Reduce, recycle, reuse (Story)

Reduce, recycle, reuse

Experts, industry work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

By BOB BLAKE

LIMA — Imagine a world devoid of polar bears in the wild, the Arctic habitat home to the creatures melted away. The image isn’t one out of some fantastical science fiction novel or the product of a Hollywood blockbuster.

It might just be a matter of time until it is reality.

For nature enthusiasts and polar bear mascots alike, it’s a sad prospect.

“Obviously, the polar bear is important, it’s our mascot here at Ohio Northern, but there aren’t going to be polar bears in the wild if things continue. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do anything fast enough about climate change to make a difference,” said Terry Keiser, professor of biology and chairman of the biological and allied health sciences. “Imagine a day when the only place you’ll be able to see a polar bear is in a zoo. Some of those things, we’ve already missed the boat. Some of those things are already going to happen.”

The problem, according to experts, is climate change. One of the prime culprits: the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Some of the gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide — occur naturally in the environment, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Others — chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons — result mostly from industrial activities.

The issue has brought environmental and industrial professionals together. The U.S. EPA initiated a program in 2009, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, designed to track emissions from large producers of greenhouse gases. In January, the EPA published facility-level data on greenhouse gas emissions nationwide. Companies reported data from 2010. Facilities with emissions greater than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent were required to report while other companies volunteered data.

“This publicly available data enriches and empowers all of us who want to identify opportunities for reducing greenhouse gases. The data can be used by communities to identify nearby sources of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “It can be used by facilities to compare their emissions to similar operations to see where there may be cost-effective opportunities for reductions. It can be used by businesses to track their own emissions over time.”

Tracking emissions

The impact of the greenhouse gases, in particular the human impact on climate change and rising levels of greenhouse gases, has long been a matter of debate.

“Climate change is a natural process,” Keiser said. “But we are influencing that climate change by speeding it up.”

The EPA has been tracking greenhouse gas emissions for the better part of two decades. A report issued last week by the agency shows overall emissions in 2010 increased by 3.2 percent from the previous year.

According to the EPA, the increase in emissions was in part attributed to greater energy consumption with an expanding economy. Increased demand for electricity for air conditioning because of a hot summer also contributed, officials said.

In the past 20 years, the level of greenhouse gas emissions has risen more than 10 percent, the EPA report said.

“It’s like thinking of the atmosphere, of the natural ozone layer, as a blanket around the planet. The more of these greenhouse gases that get produced and released into the atmosphere is equivalent to putting on more and more blankets around the planet,” Keiser said. “As we have more and more people in the world, even if the levels everyone produced stayed the same, the overall effect would be greater amounts of these gases.”

McCarthy acknowledged that part of the design of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is to provide the data so policymakers in this country and around the world can make decisions to reduce the amount of gases produced. The EPA effort is the U.S. effort as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is working to affect change on a global scale.

“Our hope is that people outside EPA, outside the federal government, will use this data as a powerful resource for better decision-making and in the end use the data in ways that we here at EPA haven’t even contemplated,” McCarthy said. “What we can bank on is that better information will always lead to a better informed public, which will lead to better environmental protection.”

Data from the EPA’s January report shows 17 facilities across the nine-county region surrounding Lima reported 2010 greenhouse gas emissions. The output ranges from a high of more than 1.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent produced by the Husky Energy Lima Refinery to more than 22,000 metric tons produced by Veyance Technologies, the former Goodyear plant, in St. Marys.

Overall in the Lima region, the 17 businesses accounted for more than 2.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Statewide, 246 businesses reported greenhouse gas emissions totaling more than 156 million metric tons.

Greenhouse gases and industry

Representatives from industry acknowledge the business community has a responsibility to customers and communities to stay on top of the greenhouse gas issue.

“Husky is a responsible corporate citizen and is committed to the continuous improvement of its environmental performance,” said Mel Duvall, a spokesman for Calgary, Canada-based Husky Energy. “We work to mitigate any impacts to air, water, land and habitat and strive to meet or exceed all regulatory requirements for environmental monitoring and reporting.”

Duvall pointed to recent projects at the refinery designed to have a positive impact on the facility’s carbon footprint. In fall 2009, the facility underwent a turnaround that included initiatives to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions, increase flare gas recovery and improve energy conservation.

A flare gas recovery project was completed at the refinery in December 2010. The project redirects gases that were once emitted back into the plant to be recycled as energy. Duvall said the effort has cut overall emissions by 30 percent.

“Our internal environmental reporting system provides accountability in tracking emissions and Husky contributes emissions data to the Carbon Disclosure Project, the world’s largest database of corporate climate change strategies and greenhouse gas emissions,” Duvall said. “As a responsible corporate citizen, Husky strives to implement actions and practices consistent with sound environmental management and conservation.”

In the Lima region, Husky’s more than 1.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent is 10 times greater than the second largest site — Linde Gas North America’s Lima Plant 2, which had more than 139,000 metric tons in 2010. Linde also operates a second plant in Lima that ranked ninth in the region with more than 73,000 metric tons emitted.

Vinita Abraham, a spokeswoman for New Jersey-based Linde North America, said the company is committed to reducing its carbon footprint.

“Linde is committed to developing and adopting environmental solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support sustainability for both ourselves and our customers,” Abraham said. “Our Lima plants comply with all applicable federal, state and local environmental regulations and are both certified under the American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care Program. Responsible Care is a globally recognized management system aimed at helping companies improve performance in areas such as safety, health, environment and security.”

The company’s two hydrogen plants and one carbon dioxide recovery plant in Lima help provide customers with clean fuel, chill food, carbonate drinks and make medicines, Abraham said.

“The hydrogen we supply from our hydrogen plants helps our customers remove sulfur contamination from fuels and enable them to meet the EPA clean fuel requirements, produce fewer greenhouse gases and other tailpipe emissions,” she said. “Linde has invested a great deal of money in using the best control technologies for combustion such as [low nitrogen oxide] burners and employed some of the latest and most efficient technologies for efficient plant operation.

“In Lima, Linde captures and purifies [carbon dioxide] emitted as a byproduct from an ammonia manufacturer. Linde uses advanced technologies to capture the plant’s CO2 emissions, which would otherwise be vented straight into the atmosphere. Linde recovers, purifies and liquefies the CO2 and then ships it by tanker trunk to a variety of customers, who use it in applications such as food chilling and freezing, health care, pharmaceutical manufacturing and soft drink bottling and dispensing.”

Patrick Barrett, corporate director for environmental health and safety at Veyance Technologies, said efforts in St. Marys and elsewhere in the company focus not only on what’s directly emitted but also on indirect emissions. The company has adopted a smart-building approach that engages heating and cooling systems as well as lighting only when an area is actually being used. The company also changed its forklift fleet to more energy efficient models.

