Surprises Possible In Strickland’s Speech

COLUMBUS, Ohio—A radical realignment of expectations at Ohio public schools and alternative prison time for thousands of nonviolent offenders are some of Gov. Ted Strickland’s possible surprises in his upcoming State of the State speech.

Strickland has a penchant for making the address a shocker.

In 2007, he unveiled plans for a property tax break for seniors and the disabled - paid for with tobacco settlement proceeds - and vowed to strip privately run charter schools of their public funding.

Last year, he pitched an economic stimulus package he hoped would fuel the state’s promise as an alternative energy and bioscience mecca. He also flabbergasted the state education hierarchy with plans to seize control of the State Department of Education and disempower the state school board.

Not all Strickland’s podium pronouncements have been achieved, to be sure. The charter-school initiative was summarily blocked by the Legislature, for example, and the Education Department coup ended in some personnel changes and a truce.

But Strickland clearly enjoys using the annual address to stir things up. Its contents are closely guarded even from the most well-connected Statehouse policy experts and lobbyists, as well as from journalists right up to the hour it is delivered.

Two things are known about Wednesday’s speech, though: It will contain Strickland’s long-awaited proposals for addressing the state’s unconstitutional school-funding system, and it must give citizens a sense for how Strickland intends to tackle a looming $7 billion budget deficit.

Inventive ideas would certainly be in order, this year if ever.

With regard to the schools solution, attentive listeners have perceived a shift in Strickland’s vocabulary as the plan has reached fruition. It is no longer “a funding plan” but “a reform plan” - a hint that the changes he will propose go beyond mere mathematical wizardry.

New House Speaker Armond Budish, a fellow Democrat working closely with the governor’s office, says he favors distance learning as a possible remedy to Ohio’s educational inequities. Digitally piping lessons taught by the best teachers into the classrooms of the underserved could raise standards statewide at relatively low cost, Budish said.

Expanding Ohio law to allow districts more freedom to fire ineffective teachers and junking standardized tests perceived by critics as distracting are two other big ideas proposed in a report released on the eve of the speech by the influential Ohio Grantmakers Forum.

Revolutionary education ideas alone can’t solve the state’s budget problems, though. And Strickland is constrained in doing so by his stated promises and priorities: Not raising taxes, protecting affordable tuitions, providing health insurance to every Ohio child, and continued attempts to improve the state’s economy.

He will have to cut somewhere, and the political climate is ripe for the reductions to come in the state’s massive $1.8 billion prison budget - which, along with education and Medicaid, makes up the bulk of state general revenue spending.

Strickland’s prisons director Terry Collins laid out a variety of moneysaving options for state lawmakers in a recent memo, including equalizing crack cocaine sentences to match lesser ones for powdered cocaine, moving nonviolent prisoners into more community-based programs or putting them on GPS devices, and shaving time off people’s sentences for betterment efforts they undertake such as earning a GED.

Aging inmates who have been well-behaved, sometimes for decades, could also be moved into less expensive quarters to save money.

Democrats like Strickland, a former prison psychologist, have an opportunity to take advantage of the economic downturn and the states’ thirst for cash to push for such prison reforms.

Doing so would ease prison overcrowding, save millions in taxpayer dollars, and reverse many of the tough-on-crime initiatives of the Republicans that Democrats opposed in the first place.

It remains to be seen how school and prison reforms take shape, and how the Legislature responds to such proposals. How they translate for Ohio voters in 2010, when Strickland must face re-election, would be the next big surprise.

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