Ohio Legislative Report
January 2025
A new year has begun, and legislators have been sworn into office. The opening session of the 136th General Assembly was Monday, January 6. But before we delve into what might happen with that one, we need to wrap up the 135th General Assembly and see what happened during its final weeks. Here is the committee action in December.
February 2025
The Ohio 136th General Assembly is now underway, but we do not have very many committee hearings to report on but for good reasons. At the start of every General Assembly there is a lot of business to take care of before new bills can be introduced. After the swearing in of the members, each house elects their leaders starting with the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. Committees must be created and leaders and members appointed for them.
March 2025
During the first two months of the 134th GA there were only 7 pieces of veteran/military legislation introduced. In the same period of the 135th GA there were 13 introduced. Your law makers of the 136th GA introduced 16 veteran/military related pieces of legislation. Let us hope that the momentum is not short lived and that a high percentage of these bills will make it all the way to the governors desk. The number of hearings also picked up in February as a result.
April 2025
Ohio legislators were busy in March working on the state’s biennium budgets. The transportation budget (HB 54) passed in the House in February and the Senate spent much of March with lengthy hearings and drafting amendments. They passed Am. Sub. HB 54 on the 19th and the house concurred on the same day. It was then sent to Governor DeWine and he signed it March 31 without any lines vetoed. It will go into effect on July 1. It does not have anything directly affecting our veterans or Ohio’s military. It creates funding for critical transportation infrastructure projects across the state.
May 2025
The General Assembly was pretty busy in April despite being on spring break for two weeks. With a five-week month, they were able to hold committee hearings during three. The House Finance Committee ended hearing for the budget bill (HB 96), made all of their amendments and passed a substitute bill out of committee on April 8. The next day during a three-hour general session the House passed it. The vote was 60 to 39. Substitute House Bill 96 was sent over to the Senate the next day. The Senate began working on it when they returned from break.
June 2025
It was the Senate’s turn to tackle the Budget Bill (HB 96). There were hearings all month in several committees. The general assembly has until June 30 to pass the bill and have the governor sign it into law. There were seven pieces of veteran/military legislation introduced in May. In the house there were three new bills and one resolution. The senate had two bills and one resolution.
July 2025
As in the past couple of months the Budget Bill (House Bill 96) took up a lot of everyone's time. The Senate was holding hearings during the first week. During the second week the bill bounced back and forth between the two chambers. On Monday the Senate Finance Committee voted 11 to 3 for favorable passage of their version of the bill. Tuesday the full Senate passed it with a vote of 23 to 10 and it went back to the House.
August 2025
Our regular readers are aware that this column is all about what happened last month in the various committees as they held hearings on our veteran/military bills. This issue and the September issue will not be covering any hearings because there are no hearings scheduled until mid-September when the General Assembly returns to Columbus following summer break.
September 2025
Another month of no Committee hearings to report on. Hopefully hearings will start back up sometime in September. We can’t say when because at this time The Ohio Legislature Website does not show any hearings scheduled on their Legislative Calendar. It does show weekly sessions beginning September 23.