Thomas Suddes: Abortion fight burying critical issues. That's just how insiders like it.

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

Watching the General Assembly’s Republicans act as if they are gynecologists for the state’s women — women, keep in mind, who are a majority of Ohio population — is startling.

It’s such a paradox, after all those years when, during debates on public health insurance, Republicans shrieked about Democrats “interfering in the doctor-patient relationship.”

This of course is the same wise legislature, GOP-run then, too, that ballyhooed Prohibition, which bankrolled the Mafia. And, it’s the same legislature that, during World War I, forbade Ohio schools to teach the German language because, hey, that might comfort Kaiser Bill, the German emperor, and his fellow “Huns,” who fought Americans on Europe’s battlefields.

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Then, too, it’s the same legislature that passed Ohio’s nationally condemned Bible-reading bill, in 1925, Ku Klux Klan-backed, requiring that ten Bible verses be read daily in the state’s public school classrooms, regardless of pupils’ religious affiliations.

(Conservative) Democratic Gov. Vic Donahey vetoed the bill, writing, “It was the hope and desire for religious freedom that inspired the settling and founding of the United States of America.” (Among House members who fought the Bible-reading bill was the first Bob Taft.)

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Of course, skeptics will say, that was the legislature then. The new, legislature is supposedly far better: Today’s Ohio legislators have college degrees!

They know that an espresso is a beverage, not an overnight delivery!

Still, there’s a handy test to assess how “representative” the General Assembly really is. One thing Ohio does do right is televise sessions of the Ohio Senate and Ohio House and their committee hearings on the Ohio Channel (ohiochannel.org).

Take some time — though a few minutes is plenty — to watch and listen.

Then ask yourself just how much, in speeches or on issues, Rep. “X” or Sen. “Y” represents what you personally think and want. The answer to that question will tell you all need to know. And it won’t be pretty.

Abortion amendment fight burying issues

Because of the fight over the proposed abortion-rights amendment, some other issues are getting buried at the Statehouse, which is how the insiders like it.

One of the more interesting arguments, both pro and con, is over whether Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, and successors of both parties, should gain more power over state supervision of Ohio K-12 schools.

In the 1950s, voters created the State Board of Education and empowered it to hire a superintendent of public instruction. But voters left it pretty much up to the General Assembly to write the state board’s and superintendent’s job description as head of the state Education Department.

That’s why the legislature has the power to, in effect, make the board and superintendent all but bystanders by creating a new Ohio Department of Education and Workforce headed by a director appointed by Ohio’s governor. The new director would be in the governor’s Cabinet; the superintendent of public instruction isn’t and hasn’t been a Cabinet member.

This isn’t the first time a governor has tried to get more influence over the Education Department and its board. Republican then-Gov. George V. Voinovich sought to transform the (elected) board to an appointed board. But then-House Speaker Vern Riffe, a Scioto County Democrat, refused. The compromise: A board with a mix of elected and appointed members.

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The legislature is virtually certain to give DeWine what he wants. And assigning direct responsibility for K-12 schooling to governors will at least show where the buck stops.

Still, public schools nationwide have become battlefields in what seems like an endless culture war over the teaching of American history, and interracial and gender justice, in the nation’s K-12 schools.

In the last 60 years, Ohio’s governors of both parties have essentially been middle-of-the-roaders, not ideologues. And maybe that will always be the case (though if the General Assembly is any indication, Ohio has no shortage of political kooks).

Still, people favoring governors’ direct oversight of K-12 schools should consider whether a future governor might try to infuse schools with his or her philosophy — stoking the cultural war over schooling that rages today. That’s not Mike DeWine’s deal. But it could be a successor’s.

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: Thomas Suddes: Suddes: Abortion fight burying issues you should care about