Litigation By Anti-Smoking Foundation
Agitating for its life, Ohio’s preeminent anti-smoking foundation went to court recently to block Gov. Ted Strikland and legislative heads from taking around 85 percent of the foundation’s wealth for a job-generating scheme. The Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation moved a motion before Franklin County Common Pleas Court to invalidate an emergency law brought in and approved Tuesday that would deviate $230 million of the foundation’s $270 million towards Strickland’s economic-stimulus plan. The anti-smoking foundation also is looking for a temporary restraining decree to prevent Treasurer Richard Cordray from transferring the money.
In its legal registering, the foundation said lawgivers tucked the measure on liquidating its pluses into an unconnected bill on the inspection of plumbing, thereby breaching a ban on cobbling together uncorrelated measures in an exclusive bill. “The dissension between these provisions — the virtual obliteration of a $300 million government agency on the one hand and plumbing on the other — is precisely what the single-subject rule is meant to keep off,” the anti-tobacco team wrote in its plaint. Strickland is frustrated by the foundation’s step and thinks the law ordained recently is legal, spokesman Keith Daily stated. “He’s convinced state government does indeed have the power to reserve state funds,” Daily added.
Tags: anti smoking