Governor Voinovich's Selected Speeches   

1992 State of the State Address(14th January, 1992)
State Capitol, Columbus, Ohio

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Mr. Speaker -- Mr. President -- Lt. Governor DeWine -- distinguished members of Ohio's 119th General Assembly -- Justices of the Supreme Court -- elected state office holders -- members of the Cabinet -- family, friends, and fellow Ohioans:

One year ago this very minute, many of you were shivering outside as I delivered my Inaugural Address on the front steps of the State House.

That was the shortest speech I've given in my life, but Janet still got pneumonia, I got the flu, and began losing what turned out to be 14 pounds.

That was definitely not what I had in mind when I said I was going to do more with less!

In the 365 days since that moment, I think we've learned a great deal about how important it is for us to work together for the good of Ohio.

Vern and Stan -- I made a New Year's resolution to spend as much time with you in 1992 as you can put up with me -- I'm ready if you are!

I'm pleased with what we accomplished in 1991, and I want to express the gratitude of our entire administration for the help and guidance we received from all of you.

To fully understand what we achieved in 1991 -- and what we must strive toward in 1992 and beyond -- it's important to recognize the environment in which we are operating -- at least from my perspective.

The 1980's in Ohio were a time of significantly higher taxes -- skyrocketing state spending -- a low job growth rate -- and declining real personal income.

Other states passed us by.

Ultimately, last year's budget crisis forced us to take a fresh look at the way state government conducts its business, and to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

We knew that, in order for Ohio to regain its competitive edge and work up to its capacity, state government was going to have to do the same.

Recently I met with a fellow governor from the south who served during the 80's, and he said, "George, I should have gotten out when it was good... I've never seen anything like this."

I told him, "You're going to have to work harder and smarter, and do more with less."

And we're beginning to do it in Ohio.

We didn't spend one cent in 1991 on furniture in either the State house or the Riffe Tower -- we saved $156,000 on my personal security costs and $170,000 on use of the state airplane compared to 1990.

Our cooperative efforts produced the first budget in over a decade that reined in state spending and kept it in line with inflation.

We avoided the major tax increases, significant cutbacks in valuable services, and massive layoffs that other states have resorted to -- and we emerged with no black eyes, bloody noses, or broken teeth!

Because of that, 1991 was our year to move ahead of some of our competitors.

But now, 1992 brings with it another recession-driven, spending-and-revenue problem, and, as someone -- maybe Yogi Berra -- once said, it's deja vu all over again.

I'm very confident that we will continue to work together to make sure Ohio weathers the current storm and emerges in a more competitive position.

If I had to describe 1991 in one sentence, I would say this:

During tough economic times, we invested in our greatest resource -- our people -- and laid the foundation for a stronger Ohio in the years to come.

We chose to target our scarce rescues on people, and particularly those most at risk -- women, children, and senior citizens. That's why, in our plan to solve the $460 million state budget deficit, we have not used an across-the-board approach in making cuts.

Basic aid to schools -- Head Start -- special and vocational education -- instructional subsidies to colleges and universities -- and other critical education programs are receiving smaller cuts than the norm.

Receiving no cuts at all are childhood immunization -- student financial aid --Healthy Start -- the Healthchek program for women and children -- and the PASSPORT and Meals on Wheels programs for senior citizens.

In order to prevent harmful cuts to the programs I just mentioned, we need a package of carefully considered revenue enhancements. I have given you my proposals, and I know you have some ideas of your own.

Working together, I know we can agree on a plan which will eliminate the deficit and prevent further cuts in vital programs. It's important that the final package has permanent enhancements for long-term stability -- avoids reliance on one-time revenue pick-ups -- poses no harm to the state's economic recovery -- and does not set the stage for a major tax increase in the near future.

I know we all agree that we should protect education against any further reductions.

If revenues significantly exceed projections, our first priority must be to direct those additional dollars to our schools. Through it all, we must maintain our commitment to assuring Ohio children the chance to grow up healthy and ready to take care of themselves -- to find a good job, raise a family, and make a contribution to society.

In just 10 short months since last year's address, we've made significant progress.

The number of pregnant women, infants, and children enrolled in the Healthy Start Medicaid program increased from 20,000 last April to 129,000 today.

We expanded immunization funding to make a second dose of measles, mumps, an rubella shots available to 75,000 children last year. We increased the number of women, infants, and children served in the "WIC" nutritional program and added 10,000 new day care slots to serve working parents.

Thanks to the efforts of Jane Campbell, Joan Lawrence, and Grace Drake, we passed House Bill 155, which will make day care services available to as many as 40,000 Ohio families.

These efforts demonstrate that we have taken a holistic approach to education -- education begins at conception.

