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OHIO NEWS
from Eyewitness News Online  Text of Ohio governor's State of the State speech February 08, 2012 6:33 AM STEUBENVILLE, Ohio SPEAKER BATCHELDER: Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to call the House and Senate to order for the purpose of a joint convention. It is my further privilege to introduce the president of the Ohio Senate, Tom Niehaus, a learned friend. PRESIDENT NIEHAUS: Good afternoon. The members of the House and Senate will please assemble and take their seats. Is there a quorum of the Senate present? The Chair recognizes President Pro Tempore Senator Faber. SENATOR FABER: Thank you, Mr. President. There is a quorum of the Senate present. PRESIDENT NIEHAUS: Is there a quorum of the House present? The chair recognizes the Speaker Pro Tempore, Representative Blessing. REPRESENTATIVE BLESSING: There is a quorum of the House present. PRESIDENT NIEHAUS: A quorum of the 129th General Assembly being present, this joint convention will come to order. Please join me in welcoming Vernita Prather, who will be singing How Great Thou Art. Ms. Prather will be accompanied by Michael Hall on the piano. PRESIDENT NIEHAUS: I invite everyone to please stand for the posting of the colors by the Army recruiting station and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. PRESIDENT NIEHAUS: You may be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, the governor of the great State of Ohio, Governor John Kasich. GOVERNOR KASICH: Thank you very much. PRESIDENT NIEHAUS: You may be seated. It is now my distinct honor and pleasure to present Governor John Kasich. GOVERNOR KASICH: Well, thank you, Mr. President, and Mr. Speaker. Thank you members of the General Assembly, my partners in moving Ohio forward. How about that cabinet? Thanks for coming over here today folks, and you know I love you for what you're doing, making Ohio a stronger and better place. The students and teachers at the Wells Academy, they're just fantastic, huh? They are just the best. But they're a reflection of the people of Steubenville and I have to tell you no one could have ever received a better reception than I did coming into this great town. I love the people of Steubenville. We'll be back many times because we're going to make this town great. And your children at Wells Academy are a reflection of your excellence and I want to thank you for the generous reception that you gave me. And I also want to give a nice comment about my wife, Karen Kasich. Sweetie, stand, take a little wave, would you, okay? I remember that cartoon that said, "Kasich will still not reveal how he snagged that hot wife." You know, I hope we all appreciate our spouses. They never get the glory. They never get the light. They're the ones that are, you know, raising the kids, taking care of the home front. I think about Bob Sprague, who is with us today _ five children. You know, think about his wife letting him do this. It's unbelievable. So, let's remember our spouses, because without them, we can't do any of what we do. You know, as a governor, I promised that I was going to travel, like, all over the place and, you know, I hope you realize that I've kept my word. I've visited many of your towns many times. And in case you wonder about my travel schedule, you can read all about it in the newspapers about the number of times I use the _ I use the state airplane. I mean, you can nail this down pretty well. And let me _ I've got news for you, I'm going to continue to use it and I'm going to continue to travel. I'm going to come to where you are. A lot of speculating, or some people are speculating, why would he come to Steubenville? First of all, I want to let you know I knew a year ago I wasn't going to be in Columbus for this. I wanted to travel. I wanted to get out. I wanted to see the folks. That's what it's all about. You don't stay far away from them. You want to touch them. Why did I come here? It's not very complicated. I'm sort of a common sense, straightforward guy about things. I came for two reasons, one is Wells Academy. I came to Wells because they've set a standard for the entire, rest of the state. I mean, they're the number one school _ performing school in Ohio. And if you were to guess where would that number one school be located, you may not get to Steubenville. But yet, here it is. And let me tell you a little bit about what they do, because it's so important to understand the culture. First and foremost, the teachers and the administrators have adopted a principle. I've seen it at the Frederick Douglas Academy in the middle of Harlem. I have seen it in other fine charter schools around the state, in some of our public schools. You know what it gets down to, in the teachers' minds and the administrators' minds, nothing stands in the way of kids being great. Not poverty, not broken homes. I mean, these obstacles, we want our parents to be involved, but the teachers here have a deep commitment to the child's future and they'll do everything they can to move it forward. So, one thing we have to do is ask all of our people in public education, including our parents, give these children a chance to realize their God-given destiny, and that is exactly what is happening here. It's important to note that 60 percent of the children in this school are economically disadvantaged. That's 15 percent above the statewide average, and yet, they're number one, and they're number one because of that commitment. You know, they don't spend a lot of money on administrators and overhead and buildings. In fact, this building they share with the high school. You may have heard about the high school here. They're the home of the football powerhouse, the Big Red. Ever heard of them, huh? Wells. Wells spends its money where it