Infighting, ambition and ego gum up progress at Ohio Statehouse

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

The General Assembly is taking time off to campaign for the March 19 primary election. But hey, it isn’t like anything else needs doing at the Statehouse, is there?

Except that intra-Republican bickering between the state Senate and the Ohio House of Representatives has held up passage of Substitute House Bill 2, a $2 billion state construction bill, of which $350 million is earmarked for “One-Time Strategic Community Investments” – i.e., hometown pork-barrel projects.

Of that $2 billion, the $350 million will come from spare change sloshing around in the state treasury, the remaining $1.65 billion from bonds, with the bond money used for school- and college buildings, prisons, and local infrastructure.

Among the $350 million pool of “strategic investments,” the best known to Greater Clevelanders is likely a $20 million earmark for the North Coast Connector project – a proposed land bridge over lakeside roads and rail lines to link downtown Cleveland’s Mall C and the City Hall area with lakefront attractions, such as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Cleveland Browns Stadium.

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As for Franklin County, the House-passed bill allots $42 million, not counting more than $76 million for Ohio State University (some of that for the university’s four branches). And yes, to cover many if not all bases, the House-passed bill includes earmarks for small-town Ohio.

Two examples: $1 million for Ashland County’s Fair, $450,000 for Marion’s Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Chapel.

The slowdown on HB 2 is due to the conflicting ambitions of House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Republican of Lawrence County’s Kitts Hill, and state Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican.

The bottom line is that Huffman, term-limited out of the Senate in December, is headed to the House in January, where he’d like to replace Stephens as speaker. Naturally, Stephens likes things just the way they are in the House. Te question s who gets to play Mr. Results.

Stephens’s circumstances are complicated by the fact he was elected speaker with the help of Democrats due to a House GOP split between Stephens (and his 21 GOP allies) and Republicans who supported Rep. Derek Merrin, of suburban Toledo, for speaker.

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Bottom line, the 22-member Stephens GOP faction united with the House’s 32 Democrats to elect Stephens speaker, for a total of 54 votes, while, with two Republicans absent, the remaining House Republicans voted for Merrin. The GOP caucus as a whole had originally backed Merrin but evidently some minds changed or got changed.

(Merrin, who voted for HB2, is now seeking a GOP congressional nomination to challenge the re-election of Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat.)

But sniping continues between Stephens and the House’s Merrin faction, and those Republicans whom Merrin’s allies call the “Blue 22” for joining with House Democrats to help Stephens win the House’s gavel.

On Wednesday, Stephens won a tactical victory in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. A judge rejected – at least for now – a bid by Merrin and his group to pry control of House Republicans’ caucus campaign fund, the Ohio House Republican Alliance, from Stephens, a pot of money Stephens can use to defend House GOP allies from primary-campaign attacks by Merrin supporters.

“The question,” as Humpty Dumpty told Alice, “is which is to be master – that’s all.” Result: The Huffman-Stephens chess game, whose net effect is to gum things up while deals get cut, if they can. Functionally, Stephens’ mission is to prove he can get things done, while Huffman’s is to prove Stephens can’t.

Intra-GOP bickering in the Senate and House are unnecessarily confusing matters when clarity is what’s called for. Funny how that happens when goals and power mix, driven by the hyper-ambitions that term-limits stoke.

Such is the real cost of doing business on Capitol Square – measuring a lawmaker’s goals and tailoring donations to fit a pol’s plans. Result: Haggling for projects to tell voters their legislator is Mr. or Ms. Results.

That’s our Statehouse – where ambition and ego combine to gum things up ... while Ohio waits.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: $2 billion Ohio construction bill slowed down by Republican infighting