As Ohio lawmakers consider a proposal that would make it harder to pass constitutional amendments at the ballot box by requiring the issue get a 60% vote, one former legislator thinks there’s another option that should be considered.
Republican lawmakers sponsoring the proposal said they want to make sure special interests are not injected into Ohio’s constitution.
Former House Representative Mike Curtin, a former Democratic state representative and former Columbus Dispatch newspaper editor, said he is not a big fan of putting things in the constitution that would be better suited in Ohio law instead. He said majority Republicans sponsoring this bill are going about it the wrong way.
“It’s a monumental abuse of power for the supermajority that controls the legislature in lame-duck session to rush something to the May primary ballot in an odd-numbered year, without full public participation and full public debate," Curtin said.
Curtin said the resolution being considered now is an example of "monumental bad faith and abuse of power."
If this bill passes now, voters could be asked to approve the change in the process could appear on the May 2023 ballot, which Curtin said is unusual.
"We have not had a General Assembly sponsor proposed amendments to our constitution on a primary ballot in an odd-numbered year for 50 years, a half-century. The last time we had that was May of 1973 when Ohioans were asked to approve the Ohio Lottery," Curtin said.
Curtin said there is no way this proposal should happen during lame duck — the time between elections and the end of a General Assembly. He said if lawmakers want to raise the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment, they should take steps to make it easier for groups to put policy into state law, through the initiated statute process.
Right now, he said it’s just as hard to do an initiated statute and if it passes, there’s nothing to protect the General Assembly from immediately changing it.
Curtin was a member of the former Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission. That panel looked at this issue as part of its deliberations but did not come up with a formal policy amendment to address it.
