Changing Gears

“Shall the law be approved?”

It’s a simple question that voters will see on ballots across Ohio on Tuesday. Their answers will write another chapter around one of the most divisive issues of the 2011 campaign season, a political battle over Issue 2 and the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Here are some of the basics:

The history: Issue 2 is a referendum that provides a bookend to an earlier piece of state legislation, Ohio’s Senate Bill 5, which was passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. John Kasich on March 31. SB5 limits the collective bargaining rights of Ohio’s 360,000 public employees.

Among the mandates of SB5: It says public employees must pay for at least 15 percent of their health care premiums, prohibits union members from negotiating benefits, makes strikes by union members illegal and emphasizes merit versus seniority when mulling promotions.

The buildup: Union organizers gathered enough signatures to place a repeal of SB5 on the November ballot. At the end of August – five months after signing the bill into law — Gov. Kasich sought a compromise on SB5 that would strike down some provisions in exchange for removing the referendum, now known as Issue 2, from the ballot.

Organizers of the anti-SB5 group We Are Ohio told the governor they would not compromise on piecemeal provisions in the law. They wanted it repealed in its entirety before they would negotiate. An August 30 deadline passed. No compromise was reached.

What happens Tuesday: Polling places are open in Ohio from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET. A “yes” vote on Issue 2 means a voter approves of the SB5 law. A “no” vote means a voter rejects the law.

What comes next: Two weeks ago, a Quinnipiac Poll showed voters could reject the measure by a 25-point margin. If Issue 2 is defeated and SB5 is repealed, that hardly means the debate is finished.

Many Ohio politicians have indicated that the Republican-led legislature would introduce parts of the bill individually – while recent polls have showed weak support for SB5 overall, they have also shown strong support for certain segments of it.

The Columbus Dispatch reported Monday those provisions could include, “limits on how much local governments would be required to pay toward employees’ health-insurance costs or on picking up portions of employees’ pension contributions.“

Broader implications: Results of the Ohio vote are being closely watched across the Midwest. In Wisconsin,a fight of similarly fierce volume broke out over legislation that limited the collective-bargaining rights of public employees, and many experts will draw parallels between the Ohio results and ongoing efforts in Wisconsin to recall Gov. Scott Walker.

But there are clear distinctions between the states and the way they operate, explains the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen tells the newspaper it’s partly a referendum on the governors.

“I think that if the (Ohio law) really does get rejected by the kind of margins the polls are suggesting, it’s a reflection of the fact that John Kasich is a lot more unpopular than Scott Walker is,” he said.