Legislature’s sleight of hand affects issues
Carnival barkers and General Assembly members share one secret – the hand is faster than the eye along the midway or at the Statehouse.
All the more so, given that Ohioans face distractions ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the weekly trials of the three B’s – the Browns, Buckeyes and Bengals. So while many Ohioans’ eyes are elsewhere, the General Assembly is drilling and sawing the Revised Code to meet private interests’ specs.
A Senate-house conference committee is gearing up to craft a bill legalizing sports betting in Ohio.
Whether that is good or bad for Jane and John Taxpayer remains to be seen. But you can be sure that the promoters of sports betting – just like the promoters of Ohio’s casinos – don’t aim to lose any money. Gambling, after all, is the one business where the proprietor always wins.
Then there is the latest entry in Ohio’s quest to treat the environment as a slash-and-burn zone – House Bill 175, which the House passed 61-33 on Sept. 29. (The only Democrat voting “yes” was Rep. Richard Brown, of Canal Winchester. The only Republican voting “no” was Rep. Laura Lanese, of Grove City.)
Gobbledygook aside, the bill, sponsored by Rep. Brett Hudson Hillyer, a Uhrichsville Republican, would hogtie Ohio’s power to fight water pollution by ending regulation of so-called ephemeral streams: “Surface water … that flows or pools only in response to precipitation, such as rain or snow,” the Legislative Service Commission says.
HB 175 is opposed by the Ohio EPA, which answers to Republican Gov. Mike Dewine; by the Darby Creek Association, dedicated to protecting Greater Columbus’ regionally and nationally prized Big and Little Darby creeks (they are national and state scenic rivers); by the Ohio Environmental Action Fund; and by former Ohio first lady Hope Taft.
She and former Gov. Bob Taft live along the Little Miami River, also a national wild and scenic river, in Greene County.
And Hope Taft is vice president of the Ohio Scenic Rivers Association. “(Ephemeral streams are) like capillaries are to our circulatory system, if enough are damaged our whole body gets sick,” Hope Taft said in testimony opposing HB 175.
And we’re not talking small stakes. According to Ohio EPA Director Laurie A. Stevenson’s testimony in opposition to HB 175, of an estimated 115,206 miles of Ohio primary headwaters streams, “an estimated 36,405 miles are ephemeral streams,” from which the bill would yank protection.
Moreover, as the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund’s Peter Bucher observed his opposition testimony, HB 175 would undercut Dewine’s multimilliondollar H2ohio program, aimed at protecting Ohio’s waters. “HB 175 takes our state in the wrong direction,” Bucher said – unless, that is, the state Senate slams on the brakes on the bill.
Meanwhile, it wouldn’t be Ohio’s General Assembly if a clutch of pro-gun bills wasn’t floating around. The latest is Substitute Senate Bill 185, to crimp public officials’ emergency powers to suppress riots or mobs. The bill declares firearms and ammunition to be “life-sustaining” – yes, irony is lost on our legislators – “‘essential’ businesses” during an emergency.
The bill then forbids the state or Ohio’s political subdivisions to forbid the sale of firearms, ammunition or, for that matter, the sale of any deadly weapon. As an example of Statehouse absurdity, that’s hard to top.
Paying up
The General Assembly is still refusing to fully repeal House Bill 6, that 2019 gem that resulted in federal corruption indictments and which still costs Ohio electricity customers big money.
As signed by Dewine, HB 6 would have bailed out, at consumers’ expense, the Perry and Davis-besse nuclear power plants then owned by Akron-based First Energy Corp.
Earlier this year, the legislature repealed the nuclear bailout, not so much out of embarrassment (as if), but because the plants’ new owners said in so many words the subsidies created a problem with federal utility regulators.
But the General Assembly left in place subsidies for two coal-burning power plants, one in Indiana. And because the legislature’s coal-plant mandate remains in effect, Ohio consumers have paid $150 million in coal-plant subsidies since January 2000. That’s the Statehouse Way: Pay up. Move on. Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University.
tsuddes@gmail.com