really needs to go and it's something we can all learn from. It directs its money to the classroom and the teachers work together like doctors do in an operating room. They use data to look at the struggles and the problems that children have and as a group, they fix it. It is very data driven. They know what works, then they apply it. They stick to it and they're able to lift these kids. The administrators are right there with the teachers. I've always thought administrators need to teach in the classroom. Well, here they're there all the time. I had a chance today to spend a little bit of time with the superintendent and the principal and they get it and they fight to give the teachers the resources they need to get the job done. And, you know, here is the thing, at the end of the day, the students are doing so well it creates success. The one thing I've learned in life is when you have success it builds momentum for more success. And they have also successfully implemented an early childhood education program. It's something my wife has believed in. The whole time that we've been married, she talked to me about it. You know, we got good news. Ohio just received a $70 million grant. We were the fifth-best in the country and we're going to be able to use that money and apply it to early education, making it work and making it better across the State of Ohio for the good of our children, and it's fantastic news. Secondly, I came to Steubenville, because it's where I grew up. Oh, I didn't grow up in Steubenville, but when you come from an ethnic town along the river, you're all family. Well, you may not know each other, you may not be related, but you're all family. You know, some of you know my story. I'm privileged today to have my Uncle George here. Uncle George was one of eight kids. Uncle George, I so love Uncle George. His father was a coal miner. He died of complications from black lung. Uncle George came from a family of eight, eight children. Uncle George graduated from high school. My dad, who carried mail on his back for 29 years, graduated from high school and the two sisters graduated from high school. The other four boys never got it done, never graduated from high school. But it didn't make them anything less than great, you know, because my Uncle Steve ended up fighting in Iwo Jima, becoming a war hero who we honored until the day that he was put in the ground. Uncle George went on to college, became a guidance counselor. And he was a guidance counselor, think about this, for 37 years. How the Lord works and how families work, and, you know, the bottom line is when you talk about Steubenville and you talk about the ethnics and you talk about people who have common sense and you talk about people who are God-fearing, and you think about people who can get knocked down and they never get knocked out, I mean, that was McKees Rocks. That's where I come from, and that's why I came here. You know, even this morning it became very emotional for me thinking about the fact that the Lord gave me the chance to come here and stand up here, not Johnny Kasich, but just another kid from an ethnic blue collar, hard-working town: people who play by the rules and get a chance to do something to lift people and it's why I came to Steubenville. And the excitement that we've all felt has really confirmed the decision to come here. And everybody keeps asking me, "Where are you going to go next year?" We'll have to deal with the legislature on that one. Hey, look, we cannot forget the untimely and tragic death of Lee West. A young man killed in a house fire, just happened last week. The school mourns, the town mourns. There is no great word for the West family, but it gives us a chance to the students that are here today from the high school, you know, invite those kids that sometimes you think of as the nerds or invite those kids who sometimes get ignored, hug them, make them feel special, because you never know what's going to happen in the next day. My mom and dad were taken from me in a horrible car crash in 1987, but they didn't die in vain. Their son became a better man. And, you know, maybe through the death of Lee, we can become better people. But you know what, visit the family, hug them, tell them what a great young man Lee West was. Don't just stop after a week. You go and visit them. You will be doing a great service not only to them, but a great service to the Lord, as well. You know, I think it is so important because when I look at these things, it just kind of gets me so pumped up. How far we have come as Ohioans, you know, where we were and where we are now. And I know some of you have heard this before, but many of you have not. And it's good to reflect back. A year ago, Ohio ranked 48th in job creation. We trailed only Michigan and California in lost jobs _ Michigan, the home of the auto industry that was devastated and California, of course, filled by a bunch of wackadoodles. So, the fact of the matter is, who would have ever dreamt, who would have ever dreamt that we'd be the third worst? When I came to Ohio State in 1970, we were the Promised Land and somehow we drifted. We lost 600,000 in the last 10 years, 600,000 jobs gone, 400,000 jobs gone in the last four years, 400,000 families. One third of our college students were leaving the state within three years of graduation. They're finding their destiny somewhere else. Who can blame them? If there is nothing happening here, they're going_and I don't blame them. Ohio's credit outlook was negative. In fact, we thought there was a very good chance, Tim Keen and I believed, the budget director, that we'd get downgraded and we were nervous about it. And then think about it for a second, because we glossed over it, eight billion in the hole, eight billion in the hole, the largest deficit