Unbelievable.I knew the governor’s approval rating was in the dumper, but I honestly never believed he would stoop to this level.Of course, when the first 20 people a politician appoints to his Cabinet are white, and 16 are men, and the biggest newspaper in the state runs their photos across the top of the front page like prison mug shots, that politician has a lot of ground to make up among other demographic groups.You’ve probably heard by now that our fearless leader has decided that poor, misunderstood Kelley Williams-Bolar has suffered enough. He reduced her ongoing felonious falsifications to misdemeanors. “School Mom,” as she has become internationally known, was abused by the evil judicial system, so Ohio’s highest-ranking official stepped in to dispense justice. Yessir.Did John Kasich even read the report by the Ohio Parole Board?He was the guy who assigned those eight people the task of analyzing the case! And those folks — whose jobs consist of making precisely these types of character judgments — held a huge hearing in Columbus at which all parties were given plenty of time to talk. Testimony went on for six hours.The board listened and asked questions. And then it assembled a 16-page report that said, in essence: Kelley Williams-Bolar deserves clemency when hell freezes over.Board members took 44 days to analyze the testimony. Kasich took a Labor Day weekend to blow them off.Kasich’s approach was the equivalent of an NFL referee watching a replay challenge with his eyes closed. Nothing was going to sway him from his previous notion.He said as much in Wednesday’s short news release: “When I first heard about this situation, it seemed to me that the penalty was excessive for the offense.”If nothing was going to sway him from his first impression — including the facts — why go through the charade of asking for outside assistance?The board’s report was not exactly ambiguous.‘‘Williams-Bolar was faced with a no more difficult situation than any other working parent who must ensure that their children are safe during, before and after school. ... Most parents find legitimate and legal options to address this issue. Ms. Williams-
Bolar’s only response was to be deceitful.”The board also said the prosecution was not selective, the jury “correctly applied” laws that are “appropriately crafted ... to protect public institutions from being intentionally defrauded” and that the judge “responded with appropriate sentencing, given the defendant’s wholesale refusal to accept any responsibility for her actions.“Any effort to [reduce the sentence] ... would communicate exactly the wrong message.”Mind you, the board does not consist of a bunch of Nazis. Its chairwoman, Cynthia Mausser, once worked as an assistant state public defender, fighting for inmates at parole-revocation hearings.By reducing the charges, Kasich not only blew off all eight members of the parole board, but also all 12 members of the Summit County jury who decided Williams-Bolar’s actions were worthy of felony convictions.The main thing that is consistently lost in all of this is that, to reach a plea bargain, both sides have to be willing to bargain. Williams-Bolar adamantly maintained her innocence throughout the entire judicial process (and well beyond). Should everyone whose legal strategy doesn’t pan out get another shot?Maybe Kasich didn’t make his judgment with one eye on the most recent Quinnipiac poll — which shows him with a stunningly low 35 percent approval rating — and another eye on the 184,000 pro-
Williams-Bolar emails his office received from Change.org and the 70,000 names on a petition from ColorOfChange.org. But given the circumstances, nothing else comes to mind.I wonder how Kasich would like it if Williams-Bolar were teaching his own kids?Oops, no chance of that. As the board put it, she “is nowhere near to obtaining a college degree in any discipline, let alone in education or early childhood development.”In other words, all that gnashing of teeth about School Mom losing her impending teaching career was a farce.Bottom line: The governor of this state says you can rip off a public school system for $30,000 in tuition (which Copley-Fairlawn will never get back), lie about your residency, your income, your child support, your military service, your insurance coverage, your eligibility for home heating assistance and subsidized lunches ... essentially lie ad infinitum, and the only thing you’re risking is a slap on the wrist.Nice lesson we’re teaching our kids.Perhaps it will be part of the curriculum at Kasich’s charter schools.Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.