House Passes State Budget with Key Ag Provisions, Including H2Ohio Cuts and Pesticide Law Updates

The House passed the state operating budget (House Bill 96) on Wednesday, April 9 by a 60-39 vote with Rep. Levi Dean(R-Xenia), Rep. Ron Ferguson (R-Wintersville), Rep. Jennifer Gross (R-West Chester), Rep. Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill), and Rep. Michelle Teska (R-Centerville) joining Democrats in opposition.  The House’s version of the budget is $91.5 billion in mostly state General Revenue Fund appropriations (“GRF”) and $202.7 billion in all funds over the biennium. The last biennium budget, as enacted, provided $86.1 billion in GRF and $190.7 in all funds spending. This bill will now go to the Senate and we will continue to monitor their progress.

H2Ohio

The House decreased H2Ohio funding for the Ohio Department of Agriculture from the Governor’s proposed $60,607,500 for FY 26 and $60,662,000 for FY 27 to $33.7 million for each year.  Decreases to H2Ohio were also made for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Pesticide

Ohio has delegation authority to implement and enforce the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (“FIFRA”) through the Ohio Department of Agriculture (“ODA”) in Chapter 921 of the Revised Code. In 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“U.S. EPA”) adopted amendments to the federal code of regulation for FIFRA’s pesticide certification that required states to make changes in their laws if they wanted to retain their delegation authority. States originally had until March 4, 2020, to come into compliance but that deadline was extended to 2023 because of the pandemic. 

Among the most substantial change in federal rule was the definition of “use” to include pre-application activities involving mixing and loading the pesticide and other activities, including, but not limited to:

• Transporting or storing pesticide containers that have been opened,
• Cleaning equipment, and disposing of excess pesticides, spray mix, equipment wash waters, pesticide containers, and other pesticide-containing materials.

ODA’s compliance plan to conform with the federal rule change was approved by U.S. EPA Region 5 in 2023.  The new definition of “use” for restricted use pesticides, among some other changes to Ohio’s pesticide laws, was part of the Governor’s introduced budget. However, the needed language for Ohio’s pesticide law was stripped from the budget when the House Finance Committee adopted a substitute budget bill. An amendment restoring the language was adopted by the committee several days later and is again part of the budget that has been passed by the House and is now being deliberated in the Ohio Senate.

Pesticide Registration Fee

The pesticide registration and inspection fee for ODA was increased in the budget from $150 to $250. ODA has stated that this fee increase is still comparable, if not lower, than our surrounding states.

Hemp

The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp for cultivation and processing allowing states to create their own programs or defaulting to the USDA for administration of hemp licensure. In 2019, the Ohio General Assembly passed a bill signed by Governor DeWine into law that established the license for hemp cultivation and processing in ODA.  From that time, our state has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of farmers who are cultivating hemp.  As a result, the budget bill has granted the ODA director the discretion to transfer the monitoring and regulation of hemp cultivation back to the USDA, while retaining the license for hemp processing.