OPINION: 134th General Assembly round up
House Chamber of Ohio State House, 2018. Photo by Wikimedia Commons
Julianna Rittenberg is a sophomore studying political science and an opinion writer for The New Political.
Please note that these views and opinions do not reflect those of The New Political.
With the end of 2022 also came the end of the 134th Ohio General Assembly. While Ohio University students went on winter break, Ohio's state legislators prepared for one of their busiest times of the year: the Lame Duck session.
A Lame Duck session means new bills, proposals and amendments are brought to the floor during every session. Staff and elected officials alike run around the statehouse, hoping to figure out who supports what and how the day might end.
In between goodbye speeches, legislators passed a $6 billion spending bill during a session that went until 5 a.m. Ohio schools received the most funding with $1.75 billion and publicly funded childcare programs received $500 million. The third, fourth and fifth highest-funded programs are nursing homes, hospitals and social security.
Legislators also decided the fate of dozens of bills that had been introduced over the course of the 134th General Assembly. Here is an overview of just a few:
House Bill 458 requires voters to show a photo ID when voting in person, both early and on Election Day. Before this bill was signed into law, voters could choose from alternate forms of ID such as utility bills and bank statements. The bill does include a requirement that the BMV provides free state ID cards to those who request them. The issue with this change is ensuring the public is aware of the free option for a state ID. Excluded from the list of accepted IDs are state veterans' IDs.
The law includes steps to ending August special elections, limiting each county board of elections to one ballot dropbox and eliminating early voting on the Monday before Election Day or the day prior.
All of these steps will make it harder for people to vote. Mark Elias, an elections attorney, has already filed a lawsuit against the law on behalf of different Ohio interest groups. Abha Khanna, an attorney who works for the Elias Law Group, stated, "this bill makes it substantially harder for Ohioans to vote in person and by mail, and makes it harder to correct simple mistakes that prevent ballots from being counted."
By limiting voting dates, and tightening restrictions around voting qualifications, voting will become harder in Ohio.
In better news, Ohio's House Bill 454, which would prevent minors from receiving gender-affirming care, failed to make its way out of committee. The bill prohibits school staff from keeping a minor's gender identity from their parents, referrals for minors to receive medical care for gender dysphoria, any public or private insurance from covering any medical treatments for minors for gender dysphoria, including hormones and threatens to withdraw medical licenses for doctors who do not follow the law.
H.B. 454 received several hearings in the Families, Aging and Human Services committee, where dozens appeared to testify against the bill. By the end of the 134th General Assembly, it had not been voted out of committee, killing the bill until it was reintroduced in the new General Assembly. If the bill is reintroduced, the opposition needs to be just as loud, if not louder. Bills like this increase mental health risks in a population that is already at high risk, according to the Trevor Project's 2022 survey findings.
House Bill 507 had a seemingly innocent title, "Revise number of poultry chicks that may be sold in lots." However, the bill hides a larger environmental issue.
The bill opens up all state-owned land for fracking, forcing state agencies to accept qualifying lease applications from oil and gas drillers by changing language formally in the bill. Additionally, the bill expands the definition of green energy to include natural gas and prohibits local pesticide bans, stripping individual cities of their choice to do so. Notably, the bill includes state parks.
The bill was signed into law by Governor DeWine on Jan. 6, and only time will tell the effects of opening up more land for fracking in Ohio.
House Chamber of Ohio Statehouse, 2018. Photo by Schooley Caldwell Associates, SAH Archipedia
Ohio legislators combined three bill concepts in House Bill 151. What began as a shift in the Ohio Teacher Residency Program had an amendment tacked on to include a transgender athlete ban. Then, Ohio senators folded Senate Bill 178, which would loot the State Board of Education of the majority of its powers, into the House Bill.
The trans athlete ban portion of the bill would force athletes in middle and high schools to compete with the team corresponding with the sex on their birth certificate rather than the team corresponding with their gender identity.
The State Board of Education section comes after Democrats are poised to take control of the board following the November election. It would shift the majority of its powers to a new cabinet agency.
The Ohio Senate voted to pass this last version of the bill, containing all three aspects, but the Ohio House of Representatives voted against the bill.
Predicting a movement in coming election years to battle state abortion laws, Republicans in the Ohio legislature moved to make it harder to pass constitutional amendments. Constitutional amendments are one of the most direct ways Ohioans can influence Ohio's laws. Constitutional amendments have been discussed to protect abortion rights.
House Joint Resolution 6 would require all proposed constitutional amendments to receive 60% of the vote instead of 50%. This means just 40% of Ohio voters could determine whether or not an amendment is in place. The resolution failed in the 134th General Assembly.
While many of these resolutions failed in the 134th General Assembly, it is important to remember that they will most likely be back. Failing once is not the end of the story. We have to keep fighting. Be active in the political process by showing up to committee hearings of bills you oppose.