“It stems back to our ownership group and their focus on responsible investment. That responsibility spans the company,” Barrett said. “Back when I got into this more than 20 years ago, this was a trendy type of thing. Now people’s awareness is up tremendously. Government has a responsibility to drive for more efficient processes and equipment. If we could get everyone pulling in the same direction, God only knows what we could accomplish.”

Joe Bianco, the safety, health and environment manager at the INEOS plant in Lima, said the company constantly monitors its emissions as well as looks for other ways to save energy.

“If it’s not in use, it’s isolated,” Bianco said. “Office temperature compressors are turned off at night. We did that back in the late 1980s at the old offices. Our new offices will be the same way.”

Other companies like Bunge North America, which has a plant in Delphos, and Cargill Inc., which operates a facility in Sidney, also have specific goals for reducing their carbon footprint. Bunge’s plan calls for a 5 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per ton of output, a 10 percent reduction in water usage per ton of output and a 10 percent reduction in the total amount of material sent to landfills.

Similarly, Cargill is looking for a 5 percent improvement in energy efficiency, a 5 percent improvement in greenhouse gas intensity, an increase in renewable energy use to 12.5 percent of the company’s energy portfolio and a 5 percent improvement in freshwater efficiency.

Keiser said if all businesses, industries and individuals looked for even small ways to reduce their carbon footprint, it would make a difference.

“It would be significant. That footprint would definitely be reduced,” he said. “What can we do to minimize it? It comes down to the three R’s: reduce, recycle, reuse. Reduce consumption, recycle what you can, and reuse what you can.”

Published in The Lima News: April 22, 2012

‘Modern-day slavery’ (Story)

‘Modern-day slavery’

Trafficking task force eyes charges in Coppler case

By BOB BLAKE

L IMA — Nicholle Coppler ran away, leaving her home on Broadway Street in May 1999. She never returned. Nearly 13 years later, a federal crime task force is closing in on charges against individuals who may have played a role in why the Lima teenager never came home.

Three times law enforcement officials have conducted raids at sites in Allen and Hardin counties looking for clues or for Coppler herself. The searches never found Coppler, though traces of her — a human hair and her school identification card — were found inside the home of Glen Fryer at 735 S. Elizabeth St.

Fryer, who reportedly was going to talk to authorities about Coppler, committed suicide in the Allen County Jail in February 2002 — four days after pleading no contest to rape charges involving a 12-year-old girl.

Coppler’s case remains open and active for the members of the Northwest Ohio Violent Crimes Against Children Task Force. Comprised of members of the FBI, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation and other local law enforcement agencies, including the Lima Police Department, the task force has continued its work to determine what happened to Coppler and bring those responsible to justice.

“The task force is investigating Coppler’s activities prior to her disappearance. Other persons of interest involved with Glen Fryer are being looked into for possible state and federal charges,” said Investigator David Gillispie, a member of the task force and the Lima Police Department. “No information has been received that [she] is alive, however she cannot be presumed deceased at this time. I would welcome any information from the public.”

The Coppler investigation now centers on individuals believed to be involved in human trafficking. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center calls it a modern-day form of slavery where victims are “subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor.”

Unlike prevailing public perceptions, human trafficking isn’t just a problem in exotic locations abroad or in major urban areas. It’s a problem in the United States, Ohio and Lima, too. In fact, human trafficking is the second-largest criminal enterprise in the world, second only to the drug trade, officials said.

How big is the problem?

Advocates of human trafficking awareness and prevention said the scope of human trafficking is staggering.

Statistics from the National Human Trafficking Resource Center estimate between 600,000 and 800,000 people annually are trafficked across international borders worldwide. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who has continued an Ohio Human Trafficking Commission initiated by his predecessor Richard Cordray, said by some estimates human trafficking is a $32 billion a year international enterprise.

“It’s a nasty, nasty crime. All crimes are nasty. I think what particularly makes this offensive is that most of the victims are young, most of them are under 18, there’s someone who is dominating them,” DeWine said in an interview with The Lima News. “There is someone who is older who is making them work against their will or making them have sex against their will. It’s something that we all should be concerned about, that should affect all of us. It should make us all mad. We all should have a sense of indignation about this.”

As many as 100,000 children in the United States are thought to be involved in the sex trade, according to DeWine’s office. Most of the girls involved begin between the ages of 12 and 14.

“It’s a quiet, silent, insidious crime. It’s very difficult to detect,” DeWine said. “What our office has started to do now since I became attorney general is focus more on the criminal side of this. Frankly, we have a ways to go and we need help.”

Mercer County Sheriff Jeff Grey, president of the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association, said the organization has offered training specifically on the issue within the past year. Grey, however, said he wasn’t aware of any cases of human trafficking in Mercer County or in the surrounding counties.

“It’s hard from a law enforcement perspective because we’re mostly reactionary. We certainly go out on patrol, we certainly try to do crime prevention type activities and educate the community,” Grey said. “When a crime is happening most of the time we find out when a victim tells us or someone else who’s seen the activity tells us. It makes it very difficult because if nobody is telling us about the problem, it’s hard for us to react to the problem.”

An Ohio problem, too

Gillispie said the work of the federal task force out of Toledo has shown the prevalence of the issue not only in the United States but also in Ohio.

A growing awareness of the scope of the issue and the connections between Toledo and Lima helped precipitate Gillispie’s assignment full-time to the task force in early 2009, he said.

“This issue came about as a result of numerous complaints of juveniles, especially juveniles from the Lima and Allen County area, being lured away from this area by the Internet or being actively involved in prostitution outside of Ohio,” Gillispie said. “Girls from Toledo as well as Detroit are often recruited and sent from the Toledo area to Lima and to Beaverdam to the truck stops under pimp control. I wouldn’t say our problem in Lima is prostitution within our city as far as the juveniles. The cases I’ve been running, girls from Lima have been recruited and sent outside the area to include Fort Wayne, Covington, Ky. and elsewhere for the actual prostitution.”

A report from the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission to former Attorney General Richard Cordray found that Toledo is No. 4 in the country in terms of the number of arrests, investigations and rescue of domestic minor sex trafficking. Only Miami, Fla., Portland, Ore. and Las Vegas rank higher.

“It’s a huge problem globally and nationally. The most important thing is it’s here. I’ve seen two cases firsthand,” said Mark Ensalaco, associate professor of political science and director of the Human Rights Studies Program at the University of Dayton. “One a foreign national and one a U.S. citizen, an American girl at a local high school who was trafficked into sex beginning at the age of 14. It was two years before we were able to extricate her from that.”

A 2009 conference at the University of Dayton on the issue of human trafficking sparked enough interest to get a new group, Abolition Ohio, formed to address modern-day slavery. The group has generated support from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, students, other civic groups and social service agencies, Ensalaco said.

