Payday lending issue certified

By Marc Kovac

COLUMBUS — With less than two weeks before the general election, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office has certified the last of five ballot issues, a hotly debated payday lending referendum seeking to overturn portions of a new law OK’d by lawmakers earlier this year.

Kevin Kidder, a spokesman for Jennifer Brunner, said the official certification letter was sent late Thursday afternoon, with a total of 279,174 signatures deemed valid. Ohioans for Financial Freedom, the group behind Issue 5, needed 241,366 verifiable signatures to place the referendum before voters.

The secretary of state’s announcement came more than three weeks after the petitioners, also known as the Committee to Reject House Bill 545, turned in an additional 200,000-plus signatures after an earlier submission of about 400,000 proved insufficient.

House Bill 545 was signed by the governor in June. Among other provisions, it caps the interest rates charged on payday loans at 28 percent (compared to nearly 400 percent now) and prohibits lenders from adding additional fees, interest or costs.