I’ve spent my adult life working in and around politics. I’ve worked for elected officials, been one myself, and spent years trying to convince government to do something. I’ve won elections, lost political battles, negotiated legislation, built coalitions, and made more than my fair share of mistakes along the way. One thing I have come to appreciate is that winning an election and actually governing are two very different things. We sure spend an awful lot of time and money on the first and not nearly enough care and attention on the second.

Running for office is largely about trying to convince people you are the better choice. But once you are elected, you have to work with everyone… including those who didn’t vote for you, don’t agree with you, and occassionally don’t particularly like you. You can spend your time being frustrated by that reality or you can figure out how to get something accomplished anyway. Personally, I always preferred the latter.

And that’s where the real work begins. Governing is messy. It requires compromise, patience, tolerance. It means listening to those with whom you disagree, reconsidering things you thought you knew, and occassionally accepting that you aren’t going to get everything you want. None of that makes for a particularly good campaign commercial, but it is essential if you actually want to get things done.

This responsibility doesn’t rest entirely with the people whose names are on the ballot. For some of us, working to make government serve the people is our job. For the rest of us, it’s part of being a good citizen and caring about the communities where we live, work, and raise our families. We don’t have to agree on everything and we certainly don’t have to pretend our differences don’t matter. But we do have to be willing to stay engaged, even when things don’t go our way. You can’t just take your ball and go home because your candidate lost or your idea didn’t prevail.

So tonight, I’ll watch the returns, celebrate some victories, be disappointed by others, and probably stay up later than I should. Tomorrow the shouting can subside and hopefully we can return to the business of figuring out how to solve problems and make government work. Winning an election is just the beginning. Delivering on behalf of your constituents is what matters. And, trust me, that’s a whole lot harder than getting elected.

Let me tell you… getting everyone together for those pictures was no small accomplishment. Russell and me, our two grown kids and my son’s fiancee, my sister and brother-in-law, their three kids and significant others, and my stepfather. Between jobs, travel schedules, and everyone’s other commitments, there was exactly one day when all fourteen of us would be at the beach together.

One day!

So I did what any mother would do — I hired a photographer and informed the family that we were having professional pictures taken. I’m sure a photo session was high on everyone’s list of things they wanted to do on vacation, but they humored me nonetheless.

For decades, Siesta Key has been our family’s happy place. When the school calendars cooperated, my sister and I would pack up our families and head to Florida for spring break. We’d all pile into the Florida condo, and somehow we made it work. During my summer breaks from the legislature, I’d load my two kids and a couple of my sister’s into the car and drive south for a couple of weeks at the beach.

I loved those trips.

My sister and I practically raised our kids together. Her three have always felt like my own, and I honestly can’t think of a memory of being at the beach with my children that doesn’t include my niece and nephews.

And now those five kids are grown. How in the world did that happen so fast?

They’re building careers, falling in love, getting married, and making lives of their own (the nerve!). I’m genuinely excited about everything that’s ahead for all of them. But I have to admit, there’s a part of me that would give just about anything to have one more of those summers when I could pile everybody into the car and take off to Florida.

Back then, there was unlimited summer vacation time and no one needed to coordinate with their boss or a fiancee. I just told them we were going.

That’s the thing about parenting adult children… you spend years teaching them to be independent, encouraging them to follow their dreams, and build lives that make them happy. And then they do exactly that! Of course, that IS what you want for your children. But suddenly getting everyone together requires more coordination than a small military operation.

I’ve been thinking about my mom, too, as I’ve looked through these pictures. Her absence was felt by all of us during that trip. While family photos mattered to her, being together is what mattered the most. She made family time a priority, and while I appreciated it growing up, I don’t think I understood quite how much effort went into making it all happen. Or how quickly those years would pass.

I think that’s part of why looking at these pictures makes me a little sad. Not because I want our kids to stay little or because I don’t love the lives they are building for themselves. I do. In addition, I really love the life Russell and I continue to build as empty nesters in this next chapter. But there is something bittersweet about this stage of life. You don’t notice it while it is happening. One year you are loading up the Buick with kids and beach toys, and the next you’re trying to find a single day when fourteen adults can all be in the same place at the same time.

But here’s what made me especially happy about Labor Day weekend… our kids wanted to be there with us as much as we wanted them to be. They have their own relationships with each other, their own shared memories, and plenty to talk about that has nothing to do with us. Watching them together, laughing and catching up, and sharing the same beach they’ve loved since they were little, was probably my favorite part of the weekend.

Now I recognize that there will be years when some can’t make it. Careers, marriages, new babies, and all the other things that come with building a life together will, of course, get in the way. I don’t particularly like thinking about it, but that’s, as they say, life. What I know now is that even when they can’t be there, they’ll want to be. And they’ll make the effort when they can.

I also suspect that as they begin raising families of their own, they’ll want their children to have the same kind of closeness they’ve enjoyed with one another. Not because anybody told them should, but because they know what it means in their own lives.

Looking at these pictures, I understand my mom a little better too, even in her absence (or maybe especially because of her absence). She knew how important it was to make being together a priority, even when it wasn’t convenient. Time is fleeting.

I don’t know when we will manage another vacation family photo. But I do know this: my sister and I will make sure we create the opportunity and the others will work just as hard as we will to make it happen.

And apparently two devices tracking me around the clock aren’t enough because I do plenty of my own counting. Macros. Grams of protein. Ounces of water. Even the number of pages of a book I read.

The thing is, all of this counting has served me well. There is something powerful about knowing what you are actually doing instead of what you think you are doing. Paying attention to what I eat and how much I move has helped me make some pretty significant changes in my life.

But I am starting to wonder if I have gotten so used to counting everything that I Haven’t sucked all the joy out of living.

I noticed it recently when I was thirsty and grabbed a bottle of water. My brain immediately registered 16 ounces. Check!

It happens with food too. I can look at a really good croissant and know exactly how to count it. Same with my favorite adult beverage, the Cosmopolitan. I know they have calories (quite a few, in fact!). I don’t need to unknow those facts. But every once in a while I would like to order my Cosmo and enjoy it without simultaneously doing the accounting in my head.

But here’s the thing… at some point, paying attention can interfere with actually enjoying the thing you are paying attention to. Make sense?

I love riding my bike, for example, but I don’t ride because I care about how many miles I can clock. I ride because I like it. I like being outside and enjoying nature. Ohio has so many great trails for leisure riders like me. I especially like riding to a destination. Give me a trail with an outdoor patio along the way where we can stop for a sandwich before we ride back and I am one happy camper.

Of course my watch is recording the whole thing. I can tell you afterward how far we went and how long we rode and how many calories I burned. But none of these things are why I had a great afternoon. I rode my bike outside on a beautiful day, went somewhere with someone I enjoy, had a drink and a sandwich on a patio, and rode home. Why can’t that just be enough?

Someone at a work dinner recently asked who our favorite Peloton instructor was. I, of course, didn’t have one. Nothing against Peloton. It just occurred to me as everyone was talking that what I like about riding my bike has very little to do with getting a great workout. The fact that is is exercise is terrific. It just isn’t the whole point.

I’m wanting to learn to play pickleball, and I can already feel myself ruining that joy too.

I have never played. I will probably suck at it. But I want to learn something new, meet some new people, and stretch my mind and my body a little. Mostly I want to have fun. Can I do that without being disappointed if I don’t burn a bazillion calories? Can I be terrible learning a new skill without turning it into another goal?

Can I simply enjoy it? I hope so.

Then Dolly Parton died, and apparently Dolly’s impact on me personally was enough to bring me back for a day.

Now Labor Day has come and gone, which means summer is essentiantially over whether I am ready or not. Calendars are filling back up, everyone is back from vacation and back to school, and I suppose that means I should get back to writing.

I have missed it. But the problem is, every time I think about what I want to write, I keep running into the noise.

That isn’t normal for me. I usually have something rattling around in my head about how we work together in political spaces, why relationships still matter, why bipartisanship isn’t a dirty word, or some policy issue I think we are getting right — or spectacularly wrong.

