10 Things That Happened At The Statehouse

January 9, 2017 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS

Lawmakers are back in town, and their 2017 agenda includes issues as diverse as tax reform and violence in dating.

During a shortened first work week of the new year, Gov. John Kasich had his first news conference of 2017, and more than two dozen bills were signed into law. Here are 10 things that happened over the first four days of the 132nd General Assembly:

1It was mostly ceremony and agreement, with unanimous adoption of resolutions setting up the Legislature and its employees.

“We’ve got a lot of new members, a lot of new ideas, a lot of energetic people ready to work,” House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, a Republican from Clarksville, told reporters. “And I’m excited to see what the new year brings and the new term brings.”

1“We’ve got nine income-tax brackets,” he told reporters. “And a lot of other states have one or two or three. That’s something I think a lot of people consistently look at. So even though our overall rate in Ohio has gone down, the complexity, the needless layers of it, hasn’t really changed, and I think that’s a problem.”

Also on the list: eliminating red tape and burdensome regulations “that get in the way of small business and hurt the economy,” Obhof said. “What I’d like to see us do is have everybody pick a law that’s not working the way that it was supposed to or not working how it was intended or is overly cumbersome or a regulation that’s getting in the way of the economy, and let’s start repealing laws, cutting their scope or cutting their length or their complexity ...”

111Among other provisions, that bill would have allowed courts to issue protection orders against perpetrators of dating violence and provide greater access to domestic violence shelters for victims.

111Up to eight members of the House and Senate will be picked to attend the event Jan. 20 in Washington, D.C.

Rep. Kathleen Clyde, a Democrat from Kent, was one of the “no” votes on the resolution.

“Each day brings more disturbing news than the last from our president-elect,” she said in a released statement. Her “no” vote “was a protest vote against a man who admits to committing sexual assault, defrauding working people and continuing his many conflicts of interest.”

1Rosenberger said his members still support the bill.

“We’ll have a conversation with the caucus, but I assume that the majority of the members will probably want to see that bill move again,” he said. “And so we’ll probably have that bill come up for conversation ....”

But Kasich told reporters that he isn’t supportive, noting the bill had no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.

“You cannot not have those exceptions,” he said.

He added, “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve had a state that we’ve been pro-life, and I’m pretty satisfied with where we are at this point.”

1Obhof said supporters of the bill wanted a longer-term, consistent and stable energy plan for the state — “Whether you’re in a traditional energy sector or an emerging one, we want you to be able to invest in Ohio and know that the law isn’t going to change radically every two years or every four years.”

That said, the Republican leaders of the Ohio House and Senate said lawmakers would continue to work on related legislation.

“There’s not a lot of support in the Legislature for the mandates as they exist right now,” Obhof said. “That doesn’t mean that we can’t try to find some middle ground approach that is good for everybody. What that ultimately looks like, we’ll decide over the next couple of months.”

Rosenberger added, “I think there will be a longer conversation about our entire energy climate here in the state of Ohio that regards not only renewable energy but other areas. We’re going to be open and eager for those conversations and working with the Senate and the administration going forward on what that might look like.”

1He’s already made it clear that spending will be tight.

“We’re not going to have a big net tax cut,” he said, adding later, “We will have some tax reform in there ...”

Obhof told reporters he expected a “challenging budget — probably not as challenging as we had in 2011 but the most challenging one we’ve had since then ... Revenues have come in for several months below expectations ... We will tighten our belts if we need to. We plan to govern conservatively, and we would have done that whether things were slowing down fiscally or not. I would expect not to see a lot of growth in the size and scope of government over the next two years.”

Obhof said there remains a desire to cut income taxes, but, “if things are tight already, that might restrain our ability to do that.”

Rosenberger added, “Tax shifting is something I’m not interested in. ... Clearly if we can find avenues so we can give more money back to the citizens through tax cuts, I’d like to find that avenue and make it happen.”