Innovation Ohio

What you need to know about Ohio Statehouse Policy

The Work Continues — Statement from Desiree Tims

Today kicks off the start of Women’s History Month. This month is dedicated to commemorating and celebrating the role women have played in shaping American history.

From activists calling for bold action, to artists and athletes influencing culture, to elected officials advancing pro-women policy, women have long been at the forefront of movements for social change. But this recognition of the women who have paved the way in history must extend beyond the month of March.

At Innovation Ohio, we recognize the unprecedented moment we are in right now to advance real, systemic change for the lives of women. Here’s a look at some of the work Innovation Ohio and our program, the Women’s Public Policy Network, have been leading in the fight for gender equity:

The women throughout our country’s history have brought us to where we are today, but it will be on all of us to continue to move the needle forward for change. We hope you will join us in this fight!

Chip in to support our work

In Solidarity,

Desiree Tims
Innovation Ohio CEO

Wrapping Up Lame Duck

Our hopes of seeing the last of the 133rd General Assembly last week were unrealized. A few pieces of unfinished business remain.

Last week, the Ohio House added a “Stand Your Ground” gun amendment to another bill (SB175), and with the agreement of the Ohio Senate on a party-line basis, the bill now goes to Governor DeWine for his signature. The House also sent DeWine a bill (SB27) to require burial or cremation of aborted fetal remains.

DeWine has 10 days, not including Sundays and holidays from the day he receives a bill to veto or sign, or it becomes law.

In unfinished business, a Senate committee last week added a measure (SB317) to allow school districts to arm staff to a bill (HB425) that eliminates the requirement that a concealed carry license-holder notify a law enforcement officer that they are carrying a weapon. The bill, opposed by law enforcement and education groups, has not been reported out of the committee, so its backers may be out of time, but with sessions scheduled for tomorrow, anything can happen.

Another piece of unfinished business is what to do about HB6 — energy legislation passed as part of a $61 million bribery scandal, that eliminated Ohio’s renewable energy standards and subsidizes failing coal and nuclear power plants at ratepayer expense. One option (HB798) would delay the implementation of the law for a year, while another (HB772) would only eliminate portions of the law. House and Senate leaders had planned to spend the weekend negotiating and, if they reach a deal, the language could make its way into either HB264, a water infrastructure bill currently pending in a conference committee (meeting time at the call of the chair, Rep. Wilkin) or HB104, a nuclear power bill pending in the Senate Energy Committee, which is scheduled to meet tomorrow morning at 10 am.

Either bill could be on the House or Senate floor Tuesday. To stay up to date, watch session live streams on ohiochannel.org.

We were wrong last week, but really really hope this is the last update we send in 2020. See everyone in 2021!

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As Always, Guns and Abortion Rule Lame Duck

Still operating without a mask requirement with COVID-19 spreading through the committee rooms and offices, the Ohio House and Senate will meet again this week to finish up the Lame Duck session.

Among the bills on the agenda this week is Senate Bill 260, prohibiting doctors from dispensing of any “abortion-inducing medication” via telemedicine, putting legal abortion further out of reach for Ohioans in many rural and underserved communities. The vote on SB260 comes after lawmakers last week sent Senate Bill 27 to the Governor for his signature. SB27 would mandate the burial or cremation of fetal remains resulting from abortion services–but not miscarriage.

Given all the movement in the past several weeks of proposals to loosen Ohio gun laws, including proposals to eliminate the Duty to Retreat in armed conflicts (also know as “Stand Your Ground”), we’re watching to see what happens with Senate Bill 360, the only gun-related measure on the agenda this week. SB360 would exempt gun stores from mandatory closure in a health emergency, but the bill could get loaded up with amendments as lawmakers run out of time to move legislation separately.

Legislation to reduce penalties for drug possession (Senate Bill 3) is likely to pass, and a bill (Senate Bill 310) originally allocating federal COVID-19 relief is being repurposed as a vehicle to pass a state capital budget quickly. SB310 may also see amendments related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

We hope this is the last statehouse update we send this year!  Look for us in early 2021 when focus turns to the state budgeting process and a brand new legislative term.

Unfinished Business: Important Bipartisan Reforms Await Legislature’s Return

Several bipartisan proposals — among them gun safety reforms, a fix to Ohio’s out of control private school voucher program and modernization of our voting systems, just to name a few — still await action in the legislature 20 months into the General Assembly’s current two-year term.

