Ohio Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act

           136TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF OHIO
                      Regular Session 2025-2026

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                       HOUSE/SENATE BILL ____

BY __________ (Introduced by request)

CONCERNING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF STATE PROGRAMS FOR FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE, PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE, AND EDUCATION MODERNIZATION TO ENSURE THE MATERIAL SECURITY, PHYSIOLOGICAL WELL-BEING, AND DEVELOPMENTAL MATURITY OF ALL OHIO RESIDENTS, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ENACTING NEW SECTIONS OF THE OHIO REVISED CODE IN TITLES 9, 33, AND 51, MAKING APPROPRIATIONS, AND PROVIDING EFFECTIVE DATES.

                          A BILL

To enact sections 901.90 to 901.99, 3301.90 to 3301.99, 3333.40 to 3333.49, 5101.90 to 5101.99, and 122.90 to 122.99 of the Revised Code to create the Ohio Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act.

LEGISLATIVE ROUTING NOTE

Ohio has a citizen-initiated statute process. Under Article II, Section 1a of the Ohio Constitution, citizens may propose laws by petition. The process is an indirect initiative: petitioners first file a proposed law with the General Assembly, which has four months to act. If the legislature rejects or fails to act on the proposal, petitioners may collect additional signatures to place it on the ballot.

INITIATED STATUTE PROCESS (Article II, Section 1a, Ohio Constitution; ORC Chapter 3519):

    Step 1 — INITIAL FILING: A summary of the proposed law and 1,000
    valid signatures are submitted to the Ohio Attorney General for
    review and certification of the petition language.

    Step 2 — ATTORNEY GENERAL CERTIFICATION: The Attorney General
    certifies that the petition is a fair and truthful statement of the
    proposed law.

    Step 3 — INITIAL SIGNATURE COLLECTION: Petitioners collect
    signatures equal to three percent (3%) of the total votes cast in
    the most recent gubernatorial election. Based on the November 8,
    2022 gubernatorial election total of approximately 4,201,368 votes,
    the initial signature requirement is approximately 126,041 valid
    signatures, from at least forty-four (44) of Ohio's eighty-eight
    (88) counties, with no fewer than one and one-half percent (1.5%)
    of the county's electorate from each county counted.

    Step 4 — LEGISLATIVE SUBMISSION: Certified petitions are filed with
    the General Assembly, which has four (4) months to act on the
    proposed statute.

    Step 5 — SUPPLEMENTARY PETITION (if legislature rejects or fails to
    act): Petitioners collect additional signatures equal to three
    percent (3%) of the total votes cast in the most recent
    gubernatorial election (an additional approximately 126,041
    signatures), bringing the total to approximately 252,082 valid
    signatures.

    Step 6 — BALLOT PLACEMENT: The Ohio Secretary of State places the
    proposed statute on the ballot at the next general election.

ALTERNATIVELY, this bill may be introduced through the General Assembly by any member of the Ohio House of Representatives or the Ohio Senate.

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT: Upon introduction, this bill would likely be assigned to:

    - House Agriculture and Conservation Committee or Senate Agriculture
      and Natural Resources Committee (Division I)
    - House Health Provider Services Committee or Senate Health
      Committee (Division II)
    - House Primary and Secondary Education Committee and House Higher
      Education Committee, or Senate Education Committee (Division III)

Because the bill spans multiple committees' jurisdictions, it may be referred to a select or joint committee, or the Finance Committee.

FISCAL NOTE: The Ohio Legislative Service Commission (LSC) prepares fiscal notes and local impact statements for all bills with budgetary impact per Ohio House and Senate rules.

FLOOR VOTE: Simple majority in each chamber (50 of 99 Representatives; 17 of 33 Senators). Governor's signature or veto override (three-fifths of each chamber, per Article II, Section 16, Ohio Constitution).

SESSION: The 136th General Assembly (2025-2026). Ohio legislative sessions are biennial, convening on the first Monday of January in odd-numbered years.

PRECEDENT: Ohio citizens demonstrated their willingness and capacity to use the initiative process in November 2023, when Issue 1 — a citizen- initiated constitutional amendment on reproductive rights — passed with 56.8% of the vote, despite a prior attempt by the legislature (August 2023 Issue 1) to raise the amendment threshold to 60%. Ohio's initiative muscle is active and proven.

HISTORY: The original version of this proposal was first developed in 2016 through the Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first non-partisan political trade school in the United States, registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools (DPOS). The original proposal was drafted for the State of Colorado and was sidelined during the 2016-2017 legislative cycle. The present Ohio version incorporates updated research from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work providing the evidentiary foundation for this legislation. Ohio is the fifth state adaptation, following Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, and California.

LEGISLATIVE DECLARATION

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio:

Section 1. Legislative findings and declaration.

    (A) The General Assembly hereby finds, determines, and declares
    that:

    FINDINGS RELATING TO OHIO'S INDUSTRIAL HISTORY AND PRODUCTIVE
    CAPACITY:

    (1) On September 19, 1977 — a date remembered in Ohio as "Black
    Monday" — the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company abruptly shuttered
    the Campbell Works steel mill in Youngstown, Ohio. Within five (5)
    years, approximately fifty thousand (50,000) jobs disappeared from
    the Mahoning Valley. Black Monday marked the beginning of
    deindustrialization in Ohio and gave birth to the term "Rust Belt."
    Youngstown's population, which once exceeded 170,000, has fallen
    below 65,000. This event is not historical trivia — it is the lived
    origin of the economic conditions this bill addresses;

    (2) Ohio was the industrial heartland of the United States. Akron
    was the rubber and tire capital of the world. Cleveland was a center
    of steel production and automobile manufacturing. Toledo was the
    glass capital of the world. Dayton was the birthplace of aviation
    and home to NCR, Delco, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
    Youngstown produced the steel that built America. Cincinnati was
    headquarters to Procter & Gamble and a center of machine tool
    manufacturing. The deindustrialization of Ohio is not an abstraction
    — it is the factory proof made flesh;

    (3) The United States has approximately two hundred ninety-three
    thousand (293,000) manufacturing establishments. Studies indicate
    that ten thousand to fifteen thousand (10,000 to 15,000) facilities
    would suffice for universal material abundance for three hundred
    thirty-five million (335,000,000) Americans, representing nineteen
    and one-half to twenty-nine and three-tenths times (19.5x to 29.3x)
    overcapacity. United States manufacturing currently operates at
    approximately seventy-seven percent (77%) capacity utilization — the
    remaining twenty-three percent (23%) is idle not due to supply
    constraints but due to demand constraints: people cannot afford what
    factories could produce (Federal Reserve; Cooper, "The Mathematics
    of Abundance," 2025). Ohio KNOWS this — Ohio LOST thousands of
    these establishments and watched its communities collapse as a
    direct result;

    (4) The economist Thorstein Veblen documented in "The Engineers and
    the Price System" (1921) the deliberate restriction of production
    capacity by business interests to maintain prices above production
    cost, a practice he termed the "conscious withdrawal of efficiency."
    Veblen's "sabotage" thesis describes exactly what happened to Ohio
    manufacturing: productive capacity was deliberately idled or
    offshored not because it failed but because finance decided it was
    more profitable elsewhere. The General Motors Lordstown Assembly
    plant, which closed in 2019 after fifty-three (53) years of
    operation, is the most recent Ohio example of Veblen's thesis in
    action;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO THE STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVE FOR STATE
    ACTION:

