Republican State Senator Bill Coley’s bill would repeal the controversial election reform law passed into law last year.
Coley: "This is just a straight repeal. And then I’ve asked members on both sides of the aisle to put on their thinking caps and get their ideas ready so we can work on improvements in a second piece of legislation."
After the election overhaul was passed last year, Democrats and other opponents of the new law collected more than 300 thousand valid signatures from voters to put the issue on the statewide ballot this fall. If lawmakers pass Coley’s bill to repeal the law, what happens to the ballot issue? Coley says its backers should be pleased.
Coley: "Uh, I thought they wanted 194 repealed so we could reach concensus sooner rather than later and make improvements sooner rather than later."
Kearney: "Repealing it would be unconstitutional."
That’s Democratic State Senator Eric Kearney. He says the time to repeal this law was before opponents went through the effort to put it on the ballot. Now that it’s on the ballot, Kearney says Ohio voters, not lawmakers, should make the decision. And he says there shouldn’t be any efforts to force it off the ballot if lawmakers pass a repeal.
Kearney: "It would another violation of the constitution for them to say that now, because they repealed it, that you can’t have it appear on the ballot. It’s got to appear on the ballot. It should appear on the ballot. It’s unconstitutional what the Republicans are doing."
Kearney says the referendum process, once it reaches this point, should be allowed to continue but he adds there’s a good chance the issue could end up in court.
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Portman says the Army Corps should get the message: No dumping
