When Governor Kasich bowed to public pressure and asked House Republicans to remove an MBR amendment that would have blackmailed Ohio counties seeking to expand voter access, the Governor and his office claimed they had no advance knowledge of the voter suppression tactic.
But, yesterday, one of his Republican colleagues in the house, challenged that claim – saying Kasich was the real puppet master behind the MBR:
Chrissie Thompson @CThompsonENQ: #GOP Rep Boose just gave floor speech condemning MBR process. Says it’s confusing, moves too fast, secretive. Largely blames @JohnKasich
Enquirer: “But GOP Rep. Terry Boose, of Norwalk, rose to chide Kasich for sending over a budget-like bill in the middle of the state’s financial biennium. “We get this secretive thing that’s all held up in the governor’s office and then it comes to us,” Boose said. “Some of this stuff moves so fast that we don’t have the time to get the answers that we need to. … If there’s a problem, come to us.”
Plain Dealer: “Boose also criticized Kasich. “We are the legislative branch,” Boose said. “He’s the executive branch. It’s our job to do the laws, to run the bills through our process. We’d love to hear his ideas, but we’d like to hear them on a constant and regular basis.”
For Ohioans, this is a deja vu moment. Kasich’s office also claimed ignorance about the FrackGate scandal, only to later admit that they did assist ODNR is drawing up the public relations plan targeting Democratic legislators in order to encourage fracking on tax-payer funded parks.
And after SB 5 was overwhelmingly voted down by Ohioans, Kasich claimed that the right-to-work legislation he’d been championing for the last several months was really instigated by members of the legislature.
So it’s no surprise that as of yesterday, John Kasich is having former Romney cheerleader and State Auditor, David Yost, pick up where the legislature left off – and taking things even a step further: threatening Ed FitzGerald’s personal finances, rather than just Cuyahoga Counties’ funding.