COLUMBUS -Ohio's three GOP gubernatorial candidates sat elbow-to-elbow here yesterday in a preview of their coming race for the state's highest office, the discussion ranging from the state budget to voting machines. Though they kept the session mostly polite, at times the talk was just short of hostile.
What does that have to do with the question? State Auditor Betty Montgomery asked Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, interrupting him as he responded at length to a reporter's query. Later, when she wanted to digress, she said she was going to do a Ken Blackwell.
Blackwell, Montgomery, Attorney General Jim Petro and State Treasurer Jennette Bradley -the only member of the session's last panel not hoping to succeed Gov. Bob Taft in 2006 -sparred primarily over a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would limit the amount the state government could spend.
Blackwell supports it, and said that in one form or another
it will be on the ballot this November.
Bradley, Petro and Montgomery all oppose the amendment, fearing, as Montgomery put it, that the state government would be locked on autopilot.
The state constitution already requires lawmakers to pass balanced budgets. The new amendment would stop state expenditures from rising faster than the Consumer Price Index plus the rate of population growth. This year's CPI is about 3 percent, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Ohio's rate of population growth is about .07 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. So if voters pass Blackwell's amendment, the state's 2007 spending could not exceed $51.85 billion, only a 3.7 percent increase over this year's $50 billion budget.
The panelists also argued about how best to change Ohio's public schools, an evergreen point of controversy in state politics. Bradley said she thought the state should reduce the number of public schools and spend more for each, while Blackwell said he supported expanded home and private school choices for parents. He contrasted the options he wanted for parents against his own experience as a child:
Yeah for Jim [Petro] and me third grade was the best three years of our lives
right Jim?
Petro smiled weakly.
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Philip Ewing
