Ohio smoking ban -- again

The Buckeye Liquor Permit Holders Association to submit a proposal for a constitutional amendment, along with 1,417 signatures, to the Ohio Attorney General to roll back Ohio’s smoking ban and allow smoking in bars and other establishments not making more than 10% of their gross revenue from the sale of food.

The next step would be to circulate petitions in those types of establishments across the state in order to get the 140,000 signatures needed to have the proposal introduced in the legislature before the end of the current session at the end of the month. (Cin’ti. Enquirer article)

The proposal would also supersede any state or local law more restrictive of smoking

Names of executioners shielded

After the execution of Christopher Newton last month, the ACLU “responded with a wide-ranging request of state records, seeking, among other things,” an AP article in yesterday morning’s Cincinnati Enquirer relates, the names of the volunteer medics and guards who oversaw it,” drawing Ohio once more back into the ever-widening debate over capital punishment.

The article cites Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center—which opposes the death penalty—as saying the public can’t properly scrutinize the effectiveness of capital punishment without adequate information on those carrying it out. Advocates of the death penalty, such as Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, accuse opponents of wanting to identify members of execution teams in order to intimidate them.

In most of the 37 states having the death penalty those identities are shielded & confidential, such as in Indiana; Ohio and Kentucky’s are more generic. Missouri has a pending bill not only keeping the identities of execution team members confidential, but also making disclosure of those identities an upper level, Class A, misdemeanor.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, by the way, decided Monday that Missouri’s lethal injection procedure was not “cruel & unusual punishment,” allowing executions to resume in the state. (Article) (Decision)

Ohio public records law question

Recordkeepers & administrative public offices across Ohio are in a quandary this week, awaiting word from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Attorney General Marc Dann on how to proceed with changes recently made to the state’s public record law following passage, last December, of Substitute House Bill 141… and the confusion’s growing, according to a Columbus Dispatch article Sunday.

“The bill tweaked privacy protections already afforded police officers, firefighters, EMTs, prosecutors, and others,” the article says, but it’s the bill’s deletion of the phrase about personal information “maintained in a personnel record” from the original wording of the statutes that’s caught Secretary Brunner’s attention and that of Attorney General Dann.

Franklin County Auditor Joseph Testa, who was one of the ones first seeking advice, commented that with the “personnel record” stipulation stripped, it appears any public record, which could include deeds, mortgages, transfers of ownership, and voter registration. “Basically, what this bill would do is say these things are no longer public records,” Testa told the Dispatch. “It’s very, very far-reaching, and not a good direction to be going in.”

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien formally requested guidance from the Attorney General in April. The Secretary of State has issued an advisory to Ohio election boards, also “in the interim…encouraging the sharing of the advisory with their individual prosecutors, so as to allow counsel the opportunity to become familiar with the new provisions and determine whether or not to notify other political subdivisions in the county whose employees may be protected by this legislation.”


H.B. 141
(bill analysis)