Background: Thanks to X-ACTO-sharp hairsplitting, some cash the state is entitled to – in this case, liquor profits – isn’t necessarily believed to be as off-limits to private interests as most state money is.
The 2025-26 budget let the board extend the JobsOhio deal without requiring – as Republican Attorney General David Yost pointed out – any JobsOhio payment in exchange.
The original liquor deal required JobsOhio to pay the state roughly $1.4 billion up front, Yost said: “How is it in the best interest of the people of Ohio to extend such a valuable franchise under these circumstances?” It’s not.
The board’s legislative members are picked by House Speaker Matt Huffman, of Lima, and Senate President Rob McColley, of Napoleon, both Republicans. Thus, crucial financial decisions are made by group that answers to just two of the legislature’s 132 members. That’s gerrymandering with a goiter.
On Wednesday, the board approved the JobsOhio extension 5-2; all Republicans voted “yes,” while the two Democrats, Sen. Catherine Ingram of Cincinnati, and Rep. Tristan Rader, of Lakewood, voted “no.”
The Controlling Board got its start in 1917, when the General Assembly met for maybe three months in 24; legislators mostly stayed home to plant corn and slop hogs. But U.S. entry into the First World War was on the horizon, so the board was created to act as a proxy for the legislature in case of emergencies. (The only real war emergency was the vicious violation of civil liberties by self-described Ohio patriots. Sound familiar?)
The panel came into its own in the 1970s, when Democrats won control of the General Assembly but were unexpectedly confronted by Republican James A. Rhodes’s return to the governorship. (Democrats had expected Gov. John J. Gilligan, a Cincinnati Democrat, win re-election.)
So Democrats, if memory is any guide, spearheaded by Sen. Harry Meshel, of Youngstown, mobilized the Controlling Board to play cat-‘n’-mouse with Rhodes. They required the board, as one example, to OK periodic legal-fee requests from lawyers defending Rhodes in his official capacity as governor in legal actions resulting from the May 4, 1970, killings of four Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard. Democrats hoped to damage Rhodes politically. (They didn’t; voters gave him a fourth term in 1978.)
A public-spirited Ohioan with deep pockets and “standing” could ask Ohio’s Supreme Court to outlaw the board. But that court’s customary posture in dealing with General Assembly antics is ... prone.
---
In a great move, Gov. Mike DeWine chose Jim Tressel, of Medina, once Ohio State’s head football coach, later Youngstown State’s president, to be Ohio’s lieutenant governor.
DeWine’s decision was smart, imaginative and constructive. Tressel and his wife, Ellen (Watson) Tressel, will be outstanding representatives of Ohio. And Jim Tressel, should the need arise, could capably step into the governorship. He’ll serve as lieutenant governor until DeWine’s term ends, in January 2027.
Tressel is a native of Lake County’s Mentor, Mrs. Tressel of suburban Youngstown’s Canfield, Mahoning County’s original seat.
As lieutenant governor, Mr. Tressel will succeed Upper Arlington Republican Jon Husted, whom DeWine appointed to the Senate seat of Cincinnati Republican J.D. Vance, now Donald Trump’s vice president.
Three cheers for Mike DeWine, for reaching way outside the tired, stale Statehouse pack, picking instead a genuinely distinguished Ohioan to be lieutenant governor.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
About the Author