And HB 6′s passage ultimately consigned former House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican from Perry County’s Glenford, to 20 years in federal prison, and former Republican State Chair Matthew Borges, of Bexley, to five years.
Yet as of mid-July, HB 6 had still squeezed more than $166 million from Ohio electricity customers to bail out two coal-fueled power plants, one in Indiana. Those subsidies were logrolled into HB 6 to benefit a group of electric utilities, notably including Columbus-based American Electric Power Co., that owns the two power plants.
Maybe someone could ask the General Assembly’s Republican leaders — when they take a break from pumping tax money into non-public schools, or bashing transsexual Ohioans — how a bill that helped send Larry Householder to prison still remains sufficiently legitimate to squeeze electricity consumers.
Fair answer: It’s because of the General Assembly’s heads-we-win, tails-you-lose, attitude toward legislation.
Now pending in the General Assembly is House Bill 120 sponsored by Democratic Reps. Casey Weinstein, of Hudson, and Sean Brennan, of Parma, to end and refund the extra charges HB 6 forced Ohio electricity consumers to pay. House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Kitts Hill Republican, has stalled action on the Weinstein-Brennan repeal. Consequence: Larry Householder and Matt Borges are in prison because of legislation that’s partially still in effect, thanks to the General Assembly.
The next Statehouse donnybrook could erupt after Labor Day. That’s when the Ohio Redistricting Commission may begin the redraw state Senate and Ohio House of Representatives districts for use in 2024′s General Assembly elections.
The (current) boundaries used to elect the General Assembly were, by federal court order, to be used only in 2022. (The 2-1 court order was imposed by a three-judge panel composed of two appointees by President Trump and one appointee of President Clinton.)
Republicans now control the Redistricting Commission. It’ll be up to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine when to call its next meeting. The district maps used in 2022′s elections produced a General Assembly with 67 House Republicans to 32 Democrats, and a Senate with 26 Senate Republicans to seven Democrats. That gave the GOP veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly
If the past is prologue, amid a blizzard of lawsuits in state and federal courts, a pro-Republican map will emerge for use in 2024′s Ohio primary and general elections for General Assembly seats. One factor that could change the battlefield, however, is a possible voter-initiated constitutional amendment that would, if ratified, assign the task of reapportionment and congressional redistricting to an independent body like those used in some other states.
Ohio’s current (legislative) reapportionment and (congressional) redistricting mechanisms, adopted by voters as constitutional amendments in 2015 and 2018 respectively, are ineffectual. Besides GOP supermajorities in the legislature, the amendments have produced an Ohio delegation in the U.S. House composed of ten Republicans and five Democrats.
Unless voters get a fair chance to redesign those procedures, those current laws will continue to skew legislative and congressional politicking in a state that needs less of both.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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