• Ohio police agencies can now charge up to $75 per hour of body camera footage released in response to public records requests.
• Some agencies have adopted the fees, while others are still deciding or reviewing the legislation.
• Producing the footage is costly and time consuming for police due to redaction requirements.

Some Central Ohio police agencies will now charge the public up to $750 for officer body and dash-cam footage under a new law signed by Gov. Mike DeWine in January. 

The law that took effect in April gives Ohio’s law enforcement agencies discretion to charge up to $75 per hour for video records, including body camera and dashboard camera footage and surveillance video, with total fees per request capped at $750.

The law allows individual agencies to decide whether to charge fees and set their own rates. Central Ohio agencies that spoke with The Dispatch said they are still deciding whether to impose fees. Police in Grove City, Reynoldsburg and Whitehall have already set new fee schedules, charging as much as the new law allows.

Media outlets often use body camera footage to provide insight into critical incidents involving police, including shootings. Critics, including media groups and civil rights organizations, have argued that increased fees for body camera videos could hinder transparency and give policing leaders the ability to pick and choose what the public sees. 

ACLU says body cam fees ‘financially impossible’ 

“It shouldn’t depend on how much money Ohioans have in their pocket to be able to enjoy access to public records,” Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the ACLU of Ohio, said.

Daniels said the ACLU of Ohio has grave concerns about the new law, which “sets a bad precedent” and will impede access to records. He added that many police agencies will likely charge the max for records, and it will become “financially impossible” for smaller news organizations to access footage.

Body camera footage is important for the public to access because it sheds light on sometimes hotly-contested moments in which police and witnesses disagree on events, such as when officers fire their guns or are killed in the line of duty.

On the other hand, compiling the footage is expensive and time-consuming for police agencies to produce. Some portions of the videos must be redacted to comply with state laws, including limiting images of uncharged suspects and crime victims.  Many police agencies receive large volumes of requests; the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office fielded 400-500 requests for videos last year, spokeswoman Tracy Whited said.

The law allows agencies to recoup pay for employees who redact and produce the videos, as well as video storage fees, redaction software costs, and other expenses.

Ohio police departments say body cam footage review takes time, money 

Grove City adopted its new policy on June 13, according to a copy provided to the Dispatch. The Grove City Police Department will charge a flat $10 base fee per video record to cover costs of redaction software and video storage, with maximum fees capped at $75 per hour of footage and $750 per video.

The requester must pay the estimated fee upfront before Grove City will produce the records. For “certain critical incidents,” the Grove City police chief may choose to release footage at no cost, according to the policy.

The Reynoldsburg Police Department’s policy, adopted March 12, says it will release footage of any incident in which an officer fires a gun without charge. Other videos cost up to $75 per hour or up to $750 per request.

Requesters must pay a $75 deposit to the Reynoldsburg police before the department will begin redacting the footage.

The Whitehall Division of Police states in its fee schedule that video footage costs $75 per hour or $1.25 per minute, with a maximum fee of $750 per request.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, and police in Columbus, Gahanna, Hilliard, Dublin, New Albany, Grandview Heights and Upper Arlington stated that they have not made any changes to their fee schedules. Several of those agencies said they are still reviewing the new law.

Whited said body camera footage requests make up the bulk of the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office records department’s workload and have caused a significant backlog, leading the sheriff’s office to consider outsourcing some of the work to a third party. 

But hiring a private company would be expensive, and the sheriff’s office would prefer to keep doing the work “in-house,” Whited added.

Whited said the unit often watches videos three times: once to check for visuals that need to be redacted, a second time to review the audio, and a third time to ensure nothing was missed. That means a half-hour of footage could take over an hour and a half to edit. 

In other cases, a less complex 15-minute video might take about 20 minutes to redact one segment of footage. Most of the videos are about 30-45 minutes long.

Currently, the sheriff’s office has software that can track objects in footage that need to be redacted, like a piece of paper with a social security number or a child’s face. Sometimes, for unknown reasons, the tracking fails, and staff must redact frame by frame, Whited said.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The proposals to overturn legislation overhauling higher education, eliminate property taxes and end qualified immunity will not be on the November ballot, despite advocates trying to get the question to Ohio voters.

Public education advocates have fallen short 50,000 signatures of the needed 250,000 to put a referendum on the Ohio ballot, Youngstown State University Professor Dr. Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich said. She was aiming to repeal Senate Bill 1, a controversial college overhaul bill.

