(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — The Ohio Attorney General’s Office today certified a revised petition for a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would require nursing facilities to provide certain staff-to-patient ratios and minimum daily amounts of direct care to patients.
On June 23, the Attorney General’s Office received the summary language for the “Nursing Facility Patients’ Bill of Rights.” The proposed amendment would also be known as “Carolyn’s Law” and require the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Board of Nursing to establish regulations that set minimum staffing levels for nurses and certified nursing assistants at nursing, skilled-nursing and rehabilitation facilities.
A previous version of the petition was rejected on Dec. 5, 2019.
The attorney general’s role in the petition process is to determine whether the summary is a fair and truthful representation of the proposed law. The revised petition meets that requirement.
Next in the process, the Ohio Ballot Board must determine whether the proposal contains a single law or multiple laws. If the board certifies the proposal, the petitioners must then collect signatures from registered voters equal to at least 10% of the vote cast in the last gubernatorial election. In addition, those signatures must come from voters in at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties and, for each of those counties, the number must equal at least 5% of the vote cast in the last gubernatorial election.
If sufficient signatures are verified by the Ohio Secretary of State at least 65 days before the election, the full text of the proposed amendment shall be submitted for the approval or rejection of the electors at the next succeeding regular or general election in any year occurring subsequent to 125 days after the filing of such petition.
The full text of the certification letter and the petition can be found at www.OhioAttorneyGeneral.gov/Petitions.