“They know it’s here. They’ve seen it, they’re concerned about it. We’re very happy there’s a multiple level of awareness that modern slavery exists here but also the commitment to try to abolish it,” Ensalaco said. “It’s a very difficult phenomenon to identify. Victims are afraid to come forward. It’s a clandestine criminal enterprise. It’s very profitable. It’s very hard to track this.”

Ensalaco said one of the problems that has been identified is the lack of safe havens for those who are rescued from traffickers.

“The big problem now is what do you do when you rescue them. They need protection,” he said. “There are homes for runaways, but they may not have the expertise to deal with the broad range of issues facing these people.”

A safe haven

Recognizing the need for a safe haven for victims of human trafficking, Gracehaven, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2008 with the goal of opening Ohio’s first shelter.

Theresa Flores, director of training and education for Gracehaven, said the goal is to open the house — at an undisclosed location in Logan County — yet this year. In the years since its founding the group, with an office in Dublin, has been focused on increasing awareness of the issue.

“Pimps are traffickers. A lot of people don’t realize that,” Flores said. “We as a society just don’t label it as that. That’s part of the problem.”

Flores said studies have shown the average pimp involved in human trafficking makes $300,000 a year in cash through threats, coercion and violence toward the people they are trafficking.

“To me human trafficking is a big deal. You’re using a person continuously, nightly. Rape in the first degree could be a one-time thing,” Flores said. “It’s just sad from a victim’s perspective. That’s what they’re faced with. That’s why it’s so hard to heal sometimes because society doesn’t believe you and everything is against you. It’s like you have to convince people that this is a problem. How many crimes are out there that the victims have to convince people that this is wrong, that they were a victim?”

Flores knows. She’s been there. She was just 15 and a sophomore in high school in an affluent suburb of Detroit when a boy she had a crush on drugged and raped her. Male family members of the boy took photographs and told her she’d have to “earn them back,” threatening to show them to her parents, her dad’s boss and others if she told anyone.

For two years, Flores endured the threats, beatings, being drugged and raped associated with human trafficking. The experience changed the course of her life as she pursued a career as a social worker. It wasn’t until a convention several years ago that she realized her experience had a name — human trafficking.

“No one would choose this. I didn’t,” Flores said. “It just gets bigger and bigger and you don’t know how to get out.”

It was an instantaneous decision to get involved in raising awareness of the issue, Flores said. As she puts it, human trafficking awareness and prevention became her life’s purpose.

Flores said she was shocked when she realized just how much of an issue human trafficking is in Ohio.

Studies through the Ohio Human Trafficking Commission estimate more than 1,079 children are being trafficked currently in the state. The studies have also estimated more than 700 immigrants are being trafficked. Current estimates put the number of people who are being trafficked either in the sex or labor trades around 4,000, Flores said.

While it has been difficult to tell her story and be identified as a human trafficking victim, it has been part of her healing process, Flores said.

“The biggest part of my healing has been finding my purpose and trying to make sure this doesn’t happen to others,” Flores said. “The biggest factor has been finding my calling. Something like Gracehaven is a very tangible way to heal, to have something for these young girls that I didn’t have when I was their age.”

Changing the culture

Increasing awareness of the issue is one way advocacy groups and law enforcement officials are working to get a handle on and stamp out the issue of human trafficking.

“We’re trying to change the culture and trying to change people’s attitudes. It’s not that people don’t care,” DeWine said. “It’s just a police officer’s got a ton of things to do that are coming at him or at her every single day. This one doesn’t necessarily jump up and hit them in the face.

“You get a burglary report, you take the report. You get a rape report, you take the report. You investigate it. These, you don’t get reports on. The victim is not calling you. The victim is not saying solve my crime because the victim is being coerced and so you have to get evidence someplace else.”

That’s exactly what the members of the Northwest Ohio Violent Crimes Against Children Task Force in Toledo have been doing in the Coppler case.

“It’s an active investigation. We have made progress in the case,” Gillispie said. “We’re hoping to be able to charge people shortly with that and not so much in the missing juvenile but possibly in the area of human trafficking.”

Gillispie said any indictments will be sought in U.S. District Court and will be announced by the FBI’s Cleveland office since it is a federal investigation.

“The public perception on prostitution ranges from disgust to legalization. It’s viewed by some as a victimless crime,” Gillispie said. “When I speak to girls involved in prostitution, I ask them why. I have been told many reasons including supporting of a drug habit, doing for the love of their boyfriend/pimp and needing money. I have never been told that they are doing it for enjoyment.

“The victimization can continue for years. Victims are reluctant to provide information on their abusers out of fear, loyalty or the belief that no one cares about them. The victimization is downplayed by media. TV shows, music have glamorized the life of the prostitutes and pimps. The reality for victims is something entirely different. Physical and mental abuse, drug addiction and rape are the norm.”

Published in The Lima News: Jan. 29, 2012

Still skilled behind the wheel? (Story)

Still skilled behind the wheel?

Some in aging population no longer can safely drive

By BOB BLAKE

LIMA — Georgia Cress was worried about her husband, Frederick. A doctor diagnosed him with Alzheimer’s disease. The recommendation: Frederick needs to stop driving.

It wasn’t a suggestion Frederick took well.

“He argued with the doctor and said he’d just stop taking his medication,” Cress said. “I did not know what to do.”

The concern conveyed by the doctor was real. Could Cress’ husband safely operate the car and maintain that independence? Cress said they talked about the potential consequences — including getting into a crash that kills or seriously injures someone else — at length.

“It wasn’t until our son, Larry, came in and calmly drew a line down a piece of paper that things changed,” Cress said. “He listed the pros and cons for driving. When he was done, there were way more things on the con list. After that, my husband gave me the keys and never said anything about driving again.”

Cress said she was able to keep Frederick at home with her about a year after he gave up driving. Eventually, it was too much for her to handle and he went into a nursing home, she said. Frederick died in October.

“The day that you sit there and feel sorry for yourself is the day you might as well give up yourself,” she said. “I want to be active until the day I die.”

Conversations like the ones held by the Cress family are becoming increasingly more prevalent as the American population ages. Advances in medicine, a growing focus on nutrition, overall health and wellness, along with technology that has made cars easier for people to drive, have contributed to people aiming to stay behind the wheel longer than ever before.

All those advances, however, have had one unique, unintended consequence: Drivers are outliving their physical ability to safely get behind the wheel.

“There’s one projection that was made that projects as we look at the aging baby boomers that women will outlive their driving life by 10 years and men by seven,” said Elin Schold Davis, coordinator of the American Occupational Therapy Association’s Older Driver Initiative. “We used to have various funny lines that we used to expect to drive to our funerals. The idea that I would stay in my home longer than I could drive was never really something on the radar years ago.”

