Dear Loveland Magazine Readers,
The hypocrisy and misrepresentations on Representative Louis Blessing III’s campaign website are almost too much to bear. He states that “I believe that small businesses truly drive our economy. However, I feel that the incentives to start a small business are too few, while the liabilities of running a small business are too great.” Yet now he is the chief sponsor of House Bill 114, which removes mandates for renewable energy as part of Ohio’s electrical generation sources. This legislation will have a huge negative impact on the roughly 100,000 jobs created by many small businesses in renewable and solar industries in this state (see http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2016/03/ohio_clean_energy_manufacturin.html and http://www.cleanjobsohio.org ).
I have personally worked with a small business that installs solar panels and employs my neighbors. The Representative said mandates have an “inequitable nature”. I guess tax subsidies to oil and gas industries aren’t so inequitable though, given that major contributions to his campaigns have come from Duke Energy and AEP. So much for incentives, Representative Blessing.
Another glaring inaccuracy is his statement that “…I will work to remove public funding for abortion clinics.” Public funding of abortions is prohibited by the Hyde Amendment. The public funding of which you speak is directed to health care service providers, not all of which provide abortions. Targeting funds that provide preventative services will actually negatively impact Ohio tax payers, as costs to pay for preventable diseases go up. Indeed, since cuts to preventative care programs have been made in Ohio, incidents of venereal disease have gone up, based on Ohio Department of Health statistics. So you don’t have much work to do here – only damage. Good going Representative Blessing.
Dawn Busalacchi
Granville, Ohio
