Stowsentry.com - Hudson Council president, appointed state rep face off for District 42 seat

by Laura Freeman

Reporter

A three-year Hudson City Councilman will take on a five-month state representative for the District 42 State House seat on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Hudson City Council President and Democrat Mike Moran will challenge Republican District 42 Rep. Richard Nero for the District 42 seat. John Widowfield (R) resigned from the post earlier this year, and Nero was appointed in June to finish his two-year term.

District 42 includes Cuyahoga Falls, Hudson, Stow, Silver Lake and Munroe Falls.

Moran, 44, of East Case Drive, is a manager at Thomson Reuters, an international business information services company. He was elected to Hudson City Council in 2005, and his four-year term ends in 2009. He was unopposed in the March Democratic Primary.

Nero, 37, of Wellgate Drive, is a health care consultant for Oracle, a California software and technology company. He earned a spot on the ballot by defeating Dennis L. Robart Jr. by 432 votes in the March Republican Primary.

Nero's term as state representative ends at the end of 2008 unless re-elected. He previously served as an undergraduate student senator in 1991-92 while a student at Kent State University.

Democratic candidate

Moran, who is married with two daughters ages 7 and 5, said his primary focus would be balancing the state budget.

After that, he said his top priorities would be the economy and jobs, adjusting the funding formula for public education, and improving access to affordable health care.

Moran said to improve the economy and create new jobs, legislators need to help transform Ohio's industrial base into one that will serve Ohioans in a new century.

"We need to focus on new technologies and innovations and invest in them," Moran said. "Instead of tax incentives that encourage businesses to move from city to city, use tax incentives to grow the economy and add jobs to the state."

Moran said addressing the funding of public education is long overdue.

"My work with Hudson school financial advisory committee is an in-depth look at state funding," Moran said. "I'm doing homework now to help change the formula."

He said a new formula would continue to allow local communities to invest higher amounts in schools if they choose, but would assure students across Ohio receive adequate education no matter where they live.

Moran said he would look at ways to increase the efficiency of the health care system and decrease cost.

Moran has a civil engineer degree from the University of Colorado in 1988 and a law degree from Georgetown University in 1991. He has passed the bar exam, worked for a corporate law firm and his own law office, and for a contractor for the U.S. Department of Justice. For the past 13 years, he has worked as a manager of an editorial team for a law publishing company.

Republican candidate

Nero, who is married with two daughters ages 3 and 4 months, said his priorities would be to stimulate economic development, restructure school financing and expand health care through improved efficiency.

In October, Nero said he is introducing two bills in the House of Representatives for education and health care changes.

One bill Nero is proposing would offer in-state tuition to children from other states whose parents attended Ohio's state universities or colleges.

"Twenty-eight percent of parents follow their children when they go to college," Nero said. "[Through this plan] we grow our attendance to state universities and attract former residents back to the state."

The second bill Nero is introducing would make health care more affordable by replacing the paper-based medical record system with an electronic statewide system to reduce redundancy and errors and increase efficiency.

"I'm opposed to raising taxes when there [are ways to save money] through greater efficiencies," Nero said. "With the savings, I would expand Medicare."

Nero said he will look for areas where the state government could be more efficient, thus saving taxpayers money.

He said in the last two years, the state government has overhauled tax programs to improve ways to do business by phasing out the tangible personal property tax and corporate franchise tax and replacing them with the commercial activity tax.

"Businesses need to be educated about the opportunities available as a result of the changes," Nero said.

Nero said he would propose funding for schools similar to funding for libraries, where money paid to the state would be earmarked for schools only and equally distributed to students.

"Schools would rely less on property tax and move away from the current formula for figuring state funding to school districts," Nero said.

He said he would increase efficiency by proposing statewide purchasing of computers, equipment and food for all 612 school districts instead of each one buying on its own and reroute the savings back into the schools.

Nero graduated from Kent State University in 1993 with a degree in criminal justice and worked at Cleveland State University from 1996 to 1999 in an administrative role for the advancement of services.

He has been an education and health care consultant for Oracle since 1999.

E-mail: lfreeman@recordpub.com

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