Breaking! Ohio Statehouse Caught Violating the Constitution....Again

Caught Stealing Teachers' Pension Fund in the Dead of Night

It’s as egregious and lawless of a power grab as I’ve ever witnessed.

Here and elsewhere, I have detailed the saga of how Ohio’s always lawless lawmakers have spent years attempting to steal the power of teacher and retirees over their own ($100B) pension fund. And how a number of their attacks have been in clear violation of Ohio law and the constitution.

A few years back, it was the Governor himself who was found to have violated the law in how he replaced one pension board member with another—egregiously skirting Ohio law in the way he did so.

Well, just hours ago, a Court confirmed yet another egregious law violation.

This time, as I’ve written previously, it was the lawless way that the legislature replaced almost all the members of the pension board that teacher and retirees elect with…you guessed it…appointees by the politicians themselves. Essentially, the politicians stole the board majority from teachers and retirees and gave it to themselves.

But since they tried to pull off this undemocratic coup in the early morning hours of the final day of the budget process—giving no opportunity to have a hearing on such a sweeping (and non-budget related) change—it turns out they violated the Ohio Constitution in several ways.

I argued this a few weeks back HERE.

There I walk through the painful history of illegality and backroom shenanigans that culminated in the 11th hour (actually 1:00-am hour) stripping of the pension board from control of the teachers and retirees who built it.

And today, a Court agreed.

Its key findings:

• throughout the entire budget process, the makeup of the teachers pension board had not once appeared in any version of either the House or Senate version

• this isn’t a surprise, since no part of Ohio’s budget appropriates dollars to the teachers pension or its operation or management (because the system is entirely self-funded by the pension itself—either contributions, or investment income)

• nonetheless, the non-budgetary amendment replacing most of the elected members of the board first appeared at 1:00 a.m. of a conference committee on the final day of the budget— “introduced and approved without prior hearings, public notice, or deliberation.” There were no hearings, testimony or debate on the proposed change at any point of the budget process.

• It was approved several hours later by the Senate and House.

• * Specifically, the changes altered the board makeup from being seven to three members elected by teachers and retirees, to be replaced by four political appointees (from 7-4 to 3-8). Not only would teacher and retirees now be confined to a permanent superminority, but those they elect would also be barred from serving as the board’s president or vice president.

The Law

As I explained in my prior post, to forbid maneuvers like this, Ohio’s Constitution requires that all bills be:

1) presented as a single subject

and

2) be up for consideration on three different days.

The facts above are pretty clear that both were violated by the lawless legislature, and the Court didn’t mince words in confirming this was the case:

• Single Subject Rule Violation: the amendments to the pension board “have no logical nexus to the roughly 3,000 surrounding pages of the appropriations bill”—“Simply put, the [pension] amendments are a mere second-subject, non-appropriations rider wrongly grafted onto the otherwise wholly separate single-subject appropriations bill.”

• Three Considerations Violation: “it would be impossible to argue that this second, freestanding subject received three considerations on three separate days by each house. To the contrary, the bill…received no further deliberation in either house after 1:00 a.m.”

The Court ordered that any implementation of the takeover of the board be halted immediately.

Boom!

Now let me summarize in plain speak: because this gerrymandered statehouse was so afraid of the blowback from teachers and retirees for a blatant political takeover of their pension, these feckless politicians tried to pull it off at 1:00 a,m. in the morning and give no opportunity for those retirees and teachers to speak out against it.

But in their fear of teachers and retirees from across Ohio, the country’s most corrupt legislature once again broke the law. Egregiously.

Their plan, for now, is stopped.

But….if this gets appealed to higher courts, and the Ohio Supreme Court in particular, keep showing up and speaking out.

And please give a big shout out to Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Education Association, and the American Association of University Professors, for coming together to challenge this lawless takeover.