New Year, New Legislators

Inauguration day for President-Elect Barack Obama is still two weeks away, but in both Washington DC and Columbus, our new legislators are going to work.

In Columbus, the 128th General Assembly has convened. For the first time in 14 years, a Democrat will be sitting in the speaker's chair in the Ohio House of Representatives. State Rep. Armond Budish of Beachwood is probably reaching for the Tylenol right now, as he grapples with the reality of writing a budget with a potential $7 Billion hole in it. The first speaker from the Cleveland area in almost 70 years also will be called upon to guide Gov. Strickland's education reform package through Capital Square, as well as address Ohio's shortfall of transportation funding.

This profile piece in the Dispatch (R-Columbus) also outlines Budish's own initatives: getting cities to start regionalizing services. This makes good sense. Mergers are popular in the private sector for a good reason: they save money, and with most of Ohio's cities cash strapped, the necessity of going down this road grows with each passing year. Certainly a Cuyahoga County resident like Budish realizes that having 57 tiny municipalities trying to provide their own services, as Cuyahoga County does, is a recipe for waste.

In Washington, Ohioan John Boehner is leading a diminished GOP minority, having lost a net of 21 seats in the 2008 elections, of only 178 members.

Meanwhile, Ohio's freshman Democrats received their committee assignments in a press release issued by House Speaker Pelosi (click here for full details). Marcia Fudge of Ohio's 11th Congressional has been seated on the Education and Labor committee, sure to be a battleground in this congress because of the Employee Free Choice Act.  Mary Jo Kilroy and Steve Driehaus will both be seated on the House Financial Services committee, which will be writing badly needed reformed regulations for Wall Street. And, finally, John Boccieri will be serving on the House Transportation & Infrastructure committee, which will this year need to write a new six-year transportation bill to replace the 2003 SAFETEA-LU which will be expiring. 

Fun times. I'll be posting swearing in photos as I receive them. 

Two more weeks to the end of an error!