News & Blog

05.11.23

TAKE ACTION: May 17 HB 151 Opponent Hearing

HB 151 Opponent Hearing
House Higher Education Committee
Wednesday, May 17 at 10:30 am
Room 017 (Ground Floor), Ohio Statehouse

This coming Wednesday, opponents to Sub. HB 151–the companion bill to Sub. SB 83–will have an opportunity to submit testimony.

This is a hearing for opponent testimony only. However, testimony will be limited to five minutes per witness. There will be a hard stop for the committee at 1:00 pm, meaning that it is very likely that many witnesses will not be able to present testimony.

Don’t let that deter you from showing up! We know they don’t want to hear from us and that they are trying to silence us, but we cannot let that stop us from trying to make our voices heard.

In the Senate, we had hundreds of people show up to the opponent hearing for SB 83 and more than 500 opposition testimonies submitted. Let’s exceed that in the House! We must keep up the pressure and send the message that this bill is still widely opposed!

Submitting testimony by May 16 at 10:30 am
If you are submitting testimony–whether written-only or you plan to testify in-person–you must email the testimony and your completed witness slip to the chair’s office at OHRHigherEducationCommittee@ohiohouse.gov no later than Tuesday, May 16 at 10:30 am (testimony must be received 24 hours in advance of the hearing).

Witness Slip

Testimony Template

If you wrote and submitted testimony on the original version of HB 151/SB 83, you can simply update it with the new committee information (which is in the template above), as well as to reflect relevant changes that were made to the bill. You can read about the differences between the original bill and substitute bill here on our website. You can also view the Legislative Service Commission’s comparison document here.

And don’t forget, we have a forum tonight, Thursday, May 11 at 6:00 pm, to discuss the changes and to hold another testimony workshop. Register here.

Sub. SB 83
We have heard that there also will be another hearing on Sub. SB 83 next week, but we have not seen an official committee notice yet. Until we see a notice, we are not sure if Sen. Cirino will be accepting testimony on the substitute bill. We will send more information when it is available.

Early next week, we will send an additional email with more information about Wednesday and more ways to take action. Again, thank you for all that you are doing to push back on HB 151/SB 83! If you have questions, reply to this email.

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