in the history of the State of Ohio. And people said there is no way we can deal with this. Well, you know, I want to compliment my partners in the legislature, my staff, the governor's office. I tell you what we did. We just looked at the problems honestly. You know, see, when politics becomes the order of the day, the power of special interest groups become the order of the day, you really get confused. But if you look at a problem and you see what it is and you design a solution, it's amazing how far you can go. And that's exactly what we did through this process. And whether we know it or not, some of it was really very strongly bipartisan. So, I know it's not easy sometimes to look at a problem and strip out the politics and who you know and what you know and who helped you and who didn't, but that's our job. People don't elect us to get a favor. They elect us because of what we represent, principally. That's what it's really all about. And it's not easy when people attack you when you make people uncomfortable, but why did you do this if you're not willing to do it? You're short-changing your family if you're not willing to stand up. Think about this, in six months we eliminated an eight billion dollar budget shortfall without a tax increase _ eliminated it. We are now balanced. In fact, we cut taxes by $300 million. And when I came in, we had a rainy day fund that had 89 cents, and I'm told that budget guru over there, Brian Perera, sent an 89 cent check to double the amount of money we had in the rainy day fund. Try $247 million in the rainy day fund today. It's pretty staggering. And we did it the right way. Look, we were not going to hurt the mentally ill, the disabled, the poor. Just weren't going to do it. Somebody has got to stand up for them. Oh, they have a lobbyist, but we don't see Him here. Best lobbyist in the world. We'll all meet Him some day. So, you can't step on these folks. I told John Martin and Tracy Plouck, we cannot push too hard for the mental _ on the mentally ill or the disabled or the poor to take away from them. That would be sinful. It would be wrong. And we knew we couldn't raise taxes. Folks, I just got to tell if you keep raising taxes, you don't make it, because companies look around and they're looking for the lowest cost to be able to make money. And if we continue to do it, we would just continue to hurt ourselves economically. So it's not just a philosophy or some sort of an ideology. It's what makes sense. And, how did we do it? You know, we did it with reforming and reshaping. I have to tell you, you can't cut your way to prosperity. People think I'm this big budget cutter. I'd rather reform, reshape and make it work better. Come up with a better solution. Let's talk a little bit about it. How about Medicaid? Medicaid has been out of control as a part of this state budget forever. Greg Moody _ I don't even know how we got the guy. Greg Moody comes in, he's got great experience. He leaves his private sector job. He has a vision for how we can help it. Now, for how many years did you read the studies of the fact that we wanted Mom and Dad to stay in their home rather than going in a nursing home? For how many years did we say that home health care and the ability for Mom and Dad to be healthier and happier and more independent ought to be accomplished and we can't do it? But we did it, didn't we, in this budget? Mom and Dad can now stay at home if they're able to at about a fifth of the cost of being in a nursing home. Thank you for your work on that. We've been able to integrate mental and physical health. This is a big deal. If you have mental health issues, you've got physical health issues. And the ability to integrate them is what makes a big difference in the lives of those people. And we're doing it. We also found out that 4 percent of the Medicaid population drives over 50 percent of the costs. So Moody came up with this program to try to guide them in the right way. Look, we all know that too often poor people get primary care in an emergency room. You can't get primary care in an emergency room. You got to get primary care from a primary care physician. So what we're doing is creating this concept of the medical home. It's an ongoing process. And, tell you what we do, we coordinate their care. We also bring some certainty and we eliminate the confusion that many sick people have, because they don't know where they're going. So, if we can coordinate their care and get them in the right setting, they'll be comfortable, they'll be more healthy, the quality of medicine will improve and, you know what's unbelievable? We'll save money. And that is exactly what we're doing. And let me also tell you we're spending time now on this _ low birth weight moms is one other example of being out in front. I promised it a year ago when I was here. We're trying to do so many things at once. Well, what do we know? There is a couple up in Richland County, up in Mansfield, they figured out how to deal with the problem with women that have low birth weight babies. If we can get to them, and coordinate their care, and drive them to the doctor, and do all the things that are around it, we can cut the incidence of low birth weight babies by an enormous amount. Think of the savings, and think how happy the mom is, and think how great it is for the kid, for the baby. Well, that's what we're doing. We got a long way to go to completely mature these programs, but we're doing it. Let me also tell you that we are working with the private sector. When Procter and Gamble, and General Electric, and the companies down in Cincinnati have gotten together on payment reform to have outcome-based medicine, think about this: right now, we pay people on the basis of how many in the door and how many out the door. That's not how