Fairborn commencement
Badin graduation
Division I regional track finals
Home > Blogs > Ohio politics > Archives > 2011 > June > 23
Thursday, June 23, 2011
SB 5 referendum can’t be cut up, secy of state says
A spokesman for Gov. John Kasich today denied published reports that his office was considering asking the Ohio Ballot Board to divide into mulitple ballot issues a proposed referendum repealing the controversial Senate Bill 5 . Kasich concurs with Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted that the law does not permit it, said Rob Nichols, spokesman for Kasich.
He said no one in senior staff or in a position to be “impactful” on such a decision had discussed asking the board to divide up the repeal referendum, which is on track to appear on the November ballot.
The Columbus Dispatch on Thursday reported that unnamed officials in Kasich’s administration and other Republican supporters of the bill “are talking to the Ohio Ballot Board about presenting the issue to voters so that they would cast votes on its many provisions, instead of a simple up or down vote on the law.”
The legislature this year approved, and Kasich signed, the law curtailing collective bargaining rights of public employees. SB5 is on hold pending the outcome of the proposed referendum repealing it. Opponents say they have gathered more than three times the needed signatures to put a referendum for repeal on the November ballot. The petitions would place a single up-or-down referendum on the ballot, not multiple issues addressing different parts of the law.
Any effort to split the referendum into multiple questions would be “an attempt to circumvent the will of the people,” said Melissa Fazekas, spokeswoman for the We Are Ohio Campaign, which is leading the repeal effort. She called for the ballot board to reject any effort to modify the referendum. June 30 is the deadline for petitions, which need 231,000 valid signatures to appear on the ballot.
Husted, a Republican, is chairman of the ballot board and his office was unaware of the proposal to divide the referendum on the November ballot, said his spokesman Matt McClellan. “We don’t believe the ballot board has the authority to divide up a referendum issue into multiple issues because we don’t feel that the law provides for it,” said McClellan.
The ballot board determines the exact wording of state-wide ballot issues. Ohio law does allow the ballot board to divide up citizen-proposed Constitutional amendments or citizen-proposed statutes, McClellan said.
The five-member ballot board is currently made up of three Republicans and two Democrats. It includes two local members, former state Sen. Fred Strahorn, a Dayton Democrat, and Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina. Neither could be reached for comment.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment |
TweetTaft pans Lake Erie bill
A bill to regulate water withdrawal from the Lake Erie basin would violate the Great Lakes Compact and invite litigation against Ohio by private groups and possibly other states, according to former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft.
Taft testified before the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday and urged lawmakers to take the time needed to rework the bill.
Taft, a board member of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, said several provisions of the bill would directly conflict with the compact, which is a multi-state agreement ratified by Ohio in 2008. The compact was negotiated during Taft’s tenure as governor when he served as chairman of the Council of Great Lakes Governors.
Taft said the bill does not address the cumulative impact of withdrawals on the basin.
“If you don’t deal with the cumulative impacts, you may assign the lake to a death by a thousand straws,” he said.
The compact requires states to adopt water management plans by 2013.
House Bill 231, sponsored by state Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, R-Napoleon, passed the House on Wednesday along party lines, 60-39, and the Senate began informal hearings on it Thursday.
Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Cliff Hite, R-Findlay, said the bill may get a floor vote next week.
The bill creates a permit for businesses that want to withdraw more than five million gallons a day from the lake, more than two million gallons a day from rivers and streams in the basin and more than 300,000 gallons a day from ‘high quality” streams within the basin.
Ohio withdraws about 3.5 billion gallons from Lake Erie each year, according to data from the Great Lakes Commission.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Tweet
