I Support Connie ...

Judge Nathaniel R. Jones Retired Judge, United
 States Court of Appeals
 for the Sixth Circuit

Judge Ann Marie Tracey
Former Judge, Hamilton
 County Court of Common
 Pleas

Todd Portune
Hamilton County Commissioner

Paul A. Forshey
Connie's Distinguished
 Husband
 

Press Release

For Immediate Release: Friday, May 23, 2008
Contact: Connie Pillich (513) 379-3371

Connie Pillich Calls HB 477 a Waste of Money

MONTGOMERY – Connie Pillich, Democratic candidate for Ohio’s House of Representatives in the 28th District, calls House Bill 477 a shameful abuse of tax dollars. The bill, passed by the Ohio House, would “mandate” official government proceedings and records be maintained in English. “Why state the obvious?” asks Pillich.
“All government actions, proceedings, and records in Ohio are already conducted in English. What’s the point of creating this bill at all?”

There’s only one reason, claims Pillich: “It’s an election year. This is nothing more than partisan political grandstanding.”

“This bill wastes taxpayer dollars -- it has so many exceptions that it changes nothing. It is classic example of how our stagnant legislature continues to waste our money,” said Pillich, who advocates for smarter government and condemns partisan grandstanding.

“This bill was designed purely to manufacture a wedge issue in a challenging political landscape. English is and will continue to be our official language, with or without this bill.”

Pillich notes that the bill is as useful as declaring that the sky shall be blue. Except when it is cloudy, overcast, hazy, twilight, dawn, dark, or when some other color more aptly describes it. “Just how much money did we spend to draft this joke of a law?” she asks.

“Here in Ohio,” continued Pillich, “we have many of our boys coming home in body bags, veterans returning to lost jobs, children being neglected or abused, businesses leaving in droves – but does the general assembly do anything about those things? No. They let important bills languish in committee for a year, but instead they pass a do-nothing bill like this. What a shame.”

Connie Pillich, an Air Force veteran, is an attorney in private practice who has appeared in state and federal courts in many parts of Ohio. In her experience, all court proceedings and records were conducted and maintained in English.

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Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial beginning of summer and the official weekend for honoring our military veterans. We attend parades, display yellow stickers on our cars and praise the sacrifices vets have made. They need more than that.

Cases of post traumatic stress disorder, depression and drug and alcohol abuse are dramatically increasing in returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. In our community, many of our returning veterans are members of the Army Guard and Air National Guard. They were called up from their civilian lives to deploy to a war zone for a year - or more. Unlike active duty personnel who come back to a military base with all its resources, guard members are on their own. Upon return to the states, guard unit members quickly scatter to their various home towns without the long-term counseling and interdiction they might need.

Ohio's Army and Air Guard drug and alcohol interdiction program is one of the most severely underfunded in the nation. Ohio has one of the largest guard units in the country with 16,000 members. Our Guard's drug and alcohol interdiction funding, ignored for over a decade as unimportant, is on par with North Dakota and Maine! At that level, we cannot even begin to address the needs of our guard members.

Our guard members present other unique challenges to Ohio. When deployed for long periods of time, they leave behind the remnants of their civilian lives. Abandoned leases, child support issues, job security - these things haunt our guard members and their families for a long time.

We need more than flag-waving and special license plates. We need laws that help these volunteers. We need to allow any military member to be able to terminate a lease upon receipt of military deployment orders. We need to assist the families left behind by ensuring child support is properly handled.

We need a veterans hiring preference for state jobs so our veterans have an edge up when returning to the work force. We need to extend low-cost health insurance for those veterans abandoned by the VA medical system. We need to penalize employers who fail to keep a job open for their deployed employee.

Finally, we must stop letting bills that benefit our veterans and their families languish in committee for a year or more because of partisan politics. Partisan political behavior is the single greatest insult to the many men and women who volunteer to put it all on the line to protect us.

We need to honor our vets every day, not just on specified weekends. By increasing mental health services and guaranteeing job and family security, we decrease joblessness, medical costs, and homelessness - a benefit to all Ohioans. By honoring and improving the lives of vets every day, we give them the most sincere "Thank you."

Montgomery resident Connie Pillich is an Air Force veteran and a candidate for the Ohio State House in the 28th District.