    (a0) Twenty-two federal government shutdowns since 1976,
    including a forty-three-day shutdown in 2025. The House frozen
    at 435 since 1929; 762,000 constituents per representative —
    worst in the OECD. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) shifted SNAP
    administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five percent
    state share. The federal machine is structurally overloaded
    (Cooper, Paper VII, 2026). This state has the authority to act
    under its own legislative power rather than await federal
    action that structural overload prevents;

    (a1) DENIAL IS NO LONGER NEUTRAL. Inaction by a legislature
    possessing the authority, capacity, and documented need to act
    constitutes active harm. The burden rests on denial;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO FOOD AND COMMODITY INSECURITY:

    (5) Ohio generated approximately fifteen and four-tenths billion
    dollars ($15,400,000,000) in agricultural cash receipts in 2022,
    with the highest-valued commodities being soybeans, corn, chicken
    eggs, dairy products, and hogs (USDA National Agricultural
    Statistics Service; Ohio Legislative Service Commission, August
    2024). Ohio ranks among the top ten (10) states nationally for
    agricultural output. Food insecurity in Ohio is a distribution
    problem, not a production problem;

    (6) According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) and the
    United States Department of Agriculture, thirteen percent (13%) of
    Ohio households experience food insecurity. Approximately one
    million four hundred eight thousand six hundred ninety-three
    (1,408,693) Ohioans receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
    Program (SNAP) benefits. In fiscal year 2024, SNAP brought
    approximately three billion one hundred seventy-seven million
    dollars ($3,177,571,738) to the state of Ohio (FRAC, SNAP State
    Fact Sheet, February 2025);

    (7) The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research
    Service Food Dollar Series establishes that the farm share of the
    United States food dollar is twenty-four and three-tenths cents
    (24.3 cents), with the remaining seventy-five and seven-tenths cents
    (75.7 cents) allocated to processing, transportation, wholesale,
    retail, and food service markup. Total United States food-at-home
    spending is approximately one trillion ninety-one billion dollars
    ($1,091,000,000,000); production cost is approximately two hundred
    thirteen billion to three hundred twenty-seven billion dollars
    ($213,000,000,000 to $327,000,000,000). The difference of
    approximately four hundred ninety-six billion dollars
    ($496,000,000,000) represents markup above production cost;

    (8) The cost to close the food insecurity gap for all forty-seven
    and nine-tenths million (47,900,000) food-insecure Americans is
    approximately thirty-two billion dollars ($32,000,000,000), which
    represents six and one-half percent (6.5%) of the four hundred
    ninety-six billion dollar ($496,000,000,000) markup between
    production cost and retail price. "The cost to feed them all is
    6.5% of what we spend on permission" (Cooper, "The Mathematics of
    Abundance," 2025);

    (9) The United States military commissary system, established by the
    Military Commissary Act of 1867 and now codified at 10 U.S.C.
    Section 2484, has operated at-cost food distribution continuously
    for one hundred fifty-seven (157) years, delivering savings of
    seventeen to twenty-five percent (17% to 25%) below civilian retail
    prices domestically (CONUS), and up to sixty-four percent (64%)
    overseas, to approximately two million eight hundred thousand
    (2,800,000) authorized users through two hundred thirty-six (236)
    stores worldwide. This program is funded by ALL federal taxpayers
    but available only to military families and retirees;

    (10) THE PROOF MODEL IS ALREADY OPERATING ON OHIO SOIL. The Defense
    Commissary Agency operates a commissary at Wright-Patterson Air
    Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Ohio taxpayers fund the federal
    commissary system through their income taxes. Ohio military families
    at Wright-Patterson shop at below-retail prices in a government-
    operated grocery system. Ohio civilians — including the civilians of
    Dayton and Montgomery County who suffered the highest per-capita
    overdose death rate in the nation — are denied access to the system
    their taxes fund. This is not an argument — it is a verdict;

    (11) The geographer Albrecht Penck calculated in 1925 that Earth's
    carrying capacity was eight billion (8,000,000,000) people using
    1920s agricultural technology. The current world population is
    approximately eight billion. Since agricultural technology has
    advanced substantially beyond 1920s capacity, scarcity of food is
    not a physical constraint but a distribution and policy constraint
    (Penck, 1925; Cohen, "How Many People Can the Earth Support?,"
    1995);

    (12) In 2024 alone, forty-five (45) major retail bankruptcies
    occurred in the United States, an eighty percent (80%) increase over
    the twenty-five (25) in 2023, with fifteen thousand (15,000) store
    closures projected for 2025. Fifty-four million (54,000,000)
    Americans live in food deserts. Neighborhoods redlined in the 1930s
    are one hundred seven to one hundred forty-nine percent (107% to
    149%) more likely to be food deserts today. Cleveland, Cincinnati,
    and Columbus all have documented food desert zones. The commercial
    retail grocery model is collapsing as a distribution system (Cooper,
    "The Mathematics of Abundance," 2025);

    (13) The economist John Kenneth Galbraith described in "The Affluent
    Society" (1958) the condition of "private opulence and public
    squalor" — the coexistence of enormous private productive capacity
    with inadequate public provision of basic needs. Nowhere is this
    condition more visible than in Ohio, where thirty-two (32) of
    eighty-eight (88) counties are designated Appalachian by the
    Appalachian Regional Commission, with persistent poverty, food
    deserts, healthcare deserts, and education deserts concentrated in
    the same geography — while the state's agricultural and
    manufacturing output vastly exceeds its population's material
    requirements;

    (14) NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, designs and
    tests propulsion systems for interplanetary spacecraft. Ohio builds
    technology for missions to Mars and the outer solar system while
    thirty-two (32) Appalachian Ohio counties lack consistent access to
    food and healthcare. The theft documented in "Stolen Futures"
    (Cooper, 2025) — that the current generation has been robbed not of
    money but of possibility space — is visible from orbit in Ohio's
    geography;

    (14a) Augustus Caesar formalized grain distribution to 200,000
    Romans as infrastructure. He was a tyrant; even he understood
    hungry citizens are broken infrastructure. The annona operated
    400+ years. Nerva expanded it with child nutrition on bronze
    (CIL XI 1147). Mabu Co sustained abundance 4,400 years ago.
    Azolla sequestered enough CO2 to flip Earth's climate 49 MYA
    (Brinkhuis et al., Nature 2006). Three records: commissary
    157 years, annona 400+ years, biology across geologic time;

    (14b) This is not government ownership of the means of
    production. Division I contracts with private producers at
    cost plus five percent. Currency survives;

    (14c) The retail collapse and autonomous freight are already
    eliminating distribution jobs. The bill catches displaced
    workers. At-cost eliminates markup, not labor;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO PUBLIC HEALTH, HIERARCHY, AND THE OPIOID
    CRISIS:

    (15) Sir Michael Marmot's Whitehall Studies, commencing in 1967 and
    continuing to the present with ten thousand three hundred eight
    (10,308) subjects, established that among British civil servants
    with universal healthcare, full employment, and no absolute poverty,
    the lowest employment grade experienced three times (3x) the
    mortality rate of the highest grade. Standard risk factors —
    smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure — explained less than forty
    percent (40%) of the mortality gradient. The hierarchy itself,
    independent of absolute material deprivation, produces lethal health
    outcomes;

