The Ohio Library Council (OLC) presented its latest Government Relations webcast today at 10:30 a.m. The description, from their web site, is as follows : “Lynda Murray, OLC Director of Government and Legal Services, will provide an overview of the state budget as it relates to public libraries and an update on other issues pending before the state legislature.” You can watch a recording of the entire original presentation here.
The following are notes that I made while watching the presentation, organized according to the piece of legislation that was being discussed. (This blog post is by no means an in-depth discussion or analysis of these pieces of legislation, nor will it include any remotely full explanations of what they actually are or contain; just notes on what Ms. Murray said about them in regards to libraries.) All bill designations/numbers refer to the Ohio state legislature.
HB 153 – Biennial Budget
- must pass by June 30th
- contains no new information regarding library funding in this bill since it was introduced by Governor Kasich in March
SB 5 – Collective Bargaining
- The collective bargaining portion applies to all public employees in Ohio including unionized public libraries, except for association libraries.
- The rest of SB 5 does not necessarily apply to library employees.
- Public library employees are not “civil servants,” so the parts pertaining only to “civil servants” do not apply to public library employees.
- The parts about vacation and sick leave minimums do not apply to public library employees.
- The part that prohibits employers from paying the employee’s share of OPERS contributions does apply to public library employees.
- The part about performance-based pay (rather than automatic step increases) does apply to public library employees.
- Apparently there is an effort to move language about performance-based pay into the budget bill, so it will not be subject to voter referendum in November. However, as far as OLC is aware, that effort only pertains to school employees, not all public employees.
- June 30th is the deadline for submission of signatures needed to get SB 5 on the ballot in November (voter referendum). So far, over 700,000 signatures have been collected, which is quite a few more than the 231,000 needed. If the signatures are certified, SB 5 goes on the ballot and cannot go into effect until after that election (and only then, if it is upheld by the voters). The campaign regarding SB 5 is expected to be a very big deal.
- OLC has no formal position on SB 5 except to raise concerns about the potential loss of local control for public libraries.
- There has been little controversy regarding the recommendations made by the various public employee retirement systems, such as those changes recommended by OPERS.
- There has been controversy over a proposal in the budget bill to shift the contribution percentages of employee/employer from the current 10/14 to 12/12. It has been argued that doing this could result in insolvency : e.g., if an employee leaves a system prior to retirement and takes their contributions with them (such as cashing out), that share is now larger, whereas the employer’s contributions stay put.
- As of right now, the language for moving to a 12/12 split has been removed from the budget. New research is wanted in this area, so the idea is “on hold” for the time being.
HB 202 – Retire/Rehire
- This is to nix the practice of people “retiring” from a high-salaried public service job and then getting rehired in another public service job (or “double-dipping” basically), by making the practice undesirable for all involved.
- This could have possible impact on libraries that might wish to hire already-retired individuals for whatever reason.
HB 194 / SB 148 – Elections Reform
- Proposes to change primary from March to May in 2012
- was going to require photo ID for voters, but that has been removed from the bill
SB 120 – County Prosecutor Bill
- Makes the county prosecutor the legal adviser of the public library.
- It has passed, waiting for Governor Kasich’s signature, to go into effect.
Final Thoughts from Ms. Murray :
- She called the volume of significant policy changes in the Ohio General Assembly over the past 6 months “historic”. (There has been a lot going on, clearly!)
- Need to keep watching things closely. She expects budget correction bills that will adjust things later on, as needed.
- Remember : More and more library users all the time. Also, good staff is crucial. Library users do support a good staff.
As I said before, these are just my notes from watching the presentation. If you are interested in library-related legislation in Ohio right now, I highly recommend you view the original webcast.
Majority votes “No” on Ohio Issue 2, repeals Senate Bill 5
Yesterday, on Election Day, Ohio voters finally settled the whole Senate Bill 5 issue (state Issue 2) once and for all — well, at least until bits and pieces of it are re-passed in another form at a later date. That’s right, the majority of Ohioans voted “no” on Issue 2, which thereby repealed the union-busting Senate Bill 5. Therefore, Senate Bill 5 will not take effect at all. (The law was passed in March but when its opponents were able to gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot for a voter referendum, that delayed it taking effect until after the election. And since it failed voter approval, now it will not take effect at all.)
You can read articles with more details on Dayton Daily News, Columbus Dispatch, and CNN.
Since I have mentioned SB 5 in this blog on several previous occasions, I thought it would be appropriate to make a note [blog] of its repeal.
Keep in mind as I write this, I am a librarian at a unionized public library in Ohio. Some of the SB 5 stuff would have actually applied to us…
Yet, when I was first trying to understand the details of SB 5, I wrote on Feb 17 about some of the provisions that I didn’t find offensive.
For instance, I agree that…
I noted later on Feb 24 that our union contract already forbids strikes, so there wouldn’t be any change there. And I would have been interested to see the effects of eliminating the fair share fees (Apr 4).
But then again, there were some other parts of the bill that definitely weren’t so good. Take, for instance, those bits about safety equipment and staffing levels for emergency responders like policemen and firemen. Or what about teachers? I think it could be difficult to measure their performance in a lot of cases. What would they base it on? Student grades? That seems a bit unfair; just look at the disaster of No Child Left Behind and basing school funding on test scores. And let’s face it, you could have the best teacher in the world, and some kids just still wouldn’t make the grades because — and I hate to be the one to have to say this, even though I know I’m not the only one thinking it — some kids actually are lazy and/or stupid.
One of the above listed articles actually states that SB 5 started out as a 1 sentence bill and eventually evolved to over 300 pages. There were just too many factors, too many opportunities for a certain part of it to upset this or that group and make them vote “no”. No wonder it didn’t pass. Quinnippiac University polls as early as May (see May 18) were showing that the majority of voters disapproved of SB 5 as a whole, although there were certain parts that they supported.
Unfortunately, SB 5 was a “package deal.”
It reminds me of the kind of test questions you’d sometimes get in elementary school, the true/false ones that were designed to tell if you were reading the question carefully. If you just skimmed the thing, you’d say, Oh yeah, most of this looks familiar; that sounds right. And you’d mark it TRUE, and it would be end up being wrong, because the teacher slipped in ONE single detail that made the entire statement FALSE.
For example, if I said: “John Kasich, son of Ezekiel Kasich, was elected governor of Ohio in 2010 and pushed SB 5 through in early 2011.” That statement is false…unless, of course, our governor’s father’s name actually is Ezekiel, in which case I have mad guessing skills.
Well, in my humble opinion, SB 5 was kind of like that (at least to me). There were plenty of things in it that I felt were either completely reasonable, already in effect (at least for me), or not really so terrible. But then there were just a handful of other things that were pretty off-putting. And you couldn’t use a line-item-voter-veto or any magic like that. So you had to either say “yes” to all of it or “no” to all of it.
I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll hear of some of the things that were in SB 5. Good ol’ Kasich has still got a few years yet, right? But maybe in their next assault on public workers, the boys in Columbus will at least wise up and try to pass a few things here, a few things there. Unlike SB 5, which at over 300 pages threw Ohio public worker unions into a fury on basically every single page.
Seriously? SB 5 might as well have had a huge target sign painted on it.
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Posted in Commentaries, Editorials
Tagged collective bargaining, kasich, ohio public employees, ohio public employees unions, ohio sb 5