Over the years, our elected state lawmakers in the Ohio House of Representatives and the state Senate have mustered up some mighty sharp skills in the game of kick the can down the road.

From water quality initiatives to firm decision-making on capital punishment, the Ohio General Assembly has stalled real action time and time again on many heated controversies. If those stalls outlive the two-year session of the assembly, the legislation and policymaking in question simply die an ignoble death.

This time, the can being unceremoniously kicked down the road contains tens of millions of dollars in potential tax revenue for cash-starved communities in the Mahoning Valley and throughout the Buckeye State.

For context, voters statewide in November 2023 voted to legalize recreational marijuana with a 57% majority. Part of that initiative also included tax revenue provisions and their beneficiaries.

It divided a 10% excise tax on all cannabis sales among local communities, a social equity program, substance-use research and administrative costs. Voters specifically earmarked 36% of the marijuana tax’s proceeds for the cities, villages and townships that house cannabis dispensaries.

Ever since, however, Republicans in the Legislature have been trying their darnedest to defy the will of the voters. The most recent instances of that dynamic came during the long and convoluted process of crafting a state budget for the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years.

In Gov. Mike DeWine’s initial budget blueprint, that funding earmark for local communities was gutted altogether. He doubled the size of the tax but instead targeted its proceeds to the state’s general fund for disbursement to county jails, public health and safety programs, drug task forces and other causes.

Meanwhile in the General Assembly, lawmakers tinkered even more with Issue 2’s funding mechanisms as well as other provisions. The state Senate had proposed reducing the number of permissible home-grown cannabis plants and scaling back allowable THC levels, among other unnecessary amendments.

In the end, however, after outcry from local community leaders — including many in the Mahoning Valley — the final $60 billion two-year budget that took effect Tuesday maintains current funding protocols for those communities hosting cannabis dispensaries.

Unfortunately, however, that victory does not mean the battle over Issue 2 has ended. Host communities, including Youngstown, Warren, Niles, Hubbard, Struthers and Austintown, are being held captive.

That’s because state lawmakers are refusing to release those millions of dollars until they reach agreement on and formally enact their own set of amendments to Issue 2.

As a result, lawmakers have pressed pause on any debate and action on the future of legalized marijuana until this fall at the earliest as legislators have shown no will to convene a special summer session to resolve any and all thorny cannabis issues once and for all.

When they do reconvene in late September, we once again strongly urge they do not show continued scorn for the majority of Ohio voters who enacted Issue 2 as a citizen-initiated referendum. Nor should they slap in the face local leaders throughout the state who have been counting on the excise tax revenue to plug holes in their own budgets, some of which have resulted from state aid cutbacks and unfunded state mandates thrust upon them.

Austintown Township Trustee Robert Santos, a statewide leader in the campaign to restore the original funding protocols of Issue 2, has rightly called the Legislature’s interference with the voters’ mandate “a blatant power grab.”

The cannabis industry agrees.

“It is our belief that Issue 2 was clear about the money going to local communities,” said David Bowling, executive director of the Ohio Cannabis Coalition.

But now legal marijuana users and local leaders must play another unnecessary waiting game over the next three months. Once legislators reconvene Sept. 23, there should be absolutely no credible reason why they cannot act with jackrabbit speed to simply stamp their seal of approval on the original provisions of Issue 2.

Kicking that can farther down the road into 2026 would demonstrate utter disrespect for community leaders and shameful contempt for the Ohio electorate.