    (16) Dr. Robert Sapolsky's thirty-year study of wild baboon
    populations in the Serengeti demonstrated that subordinate social
    position produces chronically elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis,
    immune suppression, and cognitive impairment. When a tuberculosis
    outbreak eliminated the most aggressive males from a troop,
    hierarchy collapsed, and subordinates' cortisol levels normalized —
    demonstrating that the health damage was caused by the hierarchy,
    not by inherent individual biology (Sapolsky, "Why Zebras Don't Get
    Ulcers," 1994; "Behave," 2017);

    (17) Dr. Carol Shively's thirty-year study of female macaques at
    Wake Forest University demonstrated that subordinate social status
    directly causes visceral fat accumulation, atherosclerosis, and
    coronary artery disease, with cingulate cortex serotonin identified
    as the neurological nexus linking depression to cardiovascular
    disease (Shively, 2009; 2014);

    (18) Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in
    Physiology or Medicine, demonstrated that chronic psychological
    stress shortens telomeres — the protective caps on chromosomal DNA —
    accelerating cellular aging. Poverty and subordination age human
    beings at the molecular level (Blackburn & Epel, "The Telomere
    Effect," 2017);

    (19) THE OHIO OPIOID CRISIS IS THE BIOLOGICAL PROOF. Dayton and
    Montgomery County, Ohio, recorded the highest per-capita overdose
    death rate in the United States. The opioid crisis in Ohio is not a
    drug problem. It is a hierarchy problem. Deindustrialization
    collapsed entire Ohio communities from middle-class status to
    subordinate status in a single generation. Marmot's Whitehall
    Studies predict exactly what happened — elevated cortisol,
    cardiovascular disease, depression, shortened telomeres. Sapolsky's
    baboon research explains the mechanism: when dominant status is
    stripped from an organism, its biology deteriorates through
    measurable physiological pathways. The opioid was the self-
    medication for a biological crisis caused by economic subordination.
    This proposal addresses ROOT CAUSE. Every overdose death in Ohio is
    evidence for this bill;

    (20) These findings collectively establish that poverty, food
    insecurity, deindustrialization, and social hierarchy are not merely
    economic conditions but medical conditions with documented
    physiological pathways that produce measurable morbidity and
    mortality. Food and commodity assurance programs therefore constitute
    public health interventions with quantifiable healthcare cost
    reduction potential;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:

    (21) Neuroscientific research establishes that the human prefrontal
    cortex — responsible for judgment, impulse control, long-term
    planning, and executive function — does not fully mature until
    approximately age twenty-five (25). The current compulsory education
    system in Ohio, which requires attendance through age eighteen (18)
    under Section 3321.01 of the Revised Code, terminates structured
    developmental support during seven (7) years of critical
    neurological maturation;

    (22) Erik Erikson's model of psychosocial development (1959)
    identifies eight stages of human development, each requiring the
    resolution of a core developmental crisis. The stages from birth
    through age twenty-five encompass Trust vs. Mistrust (ages 0-1),
    Autonomy vs. Shame (ages 1-3), Initiative vs. Guilt (ages 3-6),
    Industry vs. Inferiority (ages 6-12), Identity vs. Role Confusion
    (ages 12-18), and Intimacy vs. Isolation (ages 18-25). Failure to
    provide structured developmental support through these stages
    results in incomplete psychosocial maturation;

    (23) Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (1934) establishes
    that learning occurs in the gap between what an individual can
    accomplish independently and what the individual can accomplish with
    structured guidance. This theoretical framework requires calibrated
    challenge — neither too easy nor too difficult — as the mechanism of
    cognitive growth, and provides the scientific basis for structured
    learning trials as an assessment methodology;

    (24) Robert Bjork's research on "desirable difficulties" (1994)
    demonstrates that learning conditions that feel harder produce
    superior retention and transfer of knowledge. Struggle is not a side
    effect of learning but its mechanism;

    (25) Suniya Luthar's research on the culture of affluence (2003,
    National Institutes of Health PMC1950124) demonstrates that affluent
    children exhibit elevated rates of substance abuse, anxiety, and
    depression compared to inner-city peers. The mechanism is
    achievement pressure without genuine challenge, isolation from
    consequence, and absence of meaningful struggle. MATERIAL ABUNDANCE
    WITHOUT DEVELOPMENTAL INFRASTRUCTURE PRODUCES PATHOLOGY. Education
    reform is therefore a prerequisite — not a supplement — to the food
    and commodity assurance programs established in this act. WITHOUT
    DIVISION III, DIVISIONS I AND II FAIL;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO THE UNIVERSE 25 EXPERIMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL
    INFRASTRUCTURE:

    (26) The General Assembly further finds that material provision
    without social and educational infrastructure produces behavioral
    collapse, as demonstrated by John B. Calhoun's Universe 25
    experiment (1968-1973), in which a mouse population provided with
    unlimited material resources — food, water, nesting material, and
    physical space — but no social architecture, no education, no
    healthcare, no conflict resolution, no governance, and no
    intergenerational knowledge transfer, experienced complete
    behavioral disintegration within four generations. Calhoun provided
    mice with exactly four things and called it paradise. That is not
    abundance — that is inventory;

    (27) Calhoun's own subsequent analysis attributed the collapse not
    to material abundance but to the absence of meaningful social roles
    and institutional scaffolding, a phenomenon he termed "behavioral
    sink." The social structure failed because it was never designed.
    The experiment does not prove abundance fails — it proves that
    reducing a complex social species to its caloric inputs and calling
    it paradise is bad science;

    (28) Humans are not mice. Homo sapiens co-evolved with technology
    — fire, tools, clothing, language, tribal structure. A human infant
    provided with unlimited food but no social contact does not thrive;
    it dies or develops permanent cognitive damage, as documented in
    isolation studies and cases of feral children. Even the earliest
    human communities possessed institutional infrastructure that
    Calhoun's mice never had. The depth of human technological
    dependency is illustrated by a simple question: how many engineers
    and how many years would it take to build a single automobile from
    raw materials with no prior automobiles existing? Human systems are
    not luxuries bolted onto biology — they ARE the biology at this
    point;

    (29) The United States military commissary system (established
    1867, 10 U.S.C. Section 2484) has provided material abundance to
    military communities for over one hundred fifty-seven (157) years
    without behavioral collapse, precisely because it operates within
    an institutional framework that includes education, healthcare,
    housing, family support services, mental health services, chaplain
    services, structured social roles through rank, peer accountability,
    and retirement systems. The military is Universe 25 with
    institutional infrastructure. And it works. Wright-Patterson Air
    Force Base in Dayton, Ohio — where this model operates on Ohio
    soil — is the living proof;

    (30) Luthar's research (2003, 2005), cited in finding (25) above,
    confirms that in human populations, material abundance without
    developmental structure produces higher rates of substance abuse,
    anxiety, and social disconnection than material deprivation —
    establishing that the pathology observed in Universe 25 is
    reproducible in humans when institutional infrastructure is absent;

