It’s time to reform how to alter Ohio Constitution

Columbus Dispatch: State legislative leaders want to make it more difficult for Ohioans to adopt constitutional amendments via the petition process, a right citizens have enjoyed since 1912. Ohioans should be wary of this idea, unless it’s paired with making it easier to initiate laws by petition.

Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof and House Speaker Ryan Smith have announced a shared desire to increase the percentage of the vote required for adopting initiated amendments, perhaps to 60 percent, from the current and historic simple majority.

Among the 18 states that allow the constitutional initiative, only one — Florida — requires a 60 percent vote for adoption. However, Florida requires the same supermajority vote for amendments advanced by its legislature.

The Republican leaders outlined their wish on Nov. 7, the day after Ohioans trounced Issue 1 by 63 to 37 percent. An initiated constitutional amendment proposal, Issue 1 would have reduced sentences for many drug crimes and diverted resulting prison savings to drug treatment. It was financed mostly by out-of-state interests.

“I absolutely do not believe that issues like that should be dealt with in the Ohio Constitution,” Obhof said. “I think the Ohio Constitution has been used and abused for decades.”

The Dispatch agrees the Ohio Constitution, one of the longer state constitutions in the nation, is cluttered with many statutory-like provisions and that reform is needed.

HANDLE WITH CARE

However, the Ohio General Assembly should approach reform with care. The initiated constitutional amendment is a 116-year-old right. Any effort at substantive change should be bipartisan and deliberate. A rush job would be an act of bad faith.

Over the decades, Ohioans have used this right to adopt reforms being ignored by state lawmakers. In 1933, Depression-weary citizens used the mechanism to impose a 10-mill limit on unvoted property taxes. In 1949, citizens took to the initiated constitutional amendment to eliminate straight-ticket voting, requiring a separate vote for each office.

In the modern era, citizens voted to amend the constitution in 1992 to establish term limits on all statewide executive officeholders and state legislators. In the past five years, it took a voter-initiated campaign to finally force lawmakers to get serious about the problem of gerrymandering and deliver amendments on reapportionment and redistricting reform.

The General Assembly also bears some blame for the constitutional clutter its leaders now lament by occasionally promoting amendments for political convenience.

For example, in 2009 a Republican-controlled General Assembly caved to pressure from the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and placed a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot “to create the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board to establish and implement standards of care for livestock and poultry.”

If ever there were an issue not worthy of constitutional hosannas, it would be livestock care standards. It was a genuflection to the farm lobby.

Obhof and Smith are being encouraged to limit the constitutional amendment process by corporate executives weary of being asked to finance campaigns to oppose perceived business-unfriendly initiatives.

But the solution should not be a one-sided effort to make it more difficult for Ohioans to utilize their long-held constitutional right. It’s already a difficult exercise. Since 1913, only one-fourth of initiated constitutional amendments have been approved by the voters.

And because of the modern-day record turnout for a midterm election on Nov. 7, the signature-gathering requirement to qualify a constitutional amendment initiative for the ballot just jumped by 41 percent — to 431,809 from 305,591 (a number equal to 10 percent of the votes cast in the most recent election for governor).