Lawmakers think they know best what Ohio needs, but they don’t
DThomas Suddes
on’t distract Ohio’s General Assembly with facts: Black babies born in Ohio die at a greater rate than white babies do. General Motors is throwing Northeast Ohioans out of work. Maumee Valley agribusinesses are making Lake Erie their septic tank. And, statewide, Ohio’s a Dumpster for retail litter.
No, the General Assembly’s lame-duck legislators have more important things on their minds. One of them is making it harder for voters to amend the Ohio Constitution.
Another is ducking a bid to abolish Ohio’s 25-year statute of limitations on rape prosecutions. A third — among House Republicans at least — is playing let’smake-a-deal to re-elect Speaker Ryan Smith of Gallia County’s Bidwell, or replace Smith with former Speaker Larry Householder of Perry County’s Glenford. Horse-trading, anyone? The speaker, whomever she or he happens to be, appoints committee chairs and assigns House members to the Controlling Board, which oversees some state spending.
An Ohio House member’s salary is $60,584 a year. If a House member is appointed to chair the budget-writing Finance Committee, he’s paid an extra $10,000 a year, a 17 percent raise. Other committees’ chairs are paid an extra $6,500, an 11 percent raise.
Controlling Board seats pay three House members and three state senators each a $150 per day stipend — no matter how brief a board meeting is — plus “necessary traveling expenses.” Yet the Ohio Constitution says legislators shall receive “a fixed compensation … and
allowance or perquisites.” (Emphasis added.) Oh, well, what’s the constitution among Statehouse pals?
There can be a sincere debate about extending the 25-year statute of limitations on rape, abhorrent as rape is. Witnesses can be hard to locate, evidence lost. Legal arguments aside, such a debate would and should open up a legislative can of worms over time limits on civil lawsuits seeking damages for sexual abuse. Someone age 18 or older when abused has two years to file a lawsuit. Someone younger than age 18 when abused has until age 30 to file a lawsuit. Extending that time limit would empower Ohioans sexually abused long ago to seek compensation via lawsuits. Extending the limit could also subject potential defendants (examples: the Catholic and other churches or, in the case of the late Richard Strauss, M.D., once a wrestling team physician at Ohio State University) to a wave of unanticipated lawsuits. (Full disclosure: I am a Catholic and I earned an OSU degree.)
Proposals to extend the time limit on sexual abuse lawsuits would mobilize the relentless Statehouse insurance lobby, which doesn’t lose many fights. Insurers would argue that they’d priced liability insurance based on the current lawsuit limits. Still, the Ohio Constitution makes this guarantee: “Every person, for an injury done him in his land, goods, person, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and shall have justice administered without denial or delay.” The constitution doesn’t say, “unless she or he was sexually abused more than two years before filing a lawsuit.”
Meanwhile, the legislature is considering whether to toughen the required statewide majority for state constitutional amendments that Ohio’s voters (rather than legislators) propose. To become part of the Ohio Constitution, a voterinitiated amendment now requires a simple majority of the statewide vote cast on it. But House Joint Resolution 19, introduced Wednesday by Reps. Sarah LaTourette, a Chesterland Republican, and Glenn Holmes, a suburban Youngstown Democrat, would require a 60 percent majority for such petitioninitiated amendments.
The stated aim of HJR 19 is to protect the constitution against big-money, special-interest issues, such as last month’s (rejected) drug-crime-sentencing amendment. That seemed to irk GOP legislative leaders, who think they’re the best judges of Ohio’s needs.
A 60 percent minimum wouldn’t have blocked Ohio’s 1992 (wrong-headed) legislative term-limits amendment or 2004’s (bigoted) gay-marriage ban. But requiring a 60 percent statewide majority likely would block future state constitutional amendments that rank-and-file Ohioans propose to curb corporate polluters, marketplace gougers or ever-pricier utilities.
The odds against winning approval of voter-proposed pro-consumer, pro-environment, pro-ratepayer constitutional amendments are tough enough now in Ohio. Requiring a supermajority “yes” vote of 60 percent would make it even tougher. HJR 19, whatever its stated goals, is functionally anti-consumer and pro-status quo — the last things that Ohioans need.