I think the constant barrage of politics right now has just worn me down. Worn. Me. Down!

The campaign commercials are relentless. My phone rings constantly with spam calls and I get nonstop texts I never signed up for. Social media is a cesspool. Every day brings another thing we’re all supposed to be outraged about much less have an opinion.

And we have weeks to go.

I have spent most of my adult life in and around politics and government. I currently hold elected office and care deeply about this stuff, and I’m certainly not checking out between now and Election Day.

I just don’t want to write about it. So… for the next however many days while others are stoking the rage machine or dissecting the latest poll and candidate comment, I think I’ll use this space for something else.

I’m not entirely sure what yet. But it will be a safe space from politics.

Things I’m thinking about and noticing in the moemt. Things that make me laugh. Maybe some stuff that really doesn’t even matter at all. But mostly, I think I am going to give myself — and maybe you — a break from all of it.

There are plenty of people covering politics and government and public policy. I’ll let them handle it for now.

P.S. And I reserve the right to violate this policy without notice.

And I’m not tired of any of it. Maybe because I’ve been thinking so much about all the reasons she mattered to me too.

9 to 5 has been a favorite movie of mine since I was 10 years old. I was the daughter of a working mother and became one myself. And as women do, I built my own sisterhood through the different chapters of my career — women who became colleagues, mentors, confidantes, and lifelong friends.

So yes, a movie about finding one another in the workplace, navigating the men and the systems around them, and ultimately having one another’s backs left an impression on me. (Although perhaps not the part about turning a rooster into a hen with one shot. IYKYK.)

As I got older, what I admired about Dolly became much less about what she did and much more about how she did it.

She was clear in her convictions and easy with the truth. She knew who she was. She could say exactly what she thought without seeming hard or self-righteous. She could disagree without making the other person the enemy. And somehow, everybody seemed to love her anyway.

I mean, I’ve always been pretty clear in my convictions too. I just sometimes come across like a total hag when I’m expressing them.

Dolly could be every bit as direct and yet could leave you smiling.

I’ve never quite mastered that.

I got a small window into another part of what made her so special through my service on the board of Ohio’s Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

The idea is almost ridiculously simple. Every child should have books. Not just children whose families could easily afford them. Every child, regardless of race, income, geography, or circumstance could receive the same books at home every month.

I always loved that part of it. Children who might have very little else in common were reading the same stories. They knew the same characters. They could talk about the same books with their friends.

But I loved something else about it too. The package came addressed to that child. Their name was right there on it. Something had arrived in the mail just for them.

And the books were theirs… to keep, put on a shelf, and to read over and over again.

Dolly inspired Governor Mike and Fran DeWine to believe Ohio could do that for every young child in the state. And they got the rest of us on board.

The legislature supported it year after year, Republicans and Democrats alike. Local communities raised money and built partnerships. Donors gave. People volunteered. Parents enrolled their children. Books started showing up in mailboxes all over Ohio.

If you want to feel good about government, philanthropy, and community partnerships — and what can happen when people rally around something that is simply good — look no further.

It is an exquisite project.

Of everything I’ve read these last couple of weeks about Dolly, one thing keeps coming through. She was kind. I mean really, really, really kind.

It’s what I’ve only ever wanted for my own children. Sure, I want them to be happy, to find people they love and work they care about. But they don’t need to be fancy or important or impressive. Anything else they want to be, they can be.

They just have to be kind.

And if they can manage to be clear about who they are and what they believe, tell the truth, laugh at themselves, do some good along the way — and still lead with kindness?

Well, Dolly set a pretty damn good example. Certainly better than the occassional hag that raised them.

Thank you, Dolly!

It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I write all the time. Lists (lots of lists!). Notes. Pages of thoughts when I’m trying to work through a problem. Writing is how I think. It’s how I organize all the thoughts in my head and find clarity.

But lately I’ve just been busy. I mean really, really, really busy. There has been a lot of work and a lot of work-related travel. Planes, hotels, meetings, calls, deadlines, and more planes. Much of my work involves helping other people think through complicated challenges and opportunities, and spending so much time thinking for other people can leave surprisingly little room for my own.

So I missed a week. And then I missed another. Inertia took over and somewhere in the time-space continuum On Key Insights got away from me. I kept meaning to get back to it.

And I will.

But if I’m being completely truthful, I’m not trying very hard right now.

For years the beginning of August meant the end of summer. As a working mom, the back-to-school routine took prominance and I was thrown back into the midst of carpools, parent-teacher nights, and practices. Suddenly my schedule became a lot more complicated.

Except I don’t have to live by that calendar anymore.

My kids are grown and own their own. As families around me are racing into the school year, I’ve realzed I can stay in summer a little longer.

I’ll get back to writing. But for now, an iced cold beverage and a good book are waiting for me on my balcony, and there is still a little daylight left to waste.

You may not have been following the heartbreaking story out of southeastern Ohio. Authorities recently removed sixteen children from a home after describing conditions so horrific that even experienced investigators struggled to find the words. According to reports, these children were allegedly abused and neglected by their own parents while living in their home. They were not children in foster care or already in the custody of Children’s Services.

That distinction matters because it changes the questions we should be asking.

What we don’t yet know is whether these children were known to anyone outside their home. Had there been previous contact with Children’s Services, schools, health care providers, law enforcement, or other public systems? Were there warning signs that never came together? Did they fall through the cracks, or were they simply hidden from view until it was too late?

We don’t know the answers yet.

If these children were already known to public systems, we need to understand where those systems failed them. If they weren’t, we need to ask an even harder question: What can we do, as communities, to better recognize children who are suffering before tragedy is discovered?

Either answer should challenge every one of us.

For nearly a decade, I’ve had the privilege of serving as a Warren County Commissioner. Protecting the people of Warren County, especially our children, is one of the responsibilities I take most seriously. It’s why I pay close attention to the work of our Children’s Services agency. I review performance measures, ask questions about outcomes, and try to understand both the agency’s successes and its challenges. I’m proud that, by virtually every measure, Warren County has one of the strongest child protection systems in Ohio.

But the more I’ve reflected on Vinton County, the more I’ve realized those measures tell only part of the story.

Children’s Services is often the last stop.

By the time a family comes to the attention of the agency, something has already gone terribly wrong.

That realization has changed the questions I’ve been asking.

Are we proactive enough as a community?

I’ve always believed the purpose of evaluation isn’t to prove we’re failing. It’s to discover how we can become better. That’s true whether we’re evaluating a county department, a business, a nonprofit organization, or our own leadership. Good leaders don’t wait for failure before asking difficult questions. They ask them while things are going well.

That’s exactly where my mind has been this week.

I’ve been wondering whether we’re doing enough before Children’s Services ever becomes involved. Are we building the kind of community where children are seen, where struggling families are connected to help, and where concerns are recognized before they become crises? Are our schools, physicians, law enforcement, public health agencies, churches, nonprofits, and local governments working together in ways that make it less likely a child becomes invisible?

I don’t ask those questions because I believe Warren County is falling short.

I ask them because I believe stewardship requires us to keep asking how we can become stronger.

That’s why this week I reached out to our Children’s Services Director. Not because I question the work she or her team are doing. Quite the opposite. I wanted to understand where she sees opportunities to strengthen an already strong system, where she believes our community can do more, and what lessons we should already be preparing to learn.

Those are conversations I hope are happening in every county in Ohio.

I’ve never believed government alone can solve every problem. Parents bear the primary responsibility for raising their children, and government should respect that relationship whenever possible. Children’s Services exists for those heartbreaking moments when that relationship has broken down so completely that a child’s safety is at risk.

But that’s precisely why government cannot be the whole answer.

Strong communities are.

The strongest child protection system begins long before Children’s Services receives a report. It begins with parents who are supported, neighbors who know one another, teachers who notice when something has changed, physicians who ask one more question, pastors and coaches who know the children in their care, community organizations willing to walk alongside struggling families before they reach a crisis, and local leaders committed to strengthening the fabric of their communities.

Government has an important role to play, but it cannot replace the relationships that make a community strong. Those relationships are often the first line of protection. Children’s Services is often the last line of intervention.

