I may have jumped the gun. Granted, when I said in my Jan. 15 column my support of Gov. Bob Taft was conditional, I knew down deep any defense for him — especially mine — was in desperation, a last-ditch effort for a man so far in a hole it would take a small miracle to pull him out.

And that was just after his first address, one with enough esteemed formality to hide most of the pending doom. Had I waited for the real truth of Jan. 22’s State of the State address, I may not have tried to give Taft even a half-hearted thumbs-up, for when he began early that morning, all the things he had only hinted at in his inaugural address — and hid almost completely in his campaign pitches — came out with a frightening bang.

Well, more like a long, uncomfortable confession.

The fiscal situation is not in serious trouble — as I thought before — but in shambles, unrecognizable. It is so bad, in fact, that it’s common knowledge the budget’s unbalanced, revenues are exhausted, cuts will be made, and programs will be lost no matter what.

However, I knew this, or at least knew these problems were there, just not looming with such a terrifying presence. And I did not hope for them to all be solved instantly, nor did I expect a perfect solution. I knew the road to fixing the problems would be hard — for legislators and Ohio residents alike — because in a crisis of this magnitude, there is nowhere to hide.

But I may have been premature in my last pleas for bipartisanship. Creative bipartisanship, I thought, was reasonable. Unfortunately, that is where I may have been overly optimistic and most naïve. Because the joint solutions and progressive thinking I had hoped for after the inauguration were present only in token form in Wednesday’s address.

But it wasn’t just absent from Taft’s address, but also from the Democratic rebuttal, which turned out to be more of a mud-slinging festival than I had expected. Both House Minority Leader Chris Redfern, D-Port Clinton, and Senate Minority Leader Gregory DiDonato, D-Dennison, ripped Taft’s education commissions and most of his other programs, offering few counter-solutions of their own.

That may be where I struck too early. I thought my argument of burying the hatchet was the only option — that state partisanship didn’t have to play the role that it does at the national level. But if my hatchet is stashed in a coffin, the Democrats’ are sharpened and ready for the jugular, especially over education.

And maybe they’re right.

Ohio’s educational track record during the last 12 years of Republican control has worsened, not bettered. The DeRolph litigation found the state’s school funding process to be unconstitutional. However, the state has repeatedly ignored these claims, and the old system has remained in place.

Also, Ohio’s rate of tuition increase has been almost twice the national average, which has been consistently under 5 percent. This excessive rate comes at a time when our local economy is being crippled, reducing the number of people able to go to college and making it harder for those already there.

The current budget crisis and the vicious competition for state funding under Taft leaves students at all levels — especially us in higher education — between the proverbial rock and hard place, which in our case lies between major university cuts and exorbitant tuition increases.

Unfortunately, as difficult as our situation is, there are few options that would lead to quick, concrete results. Unlike faculty and staff unhappy with a situation — as there currently are at Columbus State — a strike is obviously out of the question. Our situation is somewhat handcuffed, because a college education is a necessity, and students are forced to fund the very institutions they are trying to change.

But the fact that a college education is so important makes affordable education a must. As important as it is, though, the problems that always prove to be the most hindering are rising to the forefront of any possible legislative solutions. The Statehouse has become a mass of problems with few solutions, a set of binary opposites with few, if any, solid plans of action on either side, with no hope for joint resolutions.

Unfortunately, their timing couldn’t have been worse.

John Ross is a senior in comparative studies. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].