OH: Alcohol establishment carry in the works

[Teamless]

And here's to hoping that Texas and Ohio have reciprocity someday...

agreed, but in the meantime, I was going to get my Utah license, but with the news stuff on Utah licenses recently, I have opted for a Virginia license.
It also covers Ohio, costs $100 and no course needed, as long as you have proof of proficiency. So I have a copy of my CHL-100 and am good to go.

[Dutchster]

Bumping my own thread ... things are getting very interesting in Ohio over the next week.

The long and short of it is this summer the Senate passed SB 239 as I mentioned in my last update. SB239 would allow carrying in any establishment with a liquor license provided that the CHLer isn't drinking. In addition it also fixes just about all of Ohio's hideous car carry restrictions. The House (currently controlled by the Democrats) has sat on it and the session ends at the end of the year. As of right now there are only two more days scheduled before the session ends and everything starts over.

There is a companion bill in the House but it never even got out of committee because the speaker won't allow it to come out. However, the sponsor of that legislation drew papers for a discharge petition on the Senate bill this week. Supposedly at 10:00 on Tuesday he'll be collecting signatures. He needs 50 members of the 99 member House to force a discharge at which point the bill would be brought to the floor for a vote at the next meeting. This representative was on Cam and Company today and from what I understand he said he's got the numbers to force a discharge. From what I gather a discharge petition hasn't been used in almost 20 years in Ohio. The only other variable remains the governor who lost his reelection bid in November. He was, however, endorsed by both the NRA and Ohioans for Concealed Carry and indicated back in July that he would sign the Senate bill if it reached his desk.

The local newspapers are starting to get wind of it and they're predictably spooling up their fear mongering and complaining about all the other bills that will be left to die while real people will be left to die in piles of blood at the neighborhood tavern.

MAJOR fingers crossed. If anyone has relatives in Ohio please have them call their house representative and encourage them to sign the discharge petition for SB 239 and support it once it reaches the floor. Supposedly the numbers are there but it's important to keep the pressure up until this baby is signed into law!

More to come!

[Dutchster]

Update! The representative circulating the discharge petition got the 50 signatures he needed. This means that tomorrow (Weds 12/8) the House will vote on moving the bill out of committee. Assuming this vote succeeds, which it should since an absolute majority had to sign the petition, the bill then gets put on the calendar for a vote.

Here's where it gets dicey. Tomorrow is the last scheduled legislative day for this legislative year. Thursday is listed as "if necessary" but statewide news outlets have been saying that it is on given the number of other bills pending. The absolute last day is next Thursday. Ordinarily this would be OK because as long as Thursday's session is held the bill would come up for a vote then. But at least one media outlet is quoting the speaker's office as now saying that the House rules require a two day waiting period before the bill can be voted on. Problem is nobody can seem to find that bit in the rules and only one paper is reporting it that way. Naturally the speaker has no intention of holding session next Thursday just to vote on two bills he hates.

We might be down to a Bush vs. Gore finish here!

[Keith B]

Wish you guys luck on the bill. Hope it makes the floor for vote in time.

We had a similar issue last year where several bills never made the floor because they were either purposely left in committee or ended up not making it high enough on the list to get to the floor before the end of session. Part of the issue was strictly an effort to stall a particular bill by committee members or chairs, but there was also an issue of "chubbing" that kept a lot of bills that would have passed from making it out.

[Dutchster]

Alas, it looks like things failed for this year. The clerk conveniently took two days to "certify" the petition which consisted of only 50 signatures of people the clerk has worked with for the last two years. The House voted to discharge the bills from committee yesterday and then the Speaker called everyone who got voted off the island to come up and say their goodbyes. Barring some kind of emergency that would result in the house being called back into session it's done.

The good news is that the bill's sponsors have insisted that they will be filing them again in January. The House will once again be in Republican hands and the new speaker was one of the ones who voted to discharge. Furthermore our new Republican governor apparently gave indications he'll sign it. So we're hopeful the only issue is how long the House spends on other matters before they get around to these bills. One positive sign is that the new speaker totally ripped this House's speaker for canceling so many sessions. In the last two years the House only met some 40-odd days, many times for only an hour or two. The new speaker said something along the lines of full time pay requires full time work.

Since the FOP came out strongly opposed to this bill there's also speculation of sticking some other things that they've been whining about into next year's bill. For instance our notification requirements have tripped more than a few people up. The thought is if the FOP is going to whine we may as well make them complain all at once.

[Jumping Frog]

One positive sign is that the new speaker totally ripped this House's speaker for canceling so many sessions. In the last two years the House only met some 40-odd days, many times for only an hour or two. The new speaker said something along the lines of full time pay requires full time work.

That is a mixed bag. I don't want our legislators working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year to dream up new statutes and regulations! I think Texas is smart to limit the amount of time the legislature meets.

[Jumping Frog]

Glad to hear your state is adopting reasonable CHL laws. Unfortunately, we do not currently have reciprocity with Ohio http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administra ... rocity.htm.

That is because Texas will not recognize an Ohio license. Texas reciprocity requires the other state to perform the NICS background check. Ohio only checks with the FBI if someone has been a resident less than 5 years. Otherwise, they perform an in-state background check which is comparable to a DPS background check within Texas.

[KFP]

Glad to hear your state is adopting reasonable CHL laws. Unfortunately, we do not currently have reciprocity with Ohio http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administra ... rocity.htm.

That is because Texas will not recognize an Ohio license. Texas reciprocity requires the other state to perform the NICS background check. Ohio only checks with the FBI if someone has been a resident less than 5 years. Otherwise, they perform an in-state background check which is comparable to a DPS background check within Texas.

It would be nice if Ohio unilaterally recognized a Texas CHL though.

[Jumping Frog]

It would be nice if Ohio unilaterally recognized a Texas CHL though.

Yeah, that would be nice. But Ohio's statute requires a written reciprocity agreement between two states to effect reciprocity. There is no mechanism in place to unilaterally recognize another state.