The strength of a community isn’t measured by how much government does. It’s measured by whether people refuse to believe someone else’s child is someone else’s responsibility.

That’s the kind of community I want Warren County to continue building.

Whatever this investigation ultimately reveals, one fact is already beyond dispute. What those children experienced is unacceptable. We should never become so accustomed to stories like this that we grieve, express our outrage, and then simply move on.

The privilege of public service carries with it an obligation to keep learning, especially when the lessons are difficult.

It requires us to ask whether there is anything, anything at all, that we could do differently to reduce the chances that another child experiences the same fate.

As county commissioners, we spend a great deal of time measuring performance. We benchmark outcomes, compare ourselves to our peers, and celebrate progress. Those things matter.

But leadership requires something more.

It requires the discipline to keep asking hard questions, even when the answers may challenge assumptions about systems we believe are working well.

The strongest communities are never satisfied with being good enough. They keep asking what more they can do.

Communities that are doing well should be the first to ask where they can become even stronger.

The children of Vinton County deserve more than our sympathy.

They deserve our willingness to examine our own communities with fresh eyes, a renewed commitment to becoming better than we were yesterday, and the courage to act on what we learn.

We cannot change what happened to those children.

But we can decide what we learn from it.

And whether we have the courage to change because of it.

As Americans prepare to celebrate Independence Day, I’ve found myself thinking less about the generation that founded our country and more about the generations that followed them. History rightly celebrates the brilliance and courage of the Founders, but America did not reach its 250th birthday because of one extraordinary generation. It reached this milestone because generation after generation accepted responsibility for carrying the American experiment forward.

That thought first occurred to me a couple of weeks ago while walking the Underground Railroad sites in downtown Springboro. I’ve walked them before, but this visit felt different. As I stopped to read the historical markers, I found myself thinking not only about the families who risked everything to help enslaved men, women, and children find freedom, but also about the generations that came afterward.

The families who opened their homes created the history. Their story survived because others decided it should. Members of the Springboro Historical Society, local historians, volunteers, educators, donors, and community leaders chose to preserve those homes and the stories they hold.

History doesn’t carry itself forward. People do.

As I drove home that afternoon, it occurred to me that the same principle applies to democracy.

Thirty years in public service has changed the way I think about institutions. When I first entered public life, I suppose I assumed they simply endured. Elections happened because elections always happened. Courts remained independent because that’s what courts do. The peaceful transfer of power, constitutional checks and balances, and the quiet professionalism of public servants all felt almost permanent.

Over time, I’ve come to see them differently.

A Constitution establishes a framework, but it cannot create civic trust, institutional restraint, or a culture that values constitutional principles above temporary political victories. Those things are built over generations. They are reinforced by citizens, parents, educators, community leaders, volunteers, and public servants who understand that democracy is more than a form of government. It is a set of habits, expectations, and responsibilities that each generation inherits and chooses to renew.

That feels especially important as America celebrates its 250th birthday.

We are living through a period of deep political disagreement and declining confidence in many of our institutions. Across the political spectrum, too many of us have become willing to excuse conduct from our own side that we would almost certainly condemn in the other. We increasingly judge our institutions by whether they produce outcomes we like instead of whether they faithfully uphold the constitutional principles they were designed to protect.

Those are not abstract concerns. Americans have argued passionately since the beginning. Disagreement itself has never been the greatest threat to the republic. The greater challenge has always been whether each generation remains committed to the constitutional principles and civic habits that allow us to work through those disagreements peacefully.

One lesson public service has taught me is that institutions rarely fail all at once. More often, they erode gradually. A norm is ignored. A process is bypassed. A principle becomes optional because the desired outcome feels more important. None of those decisions seems especially significant in isolation. Over time, however, they reshape the institution itself.

Perhaps that is why, the older I get, the less impressed I am by political victories and the more impressed I am by institutional resilience.

Elections matter. Policies matter. Leaders matter. But what has allowed America to endure for 250 years is something deeper: generation after generation choosing to renew the constitutional principles and civic habits that make self-government possible.

That responsibility belongs to all of us. It belongs to parents raising children of character. Teachers introducing students to our history. Election workers faithfully administering elections. Journalists asking difficult questions. Public servants committed to the Constitution rather than to personalities. Volunteers serving on local boards. Neighbors strengthening their communities. Citizens willing to place the long-term health of our republic above the satisfaction of winning today’s political argument.

When I think back to that afternoon in Springboro, I realize I wasn’t really reflecting on local history.

I was reflecting on continuity.

The families who sheltered escaping slaves wrote one remarkable chapter in the American story. The generations that preserved their story wrote another.

Now the responsibility belongs to us.

Someday, Americans celebrating our nation’s 300th birthday will inherit the chapter our generation leaves behind. They will judge us not only by the policies we enacted or the elections we won, but by whether we strengthened the institutions, the civic habits, and the constitutional principles that allowed this remarkable experiment in self-government to endure.

The Fourth of July has always been a celebration of our nation’s founding.

This year, for me, it has also become a reminder that history doesn’t carry itself forward.

People do.

And every generation must decide whether it will carry the American experiment forward.

Instead, I found myself thinking about Ohio.

The study estimates that Ohio’s child care gap would increase by approximately 37 percent if Head Start disappeared, placing Ohio among the states that would experience the largest disruption in the country. What immediately caught my attention was not simply that Ohio would be affected. Every state would be affected. What caught my attention was how affected Ohio would be.

According to the analysis, Ohio ranks among the states most dependent on Head Start in the nation.

That is a very different finding than simply saying Head Start is important.

For decades, discussions about Head Start have focused on children. That makes sense. Head Start was created as an anti-poverty and school readiness initiative, and its mission remains centered on helping children arrive at school healthy, supported, and ready to learn.

But the Child Care Trust analysis suggests that Head Start may be serving another function in Ohio as well.

It may be functioning as workforce infrastructure.

That may sound like an odd way to describe an early childhood program, but the more I thought about the findings, the more difficult it became to ignore the connection. Parents cannot work if they do not have reliable care for their children. Employers cannot fill positions if workers cannot consistently show up. Workforce participation, particularly for parents of young children, depends in part on the availability of child care.

Viewed through that lens, Head Start begins to look like more than an early learning program. It becomes part of the infrastructure that allows parents to remain connected to the workforce.

Nationally, most Head Start families have a parent who is working, attending school, or participating in job training. For many families, Head Start is not simply an educational opportunity for their children. It is part of the support structure that makes employment possible.

That is why Ohio’s ranking matters.

If Ohio were near the middle of the pack, this would be an interesting data point. Instead, Ohio appears to be among the states most vulnerable to the loss of Head Start. That raises a question I have not seen discussed nearly enough.

Why has Ohio become one of the states most dependent on Head Start in the nation?

States arrive at outcomes through a series of policy choices, funding priorities, market conditions, and demographic realities. Over time, those choices create systems.

The Child Care Trust analysis suggests Ohio has built a child care and workforce system that relies more heavily on Head Start than most states. That dependence did not emerge overnight, nor is it the result of any single decision. It reflects decades of choices about public investment, eligibility, provider support, workforce challenges, and the role government should play in helping working families access care.

To Ohio’s credit, policymakers from both parties have taken meaningful steps in recent years to expand access to child care assistance. Eligibility for publicly funded child care has increased, and additional supports have been made available to some working families through the state’s voucher program.

Those efforts matter.

But the study suggests they have not yet altered a larger reality.

In fact, I suspect the analysis highlights a distinction that often gets lost in policy discussions. We spend a great deal of time talking about eligibility and far less time talking about capacity.

The two are related, but they are not the same thing.

A family can qualify for assistance and still be unable to find care. A state can expand eligibility and still lack enough providers, teachers, classrooms, and available seats to meet demand. Eligibility determines who can receive help. Capacity determines whether care actually exists.

The Child Care Trust analysis is measuring capacity.

And what it appears to show is that Ohio has come to rely on Head Start for a meaningful share of that capacity.

