Too Little, Too Late

Ohio Gov. John Kasich wants to negotiate a compromise on the anti-collective bargaining law known as Senate Bill 5. The highly controversial bill sharply restricts collective bargaining, ends binding arbitration and bans worker strikes for all state and local public employees.

Perhaps because of the sobering results of Wisconsin’s’ recall elections, or his sharp decline in job approval rating Kasich held a news conference to publicly ask union leaders opposed to SB5 to meet with him and other Republican leaders.

According to Kasich his sudden epiphany and willingness to talk and negotiate with union leaders has nothing to do with efforts to repeal the law, or a recent Quinnipiac poll that shows the measure being defeated by double-digit margin.

Senate Bill 5 which was signed into law on March 31 has dominated the Ohio political landscape for months and has galvanized staunch opposition from all quarters. Boisterous and intense rallies in the Statehouse have drawn huge crowds. One rally in particular attracted more than 8,000 people, which in turn prompted Kasich and his cronies to lock the Statehouse door to keep opponents out. Those types of strong-arm tactics drew national media attention.

Unfortunately the working and middle class in Ohio didn’t take kindly to being shut out of their Statehouse and decided to collect 1.3 million signatures demanding the repeal of SB5. WE Are Ohio spokeswoman Melissa Fazekas, who was waiting outside Kasich’s Statehouse office, made it clear that the time for talk and foot dragging was long past.

"These politicians who passed Senate Bill 5 have the ability to come back and repeal the law," she said. "And that is what they should do, repeal the entire law. Or they can join us and vote no in November on Issue 2."

Gov. Kasich and the Republican leadership in Ohio rammed SB5 down the throats of the people of Ohio, they locked the doors of the Statehouse to keep opponents out and they made a mockery out of the democratic process. They own SB5 and they are going to defend it to the bitter end, and they will do anything, including standing before the cameras at a press conference and asking the people who they ignored and victimized, “hey lets talk.”

In most cases, an honest an open debate is the way to go. Democracy is dependent on compromise and respect for differences of opinions. Unfortunately Gov. John Kasich and Scott Walker in Wisconsin see the democratic process as something to be discarded when it stands in the way of their political aims. They talk real tough when the game is rigged in their favor, but when the voters take up the call to arms and stand against them, and then they have an epiphany and run to the cameras to plead their case. In the case of Senate Bill 5, the time for talk was 197 days ago when Gov. Kasich ignored the will of the people he works for.

1.3 million voters have already spoken and their message is succinct and clear, “Too Little, Too Late.”