Gregory Weston's Conversation with Senator Rhine McLin (D-Dayton)
September 21, 1997
Rhine
McLin did not intend to go into politics, however just before her father,
State Representative C. J. McLin, died, he requested that she fill out
the rest of his term. She had been a teacher and a mortician. But she liked
her new job as state rep, and when there was a vacancy in her state senate
district in 1994 she ran to fill it. Campaigning for the state senate was
a different experience for her, because her senate district was less Democratic
and more diverse then her old house district. The district included nearly
all of Dayton, Trotwood, Jefferson Township, Huber Heights, and most of
Miami County. She beat Republican Pam Miller Howard very narrowly, 52 to
48. Her district has 15 percent minorities, the rest "melanin impoverished,"
half of whom are form the Appalachian regions.
Senator McLin went through Dayton Public Schools, then went to Parsons Collage in Iowa. There she got a BA in Sociology. Afterwards she went to Xavier University in Cincinnati, and then went to law school for two years. She also has an Associate’s Degree in Mortuary Science.
Senator McLin is on the Ways & Means, Human Services, Energy/Environment/Natural Resources, and Agriculture Committees, plus several nonstanding committees. But the issue she is really concerned about is crime & punishment. She serves as the chairman of the unofficial Correctional Institution Inspection Committee. She thinks that prisons are too expensive, and that many people in Ohio’s prisons would be better served doing community service. She thinks that there should be term limits on the state parole board. She told me that it is a big waste of money to house many of Ohio’s 45,000 prison inmates, three-forths of whom are there because of non-violent drug related offenses. I asked her if she though that legalizing drugs could be a solution to that problem. She responded that certainly marijuana should be legalized for medicinal uses. How about recreational uses? I asked. She was obviously uncomfortable with the issue, and showed what a good politician she is by deflecting it and asking me what I thought of the issue. I replied that if there is no victim, as with recreational use of marijuana, there is no real crime. She gave me an ambiguous sign of agreement.
One law Senator McLin is strongly in favor of is the domestic violence bill. It expands the definition of a family member to include common-law marriages and siblings. It also requires that the police arrest someone every time there is a domestic violence report to the police. A law she is against is Governor Voinovich’s worker’s compensation reform. She objects to the fact that it does not allow carpal-tunnel syndrome to be called a work-related injury. She thinks that carpal-tunnel syndrome is the "work-related injury of the information age." She also told me that other provisions of the reform favor employers over employees.
I asked her if she had written any laws while she’s been in the Senate. She had. An anti-child abuse law she told me about allowed parents who fake a kidnapping like Jolynn Ritchie, Teresa Noble, and Susan Smith, to be charged with the crime of inciting panic. It also increases the time before a child molester can have his record expunged from seven to ten years. That led me to ask what she thought of Megan’s law. She told me she favored the concept of community notification but disliked another provision of it which forced some prisoners to go counseling. What was happening was that prisoners with one sexual offence a long time ago were being forced to go to counseling after a second felony, even if the felony was not a sexual crime.