    (31) The education modernization provisions of Division III of this
    act constitute the institutional infrastructure necessary to
    prevent the behavioral pathology that material abundance produces
    in its absence. Without Division III, Divisions I and II of this
    act risk replicating the conditions of Calhoun's experiment at
    state scale. Ohio's deindustrialization already demonstrated what
    happens when institutional infrastructure collapses — the opioid
    crisis was Ohio's behavioral sink. This proposal rebuilds the
    infrastructure;

    (32) Arnold van Gennep (1909) and Victor Turner (1969) documented
    that virtually every human society creates structured ordeals for
    adolescents — physical trials, endurance tests, isolation periods,
    community service — as developmental infrastructure. Societies that
    abandoned these structures did not produce freer human beings; they
    produced developmentally incomplete ones;

    (33) Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis demonstrated in "Schooling in
    Capitalist America" (1976) that the education system reproduces
    class structure. However, the appropriate diagnostic framework,
    described in the Historical Apoplexy literature as the "targeting
    error" (Cooper, Paper V, 2025), recognizes that socioeconomic
    stratification permeates every institution — housing, diet,
    language, healthcare, employment, criminal justice — simultaneously.
    The gradient itself is the mechanism, and it kills at every level.
    Teachers are not responsible for society-wide stratification. The
    ocean is stratified; the cup is not;

    (34) E.D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" (1987) established that core
    knowledge must reside in the individual's own mind — the Analogue
    Knowledge Base — not merely be accessible through external
    references, as the prerequisite for democratic participation;

    (35) PIAAC 2023 (OECD, December 2024): 28% of US adults at
    the lowest literacy level (up from 19% in 2017). 34% lowest
    numeracy. 32% lowest problem-solving. Declining in 19 of 26
    OECD countries. Compound-competency: ~1 in 6,700 American
    adults meet a basic standard (2 sports, 2 languages, 12th-grade
    subjects, 2 instruments) the German Gymnasium certifies as
    ordinary;

    ADAM SMITH AND WHOLE-HUMAN EDUCATION. Smith
    wrote in Wealth of Nations Book V Ch I Pt III Art II:

        "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few
        simple operations... generally becomes as stupid and
        ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
        become."

    His remedy: compulsory state-funded education. Smith was a
    polymath (Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, seventeen years
    before Wealth of Nations). To cite Smith for markets while
    opposing what Smith demanded is to invoke an authority one
    has not read;

    (36) The Vitruvian Quotient framework (Cooper, 2025-2026) models
    human intelligence as eight measurable domains mapped to
    neurological substrates: Knowledge Quotient (KQ, temporal and
    parietal cortices), Reasoning Quotient (RQ, prefrontal and parietal
    cortices), Emotional Quotient (EQ, limbic system and amygdala),
    Language Quotient (LQ, Broca's and Wernicke's areas), Creative
    Quotient (CQ, default mode network), Social Quotient (SQ, mirror
    neuron system and temporoparietal junction), Motor Quotient (MQ,
    motor cortex and cerebellum), and Biological Quotient (BQ, autonomic
    and hormonal regulation). VQ = KQ + RQ + EQ + LQ + CQ + SQ + MQ +
    BQ. Contextual modifiers (XQ) and emergent Trustworthiness (TQ =
    EQ+SQ+RQ interdependency) complete the model. VQ is the formalized
    scientific foundation for the Greek concept of paideia;

    THE MEYERHOFF PROOF. Meyerhoff Scholars (UMBC, Hrabowski
    1988): ~5x STEM PhD rate among 1,400+ alumni vs. matched
    comparisons. Division III at one program's scale. This act
    scales the demonstrated mechanism statewide;

    (37) Kent State University, located in Kent, Ohio, is the site where
    on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed students
    and wounded nine others during a peaceful protest. Ohio knows what
    happens when the state turns on its own citizens. That memory is in
    the state's DNA. This proposal emphasizes structural reform through
    democratic processes, not confrontation;

    (38) Ohio's existing higher education infrastructure includes The
    Ohio State University (one of the largest research universities in
    the world, with approximately sixty-one thousand (61,000) students
    on the Columbus campus), the University of Cincinnati, Case Western
    Reserve University, Ohio University, Kent State University, Bowling
    Green State University, Miami University, the University of Toledo,
    University of Akron, Wright State University, Cleveland State
    University, Youngstown State University, and Shawnee State
    University, among others. The Ohio Association of Community Colleges
    (OACC) represents twenty-three (23) community and technical
    colleges. Ohio Technical Centers provide adult career-technical
    education. The Ohio Department of Higher Education (formerly the
    Ohio Board of Regents) oversees the state's public higher education
    system. The College Credit Plus (CCP) program enables high school
    students to earn college credit at no cost — seventy-one thousand
    five hundred seventy-seven (71,577) students participated in fall
    2025. The educational infrastructure for Division III already
    exists;

    (39) Ohio's biennial budget cycle — one of only four states that
    budgets on a two-year cycle — actually facilitates implementation
    planning. A full pilot cycle can be built into a single budget
    window. Ohio's total state budget for the FY 2024-2025 biennium is
    approximately ninety-three and four-tenths billion dollars
    ($93,400,000,000), with a state-only General Revenue Fund (GRF) of
    approximately twenty-eight and one-tenth billion dollars
    ($28,100,000,000) in FY 2024 and twenty-nine and four-tenths
    billion dollars ($29,400,000,000) in FY 2025 (Ohio Office of Budget
    and Management);

    (40) "As Ohio goes, so goes the nation." Ohio has been the
    bellwether state in American politics for over a century. No
    Republican has won the presidency without Ohio since 1960. If this
    proposal passes in Ohio, it becomes a national model. Ohio has the
    political gravity to shift the Overton window;

    (41) The Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first
    non-partisan political trade school in the United States, registered
    with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of
    Private Occupational Schools (DPOS), developed the original version
    of this proposal for the State of Colorado in 2016. SMRF was founded
    by Imran Cooper with the express purpose of training citizens in
    legislative drafting, policy analysis, and democratic participation.
    The present Ohio legislation represents the fifth state adaptation,
    incorporating research from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper,
    2025-2026).

    (B) The General Assembly further finds that the programs established
    in this act — food and commodity assurance, public health
    intervention, and education modernization — are interdependent
    components of a single policy framework. Material abundance without
    developmental infrastructure produces the affluence pathology
    documented by Luthar. Education without material security cannot
    function because students cannot learn while food-insecure. And
    neither program can achieve its purpose without addressing the
    physiological damage that hierarchy, deindustrialization, and poverty
    inflict on the human body. These three divisions must be enacted
    together, and each is necessary for the others to succeed.

DIVISION I — OHIO FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT

SECTION 2. Sections 901.90 to 901.99 of the Revised Code are enacted to read:

ARTICLE 1 Ohio Food Assurance Program

901.90 Short title.

    Sections 901.90 to 901.99 of the Revised Code shall be known and
    may be cited as the "Ohio Food Assurance Act."

901.91 Definitions.

    As used in sections 901.90 to 901.99 of the Revised Code:

    (A) "At-cost pricing" means the price of a food product calculated
    as the sum of the direct production cost paid to the producer or
    supplier plus a facility surcharge not to exceed five per cent (5%)
    of the production cost, with no additional profit margin, markup, or
    marketing cost applied.

    (B) "Department" means the Ohio Department of Agriculture.