That observation should matter regardless of where someone stands on Head Start itself.

Supporters of the program should recognize that its role may extend far beyond early learning. Critics of the program should recognize that eliminating it would likely have consequences that extend far beyond the children enrolled.

If Head Start disappeared tomorrow, Ohio would not simply lose an early childhood program. It would lose a meaningful portion of the child care capacity that supports workforce participation.

The effects would show up in places that rarely appear in discussions about Head Start. Manufacturing plants trying to fill shifts. Hospitals struggling with staffing. Small businesses working to retain employees. School districts, local governments, and health care providers competing for workers in an already challenging labor market.

Those challenges are already difficult. Removing a meaningful share of Ohio’s child care capacity would almost certainly make them harder.

At a time when workforce shortages remain a concern across much of Ohio, that should matter.

I do not view this as an argument that every existing program should be preserved forever. Nor do I think it is useful to reduce the conversation to a debate over whether Ohio spends too much or too little on child care. The reality is more complicated than that.

What I do think is that the findings should prompt us to ask a different set of questions.

The most important question raised by this analysis is not whether Head Start is valuable.

The more important question is why Ohio appears to depend on it more than most states.

Understanding that answer requires us to look beyond Head Start itself and examine the broader child care and workforce systems we have built over time.

Because if the loss of Head Start would create one of the largest disruptions in the country, the real lesson may not be about Head Start at all.

It may be about Ohio.

More specifically, it may be about what happens when decades of policy choices leave a state more dependent on a federal program than it ever intended to be.

I’ve seen government get things right. I’ve seen government get things wrong. I’ve seen good decisions, bad decisions, and plenty of complicated decisions that don’t fit neatly into either category.

What I’ve also seen is a growing tendency to assume the worst.

Healthy skepticism is essential in a democracy. Citizens should ask questions and expect accountability from those entrusted with public resources and public authority.

But skepticism and cynicism are not the same thing. And when we stop recognizing the difference, it becomes much harder to solve problems together.

I had a recent experience as a county commissioner that crystallized this for me. Our county has been exploring another property tax holiday while also beginning to look seriously at long-term strategies to reduce our reliance on property taxes altogether. It is exactly the kind of conversation I believe government should be having. How do we grow responsibly? How do we reduce pressure on taxpayers over time? How do we continue delivering services while keeping government disciplined and financially stable?

A local article was published about the discussion, and almost immediately someone posted it online questioning the motives behind it.

Then the pile-on started.

What struck me wasn’t the disagreement. Disagreement is part of governing. What struck me was how quickly the conversation shifted from debating the idea to assuming bad intent.

The possibility that elected officials might be exploring the issue out of a genuine desire to control spending, protect taxpayers, or improve public policy barely entered the discussion. The motives had already been decided.

That’s the moment skepticism stops being healthy. When we stop asking questions and start assuming the worst, we make it harder to have the kind of honest conversations good governance requires.

And honestly, I’ve started to notice versions of this dynamic everywhere.

We increasingly operate inside civic cultures where the immediate instinct is often suspicion. Hidden motives. Corruption. Hypocrisy. Performative politics. The possibility that leaders, institutions, or communities might actually be trying to solve difficult problems thoughtfully and responsibly often feels almost secondary to the rush to expose failure, contradiction, or bad intent.

That has consequences for governance.

Because good governance is often complicated, iterative, and imperfect. It involves tradeoffs, operational constraints, long timelines, financial realities, competing priorities, and decisions that rarely satisfy everyone completely. Most serious public problems do not have clean ideological solutions. They require people willing to stay engaged inside complexity for long periods of time.

But complexity performs poorly online.

Outrage is faster. Simpler. More emotionally satisfying. It gives people clarity, certainty, and the feeling of moral positioning without requiring much patience for ambiguity or operational reality.

And increasingly, I think reflexive cynicism is starting to replace discernment.

That is a problem because democratic systems actually require discernment. They require citizens capable of distinguishing between disagreement and corruption, between imperfection and bad faith, between leaders making difficult tradeoffs and leaders acting irresponsibly.

More than that, democracies require at least some baseline assumption of good faith in order to function. Not blind trust. Not the absence of accountability. But enough civic trust to allow institutions, leaders, and communities to work through disagreement without immediately collapsing into suspicion and moral accusation.

Without that, collective problem-solving becomes extraordinarily difficult.

When every decision is immediately flattened into accusation, outrage, or tribal interpretation, public life slowly becomes harder to navigate honestly.

Institutions become more defensive. Leaders communicate less candidly. Public trust erodes further. And over time, governance itself becomes more performative because performative behavior is often safer than honest complexity.

It becomes safer to posture than to govern.

Safer to criticize than to build.

Safer to project certainty than to acknowledge tradeoffs or complexity.

And honestly, I think some communities and institutions are handling this dynamic far better than others.

The places that continue making progress are not necessarily the places with the least disagreement. They are often the places still capable of tolerating complexity without collapsing into permanent cynicism. Places where people can disagree without assuming corruption. Places where institutions and leaders are still given enough room to experiment, adjust, learn, and improve without every imperfect decision immediately becoming a moral indictment.

That kind of civic maturity matters more than we probably realize.

Because difficult public problems are rarely solved in one election cycle, one headline, one press conference, or one perfect policy proposal. Progress usually requires trust, patience, operational competence, and people willing to stay engaged long enough to improve things over time.

And increasingly, I think one of the biggest threats to that progress is not simply polarization itself.

It is the growing inability to recognize or reward good-faith stewardship when we actually see it.

Because eventually, when every institution is presumed broken and every leader presumed corrupt, collective problem-solving itself becomes almost impossible.

Different organizations. Different sectors. Different challenges.

A nonprofit executive navigating funding uncertainty. A public official managing growing demands with limited resources. A foundation leader trying to move from strategy to execution. An association CEO balancing member expectations, staffing pressures, and long-term sustainability.

Eventually, the conversation almost always arrives in the same place.

“I don’t have any time left to think.”

Not time to attend another meeting. Not time to answer another email. Not time to respond to the next urgent issue demanding attention.

Time to think… Time to step back far enough to see the bigger picture. Time to reflect, synthesize, and consider where the organization needs to go next. Time to wrestle with difficult questions before being forced to react publicly to them.

The thing that strikes me isn’t that I’ve heard it once. It’s how many capable, accomplished leaders are saying some version of the same thing.

These are not disengaged people looking for an easier workload. In many cases, they care deeply about their organizations and the people they serve. They are working extraordinarily hard. They are carrying enormous responsibility. They are showing up every day and doing their best to navigate increasingly complex challenges.

And yet many of them feel like they are operating without one of the most important tools leadership requires: the space to think.

I’ve started to wonder whether many of our institutions are now operating in environments fundamentally incompatible with thoughtful leadership.

I don’t mean leadership in the performative sense. We have plenty of performance right now. Plenty of visibility, urgency, reaction, outrage, branding, positioning, and constant commentary. Everything feels immediate. Everything feels existential. And everyone is expected to respond in real time.

I mean the kind of leadership that actually helps institutions function well over time. The kind that requires reflection, judgment, trust, operational understanding, relationship-building, and enough space to think clearly about difficult problems before reacting to them publicly.

That kind of leadership feels increasingly difficult to sustain.

I see it in government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and advocacy organizations. Some of the most capable leaders I know seem exhausted in a way that feels deeper than ordinary burnout.

Not because they have stopped caring. Quite the opposite.

They are carrying the weight of increasingly complex challenges inside environments that reward speed over reflection and reaction over thoughtful execution. Everything feels urgent. Everything is public. Everything requires an immediate response. Meanwhile, the work of actually keeping institutions functioning continues underneath it all.

At some point, the pace itself becomes a leadership challenge.

Leadership and management are not the same thing.

Every organization needs people who can execute, solve problems, manage details, and keep the work moving forward. But leadership requires something additional: the ability to see beyond the immediate crisis and connect today’s decisions to tomorrow’s opportunities.

That is why those people became leaders in the first place.

Their ability to think strategically, synthesize complexity, and see around corners is often exactly what organizations need most from them.

