In her district she's known as Hazel 'Skip-a-day'

Kudos to judge, Schuring in Sidaway, barber cases

Canton Repository

May 15, 2006

Generally Speaking

By Michael E. Hanke

Among some teachers, she became known as Hazel “Skip-a-day” because she took off so much time from the classroom for retirement board “duties.” It probably won’t be a good idea if Hazel Sidaway skips any of the 100 hours of service she has been ordered to perform for her former employer, Canton City Schools.

Copley Ohio Newspapers Columbus Bureau Chief Paul Kostyu reported last week that Sidaway “was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, 100 of which must be performed in her former school district. The other 100 hours must be spent working in a nursing home or retirement facility, where a Franklin County judge said she hoped Sidaway would have to help retired teachers.” She also was sentenced to two separate 180-day suspended jail terms and was placed on two years’ probation.

Sidaway, in her role as a board member of the State Teachers Retirement System, took some expensive tickets, in violation of state ethics laws. She apologized. But the judge didn’t buy it, partly because Sidaway hid tickets by reporting them as “meals.”

The judge also was disgusted with Sidaway’s “long list” of trips at the expense of retirees, teachers and school districts. Good for the judge.

SCHURING TRIED TO FREE FRANKLIN

State Sen. Kirk Schuring took some time from his busy day last week to make the patrons of Matt’s Barber Shop in Canal Fulton a little happier. Schuring pounded out a deal with the stuffy Ohio Barber Board that will allow Franklin the basset hound to return to the barbershop, where he delights the patrons with his basset-like inertia.

Franklin, 3, greeted customers at Matt Schwendiman’s barbershop until an Ohio Barber Board state inspector, with apparently little more to do than be grumpy, cited the shop on Feb. 7 for — shudder — violating the board’s pet policy, which bars pets from barbershops.

The state board, the apparent source of this grumpiness, would not budge, even though Schwendiman has been bringing a dog to work for 10 years, and presumably in front of other less anti-dog inspectors.

Schuring, noting that dogs are allowed in such places as hospitals, urged the board to reconsider its own inertia, and the board president agreed to present the board with a deal hammered out with Schuring. The Barber’s Board, however, decided on Thursday to send the agreement for an attorney general’s opinion. Apparently, some of them fear that barber clients will start bringing dogs to the shop. Maybe these board members had guppies for pets when they were kids.

So, here is a tip of my basset Charlie’s canine cap to the pet-friendly senator. And thanks from the rest of us dog lovers, too. Let’s hope the attorney general is one of us.

WHY IS CANAL FULTON COUNCIL HIDING PROCEEDINGS FROM CITIZENS?

Now that Franklin the basset is back in the barbershop (see above column item), perhaps he could drop by the Canal Fulton City Council meeting and take a chomp at the collective political posteriors of the group that has decided not to tell everyone in the city about its gambling conversations.

Council members decided to meet in secret session last week with a lawyer they hired to represent them in negotiations with the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma about a possible casino agreement.

Frankly, I think they violated Ohio’s open meetings law in going behind closed doors. But even if they didn’t violate the law, they violated their trust with the residents of the city. The law doesn’t require them to go into secret session; it only offers them the opportunity. What is it that they wouldn’t want their constituents to know?

Michael E. Hanke is general manager of The Repository. He can be reached at (330) 580-8301, by writing 500 Market Ave. S, Canton, 44702 or by e-mail at: mike.hanke@cantonrep.com

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