    (C) "Director" means the director of the Ohio Department of
    Agriculture.

    (D) "Food assurance center" means a state-operated facility
    established under sections 901.90 to 901.99 of the Revised Code for
    the purpose of distributing food products to Ohio residents at
    at-cost pricing.

    (E) "Facility surcharge" means a charge not to exceed five per cent
    (5%) of the production cost of a food product, applied to cover the
    operational costs of a food assurance center, including but not
    limited to facility maintenance, labor, utilities, and
    transportation.

    (F) "Production cost" means the cost of producing a food product as
    determined by the department based on wholesale acquisition price
    from producers, cooperatives, or the most proximate point in the
    supply chain to the point of original production.

    (G) "Resource library" means the distribution system established
    under Division III of this act in which goods are distributed
    according to need and tiered by permanence.

901.92 Ohio food assurance program — creation — purpose.

    (A) There is hereby created in the Department of Agriculture the
    Ohio food assurance program.

    (B) The purpose of the program is to establish state-operated food
    distribution centers where all Ohio residents may purchase the full
    range of grocery products at at-cost pricing, modeled on the United
    States military commissary system as authorized by 10 U.S.C.
    Section 2484 and as operated by the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA)
    continuously since 1867 — including the commissary already operating
    at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

    (C) The program shall:

        (1) Establish and operate food assurance centers throughout the
        state of Ohio;

        (2) Purchase food products directly from Ohio producers,
        cooperatives, and wholesale suppliers at or near production
        cost;

        (3) Sell food products to Ohio residents at at-cost pricing as
        defined in section 901.91 of the Revised Code;

        (4) Prioritize procurement from Ohio farms and ranches to the
        maximum extent practicable;

        (5) Accept all forms of payment including but not limited to
        cash, electronic benefit transfer (EBT), Supplemental Nutrition
        Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and Women, Infants, and
        Children (WIC) vouchers;

        (6) Operate without profit motive, with all revenue above
        operational costs reinvested in program expansion.

901.93 Pilot food assurance centers — locations — timeline.

    (A) Within two (2) years of the effective date of this section, the
    department shall establish not fewer than eight (8) pilot food
    assurance centers in the following regions:

        (1) Two (2) centers in the Columbus metropolitan area;

        (2) One (1) center in the Cleveland metropolitan area,
        prioritizing neighborhoods identified as food deserts by the
        USDA Food Access Research Atlas;

        (3) One (1) center in the Cincinnati metropolitan area;

        (4) One (1) center in the Dayton metropolitan area — within
        fifteen (15) miles of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, so that
        the civilian at-cost model operates alongside the military
        commissary model that has served Dayton's military families for
        decades while Dayton's civilian families experienced the highest
        overdose death rate in the nation;

        (5) One (1) center in the Toledo metropolitan area;

        (6) One (1) center in the Youngstown-Warren metropolitan area —
        because the community that paid the highest price for
        deindustrialization deserves the first demonstration that the
        state will not abandon it again;

        (7) One (1) center in the Appalachian Ohio region, including
        but not limited to Athens, Marietta, Zanesville, or
        Chillicothe, serving the thirty-two (32) Appalachian Ohio
        counties where food deserts, healthcare deserts, and education
        deserts converge in the same geography.

    (B) Within five (5) years of the effective date of this section, the
    department shall expand the program to not fewer than twenty-five
    (25) food assurance centers statewide, with at least one center per
    congressional district and at least five (5) centers serving rural
    Appalachian communities as defined by the Appalachian Regional
    Commission.

    (C) The department shall prioritize locations with the highest rates
    of food insecurity, the greatest distances to existing grocery
    retail, and the largest populations residing in food deserts.

901.94 Ohio-first procurement.

    (A) Not less than fifty per cent (50%) of all food products sold
    through food assurance centers shall be sourced from Ohio producers,
    cooperatives, or processors within three (3) years of the effective
    date of this section.

    (B) The Ohio-first procurement target shall increase to seventy
    per cent (70%) within five (5) years of the effective date of this
    section.

    (C) The department shall establish partnerships with the Ohio
    agricultural community to develop direct supply chains between Ohio
    farms and food assurance centers.

901.95 Ohio food assurance fund — creation.

    (A) There is hereby created in the state treasury the Ohio food
    assurance fund.

    (B) The fund shall consist of:

        (1) Appropriations from the General Revenue Fund;

        (2) Revenue from facility surcharges collected by food assurance
        centers;

        (3) Federal grants, reimbursements, and matching funds;

        (4) Gifts, grants, and donations from private sources.

    (C) All money credited to the fund shall be used exclusively for the
    purposes of sections 901.90 to 901.99 of the Revised Code.

901.96 Reporting.

    (A) The department shall submit an annual report to the General
    Assembly, not later than December 31 of each year, detailing:

        (1) The number and location of food assurance centers in
        operation;

        (2) Total food sales volume and average savings compared to
        civilian retail prices;

        (3) The percentage of Ohio-sourced products sold;

        (4) The number of Ohio residents served;

        (5) Financial performance of the food assurance fund;

        (6) Progress toward self-sufficiency through volume surcharges.

SECTION 3. Sections 122.90 to 122.99 of the Revised Code are enacted to read:

ARTICLE 2 Ohio Essential Goods Program

122.90 Ohio essential goods program — creation.

    (A) There is hereby created in the Department of Development the
    Ohio essential goods program.

    (B) The purpose of the program is to produce and distribute clothing,
    household supplies, hygiene products, tools, educational materials,
    and other essential goods at below-retail pricing through
    manufacturing partnerships and direct procurement.

    (C) The program shall leverage Ohio's existing manufacturing
    infrastructure and workforce to produce essential goods within the
    state wherever practicable, rebuilding the productive capacity that
    deindustrialization idled.

122.91 Essential goods categories.

    (A) The program shall distribute goods in the following categories:

        (1) Clothing and footwear;

        (2) Household supplies and cleaning products;

        (3) Hygiene and personal care products;

        (4) Tools and basic equipment;

        (5) Educational materials and school supplies;

        (6) Infant and child care supplies;

        (7) Other categories as determined by the department.

    (B) All goods shall be distributed at pricing not to exceed the
    direct production cost plus a surcharge not to exceed ten per cent
    (10%) of production cost.

122.92 Essential goods fund — creation.

    (A) There is hereby created in the state treasury the Ohio essential
    goods fund.

    (B) The fund shall consist of appropriations from the General
    Revenue Fund, federal grants, surcharge revenue, and private
    donations.

