U.S. Rep Jim Jordan Favors LaRose’s 60 Percent Ohio Constitutional Amendment

by Jack Windsor

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Congressman Jim Jordan told The Ohio Press Network (OPN) in a phone interview over the weekend that an Ohio General Assembly effort — spearheaded by Ohio Secretary Frank LaRose — to require 60% approval to amend the state constitution is a “good, common-sense thing that our Founders understood [to be] important to protect people’s liberties and our representative form of government.”

Jordan, who is tabbed to chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee when Republicans regain control of the lower chamber in January, said that a supermajority is needed to override a presidential veto and a governor’s veto, and should be required in order “to change fundamental principles and fundamental concepts.”

On November 17, State Rep. Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) and LaRose held a press conference on the Constitution Protection Amendment which would require citizen initiatives to amend the Constitution of the State of Ohio be increased to a 60% vote instead of 50% approval.

The U.S. Constitution requires a supermajority vote to amend. “The state constitution has 10-times as many words as the U.S. Constitution,” Jordan said. Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming are states requiring a supermajority vote to amend their respective state constitutions.

Since it was introduced in November, House Joint Resolution 6 (HJR 6) has been amended to include all ballot initiatives — constitutional amendments, legislation and referendums — to require 60% approval. The resolution was reported out of the House Government Oversight Committee Monday with a party-line vote of 7-5 – Republicans favoring; Democrats rejecting.

Opponents of the bill claim the resolution is an attempt to stop petitions endeavoring to legalize recreational marijuana use and to expand the lawfulness of killing babies in the womb.

Common Cause Ohio is one of those opponents. Executive director Catherine Turcer told a Columbus news outlet this week that “these citizen-led measures are all about the public, the voters having the say. And the message here is, ‘we don’t trust voters.’”

In an interview with OPN last week, LaRose said detractors focused on a few issues are incredibly short-sighted and that fixating on those issues ignores the long-term consequences.

“If you’re pro-this or anti-that and you’re worried about this, then you’re showing your cards and saying that your group must not have broad support. You’re saying that only a narrow majority of Ohioans support your idea. You’re saying that you cannot get a consensus, a broad consensus of Ohioans, who believe in your cause. And if that’s the case, it doesn’t belong in the Constitution,” LaRose said.

The constitution lays the entire framework for how the government is going to run — the branches, their powers and the separation of those powers. It also includes our fundamental rights. The legislature’s work, creating laws, deals with how the government is going to operate day-to-day. LaRose says that laws require a simple majority and should be easier to pass but constitutional amendments should be tougher.

“A lot of the same fundamental rights that we think of from the U.S. Constitution are also in our state constitution so it should be harder to change — it should be more durable, more lasting, less susceptible to the sort of whims of the day or whatever happens to be popular. A constitution should be much harder to amend than the Ohio Constitution is currently. And that’s what lies at the heart of this work that we’re trying to do.”

The secretary said that initiating a constitutional amendment is “a tough task for Bob and Betty Buckeye who organize friends and neighbors to make a change but it’s not a difficult deal for special interest groups with deep pockets funded by big out-of-state special interest budgets that can hire thousands of people with clipboards to collect signatures, hire qualified lawyers to write up an amendment so that it passes the scrutiny of the attorney general’s office and then hire political consultants to put a lot of ads on the television to get people to vote for their thing.”

LaRose concluded, “This not about the next two or three or four big ideas that people might have. This is about a constitution that will still be in place for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, protecting it for the long run.”

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Jack Windsor is also an investigative reporter for The Ohio Press Network and a Statehouse correspondent for WHK AM1420 in Cleveland.

 

 

 

 


Reprinted with permission from The Ohio Press Network

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