Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is Refusing to Call the Derailment in East Palestine a Disaster
Ohio governor Mike DeWine is bungling the cleanup after the recent train derailment in East Palestine, which released harmful pollutants. His refusal to announce a disaster declaration is grounds for scrutiny of his connections to the railroad industry.
Mike DeWine, governor of Ohio, speaks during a news conference in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 21, 2023. (Matthew Hatcher / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
BY MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM-COOK
Jacobin
Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine has pledged that Norfolk Southern will be held accountable for the February 3 train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, to ensure the community is properly protected from the toxic chemicals released into the air and water.
“They’re the ones who created the problem,” said DeWine on February 7, four days after the accident. “It’s their liability. They’re the ones who ought to pay for it.”
But DeWine has refused to issue a disaster declaration that would send much-needed federal resources to East Palestine and draw attention to the Norfolk Southern accident. He has also failed to ensure that the railroad giant paid the price for two other derailments in his state earlier this year.
The governor’s failure to act raises questions about his management of the crisis — and the influence of his close ties to Norfolk Southern’s Ohio lobbying firm, which just so happens to be at the center of what federal prosecutors have called “likely the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”
DeWine’s office did not answer questions in response to our inquiries.
“Red Flags”
Norfolk Southern and its political action committee (PAC) have donated more than $20,000 directly to DeWine’s gubernatorial campaigns as well as his 2019 inauguration. The company has also delivered $165,000 to political committees supporting DeWine’s political career, including the Republican Governors Association and the Republican Attorneys General Association.
What’s more, DeWine has a very close relationship with Norfolk Southern’s lobbyists in Columbus.
Dan McCarthy, DeWine’s legislative director from January 2019 to September 2021, previously served as president of Norfolk Southern’s Ohio lobbying firm, the Success Group, from 1994 until 2020. The rail company has had the Success Group on retainer since at least 2009, according to Ohio lobbying records.
The Success Group has been exceptionally successful in blocking state legislation under DeWine’s watch that would have increased safety on the railroads, state records show. The firm’s lobbyists reported lobbying last year on a bill to mandate a minimum of two-person train crews on all trains. The legislation died at the end of the year when the previous legislative session came to a close.
The lobbyists have also been successful in greasing the wheels for a proposed $1.6 billion sale of the city of Cincinnati’s publicly owned railroad to Norfolk Southern. So far, DeWine has not raised concerns about the proposed privatization effort, which critics say could lead the city to lose out on perpetual lease payments.
Ohio state senator Bill Blessing, a Republican from Cincinnati, wrote in a recent op-ed, “Long-term, I believe that owning and leasing the railroad will provide better value for the city than the sale and what its proceeds may generate.”
During his time at the Success Group, McCarthy founded a dark money group, Partners for Progress, that ended up at the center of a bribery scandal involving Ohio’s main nuclear power operator, FirstEnergy.
FirstEnergy was criminally charged in 2020 for funneling tens of millions of dollars into dark money groups, including one called Partners for Progress. Some of these funds, federal prosecutors alleged, were bribes to get legislators to bail out FirstEnergy’s struggling nuclear power plants.
Partners for Progress funneled $300,000 to a dark money group backing DeWine’s 2018 campaign, and also put $100,000 into a failed effort to elect DeWine’s daughter Alice to a local prosecutor position in 2019.
When McCarthy stepped down from Partners for Progress to work for DeWine in 2019, his spot on the nonprofit’s board was filled by his Success Group colleague, McKenzie Davis.
The FirstEnergy case illustrates the close ties Norfolk Southern’s lobbyists enjoy with the governor’s office.
The FirstEnergy scandal, said Craig Holman, an ethics lobbyist at Public Citizen, “raises red flags around the entire exchange between the company, the lobbying firm, and DeWine. DeWine should make certain that Norfolk Southern pays for the derailment, make the transaction transparent so the public can understand what is going on — and DeWine should also be held accountable for his lackluster administration of the scandal.”
“Seek the Full Support of the Federal Government”
DeWine recently highlighted the lack of federal aid going to the East Palestine disaster, tweeting last week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “continues to advise that Ohio is not eligible for assistance at this time. I will continue working with FEMA to determine what assistance can be provided.”
