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After more than six month’s worth of diffcult advocacy work, the ORA successfully placed an amendment in Ohio’s latest two-year budget, HB 153, that effectively prohibits local political subdivisions from passing laws that discriminate against restaurants.

For years, the ORA has been concerned with local politicians who desire to mandate a wide variety of laws that target our industry. Their efforts – well-intentioned or otherwise – have the effect of making it diffcult for restaurants to grow their businesses and create jobs.

We saw this same situation earlier with a patchwork of anti-smoking laws that cropped up across Ohio. The fact that no two were exactly alike posed serious competitive challenges for our members depending on their business’ location.

We feared that a recent ordinance enacted in Cleveland that banned the use of trans fats and mandated costly recordkeeping for all operators might be adopted in other Ohio cities. The good news for our Cleveland members is that our amendment trumps the local ordinance. From this point forward, the Ohio Department of Agriculture will be responsible for managing issues such as these should they arise. In the end, it will make it much easier for the ORA to monitor and participate in the creation of regulations that impact our industry.

To be clear, we simply argued for a process to examine issues such as this and others at the state level, not community by community. Additionally, we saw the trans fat issue addressed in the marketplace several years ago with the vast majority of operators voluntarily switching to other cooking oils at the public’s urging. The Cleveland City Council’s ordinance

was actually more about show and less about substance since this was “last year’s” issue.

Another important point to make is the extent it is appropriate for politicians to dictate how you will run your business. We have already seen this concern manifest itself in California and elsewhere with community bans on quickservice restaurants; mandated allergen labeling; bans on offering toys with meals; bans on using certain ingredients in the preparation of food and many more. I doubt that few Ohioans want to see a “nanny state” dictating our choices in restaurants.

It’s fair to say that in many cases local governments are concerned about the obesity challenge and choose to target our industry as the culprit. Bans and mandates such as those described above are a one-size-fts-all solution that fails to address the larger issue of parental responsibility and the lack of exercise for kids and our society, in general. There is a more appropriate time and place to have this discussion.

Your association worked hard to achieve this victory. I hope it gives you a better sense of the value we deliver daily to you as a member. We take what we do quite seriously and thank you for your support. Without it, legislative and regulatory successes of this magnitude would be much more diffcult to achieve.

by Geoff Hetrick President & CEO, Ohio Restaurant Association

ORA Achieves Major Victory for Ohio’s Foodservice Industry

Protecting Your Bottom Line

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