Intoxicating hemp; school buses
Take, for example, the governor’s public request for the legislature to either fully ban or age-restrict the sales of intoxicating hemp products. Despite being a priority of both the Ohio House and Senate, over a year of negotiation between the two chambers never yielded an agreement.
As a result, Ohioans of any age can still legally buy hemp-derived gummies and other products in a plethora of convenience stores across the state.
Also unheeded were proposals from a governor’s task force on school bus safety following a Clark County school bus crash that killed an 11-year-old student. Recommendations included increasing penalties for drivers who break school bus traffic laws; mandating extra training for drivers; creating a costly grant program for school districts to retrofit older buses with additional safety features; and more.
“In the spirit of the holidays, I won’t say much more other than: Hope springs eternal,” DeWine told reporters last week. “There will be a new legislature that will come back in January. I hope that these will be two priorities because both of them, both of them, have to do with the safety of our children.”
DeWine said he intends to soon ask the state’s controlling board to release some funds to allow districts to improve the safety of some buses. Rep. Bernie Willis, R-Springfield, who carried many of the group’s proposals in a bill this year, said he believes the legislature will act on it quickly in 2025, funding relevant measures through the state operating budget.
“In regard to the juiced-up hemp, that is just a real, real problem,” DeWine said last week. “There’s no reason that shouldn’t be abolished, no reason at the very least it shouldn’t be folded in and sold in the same way, with the same requirements and regulations and safeguards that we’re selling marijuana. We gotta keep it out of the hands of kids.”
While the 136th General Assembly’s leadership is not yet official, the Ohio House held a preliminary vote to elect current Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, who will jump over to the House on Jan. 6, as its next speaker. Expected to take over for Huffman in the Senate is Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, who never publicly broke with Huffman throughout the 135th General Assembly.
If both men maintain the Senate’s position, intoxicating hemp products may be banned entirely in Ohio.
“It’s a pretty complex issue,” Huffman told reporters in November, “but I simply boil it down to: It’s a dangerous product with no regulation of any kind and I think we need to do something before the end of the year.”
Property tax
There were 23 stand-alone bills introduced over the past two years to tackle property taxes, which skyrocketed in a handful of Ohio counties this year as a result of soaring housing prices, but only two relatively meager bills made it into law.
Several lawmakers told this outlet earlier this month that they expect a more sweeping reform will be in the works in 2025. Butler County Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Twp., who introduced more property tax bills than any other lawmaker in the 135th General Assembly, said he recently spoke with Huffman about the issue.
“He believes what I believe, the current property tax system is a failure to Ohioans and he believes that if we’re going to do something we’re going to do it right and overhaul the whole thing and not just try to piecemeal it,” Hall said. “I’m very, very optimistic to see how much progress we can make especially with the next budget, which will be here quicker than we know.”
On the last day of session, Huffman told reporters that, when it comes to property taxes, “we’ve got a system that’s outdated and needs to be reformed.”
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