The effort was led by a small grassroots organization made up of mainly Youngstown State professors like Jackson Leftwich. The group had no money, no backing from statewide or national education groups or paid canvassers — which she said was a problem.

Typically, successful coalitions submit hundreds of thousands more signatures, because oftentimes they are invalid. When Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, the group putting an amendment on the ballot to protect abortion, IVF and contraception, they submitted 300,000 more signatures than needed as cushion room. The group needed around 415,000, submitted 710,000 and ended with about 500,000 valid.

“It shouldn’t take millions of dollars to fight [for] democracy,” she said. “It shouldn’t take millions of dollars for consultants and lawyers for average voting citizens to say, ‘Hey, this is an unjust bill.’”

State Sen. Jerry Cirino, the top Republican on the influential Finance Committee, introduced the legislation.

“It provides for a policy to be established for what I call intellectual diversity, which is very important,” Cirino said. “It means openness to all various thoughts about various issues, which is the opposite of indoctrination — indoctrination is when you expose students to only one train of thought, so a monolithic thought environment. That is not good for students.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signs controversial college overhaul bill banning DEI

This massive bill focuses on what the Republican calls “free speech,” banning public universities in Ohio from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, having “bias” in the classroom, and limiting how “controversial topics” can and can’t be taught. Eliminating DEI would mean no diversity offices, training, or scholarships.

“I believe that will benefit students greatly and produce better students who know how to think and analyze and come to their own conclusions,” he added.

Students and professors from across the state have continued to argue that there is nothing wrong with their education, and they are furious that lawmakers are trying to interrupt their classes.

Ohio House bans DEI, passes education overhaul bill

This is one of the most protested-against bills in recent Ohio history. There were roughly 1,500 people who submitted opponent testimony against S.B. 1, and there were about 30 who submitted in support. Which is why Amanda Fehlbaum, a YSU professor, was shocked when no larger organizations “stepped up” to help them, she said.

The group raised $45,000 in six weeks and collected the signatures without any paid assistance, which was very challenging, Fehlbaum added, emphasizing that larger groups said that a referendum would be “too expensive,” she said.

Cirino told us Thursday that he isn’t surprised that the effort failed, because he said the bill is good policy.

“I think their biggest problem was that this was a group of disgruntled faculty members, mostly from Youngstown State, who are satisfied with the status quo in higher education,” he said. “They couldn’t be more detached from reality in terms of what needs to be done to make Ohio’s Higher Ed the very best we can be.”

But the S.B. 1 repeal wasn’t the only “everyday” group that couldn’t get on the ballot.

The Citizens for Property Tax Reform didn’t submit the signatures they gathered.

“It’s such a huge undertaking,” organizer Beth Blackmarr said Thursday.

Blackmarr helped create a coalition of homeowners in Cuyahoga County, hoping to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would eliminate property taxes.

Ohio citizens working to get proposal on ballot to abolish property taxes

Her team, Citizens for Property Tax Reform, knew they weren’t near the 415,000 they needed. She didn’t have an estimate of how many they collected, nor how much money they raised.

“As naive as we are, we may have underestimated, just a little bit, how big the response was really going to be,” she said. “That’s been quite rewarding, so we’ve asked everybody to keep on trucking and keep going.”

Despite both being grassroots, her situation is different from Jackson Leftwich’s for two main reasons: constitutional amendment proposals can be pushed back to future elections, and she told us a month ago that her proposal didn’t even have to reach the ballot.

“Hopefully, what legislators will do is counter with some legislation of their own,” she told me in May.

And it has worked.

“I’m hoping this does help to push us,” State Rep. David Thomas (R-Jefferson) said when I asked him about the tax amendment.

Thomas leads property tax relief discussions in the House and said that he and the other members heard Blackmarr. Since her amendment, lawmakers have been proposing more property tax relief bills and have passed several in the budget.

“This is a win-win for Ohio,” Blackmarr said.

Strategy has to come into play when getting an issue proposed statewide, she added.

“Is this indicative of the challenges that regular people face when trying to access the ballot?” I asked the professors.

“Ohio makes it as difficult as possible,” YSU’s Education Association President Mark Vopat said, detailing all of the work that must be done to go through the extensive collection process. “I believe that the state has made it as onerous as possible for individual citizens like us, — we’re doing this as a voluntary effort — to actually get some sort of referendum passed.”