The senior tsunami

The issue of keeping older drivers safe on the road has taken on a new urgency in the past few years, Schold Davis said. Three years ago, the American Occupational Therapy Association, along with AAA, started Older Driver Safety Awareness Week. This year’s observation ended Friday. The weeklong public awareness campaign was specifically targeted between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays because of the opportunities potential family gatherings have for honest conversations, she said.

Statistics cited by the American Occupational Therapy Association show more than 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day, a trend projected to continue for 19 years. In fact, in the next 10 years, one in four licensed drivers will be 65 or older.

“We call it the senior tsunami that’s coming,” Schold Davis said.. “As much as that might be sort of an amusing statement, one of the things I like about it is tsunamis are like a big wall. They don’t allow you to ramp up slowly. It’s another reason for the awareness campaign. We should not dawdle on this. People need to become aware of what their resources are and people need to take a proactive stance within their own families to help get their loved ones the services they need.”

Providing services to older drivers was one of the key reasons AAA joined the effort, said Kimberly Schwind, a spokeswoman for AAA Ohio Auto Club.

“At AAA, we really advocate for the safety of all drivers. That starts with teens and goes all the way through to senior drivers,” Schwind said. “We have programs in place for senior drivers. We really need to continue to advocate for the safety of these drivers especially as our population continues to age.

AAA offers a number of programs to help give motorists a hand in making decisions about when it’s time to let someone else handle the driving. The AAA Roadwise Review is a computer-based self-screening tool to assess a driver’s functional abilities. Another program, Car Fit, aims to ensure senior drivers fit in their cars — looking at seat belt usage, gas and brake foot pedal placement, among others.

“We don’t want to take the keys from them,” Schwind said. “We want to make sure that these older drivers are driving safer, longer. That’s our ultimate goal.”

Options limited

There are few options specifically targeted toward helping older drivers maintain their independence as long as possible, experts admitted.

“I want seniors to demand these programs if they don’t have them. We need services in our area because this is coming,” Schold Davis said. “We need citizens to speak up because programs respond. When people tell us what they need programs grow. It’s hard to make programs grow when people aren’t asking for them. Every community deserves to have a range of resources available to the citizens to help them stay mobile, stay engaged and keep going to things.”

Betsy Winget, executive director of Senior Citizens Services Inc., said she’s not aware of any local agencies, including her own, that provide evaluations and services designed to help older drivers assess their ability to continue driving.

Linda Chartrand, spokeswoman for St. Rita’s Medical Center, said the hospital’s occupational health department has an assessment program. She cautioned, however, that it isn’t something that’s available to everyone.

“This program is for people who have real physical problems. There has to be a physical impairment that they’ve been working with their physician on,” Chartrand said. “There has to be physician’s prescription to take part in the program. It’s not something that’s open to just anyone to do an evaluation.”

Cress and friend Katy Simmons said that, despite the lack of locally available assessment options, they are determined to keep driving as long as possible.

“I’m not considering giving up driving myself anytime soon,” Cress, 83, said. “I just hope when the day comes that I can’t drive that I’m willing to give it up. That day will probably come.”

Cress and Simmons said they stay active and engaged with friends throughout the community as a means to stay sharp for driving.

“It’s very important to me to keep driving,” Simmons, 90, said. “I belong to a couple of clubs, I come here (Senior Citizens Services). I can’t depend on the kids. If I wasn’t still driving, I’d have to give things up.”

Both Cress and Simmons said it’s their ability to continue driving, taking part in programs like those offered by Senior Citizens Service and just social interaction in general that helps keep the skills sharp they need to be safe when they get behind the wheel.

“We’re better off to just keep moving,” Simmons said. “I feel good enough that I don’t worry about it.”

Published in The Lima News: Dec. 11, 2011

Economy on the Mend: Auto industry revs up (Story)

Economy on the Mend

Auto industry revs up

By BOB BLAKE

LIMA — The automotive industry is cranking up its engines in Ohio.

Ford is planning to invest up to $400 million in its Lima Engine Plant. Honda of America Mfg. is in the midst of a $120 million expansion project at its Russells Point transmission facility. Just a couple of weeks ago, Chrysler announced a $1.7 billion investment at its Jeep assembly plant in Toledo.

The projects will mean hundreds of jobs. The scope of the projects is bound to lead to jobs throughout their supply chains. Industry experts and economic development professionals are cautiously optimistic it all signals the start of a meaningful economic recovery.

“It’s obviously good news. Any investment announcement is always good news for a community and for the broader region,” said Valerie Brugeman, project manager for sustainability and economic development strategies at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “We’ve done economic multiplier studies of how much one automaker job means for a community, how many other jobs it helps support. Nationally, that number is about 10. At the state level, it’s more reduced. For Ohio, it probably means about four or five other jobs.”

While the announcements through the course of the last year are good news, enthusiasm in the industry has been somewhat tempered, Brugeman said.

“This investment could also be partly due to some of the economic troubles in Europe as well as the natural disasters in Japan. I know Toyota’s been affected by it and probably Honda as well,” Brugeman said. “It could be tempered enthusiasm because it could be because of the problems in these other regions.”

Brugeman said the auto industry typically sees an increase in auto sales when the nation’s gross domestic product growth rate is more than 3 percent. That number is hovering around 2.5 percent, she said, which means the investments signal the economy is poised for more growth, productivity and profits.

“We’re poised to pounce but not quite there yet,” Brugeman said.

Local economic development officials are echoing the cautious optimism about an economic recovery.

“I think there’s a strong sense that very cautiously things are rebounding, probably not as quickly as everybody would like to see. There are some bright spots on the horizon, especially in automotive with Ford and with Jeep,” said Marcel Wagner, president and chief executive officer of the Allen Economic Development Group. “I think that’s very true. I think where we still see the trouble is with the smaller firms that are still having difficulty in getting the capital to expand or continue to grow. That’s still a concern.”

Wagner agreed with the assessment that the troubles abroad could be helping drive, at least in part, some of the investments in the United States and Ohio. The investments represent a new opportunity to seek and secure additional investments, he said.

“The Honda’s and Toyota’s in Japan were put in a very bad position with the recent natural disasters over there. I think what we’ll see from them or their supply base is a bigger interest in spreading that supply base out,” Wagner said. “We’re looking at some things to try to cater to that potential market. We have the ability here to provide you the space and the workforce to put out a quality product and that’s something you should be considering.”

Exactly how big of an impact the recent auto announcements will have on the job market remains to be seen.

Ford officials have yet to provide specifics of what can be expected at the Lima Engine Plant, although the recent agreement between the company and the United Auto Workers union includes the promise of a new V-6 engine line locally that could bring as many as 500 jobs.

The expansion projects at Honda’s transmission facility is expected to bring as many as 100 jobs by 2013, company officials have said.