We stopped state government's participation in child abuse by putting sharp teeth in our child support enforcement system -- and increasing statewide collections by $70 million.

Head Start expansions will serve an additional 5,400 eligible children during the current biennium, and my commitment is that all eligible children will be served by 1995.

Increased funding for the adoption assistance program will place 700 children with adoptive families and foster homes in fiscal year 1992 -- and 768 more the next year.

Those may not sound like large numbers, but to each of those 1,468 children who gains a new home and family, it's the biggest deal in the world.

Let me read you part of a letter sent last November to the Lucas County Children Services Agency by three children -- Jennifer, Michael, and Brian -- concerning their pending adoption.

"After all the times we have been moved and all that has happened to us, we finally have a home and family we love and want forever....

"Christmas is coming soon and more than anything else, we would like our adoption final before Christmas....

"If there is anything you can do to help... it would mean more than any other present we could get."

Well -- their adoption was finalized on December 16th, because that agency shares our commitment to put Ohio's kids first. Lest anyone doubt how important that commitment is, just look into the eyes of one of Ohio's newest families.

Jennifer, Michael, and Brian -- would you -- your new mom and dad, Tim and Angela Grimm -- and your new sisters and brother, Holly, Janell, and Tommy -- please stand so everyone can meet you?

By intervening early through these and other initiatives, we will assure a brighter future for our children and trigger huge savings down the road, in the form of reduced spending for prisons, adult welfare programs, and remedial schooling.

I want to touch briefly on other areas where we laid a foundation in 1991 for solid progress in the years to come.

As you know, I've placed a great deal of emphasis on management.

Better management means getting the biggest bang for our buck and guaranteeing something we all want -- value -- a quality product for the least amount of money.

It also means that state government is better able to help improve the quality of life in Ohio and serve as a partner to Ohio business in creating more jobs.

Our administration has attracted millions of dollars in aid from the private sector for the Operations Improvement Task Force audit of all state agencies under my jurisdiction and similar audits of the Department of Education and Bureau of Workers' Compensation -- at no cost to the taxpayers.

And the Board of Regents has commissioned a two-tier management audit of higher education in Ohio -- something not done since 1979.

These all-volunteer, public-private partnerships, represent the most comprehensive management audit of state government in Ohio history, and perhaps in the nation.

We're already seeing the results.

For example, the Bureau of Employment Services trimmed its regional operations and saved a million dollars, while at the same time increasing the delivery of unemployment checks to first-time applicants by more than six percent.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's doing more with less.

We're using a new, fast-track method to build prisons that will create more than four times the number of new beds than the same dollars would have bought under the old method.

A new system of awarding state contracts on a competitive basis has already saved several million taxpayer dollars, and will save millions more.

And a woman applying for Healthy Start no longer has to fill out a 34-page form, but a 2-pager instead.

We also devoted much time in 1991 to laying the groundwork for meaningful education reform in Ohio.

The Governor's Education Management Council, or GEM, is already a national model for involving the private sector in education reform.

And its members are focusing their efforts on school governance -- revising Ohio's school funding formula -- and making Ohio a trailblazer in meeting the six national education goals:

--School readiness -- reducing the drop-out rate -- competency in challenging subject matter -- proficiency in science and math -- literacy for all adults -- and drug - and violence-free schools.

At the request of the National Governors Association, I have taken a national leadership role with respect to the six goals, heading up school readiness -- one of three national action teams.

Thanks to Chester Roush, President of the Ohio School Board -- Vice President Sue Ann Norton -- and an enlightened school board -- we gained our biggest education achievement of 1991, when we hired Ted Sanders.

Ted Sanders is as respected an education leader as you'll find in the country, and he's already demonstrating his strong leadership.

I know Ted believes as I do, that education is the best investment we can make in our future -- and it's also our best economic development tool.

On the jobs front, I am committed to making Ohio more competitive -- that's why our budget proposal calls for no increases in major state taxes.

Thanks to you, we have begun reorganizing and regionalizing the Department of Development to make it more responsive to the needs of Ohio business.

With more than 350,000 Ohio jobs directly attributable to exports, we created a private sector task force to advise us on how to boost Ohio exports and get more companies involved in this job-creating arena.

We created a 15-member Science and Technology Council to advise us on how to make strategic investments of taxpayer dollars in the new technologies and attract jobs for Ohio's future.

On the environment, we have proposed a moratorium on the construction of any more hazardous waste incinerators, and we will be needing your legislative support to put this into action.

We committed ourselves to pollution prevention as our best means to protect the environment, and we are pushing to curb the flow of out-of-state waste into Ohio.

