By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent WAYNE COUNTY, Ohio — Gov. Ted Strickland has signed Ohio’s House Bill 9 (HB 9), also known as the “fast tractor bill,” into effect.
A group of Wayne County farmers, members of a Farm Bureau committee, worked for seven years to write that bill and get it passed, according to committee member Scott Myers, who owns a high-speed tractor.
Fast tractors travel up to 45 mph, have disc brakes and feature an anti-locking brake system (ABS). They range from 185-250 horsepower, said Myers.
“There are 50 or 60 high-speed tractors in this county,” he said. “The law here in Ohio didn’t cover those tractors. The old SMV law didn’t allow for any piece of farm equipment to go over 25 miles per hour.”
Another committee member, Roger Baker, was instrumental in starting the campaign after an accident involving one of his tractors and a semi truck convinced him tractors should move faster on the road.
“The seeds were planted eight years ago,” Baker said. “But the momentum didn’t start until a couple of years ago. It’s grassroots in action. We saw it through to the end and were glad to have it signed into law today,” said Baker at the bill’s signing.
John Fitzpatrick, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s (OFBF) organization director for Wayne, Ashland and Medina counties, worked with the farmers.
“Due to northeast Ohio’s topography, as well as a lot of residential development, we have farmers who, by economics, have had to grow beyond the old historic 80-acre single family farm,” Fitzpatrick said. “They end up either buying or leasing farms.”
That meant more farmers driving further on the road. When high-speed tractors were introduced, some of the farmers bought them. They found it safer to travel on the roadways if they were able to approximate the speed of standard traffic, Fitzpatrick said.
Because the tractors were agricultural equipment, they had to display the SMV logo.
“Ohio law specifies that if you’re showing an SMV logo, you can’t exceed 25 mph,” Fitzpatrick said. “In some areas we had friendly acceptance by some of the local law enforcement. But there were others who properly enforced the law.”
Farm Bureau is a grassroots organization, so the farmers had to convince the membership that this was a policy that it should be working on. “That policy passed at an annual meeting in 2000,” Fitzpatrick said. “From there we started having meetings about the best way to propose changing the law.”
OFBF attorney Larry Gearhardt advised the group. In 2002 they asked Ohio Rep. Jim Carmichael (R-Wooster), who eventually sponsored the bill, to look at it.
“From there we drafted legislation,” Fitzpatrick said. “After we drafted legislation, we found out that that process is not as simple as it looks. The minute you draft a law and you think you’re in the correct section of the Ohio Revised Code, you find out that our laws are so complicated that you may need to change the code in this section, but by doing that, you also end up changing the code in probably three or four other sections.”
The committee, comprised of Jon Orr, Earl Jentes, Bob Slicker, Kurt Steiner, Baker and Myers, stuck with it. Initially introduced in 2006, the legislation did not make it through last year’s General Assembly. Reintroduced in 2007, it passed both the House and the Senate without a single dissenting vote.
“These new standards will also help lessen the traffic burden on rural roadways while ensuring the safety of all traveling Ohio roads,” Strickland said at the signing.
This farm news was published in the Aug. 15, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