“I think it all signals an improving economy,” Brugeman said. “That’s not only a good thing for Lima, but a good thing for the region and Ohio. That’s about all I can say — it’s a good thing.”

Published in The Lima News: Nov. 27, 2011

Economy on the Mend: Industrial projects spur local economy (Story)

Economy on the Mend

Industrial projects spur local economy

By BOB BLAKE

LIMA — Looking for signs of an economic resurgence? Look no further than the industrial complex at the south side of Lima.

Millions of dollars worth of investment are springing into view at the complex.

INEOS is investing $25 million in a new 72,000-square-foot office and multipurpose complex. Potash Corp. has invested $45 million in maintenance and capital projects at its PCS Nitrogen plant. The Husky Lima Refinery has invested $45 million in maintenance and another $60 million in capital improvement projects, including a new central control facility.

“There are a lot of dollars being spent in the community, not just by the people coming in but by suppliers that are supplying components for those projects,” said Marcel Wagner, president and chief executive officer of the Allen Economic Development Group. “A lot of what’s going on with PCS and INEOS is being driven by changes in regulation in that particular industry. It does provide a substantial amount of investment and construction jobs as well as a new tax base.”

The projects are not only helping put local workers back to work but are also bringing in outside workers.

“Those people are spending money in the community. There are sales tax ramifications,” Wagner said. “Essentially for every payroll dollar spent in the community, whether it’s with a local person or someone else, it creates $3 to $4 in value for the rest of the community. These are people that are buying goods or services here. It does have a ripple effect throughout the entire economy.”

Mike Knisley, business manager for United Association Plumbers, Pipefitters and Service Technicians Local 776, said that’s good news for the skilled laborers in the community who have been hit hard the past few years with the struggling economy.

“I think it’s going to be slow and steady but I think there’s a lot of opportunities for everybody. I think the 2009 recession, as painful as it was, I think we hit rock bottom,” Knisley said. “I think the country is starting to pull itself up. I think when you start investing in steel plants and automotive plants and if we can get through the gridlock in Washington and get some investment out there for infrastructure, those are things America needs to get working on again.”

Knisley, who also serves as president of the Lima Building and Construction Trades Council, said skilled laborers in the area have benefitted from the emphasis the companies at the industrial complex have placed in maintenance.

“Probably what’s more important are the day-to-day maintenance jobs that go on for the pipefitters and the electricians and people because they are so heavy industrial that things wear out, they break,” Knisley said. “It’s very intensive, it’s a 24/7 operation. Maintenance is as high a priority as operations. It’s a long-standing economy engine for this community.”

Published in The Lima News: Nov. 27, 2011

Year of the twister (Story)

Year of the twister

Radar locations leave area at risk

By BOB BLAKE

LIMA — One month ago, the lives of the residents of Joplin, Mo., changed forever. A nearly mile-wide tornado cut a swath of catastrophic damage across the southern half of the town. The monster storm claimed 153 lives and injured more than 1,100.

The storm, a rare EF-5 with winds greater than 200 mph, is the seventh-deadliest single tornado in American history. It was an historic tornado in the midst of what is quickly becoming an historic severe weather season.

Traditionally rare, there have been five EF-5 tornadoes nationwide so far this year. Imagery from Joplin, along with other devastating tornadoes in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Ala., has raised questions about storm vulnerability and preparedness.

“It’s not a matter of if we’re going to get a big tornado in here, it’s a matter of when,” said Michael Lewis, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in North Webster, Ind. “It’s just a matter of time before a big tornado or a big severe thunderstorm outbreak or a heavy snow, winter storm, blizzard — it’s just a matter of time before we get impacted significantly by the weather.”

The region is no stranger to tornadoes — just ask folks in Celina, Cridersville and Van Wert. This region, however, is in a unique position geographically — located on the edge of three separate weather service forecast zones. The problem that arises from that unique position is that the weather service radars are positioned so far away they can’t always see what’s happening closer to the ground.

Troy Anderson, director of the Auglaize County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said there are instances when storms move into the county right under the radar and spin up quick, weak tornadoes.

“We had the tornado that hit New Knoxville [in August 2006]. We had the damage and the weather service didn’t see it until they came up to do the [damage] survey,” Anderson said. “We were showing them those patterns and they said they didn’t catch that. After several events like that, I said we have to do something here.”

The key, according to weather and emergency management officials, is making sure lines of communication are open between agencies and promoting preparedness to residents and businesses.

Russ Decker, director of the Allen County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said, “I think we cannot undervalue the importance of mitigation — things like public education, the community warning sirens, encouraging people to go out and buy weather radios.

“For tornadoes, it’s not like we can build a levee and protect the community. We have to look at public warning. In the case of Joplin, there were 24 minutes of warning time. That 24 minutes is excellent and it’s above the national average but it only helps you if the people in your community know what to do with that 24 minutes.”

A unique situation

Three separate National Weather Service offices are tasked with issuing forecasts, watches and warnings for the region, with no overlap between offices. The North Webster, Ind., office handles Allen, Putnam and Van Wert counties. The Wilmington office is responsible for Auglaize, Hardin, Logan, Mercer and Shelby counties. Hancock County is the responsibility of the Cleveland office.

Missed tornadoes and the ice storm of 2005 prompted Anderson and others to build an active spotting program in Auglaize County. The Aug. 28, 2006, tornado, an EF-0 that caused minor damage, hit the southern part of New Knoxville and was part of the impetus. A tornado warning had been issued earlier that night for a storm in Mercer County. No such warning was ever issued for Auglaize County, according to published reports at the time.

“We’re doing the storm spotting, the storm reporting. We’re the eyes for Wilmington,” Anderson said. “If we’re the farthest away, their radar is not seeing where we’re at. Some of the storms are sliding through. On the radar if the storm top isn’t high enough and severe enough, it’s going to look mild on radar to them. Here, it’s not mild.”

Mary Jo Parker, warning coordination meteorologist for the weather service office in Wilmington, acknowledged that there are limitations with the radar technology.

“Storm spotters, emergency management are important no matter where we’re talking about in our coverage area,” Parker said. “A lot of times the tornadoes that we’re dealing with, very weak tornadoes, may or may not be detected on radar depending on where they occur, even if they occur fairly close to a radar site. It’s really important to have that network of spotters out there, be in close contact with emergency management.”

An unusual season

It has been an overly active severe weather season by all accounts. There’s been a nearly three-fold increase in the number of severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings issued by the National Weather Service office in North Webster, Ind., across its 37 counties in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, Lewis said.

“If you go back to our fall season, it was also very active,” Lewis said. “From September through June, the bottom line is it’s been a very active year.”

Lewis said exact numbers aren’t readily available for the number of warnings. While those specifics haven’t yet been charted, he said in terms of the number of people affected by warnings and the size of the areas impacted, it has been larger this year, he said.

