Self-interest behind move to restrict initiated amendments
SThomas Suddes
ome Ohio General Assembly members seem to have their Dockers in a bunch over statewide ballot issues that let Ohio’s voters amend the Ohio Constitution without the legislature’s “help.”
That’s funny. General Assembly members take an oath to support the federal and Ohio constitutions. And here’s what the Ohio Constitution says: “All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform, or abolish the same, whenever they may deem it necessary.”
Trying to overrule the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling doesn’t faze Ohio’s House. And our (mostly white-guy) legislature wants virtually everybody in Ohio to carry a handgun. (What could possibly go wrong?) But when Ohioans want to readily exercise their constitutional right to propose ballot issues — hey: That’s a problem.
Since 1912, Ohioans, if they gather enough signatures, have been able to put proposed Ohio Constitution amendments directly on the statewide ballot for voters to ratify or reject, without any legislative action. Ohioans can also petition the legislature to pass a specific law (“initiated statute”). If the legislature won’t pass that law, Ohioans can gather more signatures and put that proposed law directly on the statewide ballot for voters to pass or reject.
Voters may also petition to place on the statewide ballot — for Ohio voters to pass or reject — a bill the legislature has already passed. That’s called a referendum. A memorable example came in 2011 when the General Assembly’s Republicans passed and Republican Gov. John Kasich signed Senate Bill 5, a measure that aimed to gut Ohio’s public-employee labor unions (teachers, cops, firefighters, school bus drivers, etc.).
Funny thing about the Senate Bill 5 referendum: Down at the Alibi Lounge, big-fee political “consultants” who lose Ohio elections keep telling anyone who’ll listen that because Ohio has gone “red,” Democrats just can’t win in the Buckeye State. (It’s never your candidates or issues, is it guys?)
Still, 2011 — seven years ago — almost 62 percent of those Ohioans voting in a referendum on SB 5 stomped the union-buster dead. And among the counties whose voters killed SB 5 were Putnam (which cast 80 percent of its vote for Republican Mike DeWine for governor on Nov. 6); Mercer (79 percent for DeWine); Auglaize (78 percent for DeWine); and Darke (77 percent for DeWine). Ohio isn’t red, blue, purple, pink, teal or grey. Ohio is Ohio.
True, some statewide ballot issues backed by big money are out-and-out grabs, such as Dan Gilbert and Penn National Gaming’s 2009 casino-monopoly amendment, a $50 million campaign. Then there was last year’s so-called Drug Price Relief Act, a petitionproposed (“initiated”) law, not a constitutional amendment. It took aim at scandalously high prescription-drug prices. The 2017 drug-price campaign is believed to have been the most expensive in Ohio history, thanks to “vote no” spending by prescriptiondrug manufacturers.
Long story short, the legislature’s Republican leaders have implied it might be a keen idea to make it harder to place petitionproposed constitutional amendments on Ohio’s statewide ballot. Why? Because the legislature is a more thoughtful forum than a ballot box for setting state policy.
It is blatantly hypocritical for GOP ballot-issue critics to fret that hijacking Ohio’s ballot-issue mechanism for brazenly selfish reasons is mainly an Election Day thing. Lobbyists throng the Statehouse when the legislature’s in session and not because of intellectual curiosity. They aim to get results for their clients. Often as not they do, especially if they lobby for banks, insurance companies or utilities that year after year seem to do pretty much what they please in Ohio. Yet ballot issues are the problem?
Despite stated concerns about policymaking by ballot issue, the legislature’s priorities (as implied earlier this month in Ohio’s House: guns and abortion) suggest that headlines, not policies, are what legislative insiders really like to craft. Meanwhile, the GOP, which runs Ohio from basement to attic, would likely love to see some of all that ballotissue money spent instead on a really worthy cause: electing and re-electing Republicans to Ohio’s House of Representatives and state Senate.