Gov. John Kasich recently delivered the State of the State address in Medina and spoke about how we can expand on the agenda to lower taxes, create jobs, rein in the size of government, and do more to help Ohioans have better opportunities. Below is an editorial from the Columbus Dispatch:
Gov. John Kasich’s State of the State speech Monday night was forward-looking and focused on attacking specific problems and barriers to Ohioans’ prosperity.
That was an apt reflection of his three years in office so far: focused on Ohioans’ well-being and moving relentlessly forward.
The two key areas discussed — lowering the state’s top income-tax rate to something below 5 percent and several initiatives to bolster public schools — deserve to be so emphasized, because they offer clear potential to bring rapid improvement.
Citing $12 billion in income that has left Ohio for lower-income-tax states in the past 20 years, Kasich made the point that reducing income taxes further will encourage companies and individuals to invest in Ohio, creating jobs and opportunities.
But even the strongest jobs climate can’t make Ohio more prosperous if Ohioans aren’t educated or prepared enough to fill those jobs. Kasich is hitting the right targets with proposals to reduce the rate of high-school dropouts, connect kids with mentors, expand vocational education to 7th grade, make it easier to earn college credit while still in high school and grant credit for military veterans for the skills and experience they’re earned serving their country.
Nearly 24,000 Ohio high-school students drop out every year.
The blight this inflicts on their own prospects carries over to society at large, because people without diplomas have a tough time supporting themselves, and in an increasingly global, competitive economy, it’s only going to get tougher.
Kasich rightly applies effort both to the college-bound — helping them earn credits early and improving high-school curricula to better prepare them — and those who just need the right training and certifications to move into the types of high-paying, 21stcentury jobs that are going unfilled for lack of qualified applicants.
Special help for veterans to find jobs and make the transition to civilian life is an obvious moral imperative, but he made a critical larger point when he added that “jobs are Ohio’s greatest moral issue.”
All of the efforts of his very busy term in office — improving K-12 and higher education, reducing tax and regulatory burdens on businesses, providing better services for those battling mental illness or drug or alcohol addiction — ultimately aim for the same outcome: helping more Ohioans engage in productive work that supports their families, improves their communities and gives them hope that their children can build even-better lives.
Critics from either end of the political spectrum have trouble painting Kasich as overly partisan or politically motivated.
The same governor who has taken heat for steadfastly backing tax cuts and trimming fat in the state budget fought a tremendous political fight last year to expand Medicaid eligibility in Ohio. Though the expansion came via the deeply flawed federal health-care reform that Kasich abhors, he recognized that extending health-care coverage to 275,000 needy Ohioans, with no increase in state spending, was too important an opportunity to reject.
His focus on moving forward makes it easy to see how Ohio has made such tremendous progress since Kasich took office, when the state faced an $8 billion budget hole, had lost 350,000 private-sector jobs and had a rainy-day fund with only pennies rattling around in it. More important, it lends confidence that Ohio’s future is brighter still.
You can read the original editorial here.
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