Base pay this year for a member of the Ohio House and state Senate is $71,099 for what is legally a part time job, though many legislators are paid more because of salary supplements for chairing committees, etc.
What do the taxpayers get in exchange for this? Mostly, a lot of mouth, cleveland.com’s Jake Zuckerman found: “Last year [2023] marked the least productive year in terms of passing laws from the Ohio General Assembly since Dwight D. Eisenhower served in the White House, at least,” he reported. (Eisenhower was president from 1953 through 1960.) “The legislature, where Republicans have commanding supermajorities in both chambers, passed just 16 bills that were signed into law in 2023,” Zuckerman found.
That’s not to say that legislature hasn’t produced periodic sound-and-light shows, including such objectionable legislation as transsexual-bashing Substitute House Bill 68, a vile measure passed over Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto. That’s also not to ignore that the legislature passed a balance state budged for the two years the began July 1. (Price tag: $86 billion, or about $7,300 per Ohioan.)
True, there’s a case to be made that the less a legislature does, the safer are that state’s taxpayers, because, as a New York probate judge wrote after the Civil War: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”
The General Assembly has been treading water pending Tuesday’s primary. Notably stalled: Differing Senate and House versions of a huge state construction program to fund not only new state buildings and the like but also an array of “community projects” – the polite word for local museums, theaters, etc., that Ohio locales may want but say they can’t afford without state help. The political payoff for Anytown’s state legislators: Publicized ground-breakings and ribbon-cuttings held back home, in Ohio House or state Senate districts, where voters can see those events as evidence that their legislator can bring home the bacon from Columbus.
Also frozen, though in effect permanently: Repeal of the remaining parts of House Bill 6 of 2019, the scandal spattered bailout of money losing nuclear power plants that Akron-based FirstEnergy then owned. Still in place is part of HB 6 that subsidizes two money losing coal-burning power plants, one in Indiana, benefiting American Electric Power, AES (Dayton Power & Light) and Duke Energy. Total to date charged ratepayers: $245 million.
Holdups are stalling the exchange of legislation between the two chambers even though both the Senate and House are Republican ruled. As noted, part of the reason is watchful waiting – to see the results of Tuesday’s primary for nominations to legislative seats.
But the Senate-House stall is largely due to the clashing ambitions of House Speaker Jason Stephens, of Lawrence County’s Kitts Hill, who’d like to keep the House gavel for another two years, and a rival who’d like to capture it, Senate President Matt Huffman, of Lima. They’re both Republicans. (Huffman is term-limited out of the Senate in December and is seeking election to the House this November.)
On such vanities hinge the legislative business of the Union’s seventh-most populous state, with an economy slightly smaller than Switzerland’s, the Legislative Service Commission reports, and a legislature – recent Statehouse experience teaches – about as mature as a high school student council.
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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