But increasingly, many leaders are being pulled so deeply into operational survival that they no longer have the space to actually lead.

Eventually the visionary becomes the overwhelmed operator. The strategist becomes the crisis manager. The person most capable of imagining the future becomes consumed by sustaining the present.

And I think that has real consequences for institutions.

If nobody has the space left to think beyond the next crisis, organizations slowly begin to lose the very capacity that allows them to evolve, adapt, and move forward.

That kind of erosion rarely happens all at once.

It happens quietly.

People step back. Retire earlier than they planned. Choose smaller roles. Leave public-facing leadership entirely. Not necessarily because they no longer believe in the mission. Often it’s because the conditions required to do the work thoughtfully and sustainably no longer feel consistently present.

Unfortunately, many of the people most likely to quietly leave are often the very people holding complicated systems together. They are the relationship-builders, the translators, the people who know how to navigate disagreement without escalating conflict. They understand institutional history, operational realities, and the importance of trust.

Those qualities do not always show up on organizational charts or social media feeds. But they matter enormously.

I also think something larger is happening culturally.

We increasingly reward announcement over execution, disruption over maintenance, and visibility over stewardship. Yet healthy institutions are not sustained by performance alone. They require trust, continuity, operational capacity, and people willing to do the often invisible work of keeping things functioning over time.

The irony is that many of the leaders we most depend upon are the very people least likely to complain. They simply absorb more responsibility. Work a little longer. Carry a little more.

Until eventually they can’t.

And when they leave, organizations often discover that replacing a position is far easier than replacing the judgment, relationships, credibility, and institutional knowledge that person carried.

Which brings me back to the question I can’t seem to shake:

Are we creating conditions where leaders still have the capacity to think beyond immediate survival?

When every leader becomes consumed by sustaining the present, eventually nobody is left imagining the future.

And that should concern all of us.

I started reconnecting with old friends.

Not networking. Not “circling back.” Not transactional coffee meetings disguised as friendship. Actual reconnecting. The kind where you sit down across from people who knew you twenty years ago and somehow still know you now.

Buck and Dave and I had our annual lunch last week. We’ve done it every year this month for 26 years.

Twenty-six years.

There is something almost sacred about friendships that endure. Career changes. Victories. Disappointments. Elections. Losses. Reinventions. We pick up exactly where we left off every single time. Updates about kids and grandkids. A few stories we’ve all heard before but still laugh at anyway. And politics. Always politics.

And it was nice.

Not productive. Not strategic. Just genuinely nice.

The kind of lunch you wish could go on another hour. The kind where everyone says, “We need to do this more often,” while fully understanding you’ll probably see each other at the exact same restaurant at the exact same time next year.

Honestly, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.

There is something unique about these long professional friendships. They are different than my closest girlfriends, but meaningful in an entirely different way. These are the colleagues who became genuine friends along the way. The people who saw you exhausted, ambitious, overwhelmed, hopeful, frustrated, growing. The people who understand certain stories without explanation because they lived them with you.

This month reminded me how many of those people have shaped my life.

There’s Judith, who retired from the early childhood profession several years ago and who, in her mid-eighties, can still run circles around me. We had lunch recently and I left thinking, once again, how lucky I am to know her. Less than a year after losing her husband, she is slowly finding her groove again. She is an avid reader, endlessly curious, sharp as ever, and still one of the most interesting people in any room she enters.

She once told me something I have never forgotten: you have to do things while you can. Travel while you can. Experience life while you can. Because eventually there comes a point where you can’t.

And another lesson: keep your girlfriends close and treat them like gold.

She has lived both truths.

Then there’s Lynanne. We had coffee recently and, as always, ran out of time.

She worked for me years ago at Groundwork Ohio, and even then it was obvious she was exceptional. Smart, creative, talented, incredibly funny, and caring as hell. Over time, our professional relationship evolved into a genuine friendship, and watching her eventually step into the CEO role after me has been one of the real joys of my career.

We still work in the same orbit, but I no longer see her nearly every day the way I did for so many years. Sitting across from her recently reminded me that some people become woven into the fabric of your daily life so gradually you don’t fully appreciate it until time and distance change the rhythm. It also reminded me how lucky I was to spend so many years building something meaningful alongside people I cared about.

Brian has long been one of my favorite combinations: exceptionally smart and easy to be around. One of the smartest state budget minds I know, he combines brilliance with genuine warmth and good humor. We had lunch recently and I realized halfway through how refreshing it felt to simply enjoy each other’s company. Neither of us needed anything. No ask. No angle. Just old stories, current realities, family updates, and memories from another chapter of life.

It felt oddly luxurious.

Dan has always been what I would call a work soulmate. Thoughtful. Empathetic. Wise in a grounded, practical way that has helped steady me more than once over the years. He genuinely cares about people. Not performatively. Not strategically. Authentically. I tend to hang onto his insights like they are precious diamonds because they usually are.

We met for coffee recently and I found myself wishing it didn’t end. The kind of conversation where you leave feeling steadier somehow. More grounded. More understood.

And Mike. A little bit Debbie Downer, a little bit war story, a little bit perpetual motion. He always seems to be trying to solve a problem, fix something, help someone, or figure out how to make things work.

But beneath all of that is someone deeply conscientious and deeply caring. The kind of person who keeps showing up for people, over and over again. No one works harder. And somehow he still manages to lace even the hardest conversations with enough humor and self-deprecation to make you laugh while he’s explaining why the sky may be falling.

Over the years, ours became the kind of friendship that grows out of shared work, long history, mutual respect, aggravation, laughter, and the quiet understanding that you’re always in each other’s corner.

We had a cocktail recently that felt like no time had passed at all. Like we had simply slipped back into the same bar seats we occupied years ago, picking up old stories and familiar rhythms without missing a beat.

Different personalities. Different paths. Different politics even at times.

But connected by our life’s work.

By long meetings and campaigns and impossible deadlines and shared purpose. By years of trying, in our own imperfect ways, to leave things a little better than we found them.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to understand that professional life is not only about titles or accomplishments or influence. It is also about the people who quietly walk beside you through it all.

The ones who get you through the hard seasons.

The ones who know your spouse’s name, your children’s milestones, where you like to vacation, and where you go when life gets hard. The ones who remember who you were before the résumé lines and LinkedIn headlines.

We take these friendships for granted sometimes because they exist in the background of our lives. But they matter deeply.

This month, I gave myself the gift of making time for them again.

And maybe that’s one of the reasons I find myself surprisingly happy to be turning 56.

Because if I’m lucky, there are still more birthdays ahead of me. More lunches. More stories. More coffee that shouldn’t end. More cocktails that feel like no time has passed at all. More opportunities to sit across from people who helped shape my life and remember just how grateful I am they did.

Honestly, I’d like a lot more of that.

Her argument is essentially that we are living in an age of profound uncertainty — economic uncertainty, political uncertainty, cultural uncertainty, climate uncertainty — and that many people no longer feel confident enough about the future to take the leap into parenthood.

There’s truth in that.

And to be fair to my children’s generation, many of the barriers they are facing are very real.

Housing costs are dramatically higher relative to income than they were for many previous generations. Rent consumes an enormous share of monthly budgets. Child care costs are staggering. The idea that most young families can comfortably build a middle-class life on one income today is largely fiction unless someone quietly became a hedge fund manager and forgot to tell the rest of us.

Even highly educated, responsible young adults can feel like they are running hard just to stay in place.

That deserves acknowledgment, not dismissal.

I also agree with one of the article’s central points: small tax credits or one-time financial incentives are unlikely to reverse deep demographic trends on their own. A few thousand dollars here or there disappears pretty quickly into rent, child care, groceries, or one mildly alarming trip to Costco.

But I also found myself pushing back a little on the core thesis.

Because I don’t really believe this is mostly about “vibes.”

Every generation has faced uncertainty in one form or another. The economic pressures facing young adults today are very real and, in many ways, uniquely difficult. But uncertainty alone cannot fully explain what we are seeing.

