The House budget eliminates a 30-year-old commission intended to enforce campaign finance laws. Gov. Mike DeWine had proposed a slight increase for the Ohio Elections Commission to $1.2 million out of the $61 billion in overall state funds in the budget. But Republicans wanted to try something new.
The House budget would send campaign finance complaints to the Secretary of State or county boards of elections. House Finance Chair Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) had a case before the commission for three years. He said the panel isn’t getting the job done.
"It's not providing the timely process that it was intended to," Stewart said earlier this month after the House budget passed. “They've not been able to process cases in a timely manner. You know, even politicians deserve due process."
Stewart added Republicans want a more streamlined system.
"Under this bill, all of our local candidates that have their complaints heard at their local board of elections," Stewart said. "It’s absurd that under the current process, we're hauling people in from all over the state to come down to Columbus and appear on camera and have this big sort of elaborate trial before a seven-member tribunal of, in many cases, they’re not judges, they’re not lawyers. And so we want to get to a process where these claims are heard by an attorney who’s a hearing officer."
Commission members defend their work
The executive director of the Ohio Elections Commission testified before state lawmakers in February on DeWine's proposed increase in the OEC's budget. He said the commission's seven members - three Democrats, three Republicans and one unaffiliated - get around 500-700 cases filed each year by boards of elections and around 50 by the secretary of state's office. Richter said the increase would pay for a new electronic filing system as well as some other changes, and to hire his replacement upon his retirement.
"I feel like the commission deals with most matters on a fairly prompt basis, makes educated decisions and tries to make consistent decisions so that there is a consistent application across the entire state of Ohio," OEC Executive Director Phil Richter told the Ohio House Finance Committee.
Richter ended up taking many questions about the length of time it takes for some cases to be resolved - specifically, from Stewart and Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Loveland), who's also had a case pending before the commission for a while.
Stewart hinted at that committee hearing that the elimination of the commission was a possibility, though that wouldn't come out until the House's version of the budget was introduced in April.
"Why not just send all these cases to the court where they can be dealt with by a judge who knows the law? And if people feel this strongly about their case, let them bring it themselves," Stewart asked Richter.
"If there was no commission, then you're essentially putting the matters back into their respective counties, and then you have essentially 88 different interpretations, potentially on law and 88 different applications across all the various county prosecutors," Richter replied.
"If we have 88 different interpretations of Ohio Revised Code as it is, what makes election law so special that we can't have it dealt with at a local level?" Stewart countered.
Richter said county prosecutors had told him they were reluctant to take that on, especially when so many cases involved collections, often in small dollar amounts.
Republicans also noted the commission’s power was dramatically cut by a 2014 federal court ruling that a state law banning false statements is unconstitutional. A district court upheld that ruling in 2016.
After the 2014 ruling, Richter said he worked with attorneys for Republicans and Democrats, and "it was our respective belief that there was a way of reenacting a statute that could be enforceable, by taking primarily by taking out any kind of criminal penalties, but allowing the commission to go forward," Richter said. "But, you know, it's been talked about but nothing has ever been moved forward into or through the General Assembly as it relates to that."
Shayla Davis served as a Democrat in the Ohio House in 2022 and is the commission’s vice chair. In an interview, she said the commission's members do important work with a small budget.
"The Ohio Elections Commission was created to ensure that there was transparency and fair practices and compliance and campaign finance law. We should exist if anyone believes in democracy," Davis said. “Our boards of elections can’t handle a lot of these things. It's campaign finance compliance. And so you need an independent body to be able to do that.”
"We were mirrored off of the model of the Federal Elections Commission, because there has to be some level of regulation and regulatory compliance," Davis added. "If not, people will do what they want to do."
DeWine may get final say on commission's future
When asked for his thoughts on the zeroing out of the Ohio Elections Commission in the House budget, DeWine said he has some questions about that.
“I want to see how they going to do it, and you know what, where does that put the responsibility. There’s been some concerns expressed about that, back to 88 counties. I've got to better understand exactly how that would work," DeWine said.
The budget is now in the Senate, which will begin hearings next week.
