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Issue might end up before House, Senate
By Dennis Willard
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Sunday, Dec 02, 2007
COLUMBUS: Barbara Sykes has been on the job as chairwoman of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission less than two months, but she is once again upsetting members of her own party.
Sykes earned the enmity of some fellow Democrats, most of them white men, when she worked with Republicans in her days in the Ohio House as leader of the black legislative caucus.
Sykes, who represented the Akron area for six years, pledged votes from her caucus for bills, particularly budget plans, in exchange for funding for programs aimed at her and other black legislators' inner-city constituencies.
Some colleagues wanted Sykes to hold out and unite with all the House Democrats for more bargaining leverage, but she could not be swayed.
Last year, Sykes ran for the state auditor's job, losing in a close race to another state legislator from the Akron area, Republican Mary Taylor.
Anyone watching the television airwaves could see that Sykes was not being supported financially by her party. This indifference could come back to haunt Democrats in 2010 because the auditor's office is one of three key seats on the Ohio Apportionment Board that draws legislative district boundaries, always in favor of one party over the other to secure majorities in the General Assembly.
Taylor, in the year of the Democrat, ran clever ads that never told voters she was a Republican. Instead, the spots focused on her commitment to ferreting out fraud and waste in state government.
Sykes landed as head of the United Way of Ohio and was out of state government until Gov. Ted Strickland named her to the Civil Rights Commission, which has been generally lethargic for decades.
But Sykes came along at an opportune time.
The same month she came on, the commission was wrapping up about a year's work on a new rule the panel believed would clarify a state law on the books for three decades.
Since 1977, employers have been required to provide a ''reasonable'' amount of unpaid leave to pregnant workers.
In October, the commission voted to define ''reasonable'' as 12 weeks of unpaid leave, ordered by a doctor, with the stipulation that a company could object if the employee's absence created a hardship for it.
Small companies, led by their lobbying association, the National Federation of Independent Business-Ohio, objected to the rule, contending the commission was placing some firms at an economic disadvantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
The federation also argues the commission is writing the law rather than implementing a rule, and this issue should be debated and voted on by elected state legislators.
The federation launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to stop the commission, including calling on the governor to intervene.
Strickland, who named Sykes to the commission, had his top lawyer, Kent Marcus, call her and ask for a delay on moving to implement the rule.
Sykes called three fellow commissioners who voted for the rule, and all told her they wanted to move ahead with a plan to go to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review.
JCARR is an obscure legislative panel that cannot weigh in on the merits of an issue — its sole purpose is to determine whether a state agency or commission has the legal authority to put a rule into effect.
Sykes called the governor's office and said the commission will go before JCARR as planned Monday.
The commission believes pregnant women should not
fear they might lose their jobs should they seek a leave of absence.
There was nothing Strickland could do at this point.
The governor's appointments to the commission are for five years. Sykes' tenure will outlast Strickland's first term.
And only the commission can pull the requested rule review from JCARR's agenda or ask for a delay.
Sykes and her new colleagues on the commission — all appointed or reappointed by Republican Gov. Bob Taft — are not blinking.
The business group has been lobbying JCARR, which is composed of 10 legislators — six Republicans and four Democrats.
It appears that some members of JCARR, such as state Rep. William Batchelder, R-Medina, believe the commission may not have the legal authority to order small companies to grant 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave to women.
But this story has another interesting twist to it.
JCARR doesn't approve or disapprove rules.
Should the members of the committee vote against the commission Monday, the issue, by law, must be introduced as a concurrent resolution to be voted on by the full House and Senate.
This means the debate will continue rather than end, and there will be more headlines and attention paid to the issue of whether pregnant women should receive extended leaves of absences.
And Sykes once again will have played a key role in stirring up things on the House floor — this time from the outside.
Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.
COLUMBUS: Barbara Sykes has been on the job as chairwoman of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission less than two months, but she is once again upsetting members of her own party.
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