In what Today in Ohio podcast hosts call a textbook example of political sleaze, Ohio Republican lawmakers quietly inserted a significant pay raise for one of House Speaker Matt Huffman’s top allies into the state’s transportation budget bill.
“This is sleazy, totally sleazy,” said Chris Quinn, introducing the topic on Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer’s news discussion podcast. The amendment increases Rep. Phil Plummer’s salary, who is taking on a newly created leadership position known as House Assistant Pro Tempore.
The raise came through an omnibus amendment accepted by the Senate Transportation Committee—raising immediate questions about why such a matter was included in a transportation funding bill rather than being debated transparently.
The podcast’s host, Quinn, stated, “And here we are, Matt Huffman, king of the House, playing with his Senate friends to take care of his buddy. “That is not what government is supposed to be about,” Quinn stated.
The timing is especially suspicious given recent history. Last year, legislators defeated a broader effort to adjust pay rates across local government, arguing that such changes deserved a thorough public debate rather than being rushed through. Yet here they are, doing exactly what they claimed to oppose: slipping pay increases through without scrutiny.
“It shouldn’t be done in such a shady, underhanded way,” Quinn stated.
The pay raise scheme did not end with Plummer. Johnston noted that Huffman has significantly expanded the House Majority Whip position, which was previously held by a single representative, to include four lawmakers—all Republicans. “So they’ll all receive the enhanced whip salary of $74,000 instead of $63,000.
This pattern of creating new leadership positions with higher salaries appears to be intended to bypass the normal process for legislative pay increases while rewarding political allies.
The podcast hosts attribute this brazen governance style to the unchecked power of Republican supermajorities in both chambers of Ohio’s legislature. With veto-proof majorities, the leadership faces few meaningful checks on their authority, allowing for maneuvers that would otherwise be met with strong opposition.
Quinn predicted that such tactics would eventually elicit a strong public response: “The voters will finally get out their pitchforks and torches. They are out of control, abusing citizens with shady practices like this.”
The pay raise provision still faces one potential impediment to becoming law. Because it is included in a budget bill, Governor Mike DeWine has the authority to use his line-item veto to strike it—though whether he will do so remains to be seen.
For Quinn and the other podcast hosts, the episode is a troubling example of how supermajorities can undermine democratic principles by avoiding transparency and public debate on taxpayer-funded issues.
“You want to talk about raises, talk about raises,” Quinn said. “Don’t shove it in underhanded into a bill and hope nobody catches it.”
