Ohio Senate

A bill that would give Ohio’s local school boards the power to allow employees to carry guns in school buildings gets its first Senate hearing in almost two months on Tuesday. However, gun control groups say the bill also eliminates required weapons training for those workers.

A collection of health and human services advocates are urging Ohio leaders to immediately work on revamping the unemployment compensation system in order to avoid another backlog of claims.

The Ohio Senate has passed what supporters call a critical bill to address criminal justice reform and overcrowded prisons. The legislation lowers the penalty for many drug possession charges from felonies to misdemeanors.

Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a law that allows students in public schools to express their religious beliefs.

The Ohio Senate is being asked to consider a bill passed along party lines in the House that requires new reporting standards for COVID-19.

Nearly 1 million Ohio households lack reliable broadband service, including 300,000 who don’t have any service at all. The Ohio House has passed a bill that would help expand broadband, and it's now up to Senators to pass the plan.

The Republican leader of the Ohio Senate, Senate President Larry Obhof (R-Medina), has issued a rebuke to racist comments made by state Sen. Steve Huffman (R-Tipp City) during a committee hearing last week.

A Republican state senator from the Dayton area has lost his job as an emergency room doctor after asking a racially insensitive question at a hearing on a resolution to declare racism a public health crisis.

This week the Ohio Senate unanimously approved SB 252, which prohibits health care providers from requiring advanced-stage cancer patients try the cheapest medication first. 

An investigation is ongoing into threats targeting two sitting Democratic state lawmakers, a well-known senator from Akron who’s served in both chambers and his daughter, who leads the minority in the Ohio House.

A Republican-backed bill to prohibit communities from banning plastic bags and other disposable containers passed the Senate on a mostly party-line vote, following a significant change related to the COVID-19 pandemic.