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| Ohio Union Members Protest Prison's Closing, Blast Governor |
| By WKMG |
| Published: 02/25/2002 |
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Several hundred state employees, many of them off-duty corrections officers, massed in front of the Statehouse recently complaining of unfair treatment and challenging each other to help overthrow Gov. Bob Taft at the ballot box in November. 'This whole administration should receive the Heartless Award,'' said Gerald McEntee, international president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The members of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Union were especially upset by the planned closing of Orient Correctional Institution, requiring the transfer of 1,700 inmates and the possible loss of 450 jobs. Instead, they said, two privately operated prisons in northeastern Ohio should have been closed. The state employees hoisted umbrellas to ward off intermittent showers andcarried signs that read: 'Keep our doors open -- support state services'' and 'Who owns stock in private prisons, Reggie or Taft -- do you know?'' 'Reggie'' referred to Reginald A. Wilkinson, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, who decided to close Orient after Taft ordered a 3 percent cut in the department's budget. The Orient closing will save an estimated $19 million, the department estimated. 'You're on the frontlines of homeland security,'' McEntee said. 'We believe Ohio politicians have put our homeland security at risk. 'We've got to fight, not just today but every day. Call those legislators today. Fill their mailboxes. They don't get it. Tell them the story.'' Tim Shafer, president of the union's corrections officer sub-unit, concentrated on Taft, saying he should be defeated in November. 'We have a state that has been mismanaged at the Statehouse from the governor's office all the way to the cabinet directors,'' he said. 'It's time for a change here in Ohio.'' Shafer called Taft 'the Fred Astaire of Ohio politics. He's tangoed with the Department of Job and Family Services, he's done the bump on Ohio's children waiting for child- support payments, he twisted with MRDD (Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities) and did a little disco with ODOT. Recently he two-stepped around (the corrections department), and now he's slam-dancing our brothers and sisters all around Ohio.'' Union members waved their signs and chanted: 'Taft's got to go!'' Mary Anne Sharkey, spokeswoman for Taft, said the governor acted on Wilkinson's recommendation in closing Orient. She said the issue of private prisons is separate from the administration's need to cut spending to balance the budget. 'My understanding is that the (prisons) director is going to do everything he can to place those employees at Orient in other positions,'' Sharkey said. |
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