What did DeWine veto?
Gov. Mike DeWine had until midnight Wednesday to either sign or veto several major bills, under a deadline in state law that otherwise would have seen them take effect without his signature.
He took almost all the time he had to make a decision – including two noteworthy vetoes.
What Andrew was watching: Ohio has required a photo ID for in-person voting since 2023. But Republican lawmakers passed a bill two weeks ago to extend those requirements to mail voting, too. The bill lays out a few options for doing so, including an online portal and sending a photocopy of an ID in the mail.
DeWine announced that he vetoed the bill around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday. In doing so, the governor followed through on comments he made three years ago, when he said he considered voting security to be a settled issue and urged the legislature to pass no more new restrictions.
DeWine issued an unusually lengthy statement explaining his rationale for vetoing House Bill 472. The gist: He called it a burden to voters without any real benefit. Read more here.
What Jake was watching: The submetering bill. DeWine also vetoed that bill late last night, a blow to the submetering industry. The bill would have reversed an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that submeterers were public utilities, which means they’re subject to regulation. Read more here.
A fun fact – DeWine’s veto effectively upholds a near unanimous Ohio Supreme Court opinion authored by Justice Pat DeWine, the governor’s son.
Loud and proud
The Ohio Organizing Collaborative isn’t lying low after the group was raided two weeks ago by the FBI.
The progressive advocacy group held a rally Wednesday on the steps of the Ohio Statehouse, urging DeWine to veto HB 472, the photo ID for mail voting bill.
About 50 group members appeared on stage, alternating between giving speeches and singing Civil Rights Era-esque freedom songs. Speakers included several Black religious leaders and representatives of OOC affiliates like the Ohio Student Association. The speakers didn’t reference the federal investigation – instead focusing their comments on the voting bill.
“We are actually here because righteousness will not allow us to be silent,” said Pastor Derrick Holmes of Union Grove Baptist Church in Columbus.
In an interview afterward, Deidra Reese, OOC’s director of voter engagement, said the bill would be an impediment to legal voters, including senior citizens, and said there was no justification for new restrictions on mail voting.
Asked about the FBI raid – which federal officials have yet to explain – Reese said it doesn’t change anything for the OOC.
“We’re just going to keep doing what we do. It’s who we are, it’s what we do. Why should we change?” Reese said.
Ohio trashes another solar farm
The Ohio Power Siting Board on Wednesday rejected Sloopy Solar, a Clark County project that its developers say would have generated enough power for 33,000 Ohioans’ homes.
As Jake reports, this is the eighth solar farm that state officials have rejected since 2020. And it comes as renewable energy takes flak from lawmakers, the courts, the public and the voters in Ohio. Unions say the rejection means the loss of 200 jobs.
Knee high by the 250th 4th of July
Andrew stopped by an agricultural-themed event held by Sherrod Brown’s U.S. Senate campaign this week.
Brown visited the Wal-Mec Farm in Thornsville, just inside Perry County near the Licking County border. There, co-owner Mark Mechling described economic challenges that tariffs and rising diesel and fertilizer prices pose for his soybean and corn farms.
The visit included a piece of Ohio political trivia that Mechling shared while giving Brown and media a tour of his property. The neighboring farm is owned by the DeRolph family, the plaintiffs in a landmark series of cases in the 1990s and 2000s in which the Ohio Supreme Court found Ohio’s system of funding public schools through local property taxes to be unconstitutional.
In an interview, Brown said the effects of the tariffs Trump announced a year ago are lingering – in the form of more expensive tractor equipment and the loss of China as an export market for soybeans – compounding with the recent gas price spikes caused by the war in Iran. Brown’s campaign has been holding events at farms for months, hoping to make inroads in rural Ohio as he campaigns against Republican Sen. Jon Husted in the November election.
“They are persistently pretty unhappy,” Brown said. “But so I mean, that’s like it’s still in their face because they still see the prices.” Brown blamed his opponent, Husted, for supporting Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war.
In a statement, Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce touted Husted’s backing of tax cuts she said helped farmers invest in new equipment and his support of biofuels and ethanol production. In turn, she faulted Brown for supporting the Green New Deal while in the Senate and for supporting a bill that directed COVID relief to nonwhite farmers and for failing to stop Chinese companies from buying American farmland.
“Sherrod Brown spent 32 years putting Washington liberals ahead of hardworking Ohio farmers,” Natoce said.
In the news
Deadly neglect lawsuits and fines follow Ohio nursing home chain. In courtrooms and Ohio Department of Health inspections, Arbors at Ohio facilities have repeatedly been accused of neglectful care with fatal outcomes. The chain has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in regulatory penalties. Read more by Jake Zuckerman.
Ohio GOP candidate for governor has put $500,000 on the campaign credit card. But there’s no way to tell what he spent it on. Read more by Nick Evans of the Ohio Capital Journal.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine grants mercy to a man on death row for the first time. The kicker: DeWine did it three weeks before he urged lawmakers to end the death penalty. Read more by Doug Livingston of The Marshall Project.
