Ohio Senate working on measure to regulate transition accounts

By Marc Kovac

The legislation was sparked by the actions of former AG Marc Dann.

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Senate began work Wednesday on a House bill prompted by the investigation of former Attorney General Marc Dann.

The legislation, which passed on a unanimous vote in the House in May, would regulate transition accounts, used by officeholders to pay for inauguration parties and other expenses as they assume their elected posts.

Unlike other campaign finances, candidates have not been required to disclose who donated to their transition accounts or how the funds were spent.

The legislation, sponsored by Republican Rep. Mark Okey, from Carrollton, and Democrat Rep. Dan Dodd, from Hebron, would allow transition accounts for officeholders. But it would cap individual donations at $10,000 for accounts used by the governor and lieutenant governor and $2,500 for others.

It would also limit the use of those funds, require disclosure statements be filed with the secretary of state and require the accounts to be closed out after 120 days.

“The public has a right to know who has made a donation to their public official’s transition account and how much has been donated,” Okey told the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee on Wednesday. “Absent public oversight and reasonable reporting requirements, donations to such accounts erode public confidence in their elected official’s impartiality, integrity and fitness to hold the office to which he or she was elected. The time for addressing this gap in Ohio law is now.”

Transition account reform was among the priority issues in both the House and Senate, after the state inspector general questioned Dann’s use of transition funds to pay for personal expenses and purchases from his wife’s dinnerware business.

Dann, who resigned from office a year ago, was fined for using campaign funds to pay for family expenses and to install an alarm system on his house, but the state elections commission declined to pursue criminal charges against him.