What you missed in the Ohio House while the Strickland Administration was getting smoked in the Ohio Senate...

Yesterday's confirmation hearing of Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Cathy Collins-Taylor lived up to the promised fireworks. I'll have more on that later today.

But yesterday's events in the Ohio House included a few interesting tidbits on their own.

A friend of 3BP writes in with their eyewitness account:

Speaker Budish has been at the helm for 17 months now, receiving little if any or maybe a lot of guidance from his Democratic counterpart - Governor Strickland... However, it is ambiguous how a candidate’s financial assets will affect his ability to run the state of Ohio, but Democratic Reps. Hagan and Foley somehow find this tidbit important in a satirical crusade against Republican gubernatorial candidate, John Kasich. Important enough, in fact, that they have introduced legislation to require a candidate for statewide office to disclose the last four years of federal income taxes.

House Bill 504 neither creates jobs nor fixes the deficit; it simply creates controversy where none should be and makes hard work and personal success an object of public scrutiny. A bait-and-switch, if you will.

In this apparently no-holds-barred stratagem in the House chamber, Rep. Jarrod Martin of Beavercreek followed up with a common sense question—why not also require candidates to submit health records as well? Wouldn’t a candidate’s physical and mental ability to do his job matter more in a statewide office than how much money is in his bank account?

If the House Democrats want transparency and accountability for Ohioans, they have set their sights on the wrong target. Is John Kasich’s net worth more important to the average Joe and Jane Ohioans who are struggling through job loss and cut wages? Or do the taxpayers care more about accurate, nonpartisan revenue projections, efficiency within state agencies, and a more responsible use of their hard-earned money?

Reps. Hagan and Foley are so out of touch with their neighbors back home that they have allowed polarized politics and ulterior motives to block true transparency from being reached.

In one of the rare bipartisan efforts in the Ohio House, both Republicans and Democrats collaborated to create House Joint Resolution 9, which will increase the age of eligibility to 75 years of age for individuals to be elected or appointed to judicial office.

However, the House Democrats politicized this otherwise genuine collaboration between the two parties, proving once again that for the House majority, politics with always win out when pitted against sincere legislative efforts.

Moments before the convening of House session, it was revealed that Rep. Tracy Heard would propose an amendment that would place party affiliation with the identification of those seeking judicial office.

Because apparently, for House Democrats, party affiliation and the “R” or “D” behind a name is the only detail that matters.

Rep. Matt Huffman, a joint sponsor of this legislation, expressed his disappointment that his colleagues across the aisle would stain the bill with a partisan provision. “I had hoped that political affiliation would not enter into this effort,” he said.

But it always does, doesn’t it? From silencing dozens of job creation bills and cost-saving measures that would repair Ohio’s economy immediately and long-term, House Democrats have always—and it appears will continue to—allow partisanship to take center stage in the political circus that is the Democrat-controlled Ohio House.