To me, what’s really eroding is trust — trust in institutions, trust in neighborhoods, trust that communities will support families, trust that adulthood is still attainable, trust that ordinary life can still be good.

“And maybe most importantly, trust that if things fall apart, someone will help hold you up.”

For decades, we have systematically weakened many of the institutions and relationships that once helped people absorb risk and uncertainty together — churches, civic organizations, extended families, neighborhoods, local communities, even confidence in government itself.

At the same time, we’ve created a culture that tells young people they should not have children until every aspect of life feels optimized, secure, financially stable, emotionally healed, professionally established, personally fulfilling, and preferably organized in matching containers from The Container Store.

That’s an impossible standard.

We increasingly talk about children almost entirely through the lens of cost, sacrifice, anxiety, and exhaustion rather than meaning, joy, continuity, purpose, and love.

That matters too.

As someone whose own life has been profoundly shaped and enriched by my children, I think about this a lot lately as they enter adulthood and begin thinking about marriage, family, and what comes next.

Of course I want them to be financially responsible and thoughtful about the future. Every parent does. But more than anything, I want them to move into that future with confidence and courage — not paralyzed by the doom and gloom of the moment.

I want them to understand that family life is almost never built in perfect conditions. It’s built alongside uncertainty, sacrifice, messiness, resilience, humor, faith, and love. Most of us are figuring it out as we go.

And I want them to know they won’t be doing it alone.

They have extended family. Deep relationships. People who will show up for them. And I hope they continue building strong community around themselves wherever life takes them because I increasingly think that may be one of the most important things of all.

One of the reasons I found the article so interesting is because it unintentionally highlights something I think many policymakers — on both the left and the right — still miss:

“Nobody decides to have a baby because a spreadsheet finally looked perfect.”

People build families when they feel connected to something larger than themselves. When they feel supported. When they believe there is still goodness ahead. When they trust that even imperfect lives can become beautiful ones.

That’s not just an economic problem or a tax policy problem.

At its core, it’s a trust problem.

And rebuilding that is going to take a lot more than better “vibes.”

I’ve now seen this from multiple vantage points: as a congressional staffer, state legislator, committee chair, county commissioner, nonprofit CEO, and consultant working alongside government agencies, philanthropy, and advocacy organizations. The older I get, the more convinced I become that good ideas rarely fail because nobody cared or because the vision was lacking. More often, they struggle because not enough people spent time thinking through what it would actually take to make the idea work in real life.

Policy is often the easy part. The hard part comes later.

A legislature passes a law expanding access to a program. A foundation launches a promising initiative. An agency announces a bold new strategy. An advocacy coalition celebrates a major win. Then reality shows up.

Counties need staffing. Procurement takes longer than expected. Workforce shortages emerge. Technology systems don’t communicate with one another. Funding streams fail to line up neatly across agencies. Reporting requirements multiply. Local providers are already overwhelmed. Political leadership changes. Public trust may already be fragile before the work even begins.

And suddenly everyone is no longer talking about vision. They are talking about execution.

The reality is that most public progress does not happen in dramatic moments. It happens slowly, through thousands of small decisions made over time by people trying to solve problems inside systems that were never designed to work as cleanly as we wish they would.

One of the things local government taught me is that counties and communities are where policy becomes real. This is where broad ideas encounter actual staffing shortages, actual budgets, actual operational limits, and actual families trying to navigate complicated systems while living busy and often difficult lives. It is also where trust is either built or lost.

Families do not experience government through strategic plans or policy papers. They experience it when they call for help, fill out an application, try to navigate a program, or wait for someone to follow through on a promise. And yet the people closest to implementation are often the last people brought into the conversation.

I’ve seen extraordinarily smart people develop compelling policy frameworks without fully understanding the burden they create downstream. I’ve also seen local leaders resist genuinely good ideas because they were brought in too late to build trust or practical alignment around how the work would actually happen. Neither side is entirely wrong.

Over time, I’ve also noticed that the people doing the most lasting work are usually not the people making the biggest speeches. They are the people who understand relationships, timing, operations, and the reality that public systems are ultimately run by human beings.

And human beings get tired.

Timelines slip. Staffing changes. Budgets tighten. Political priorities shift. Frustrations build. Systems strain under pressure. When that happens, relationships often become the thing holding the work together.

That kind of leadership is slower than many people want. It is also less glamorous. There are no ribbon cuttings for improved interagency coordination. No standing ovations for modernized procurement systems. No viral social media posts celebrating contract structures that finally make implementation easier at the local level.

But those things often determine whether a policy succeeds or quietly collapses under its own weight.

I also think philanthropy and advocacy organizations sometimes underestimate this part of the work because urgency naturally drives their culture. And urgency matters. Some problems deserve urgency. But eventually somebody still has to figure out how to make the thing actually work.

Families do not experience government through strategic plans or policy papers. They experience it when they call for help, fill out an application, try to navigate a program, or wait for someone to follow through on a promise.

That means understanding staffing realities, operational constraints, competing priorities, outdated systems, local capacity, and public trust. It means recognizing that announcing a vision and operationalizing it are two completely different things.

The answer is not lowering ambition. The answer is taking implementation as seriously as we take the policy idea itself.

Because in the end, families do not judge systems by how ambitious the vision sounded at the press conference. They judge them by whether help arrived when they needed it. Whether the application worked. Whether someone answered the phone. Whether the program existed long enough to trust it. Whether the system kept its promise.

That is where public trust is built or lost.

So I went to Siesta Key by myself for a few days.

Anna had just graduated from Ohio University last weekend and was visiting her brother Jake in Chicago, and somehow the timing felt right. There was something about being there that felt comforting to me, even if I couldn’t fully explain why. Maybe grief makes you retrace familiar steps. Maybe love does too.

I went to some of my mom’s favorite places while I was there. One afternoon, I stopped at a little local burger joint she loved. Her favorite burger used to cost five dollars. Now it’s ten. I added cheese, which made me laugh quietly to myself because my mother absolutely would have commented on the price increase and definitely would not have paid the extra $1.25 for cheese.

And somehow I could hear the entire conversation anyway while I sipped my Diet Coke.

That’s the strange thing about grief after a few years. The person is gone, but the dialogue still lives inside your head so clearly that for fleeting moments, it almost feels real.

Another day, I took a little trip to St. Armands Circle. I ordered the famous 1905 Salad and a sangria and sat along the black wrought iron railing just as we had done countless times before.

Some places become so layered with memory that you are never really there alone. Every prior version of your life somehow sits there with you too.

I walked over to her favorite jewelry store, which over time had quietly become my favorite jewelry store too. I was hoping to buy myself a little bauble in her memory. But the store had closed.

Since the hurricanes, a lot has changed.

Some places are gone. Others feel different. Familiar landmarks have shifted. And yet somehow, I still saw her everywhere.

I ended up buying a small piece of sunflower art instead because sunflowers were her favorite flower. Somehow it felt more meaningful anyway. Less about buying something and more about bringing home a small reminder of her warmth and brightness and presence.

The older I get, the more I realize grief is carried in these tiny details.

Not the dramatic moments. The ordinary ones.

The smell of sunscreen.
A restaurant menu.
A flower.
The sound of ice clinking in a Diet Coke.
A conversation you can still hear perfectly in your head years later.

I have beautiful memories of all the major moments my mother was part of. My graduations. My first real job. My wedding. The births of both of my children. My first election to public office. She was there for every one of those milestones, loving me, supporting me, worrying about me, celebrating with me.

Those memories feel permanent.

But what I find myself worrying about now are the smaller things. The exact sound of her voice. Her expressions. The cadence of ordinary conversations. The little details that made her uniquely herself.

And maybe that’s why one moment this week surprised me so much.

I looked down at my hands while I was sitting on the beach reading, and for the first time, they looked like hers.

It wasn’t sadness exactly. It was almost like a flash of recognition. A memory. A reminder of her.

Because growing up, I never thought I looked much like my mother at all. She was striking. Tall and slender with dark hair, olive skin, and the most stunning blue eyes. People noticed her when she walked into a room.

