ProgressOhio

Ouch.

That’s how it must feel for capital flaks these days.

While Ohioans are faced with a messaging barrage based on the Attorney General’s solar plexus, gone is a focus on the greenbacks of Ohioans gluteus maximus.

All Marc Dann. All the time. ProgressOhio’s front page, with its live news and blog feeds, is no different.

Over 650 mentions of pajamas that never were, coupled with the police complaint that led to no charges, the car accident that happened months ago and a third-level rogue bureaucrat named Anthony Gutierrez who rightfully looks like a scoundrel.

Blackberries and emails will never quite be the same for anyone with an address ending at .gov, as day after day some tabloid tidbit pops from the fingertip-sized memory of a blackberry drive.

It’s as if the world has stopped, and drip by drip, line by line, ticker by ticker and paper by paper Dann, Dann, Dann explodes byte by byte.

Caught in the zipper of tawdry headlines is Ohio’s struggling economy. Both parties made major election year moves to address Ohio’s ailing economy in the hearts and minds of our wallets last month. Did anyone notice?

Even Other Zippers Stories Were Eclipsed by Dann Coverage

What, you say, could be more important than Marc Dann?

Well for starters, you wouldn’t know it from Ohio headlines, but Marc Dann’s scandal and apology last Friday isn’t the only zipper scandal out there in the post- Elliot Spitzer world:

• Detroit: In the motor city, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick got caught in technology as well with a host of suggestive text messages with his chief of staff.
• Kansas: Yes, in good ‘ol Dorothy’s Kansas, Attorney General Paul Morrison resigned in December after admitting an affair with a woman who accused him of misconduct.
• Nevada: What happens in Las Vegas didn’t stay in Las Vegas and philandering GOP Governor Jim Gibbons finds himself locked out of the Governor’s mansion in the midst of a contested divorce that includes fighting to get back into his state financed mansion.
• And in Norwalk: Ohio’s earlier headline maker, former Rep. Matt Barrett also became a victim of technology via downloaded naughty pictures on a flash drive that became Ohio’s most memorable “How a Bill Became a Law” lesson. Barrett was told he will not face charges. News of the lack of charges hardly made news – especially compared to his earlier headlines.

Even other errant zippers were “caught in the zipper” of -- all Dann -- all the time. And you have to wonder what will be next.

• Will it be the Ohio preacher who is widely rumored to have trysted with one of his worshippers?
• Or is it the next legislator or executive staff member whose hormones get the best of him?

Dann’s Dark Friday Is Garbage Day For Bureaucrats

But Dann’s bombshell Friday press conference worked two ways for both political parties – hurting other major consumer and economic rollouts and giving bureaucrats a famed garbage day – the chance to air their dirty laundry with little sunshine beneath Dann’s dark cloudy days.

On Friday, the day the AG investigation came out and Marc Dann made his admission of an affair, taxpayers in Hamilton County and staff members of Ohio’s Department of Jobs and Family Services found what used to be front page news buried in their newspapers.

• The $135 million dollar Hamilton County Audit: In 2006, the Ohio budget for community and economic development from the state general fund was just over $112 million dollars.

That’s why when ODJFS announced Friday afternoon after a long protracted audit that the $1.7 billion from a draft audit of Hamilton County JFS in 2006 had dwindled to a $135 million dollar finding – it was buried in state newspapers if covered at all.

Here’s what current Strickland Medicaid guru John Corlett had to say in his former job about the Hamilton audit in a post from the Center for Community Solutions blog back on September 1, 2006:


The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services announced another failure to properly account for and spend public dollars yesterday. They released a Draft County Audit Report: Hamilton County which states that the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services is responsible for $224 million that was misspent between 2002 and 2004. In addition ODJFS said that $1.7 billion in expenditures on public assistance, child support, and children services funds were "unauditable.”


Last year it was revealed that ODJFS had illegally used hundreds of millions of TANF dollars to match federal Medicaid and Food Stamp funds. Add to this, the fact that the agency has never accurately predicted TANF funds and allowed its TANF reserve to climb over a billion dollars at one point and it makes you wonder what kind of fiscal controls or oversight exists in this agency. Of course Hamilton County officials are contending that everything they did was with the blessing of the state, so this is all bound to end up in court and may even require a state bailout at some point. # posted by John Corlett @ 12:00 PM

We’ll see if Corlett’s pre-Strickland administration prediction is true. But just a few short years ago the Dispatch ran a big Sunday headline announcing Hamilton County’s $1.7 billion woes. Oh, editor, editor – anyone see that banner Dispatch headline last week. Dann, Dann, Dann.

You can read the report here.

• You thought Skybus was bad: Back when the sky was falling on Skybus, Columbus media both print and broadcast were breathless in their coverage of the 450 workers, 365 who were in Columbus that lost their jobs.

Buried in the Metro section last Saturday beneath gobs of coverage of Marc Dann’s darkest day was news that ODJFS announced they were cutting over 554 jobs mostly in Columbus

So over 200 more jobs then Skybus were lost in Columbus last Friday and it was buried on the Metro page. Solid work by ODJFS’ PR folks on garbage day with an assist from Dann, Dann, Dann.

Consumer Issues Progress Leaps and Bounds

Also buried in the ever growing wake and ripple of Marc Dann are efforts by his office, Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray and a host of others to reign in consumer credit abuse from credit cards to Pay Day Lending.