The Ohio Senate this week announced that it is canceling its scheduled Session next week, joining the Ohio House in having no plans to return to Columbus in August. Both chambers have tentative plans to conduct business in mid-September, which may represent the last best opportunity for important legislation to be enacted before the election and the end of the legislative term.

Several bipartisan proposals — among them gun safety reforms, a fix to Ohio’s out of control private school voucher program and modernization of our voting systems, just to name a few — still await action in the legislature 20 months into the General Assembly’s current two-year term.

Without action by the end of this year, all progress on these and many other important proposals will be lost, and bills must be reintroduced in January 2021 with the process starting over at the beginning. 

Bipartisan proposals still awaiting action in the legislature:

  • The Ohio Fairness Act, to prohibit discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation
  • Ending Ohio’s out-of-control and unsustainable private school voucher program
  • Reform of Ohio’s property wealth-based formula for funding schools
  • Bipartisan gun safety reforms like a red flag law and safe storage requirements
  • Nuclear bailout repeal and restoration of renewable energy and efficiency standards
  • Ending the failed experiment with Academic Distress commissions 
  • Modernizing Ohio’s election system including online ballot requests and automatic voter registration
  • Drug sentencing reform
  • Aisha’s Law

Other pending proposals that haven’t had the attention they deserve:

  • Increasing the minimum wage
  • Creating a paid family and medical leave system
  • Ending the spousal rape loophole
  • Policing reforms

As voters head to the polls, it’s important to press lawmakers for a commitment to return to Columbus to do the people’s work on these and other important proposals.

With an eye toward the November elections, beginning next week we’ll be back with a scorecard evaluating how lawmakers have performed on important votes taken so far in the 133rd General Assembly.

New Legislation This Week 

Below are some of the new bills introduced in the last several weeks since we last sent an update. You can also view the complete list of bills we’re tracking.

  • House Bill 742 (Crossman, Brent) – John Lewis Voter Registration Day – to designate February 21 as “John Lewis Voter Registration Day” and to require the boards of elections to promote that day to encourage voter registration.
  • House Bill 744 (Leland, Brent) – Rental Assistance – to enact the Eviction Crisis Response Act to create the COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program, to make an appropriation, and to declare an emergency. 
  • House Bill 746 (Lanese, Greenspan) – HB6 Energy Repeal – to repeal the changes made by H.B. 6 of the 133rd General Assembly to the laws governing electric service, renewable energy, and energy efficiency and the changes made to other related laws.
  • Senate Bill 348 (Schaffer, Roegner) – Health Orders – to prohibit local boards of health from using certain threatening words in notifications to the public, to allow local boards of health to reject Department of Health orders during an emergency, to allow health care professionals who serve on a board of health to receive continuing education credit, and to change the makeup of local boards of health.
  • Senate Bill 349 (Fedor) – Campaign Finance – to modify the campaign finance law, to name this act the Ohio Anti-Corruption Act, and to amend the versions of sections 3517.10, 3517.105, and 3517.106 of the Revised Code that are scheduled to take effect January 1, 2021, to continue the provisions of this act on and after that effective date.
  • Senate Concurrent Resolution 17 (Fedor) – Campaign Finance – to urge Congress to pass legislation requiring corporations and labor organizations that make political expenditures to disclose the identities of their donors.

Women Have Outsized Stake in Census and Play Key Role in Ensuring a Complete Count

This blog post from the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network originally appeared on the Ohio Census Advocacy Coalition‘s website.

Every ten years, the United States Census Bureau conducts a count of the entire U.S. population, known as the census.

The census determines a lot of important information, including government representation and the allocation of critical federal funding for programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance. Getting a complete and accurate count is important, especially for women and their families who have a lot at stake in the census – and women will play a key role in ensuring this happens.

Not only are women one of the biggest groups impacted by the census, but they play a crucial role in ensuring that an accurate count happens at all.

One of the most fundamental outcomes of the census is the determination it plays in the allocation of federal funding to the states. In Ohio, there are more than $33 billion dollars in funding for public programs on the line, and many of those programs provide crucial support women and their families need to live healthy and economically secure lives.

For many women, the funding that could be forfeited due to an incomplete census count would jeopardize their family’s health, safety, and financial stability: The mother who relies on federal aid to receive quality child care, allowing her to continue to work and provide for her family. The young woman who receives STI testing and prevention through access to Medicaid. The woman who has turned to Ohio’s network of domestic violence shelters for protection and the help she needs to get her family on their feet.

Because women often serve as family caregivers, the stakes are even higher.

