For public university professors in Ohio, the year 2025 was dominated by three words: Senate Bill 1 (SB1).

Among other things, S.B. 1 created a mechanism to fire tenured professors who exhibit political bias in the classroom, and it included a list of “controversial subjects” that would need to be taught differently than other topics.

As a professor myself, it was far easier in 2025 to count the committee meetings that didn’t mention SB1, compared to the ones that did.

This summer marks a year since S.B. 1 went into effect. So far no professors have been fired yet. But what casual observers may not realize is that while S.B. 1 was being implemented the legislature continued to brainstorm ideas for new restrictions on higher ed.

During the legislative session this spring we finally got a glimpse of what that might entail.

In February, the “Enact the S.B. 1 Compliance Supplemental Appropriation Act” was introduced as Ohio House Bill 698 (HB 698).

The word to notice in that title is “Appropriation” which of course means money.

After describing many pages of new diversity, equity and inclusion related paperwork for university administrators, the bill outlines a mechanism for public colleges and universities to lose out on funds they would normally receive from the state of Ohio — something called the “state share of instruction”.

These are funds that public colleges and universities receive based on how many students choose to enroll, and how effective the institution is at educating and graduating them.

H.B. 698 proposes an additional process that ties an unspecified percentage of those funds to a to-be-determined anti-DEI evaluation process run by an unspecified member of the Ohio Department of Higher Education.

The outcome of this process could ultimately lead to cuts ranging from millions of dollars per year to tens or potentially over a hundred million dollars per year for larger campuses like Ohio State University and Ohio University at a time when federal research funds are under threat, and when universities are facing other budget issues, including the rising cost of living and healthcare.

In May, the Ohio House committee on Workforce and Higher Education hosted the first opposition hearing for H.B. 698.

For most of the witness testimony it was a natural opportunity to relitigate S.B. 1.

Some academic majors that were underenrolled have been eliminated as a result of the bill. The few public colleges with faculty unions no longer have the right to strike even though many other types of unions can strike in Ohio, including the unions for life-and-death essential workers like nurses.

Other witnesses discussed how OSU and other colleges have “overcomplied” with SB1 by inventing rules that do not appear in the bill, like when then-president Ted Carter overturned decades of precedent and banned students from chalking sidewalks at OSU — a ban that remains in effect.

I ended up being the last witness to testify against H.B. 698 at the hearing.

I used my three minutes to point out that cuts to the state share of instruction will affect payroll — including staff and instructors in every department — which crosses a new line in the sand.

That was my central point: keep your hands off the salaries of tens of thousands of hard working faculty, staff and graduate students in public colleges across our state, many of whom have little to do with the culture war issues the legislature is trying to fight.

I am not the best person to predict — either from the time remaining in the legislative calendar or the number of votes — whether H.B. 698 will end up on the governor’s desk.

But even if H.B. 698 doesn’t make it to the finish line, the bill says a lot about what the future might be for legislative oversight of higher education in Ohio.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.