we should pay them. We should pay them on the basis of their outcome. We should pay them on the basis of the fact that if you keep me healthy and give me primary care, we're going to pay you more money. It will improve the quality. It will improve satisfaction. It will reduce the costs. I've talked to Ms. Cafaro, who is here today, about helping us to develop a national program to work with the Administration. It's the way we've got to do things. I think she's got some ins down there. If she doesn't, you know we'll have to see if you can do that Capri, but we want to involve her in this. We want this to be bipartisan going forward. Sentencing reform. How long did we wait? For how long did we wait? I always like to point to my buddy Lynn Slaby, the prosecutor, who stood up and he said we're not going to just play politics. Locking 12,000 people up next to hardened criminals, rapists, murderers, drug dealers for less than a year, and we think we're doing good? Gary Mohr. Where is Gary Mohr? This guy is the great leader in corrections reform. Because of your work in the legislature, and because of your constant insistence on improving this situation, we were able to pass sentencing reform where now a low-level offender can be put in a community setting where they can get their lives back; where they can have a second chance. Now, here is the amazing thing that you know when you talk about reforming prisons and giving people an easier time: it's a great applause line at a Republican dinner, as you can probably imagine, but I'm not looking for those. What I'm looking for is giving people a second chance. So you know what we're thinking about now? If you've been a violent offender and you're in prison, you want to work your way out of that, we'll give you a chance. We're going to create a process whereby people can work their way back. If you take violence in the prison, we will lock you up for 1,000 years. Have no doubt about that. It's a great achievement to have done sentencing reform in this last year. Construction reform. 124 years multiple primes. Think about this: you build a house and everybody is a multiple prime. Dave, can you imagine that? It drives up the cost sky high. Gordon Gee is with us today. Gordon Gee, Ohio's best politician, is with us today. He is the president of Ohio State University. Gordon, you got to stand up and take a wave. Where the heck are you? There he is. Gordon said, "If we can go to a single prime contractor, we can cut the cost of building my new hospital by 25 percent." For 124 years we did it. We don't do it anymore. Now we're down to a single prime, and who is going to benefit? The public, students, and families, through lower tuition, lower costs. Thanks, Gordon, for what you did and for the other presidents that were strong enough to do this. Economic development. 1962, 1963, Jim Rhodes created the Department of Development. It worked fine for a while, but it's become slow, bureaucratic, outdated, and atrophied. I want to thank you. And, you know, Tom Sawyer is out here, I just called him the other day. As we move the contract through the controlling board, Tom was there when we first brought up JobsOhio. We had some bipartisan support. Not overwhelming obviously, but we thought if we could create an entity that could move at the speed of the market operation and not the speed of the statute. Because I saw a race between the statute and the glacier. And the glacier won. In the 21st century, you've got to move at the speed of the marketplace. And so we created JobsOhio. It's beginning to bear fruit in our state already and I'm so excited. Mark, thanks for coming from California. Now he is an Ohio resident. Who knows what we'll see next, right? It's amazing. Education reform. Think about this: No mom and dad should have to have their kids in a school where they're not safe and they're not learning. It's a civil right. This is not an attack on the public school system or public school teachers. We have to honor the ones that are really out there just like we see here in Wells Academy. But, when the schools aren't working and they're underperforming, let our children go. We went in this state from 13,000 vouchers to 30,000 families who can have more choice and more freedom, to next year 60,000 vouchers. I don't know that that exists anywhere in America. And it's going to give our poor people a chance. We lifted the cap on the number of charter schools. And let me make it clear: if you're an underperforming charter school, we'll be on you. We have to have excellence in every school, and just because it has a name, if it's not working, we're going to have to deal with it. I'll ask the legislature to exercise proper oversight. And let me also _ you can applaud for that. I know a lot of people are concerned about that. If the school continues to fail, parents and teachers have the power to take the school over themselves. I want to give a big shout out to Stan Heffner. He is a man who has decided that he is committed to the fact that we need to let moms and dads know, across this state, how their kids are doing. He has published a report that ranks the schools, and that's how Wells got to be number one. He is traveling the state. We need moms and dads to know how their schools are doing. And let me also say I'm very proud of the fact that we did teacher evaluation. We had 19 meetings across the state; 1,400 e-mails from teachers. You know what teachers are worried about? They don't mind being evaluated, but what they don't want is to get the short end of the stick. They want to make sure there are multiple ways for them to be measured. We listened to them. It's exactly what we did. We took this framework to the State Board of STORY TOO LONG: REMAINDER TRUNCATED |
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