Some Ohio legislators need to learn about state constitution
After taking almost a quarter-century to even try to properly fund public schools in Ohio, some members of the General Assembly are now preparing to dictate what should or shouldn’t be taught in Ohio’s classrooms — in accordance with whatever talk-show twaddle they’ve heard.
More:Professor: ‘Only the brave and foolish’ will teach about race, ethnicity if bill passes.
As it is, Ohio school pupils already must take a battery of proficiency tests — which a befuddled legislator once called “efficiency tests” — throughout their 12 years in the state’s elementary and high schools.
Meanwhile, the members of the state Senate and the Ohio House of Representatives are also aiming to block or at least limit serious consideration of America’s racial history and questions of gender identity. Perhaps like Henry Ford, some members of the legislature think that “history is more or less bunk.”
Maybe what Ohio really needs is a proficiency test for members of the General Assembly. That might screen out some of the more startling specimens that now occupy the no-concealed-carry Statehouse.
It might help, for instance, if prospective state senators and representatives acquired at least a passing acquaintance with Ohio’s Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Sure, some of those words, written as long ago as in 1802 and 1850-51, are parchment-and-quill-pen stuff. But some of it is utterly practical.
More:Editorial: Spruce up the outdated Ohio Constitution
Take for instance the now-flouted constitutional command rule that “members and officers of the General Assembly shall receive a fixed compensation, to be prescribed by law, and no other allowance or perquisites …”
It’s hard to reconcile that wording with, for example, the extra pay that Ohio House speakers and state Senate presidents ladle out to legislative committee chairs, floor leaders, etc. — extra pay that can be yanked at any time for not toeing that day’s party line.
That is, extra pay can be a way to keep any potential rebels in line. Meanwhile, it is just as hard to reconcile that ban on extra pay with actual practice considering, for example, the $150 per day fee paid to each legislative member of the Controlling Board, a panel that itself is constitutionally suspect as almost a third legislative house.
Also on the Ohio Legislators’ Constitutional Proficiency Test might be a section on the one-subject rule: The Ohio Constitution says that a bill may not contain more than one subject, which should be clearly expressed in its title.
More:Gov. Mike DeWine signs $74B state budget. What did he veto? What did he keep?
For some reason, Ohio’s phonebook-thick budget bills (and similarly massive measures) don’t quite meet that requirement. The current state operating budget is 2,436 pages long. And its title is (supposedly) “clearly expressed” in these 11 words: “to provide authorization and conditions for the operation of state programs.”
Got that? The price tag of that 2021-2023 budget bill, incidentally, is $74 billion — or about $30 million a page.
In fairness, members of the General Assembly took an oath to uphold the Ohio Constitution. But as almost every legislative session demonstrates, that’s not quite the same thing as taking an oath to understand the Constitution.
Footnote: Two and a half years ago, in the summer of 2019, a gunman killed nine people in Dayton’s Oregon District before police shot and killed him.
More:Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed permitless carry. Why his gun record leaves him open to attack.
When Republican Gov. Mike DeWine attended a vigil at the crime scene, other mourners directed a shouted plea at the governor, “Do something!” That is, they demanded that DeWine act to reduce gun violence in Ohio.
Soon after, DeWine proposed a gun safety package. But the General Assembly, led by the governor’s fellow Republicans, made a point of ignoring his plan.
Then, last week, on Monday — 953 days after the Oregon District shootings and the crowd’s pleas, DeWine did indeed do something, though perhaps not what those Dayton mourners had in mind: The governor signed Substitute Senate Bill 215, which, in a headline writer’s words, “(allows) people to carry concealed firearms without training or permits.”
More:For second consecutive year, Columbus sets new record for homicides
Meanwhile, “more Ohioans died from firearms in 2021 than almost any year on record, according to preliminary data from the Ohio Department of Health,” Ohio Capital Journal reported last month.
And judging by Senate Bill 215, nothing can — or will — be done about it.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. [email protected].
Read More: Some Ohio legislators need to learn about state constitution