Ohio lawmakers teeing up flurry of legislative activity in last sessions before summer break

COLUMBUS, Ohio — State lawmakers here are preparing for a busy week of legislating before breaking for the summer.

An Ohio House committee voted Tuesday morning to tee up 34 separate bills for a vote, possibly as soon as Wednesday, when the Ohio House is scheduled to hold its final full session of the season. Among them is Senate Bill 94 , legislation originally centered on county recorders' offices that a different House committee voted earlier in the morning to stuff with more than 100 pages of amendments.

Among those changes was tacking on an entire different bill, House Bill 606 , that requires state universities to track antisemitic incidents and to develop a public policy for restricting student expression. Lawmakers recently changed the bill to also track anti-Christian discrimination. HB606 is an alternative to a sweeping priority Senate bill designed to curtail perceived liberal bias on campus that has stalled in the House since the Senate approved it last year .

A Senate committee meanwhile is expected to meet Tuesday afternoon to schedule the chamber's legislation for its respective session scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Dozens of bills also are receiving committee hearings this week.

The flurry of legislative activity comes as the General Assembly prepares to pass billions of dollars in state spending on capital projects . The House and Senate unveiled their capital budget plan, which included $146 million in spending for Cuyahoga and its five neighboring counties, last week after the two chambers made little public progress negotiating a plan for months.

House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Lawrence County Republican, wasn't specific about the House's plans for the week when he addressed reporters on Tuesday morning. But he described the 32 bills as "a lot of really good things."

Among other bills the House Rules Committee, which helps shepherd bills through the committee process before designating them for a full House vote, recommended on Tuesday:

House Bill 531 , which would increase criminal penalties for sexual extortion, defined as threatening to release someone's private images. The bill is referred to its sponsors as Braden's Law, named for a 15-year-old Columbus-area student who died by suicide in 2021 after someone posing as a 15-year-old girl tricked him into sharing nude photos and then threatened to release them.

House Bill 308 , which would declare electricity produced by nuclear power plants to be "green energy"

House Bill 599 , which would declare the walleye as the state fish of Ohio

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