Now that the Ohio Senate has passed a proposal cutting union power in collective bargaining for government employees, the measure goes to the House.
The top man there, House Speaker Bill Batchelder, is mostly being tight-lipped, but he told Ohio Public Radio’s Bill Cohen that his timetable is to have the bill ready for a house floor vote by the end of the month, after committee hearings.
Batchelder was hesitant to offer his opinion on the bill.
"When you have a hundred pages of amendments--its 99--it's tough to say how that all interacts. I favor doing something in this area because nothing's been done since 1983," he said.
Republican backers of the bill to change collective bargaining are hoping to get it passed and signed into law by the first week of April. That way, any referendum to repeal the law would have to happen this November, and in that kind of off-year election turnout would be relatively low, especially among Democrats. That would make it more likely that the new law would survive.