Parker said there’s no question there have been more severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings issued across the 52 counties of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky served by her office since the first of the year.

“Over that time period, we issued a total of 1,198 warnings,” Parker said. “That doesn’t mean we had severe weather for each warning. Sometimes we’ll issue a warning and we don’t get anything. Compared to last year for the same time period, we issued 398 severe thunderstorm or tornado warnings. It was quite an active springtime and we’re not out of the woods yet.”

Nationally, statistics show a similar pattern.

A report from the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., shows so far there have been nearly 1,500 reports of tornadoes — up from the three-year average of 1,376. There have also been more than 500 tornado deaths, significantly higher than the three-year average of 64. There were more than 800 tornado reports and more than 360 tornado deaths reported in April alone, according to the report.

Mike Bettes, an on-air meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said conditions have been ripe for explosive weather.

“Atmospherically there have been times when a strong jet stream combined with just a lot of Gulf of Mexico moisture have combined at the right time, right place or the wrong time, wrong place to create these huge events,” Bettes said. “Conditions have been ripe multiple times this year for violent tornadoes to form. Unfortunately very violent tornadoes have formed.”

The national average for the occurrence of the most violent tornadoes, EF-5, is one every two years, Bettes said. This year alone there have been five, including Joplin.

‘It changes you’

Experiencing a life-altering tornado like Joplin firsthand has impacts, even for veteran weather professionals, Bettes said.

Bettes was in the Midwest chasing tornadoes as part of The Weather Channel’s monthlong “Tornado Hunt” from May 9 through June 3.

“We go out in search of the storms and I think in the back of our minds we always know what the result of something big could be, but in most instances we don’t think about it,” Bettes said. “We think about a big, beautiful, majestic tornado in the wide open countryside. I think this year that changed for us in particular when we ended up in Joplin literally minutes after the tornado touched down.”

Bettes said they ended up seeing exactly what an EF-5 tornado’s aftermath is when it strikes a populated town.

“That was a storm that we actually targeted that day. We were chasing it, we intercepted it just outside Joplin but at the time it didn’t have a tornado,” Bettes said. “As it moved past us, we followed in behind it and ended up getting stuck in some heavy rain and some hail and that ended up slowing us down because the visibility was so bad we couldn’t even do the speed limit.

“If it hadn’t been for that our whole crew would have likely been right in Joplin when the tornado hit. I think the rain and the hail actually probably saved our lives.”

The crew witnessed many things with the raw emotion, the shock and the scenes of utter devastation when they pulled into town, Bettes said.

“I think it changes you. It changed me,” Bettes said. “Often times in the job we do, we usually end up at a tornado site after the fact, a day later. The freshness of it is gone, you still see damage but you don’t feel that emotion that you feel when it happens right in front of you. You see the terror on people’s faces, the shock and the injuries and the fatalities and it’s all very fresh for you.”

The experience has given him a new outlook on how to approach passing along warnings to viewers, Bettes said.

“For me personally at least, what I took away from that was there are so many times when we can become very disingenuous when we talk about tornado warnings because we talk about them so frequently,” Bettes said. “There is a direct result of having people take action because of the words that you speak. For me, I think I take them more seriously now even, there’s more urgency in how I talk about tornadoes now than I ever used to have.

“I think that’s for me a direct result of having witnessed what I witnessed in Joplin.”

Overcoming the limitations

Despite the vulnerabilities, officials said there is constant work to improve collaboration between agencies as well as the utilization of new technology to improve the system.

“Technology provides limitations no matter what you do. The advantage is we’re trained and we receive training on radar interpretation nearly continuously,” Lewis said. “The focus has always been how can we make better sense of the radar and how can we use it to our advantage. Regardless of where the storms are, we understand what we can reasonably expect down to the ground. This is why we need spotters. There’s a constant need for steady, reliable information.”

Decker said there are constant discussions between the weather service offices, first-responders and emergency management officials working to improve the warning system.

“Every day we are doing things to make the system better,” Decker said. “There are a lot of things we’re working on to get better in the future. We’ve added Facebook and Twitter. We’re trying to reach out on the social media level.”

Other improvements down the line include technology that will be able to send warning information to people under a warning through their satellite radio and wireless phone technology regardless of where they are at, Decker said. That technology is less than five years away, he said.

It’s all aimed at improving warning notification and is part of the process and debate about how much lead time is just right, Lewis said. Conventional wisdom has held that the more lead time people have before a storm, the better. That’s not necessarily true, Lewis said.

“The big question is how much is too much time. There is a point where if I gave you five days warning a lot of life occurs in five days,” Lewis said, noting too much warning time may give people a false sense of safety. “Will you remember in five days that we told you five days ago? Time is of the essence. The question is how much time is too much time.”

Published in The Lima News: June 19, 2011

Bargaining battle (Story)

Bargaining battle

Foes say collective bargaining bill unfair; backers say it’s needed for Ohio’s fiscal health

By BOB BLAKE

LIMA — Open dialogue and good faith bargaining have been the hallmarks of labor negotiations between the county and the sheriff’s office for decades in Allen County, according to those who have been involved in the discussions. Legislation moving through state government threatens to undermine years of goodwill, they said.

The frustration felt locally has been readily apparent statewide.

“Kill the bill” has been the mantra for thousands who have journeyed to the Ohio Statehouse in recent weeks. The target — Senate Bill 5. Opponents say the pending legislation unfairly targets public servants and blames them for the state’s fiscal mess — a projected $8 billion deficit for the next two-year budget that must be passed by the end of June.

“The state is just mismanaging their money. Now they’re trying to make the employees suffer for their mismanagement,” said Sgt. Alan Mefferd of the Allen County Sheriff’s Office. “Just because we are public employees, we’re not responsible for all of the state’s miscues on managing their money. Most of these way upper management people think that their power is measured by the number of people that they manage, and they’re just adverse to pare their department down to the people that are needed.”

Proponents say the bill is necessary to rein in out-of-control state spending and force the state to live within its means.

“This bill is simply about trying to level the playing field and giving a system the taxpayers can afford. We all respect law enforcement. We all respect firefighters. We all respect hard-working public servants,” said state Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina. “That doesn’t mean in places where collective bargaining doesn’t exist that they don’t have public servants that are also doing a good job. Collective bargaining in and of itself is not the variable that makes good public servants.”

The bill

The bill was introduced Feb. 1 by Sen. Shannon Jones, a first-term senator from Springboro. The bill contains sweeping changes to the state’s collective bargaining law passed in 1983.

Among the changes, the bill replaces salary schedules and longevity pay supplements with merit-based pay ranges. It caps the maximum contribution amount that state and local government employers can pay toward employee health benefit premiums at 85 percent. The bill also prohibits public employers from paying employee contributions to any of the five state retirement systems. Those contributions alone were approximately $2.9 billion in fiscal year 2009, according to an analysis by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.