He did not mention that the reason why East Palestine has so far received only limited support from the federal government is due to his failure to declare a disaster in the area.
Under federal law, there are two forms of disaster declarations: an “emergency declaration,” which authorizes up to $5 million in federal aid to the affected community, or a “major disaster declaration,” which “provides a wide range of federal assistance programs for individuals and public infrastructure, including funds for both emergency and permanent work,” according to FEMA’s website. The president makes the decision to declare an emergency after receiving notice from a state’s governor.
Federal law states, “All requests for a declaration by the President that a major disaster exists shall be made by the governor of the affected state.” DeWine must submit a request to the Biden administration by March 5 for the area to be eligible.
A disaster declaration would allow the federal government to provide additional resources to East Palestine — but it would also draw further attention and federal resources to aid the toxic chemical-stricken community, adding pressure on Norfolk Southern to both pay for the costs of the cleanup and to reimburse the government.
As of now, the railroad, which is worth $50 billion, has committed just $6.5 million in aid to the community, some of which may be tied to dropping legal claims against the railroad.
Last week, Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown sent a letter to DeWine urging him to “officially declare a disaster and seek the full support of the federal government to bolster the state of Ohio’s ongoing clean-up efforts.”
DeWine has also refused to take other actions to hold Norfolk Southern accountable for the derailment. For example, he could immediately endorse railroad safety legislation that has been languishing in the GOP-controlled state legislature that would mandate minimum two-person train crews and require better lighting in rail yards.
But DeWine has a history of going easy on Norfolk Southern. His administration has so far done nothing to compel the company to complete cleanups from two smaller Ohio derailments last fall, one in Sandusky in October and another between Steubenville and Toronto in November. The governor has sidestepped questions on the matter.
On February 14, DeWine called on Congress to expand the definition of a “high-hazard flammable train” (HHFT train), after our reporting revealed the derailed train in East Palestine was not covered by the current definition — even though the large amount of vinyl chloride on board necessitated local evacuations and was ultimately released and burned by crews.
“This train was not considered a high-hazardous material train. . . . Therefore the railroad was not required to notify anyone here in Ohio what was in the rail cars coming to our state,” DeWine said in a press conference. “This is absurd.”
Matthew Cunningham-Cook has written for Labor Notes, the Public Employee Press, Al Jazeera America, and the Nation.
Trump-branded water arrived in East Palestine, and lousy media takes followed quickly behind
Laura Clawson
Daily Kos Staff
Friday February 24, 2023
Media coverage of the train derailment and toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, has reached the point where the stories are not about the derailment itself but about the circus of political figures stopping by to show that they care and/or make political points. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited, under pressure from the right-wing media, despite the rarity of a transportation secretary visiting the site of a non-fatal train derailment. Donald Trump showed up to distribute Trump-branded bottles of water that we have to hope hadn’t been sitting around since Trump’s water brand folded in 2010.
The New York Times had to be stoked for this moment after its years of coverage of Trump supporters in Ohio diners. Suddenly that obsession is related to real news—what a win for the newspaper! (Donald Trump got 72% of the vote in Columbiana County, Ohio, in 2020.) And sure enough, the Times delivers in true Times-political-coverage fashion. To give you a measure of how bad the Times take on the ways political figures are trying to leverage the derailment to their advantage is, Politico has a better article on the subject. Once upon a time, The New York Times would have been ashamed to be outdone by the likes of Politico.
RELATED STORY: Crew tried to stop train before toxic derailment, NTSB preliminary report says
Then again, it’s entirely possible that the editors and writers of the Times believe that their coverage is good for the exact same reasons it is bad. Politico is up front about covering the circus aspects—the politicians and news producers showing up for long enough to do a little pandering or get a couple quotes, and the ways residents are either rolling their eyes or jumping for their moment in the spotlight. It’s slight but doesn’t actively insult the intelligence of its readers.
The Times reaches for more, following its tried-and-true formula of an opening that skews toward Republicans while engaging in some both-sidesism, followed—far enough into the article that only dedicated readers will have gotten there—by some pretty damning stuff about Republicans.
