ASHLAND — A county commissioner, a state politician, a police officer, and a local trustee walk into a meeting room.
This is not a setup for a bad joke. It’s a scene from Ashland’s Amish Buggy Committee, a group of state and local officials that came together in Jackson Township in the 1990s to pursue a single goal: change state laws so that Amish buggies have to display slow-moving vehicle signs.
Former Jackson Township Trustee Carl “Ross” Oehling, now 79, started the committee after years of living in Amish country.
“I used to tell our kids when they were growing up, soon as they started to drive. I said, ‘watch for the buggies’,” he said.
Joining Oehling in his legislative crusade were then-county commissioner Dick Myers, state rep. Gene Byers, along with a number of officers from the Ashland County Sheriff’s office and Ohio State Highway Patrol. The group was not a collection of “Amish bashers,” as Oehling put it, they just wanted to improve road safety, he said.
The group met once a month and took multiple trips to the statehouse to speak in support of a bill that would require buggies to display a slow-moving vehicle sign.
The first time they went, 10 members packed into two cars and made the drive to Columbus. Upon their arrival at the statehouse, the state capitol’s rotunda was already filled with the bill’s opponents.
“We got in there and there were Amish all the way around there, and (they had) their babies. They came up to testify against it,” Oehling said.
After the buggy committee testified before the lawmakers, Oehling got the impression they were unfamiliar with the Amish and “probably didn’t even know a horse.”
The lawmakers kept adding more safety requirements for the buggies to the bill, straying further from the committee’s goal.
Ultimately, the bill’s additional safety measures killed it, Oehling said.
“They (were) putting too much on them. If we just got that slow-moving vehicle sign, that’s a plus,” he said.
With the bill’s failure, the committee’s goal was put firmly out of reach. So the group stopped meeting. The county-wide coalition was no more.
“Well, we, we didn’t really accomplish anything,” Oehling said.
While the committee’s efforts fell short in the 1990s, the Ohio General Assembly did pass a law requiring buggies to display a slow-moving vehicle sign in 2009.
Recently, Gov. Mike DeWine signed a new law requiring buggies to display flashing lights, sparking defiance in Ashland’s local Swartzentruber clan.
“I hope that they stick to this law. I don’t know how they got it passed, but it’s great,” Oehling said.