And yet now, as I age, I catch glimpses of her unexpectedly looking back at me. Sometimes in the mirror. Sometimes in an expression. This week, it was in my hands resting in the sun with a book in my lap.

For just a second, I could see her so clearly.

Losing my mother has also changed the way I think about my own children. I always loved being Jake and Anna’s mother, but now there is another layer to it. I find myself wanting more time. More conversations. More ordinary moments together. I want to know them fully as the adults they are becoming, not just as the children I raised.

I want to be here for all of it. Their weddings. Their families. My future grandchildren. The traditions and stories and inside jokes that slowly become the fabric of a family over decades.

Because I understand now, in a way I never fully did before, how much those shared years matter.

This morning is Mother’s Day, and I’m writing this over coffee and a BLT at The Dutch Valley Restaurant, one of my mom’s favorite breakfast spots, before heading back home.

She would have ordered over-easy eggs — and they better actually be easy — potatoes, rye toast, and a Diet Coke.

I can hear her saying it to the waitress even now.

And honestly, it feels like the perfect place to spend Mother’s Day.

I think when you lose someone you love deeply, especially your mother, one of the hardest parts is the fear that time will slowly blur the details of them. That you will lose pieces of them little by little.

But maybe the people we love never leave us as completely as we fear they will.

Maybe they live on in gestures and habits and memories and stories. Maybe they live on in the things we reach for without even realizing why. Maybe they even live on in the shape of our hands.

This Mother’s Day, I miss my mom deeply. But I also feel grateful that after all these years, I can still find her in the places we loved, the memories we built, and sometimes even in the reflection looking back at me.

I’ve spent most of my professional life in public service—working for Congress, serving in the Ohio legislature, and now as a county commissioner. I’ve also had the opportunity to serve on boards, including the Warren County Foundation, which supports a range of efforts across the community. Magnified Giving is one of those investments, so it was especially meaningful to see that work not on paper, but in practice with students.

What makes this program different is its intent.

Students are not learning about philanthropy in the abstract. They are expected to engage—volunteering with organizations, learning who is being served, asking questions about impact, and working together to define what matters. They establish criteria, work through competing priorities, and ultimately decide where funding should go. The dollars come from partners like the Foundation, but the responsibility for the decision rests with them.

That structure is not accidental.

Roger Grein built this model around a simple but important idea: if you want people to value service and understand philanthropy, you have to trust them to do it. His own story—reflected in his book The Mower Boy—is grounded in that belief. Giving is not something you talk about or admire from a distance. It’s something you practice, develop, and take ownership of over time.

You can see that play out with these students.

They are learning how to evaluate need, assess organizations, and make tradeoffs. They are learning that resources are finite and decisions matter. And they are doing it in a way that connects directly to their own community, which makes the experience real in a way a classroom discussion never could.

We tend to talk about philanthropy as if it belongs to a small group of people—those with the capacity to make large donations or attach their name to an institution. But that framing misses the point.

What I saw last week was philanthropy at its most basic level: people paying attention, asking questions, and making a decision to contribute to something beyond themselves.

That’s accessible to everyone.

Programs like Magnified Giving don’t just introduce young people to service. They set an expectation that service is part of how you participate in a community.

And from the Foundation’s perspective, that’s the return on investment that matters most. Not just where the dollars go today, but how these students will think, decide, and engage for years to come.

That’s how a culture of service is built—and it doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when people are trusted early, given real responsibility, and expected to use it well.

That’s where most policy debates fall short.

A recent piece from Capita pushes on that tension, making the case that our institutions should be “hospitable by design.” It’s a thoughtful idea and one worth paying attention to. But for policymakers, the translation matters. What they describe as “hospitality” is, more plainly, whether the systems and programs created actually achieve their intended outcomes.

And it’s not how we usually judge whether a policy succeeds.

We spend a lot of time debating whether a policy is a good idea. We spend far less time asking whether it is usable—whether it reflects how people actually live, whether it assumes unlimited time and flexibility, or whether it requires navigating layers of systems that were never designed to work together. Too often, the answer is no. And when that happens, the burden doesn’t disappear. It shifts quietly onto families to figure it out on their own.

That’s the part we don’t say out loud.

That is where “hospitable by design” becomes more than a nice concept. It becomes a governing test—not whether we care about families, because most policymakers would say they do, but whether what we have built actually reflects that in practice.

We are starting to see what this looks like when leadership gets it right. A recent announcement from Dayton Children’s Hospital reflects exactly this kind of thinking. With a $40 million investment and a new national partnership, their leadership is not simply expanding services. They are rethinking how care is delivered—bringing it closer to where children live, integrating behavioral health, and focusing on earlier intervention.

That deserves more attention than it’s getting.

What stands out is not just the scale of the investment. It’s the recognition that better outcomes don’t come from doing more of the same. They come from stepping back and redesigning how the system works. That is a different kind of leadership—and it’s what this moment demands.

For conservatives, this should feel familiar. There is a long-standing instinct to ask whether systems are efficient, sustainable, and grounded in how people actually behave. But too often, we skip the harder question—whether the system we already have is coherent in the first place. A system that works for families should meet that standard. It should be navigable and aligned with real life, not dependent on constant expansion to compensate for poor design.

For progressives, the concern is different, but the conclusion should be the same. When systems are difficult to navigate, the burden does not fall evenly. It falls hardest on families with the least flexibility—those working multiple jobs, those without reliable transportation, and those managing instability across multiple parts of their lives. Access is not just about eligibility. It is about whether something is actually usable, and design determines that.

This is where the Capita framework has real potential. It shifts the conversation away from a familiar and unproductive divide—not whether government should do more or less, but whether what it does actually works. That is the question that cuts through most of the noise—and avoids a lot of performative debate.

In my experience, this is where many well-intentioned policy efforts break down. We identify a real problem and propose a reasonable solution, but we do not fully account for how that solution fits within the broader system people are already navigating. So we add something new. Then something else. Over time, we build a collection of programs that may make sense on their own, but together create more complexity, more friction, and more burden for the very families they are meant to support.

We do not have a shortage of programs. We have a design problem.

If we are serious about strengthening families, then the question is not just what we fund. It is whether what we have built works in the lives of the people we are trying to serve—not in theory, but in practice.

“Hospitable by design” raises the right question. But the real test is whether we are willing to apply it. Because once you do, it becomes difficult to ignore what is no longer working.

If we were starting from scratch, knowing what we know about how families actually live, we would not design our systems the way they exist today.

And if that’s true, then the work in front of us is not just to add more.

It is to decide what actually works—and have the discipline to build around that.

It was, in every sense, breathtaking.

We started in Zurich, where we spent Easter with my aunt and uncle in Kilchberg. From there, we made our way to Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen, easily the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and then on to Lucerne. Everywhere we went felt like something out of a postcard. The weather cooperated in a way that almost didn’t seem real.

We hiked, explored, and took in as much as we could. In Zurich, we spent time at the Swiss National Museum, which Anna was especially interested in given she is currently student teaching World War 2 history. We also visited the Kunsthaus, where the Giacometti pieces were a highlight for me.

And, of course, we made our way to the Lindt Home of Chocolate, which, as it turns out, is within walking distance of where my aunt and uncle live. Perhaps a little too convenient.

Anna and I also shared a traditional Swiss fondue, delicious but not an everyday kind of meal. There was also plenty of beer along the way. They know what they’re doing.

We even spent one afternoon at an Alpine spa, soaking in a warm pool overlooking snow-capped mountains. And I was reminded how much I love the European coffee culture, just stopping at a small café, ordering a cappuccino, and sitting long enough to have an unhurried conversation.

All of it was wonderful. The places, the scenery, the experiences.

But what I keep thinking about isn’t any one of those moments.

It’s the time.

Time with my aunt, who I don’t get to see nearly often enough. Time for Anna to get to know her better. And time for Russell and me to get to know Anna in a different way, as an adult, on the edge of whatever comes next.

Anna graduates in a few weeks (where has the time gone?) and is preparing to start her career as a high school social studies teacher. She has a strong sense of who she is and a genuine enthusiasm for both her students and the subject matter she’s chosen to teach. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see that come into focus.

