League of Women Voters of Ohio Education Fund
Hamilton County, OH November 2, 2004 Election
	Wayne Coates Answers Questions Candidate for State Representative; District 28

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of Ohio and asked of all candidates for this office.

Read the answers from all candidates.

Questions & Answers

1. What are your qualifications for office?

Serving as State Representative in the 124th General Assembly I know how to build bipartisan coalitions having passed legislation as a minority member of the House. I have worked to reduce property taxes, created jobs for working families, lowered the cost of prescription drugs, rewarded scholarships to student achievers, and protected retirees' savings from investment scams.

2. How would you implement your top priority?

We need to stop the Columbus one-party "shift and shaft" tax policies that allow corporate elitist to avoid paying their share of taxes and shift the burden onto the backs of small businesses, working families, retirees, and property owners. State lawmakers need to eliminate contracts and tax breaks to corporations and their affiliates that relocate jobs overseas!

3. What do you see as the two most pressing issues you would address if elected? What plans do you have relative to those issues?

Lower taxes for working families and small businesses, and reinvigorating Ohio's job market. Unpatriotic corporations are moving jobs overseas and setting up offshore shell corporations to avoid paying their share of taxes. We must close tax loopholes and audit elitist corporations' aggressive accounting practices. State lawmakers must make sure that Ohio's business tax incentives preserve and protect our family-owned small businesses, and not allow mega-corporations to put families out of business.

4. What are your suggestions for reconciling state revenue shortfalls with increasing costs for state services?

Comprehensive tax reform that closes tax loopholes and audits elitist corporations' aggressive accounting practices to avoid paying taxes. Change the state's tax policy to one of fairness that reduces the tax burden on hard working families and small business owners. Eliminate burdensome regulations and red-tape that stifle small businesses ability to create new and better jobs.

5. How much of public education should be funded by the state? Explain your answer.

Today our local boards and parents have lost control to Columbus and Washington bureaucrats. We all want good schools for our children however the relentless and ever changing test have teachers teaching test facts rather than educationing our children to think. If the state and federal government places 50% or 75% of regulations on our school districts then let them fund our schools at that percentage level.

6. What Ohio state tax reforms would you support to re-develop existing older communities?

I worked with the Village of Glendale officials on legislation that would offer state tax credits for older and historic properties that could be used in other communities with older homes. This past year I worked with the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission's Community Revitalization Task Force that addressed this issue.

7. What plans do you have to promote a more balanced transportation system in Ohio?

I worked to bring the Metro Park and Ride to Forest Park and understand the need for a more balanced mass transit system. Hamilton County voters have rejected funding the last "transportation plan" proposal. During my tenure as Trustee with the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments we worked on various long-range transportation plans to address Hamilton County's future traffic patterns and needs.

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