Oh, and the Jonathan Weissman-written piece is as self-important as the Times could wish. Here’s the opener:
To Democrats, the train derailment and chemical leak in the hamlet of East Palestine, Ohio, is a story of logic, action and consequences: Rail safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration were intended to prevent just such accidents. The Trump administration gutted them.
To Republicans, East Palestine is a symbol of something far larger and more emotional: a forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government whose concerns have never included the likes of a town of 4,718 souls.
Where to begin. The gutting of rail safety regulations is not just a logical story. Anytime safety regulations are gutted, people’s lives are on the line—workers, locals who breathe the air and drink the water. “Republicans put corporate profits over life-saving regulations” is an emotional story. (It’s not clear that the specific train braking system regulation that is most often cited as having been gutted by Trump would have made a difference here, but it’s part of a much larger story of Republican opposition to efforts to improve safety because they consistently put corporate profit over regular people’s lives.)
On the other hand, there’s the “forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government.” A government that tries to put in rules to make trains safer is not an unseeing government. We have a government that Republicans have done their best to break, but—just a though—maybe reporters for the newspaper of record should not take the outcome of Republican efforts to break the government as a validated part of the Republican narrative.
Also, too, “struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation.” Exactly the kind of uncaring mega-corporation Republicans have given power to over decades, from protecting them from safety rules to slashing their taxes. Not for nothing, the $98,000 Norfolk Southern has given to Ohio politicians over the past six years was “virtually all” to Republicans, local news 6 On Your Side reported, and the company filed more than 200 reports on its lobbying in the state. Much of that lobbying was aimed at defeating bills intended to make freight rail safer.
I get what Jonathan Weissman probably thinks he’s doing: offering up the story being told by each party about what’s going on here, and doing so in a way that conveys the old stereotypes about Democrats appealing to facts and Republicans appealing to emotions. But he does it badly, and self-importantly, and also … that kind of reporting is past its expiration date.
“In some sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong and, in the bifurcated politics of this American moment, none of the arguments much matter,” he writes, a few paragraphs later. Why is that? It’s a question partly answered by the conspiracy theories about the derailment he details quite a few paragraphs later. Go figure, those conspiracy theories are being pushed by Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump.
It’s a vapid analysis that gestures toward some of what’s really going on without going beyond the surface of this story, let alone being willing to name the broader political forces at play. And it’s completely par for The New York Times course.
This is a serious event that deserves serious action by the government—which is making Norfolk Southern pay for the cleanup process—and a lot of investigation into how it happened, from how the specific wheel bearing came to overheat to the deeper roots of how the freight rail industry has increased profits by keeping its costs down too far. The physical complaints of people in East Palestine deserve more than the government telling them the air and water are safe even if the air smells and fish were only recently dying in local streams and expecting those assurances to put an end to the worries. It’s possible that a lot of what people are experiencing physically is related to the stress and fear they’ve had to deal with, but they deserve to be taken seriously. And it’s true that there are real political aspects to this—undoubtedly so—but “Republicans are blaming Democrats because of the vibe” and “Democrats want to talk about safety regulations” are not two sides of the same coin and shouldn’t be treated as such.
RELATED STORIES:
Biden offered Ohio ‘anything you need’ after train derailment. Why isn’t DeWine asking for anything?
Laura Clawson
Daily Kos Staff
Friday February 24, 2023
Media coverage of the train derailment and toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, has reached the point where the stories are not about the derailment itself but about the circus of political figures stopping by to show that they care and/or make political points. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited, under pressure from the right-wing media, despite the rarity of a transportation secretary visiting the site of a non-fatal train derailment. Donald Trump showed up to distribute Trump-branded bottles of water that we have to hope hadn’t been sitting around since Trump’s water brand folded in 2010.
The New York Times had to be stoked for this moment after its years of coverage of Trump supporters in Ohio diners. Suddenly that obsession is related to real news—what a win for the newspaper! (Donald Trump got 72% of the vote in Columbiana County, Ohio, in 2020.) And sure enough, the Times delivers in true Times-political-coverage fashion. To give you a measure of how bad the Times take on the ways political figures are trying to leverage the derailment to their advantage is, Politico has a better article on the subject. Once upon a time, The New York Times would have been ashamed to be outdone by the likes of Politico.