Most of what matters doesn’t happen in the big moments. It happens in the time you almost don’t notice while you’re in it.

But this trip felt a little different.

In Interlaken, Russell and Anna went paragliding, while I stayed safely on the ground.

I watched Anna take off and drift out over the valley, steady and completely at ease. I stood there waiting for her to land, holding my breath. And she did, softly and without much fanfare, exactly as it should be.

And in that moment, it caught up with me.

My youngest isn’t a child anymore.

And this is the last time I will travel with one of my children as a child.

There’s a part of me that wants to hold on a little tighter, but she doesn’t need that anymore.

And the rest of the trip carried on just as it had before—easy, beautiful, full of all the things you hope for when you travel.

The beauty of Switzerland will stay with me. That’s a given.

But more than anything, I’ll remember the time we had together—and the moment I began to understand what comes next.

It was a good overview of what’s happening.

What it made me think about, though, is something we’re not talking about enough—what this shift means for the ability to actually move policy.

This isn’t entirely new, but it has become more pronounced over the past several months.

More lawmakers are attempting to bypass leadership to force votes on issues that have stalled in the traditional process. Tools that were once used sparingly are now being used more frequently, often in an effort to move issues that haven’t yet built enough consensus within a caucus.

From the outside, that can look like momentum. It can feel like the system is becoming more responsive—or even more democratic.

But that’s not what’s happening.

It’s a sign that the normal work of building agreement is under strain. And when that happens, policymaking doesn’t become easier. It becomes more fragmented—and often more difficult.

There’s a tendency to think of leadership as the obstacle—the reason good ideas don’t move. I understand that instinct. I’ve heard it plenty of times.

But leadership, at its best, does something much more constructive.

During my time as Majority Whip in the Ohio legislature, a big part of the job was not simply counting votes. It was understanding where members were, what concerns they had, and what it would actually take to bring enough people into alignment to move something forward. Most of that work happened well before anything ever came to the floor.

That’s the part people don’t see.

Leadership filters ideas. It tests assumptions. It works through tradeoffs. It creates the conditions under which members can support something with a clear understanding of both the policy and the politics.

And maybe most importantly, it builds confidence that if a vote is taken, it will succeed.

Most policy doesn’t pass because it sounds good. It passes because someone has done the work to make it viable.

When leadership can’t unify its members—or chooses not to play that role—the process doesn’t suddenly open up in a productive way. It just becomes less predictable.

Coalitions form around individual issues rather than shared priorities. Votes are pursued for their signaling value rather than their likelihood of passage. Public pressure starts to replace the quieter, more deliberate work of negotiation.

From a distance, that can look like movement.

But activity is not the same as progress. And in many cases, it creates the appearance of movement without the substance required to actually get something across the finish line.

In this kind of environment, it’s easier to force a vote than to build agreement—and only one of those leads to lasting policy.

That matters, especially for the kinds of issues that are already hard to move.

Child care. Maternal health. Workforce participation. Tax policy.

These aren’t one-vote wins. They require funding, structure, and long-term commitment. They require alignment across different factions and, often, across party lines.

And alignment is exactly what becomes harder when the process itself starts to break down.

Without a way to build and hold that agreement, even well-supported ideas can stall.

Moments like this are easy to misread. When the traditional process isn’t working well, it can feel like an opportunity to push harder or go around it.

Bypassing leadership doesn’t eliminate the hard part. It just moves the problem.

At some point, every proposal still has to secure votes, navigate tradeoffs, and withstand scrutiny from the people responsible for funding it and implementing it. Without that foundation, even strong ideas tend to stall after the initial moment of attention.

If anything, this kind of environment makes strategy more important—not less.

It requires a clearer understanding of how decisions are actually being made, where alignment is possible, and what concerns need to be addressed before something can move. It also requires a level of patience that can be difficult in a moment that feels urgent.

Because when the process becomes less stable, the path to agreement is rarely linear. It takes more effort—not less—to build the kind of support that leads to lasting policy.

It’s easy to look at what’s happening in Congress and see dysfunction. There’s certainly some truth in that.

But more importantly, it reflects a system that is struggling to do one of its most important jobs: build enough agreement to act.

Until that function is restored, policymaking will continue to feel uneven—not because the problems are unclear, but because the system is no longer doing the work required to turn agreement into action.

But that’s not how policy actually moves in a Republican-led state.

Last week, I wrote about STABLE accounts and how we should be paying more attention to policies coming out of Republican-led states that are actually working for children and families. This week, I want to build on that idea with a more recent example, one that shows how policy actually moves in a center-right state, and what it takes to expand access when the path forward looks different than what many advocates would design.

In Ohio, that example is the Child Care Choice Voucher.

For years, advocates have pushed to expand eligibility for publicly funded child care. That work matters, and it has led to incremental progress. But it has also been slow and difficult to advance in a Republican-led state.

That’s because in a state like Ohio, the question is not just whether a policy is needed. It’s whether the structure of that policy aligns with how Republican policymakers think about governing: how programs are funded, how they grow, and how risk is managed over time.

That reality shapes what moves.

And it’s where many well-intentioned efforts stall—not because the problem isn’t real, but because the solution isn’t structured in a way that can move.

In Ohio, eligibility has gradually increased from 130 percent of the federal poverty level to 145 percent, with continued efforts to go further. But for families just above that threshold, the reality hasn’t changed. Many are not working, not because they don’t want to, but because the cost of child care makes it difficult to justify taking a job at all. In too many cases, they are sitting on the sidelines because it simply doesn’t pay to work once child care is factored in.

That’s the gap the Child Care Choice Voucher was designed to address.

When Governor DeWine launched the pilot in April 2024, it didn’t look like the policies advocates had traditionally pursued. It wasn’t an expansion of an existing program. It was a new approach — structured differently, and importantly, framed differently.

That wasn’t accidental.

In a Republican-led state, language matters. Words like “choice” and “voucher” signal something important. They reflect a belief in flexibility for families, a defined public investment, and a structure that can operate within real fiscal constraints.

The program reflects those same principles.

It is funded through a finite appropriation, which protects the state if demand exceeds projections. That dynamic gives policymakers confidence to move forward, knowing the program can be managed if demand outpaces expectations. At the same time, it provides something else that is often missing in these conversations… real-time data about how many families are seeking help and where the need is greatest.

That structure is not a limitation. It is the reason the policy moved.

It also creates a real tension.

Because unlike traditional entitlement programs, this approach is finite. It depends on a defined appropriation, which means not every eligible family may be served if demand exceeds what the state is willing to fund. That is a real vulnerability and one that advocates are right to care about.

But it is also what makes the policy viable in the first place.

At Groundwork Ohio, where I was serving as CEO at the time, we made a deliberate decision to support the pilot.

Not because it was perfect, but because it worked.

It expanded access to care for more families… just not in the way advocates had originally envisioned.

And it did something else that often gets overlooked. It aligned with core Republican values.

It incentivizes work by making it possible for parents to enter the workforce in the first place. It supports employers who are struggling to find and retain workers. And it does so in a way that reflects fiscal discipline and program accountability.

Those elements are what made the policy viable and what continue to sustain it.

To date, the program has reached nearly 12,000 children across nearly 7,600 families. That means more parents able to work. More families moving toward stability. And more employers able to fill jobs.

It also means something more strategic: it is building a base of support.

Families who benefit from the program. Employers who rely on it. Policymakers who can point to results.

That’s how policy grows.

And yet, this is not typically how child care policy is discussed. The conversation often centers on what the solution should look like, rather than how to move policy forward in the environments where decisions are actually being made.

That’s the disconnect.

In center-right states, progress often comes through policies that fit the political environment — policies that can move, that can be sustained, and that can build support over time.

This is the best example of leaning into red-state solutions and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

If we want to improve outcomes for children and families, we have to be willing to advance policy in the states where those decisions are being made, even when the path looks different than what we would design on paper.

Because in many states, this is not a compromise. It’s the path to getting something done at all.