State senators don’t seem to be worried about appearances as they sneak into their version of the Ohio budget a provision that specifies the OneOhio Recovery Foundation is not a state entity — and therefore is exempt from complying with public records requests, according to a report by the Ohio Capital Journal.
Just last month the Ohio Supreme Court ordered OneOhio to comply with a request for its records, after it tried to avoid doing so. Justices understood the foundation set up to distribute money that local and state government entities are receiving from opioid settlements was functionally a public body. The Ohio Supreme Court considered whether providing public access to records serves the policy of governmental openness.
“In this case, allowing public access to the Foundation’s records serves that policy,” the Court said.
Yet some state senators appear to believe a) they know better than the Ohio Supreme Court, and b) there is reason for OneOhio to keep its actions hidden from the public.
It is difficult not to wonder why those who inserted protective language into the state Senate version of the budget want to keep the public in the dark about how OneOhio will handle more than $1 billion.
Dennis Cauchon, president of Harm Reduction Ohio, and the person whose public records request sparked the court ruling, is right to call the loss of public oversight of OneOhio a “petri dish for corruption,” particularly as OneOhio spokeswoman Connie Luck reports the group is so pleased with the possibility of being able to continue to operate in the dark.
“My concern early on was that it would be a nudge or a wink, but now it doesn’t have to be a nudge or a wink. You can just do it. It’s unambiguously legal,” Cauchon said, according to the Capital Journal. “And there’s no way for anyone to find out, because you have no right to know who got any contract, who got how much money, how the decision was made. It’s a beautiful design if that’s your goal.”
State House and Senate negotiators must take a look at what motivated the inclusion of such a nasty little thumbing of the nose to Ohioans, and then fulfill their responsibility to remove it.
