2024 Year in Review: Changes to higher ed and weed law among bills that didn’t survive lame duc

The Statehouse News Bureau

December 27, 2024

Sarah Donaldson

The Ohio General Assembly runs on two-year terms, so when lawmakers adjourned around 2 a.m. on Dec. 19, any bill not on its way to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk effectively died.

That included a contentious bill addressing conservatives’ concerns with higher education. It would have banned most mandatory diversity training in public colleges, required the protection and promotion of so-called “intellectual diversity,” and slashed university trustee terms.

Although it cleared the Senate in summer 2023, it withered in the House, much to Sen. Jerry Cirino’s (R-Kirtland) chagrin.

“We’re losing ground in Ohio by letting this bill sit and that’s why I’m so critical of the speaker for not moving this forward,” Cirino said in November. “It would be an excellent chance for him to leave some kind of a legacy that would be meaningful versus being one of the least productive speakerships that we’ve had in our history.”

House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) maintained it didn’t have the votes to pass the full chamber, but Cirino vowed to resurrect the original proposal in 2025, without what he called concessions, like removing the ban on faculty strikes.

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