DIVISION II — OHIO PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE ACT

SECTION 4. Sections 5101.90 to 5101.99 of the Revised Code are enacted to read:

5101.90 Public health findings — hierarchy as medical condition.

    (A) The General Assembly finds and declares that food insecurity,
    poverty, deindustrialization, and socioeconomic hierarchy are medical
    conditions with documented physiological pathways, based on:

        (1) The Whitehall Studies (Marmot, 1967-present): Among 10,308
        British civil servants, all employed, all with universal
        healthcare, the lowest employment grade experienced three times
        the mortality of the highest grade. Hierarchy kills independent
        of poverty;

        (2) Primate studies (Sapolsky, 1980-2017): Subordinate social
        position causes chronically elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis,
        immune suppression, and cognitive impairment. When hierarchy
        collapses, biology normalizes;

        (3) Macaque studies (Shively, 1990-2020): Subordinate status
        causes coronary artery disease through serotonin pathway
        disruption;

        (4) Telomere research (Blackburn, 2009 Nobel Prize): Chronic
        stress shortens telomeres — hierarchy literally ages human
        beings at the DNA level;

        (5) The Ohio opioid crisis as case proof: Deindustrialization
        imposed catastrophic status loss on entire Ohio communities in a
        single generation. The biological response — elevated cortisol,
        cardiovascular disease, depression, shortened telomeres — is
        exactly what Marmot, Sapolsky, and Blackburn predict when
        organisms experience involuntary subordination. The opioid was
        the self-medication. This section addresses the disease, not the
        symptom.

5101.91 Designation of food and commodity assurance as public health interventions.

    (A) The food and commodity assurance programs established under
    Division I of this act are hereby designated as public health
    interventions under the jurisdiction of the Ohio Department of
    Health in coordination with the Ohio Department of Agriculture and
    the Ohio Department of Development.

    (B) The Department of Health shall:

        (1) Conduct a baseline healthcare cost assessment within
        communities served by food assurance centers within two (2)
        years of program implementation;

        (2) Measure and report annually to the General Assembly on
        healthcare cost reductions attributable to improved nutrition,
        reduced food insecurity, and reduced hierarchy stress;

        (3) Track longitudinal health outcomes in Appalachian Ohio
        counties and in communities affected by deindustrialization,
        with specific attention to opioid-related morbidity and
        mortality;

        (4) Coordinate with the Ohio Department of Mental Health and
        Addiction Services to assess the relationship between material
        security and substance abuse rates.

5101.92 Appalachian Ohio health equity initiative.

    (A) There is hereby created the Appalachian Ohio Health Equity
    Initiative to address the convergent health, food, and education
    deserts in Ohio's thirty-two (32) Appalachian counties.

    (B) The initiative shall:

        (1) Coordinate food assurance center placement with existing
        health service infrastructure;

        (2) Establish mobile food assurance units for counties with
        populations too sparse for permanent centers;

        (3) Track and report on the Marmot gradient — the measurable
        health differential between communities with and without program
        access — as the primary evidence of program efficacy.

DIVISION III — OHIO EDUCATION MODERNIZATION ACT

This division is the largest division of this act. Without education reform, the abundance program fails. Luthar's research demonstrates that material abundance without developmental structure produces pathology — substance abuse, anxiety, and depression — at rates HIGHER than poverty alone. Division I feeds bodies. Division II heals them. Division III builds the human beings capable of sustaining both.

SECTION 5. Sections 3301.90 to 3301.99 and 3333.40 to 3333.49 of the Revised Code are enacted to read:

ARTICLE 1 Extension of Compulsory Education

3301.90 Extension of compulsory education through age twenty-five.

    (A) Notwithstanding Section 3321.01 of the Revised Code, compulsory
    education in Ohio is hereby extended from age eighteen (18) to age
    twenty-five (25), effective as a phased implementation beginning
    with students entering ninth grade in the 2029-2030 academic year.

    (B) The K-20 education pipeline established under this division
    integrates the K-12 system, Ohio's twenty-three (23) community and
    technical colleges under the Ohio Association of Community Colleges,
    and all public universities under the Ohio Department of Higher
    Education into a single continuous developmental framework.

    (C) The designation "K-20" refers to approximately twenty (20) grade
    levels, with typical average completion at approximately age
    twenty-five (25). K-20 counts grades, not ages. High and low
    performer variation is acknowledged — this is not a rigid age
    cutoff.

    (D) Ohio's existing College Credit Plus (CCP) program, which already
    enables high school students to earn college credit at no cost,
    serves as a bridge mechanism between the K-12 and postsecondary
    segments of the pipeline.

3301.91 Automatic postsecondary admission.

    (A) Upon completing secondary education, every Ohio resident is
    entitled to continue in the K-20 pipeline at a public institution of
    higher education through a placement process administered by the
    Ohio Department of Higher Education.

    (B) The placement process shall replace the competitive application
    model for the purpose of K-20 pipeline enrollment. Students may
    still apply competitively for specific programs, honors tracks, or
    institutions, but no Ohio resident shall be denied continuation in
    the K-20 pipeline.

3301.92 Fully funded in-state tuition.

    (A) All Ohio residents enrolled in the K-20 pipeline shall receive
    fully funded in-state tuition and mandatory fees at all public
    institutions of higher education in Ohio.

    (B) Current in-state tuition: The Ohio State University approximately
    thirteen thousand six hundred forty-one dollars ($13,641) per year
    (2025-2026); University of Cincinnati approximately twelve thousand
    dollars ($12,000) per year; community colleges approximately four
    thousand five hundred to five thousand five hundred dollars ($4,500
    to $5,500) per year (various institutional sources).

    (C) A needs-based living stipend shall be established for students
    enrolled in the K-20 pipeline who are below two hundred per cent
    (200%) of the federal poverty level, funded through the Ohio
    education modernization fund created under section 3333.45 of the
    Revised Code.

    (D) Existing Ohio financial aid programs, including the Ohio College
    Opportunity Grant, Choose Ohio First, and War Orphans Scholarship,
    shall be integrated with K-20 pipeline funding to maximize federal
    matching and avoid duplication.

ARTICLE 2 VQ-Aligned Curriculum

3301.93 Vitruvian Quotient framework.

    (A) The K-20 pipeline shall implement a curriculum aligned with the
    Vitruvian Quotient (VQ) framework (Cooper, 2025-2026), which models
    human intelligence as eight measurable domains:

        (1) Knowledge Quotient (KQ) — temporal and parietal cortices;
        (2) Reasoning Quotient (RQ) — prefrontal and parietal cortices;
        (3) Emotional Quotient (EQ) — limbic system and amygdala;
        (4) Language Quotient (LQ) — Broca's and Wernicke's areas;
        (5) Creative Quotient (CQ) — default mode network;
        (6) Social Quotient (SQ) — mirror neuron system and
            temporoparietal junction;
        (7) Motor Quotient (MQ) — motor cortex and cerebellum;
        (8) Biological Quotient (BQ) — autonomic and hormonal
            regulation.

    (B) VQ = KQ + RQ + EQ + LQ + CQ + SQ + MQ + BQ. Scored without
    ceiling via a compensatory framework where strength in one domain
    offsets deficit in another. Contextual modifiers (XQ) and emergent
    Trustworthiness (TQ = EQ+SQ+RQ interdependency) are tracked but do
    not penalize students.

    (C) The VQ framework is the formalized scientific foundation for the
    Greek concept of paideia — the complete development of a human
    being. It replaces single-metric assessment (GPA, standardized test
    scores) with multi-domain developmental measurement.

3301.94 Developmental stages.

    (A) The K-20 curriculum maps the eight VQ quotients to Erikson's
    psychosocial stages across five developmental stages:

    STAGE ONE: FOUNDATION (Ages 0-6) — Trust, Autonomy, Initiative.
    Primary quotients: BQ, MQ, EQ. Play-based learning. Motor
    development. Attachment security. This stage is served by existing
    early childhood education programs and is included in the framework
    for continuity, not for legislative mandate at this time.

