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Columbus
Dispatch...
No timetable on
Senate Bill 5 vote
House
speaker says measure won’t go to the floor next week
By Jim Siegel
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Speaker William G. Batchelder said he is done predicting when the
collective-bargaining bill will come up for a full vote in the House.
The Medina Republican told reporters today that Senate Bill 5 will not
come up for a floor vote next week. This came a day after he told
reporters that he hoped to have a House vote next week on the
controversial measure.
Those hearings started this week with dozens of witnesses testifying.
“I have a sense of where we are headed,” Batchelder said, adding that
he met today morning with Senate President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond.
“It doesn’t do any good to pass one house and not the other.”
The Senate passed the bill 17-16 last week.
The bill would weaken collective-bargaining power for all public union
workers. It would ban strikes and eliminate collective bargaining for
safety forces, require workers to pay at least 15 percent of
health-insurance costs, limit what could be negotiated and allow the
governing body to settle an impasse by implementing its own last offer.
Republicans say the bill is necessary to slow the growth of personnel
costs and give governments flexibility to deal with looming budget
cuts. Democrats say it’s little more than union busting.
The House Commerce and Labor Committee will continue hearings next week
on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday, Gov. John Kasich will
introduce his two-year operating budget.
Batchelder has said his members are likely to make some changes to the
bill. That could include the process for settling an impasse, which
unions have argued gives them no leverage and renders collective
bargaining largely meaningless.
Democrats and union leaders have vowed to go to the statewide ballot to
ask voters to reject the law. If Republicans want that referendum
effort to occur this November, instead of November 2012 alongside the
presidential election, Kasich must sign the bill by the first week of
April.
Read it at The Columbus Dispatch
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