Under the proposal, collective bargaining for state and local government employees will be limited to wages, hours, terms and conditions of employment. The bill prohibits all public employees from striking — a provision once limited to public safety employees. Employees violating the prohibition will be subject to dismissal or have their pay deducted at twice their daily rate for each day or part of a day missed while striking.

The bill passed the Ohio Senate 17-16 on Wednesday. The next stop will be the Ohio House of Representatives. It almost didn’t make it out of the Senate’s Insurance, Commerce and Labor committee for the full floor vote.

Sen. President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, yanked a critic of the bill, Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, off the committee prior to the vote. Seitz was replaced by freshman Sen. Cliff Hite, R-Findlay, who voted in favor of the bill. Hite, a former educator, told the Findlay Courier that without the changes, drastic classroom cuts or new tax levies would be required.

Republican Gov. John Kasich was quick to hail passage of the bill as a victory in his efforts to manage the state’s budget crisis.

“I appreciate the courage and resolve members of the Senate have shown in working with me to get Ohio back on track,” Kasich said in a statement. “This is a major step forward in correcting the imbalance between taxpayers and the government unions that work for them. Our state, counties, cities and school districts need the flexibility to reduce their costs and better manage their work forces, and taxpayers deserve to be treated with more fairness. Senate Bill 5 is just one piece of a larger plan to create a jobs-friendly climate in Ohio that is essential to returning prosperity to our state.”

Shouldering the burden?

Part of the fierce debate over Senate Bill 5 and its overhaul of the collective-bargaining system for public workers has centered on whether it actually would help balance the budget. The debate has also raised questions about whether public employees are being asked to shoulder the burden for fixing the state’s budget hole.

Faber, the Senate’s president pro tempore and vice chair of the committee that looked at the bill, said they are not.

“I guess change is tough. Whenever somebody wants to defend their status quo, anything that tries to modify or level that playing field is considered as an attack or offense. I don’t see it that way,” Faber said. “The real question is whether it’s fair for the taxpayers to be expected to pay a disproportionate amount of somebody’s health care. Or is it fair that somebody in one of the best retirement systems in the world isn’t paying their own share of their retirement system?”

Union representatives at the Allen County Sheriff’s Office acknowledged that there are places, particularly in the big cities, where negotiations have yielded very favorable contract terms for public employees. In Allen County, however, the public unions have tried to work with the county to address budget issues both sides agree exist.

“In general, we have a good working relationship with the things the way they are going now. We understand the economic ties this county is bound by,” Mefferd said. “We understand we can’t get everything we’d like to have. We sure aren’t in our position for the money. We could probably all be making more money elsewhere, in the private sector maybe. We’re in here because we like what we’re doing.”

Sgt. Greg Crites, who also works on negotiations at the Sheriff’s Office, said there have been numerous instances where the bargaining units have given up raises or months’ worth of back pay to secure other benefits, like longevity pay.

Crites said employees locally do pay their share of their retirement. Employees also already pay 20 percent of their health care costs, he said.

“We’ve given up things in order to get other items in our contract. They’ve allowed us to do that,” Crites said. “It has worked well. Certainly, we’ve not always seen eye to eye, but we’ve always had the ability to sit at the table and speak freely, which is a great thing. I think this is going to limit some of that. I would hope this wouldn’t stop that rapport because it’s always been good.”

State Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, the majority floor leader, said there is no easy fix for the state’s financial woes. Huffman said the problems have been building over the past 30 years, and reform has to start someplace.

“The biggest problem with collective bargaining in a public-sector forum is the people who are bargaining are bargaining with somebody else’s money,” Huffman said. “Collective bargaining works better in the private sector because you’ve got an employer on one side of the table and the employee. The employer or his agents, they can shift jobs someplace else, they can cut jobs, they can do other things based on what happens with the collective bargaining.”

Finding a fix

Given the strong feelings on both sides of the issue, various groups have been looking to find data to shore up their arguments.

A fiscal analysis prepared by the Ohio Department of Administrative Services’ Office of Collective Bargaining found that if three of the major provisions of the bill had been in place during fiscal year 2010, there would have been significant cost savings at the state and local government levels.

The report was modeled on limiting state and local government health care contributions to 80 percent, eliminating step pay increases once current contracts expire and eliminating longevity pay once current contracts expire. The bill passed by the Senate caps health care contributions at 85 percent.

According to the report, the state would have saved more than $216 million — or $3,739 for each of the approximately 58,005 employees. Local governments would have saved an estimated $1.1 billion.

Huffman said finding a solution doesn’t rest on any one group — private or public sector.

“In the macro sense, it’s kind of a simple equation — there’s so much tax that you can charge to the public before you have diminishing returns either in the form of decreased economic activity or people simply leaving the state,” Huffman said. “We have both of those. I think we have reached the point where the public isn’t going to produce any more revenue no matter how we structure tax increases. Now the question is how do we live within those means, how do we balance the budget.”

A report released last week by the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions in Columbus found that there are actual cost savings in states where public workers do not collectively bargain. The report cites U.S. Labor Department, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures that show the average pay for state and local workers in states that allow collective bargaining is $51,064 and $41,457, respectively. In non-collective bargaining states, the state workers earn 11 percent less and local workers earn 27 percent less.

Another report by the Buckeye Institute, released in July, showed a median state worker makes 24.6 percent more than a private sector employee.

“Our view is we do not have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem,” said Matt Mayer, president of the Buckeye Institute. “I think there are other solutions to be put on the table to deal with the spending problem. Hiking taxes that are already too high on Ohioans who are making less and fewer of them have jobs is not going to lead to prosperity.”

On the other hand, a report issued last month by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. found that full-time state and local government employees in Ohio are undercompensated by 6 percent compared to similar private-sector workers.

“Rather than a cause of excessive compensation, unionization is a counterbalance to downward pressure on compensation,” Jeffrey Keefe, a labor and employment relations professor at Rutgers University, wrote in the EPI report. “It is well known that taxpayers oppose higher taxes and thus exert considerable pressure on elected representatives to resist increases in compensation, creating a formidable incentive and opportunity to hold government pay below market. Unionization represents a viable legal response to employer labor market power.”

The Center for Community Solutions in Cleveland last summer released a report calling not only for reductions in tax expenditures and reductions in programmatic expenditures but also calling for tax increases to solve the budget equation.

John Begala, the organization’s executive director, said spending cuts alone are not enough to close the $8 billion budget hole. Begala’s solution is a mix of closing business tax loopholes, addressing inadequacies in the commercial activities tax that replaced the tangible personal property tax as well as rolling back personal income tax cuts that were made over the past several years.

