Kasich pins eastern Ohio's economic hopes on oil, gas exploration

Kasich speaks in Steubenville, Ohio. THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH/KYLE ROBERTSON Enlarge

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Gov. John Kasich Tuesday held out an inner-city elementary school as an example of how success and innovation doesn’t necessarily have to come with a lot of dollars attached.

“(Wells Academy has) set a standard for the entire rest of the state,’’ he said. “They’re the number one performing school in Ohio. If you guess where that number one school would be located, you may not get to Steubenville. But here it is.’’

In an apparently unprecedented move, Mr. Kasich stood in a school auditorium some 150 miles northeast of the Statehouse for his second annual address on where Ohio stands, where he wants to take it, and how he wants to get there.

He picked Wells Academy, a K-4 elementary school built within the walls of Steubenville High School, because it is the highest-performing elementary school on state tests, flying in the face of arguments that poorer, inner-city schools tend to struggle.

But when the conversation turned to what he is holding out as part of the economic answer to struggling eastern Ohio, the new breed of natural gas and oil exploration in the local shale, the second-year Republican governor was repeatedly interrupted by a handful of protestors.

“Kasich is selling out Ohio,’’ one shouted as she was led from the school auditorium by security.

Protesters rally Tuesday outside of Wells Academy/Steubenville High School as Ohio. Gov. John Kasich highlights the themes of education and shale gas drilling in his State of the State address. ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge

Mr. Kasich, however, won applause from the crowd when he quipped, “I kind of like all this. This is what it was like when I was growing up.’’

While Mr. Kasich is placing a lot of his economic hopes for eastern Ohio on a new boom in shale deposit oil and glass exploration, many of the more than 150 protesters who were penned into a street across from the school, as well as the few that got inside the auditorium, were primarily concerned about the use of hydraulic “fracking’’ to get at that oil and gas.

The process uses fluids and chemicals at high pressure to fracture underground shale to release the fossil fuels trapped within.

The Kasich administration issued a moratorium on the operation of ignition wells that receive mining waste from inside and outside Ohio, but the industry has suggested that the Youngstown area earthquakes and wells aren’t necessarily related, let alone whether waste from fracking operations is the problem.

But there’s “no doubt’’ in the mind of Darlene O’Neil, of Youngstown, that the two are related.

“We’ve had 10 or more earthquakes in this exact vicinity since these injection wells have gone in,’’ she said. “I think that’s pretty cause and effect. I’m looking for them to stop until they can find regulation that will keep our air safe, our water safe, and our children safe and keep my house from crumbling.’’

Although he spoke for nearly an hour and a half, the only real new policy he unveiled was a $10 million investment to deploy a fiber-optic, high-speed broadband system that the state claims could increase Internet download speeds as much as ten-fold.

Gov. John Kasich speaks during the State of the State address at Wells Academy/Steubenville High School. ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge

An agreement with Cisco and Juniper calls for the state to deploy some 1,800 miles of fiber-optic cable. The first $8.1 million will fund hardware connections between Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland by June, 2012 with other portions of the state following by October, 2012.

In a particularly emotional point of his speech, Mr. Kasich mentioned his own twin daughters as he urged lawmakers to declare war on human trafficking in Ohio much as they went after prescription drug abuse in the southern portion of the state.

“We have 1,000 Ohio children — the average age 13 years of age — they’re in the slave trade business in our state,’’ he said. “(State Rep.) Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo) is, you know, on fire about this. One thousand of our children… It’s hard for me to even think about that. Can you imagine someone snatching your daughter and forcing her into prostitution at 12 and 13 years of age?

“We’ve got to stop this,’’ he said. “We’ve got to stamp this out of our state. It’s a scourge!’’

In addition to “fracking,’’ protesters challenged the governor on his potential lease of the Ohio Turnpike, Republican-passed election reforms, and even the current labor lockout at Cooper Tire in Findlay.

One protester held up a sign pointing in the direction of McKees Rocks, Mr. Kasich’s hometown about 35 miles upriver near Pittsburgh, and offering him some advice: “Go home Kasich.’’