http://www.newsnet5.com/news/5537430/detail.htmlFlannery Outlines Plan For Economic, Education Reform
POSTED: 5:34 pm EST December 14, 2005
LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- Former state Rep. Bryan Flannery has announced that he will run for governor in the November 2006 election.
Flannery, a Democrat, made the announcement Wednesday at his high school alma mater, St. Edward High School in Lakewood.
He said that his running mate will be Frank M. Stams, of Akron.
During his speech, Flannery laid out his platform and his plan for solutions to current problems, specifically economic and education reform.
http://www.freetimes.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2875 The Sincerest Form of Flannery:Gubernatorial candidate Bryan Flannery has a plan for school funding.That counts for something,right?
By Michael Gill
A YOUTHFUL BRYAN FLANNERY steps up on a coffee table, his wife Renee at his side, and begins to narrate the family history, beginning with the flight from potato famine in Ireland 150 years ago. He quickly gets to the West Side of Cleveland, where a great-grandfather helped build St. Coleman’s Church, and a grandfather began a family tradition of Ohio politics. Up there on the coffee table, Bryan is continuing the line, looking comfortable in the gentle spotlight of a fundraiser for his fledgling gubernatorial campaign.
After he was term-limited out of his seat on the state legislature, Flannery’s last campaign for public office ended in defeat, when Ken Blackwell won the race for Secretary of State. The possible rematch is just a footnote in what has for Flannery become a kind of crusade. From the governor’s office, Flannery could take care of some unfinished business. He could try something no politician in Ohio has even seriously attempted.
When he was a state representative, Flannery held a contest, offering $1,000 to the person who devised the best viable alternative to Ohio’s levy-based, property tax-dependent, and famously unconstitutional school funding system. A retired librarian from Columbus won with the kernel of what has become the candidate’s plan. While he was still in the legislature, Flannery introduced the plan as a bill. It never got a hearing.
For the last few years, he’s continued to work out details and tried to get the plan on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. The effort fell short of the necessary 350,000 signatures last year, but the committee will try again next fall. And now the plan is the centerpiece of his campaign for governor. But first, Flannery, 37, has to survive the Democratic primary...