(The Center Square) – After nearly a year in the Ohio Legislature, a bill limiting driver’s license suspension to driving violations is only a signature from Gov. Mike DeWine away from becoming law.
Senate Bill 37 has received support from Republicans and Democrats, along with a variety of policy, tax, advocacy and legal groups since its introduction in February. It passed the House 97-4 earlier this week after passing the Senate in May.
Currently, there are nearly 70 offenses that could cause the loss of a driver’s license in Ohio, including several drug crimes that have nothing to do with driving. Those, according to the bill’s sponsors, create economic hardships for citizens and place a greater burden on taxpayers.
In joint testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sens. Louis Blessing III, R-Colerain Township, and Catherine Ingram, D-Cincinnati, said, “Unfortunately, these penalties often impact low-income individuals and families the hardest. Imagine a person is convicted of something that has nothing to do with driving, for example drug possession, and has their driver’s license suspended. Just like that, their ability to drive to work, take their child to school, go to a medical appointment, or pick up groceries has been severely diminished, if not completely vanished. Now this person has been put in the impossible scenario of deciding whether to comply with the penalty or to take the risk of incurring more penalties so they can simply complete necessary daily tasks.”
The Buckeye Institute, a Columbus-based policy group, agrees and said the change is something it has been championing for more than 10 years.
In testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee, Buckeye Institute Research Fellow Greg Lawson said millions of Ohioans have had their driver’s license suspended for offenses unrelated to dangerous driving. The loss of driving privileges can lead to difficulty finding and keeping a job, damaging the ability of Ohio businesses to find employees in an already thin employment market.
Lawson commended lawmakers for ending “driver’s license suspensions to sanction truancy, drug offense misdemeanors unrelated to driving, court fines, and other debt-related offenses,” noting that “these eliminations will help hundreds of thousands avoid financial traps that breed other social problems, while still protecting the public against real vehicular dangers.”