Ohioans shouldn't have been forced into this no-win choice. If Gov. John Kasich and state lawmakers of both parties had done their job, we wouldn't have to do it for them.

Next month, voters must either ratify or repeal the new law that would limit the collective-bargaining rights of 350,000 state and local government employees, including public school teachers, police officers, and firefighters. That legislation, Senate Bill 5, is on the statewide ballot as Issue 2.

The only safe prediction is that whatever the outcome of the vote, the aftermath is likely to be dismal.

We can approve needed labor reforms -- coated in union-busting toxic waste. Or we can revert to the current state bargaining law, which has grown expensively obsolete during its three decades on the books.

There's no middle ground between these extremes. No opportunity for taxpayers to separate the policy changes they say they want from the political junk they don't.

That's what happens when partisan and special-interest polarization becomes as absolute as it is in Columbus. The object is to beat the other guy, whatever the cost, rather than to compromise and enact policies that would benefit the state and all of its citizens. And when the officials we elect to represent us can't or won't do the latter, they expect us to clean up the mess they've made.

Polls suggest that opponents of Issue 2, who conducted a petition drive to place the law before voters, have lost much of the commanding lead they once held. That margin is likely to shrink further as the big-money campaigns for and against the law ramp up. Such competition doesn't make the choice any more palatable.

Many of the changes Governor Kasich and the Republican-controlled General Assembly want to make in public-sector labor relations are not only defensible but necessary to contain spending. Government workers should contribute to the costs of their health insurance and pension plans to the same extent that private-sector employees do.

Performance, once you figure out a fair way to measure it, should be at least as important a factor as seniority in decisions about pay, promotions, and layoffs. No one deserves an automatic raise for showing up.

Retiring workers should not walk away with huge payoffs for unused sick and vacation days. Contract mediation and reopening should take a government's -- that is, taxpayers' -- ability to pay into greater account than the law does now. Past practice shouldn't be an excuse to perpetuate bad contract terms.

If the governor and GOP lawmakers had stopped there, we might not be having this divisive debate. But they didn't. Because they had the votes, they stuck provisions in the law that have nothing to do with saving taxpayers money or operating government more efficiently, and everything to do with punishing a political adversary.

Why obstruct unions from collecting "fair share" fees from nonunion workers who still get the pay and benefits that the unions negotiate? Why limit competition in providing health insurance to public workers?

What incentive will governments have to bargain in good faith when the new law allows them to impose their terms to resolve contract disputes? Or when they no longer have to negotiate many issues? Or when strikes, a rarely invoked option, are banned for all public employees?

Then there is what critics of Issue 2 call the hypocrisy factor. The liberal advocacy group Innovation Ohio observed last week that Mr. Kasich and lawmakers do not subject themselves to many of the concessions on pay, benefits, and perquisites they demand of government workers.

When lawmakers enacted their all-cuts state budget this year, they rejected a proposal to trim their own pay by 5 percent. State Rep. Louis Blessing (R., Cincinnati) explained to Ohio Public Radio last week that "I earn my pay." Oh.

Given Toledo Public Schools' contract battles with the district's teachers union, you might expect Board of Education president Bob Vasquez to support Issue 2. He doesn't.

"I'm pleased with the process we've got," Mr. Vasquez told me last week, noting that the district's new union contracts reflect the proposals of an independent fact-finder. "The system works the way it's supposed to work. [Issue 2] would infringe on collective bargaining itself."

Still, intransigent leaders of public-employee unions for whom time stopped in 1983, when Ohio enacted its current collective-bargaining law, are no great friends of taxpayers either. They insist the status quo is just fine.

Ask them what further economic sacrifices their members are prepared to make to help recession-ravaged Ohio governments maintain essential services without resorting to mass layoffs or ruinous tax hikes. Too often, the response is a blank stare, or an effort to change the subject, or a vehement gripe about what they've lost, or a mumbled promise that "we'll talk about it."

Union officials and Democratic lawmakers complain, properly, that Republicans froze them out of the development of Senate Bill 5. But when the governor offered to negotiate changes to the measure last August, his detractors refused to test his sincerity, preferring a political brawl to the prospect of a better law.

The unions and their Democratic allies insist their campaign against Issue 2 is a war to preserve the "middle class" -- a term that means pretty much anything you want it to mean. But maintaining the income of government workers requires tax subsidy by a lot of Ohioans who don't have jobs or health insurance or workplace pension plans. Who's looking out for them?

The Blade will state its institutional position on Issue 2 before Election Day. We're struggling to choose between the two lousy alternatives, as I suspect many of you are.

It shouldn't be this way. And if this issue provides a model of how state government will make -- or evade -- other tough decisions for the foreseeable future, Ohioans have scant cause for optimism.

David Kushma is editor of The Blade.

Contact him at: dkushma@theblade.com

First Published October 2, 2011, 4:00 a.m.