I-TEAM: Local lawmaker introduces bill requiring seat belts on school buses

SPRINGFIELD — For more than two months, the News Center 7 I-Team has been following the work of the state’s new School Bus Safety Task Force.

They’ve taken a holistic look at school bus safety, not just focusing on whether Ohio should become the latest state to require seatbelts on school buses.

Ohio is one of 42 states that do not require them.

Wednesday, the I-Team’s John Bedell learned State Rep. Bernie Willis, a Republican from Springfield, has introduced House Bill 279.

It would change state law to require seat belts to be installed on all school buses within five years of becoming law.

“The Legislative Service Commission took a kind of holistic view and said this is somewhere in the $280 million range, up to potentially $380 million range. And so the first feedback we got is ‘that is a really large number.’ And my feedback to them was, ‘I was there in the Northwestern School district that day when Aiden Clark’s life was taken. And I don’t think that anyone that was there that day would say that that was too much,’” Willis said.

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The I-Team asked Willis about how the task force’s recommendations would impact the fate of his bill.

“Directly. I would say all the way up to the point where if the task force said ‘everything’s fine, we don’t need to do anything’ we’re going to accept their expert opinion on that and that bill would go away,” Willis said.

Willis said the bill was designed to be simple and amenable so that the task force’s recommendations could be incorporated into it.

“Our goal really was to have something laying there in wait so that when those recommendations come in, they’re easily to amend in and have something that we can move out and turn into law,” he said.

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As for who is footing the bill, Willis said the burden would not go on school districts.

“We’re not levying this on the school district. So again, it’s a place where we have some room as the task force comes in with recommendations. We also have people on the financial side looking at what are all the other means by which we can pay for those, but definitely not to put it on school districts… We definitely don’t want to put that as an unfunded mandate. " he said.

Right now the bill is listed as being in the House committee

“It’s been quiet. we’ve had some interested parties that have come to committee and made some statements. but again, our goal was definitely not to take away any of the thunder of the task force, because we know that’s where a lot of the heavy lifting is going to happen. They have the best experts in all the fields that we need to have present in that,” Willis said.

>> I-TEAM: Changes coming for school buses - Thursday at 5pm on News Center 7

Willis said he will be at the task force’s final public meeting Thursday in Columbus.

John Bedell leads the I-Team Investigation Thursday on News Center 7 beginning at 5 PM into the changes that could come from Ohio’s school bus safety task force to help keep kids safe on the road.

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