Kasich: State is setting example for Washington

BEXLEY, Ohio -- Gov. John Kasich said Thursday that he and state lawmakers have ushered in the most aggressive policy overhaul the state has ever seen, affecting inner-city schools, shale-drilling fields, college campuses, and prison yards.

And the Republican governor is promising even more to come.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," Kasich remarked at a gathering at the Governor's Residence in a Columbus suburb.

Some big policy ideas he's pursuing include getting Ohio's educational institutions and private employers with job openings working in tandem to boost employment, and tracking schoolchildren beginning in first grade to the careers they might pursue as adults.

Kasich, stung last year by the repeal of a sweeping collective bargaining law, said he is "exhilarated" by lawmakers' openness to change.

He credited both parties for helping craft bills that radically rewrite state fiscal, tax, criminal justice, education and energy policy.

Many of the bills saw final approval in the past week.

Though Kasich didn't invite Democratic legislative leaders to Thursday's event, he said bipartisanship is at work in the state.

"That doesn't mean you've got a bill, and I've got to be for it. It means we kind of work together, and lower the rhetoric, and stop the name-calling, and the insults and the insinuations," he said. "We are making progress there. That's pretty cool. Particularly when you don't see it at all in Washington."

Former Gov. Ted Strickland, the Democrat who Kasich defeated in 2010, said Democrats and Republicans also worked together during his administration -- passing a state budget with nearly unanimous support in a legislature where control was split between the parties. Strickland also oversaw his own sweeping reforms of energy and education.

"I don't know if I'd call this current legislative session record-setting or not. What I see is a budget that guts the local government fund, cuts hundreds of millions of dollars out of public schools and decreases funding for college education," Strickland said.

"I'm not saying all of it is unnecessary," he said of Kasich's changes. "Obviously, some of it is significant."

Kasich is campaigning for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and Strickland for President Barack Obama's re-election. Kasich said Thursday the race for the White House will certainly magnify political differences.

His Thursday event coincided with dueling Romney and Obama appearances at opposite ends of the presidential battleground state.

Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder, a GOP lawmaker off and on since the 1960s, said the current session is the most significant he can remember. Senate President Tom Niehaus, another Republican, said the pace was remarkable.

The quick legislative pace under Kasich sometimes frustrated lawmakers, as well as advocates trying to have their say on dozens of fast-moving bills. Even some within his own party thought Kasich was pressuring lawmakers to move too fast.

Kasich said Ohio politicians have proved they can come together on bills that help average residents. He cited as examples a bill cracking down on the human trafficking, largely of young girls; a bill curbing collateral sanctions that gives second chances to ex-inmates; and a landmark blueprint for reforming Cleveland's public schools.