COLUMBUS — A bill at least partly designed to prevent a repeat of Toledo’s summer drinking crisis is in trouble as lawmakers prepare to possibly wrap up business this week and gavel the two-year legislative session to a close.
The clock may run out before legislators can work out various issues on the bill, including language attached late to House Bill 490 that is seen as potentially undermining the legal obligation of telecommunications companies to maintain basic land-line phone service.
“That’s very complicated,” Senate President Keith Faber (R., Celina) said last week. “The House had nine months to work on it. We’ve had nine days.”
The Senate wants to leave for the holidays on Thursday. The House may return next week to tie up loose ends. Any bill that does not reach the governor’s desk will die with the session.
Bills restricting the use of traffic cameras, hiding the identity of the makers of execution drugs, raising pay for state and locally elected officials, changing how the state redraws legislative districts, and loosening restrictions on guns all face final tests.
Gov. John Kasich has vowed to veto House Bill 490 if it reaches his desk with the telecommunications language. Some say Ohio would be better served if the industry expanded Internet and wireless service rather than keep an outdated system.
But groups such as AARP argued that it could leave consumers, especially seniors, without basic service in areas with spotty Internet or cellular service.
The Senate Agriculture Committee is slated to meet today to discuss the bill.
Sen. Cliff Hite (R., Findlay), committee chief, said the phone measure is just one issue holding up a bill that passed the House. It would bar, with exceptions, the application of manure and other fertilizers on frozen, snow-covered, or saturated farmland within the Lake Erie basin.
It also reopens water-withdrawal rules under the Great Lakes Compact and further regulates hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
On Monday, the County Commissioners Association of Ohio held discussions on the water crisis at its winter conference. Lucas County Commissioner Peter Gerken co-chairs its Water Quality Task Force to brainstorm ideas on the toxic algae woes that have plagued Lake Erie and Grand Lake St. Marys.
He has opposed the bill’s premise to move farm-related water quality regulation from the Department of Natural Resources to the Department of Agriculture.
“The state’s legislative process had worked its magic,” he said. “This ship wasn’t going to sail with many good passengers on it.”
Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.
First Published December 9, 2014, 5:00 a.m.