Sean M. Gilbow is president of the Summit Conglomerate Chapter of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association.
I had the misfortune of my downtown Akron apartment building being gerrymandered intoSen. Kristina Roegner'sdistrict.
I could cross the street and be in a Democratic district. And as a gay man and a state of Ohio employee, Roegner was acting against my interests.
In 90 days, I will be retiring after 32.5 years of service, nearly all of it with the Ohio Department of Public Safety. Half of it has been as a Driver License Examiner for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.I represented Northeast Ohio as part of the agency's "I Am Public Safety" campaign 10 years ago.
Nearly two months after the state COVID-19 shutdown began, I was back working at my
exam station and giving driving tests shortly thereafter.
I was the only examiner at my station who did not get COVID.
And only a third of the examiners who were in that job in 2020 are still doing it.
The British medical journal The Lancet had articles regarding the work of both Dr. Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Amy Acton and Mike DeWine saved lives. Ramaswamy put them in danger
First, it compared the number of deaths in each state per 100,000 people between Jan. 1, 2020, and July 31, 2022.
Ohio had the eighth-lowest death rate: 293 deaths per 100,000 people. And the seven states with lower death rates all had smaller populations.
Credit goes to both Acton and Gov. Mike DeWine for acting quickly to stop the spread. And if it weren't for right-wingers like Roegner who threatened Acton and her family, even stalking her and her family outside her home, Ohio could have led the nation in having the lowest number of COVID deaths per 100,000 people.
Then, there was Vivek Ramaswamy who, in partnership with Elon Musk as they headed up the Department of Government Efficiency, gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development known as USAID.
The Lancet cited a report by NPR that said 700,000 people worldwide died from the cutoff of humanitarian/medical aid, with the blessing of Donald Trump.
The Lancet also projected 14 million deaths worldwide by 2030 due to the destruction of USAID by Musk and Ramaswamy. That's more than the entire population of Ohio dying by the end of the next governor's term. And The Lancet predicts 4.5 million of those deaths will be children under 5.
What would Ramaswamy gut in Ohio
My coworkers across state agencies will be negotiating a new contract following the election, and the choice for Ohioans is whether they want state services to be kept intact under Acton, or whether state services will be gutted under Ramaswamy and his chief campaign contributor, Elon Musk.
I work for an agency whose mission statement begins with these three words: "To save lives." Roegner's Sept. 24 Dispatch guest column, "Acton is hiding from Ohioans who want to look her squarely in eye" and her support for Ramaswamy show she doesn't believe in saving lives.
So the question voters reading this should be asking is:
Who do you believe? A liberal gay man who has spent 15 years testing thousands of drivers, including thousands of teens, to make sure Ohioans are safe on the roads, or a politician whose focus has been targeting LGBTQIA+ people like me?
The answer not only will determine whether I will stay in Ohio, where I have lived since birth, or I take my pension income out of state. It also will determine the lives of all Ohioans, which depend on voters making the right decision: Dr. Amy Acton.
Sean M. Gilbow is president of the Summit Conglomerate Chapter of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, serving more than 250 State of Ohio employees who live and/or work in Summit County. OCSEA/AFSCME Local 11 is the largest union of State of Ohio employees, with 27,000 members.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Acton saved Ohio lives. Ramaswamy's DOGE work shows how fast he'll discard them | Opinion
