The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

No end in sight for Statehouse bill gridlock

Since Jan. 1, only 10 bills, 6 of them required for state operation, have become law.

New pool at 'The Heights' opens
5/27/12
Huber Heights suing consultant for more than $50,000
5/26/12
4 arrested for OVI at Kettering checkpoint
5/26/12
Man found dead at bar; police seek suspect
5/26/12
Turner adopts role for Romney campaign
5/26/12
> More headlines

By William Hershey, Staff Writer Updated 11:35 PM Saturday, December 12, 2009

COLUMBUS — It should come as no surprise that Gov. Ted Strickland and state legislators can’t agree in the current controversy raging over how to fill an $851 million budget hole.

On the table are tax issues in which Democrats and Republicans rarely find common ground.

They haven’t agreed on much else this year either.

Since Jan. 1, just 10 bills have gotten through the Legislature and been signed into law by Strickland. Six were budgets that more or less had to be passed to keep state government going.

The output is by far the lowest total for a governor during the first year of a legislative session, dating back to 2003.

Gridlock is alive and slowing things down at the Statehouse.

It’s partly a result of divided government with a Democratic governor, Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate.

But there are other issues in play. Strickland faces what looks to be a tough re-election fight in 2010, and Republicans aren’t eager to give the governor a legislative victory so close to next year’s campaign.

The standoff is clearly evident in the budget debate. Strickland and the House want to fill the hole by postponing state income tax cuts for two years. Senate Republicans will provide some votes for the freeze, but only if it includes construction reform and other proposals.

“I think it comes down to politics,” said Catherine Turcer, director of the Money in Politics Project for Ohio Citizen Action.

Turcer released a study in October showing that lawmakers from Jan. 1 until then had held 243 fundraisers, canceling just three. Meanwhile, during that same time period 40 of 92 legislative sessions were canceled.

Strickland signed just nine bills into law by then, and signed one more since, creating the War of 1812 Commission.

Turcer isn’t an innocent bystander in the stalemate. She’s also an advocate who’s been working for more than a decade to change how Ohio draws state legislative and congressional districts to replace the current gerrymander-friendly process that usually favors one party or the other.

This year, the Senate passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, to put a proposed constitutional amendment on the May 2010 ballot to create a bipartisan commission to draw both sets of districts.

The House hasn’t voted on the Senate resolution nor come up with its own, although House Speaker Armond Budish, D-Beachwood, said last week that Democrats are working on one.

“It makes me feel like Don Quixote,” said Turcer. “Once you get the attention of one political party, you lose the attention of the other.”

Turcer is not the only one who’s frustrated. Bill Faith, executive director of the Coalition for Homeless and Housing in Ohio has been working on ways to help the thousands of Ohioans facing foreclosures.

The House passed a bill in May creating a six-month foreclosure moratorium and providing other relief.

The Senate hasn’t even held a hearing on the bill, though Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Carey, R-Wellston, said one is coming.

“Divided government is something nobody is used to,” said Faith.

Will much get done with 2010 elections approaching?

With the 2010 elections looming, disagreements are all but guaranteed to continue.

Last week, the House passed bills requiring health insurers to provide coverage for diabetes and prohibiting insurers from excluding coverage for autism. Both pieces of legislation are likely to die in the Senate where President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, has “concerns about insurance mandates for small businesses,” said Maggie Ostrowski, Harris’ spokeswoman.

In an e-mail, Harris said, “The Legislature should not consider volume of passed bills as its highest indicator of success. The chambers are also meant to be checks on one another. That’s not a bad thing. It’s the process.”

House Speaker Budish said the count of bills signed by the governor is misleading. The state operating budget included a number of initiatives on economic development and expanding health care that could have been passed as separate bills, he said.

But if it’s not gridlock, it sure looks like it, and there is a political price if it continues, said political scientist John Green.

All things being equal, the public tends to blame the executive — a governor or president — because he’s expected to lead, said Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

“But all things are rarely equal, and the public often has a negative view of the complex legislative process,” he said. “It is common for the public to blame everyone for gridlock.”

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.

Share this article