The proposed expansion of power came in a quiet amendment to an otherwise unrelated bill that was approved by the Senate Wednesday and sent back to the Ohio House for concurrence, which is expected next week.
If approved by the state’s lower chamber, House Bill 74 would require the attorney general to assess whether or not a statewide ballot initiative’s title is a fair and truthful reflection of the proposal before petitioners can begin gathering signatures.
Ohio’s attorney general is already tasked with assessing a petition’s summary to ensure that it accurately summarizes the proposed changes to the Ohio Constitution or law.
Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, told statehouse reporters Wednesday that the state’s most recent Issue 1 was an example of why the attorney general’s power needs to be expanded in this way.
The failed proposal looked to overhaul the state’s redistricting rules and was officially titled “an amendment to replace the current politician-run redistricting process with a citizen-led commission required to create fair state legislative and congressional districts through a more open and independent system.”
“It’s like a lot of things, why would you give it a bad title? If you want to sell a book, you want to give it a good title. If legislators want their bill passed, they’ll usually name it after somebody and talk about good things,” said Huffman, who was also a chief proponent of a 2023 effort by the legislature to require a 60% vote in order to amend the Ohio Constitution.
“The number of issues is not going to slow down as we go forward as long as Ohio’s a 50% + 1 state, and so making sure the title is reflective of what is actually in the issue is important,” Huffman said Wednesday.
Wednesday’s Senate vote broke along party lines, garnering dissent from all seven of the chamber’s Democratic members.
“I certainly don’t think we should be giving him that power,” Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, told reporters after the vote Wednesday.
“We’re talking about citizens amendments, right, (that) they’re bringing to the ballot because the legislature has not acted in a way that (citizens) agree with,” Antonio said. “I do not believe it’s appropriate, then, to have one of our state offices, the attorney general, be able to make some kind of arbitrary decision about what he thinks of the title.”
In late October, Yost was told by a unanimous Ohio Supreme Court that he could not reject statewide initiatives based on their titles and ordered him to reconsider his previous rejection of the “Ohio Voters Bill of Rights,” a decision he came to, he explained, due to finding the proposal’s title misleading.
“The fact that the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio concludes the relevant statute does not grant me authority to review the title does not change my determination that it is misleading,” Yost wrote when he reluctantly approved the petition on Nov. 8. “The Court did not reach a decision on the merits of that determination. I stand by it. I urge you to consider a more accurate and less misleading title.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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