Ohio Senate wraps up 2021 work by passing abortion, marijuana, gun bills: Capitol Letter

Rotunda Rumblings

Abortion bill: During what is likely the Ohio Senate’s last session day of the year, senators sent to Gov. Mike DeWine a bill that could shutter the last abortion clinics in Dayton and Cincinnati. Senate Bill 157 would also require doctors to provide life-saving interventions on babies who survive abortions, Laura Hancock reports.

Plant adaptations: The Senate sent to the House a bill that would expand medical marijuana to any patient whose symptoms are reasonably expected to be relieved by the drug, Hancock reports. Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman said that the bill originally legalizing medical marijuana was weak and Senate Bill 261 makes needed improvements.

Hidden agenda: The Senate passed legislation to no longer require a license to carry a concealed firearm in Ohio, nor mandate that drivers proactively notify law enforcement during traffic stops that they’re armed. As Jeremy Pelzer reports, the question now is whether Republican legislative leaders will decide to send Senate Bill 215 or a similar House-passed bill to DeWine.

Closing the door: The Senate also passed House Bill 126, slamming the door to school districts that want to initiate property value disputes at county boards of revisions. The bill also prohibits appeals of board of revision decisions and settlements with property owners, Hancock reports. School districts would be allowed to fight property owners who want to lower their values before boards of revision.

Hold your bets: Although Gov. Mike DeWine is on the brink of signing a bill legalizing sports betting, Ohioans likely won’t be able to wager on sports legally until well into 2022. As Andrew Tobias reports, staff at the Ohio Casino Control Commission at a Wednesday meeting laid out the bureaucratic process behind getting the new betting system up and running. The agency doesn’t expect to seek license applicants until summer or fall, and a parallel rule-making process could see approval of each set of new rules take five to six months. The legislation has a hard start date of Jan. 1, 2023.

Randazzo probe on ice: The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio on Wednesday said its investigations indicate that FirstEnergy Corp. broke state law by not disclosing its consulting agreements with ex-PUCO Chair Sam Randazzo. But as Pelzer reports, while the commission ordered auditors to investigate the issue, it immediately put the probe on hold for now because of ongoing federal and state lawsuits into the House Bill 6 scandal.

Wait ‘til next year: The release of a different PUCO audit into FirstEnergy’s use of customer charges, scheduled to take place Thursday, has now been postponed until mid-January because the company dragged its feet on providing information to auditors, according to commission staffers. As Pelzer writes, the staffers successfully asked for the delay after arguing that they wouldn’t have enough time to, among other things, allow FirstEnergy to review the draft audit to redact any trade secrets in the report.

With a little help from his friends: The House of Representatives voted Tuesday to move forward with prosecuting former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for contempt of Congress despite impassioned defense from his close friend, Champaign County GOP U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, Sabrina Eaton writes. Jordan protested that his colleagues were “destroying executive privilege” by refusing to respect Meadows’ invocation of the principle in declining to testify before a committee probing the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters attempting to stop Congress from tallying electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.

Mole man? An Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has fired its top leader, alleging that he spied on the group for years and passed confidential information to an anti-Muslim group,” writes John Caniglia. An investigation found that Romin Iqbal, the executive and legal director of the group’s Columbus-Cincinnati office, secretly recorded meetings and passed on confidential information about CAIR’s advocacy work to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a Washington, D.C.-based group.

Flying high: Cleveland Hopkins International Airport will get $11,276,768 in federal money over the next five years as part of the bipartisan infrastructure deal, the largest share of nearly $254 million that will help nearly 100 airports across the state, Eaton reports. The airport infrastructure grant money can be used toward projects to improve and replace runways, taxiways, airport-owned towers, terminal improvement and multimodal connections to the airport, said the office of Sen. Rob Portman, which announced the funding.

COVID test: Ohio got middle-of-the-road marks in Politico’s State Pandemic Scorecard. The Buckeye State was 31st in the nation in health, 23rd in economy, 23rd in social well-being, 19th in education, resulting in an average score that placed 31st among states.

Heating up: The Democratic primary to succeed state Rep. Brigid Kelly is getting even more contentious, as community organizer Dani Isaacsohn has unveiled endorsements from incoming Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and ex-Mayor Mark Mallory, among others. As Scott Wartman of the Cincinnati Enquirer notes, Kelly, a Cincinnati Democrat, is backing Oakley Community Council president and lobbyist Colleen Reynolds to succeed her; two others, Gavi Begtrup and Antonio Sanders, are also running in the House District 26 Democratic primary.

Vote Now For The 2021 Sloopys

Voting is now open for Round 2 of the Sloopys, Capitol Letter’s Ohio politics awards.

We received hundreds of nominations for 26 categories. Today, 10 categories are up for grabs:

• Best Use of Social Media
• Worst Use of Social Media
• Least Tech-Literate Politician
• Most Factually Challenged
• Biggest Troll
• Republican Rising Star
• Democratic Rising Star
• Hardest Working Lobbyist
• Most Effective Lobbyist
• Lobbyists’ Best Friend

Voters have until 6 a.m. Friday to submit their votes at this link. The winner will be announced in the Dec. 22 edition of Capitol Letter.

Check out our past winners from 2020, 2019 and 2018.

Birthdays

Michael Hall, Gov. Mike DeWine’s chief of staff

John Plecnik, 2018 Republican candidate for Ohio House District 61

Mordecai Bartley, Ohio’s 18th governor (1783-1870)

Straight From The Source

“We’re here on our last bill before our Christmas break — we can end on a high note.”

-State Sen. Steve Huffman, a Dayton-area Republican, leading into the debate about the medical marijuana bill, on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

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