Midwest holds annual meeting
Ohio politicians, committee members provide update on legislation
Almost 200 members of Midwest Electric’s political action committee heard updates from state legislators Monday during the annual meeting held for just that purpose.
CEO Matt Berry introduced the four politicians: Ohio Auditor Keith Faber; House Representatives Jim Hoops (R-Napoleon) and Craig Riedel (R-Defiance); and 8th District Congressman Warren Davidson (R-OH ).
“Our members are their constituents,” Berry said. “We represent the same people.” Berry said.
Hoops is also chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
“Believe me it’s been an interesting committee this past year,” Hoops said.
Hoops briefly brought up House Bill 6, a nuclear bailout bill, which he supported. The bill was also part of a
scandal that removed House Speaker Larry Householder from office.
“I guess there were things happening outside the statehouse, and things happening in the statehouse on that
bill,” Hoops said, “We were able to do some good things to get it back on the right direction. There [are] still some things I know we are working on. My goal is to make sure we have diversified energy here in the state of Ohio. What that means is we don’t rely on one sector of energy, whether it’s nuclear, coal, gas, solar, or wind.”
“The big thing this past year was gas and everybody said, well that’s the future,” Hoops said. “If you look at the market now it’s jumped quite a bit.”
He gave credit to Riedel and Ohio Senator Rob McColley for the work they did to move Senate Bill 52 forward. The legislation gives local control on wind and solar projects to county commissioners; it took effect Monday.
Riedel in turn gave credit to Hoops for calling a fourhour meeting when the bill was struggling because of issues like land use rights. During that meeting they came to an agreement with interested parties and the wind and solar industry was neutral in the end.
“They made sure they were able to work together with both groups on the issue and I thought we came up with a pretty good bill,” Hoops
said.
Riedel explained why they needed the legislation.
“We wanted to bring you back into the conversation. We wanted your voice to be part of the decision making,” Riedel said.
Riedel said what was at the forefront in the legislature right now is legislation that gives exemptions for mandated COVID-19 vaccinations.
“I certainly believe that when it comest to vaccines that should be an individual choice,” Riedel said. “That’s something that should never be mandated on you particularly from government.”
Riedel said legislators are working on a bill legalizing sports betting, and has two bills that would prohibit critical race theory.
Riedel has also cosponsored a bill with Rep. Susan Manchester (R-Waynesfield) to make prevailing wage permissive. He said prevailing wage can push costs over budget.
Riedel also plans to use a portion of American Rescue Plan funds to give a $1,000 bonus
to law enforcement and first responders.
“It’s federal money that would be coming from the American Rescue Plan,” Riedel said.
Faber isn’t a fan of the ARPA and said local governments in Ohio weren’t hurting financially during the pandemic. He estimated about 80 percent had more money at the end of the 2020 than what they started with that year.
He said they don’t need more money from the federal government, and said some governments received half of their annual budget in recovery dollars.
“The reality is that they’ve put more money into local governments than they can figure out how to spend, so now they are all getting creative as to how they are going to spend this additional money,” Faber said. He said it was easier to seek guidance before spending the money than after.
“We don’t give forgiveness, we are not priests,” Faber said.
However many agencies like the Auglaize County commissioners are waiting until guidance becomes set in stone before spending a dime.
Davidson also had
frustrations with the APRA.
He noted that no Republicans voted for the American Rescue Plan and was in favor of flexible spending for local governments. He says there has been legislation to ease up ARPA restrictions in the works since early summer of 2020 to give maximum flexibility.
“The only limitation on it is that they can’t pay themselves,” Davidson said.
Faber commented briefly on his role in the redistricting process as a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve been sued three times in the same week by the allied liberal organizations that are suing our state legislative maps,” Faber said.
He believed the maps would be held constitutional.
Riedel also believes they will be found constitutional. Faber expressed his own frustrations with the state legislative maps and said he wanted to keep Mercer, Auglaize and Darke County together as they have been represented by the same people for decades. Auglaize County will not have Riedel as a representative if new maps go into effect.
Faber thinks the congressional map drawing process will eventually to be turned over to the legislature if commission members can’t agree.
Faber, who helps investigate fraud, said someone had applied in his name for unemployment benefits.
Faber said there have been $3.86 billion in overpayments to unemployment with plenty of fraud.
“It’s real money, it’s money that comes from mostly the federal government and partly from Ohio employers,” Faber said.
Davidson shared Faber’s concerns as he had a claim in his name as well. His focus was on large spending bills being debated in congress.
Davidson criticized the current budget reconciliation bill.
He sees it as pushing the agenda of Sen. Bernie Sanders and said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t allow a massive infrastructure bill to pass unless the reconciliation bill passed.
Davidson said no bank would be allowed to stay in business if they didn’t ask questions about how they spend their money or how they will pay it back. Davidson said Democrats avoid having that conversation.
Davidson also doesn’t understand federal subsidies for solar farms built on farm ground.
“Why would we pay subsidies to people to build solar panels on really good fertile farmland when there are vast amounts of desert?” Davidson said.