For all ballot proposals, campaigns need valid signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

For referendums, the total signatures must be 6% of the total votes cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. This makes the number about 248,092 valid signatures.

For initiated statutes, the total signatures must be 3% of the total vote cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. This makes the number about 124,046 valid signatures.

For constitutional amendments, the total signatures must be 10% of the total vote cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. This makes the number about 413,487 valid signatures.

There have been efforts to make this harder, though.

Republican leaders in Columbus are floating the idea of attempting to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution, a proposal that was defeated in 2023 by Ohioans across the political spectrum.

Another fight over majority rule in Ohio? Republican leaders float the idea.

Issue 1 in 2023 would have taken away majority rule in Ohio. The proposed constitutional amendment would have raised the threshold for constitutional amendments to pass from 50%+1, a simple majority, to 60%. It was defeated 57-43%.

The following year, 2024, the Senate GOP moved to increase the amount of counties campaigns must collect from and put more bureaucratic layers on advocates. They wanted to require all groups rallying for a cause that is receiving donations and spending money to register as a political action committee (PAC). This means that groups would have to file disclosures with the government, and it could make it more difficult to collect signatures to get a proposal on a township ballot.

OH House agrees to compromise on Biden ballot fix if ‘anti-democratic’ Senate provisions taken out of bill

Other challenges campaigns can face deal with the political offices they must go through.

Ohio activists are starting to gather signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would end qualified immunity — a protection for police and other government officials that prevents citizens from suing them.

State law prevents government officials from being held liable for civil damages unless the victim can prove that the officer violated their constitutional rights, which can be an uphill battle, advocates say.

The Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity has been battling Attorney General Dave Yost to get their summary language approved so that they can collect signatures. He has rejected it eight times, and recently, in short, courts have required him to allow them to move forward.

From their approval, they would have only had two months at most to collect signatures. Although initially hopeful for November, their team told us Thursday that they are now aiming for 2026.

But when it comes to S.B. 1, Jackson Leftwich said this isn’t the end for them, either.

“If we got this on the ballot, we would have overturned it,” she said.

The group didn’t specify if and how they would try again, or just rely on the larger groups in future years.

Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.

Ohio cities with marijuana dispensaries won’t receive tax money until lawmakers agree on changes to Issue 2, which voters approved in 2023

• Ohio is withholding tax revenue from cities with marijuana dispensaries until state lawmakers agree on cannabis and hemp regulations.
• Local governments express frustration over the withheld funds, while state officials claim they lack the constitutional authority to release the money without a specific appropriation.
• The debate over marijuana and hemp regulation will continue in the fall.

Ohio will continue to withhold money from cities with marijuana dispensaries after Republican efforts to change cannabis and hemp laws came up empty.

The two-year budget approved by the House and Senate maintains current funding for municipalities, which is 36% of the tax revenue from adult-use cannabis sales. But lawmakers won’t release that money until they reach an agreement on rules for marijuana and intoxicating hemp products.

Republicans hoped to have a deal on marijuana before the Legislature’s summer break, but it didn’t happen − punting the issue to later this year. Local leaders say that puts them in the difficult spot of trying to fund services without money they were promised.

“What they’re saying is if we can take your lunch money, we will,” said David Kubicki, chairman of Columbia Township Trustees.

Ohio lawmakers reach impasse on marijuana, hemp

As approved by voters in 2023, Issue 2 divides marijuana revenue between local communities, a social equity program, substance use research and administrative costs. The budget keeps local funding in place and directs the rest to Ohio’s general bank account.

Republicans pledged early on to dismantle the social equity program, which aimed to diversify the industry and right the wrongs of cannabis prohibition. State regulators have allowed the program to languish amid uncertainty about its future.

But that’s not the only part of Issue 2 lawmakers want to change.

The House and Senate spent months negotiating over Senate Bill 56, which would revise Issue 2 and govern gray market cannabis such as delta-8. The latest version regulates the gifting of home-grown cannabis, allows up to 400 dispensaries and permits smoking only at private residences and outdoor concert venues.

“We need to specify that they can have more dispensaries, for example, rather than a tightly locked number,” Rep. Jamie Callender, R-Concord, said. “The only way we’re going to drive the price down to be more competitive with other states is to have more dispensaries.”