MOUNT VERNON — Serving as the lower house of the Ohio State legislature, the Ohio House of Representatives is made up of 99 members. Each elected member serves a term of two years and can serve a limit of four consecutive terms. As of the 2010 census, each House member represents an average of 116,530 residents in their district. Of the current 99 representatives, 59 are members of the Republican Party with 40 being in the Democratic Party.
According to the Ohio House of Representatives’ official website, the role of Ohio Representatives is to listen to the concerns of their constituents and speak for them. They develop solutions to the needs of the districts through legislative action and work together, balancing the best interests of each state district.
To be a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, one is required to have resided in his or her respective district for one year preceding the election. The current salary for state representatives is $60,584 per year, which is up from $58,933 in 2007.
Mount Vernon resident Thom Collier served as a state representative from 2000 to 2008. Collier views the office of state representative as having three primary purposes. The first purposes is legislation. He described this as creating legislation of your own, debating proposed legislation or bills, passing or defeating legislation, “and all other aspects of what it takes to craft and fine tune legislation.”