In the critical area of health care, we worked very closely with Bob Ney in drafting Senate Bill 240, which mandates that insurance companies pay for mammograms -- curtails skyrocketing medical insurance costs for senior citizens -- and makes medical coverage more affordable to farmers and small business employers.

And Wayne Jones's bill also contains some excellent provisions.

These bills are an excellent first step toward addressing the needs of the 1.1 million Ohioans without health care insurance. Much more can and must be done.

On transportation, we began fast-tracking critical highway projects.

I'm proud that last year we spent $700 million on highway construction -- that's the most money spent in the year after an election in Ohio history!

And we laid the foundation for creation of a comprehensive transportation plan that will address Ohio's needs well into the next century -- something that hasn't been done in 25 years.

And our Washington office, under the leadership of Lt. Governor Mike DeWine, worked aggressively with Ohio's Congressional delegation to secure a 52 percent annual increase in federal funding over the last highway bill -- enough to sustain 250,000 jobs, compared to 137,000 in the last bill.

Our team in Washington -- and that includes our congressional delegation and our office staff -- is working together more closely than they have in years, and Ohioans are already seeing the benefits.

Just ask the people in Columbiana County, who got Ohio's first federal correctional facility, which means 1,000 recession-proof jobs in an area that badly needs them.

On criminal justice and corrections, also under the leadership of Mike DeWine, we have established unprecedented coordination among all involved state agencies, and a better working relationship with local law enforcement agencies.

We reduced drug abuse in Ohio's prisons, and are expanding Ohio's program to put inmates to work in prison industries and cleaning up our highways.

Through the leadership of Bob Ney and Jerry Krupinski, we fought together to protect 7,000 Ohio coal jobs.

Thanks to the leadership of Roy Ray and Mike Verich, we passed legislation to provide housing for low-and moderate-income people and our seniors.

In the area of affirmative action, I signed an E-E-O Executive Order establishing the centralized recruitment and referral program to aid us in the hiring of women and minorities.

We also established a one-stop shop to better serve minority-owned firms wishing to do business with the state, and increased our enforcement efforts for Ohio's set-aside laws.

If '91 was a year to lay the foundation for future progress, then 1992 must be a year to build on that foundation -- a year when plans are converted to action, and reports and recommendations produce results.

We must maintain our commitment to Ohio's children and families.

We will launch a pilot project this month to enable at-risk children and families to receive health care, job training, and day care services in our schools, rather than in agencies scattered throughout the community.

We will also move forward with two other initiatives designed to improve the efficiency of our service delivery systems for Ohio's children and families.

The Head Start Collaboration Project and Ohio's Family and Children First Initiative will work toward that goal.

This family and children initiative will be driven by local-based providers, not bureaucrats in Columbus.

And it will develop a plan to meet the health, education, and social service needs of disadvantaged children and families, and develop an action plan to meet those needs by eliminating barriers, coordinating programs, and targeting dollars.

We must revolutionize the way we deliver services to women and children in this state.

On the broader education front, the most important work ahead of us in 1992 is the completion of the Gap Analysis.

I hope all of you read "Creating Opportunities for Success" -- our first report on Ohio's progress in achieving the six goals. The Gap Analysis, conducted by GEM and funded by the Business Roundtable and the Cleveland Foundation, will identify what we are doing right, what we should be doing, and what we shouldn't be doing if we want to achieve our six goals and be a leader in education reform.

We need the private sector's help -- and I'm proud of my wife, Janet's, work on the Ohio Adopt-A-School Program, which involves the private sector in our schools.

When the Gap Analysis is done, we will propose a series of legislative and administrative recommendations which will build on Senate Bill 140 as the next major step toward lasting education reform in Ohio.

And ladies and gentlemen, once we've done it, let's get off their backs so teachers can teach, and children can learn. We must also work to assure Ohio's children that the future holds for them the one thing most likely to make their individual dreams come true -- a good job.

We must now devote our energies in 1992 to spurring new job growth in our state, and protecting the jobs we already have. That is why we must not have a major tax increase -- we must keep the lid on health care and energy costs -- reform the Bureau of Workers' Compensation -- and foster new job growth and development.

The mess in Workers' Compensation has to be cleaned up.

We can't ask Ohio employers to pay hundreds of dollars more than nearby competitors, or ask Ohio workers to go for months without money they are owed for injuries on the job.

We now have a plan -- The Mckinsey Report -- put together by this nation's premier management consultant, at no cost to the taxpayers.

That report is now being converted into legislation.

I may not always see eye-to-eye with AFL-CIO Chief John Hodges, but I want to publicly acknowledge the leadership he is showing, because he realizes how important this legislation is to Ohio's working men and women.

