Crescent-News.com - Ohio 'kids are still at risk'

COLUMBUS (AP) -- Another camp season is passing by without the state having the authority to enforce background checks on employees at residential camps across Ohio.

A bill that would add teeth to enforcement provisions in current law stalled when the state legislature broke for the summer in June without passing it.

Bill sponsor state Sen. Steve Stivers, a Republican who is running for Congress to replace U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce, said in late April he hoped he could pass the bill before the start of summer camp season.

It's failure to pass has become fodder for election-year politics. The Women's Caucus of the Ohio Democratic Party sent a letter to Stivers earlier this month telling him, "Because of your failure to act, Columbus kids are still at risk."

But Stivers says progress on the bill was stopped by difficulties in defining different types of camp employees and few working days for a busy legislative agenda in an election year. Negotiations on the bill have involved the camp industry, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, children's advocates and other lawmakers. Stivers hopes to get the bill passed once lawmakers return after the November election.

"I actually don't control the entire process," Stivers said, responding to claims that he should be blamed for the slowdown. "I want to try to work with everyone who cares about this to get this done."

Background checks at both residential and day camps are mandated by law. Camps must ask the state's Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to do background checks on employees who have lived in Ohio for at least five years, according to state law. For workers who have lived in Ohio less than five years, checks must be done through the FBI.

Enforcing those laws has been difficult.

Stivers first started working on the issue of background checks for camp employees in 2004. A bill he introduced that later became part of separate legislation signed by former Gov. Bob Taft enabled the Department of Job and Family Services to enforce background checks at day camps. The department is still trying to improve its enforcement of checks at day camps by instituting a system to levy and collect fines, after a survey of the camps by the department showed a large number failed to comply with the law.

Cases of abuse by a volunteer counselor last summer at Scioto Youth Camp, a residential camp about 50 miles southeast of Columbus, revealed that the department did not have the authority to enforce the background check provisions at residential camps. It also showed that the law needed to be clarified so that background checks would also be required for volunteers.

Timothy Stephen Keil was charged and later convicted of molesting two young boys at the Scioto camp. Keil had been sentenced in Pennsylvania in 1990 to four years probation on misdemeanor charges of indecent assault and corruption of a minor.

Stivers said last July that he would fix the law.

The stalled bill would enable checks at residential camps to be enforced, and would establish that the same checks that are performed on regular employees must also be performed on volunteers. Defining volunteers was also a challenge when the bill was being drafted.

"Background checks are just one piece in the overall effort to keep children safe, but it's a piece that, with the technology that's available out there, it can be done relatively easily and quickly," said department spokesman Dennis Evans. "It's a vital screening tool to start out with."

Dennis Elliott, the Ohio executive for the American Camp Association, said the new bill leaves untouched the question of volunteers at day camps, which present many of the same opportunities for abuse that a residential camp would.

Elliott, however, defended Stivers' work on the bill.

"I felt like Sen. Stivers was very interested in trying to help and improve the safety for children," he said. "He just ran into so many questions and concerns from other members of the General Assembly and local constituent groups that it stalled."