Letter in columbus Dispatch
Home rule is causing many to flee Ohio
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Regarding the recent passage of the new statewide concealed-carry law and general firearms regulations, Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi said, "This legislature, from predatory lending, to residency, to red-light cameras and now concealed weapons, is continuing an assault on the rights of our people."
State Sen. Eric Fingerhut, a Shaker Heights Democrat, said, "The epitaph of the Ohio 126 th General Assembly has to be the death of home rule," as if individual freedoms have been eroded.
The statements by these gentlemen are oxymoronic. What gall these two have claiming their interpretation of home rule has something to do with individual rights, when the general laws they are complaining about, passed by the General Assembly, give individuals more freedom. These two despots lose power, not rights, when our government fulfills its role as a republic.
Ohioans do not want the Statehouse to have a majority of these two kinds of politicians, who want to usurp our republic by establishing a City-State system and they vote accordingly. Ohioans want to retain their rights. They do not want to be spied upon and ticketed without driver identification. They do not want to be forced to live in the city they work for. They do not want to be arrested because they were not aware of all the firearms laws of every city through which they drive.
Home rule has been abused for a decade. It is no longer about local freedom. It is about more power for local politicians who want to rule, not govern. Since liberal Democrats from metropolitan areas have not had control of the state government for the past several years, they try to regain power by usurping the state government with a broadening of the intent of home rule.
County commissioners, city councils and mayors need to focus on improving and managing infrastructure and not on empowering themselves through home rule at the expense of individual freedom.
Ohioans need jobs, and it is because of the morass of complicated and negative bureaucracies, and a plethora of myopic laws and fees created by our city governments, due largely to Ohio being a home-rule state, that businesses and individuals are leaving in droves. Jobs and more individual freedoms are in states that do not have home rule, because, simply put, home rule has become a disguise for more rule.
BRENT GREER
Columbus
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/12/16/20061216-A9-03.html