General Assembly Appropriates Most of the Remaining American Rescue Plan State Dollars

In the last hours of the lame duck session, the General Assembly approved appropriations of nearly $1.5 billion of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) State Fiscal Recovery Funds. 

Armed with their lists of requests, legislative leaders and the administration hammered out an agreement, which outlined spending for capital improvements, workforce development, and other programs to support direct health care workers. Nearly all of the appropriations were amended into House Bill 45 and included some of our priority requests including:

• $25 million for to support Ohio’s foodbanks
• $150 million investment in lead mitigation programs to help prevent young Ohioans from being exposed to lead hazard
• $30 million for County Department of Job and Family Services to assist with Medicaid redeterminations when the public health emergency ends.

Other ARPA appropriations included:

• $350 million for nursing facility workforce
• $250 million for water and sewer improvement grants
• $112 million for school safety improvements
• $100 million for rural hospitals
• $90 million for mental health crisis infrastructure expansion
• $75 million for water and sewer improvements to support the Honda expansion. 

Ohio has $416.6 million left in State Fiscal Recovery funds which is about eight percent of the total amount received. For more detailed information on where the money is going, visit www.ohioarpatracker.org.

Expansive Criminal Justice Bill Clears Legislature

One of the most significant bills passed during lame duck was Senate Bill 288, a criminal justice reform bill. At 1,081 pages long, SB 288 effects nearly every step of the criminal legal system. 

SB 288 rewrites Ohio’s criminal record sealing and expungement statutes, streamlining the process and providing much-needed clarity. The simplification makes Ohio’s criminal record sealing laws much easier for Ohioans to navigate without the assistance of counsel. It also makes record sealing applications less expensive for Ohioans. In response to local courts across the state charging exorbitant court fees for record sealing and Certificate for Qualification of Employment (CQE) applications, SB 288 sets a hard cap for these application fees at $50. OPLC advocated for these changes to be included in the bill. 

SB 288 also provides increased protections for survivors of domestic violence. Most significantly, it expands the criminal offense of “domestic violence” to explicitly prohibit strangulation of a family or household member and establishes special penalties for violations. Also, while SB 288 generally expands access to criminal record sealing, it specifically prevents the sealing of domestic violence convictions, or the offense of violating a protection order. Finally, in response to some police departments charging service fees to survivors of domestic violence for repeat calls to law enforcement, the bill prohibits a victim of certain criminal offenses from being required to pay reimbursement for the cost of law enforcement assistance. 

Finally, SB 288 continues the work of the General Assembly to increase access to occupational licensing by reining in the consequences of collateral sanctions. It creates a moratorium on newly enacted collateral sanctions by stripping licensing authorities from denying a license under any Revised Code section enacted from SB 288’s effective date to two years after the effective date.