“If everybody shoulders a part of the burden, if this is shared fairly across the population as a whole both on the cuts side and on the revenue side, most people will accept what’s necessary in order to sustain basic services and take care of those who live without basic necessities,” Begala said. “The question of fairness is absolutely critical in the discussion.”

Published in The Lima News: March 6, 2011

Deal or No Deal (Story)

Deal or No Deal

Plea bargains a necessary part of the process

By BOB BLAKE

LIMA — Two weeks into the new year and already there’s been one jury trial in Allen County Common Pleas Court. A glance at the court docket reveals the prospect that several high-profile cases may come before juries before the year is finished.

Those realities and Hollywood’s portrayal of crime and punishment seem to make criminal trials by jury the rule in the criminal justice system. Those in the legal profession, however, say trials are the exception.

One way courts, prosecutors and public defenders attempt to manage their cumbersome dockets is through negotiations, better known as plea deals.

“Let me tell you up front that I absolutely despise negotiating pleas. Philosophically, I don’t like it at all,” said Allen County Prosecutor Juergen Waldick. “However, given 400 and some cases a year, it is just fiscally and logistically impossible not to resolve cases. I consider it to be just an unavoidable, necessary evil.”

Statistics compiled by the Ohio Supreme Court on an annual basis demonstrate just how many felony cases make their way to the state’s common pleas courts every year. In 2009, the courts handled more than 112,000 cases. There was some sort of resolution to more than 88,000 of those.

How many cases go to trial?

In a purely statistical sense, very few of the felony-level cases that enter Ohio’s judicial system end in any sort of trial. The Ohio Supreme Court’s annual Ohio Courts Statistical Report shows that, of the 88,570 cases that came to a resolution in 2009, only 2,606 were by way of a trial.

The sheer volume of cases makes it nearly impossible for courts to have trials for every case, according to Bryan Ward, a law professor and director of clinical programs at Ohio Northern University.

“The reality is that it’s never explicitly said that prosecutors are going to offer deals and defendants are going to accept deals because of the costs involved in a trial. The reality is they have a docket they have to administer on a daily basis with resources that are very limited in terms of number of judges, number of prosecutors, number of public defenders,” Ward said.

“I would venture a guess that in larger jurisdictions if you were to say you had to try 50 percent of the cases, they physically couldn’t do it — maybe not even 25 percent — just because of the large number of cases before the court every day.”

Across the region, despite resolutions in more than 2,200 cases in 2009, there were only 37 trials. Allen County led the way with 11 trials. Mercer County didn’t have any.

Even looking as far back as 1999, the first year the report was made available electronically on the Ohio Supreme Court’s website, there is little change in the overall trend. In that year, 65,382 of the 83,230 cases that came into the system statewide found some sort of resolution. However, only 2,407 of those ended with a trial.

Changing perceptions of plea deals

Legal practitioners acknowledge the system would bog down if prosecutors and defenders lacked the ability to negotiate cases.

“If the commissioners and the public say we want to pay for three or four more judges and more prosecutors, then if that’s what they want to get every case tried,” said Judge Richard Warren, one of two Allen County Common Pleas Court judges. “Otherwise, it’s a practical impossibility. That’s the reason we have to go through the litany we just talked about.”

The sheer cost of adding additional judges, prosecutors, defenders and other legal staff makes trying all felony criminal cases cost-prohibitive. That doesn’t mean the system promotes plea bargaining as a means to clear a docket.

“We’ll do what we have to do. As a judge, we have to make sure we don’t try to twist arms and say, ‘Hey, you have to do something to get this off my docket,’” said Judge Jeffrey Reed, also an Allen County Common Pleas Court judge. “We give the attorneys opportunities to come up here and see if there’s anything they can do to resolve the case. Generally, if they meet enough times and give an honest look at the case, there’s usually some kind of proposal to resolve the case.”

ONU’s Ward said plea bargaining wasn’t always seen as an acceptable way to move cases through the system.

“The Supreme Court, through a series of cases in the 1800s, concluded that plea deals as we know them today would probably not be admissible in court under the view that it really was a confession of guilt, of paying through a promise of a benefit,” Ward said. “It raised questions about whether or not you could rely on it, so it was improperly induced or motivated.”

Ward said it wasn’t until the 1970s that the Supreme Court fully embraced plea deals. At that time, the court recognized with crime rates rising and a full system that it was impractical not to embrace plea deals, he said.

How plea deals work

Generally, the attorneys working on a criminal case have an idea in advance how the court will perceive any potential deal before it’s presented. That gives prosecutors and defense attorneys an idea of what options are likely on the table as well as what a judge is likely to accept.

There are some instances where negotiations and plea deals won’t be offered, Waldick said. When negotiations are a part of the equation, there are factors used in making agreements, he said.

“We look at what kind of a case it is. We’re results-oriented. What is it that we want out of this?” Waldick said. “We have two judges in this jurisdiction, so we have some idea of what kind of sentences the judges are going to impose in certain cases. With that in mind, I try to resolve it close to what I think a judge will do at trial.”

Stephen Chamberlain, a Lima attorney and public defender, said negotiations from the defense perspective are all about minimizing a client’s exposure to potential prison time or hefty fines.

“What people don’t understand is that most clients, when they are confronted with the evidence, will understand the predicament they’re in and will accept a reasonable offer in exchange for their admission of guilt. That’s how most of these cases get resolved,” Chamberlain said. “If there are factual disputes or things like that, that is what the trial is there for. Ultimately, the client has to make the decision. I never force, and no attorney I know forces, a client to take a plea.”

Even if a prosecutor and a defense attorney come to an agreement, Ohio law typically doesn’t commit a judge to accepting it.

“At the end of the day, we have the final say,” Warren said.

Both judges admitted, however, that they try to be consistent in accepting negotiations based on similar deals in the past.

“You want to make sure the whole system is handled consistently,” Reed said.

A client’s right

No one involved in the system denies that trials are expensive. Plea deals, while still costly, do save money. Knowing exactly how much money they save, however, is difficult to say.

State organizations like the Ohio State Bar Association, the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association and the Ohio Supreme Court don’t track the cost savings. Local officials say it’s difficult to track, given funding streams that come from the state, the county and various offices involved in investigations.

All are in agreement, however, that cost isn’t the final arbiter in deciding whether cases proceed to trial. “You can’t put a price tag on justice,” Warren said. “It’s just what our system dictates.”

Caseload, budgets and all other factors pale in comparison to one — a client’s constitutionally protected right to trial — in deciding whether a deal is accepted, Chamberlain said.

“It’s their right. That’s what I always emphasize to my clients,” Chamberlain said. “If you want a full trial, that is your absolute right. Nobody can stop you from having it. I can’t stop it as a defense attorney, the prosecutor can’t stop them, the judge can’t stop them.”

Published in The Lima News: Jan. 16, 2011