Weakening the last safeguard against single-party rule

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session”: That’s what a New York judge ruled in the 1860s — and what an Ohio judge could fairly say today, in 2022, about the Ohio General Assembly’s post-election lame-duck antics.

Like houseguests who overstay their welcome, the legislature and its camp-followers, who throng the Statehouse lobbies, refuse to go home, though the 134th General Assembly legally expires Dec. 31. The (newly elected) 135th General Assembly is scheduled to start meeting (“start work” would be a reach) on Jan. 3.

Why are some (not all) legislators hanging around the Statehouse when retirement beckons for many, and holidays beckon for them all?

Simple: Retiring legislators will never again face voters. And elected or re-elected House members won’t again face voters sooner than 23 months from now — and some elected or re-elected state senators, not for 47 months.

That’s why, for example, the General Assembly gives itself pay-raises during lame duck sessions.

This year, the base pay for a state senator or state representative in Ohio has been $68,674. That will increase by 1.75% in January, to approximately $69,876 for part-time jobs (plus state health-care benefits and Public Employees Retirement System pensions.

This lame-duck session is being conducted true to form by taking up measures that would have been politically radioactive before Nov. 8.

For example, the legislature is considering making it harder to amend the state constitution — requiring a 60% “yes” vote rather than the 50% plus one vote required now.

That would almost certainly make it more difficult to restore women’s access to abortion in Ohio. Making the Ohio Constitution harder to amend would also make it harder to stop the gerrymandering of General Assembly and congressional districts by GOP leaders.

Reduced to essentials, to give 41% of a given pool of voters the power to block ballot issues creates a veto over the remaining 59%.

That may sound keen to some people. But why should it require an extraordinary majority to approve, say, state highway or conservation bonds, when only a simple majority of the electoral college (270 votes of 538) is required to elect a president of the United States?

Of course, the saving part of the 60% plan, if the General Assembly submits it to Ohio voters net year, is that voters in turn may kill it — as they should. Otherwise, voters would be handing a blank check to a General Assembly that already reaches too far too often and has a real hard time taking no for an answer from voters.

The fact is that Ohioans’ power to amend their state’s constitution — hardly easy now — is about the last Ohio safeguard against the overwhelming power of one-party rule at the Statehouse. Trying to weaken that protection is the real peril of the proposal to all Ohioans.