BuckeyeBlog

In following the debate about payday lending before the Senate Finance Committee this week, particularly the effort of Sen. Jeff Jacobson (R., Dayton) to impugn the motives of our scholar witness through innuendo and insinuation, I am reminded of what our friend Larry Reed of the Makinac Center wrote in Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy:

Too often today, policymakers give no thought whatsoever to the general state of liberty when they craft new policies. If it feels good or sounds good or gets them elected, they just do it. Anyone along the way who might raise liberty-based objections is ridiculed or ignored.

Parents, kids and the principle of freedom won a victory in the Ohio Senate today, although by a narrow margin. The vote on SB 57, the Special Needs Scholarship was 17 to 15 in favor. All Democrats voted against the bill, along with Republican Senators Stivers, Schuring and Grendell. Now SB 57 moves to the Ohio House.

Kudos to Senate Education Chair Joy Padgett, Senate President Bill Harris and SB 57’s sponsor, Sen. Kevin Coughlin for their leadership in shepherding the measure to passage.

SB 57 is not a new concept to Ohio or the nation. Florida already has a similar successful program for students with disabilities, that, contrary to what school choice opponents say, has resulted in higher test scores for scholarship AND public school students while NOT draining resources from the students that stay in the public schools. It’s been a win-win-win situation there for scholarship kids, public school kids and taxpayers who spend an average of 25% less for each scholarship student.

The prospects for the bill in the House are uncertain. Certainly House Speaker Jon Husted has remained a great champion of school choice. But it is up in the air how many Republicans are will fall prey to the money and other political enticements of the teacher unions. Under the Union Thumb, House Democrats will probably vote in lock-step against SB 57. Ohio Democrats apparently would rather side with union bosses than help children with disabilities who just want to get the best education they possible so they can live a life independent of government programs. Democrats in other states have stood side-by-side with their Republican colleagues and voted for the rights of parents and children instead of bureaucrats and unions - Ohio’s politicians can and should do the same.

I couldn’t let this quote from Wellesley economist Chip Case slip by:

“The government has got to do something.”

I remember as a student at Michigan that some group or another had a sit-in at the president’s office. They left when he promised, quote, to do something, end quote, about their issue.

This is poor journalism on NPR’s part. It’s one thing to assemble quotes, but they ought to be fair, in context and meaningful.

Perhaps looking to focus attention away from his impending impeachment, Attorney General Marc Dann hopped on the anti-payday lending bandwagon yesterday with this report. In it, he decries the “well-documented abuses” of payday lenders (did his press secretary really write that phrase without thinking someone would notice the irony?).

The document Dann put out is merely a collection of anecdotes from dissatisfied payday loan customers and representatives from interest groups opposed to the industry. Dann claims that these stories prove that payday lenders seek to trap people in debt, that borrowers don’t like these loans, and prove a variety of other “abuses.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to realize that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.” A collection of stories proves absolutely nothing about the payday lending industry as a whole or its customers.

In an attempt to actually introduce facts to this debate, the Buckeye Institute has twice brought an economist to address the legislature on this issue. You can find his testimony — based on data, not anecdotes — here.

On to the Ohio Senate for HB 420, modeled after federal earmark legislation, which would require by 2009 that the Office of Budget and management come up with performance measures for state government, and also require the development of online databases of state real property and “state awards,” including contracts and other “financial assistance and expenditures.” As to best practice standards,

The standards, at a minimum, must address all the following areas: (1) budget and performance integration, (2) competitive sourcing, (3) E-government, (4) human capital, and (5) financial performance improvement. (R.C. 126.55(A). The Director of OBM must also establish performance measures to increase transparency and to ensure citizens and agencies have a better understanding of what is being accomplished.

This is more than sunshine; it’s nuclear fusion.