For Summit GOP, three is worse than a crowd

Anyone who doubts that bad news occurs in threes might take a look at the fate of the Summit County Republican Party in recent weeks as 2013 limped through its final  days.

In quick succession, three of Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's few remaining groomed stalwarts plunged  from the party's honor role in unexpected defeat, resignation or a severe spanking by the Sixth Circuit  Court of Appeals.

Shall we begin on election day in November when Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don
Robart, in his 28th year at City Hall and virtually having his own way in his Cuyahoga Falls fortress for nearly three decades, was defeated by City Council President Don Walters, a Democrat,  denying Robart  an  eighth term?

Four years earlier, Robart was unopposed by Democrats, which doubtless led to complacency  this time in which he was said by startled  allies to have all but abandoned campaigning, content with the endorsements of the Beacon Journal and the Cuyahoga Falls News-Press  and his own notion of invincibility.

But  in a working class suburb that leans Democratic  and has twice opted for President Obama at the polls, he hadn't left well enough alone.  He charged out of the gate in a state of the city address by describing the anti-union SB 5 on the ballot "unbelievably good".  There was some disagreement by the voters who defeated it  by more than 60 pct. of the vote.  The mayor slid farther to right by welcoming the Tea Party  rally in his town with  overwhelming praise, telling the Teepers that they were the "social, fiscal and moral conscious of America."

Finally, he became the center of attraction in opposing a family rate at the Natatorium for a wounded Iraqi veteran , a spouse in a same sex- marriage, arguing that it would be too costly. Huh?

All of these missteps  finally caught up with him to send him into overdue retirement.

Next is the saga of Arshinkoff favorite Bryan Williams, a member of  the State Education Board, who was outed as a determined  lobbyist for an anti-union construction group running a private charter school. Soon thereafter, including a call from Grumpy Abe that he resign, Williams resigned.

Finally,  there's the most recent  lashing of Federal Judge John Adams , another Arshinkoff career enabler, by a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit  Court of Appeals for his presiding role in a case involving a public defender. (Adams also was  engaged in a long delay of a Akron 's sewer plan, costing the city a fortune.).

Had any of these fellows been Democrats, we feel sure that the voluble chairman would have labeled them "scandals of Biblical proportion".  But. alas,  they are Republicans, which is the party's problems, not of anybody on the other side.






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BJ sees need for transparency that's already transparent

The Beacon Journal today took gentle editorial note of the "potential"  conflict of interest on the State Board of Education by observing that it reinforced the "need for board transparency in such dealings".

Hold it right there?  If there are in fact such dealings, and they were fully exposed by the paper's own reporting, so much for the potential, right?

If you read Doug Livingston's piercingly telling  reports on how some board members are registered lobbyists  for their own private school clients, there shouldn't be any doubt by now that the public interest is not their primary mission.

In this raw corruption of public education service,  the spotlight has turned to Bryan C. Williams, the Akron Republican  who lobbies for the non-union Central Ohio Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc.,  which operates the newly chartered Ohio Construction Academy.  Its tax-supported mission is apprenticeship.  It has a modest enrollment and operates outside of the oversight of public accountability.

One paragraph in Livingston's piece should awaken the BJ's editorial board of the problem that exists down in Columbus:

"Ohio Construction Academy has a strong connection in Bryan Williams, who sits on the state school board while lobbying for the builders and contractors, known as ABC.  Records show that he has advocated this year for favorable laws, funding and regulation  advantageous to his organization at the time  he also sits in an elected position on the board, which enacts regulations governing career programs and charter schools." (Italics mine)

Seems transparent enough to me.

The board's majority,  strongly influenced by charter school advocates,  is making policy for public education.  "There's no way to remedy that," one source close to the scene told me.  "They have the votes."

Regardless of the editorial writer's version,  I don't see any reason to regret my  impolite call for Williams to resign so he can spend even more  time with his client.