National Guard brigade to deploy
An Ohio National Guard sustainment brigade headquartered in Springfield was sent off by family and friends Saturday afternoon as it prepares for deployment.
The 371st Brigade, made up of soldiers from Springfield and all over Ohio, is headed to Texas for additional training and then will be sent to Southwest Asia. A large crowd cheered and waved as the men and women marched into the HPER Center on the Wittenberg University campus Saturday. Elected officials and military leaders spoke to the group, wishing them well and thanking them for their service.
The brigade will be responsible for supporting other military personnel in the region.
“When they deploy, they are going to be responsible for everything from beans to bullets, beds to buses,” Ohio Adjutant Gen. Mark Bartman said. “They encompass pretty much the entire spectrum.”
Jason Duly, a member of the 371st, is from northern Ohio but said he spends a lot of time in Springfield.
“We come down once a month for our drill weekends,” he said. “Springfield is great. The community has been very supportive of us. Anytime you go out to eat lunch or dinner or something they are wishing us well.”
He said he and others in the brigade like to spend time at a local sports bar in the city when they are not training. He and his brother are being deployed together, and he said his family is coping.
“We have an older brother in Ohio, and he is kind of taking it the hardest because both of his brothers are leaving,” he said. “My girlfriend is going through everything you expect for a first-time deployment. Sad, worried, scared.”
The 371st Brigade is proof that Ohio offers the state’s best to protect the United States, Bartman said.
“They show me the type of people that we have in this great state of Ohio,” he said. “It makes me so proud ... to highlight the incredible individuals that we have.”
Col. Gregg Betts, who will lead the brigade to Southwest Asia, said the support shown from family, friends and the community means a lot to the soldiers.
“Your well wishes and thoughts and prayers mean more to us than you’ll ever know as we embark on our mission overseas,” he said. “I want to assure you that we are ready. We are ready to live up to our duties and responsibilities.”
Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger told more than 2,100 graduating Wright State University students on Saturday that their shared alma mater has a bright future, despite recent controversies.
Rosenberger’s speech at the Ervin J. Nutter Center touched on the usual commencement fare: quoting Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare and aiming to inspire. He also noted he wasn’t paid for the appearance.
He turned around at one point to pose for a selfie with the student government president and the graduating student body: graduates ranging in age from 19 to 61, hailing from 58 Ohio counties, 23 states and 19 nations.
“When facing adversity, keeping it simple and remembering the golden rule of treating others as you would be treated will guide you through,” Rosenberger, R-Clarksville and a 2012 WSU graduate, advised them.
Rosenberger was introduced by Provost Thomas Sudkamp, who oversaw the ceremony instead of former WSU president David Hopkins, who resigned his post in March.
Rosenberger didn’t specifically mention Hopkins or the
The state could sell more than 6,900 acres of prison farmland through “negotiated real-estate purchase agreements” rather than competitive bidding or public auctions under the budget bill pending in the Ohio House.
Language permitting an unusual no-bid process for selling nearly 11 square miles of state land is built into the two-year state budget proposed by Gov. John Kasich’s administration.
State assets, including real estate, are typically sold by having interested parties submit sealed bids, with the highest and best bidder winning. That process is still part of state law.
However, the Kasich administration could deviate from that practice for the university’s current budget crisis, ongoing federal investigation, lawsuits and other issues in recent years that led the speaker last year to advise fellow lawmakers to use caution when dealing with the school “because clearly they can’t handle themselves right now.”
Rosenberger said Saturday that when considering giving the address he experienced a “sense of pause because of recent events at Wright State” but that dissipated when he remembered his time at the school.
“There’s no question this university has faced its share disposal of prison land under the little-noticed budget provision. The land sale is being managed by the Department of Administrative Services, the business arm of state government, on behalf of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Administrative Services spokesman Tom Hoyt said the state still plans to sell the prison property through competitive bidding. Hoyt said the alternative is standard in real-estate transactions.
The wording in the budget, which the House is expected to vote on next week, says the agency director “may offer the sale of the real estate to a purchaser or purchasers to be determined, through a negotiated real-estate purchase agreement or agreements. Consideration for conveyance of the real estate shall be at a price and at terms of challenges and hardships in recent past brought on by so few, but I know this institution, and it boasts some of the best faculty, and obviously you as some of the best students,” he said.
“Wright State has an obligation to demand the best of its students, and the university alumni and its students have every right to demand the best from this institution. I am confident that just as you each are about to experience your new beginning in life, Wright State is on the right track for a new beginning as well that will carry it on for many, many years and conditions acceptable to the director of Administrative Services and the director of Rehabilitation and Correction.”
Prisons Director Gary Mohr announced in April 2016 that the state is getting out of the prison-farm business after nearly 150 years, dating to 1868, when farming began at the old Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. Mohr said at the time that farming is no longer in line with the goal of preparing inmates for life after prison. Equally important, Mohr said, is that farms are security risks because people can drop off drugs, tobacco and other contraband to be picked up by inmates and smuggled into the prison when they return.
Auction records obtained previously by The Dispatch from Administrative Services showed the state received nearly $4.5 million from to come.”
Jordan Keckler, who will graduate from WSU in the fall with a degree in organizational leadership, spent the ceremony in the Nutter Center hallway manning a table selling graduation memorabilia. She was optimistic about the half-century-old school’s future in the face of current problems.
“I think we’re definitely going to overcome it,” she said. “I think we’ve done a lot in 50 years and I think we are going to overcome it in a few years.” the sale of 3,186 dairy and beef cattle and hundreds of pieces of farm equipment. The most-expensive component, a juice-processing plant, sold for $128,350.
The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, a labor union representing about 30,000 state employees, including prison workers, said in a statement that the proposed no-bid process for selling the land is “troubling.” The union wants it removed from the budget bill.
“The clear pattern of waiving the rules around competitive state bids is troubling,” said union President Chris Mabe.
“Not only are IT (information technology) contracts part of that pattern, it now appears state farmlands could be sold in a backdoor deal with zero competition or transparency.”