$675 billion for social programs and services like SNAP and Medicaid, relies on your participation in the 2020 Census
Find more resources for census outreach

There is probably no greater example of the weight of the census for women than Medicaid dollars. Women comprise the majority of the adult Medicaid population – before the passage of the Affordable Care Act and today. Medicaid is a crucial resource for women to access the healthcare they need, and it impacts women’s ability to remain healthy and join or stay in the workforce. Whether it’s pregnancy care, postpartum care, Pap tests, timely blood pressure checks, or other preventative services, women have a lot on the line when it comes to Medicaid funding.

Because women often serve as family caregivers, the stakes are even higher. Two in five female-headed families with children are living in poverty – that’s nearly 90 percent higher than that of male-headed families with children. These mothers and their children rely on full funding for programs like SNAP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Head Start, and even housing vouchers.

Not only are women one of the biggest groups impacted by the census, but they play a crucial role in ensuring that an accurate count happens at all. Census research indicates that one person often takes the lead in filling out the Census for the whole family. Women, who are increasingly the main caregiver or head of household, are more likely to take the lead in their families. As the 2020 Census approaches, it’s important to recognize the key role Ohio women play and the outsized impact an incomplete count will have on their livelihood and their families.

Statehouse Preview: Senate Set To Pass Another Abortion Ban

This week, House committees will not meet while most of the state’s 99 State Representatives hit the campaign trail in advance of the March 17 primary election. The Senate is still in action, with committee hearings and a Wednesday session scheduled. 

Senators are expected to vote on Senate Bill 260, a proposal approved in the Health Committee last week that would prohibit doctors from conducting consultations online (telemedicine) with patients seeking medication-assisted abortions.

The move would target patients in rural areas, for whom healthcare requires extensive travel to urbanized areas, further reducing healthcare options when they are most needed.

Call your Senator this week and tell them to vote against Senate Bill 260 when it comes to the floor on Wednesday.

New Legislation

There was one bill introduced last week that we’ll be keeping an eye on in the coming months:

Senate Bill 288 (Gavarone) – Religious Expression – regarding student religious expression in interscholastic athletics and extracurricular activities

In Session this week

  • House: no sessions scheduled
  • Senate: Wednesday at 1:30 pm – watch online

>> You can monitor the status of all the bills we are watching here.

How the Latest State Budget Impacts Ohio’s Women and Working Families

Read the full analysis of the Ohio budget through a gender lens on the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network’s website.

Ohio’s new two-year state operating budget brought numerous improvements for the livelihood of women, but that’s not to say there weren’t plenty of drawbacks and lack of action on key issues as well.

Progress was made to improve the quality of childcare in Ohio. But there’s more work to be done.

The new state budget allocates $198 million to improve the quality of Ohio’s publicly funded childcare system. This increase in funding will allow improvements in ensuring that workers within the childcare sector are paid fair wages, and will also help to facilitate professional development and facility improvements. 

Where the budget falls short is allocating resources to increase the access and affordability of childcare. By increasing the accessibility of childcare, children would enter school well prepared, and parents would have the opportunity to participate in the workforce.  While the DeWine Administration stated that increasing eligibility for childcare was a policy priority, ultimately no funds were allocated to support this endeavor. 

After attempts to restrict access to Medicaid via the inclusion of the “Healthy Ohio” Program in the budget, Medicaid services were ultimately left unharmed.

The provision of the so-called Healthy Ohio Program would have required premiums to access Medicaid, which would have had crucial implications on women, who comprise more than half of Ohio’s Medicaid population. Medicaid has long been a lifeline for women, and the legislature’s decision to ultimately remove the “Healthy Ohio” language was crucial to protect access to the program.

Progress was made towards addressing wage theft, an issue that faces many working-class Ohioans, particularly women and people of color working in low-wage jobs.

When workers are paid less than they were contractually promised, it is known as wage theft. Whether it be through violation of minimum-wage laws, not getting paid overtime, or forcing an employee to work off-the-clock, Ohio clocks in with the second-highest amount of wage theft among the ten largest states. Additional funding was allocated to the Ohio Bureau of Wage and Hour to help address this issue.

The state budget also codified some policies that we expect to negatively impact Ohio women and working-class families. 

By continuing to support a business tax cut known by many public service advocates as the  “L.L.C. loophole,” Ohio loses out on about $528 million per year or $1.1 billion for the duration of every state operating budget where it remains intact.