RELATED STORY: Crew tried to stop train before toxic derailment, NTSB preliminary report says
Then again, it’s entirely possible that the editors and writers of the Times believe that their coverage is good for the exact same reasons it is bad. Politico is up front about covering the circus aspects—the politicians and news producers showing up for long enough to do a little pandering or get a couple quotes, and the ways residents are either rolling their eyes or jumping for their moment in the spotlight. It’s slight but doesn’t actively insult the intelligence of its readers.
The Times reaches for more, following its tried-and-true formula of an opening that skews toward Republicans while engaging in some both-sidesism, followed—far enough into the article that only dedicated readers will have gotten there—by some pretty damning stuff about Republicans.
Oh, and the Jonathan Weissman-written piece is as self-important as the Times could wish. Here’s the opener:
To Democrats, the train derailment and chemical leak in the hamlet of East Palestine, Ohio, is a story of logic, action and consequences: Rail safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration were intended to prevent just such accidents. The Trump administration gutted them.
To Republicans, East Palestine is a symbol of something far larger and more emotional: a forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government whose concerns have never included the likes of a town of 4,718 souls.
Where to begin. The gutting of rail safety regulations is not just a logical story. Anytime safety regulations are gutted, people’s lives are on the line—workers, locals who breathe the air and drink the water. “Republicans put corporate profits over life-saving regulations” is an emotional story. (It’s not clear that the specific train braking system regulation that is most often cited as having been gutted by Trump would have made a difference here, but it’s part of a much larger story of Republican opposition to efforts to improve safety because they consistently put corporate profit over regular people’s lives.)
On the other hand, there’s the “forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government.” A government that tries to put in rules to make trains safer is not an unseeing government. We have a government that Republicans have done their best to break, but—just a though—maybe reporters for the newspaper of record should not take the outcome of Republican efforts to break the government as a validated part of the Republican narrative.
Also, too, “struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation.” Exactly the kind of uncaring mega-corporation Republicans have given power to over decades, from protecting them from safety rules to slashing their taxes. Not for nothing, the $98,000 Norfolk Southern has given to Ohio politicians over the past six years was “virtually all” to Republicans, local news 6 On Your Side reported, and the company filed more than 200 reports on its lobbying in the state. Much of that lobbying was aimed at defeating bills intended to make freight rail safer.
I get what Jonathan Weissman probably thinks he’s doing: offering up the story being told by each party about what’s going on here, and doing so in a way that conveys the old stereotypes about Democrats appealing to facts and Republicans appealing to emotions. But he does it badly, and self-importantly, and also … that kind of reporting is past its expiration date.
“In some sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong and, in the bifurcated politics of this American moment, none of the arguments much matter,” he writes, a few paragraphs later. Why is that? It’s a question partly answered by the conspiracy theories about the derailment he details quite a few paragraphs later. Go figure, those conspiracy theories are being pushed by Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump.
It’s a vapid analysis that gestures toward some of what’s really going on without going beyond the surface of this story, let alone being willing to name the broader political forces at play. And it’s completely par for The New York Times course.
This is a serious event that deserves serious action by the government—which is making Norfolk Southern pay for the cleanup process—and a lot of investigation into how it happened, from how the specific wheel bearing came to overheat to the deeper roots of how the freight rail industry has increased profits by keeping its costs down too far. The physical complaints of people in East Palestine deserve more than the government telling them the air and water are safe even if the air smells and fish were only recently dying in local streams and expecting those assurances to put an end to the worries. It’s possible that a lot of what people are experiencing physically is related to the stress and fear they’ve had to deal with, but they deserve to be taken seriously. And it’s true that there are real political aspects to this—undoubtedly so—but “Republicans are blaming Democrats because of the vibe” and “Democrats want to talk about safety regulations” are not two sides of the same coin and shouldn’t be treated as such.
RELATED STORIES:
Biden offered Ohio ‘anything you need’ after train derailment. Why isn’t DeWine asking for anything?
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