• Ohio Treasurer and credit card fees: Bolstering the efforts of three federal agencies, Richard Cordray will be barnstorming Ohio to encourage consumer comments in support of proposed federal rules against some of the worst credit card practices that are out there.

Among the issues he and others aim to expose are unfair late payment terms, applying new higher interest rates to outstanding balances and unfair fees for exceeding a credit limit because of interest when an account is frozen in a hold pattern. You can read about it here. Dann, Dann, Dann.

• Ohio Attorney General goes after consumer fraud: The AG’s consumer protection section successfully sued CitiBank over deceptive marketing of credit cards to Ohio State University students. Separately, in a unique partnership with OSU’s Moritz College of Law, the state successfully settled a complaint with Potbelly Sandwich works for deceptive advertising to students.

Also, after numerous public hearings, the Attorney General’s office released its report on the first-ever public hearings on Ohio’s Consumer Sales Practices Act. Titled ‘’Costly Cash: 2008 Payday Lending Hearings,” the document went to the Governor and the General Assembly. You can read the study here. Dann, Dann, Dann.

• Pay Day Lending drama a win so far for consumers: Stuck in committee until revelations that the House Minority Leader’s husband lobbied for paydayers in Virginia, the newly released bill hit yet another wall.

That is, until Governor Ted Strickland stepped in and called for a 36% interest cap. House Speaker Jon Husted, chafing under the rug-pulling antics of Strickland, countered with a 28% interest rate cap. But as if to send some obscure message to Strickland, he allowed the bill to be amended to eliminate the Governor’s Keno proposal – only to recess and yank the Keno-like move from the bill.

On to the Senate for payday limits where Senate President Bill Harris had to maneuver the committee after aggressive payday industry lobbyists appeared to be making headway. But if there were a scorecard and odds, consumers look poised to be big winners – pending the next twist and turn.

Maybe you’ll even hear about it. Dann, Dann, Dann.

Other items of note:

• Cuyahoga vote audit matches, well err, voters: On her way to picking up the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award once won by none-other than John McCain, Brunner’s audit of Cuyahoga County primary voting turned out to match up. So after much DeWhining – our friends on Rich Street were strangely silent over one of the smoothest elections in what had been the Wild West of voting. What’s that I hear Mr. DeWhiner … nope just Dann, Dann, Dann.
• Veterans win: A few weeks back in Shadows, we chronicled the lack of accountability of veteran’s services in a bill proposed by Sen. Robert Spada. Well accountability took a turn for the better as the Ohio Senate passed a bill that addresses major oversight issues in the new Department of Veterans Services.

Governor Ted Strickland has long been an advocate for streamlining services to veterans and responded to an embarrassingly low ranking of veterans care. To his credit Sen. Spada responded in a bill that will streamline and help many veterans get better access to care. Didn’t hear about it – of course – Dann, Dann, Dann.

• Ohio Jobs Package will pump $1.57 billion into Ohio’s Economy: Many may have forgotten, but back on April 2, Governor Strickland and both legislative leaders unveiled a $1.57 billion jobs stimulus package avoiding a costly ballot issue.

Then in a month-long drama that broke through a few of Dann’s stormy clouds, the Legislature decided to pay for the cost of much of the plan from the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation.

The Foundation did not like this and attempted to divert its $270 million endowment. The Legislature then stepped in and took the money, while diverting the $40 million left to the Ohio Department of Health. After courts stepped in, the Legislature went one better by eliminating the Foundation.

So, both parties had solid ground to go to Ohioans with a protracted rollout of $1.57 billion worth of economic help in a month long roll-out. But when the Governor went to Youngstown, what’s that we heard reporters asking him – Dann, Dann, Dann.

Even utility reregulation, long the obsession of every shadowy nook and cranny in Columbus, disappeared from view. Dann, Dann, Dann.

Whether it is credit protection, veteran’s bills, or voting reform, April had plenty of action that normally would have made headline after headline. In the case of Ohio’s Jobs package, state officials were left to scratch their heads as a $1.57 billion love fest got lost in translation over daily tabloid reports of a few employees run morally or legally amok. For Tobacco advocates, the screams of heist were drowned by the fact that Tobacco advocacy has fallen into yesterday’s news – rightly or wrongly – it’s Spitzer time in today’s vogue journalism.

And regardless of what you think of the coverage of Marc Dann’s flaws and outrage over Mr. Gutierrez’ salacious antics, you have to wonder what it actually does for Ohioans in that leather storage pouch housing less and less green bills in our gluteus maximus.

So here’s to zipper politics. Even John McCain back in February had his moment in the zig zagged sun.

Chalk one up to us all being “caught in a zipper” – zipper journalism is here to stay.

We eat it up and feed it and revel in its details. And when we go to vote next November you can only hope that Dann, Dann, Dann becomes jobs, jobs, jobs. Because in the end Marc Dann will one way or another, one day or another, go home to Trumbull County – as the Governor says the “court of public opinion” will speak now, in July or in January 2010.

The question really isn’t about Marc Dann or Gary Hart, or Jim Bakker, or Bill Clinton, or Newt Gingrich, Elliot Spitzer or the next Marc Dann – they all fade to history.

But you still wind up reaching for your wallet and whether you realize it or not, your mind can’t help wondering – will either party be able to break through the headlines and focus on it.