Our specific strategy to create jobs and make Ohio more competitive in the 1990's will be threefold:

-- To expand Ohio's role as a worldwide exporter of goods and services; -- To maintain and expand existing businesses in Ohio; -- And to create an environment that attracts tomorrow's new jobs in science and technology.

Why are exports so important?

An estimated 25,000 new jobs are created for every new billion dollars in exports.

That means a 10 percent increase in Ohio's export sales would create 67,500 new jobs.

Our state universities can help by making international business a top curriculum priority.

But we also need to help educate Ohio businesses on how to build their export trade -- and we need a vehicle to showcase the quality of Ohio products to potential customers worldwide.

To accomplish both goals, we are proposing creation of an International Export and Exhibition Center.

The Center would be paid for through the state's bonding capability, with the debt retired through rent paid by Ohio businesses using the Center.

I believe we must also provide an incentive to make new export business more profitable to Ohio companies.

We are, therefore, exploring the feasibility of a business tax incentive that would encourage expansion of Ohio exports, thereby stimulating new job growth -- and we are aggressively pursuing creation of a financing vehicle to make it easier for small- and medium-sized companies to compete in the global marketplace.

Finally, we must move forward with a long-range transportation plan that makes it easier to move goods, not just around Ohio, but into and out of the state as well.

That plan must certainly include improved access to and from northwest and southeast Ohio, and other areas under-served by our transportation network.

Our second thrust will be to maintain or expand existing Ohio businesses.

1991 provided a resounding series of victories for Ohio along these lines.

Among the numerous companies electing to stay or expand in our state were several large, notable corporations, such as Procter and Gamble in Warren County -- the Limited here in Franklin County -- the Chrysler/Acustar Thermal Product Plant in Montgomery County -- and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel of Jefferson and Belmont Counties.

But the list also included medium- to small-sized companies like York International of Lorain County -- Pyromet/Hillsboro Aero Testing in Highland County -- and the O.M. Scott Company of Union County.

We will leave no stone unturned in trying to save jobs in this state, which is why I've taken on the Federal E.P.A. over USS-Kobe in Lorain -- We're doing battle!

We're not going to let them stop construction of that blast furnace -- particularly because, in addition to creating new jobs, it will also reduce pollution.

And I'm going back to Detroit to talk to the big three auto manufacturers to remind them of the outstanding spirit of labor-management cooperation we've got in Ohio, and make sure they know we're going to fight for Ohio jobs!

During 1991, our Economic Development Division helped 428 companies invest more than $2.4 billion to expand or locate operations in Ohio -- which kept or created 31,000 Ohio jobs.

We must increase these outreach efforts in 1992.

Lastly, we will focus much effort this year on creating new job opportunities in science and technology. It's from these areas that the jobs of the future will come -- and Ohio must be positioned to attract those jobs, or other states will get them instead.

Therefore, I am today proposing that we look very seriously at a sales tax exemption for the purchase by companies of new machinery and equipment used in research and development.

It will be a strategic investment in tomorrow's jobs.

Ohio already enjoys a solid base in such fields as aerospace, biochemicals, advanced manufacturing, polymer technology, and others.

We must build on this base, while at the same time exploring new areas to get out ahead of the pack.

One of those is environmental engineering and technology.

By the year 2000, more money will be spent in this field than is now spent on defense.

God knows, we've got enough need in Ohio for this technology.

I am, therefore, proposing that we move to create an Ohio an Environmental Technology center that could, with possible support from the federal government, become the nation's focal point for this emerging industry.

Just as NASA has its "mission control," Ohio's "E-mission control" would establish our state as the major force in this job-producing area of the future.

I wish time would permit me to list all of the other initiatives we will be taking in 1992 on health care, the environment, crime, and other critical issues -- including bringing our skyrocketing Medicaid costs under control through a managed-care system, that may include selective contracting.

We will also initiate a massive AIDS education effort and are supporting House Bill 419, sponsored by Paul Jones, which would protect health care workers and patients through expanded right-to-know and H-I-V testing measures.

Perhaps our greatest challenge in 1992 will be to break through the doom and gloom that some now preach -- to look past our immediate challenges to the opportunities within our grasp.

We can take guidance from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who would have celebrated his 63rd birthday tomorrow. Dr. King said that "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

In the face of great challenge and controversy in 1991, we laid a foundation to address our most pressing needs.

And we made an unprecedented commitment to our children.

I'm optimistic about Ohio's future.

It's been said, a pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity -- and an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.

I'm confident that, with God's help and working as your partner, we will build on the foundation of 1991 -- continue to improve the quality of life for our fellow citizens -- and secure a bright and promising future for all Ohioans.

Thank You.