The top leader in the Ohio Senate says he wants to hit the “reset” button on policymaking. The Republican lawmaker is using a new study to show that Ohio is leading most other states in regulatory restrictions.
Ohio has nearly 250,000 regulatory restrictions in its code, according to research from George Mason University. The study’s authors say this holds back economic growth for industries like manufacturing and health care.
Republican Senate president Larry Obhof says he wants to take a broad look at Ohio’s code to see what they can do to scale back these regulations. He adds that a mindset change is needed for people in the legislature and state agencies.
“Who start the day looking for problems to solve and trying to solve those, and what I’d like to see is a reset where they start the day and some significant number of them are saying can I find a burden that we don’t need that we can get rid of,” said Obhof.
Obhof added that there is such a thing as good regulation when it protects the public’s health and safety.
According to the study, Ohio’s lottery commission, environmental protection agency, and fire marshal have the most restrictions.
One area Republicans highlighted as a place to scale back restrictions is in occupational licensing. According to state Sen. Rob McColley, Ohio has more than 250 occupational licenses. He’s sponsoring a bill that would review licensing boards in order to renew the board or let it expire.
