Bills, bills, bills
The 136th Ohio General Assembly is getting up and running in Columbus, and they’re starting to have something to show for it.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Ohio House members had introduced 29 bills, while Ohio senators had introduced 63. Legislative committees also have gotten going, with a slew of Senate bills getting hearings on Wednesday.
Legislative leaders have foregone the splashy press conferences rolling out priority bills that they’ve held in past years. But the first five Senate bills – higher-numbered bills typically signal higher priority – give an idea of what might be important to Senate President Rob McColley and other top Republicans.
As we’ve previously written, Senate Bill 1 is a reintroduction of an “anti-woke” higher education reform that stalled in the last legislative session.
Senate Bill 2 is a placeholder bill to “increase power generation and improve Ohio’s electric grid.” It might be the Senate companion to a sweeping House Bill that would curtail power companies’ ability to tack extra charges onto customers’ bills.
Senate Bill 3 would phase in a flat 2.75% state income tax rate, cutting taxes for people who make more than $100,000 a year and currently pay a 3.125% rate.
Senate Bill 4 would make permanent the Election Integrity Unit that Secretary of State Frank LaRose created in 2022, set a faster timetable to investigate potential election law violations and require the unit to make annual public reports documenting its work.
Senate Bill 5 would make it easier for property owners to evict people unlawfully living in a residence.
Some other notable early bills include:
Senate Bill 22, a reintroduction of “circuit breaker” legislation that stalled last session that would help homeowners facing large increases in their property tax bill
Senate Bill 56, which would rewrite the recreational marijuana law voters approved in November 2023. Provisions including raising marijuana sales taxes from 10% to 15% while giving lawmakers authority to spend proceeds, banning public smoking and reducing the number of cannabis plants people can grow in their homes from 12 to six. It doesn’t mention “diet weed,” also known as delta-8 THC products, that DeWine and some other Republicans want to ban.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s soft launch
I’ve been wondering how Columbus-area billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy’s abrupt departure from President Donald Trump’s administration would affect his prospects of getting the president’s coveted endorsement in Ohio’s 2026 governor’s race.
Ramaswamy’s rollout of his campaign team this week answered some of my questions.
As first reported by NBC News, Ramaswamy’s campaign announced on Monday that it had hired Vice President JD Vance’s senior political team, including Jai Chabria, who managed Vance’s 2022 U.S. Senate campaign. The move puts a tacit Trump World seal of approval on Ramaswamy and reinforces his status as the race’s frontrunner.
Ramaswamy’s team then released an internal poll – produced by Trump/Vance campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio – on Wednesday showing Ramaswamy above 50% in a hypothetical Republican primary, holding a wide lead over the two other major candidates, Attorney General Dave Yost and state Treasurer Robert Sprague. Internal polls should be taken with many grains of salt, but Fabrizio has a credible track record in Ohio, including working on Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign and Bernie Moreno’s 2024 U.S. Senate campaign.
Ramaswamy addressed his departure from Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency in a Tuesday appearance on The Breakfast Club, a New York City radio show with a national audience. He said he’d envisioned the program as being outside of government – which would have allowed him to run for elected office – but it turned out to be a government initiative that barred him from doing so. This is not necessarily inconsistent with national reports that have described Ramaswamy as losing a power struggle with mega-billionaire Elon Musk to shape the department’s direction.
“Running to be the chief executive of a state, a governor, short of being a president, is the single greatest way to have unshackled impact on your country,” said Ramaswamy, who also made a 96-minute appearance on Tuesday on influencer Aidin Ross’ livestream. “And I’ll look forward to making a big announcement about that in a few weeks.”
Driving discussion
State lawmakers privatized Ohio’s driver’s education system in the 1990s, largely replacing traditional public-school programs with for-profit businesses.
But the result has been a system with limited enrollment slots, high prices and slim profit margins for operators, disproportionately impacting Ohioans in poor urban and rural communities, according to advocates and state officials.
I took an in-depth look at what Gov. Mike DeWine and others are doing about the problem, including featuring a fast-growing, school-based program in Zanesville that launched in 2022. Read more here.
Big endowments, big investigations?
It’s been a busy two weeks with directives coming down from the Trump administration – and many of them touch higher education.
Earlier this week, my colleague Amy Morona wrote about how leaders at Ohio’s colleges say a recent pause (that’s since been paused!) on federal grants would significantly impact their research work.
A different federal order looking to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion could impact some of those universities, too. As the Chronicle of Higher Education points out, tucked into that order is a directive saying higher education institutions with endowments of over $1 billion could face random investigations from various federal agencies about their DEI work.
More than 130 colleges would fall into this category, according to federal data the Chronicle compiled. That includes four institutions in Ohio: Ohio State University ($7.4 billion endowment), Case Western Reserve University ($2.3 billion), University of Cincinnati ($1.8 billion) and Oberlin College ($1.2 billion).
An Ohio State spokesperson told Amy they’re reviewing the executive order, and, in the meantime, won’t speculate.
“As always, we will follow the law and work to ensure our students, faculty and staff have the resources needed to succeed,” they said.
