Ohio lawmakers left for the holidays without passing any policies on school bus safety.
Gov. Mike DeWine wants money for certain grants, however, and said he will go straight to the source, the Ohio Controlling Board, before budgeting begins next year.
“We had recommendations that were made in regard to school bus safety, very, very clear recommendations—those can be implemented, those need to be implemented,” DeWine said during an unrelated news conference Friday. “As far as the money, we have the money available. We will ask them to release some of the money.”
In February, a statewide task force DeWine assembled released its guidance to boost safety among the state’s fleet of school buses. The task force took form in August 2023, after a Clark County crash in the western Ohio community of Lawrenceville fatally ejected 11-year-old Aiden Clark from a bright yellow school bus and seriously injured more than 20 others.
Mandating seatbelt restraints on all buses was not one of the 17 recommendations made by the 15-member committee. Instead, it recommended state-funded needs-based grants for schools to add safety features to their buses. Although DeWine said then he was looking to draw on existing sources of money to fund that, he said it would likely need to go through the legislature.
Even with four different bills under consideration, one amended to directly draw from the task force, lawmakers let the clock run out on the issue in lame duck.
“You guys always use that word ‘priority.’ It’s like it’s either very, very important or it’s not,” Huffman said in December when asked whether passing something was a priority. “There's a lot of in-between ground.”
When most of them return in January, it will be in a new legislative session, meaning they start from scratch on bill introductions and hearings.
The task force also recommended more professional training for school bus drivers and enhanced penalties for any driver that violates traffic laws involving a bus.