There is little evidence to suggest that this tax break for L.L.C.s has created any significant number of new jobs in the state. Ohio is missing out on billions of dollars of revenue that could have been allocated towards programs to address our school funding crisis, increase childcare assistance eligibility, or invest in a refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (which we’ll discuss in just a moment), to name only a few ways this money could be better spent. 

There were also some issues facing Ohio women and their families that the state budget failed to address, entirely. 

Ohio’s Earned Income Tax Credit remains non-refundable.

One of these crucial areas of inaction was the budget’s failure to make Ohio’s Earned Income Tax Credit (E.I.T.C.) refundable, a policy that would have given a major economic boost to low-income families across the state.


Nationally, the E.I.T.C has been crucial in lifting working families out of poverty. However, it is not without its limitations here in the state. The greatest shortfall of Ohio’s state E.I.T.C. is that it is non-refundable. If this gap in anti-poverty policy had been addressed, the state budget would have been able to put money back into the hands of working families. 

Despite the 2020 Census being right around the corner, the bill allocated no funding towards planning or conducting a complete census count in the Buckeye state. 

About $33 billion dollars in federal funding rests upon the outcomes of the U.S. Census, which determines how those federal dollars are dispersed, state-by-state. Without a correct and complete count, the well-being of women and historically undercounted communities, populations which rely heavily on these federal grant dollars, are undermined.

No efforts were made to create a framework for statewide paid family leave. 

Paid family and medical leave policies allow workers to address the needs of their families or their own health without risking their financial health. Currently, only 17% of American workers have access to paid leave through an employer, but lawmakers made no effort through the state budget to increase those statistics here in Ohio… To learn more about the push to bring paid family leave in Ohio, check out the Women’s Public Policy Network’s Paid Leave Advocacy page on their website. 

 

Read the full analysis of the Ohio budget on the Ohio Women’s Public Policy Network’s website.

Ohio lawmakers should update state’s antiquated laws against sexual abuse

A report released by The Ohio State University which found that a former school doctor had sexually abused more than 177 male student-athletes has added pressure on state lawmakers to reform Ohio’s laws against sexual abuse.

Since news broke of the late doctor’s widespread abuse, high-profile Republican leaders in Ohio, including Governor DeWine and Attorney General Yost, have voiced support to end the statute of limitations on rape. It’s about time!

Ohio currently has one of the nation’s strictest statute of limitations for sex crimes, which requires a survivor or victim to file charges against their abuser within 25 years of the crime. However, DNA evidence can be preserved for many decades with today’s forensic technology, meaning that the “validity of evidence” should no longer force a limit on the amount of time a victim or survivor has to seek justice. Applying a statute of limitations to these crimes also disregards the countless personal reasons that survivors of sexual assault may wait to press charges against their perpetrators.

We applaud the Republican leaders who are now calling for eliminating the statute of limitations on rape, but can’t help but wonder: why now?

Democratic lawmakers have been pushing bills to end the statute of limitations on rape for years, with very little support from their colleagues across the aisle. Amid that process, the voices and stories of many women who are victims or survivors of sexual abuse have been ignored, criticized, or questioned. Women are often asked why they didn’t choose to share their stories earlier, and the validity of their accusations is often called into question. In contrast, when men wait to share their story (which every survivor is 100% entitled to do), it does not dampen the urgency for action from political leaders. Enough is enough.

Both men and women deserve to have their stories believed by the public, regardless of how long they wait to come forward or seek justice.

There are currently bills pending in the Ohio Legislature that would achieve the goal of eliminating the statute of limitations on rape in Ohio, while also modernizing another section of the state code for cases of rape. House Bill 279, legislation introduced by Representatives Boggs (D-18) and Galonski (D-35) with bipartisan support, aims to end the statute of limitations on rape and close the marital rape loophole. Senators Nickie J. Antonio (D-23) and Sean O’Brien (D-32) recently introduced a bipartisan companion bill in the Ohio Senate that would accomplish the same ends. Senate Bill 162 currently has two Republican cosponsors.

Because of the outdated way that current Ohio law classifies rape and sexual assault differently for married couples, there are still certain circumstances, if there is no proof that there was “force or threat of force,” where there are no legal options to prosecute the crime if a couple is married or living together. Ohio’s “marital exemption” for rape is rooted in victim blaming culture and only reinforces the misguided and out-of-touch belief that married women are the property of their husbands.

If Republican leaders are serious about protecting victims and survivors of sexual abuse and rape in Ohio, they should focus their efforts on passing House Bill 279 or Senate Bill 162. It is about time political leaders listen to the stories of all victims and fix our state’s antiquated laws against sexual abuse and rape.

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