Menu

The 125^th General Assembly has convened in Columbus, and it features lots of new faces dealing with lots of old problems. Twenty percent of Ohio’s 132 lawmakers are spending their first weeks on the job, and they’ll be faced with many issues their predecessors left unsolved.

At the top of the list is a projected $4 billion budget shortfall, according to OFBF’s Director of State Legislative Affairs Scott Williams. Other issues he said may be revisited are school funding, tort reform and the new medical malpractice law.

Farm Bureau will weigh in on these issues as appropriate, but also will pursue several farm and rural issues that delegates asked for action on during the December annual meeting.

One is the growing problem of ATV operators trespassing and doing damage to farmers’ property. "One of the biggest problems is there’s no identification on the ATVs. We need to come up with a way that you can identify these things, where you can put a set of field glasses on them, figure out who’s on it, and help the sheriff out in enforcing the trespassing laws," Williams said. A law that mandates identifying numbers such as those on boats or snowmobiles may be the solution.

Another subject Farm Bureau delegates want addressed is railroad crossing safety. Williams said Ohio’s done a lot of good things in the past few years in terms of better lighting and better gates, "but there’s still a number of seasonal crossings or other crossings that aren’t as utilized that just aren’t well marked. We want to come up with a way to help counties get those crossings marked and lit."

Farm Bureau is hopeful requests for legislative help will be heard by receptive ears. According to Williams, there are six new members of the General Assembly who are active farmers. Most have some experience with their county Farm Bureaus, and one, Bob Gibbs of Lakeville in Holmes County, is the immediate past president of Ohio Farm Bureau.

In total, 21 of the 99 state representatives and six of the 33 state senators are brand new, and with the aforementioned exceptions, most are not from farm backgrounds. Fortunately, getting them acquainted with Farm Bureau shouldn’t be a problem, according to Williams. "I think one of the luxuries, if you want to call it that, is that Farm Bureau generally doesn’t have to start from scratch. These folks know who we are. We’re a huge organization and we’re well known, and we preach grassroots involvement year round. This is sort of the payoff to that (grassroots activity), that these new lawmakers most likely have met several Farm Bureau members back home and so know what Farm Bureau’s about."