    STAGE TWO: KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION (Ages 6-12) — Industry vs.
    Inferiority. Primary quotients: KQ, LQ, MQ. Core knowledge
    acquisition per Hirsch's cultural literacy framework. The Analogue
    Knowledge Base — knowledge that resides in the student's own mind,
    not merely searchable through external references. Introduction to
    the Great Conversation: students begin tracing intellectual lineage
    in their fields of interest.

    STAGE THREE: IDENTITY FORMATION (Ages 12-18) — Identity vs. Role
    Confusion. Primary quotients: RQ, CQ, SQ. Critical thinking.
    Creative expression. Social negotiation. Structured learning trials
    begin, based on Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (calibrated
    challenge) and Bjork's desirable difficulties (struggle as learning
    mechanism). The hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968) — sharing,
    waiting, conflict resolution — is recognized as genuine pedagogy,
    not institutional control.

    STAGE FOUR: INTEGRATION AND MASTERY (Ages 18-24) — Intimacy vs.
    Isolation. Primary quotients: all eight, with emphasis on RQ, EQ,
    SQ, CQ. University-level work integrating cross-domain competency.
    Structured learning trials increase in complexity. Intellectual
    lineage requirements: every student must trace the chain of
    discovery in their field, engage with primary sources, and
    demonstrate the shared knowledge base necessary for democratic
    participation. This prevents Historical Apoplexy — the loss of
    civilizational memory (Cooper, 2025).

    STAGE FIVE: LEADERSHIP AND TRANSITION (Age ~25) — Citizen readiness.
    All eight quotients assessed at maturity threshold. Capstone
    assessment integrating disciplinary mastery, cross-domain
    competency, and demonstrated capacity for leadership and service.
    Bloom's Taxonomy honored in sequence through the entire pipeline.

3301.95 Structured learning trials.

    (A) Structured learning trials replace passive attendance as the
    primary measure of educational progress in the K-20 pipeline.

    (B) Trials are based on:

        (1) Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development — calibrated
        challenge at the edge of current capability;

        (2) Bjork's desirable difficulties — conditions that feel
        harder produce deeper learning;

        (3) van Gennep (1909) and Turner (1969) rites of passage —
        structured ordeal as developmental infrastructure (separation,
        liminality, incorporation).

    (C) Trials increase in difficulty through the pipeline and are
    scored using a compensatory framework where strength in one quotient
    offsets deficit in another. No student is failed for a single-domain
    weakness if cross-domain competency is demonstrated.

3301.96 Targeting error protection.

    (A) Teachers and educators shall not be held individually
    accountable for student outcomes attributable to structural
    conditions outside the educator's control, including but not limited
    to poverty, food insecurity, housing instability, parental
    incarceration, and community-level deindustrialization.

    (B) This protection is based on the corrected critique established
    in the Historical Apoplexy literature (Cooper, Paper V, 2025):
    "Socioeconomic stratification permeates every institution; the
    gradient itself is the mechanism, and it kills at every level." The
    education system reflects stratification but did not create it.

    (C) Educator accountability shall focus on pedagogical quality,
    student engagement, curriculum delivery, and developmental support
    within the educator's sphere of influence.

ARTICLE 3 Public Service and Resource Library

3333.40 Public service requirement.

    (A) Upon completion of the K-20 education pipeline, all Ohio
    residents who have completed the pipeline are eligible for a public
    service program of two (2) to four (4) years, adjunct to or
    following state university completion.

    (B) Approved public service categories include:

        (1) State or local government service;
        (2) Emergency services (fire, EMS, emergency management);
        (3) Military service;
        (4) Public education service;
        (5) Agricultural and manufacturing service;
        (6) Healthcare service in underserved areas;
        (7) Community volunteer corps;
        (8) Infrastructure and environmental service.

    (C) Military service, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, VISTA, and Ohio
    Civilian Conservation Corps service shall be credited year-for-year
    toward the public service requirement.

    (D) High and low performers may vary from the typical age-25 start
    point. The public service requirement is not a rigid age cutoff.

3333.41 Ohio resource library.

    (A) There is hereby created the Ohio Resource Library, a
    distribution system for goods tiered by permanence, modeled on the
    resource library framework (Fresco, 2007; Cooper, 2025):

        (1) CONSTANT-NEED GOODS (food, consumables): Available to all
        Ohio residents through at-cost food assurance centers. If a
        registered household does not request its approximate monthly
        food allocation (approximately one hundred (100) pounds per
        person per month), the system flags the household for a wellness
        check — not punishment, but care;

        (2) SEMI-PERMANENT GOODS (clothing, household supplies):
        Available through the essential goods program and resource
        library at below-retail pricing. Usage monitoring prevents
        abuse (a citizen cannot request one hundred (100) t-shirts per
        month) but does not restrict reasonable access;

        (3) PERMANENT GOODS (appliances, one home, one vehicle):
        Available to qualifying individuals who have completed both the
        K-20 pipeline and the public service requirement. One home per
        household. One vehicle per licensed driver;

        (4) CURRENCY TIER (luxury, custom, specialty): Currency survives
        for goods not covered by the resource library. The market
        economy continues for all non-essential goods. The resource
        library does not eliminate capitalism; it provides a floor of
        material security below which no qualifying Ohio citizen falls.

    (B) THE UNLOCK MECHANISM: Full resource library access (tiers 1-3)
    is granted upon completion of BOTH:

        (1) The K-20 education pipeline (approximately twenty (20)
        grades, through approximately age twenty-five (25)); AND

        (2) The post-pipeline public service requirement (two (2) to
        four (4) years, adjunct with state university programs).

    Typical full access: approximately age twenty-seven (27) to
    twenty-nine (29).

    (C) Tier 1 (food, constant-need) is available to ALL Ohio residents
    through food assurance centers regardless of pipeline or service
    completion. No Ohio resident goes hungry.

3333.42 Integration with existing infrastructure.

    (A) The K-20 pipeline builds on existing Ohio educational
    infrastructure rather than creating parallel institutions:

        (1) College Credit Plus (CCP) as the bridge mechanism;
        (2) Ohio Transfer Module and Transfer Assurance Guides for
        credit portability;
        (3) Ohio Department of Higher Education coordination;
        (4) OACC community college network;
        (5) Ohio Technical Centers for career-technical pathways.

    (B) Existing Ohio financial aid programs shall be integrated with
    pipeline funding to maximize federal matching opportunities and
    minimize duplication.

GENERAL PROVISIONS

SECTION 6. Appropriation.

    (A) There is hereby appropriated from the General Revenue Fund for
    the biennium beginning July 1, 2027:

    Department of Agriculture (food assurance):       $75,000,000
    Department of Development (essential goods):      $30,000,000
    Department of Health (health assessment/equity):  $10,000,000
    Dept. of Higher Education (K-20 pipeline):       $180,000,000
    Dept. of Admin. Services (public service/
      resource library):                              $20,000,000
    TOTAL BIENNIAL APPROPRIATION:                    $315,000,000

    (B) This total represents approximately 0.54% of Ohio's General
    Revenue Fund of approximately $29.4 billion for fiscal year 2025,
    or approximately 0.34% of Ohio's total state budget of
    approximately $93.4 billion.

