Chamber Answers -

Re: November 2011 General Election Questionnair

The following are my responses to a September 23, 2011 letter requesting my views to the proposed questionnaire. By request, each of my answers are to no more than 175 words.

1. What are the motivating factors in your decision to run for public office?

I have been a Findlay resident for nearly 50 years, having attended St. Michaels and Findlay City Schools some years ago. My family roots were planted in Findlay by my parents, who taught in Findlay City Schools and served in other community organizations. I have strong personal commitments to Findlay through my wife Shirley, our children, many friends who have touched our lives over the years and my law practice.

Our founders envisioned a government that works best when balanced by competing voices, a government that works through checks and balances. I want to bring a voice of balance to Findlay City Council. I have helped with successful petitions and referenda for issues important to Findlay citizens and businesses. These represent a voice for the people of our community. I have also seen how some local officials abuse their authority at substantial cost to local taxpayers. By my experience and professional background, I hope to bring a balance that makes our city work harder and better in serving the people of Findlay.

2. What are the most important priorities that you feel need to be set, should you win in November?

Our City must preserve essential police and fire services for our citizens while balancing continuing budget constraints. The new state budget threatens to cut local funding by 25% in fiscal 2012 and 50% the next year. These cuts will have the most severe impact on our most venerable citizens. I believe the answer is in asking neighbors to look out for one another. A city of neighbors looking out for one another is a better place to live and for business. This is a time when we must ask – what can we do for our City and our neighbors.

We must continue to address flood mitigation in an open and deliberate manner. Each step must be open to and invite substantial public input. We need answers that allow us to responsibly plan the future for our neighbors and businesses. I support a comprehensive remediation plan that incorporates engineering recommendations, residential properties purchased and converted to a mid-town park area while protecting downtown business property.

We must embrace our future together as a City of neighbors.

3. Of those priorities, what would you recommend we do – as a community – to address them?

As a City of neighbors blending individual and business interests, I believe we must address economic, public service, flood mitigation and other issues with open disclosures and discussion.

Our City Council must engage in the full public disclosure and discussion of alternatives to address our priorities to assure we are acting as stewards of the public trust in a local government of the people, by the people, for the people. We must invite public input and participation in our efforts to seek and selecting solutions.

Members of our Findlay City Council must seek to identify issues and provide clear recommendations with tangible results, including costs. Each part must be conducted with sufficient notice and at a time that is convenient and open to the public.

We must constantly ask what we can do for for our neighbors. If we try to help our neighbors, we, as a city, are all better for it. I believe this will strengthen every part of our community for people and business.

Tough Decisions

The use of budgetary devices created, in part, through newly identified “tax cuts” termed “tough decisions” that practically effect politically ideological goals is a fraud on each Ohio citizen. While some may praise spending cuts justified by a plea of excuses premised on previously unspoken discomforts about seniority, pay and negotiating relationships of public employees; lost is the fact public employees and union workers are taxpayers, many pay property taxes, and their services define the character of our community and state.

In economic terms, public employees and union workers are vital consumers supportive of local business. The money each worker is paid goes to local stores or pay for services through a repeated re-invested necessary to support our local economy. The destabilization of the economic base supported by public employees and union workers during this time of severe economic recession and high unemployment is patently irresponsible. A long term economic recovery must be built on a foundation that supports the absolute necessity to provide the highest quality of education in our schools, providing essential services for the protection of citizens and guaranty quality workers for growth.

None of the statements issued by newly appointed politicos include a commitment that their tough decisions will result in the better education of Ohio school students, nor assure better police or fire protection. In their extended litany of excuses, our politicos identify no specific economic benefit for their actions. If they claim their difficult decisions will result in jobs, then what jobs, when, where and how much economic gain will result. They make no promise that local income, sales or property taxes will not be increased to compensate for “touch decisions” made in Columbus. All these “touch decisions” appear to create is a suspension of critical analysis and the probative examination of actions and consequences expected of well founded decision making.

The state of Ohio needs long term corporate and individual tax policies that provide education at the highest level; seriously address a broad range of jobs; expand business opportunities and award achievement. These goals cannot be leveraged against rights and benefits taken from public employees and working people. With the exception of the present state administration, public servants understand pay freezes, accepting reduces benefits, longer hours of commitment and the importance of the service each provides to make Ohio a better place.

Before the State of Ohio adopts the business policies proposed, including sale or long term lease of assets owned by Ohio citizens by buzz word jargon, we need to remember that bad business judgment resulted in the bankruptcy of John Kasich’s former employer. The State of Ohio cannot afford to a Wall Street type bail out of risks that results in private profit at public cost. Ohio citizens must demand that public resources that return tax money such as state liquor sales or oil and gas harvested at state parks be strictly accounted and paid to public accounts, supporting pubic service and re-investment in Ohio. We need to ask, what will be the result of these “tough decisions.”

Government That . . .

Often it appears that political and economic discussions consist in the adoption of a primary premise which becomes a conclusion. Logic and facts, although claimed as primary, are cleansed into a reformed conclusion supportive of the assumed premise. Why, because in a juxtaposition of words, it just sounds good. It is the conclusion of a conclusion and thus, must be correct.

This is compounded when the greater part of popular discussion cannot be separated from punditry. There is a subtle seduction through which we tend to simply accept statements that have been repeated so many times that fiction gains acceptance as fact. Then again, such fictitious facts can become the conclusion of a conclusion and thus, must be correct.

Take for example the belief attributed to Thomas Jefferson that government is best which governs least. The fact is, while this idea may be in line with Jefferson’s opinions, no such statement is found in his writings. The real source may be Henry David Thoreau in 1849 or an 1837 editorial in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review.

Unfortunately, what John Quincy Adams called the Jefferson-Madison partnership was in purpose a limitation of “evil” federal authority over states in 1790-1791. The Jefferson-Madison limitation upon “a government that governs least” reflects the view that by limiting federal over state sovereignty the subjugation of individuals whose enslaved labor was necessary to preserve the plantation economy in tidewater Virginia and southern states could be maintained.

Then “big government” intervention threatened to end slavery. We know this because in 1790, Ben Franklin was a prominent signatory on a Quaker petition that urged Congress to question the slave trade and slavery in America. In the first open debate over slavery in the US history, Madison led the floor fight in the House to block any extension of federal authority and preserved the slave trade by strict interpretation of the Constitution and any extension of federal authority over slavery.

Today, the argument over “big government” intervention is used in many forms. The real question is whether and how American citizens are subjugated by such argument. Lost is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

John F. Kostyo