The legislature designated March “Ohio Maple Syrup Products Month,” the Portage Lakes area as the “Purple Martin Capital of Ohio,” and Feb. 21 “Rascal Flatts Day.” Another act designates June as “Ohio Community Theatre Month in Ohio,” and creates a new Ohio position: “Ohio Poet Laureate.”
These types of bills are not a boon to Ohio legislative history, according to Tom Suddes, a journalism professor at Ohio University. The Ohio Revised Code in fact contains an entire chapter dedicated to special designations, such as the official state seal and state fruit.
“There are all kinds of reasons the legislature passes these type of bills. Primarily, I think it’s because they are inherently non-controversial, so they’re not difficult to get passed and there isn’t a lot of risk in passing them,” Suddes said. “Second, there isn’t a lot of opposition in the legislature, and third, it’s soft publicity. If a legislator can get his or her name out there about something noncontroversial, or even pleasant and heartwarming, that’s a good thing for them.”
Ohio’s Legislative Service Commission reports, unsurprisingly, that the bills will have no effect on government expenditures or revenues.
State Rep. Ross McGregor, R-Springfield, who is at the close of a 10-year term in the Ohio House, said he was never impressed by the yearly passage of such laws.
“I think the vast majority of them are pretty stupid. But some other legislators cares deeply about the purple martin capital of Ohio so they introduce a law about it,” McGregor said. “We get to the end of the session and their bill hasn’t passed, so they beg and plead and usually it gets put into another bill.”
It’s not uncommon to see bridges and highways named at the end of a session, typically in an omnibus bill that gives memorial names to locations throughout the state, McGregor said.
“The other stuff, like Maple Syrup Month, I’ve never been too impressed with. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s just is and it’s going to be that way,” he said.
Matt Smith, a professor of communication at Wittenberg University, said that even though the bills seem trivial on their surface, they still serve an important purpose.
“All acts of communication are important. When we say something, we ascribe value to it,” he said. “The legislature is validating it. They’re saying it’s important to have a conversation about birds, or candy, or whatever else, but more importantly about the deeper values those things reflect, like nature, the economy, and art.”
Other designations made this year included September as “School Bullying Prevention Awareness Month” and “Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month,” as well as the last day of February as “Rare Disease Day” in Ohio.
Smith said the bills are superficial acts that hold a deeper societal meaning.
“I’m not sure how many Purple Martins are out there waiting to be recognized, but when we come together as a society and say we recognize nature, we acknowledge birds and wildflowers, it says something about who we are as people,” he said. “Just that we are willing to make that statement.”
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