    (C) Context: Ohio currently distributes approximately $3.18 billion
    annually in SNAP benefits through commercial retailers, where 75.7
    cents of every food dollar pays for markup rather than food
    production. At-cost pricing delivers approximately four times the
    food value per benefit dollar. The food assurance program is
    designed to achieve operational self-sufficiency within seven (7)
    years through volume surcharges.

    THE FEDERAL SNAP COST-SHIFT. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) increased
    the state share of SNAP administrative costs from fifty percent
    to seventy-five percent, effective October 1, 2026. This state
    currently routes SNAP benefits through commercial retailers
    where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup rather
    than food. At at-cost routing through Division I, approximately
    95 cents of every dollar reaches the recipient as food
    (production cost plus five percent surcharge) — a 3.9-fold
    increase in delivered food value per SNAP dollar that
    independently offsets the federal cost-shift.

    DIVISION I FOOD PROGRAM TARGET. The at-cost food assurance
    program established in Division I, serving Ohio's population of
    approximately 11.8 million residents (Census Bureau, 2026
    estimate), requires approximately $3.65 billion per year at
    production cost ($309 per person per year for a base list of 25
    staple food items at 30 percent of cheapest retail price per USDA
    Food Dollar Series methodology). Against Ohio's General Revenue
    Fund of approximately $45.6 billion (FY2026, Ohio General
    Assembly), this represents approximately 8 percent. Verified
    April 18, 2026 via SearXNG.

    THE FISCAL LOCK. The argument that Ohio "cannot afford" this
    act is refuted by the state's existing expenditure on the less
    efficient version of the same programs while absorbing a federal
    SNAP cost-shift the state did not request. The fiscal question
    is not whether to spend, but whether to continue spending four
    times as much as required to accomplish the same objective.

    CONSTITUTIONAL EDUCATION OBLIGATION. Article VI Section 2
    of the Ohio Constitution requires the General Assembly to
    "make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as... will
    secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools
    throughout the state." DeRolph v. State (1997, 2000, 2001,
    2002) found Ohio's school funding system unconstitutional
    four times. Division III completes this mandate.

SECTION 7. Effective dates.

    (A) Division I (Food and Commodity Assurance): Effective July 1,
    2027. Pilot food assurance centers operational within two (2) years.
    Statewide expansion within five (5) years.

    (B) Division II (Public Health and Welfare): Effective July 1, 2027.
    Baseline healthcare cost assessment within two (2) years.
    Appalachian Ohio Health Equity Initiative operational within one (1)
    year.

    (C) Division III (Education Modernization): K-20 compulsory
    education phased in beginning with students entering ninth grade in
    the 2029-2030 academic year, with the first full cohort completing
    the pipeline in approximately 2036-2037. Fully funded tuition
    phased in over the first two (2) biennia.

    (D) Public Service and Resource Library: Effective July 1, 2032 —
    applies to the first cohort completing the K-20 pipeline.

SECTION 8. Severability.

    If any provision of this act, or the application thereof, is held
    invalid, the remainder of this act and the application of such
    provision to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected
    thereby.

SECTION 9. Emergency clause.

    This act is declared to be an emergency measure necessary for the
    immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety of
    the people of the state of Ohio. The reason for the necessity is
    that food insecurity, the opioid crisis, and the ongoing
    consequences of deindustrialization continue to impose measurable
    physiological harm on Ohio residents, and the programs established
    by this act are urgently needed to address root causes documented
    by sixty (60) years of peer-reviewed research.

REFERENCES

The research and citations in this act are drawn from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work, and the following primary sources:

DIVISION I — FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE: - Penck, A. (1925). Calculation of Earth's carrying capacity at 8B - 10 U.S.C. Section 2484 — Military Commissary Act (1867) - Defense Commissary Agency: 236 stores, 2.8M+ authorized users - Wright-Patterson AFB Commissary, Dayton, Ohio (operational) - USDA ERS Food Dollar Series: farm share 24.3 cents - Cooper (2025), "The Mathematics of Abundance" — Factory Proof, Grocery Proof, Operational Proof (military commissary) - Ohio LSC (2024): Ohio agricultural cash receipts $15.4B (2022) - FRAC (2025): Ohio SNAP $3.18B, 1,408,693 recipients - Galbraith (1958), "The Affluent Society" - Veblen (1899/1921), conspicuous consumption and sabotage thesis - Fresco (2007), Resource Library Model (three tiers)

DIVISION II — PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE: - Marmot, Whitehall Studies (1967-present): hierarchy and mortality - Sapolsky (1994, 2017): baboon studies, cortisol and subordination - Shively (2009, 2014): macaque studies, serotonin and heart disease - Blackburn & Epel (2017): telomere shortening under chronic stress - Cooper (2025), "The Targeting Error" — corrected critique - Ohio opioid crisis data: Montgomery County overdose death rates

DIVISION III — EDUCATION MODERNIZATION: - Erikson (1959): 8 stages of psychosocial development - Vygotsky (1934): Zone of Proximal Development - Bjork (1994): Desirable difficulties - Luthar (2003, 2005): Affluence pathology - Calhoun (1968-1973): Universe 25 experiment — behavioral sink - Cooper (2025): Universe 25 rebuttal — institutional infrastructure - van Gennep (1909) / Turner (1969): Rites of passage - Bowles & Gintis (1976): Schooling in Capitalist America - Jackson (1968): Hidden curriculum - Hirsch (1987): Cultural literacy / Analogue Knowledge Base - Smith (1776): Book V, The Wealth of Nations — compulsory education - Cooper (2025-2026): Vitruvian Quotient (VQ) framework - Cooper (2025): Historical Apoplexy — civilizational memory loss - Cooper (2026): The Structural Overload — Paper VII - Cooper (2026): Venus Prime — Paper VIII - Cooper (2026): The Maturity Void — Paper X - Hrabowski, F.: Meyerhoff Scholars Program, UMBC (1988-present) - Brinkhuis, H. et al. Nature 441 (2006): Azolla Event - CIL XI 1147: Tabula Alimentaria from Veleia — Nerva alimenta - Bloom's Taxonomy (1956): cognitive domain hierarchy

OHIO-SPECIFIC SOURCES: - Ohio OBM: GRF $28.1B FY2024, $29.4B FY2025 - NASBO/Urban Institute: Ohio total expenditures $93.4B FY2025 - Ohio State University: in-state tuition $13,641 (2025-2026) - OACC: 23 community/technical colleges - College Credit Plus: 71,577 participants fall 2025 - Appalachian Regional Commission: 32 of 88 Ohio counties - Black Monday, Youngstown, September 19, 1977 - GM Lordstown Assembly closure, 2019 - Kent State shootings, May 4, 1970 - NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio - Ohio Issue 1 (November 2023): passed 56.8%

END OF BILL

OHIO FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT 136th General Assembly of the State of Ohio

Prepared by: The Amanuensis — theamanuensis.com Originally proposed: 2016 (Cooper, State of Colorado) Ohio adaptation: March 2026

"On September 19, 1977, Ohio learned what it means when the factories close. Every overdose death since has been a data point. Every food desert is a map coordinate. Every Appalachian county without a grocery store is a verdict. The proof model is already operating at Wright- Patterson. The science is sixty years deep. The only thing missing is the vote."

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