheme, his own party could dismantle the Third Frontier bit by bit before it's even passed.
If, for whatever reason, lawmakers can preemptively veto certain projects that high-tech grants could fund, what's to stop them from running amok and blocking all sorts of new research in the state? Suppose State Sen. Jay Hottinger, a Newark Republican, added a clause to the Senate version of the budget that forbade any Third Frontier research on improving wicker fibers or weaving techniques. (His district includes The Longaberger Basket Co.) Why wouldn't Cincinnati Democrat Sen. Mark Mallory add a lengthy prohibition keeping grant money from funding research in soaps, shaving creams, toilet paper, coffee, etc? (His district includes The Procter & Gamble Co., the world's largest manufacturer of consumer goods.) By the time the Statehouse was finished, Ohio would have an enormous pool of money it could use only to develop more advanced miniature American flags for orphans. Which is a shame, because we probably couldn't under-price today's miniature American flags made in Micronesia.
-- Phil Ewing, a senior journalism major, is The Post's managing editor. Send him an e-mail at pe305401@ohiou.edu
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