The late Bob Netzley, an Ohio legislator whose lawn-mowing conservatism was both forward-looking and puckish: Thomas …

The late Robert E. Netzley, an Ohio House member for a record 40 years, was a Republican conservative from north of Dayton who walked his talk often as not, with a smile.

But Netzley's merry eyes could become gimlets when, as a veteran Controlling Board member, he confronted spenders. Among the watchdogs of Ohio's treasury, Bob Netzley was a purebred.

Netzley (1922-2010), of Laura, in Miami County, a decorated Navy veteran ofWorld War II, a Miami University graduate, was elected to the Ohio House in 1960. He served until Ohio's lunatic legislative term limits forced his retirement at the end of 2000. For decades, Netzley also chaired the Miami County Republican organization.

Last week, at a Capitol Square ceremony led by Netzley's close friend and conservative disciple, House Speaker William Batchelder, a Medina Republican, a Statehouse conference room (along the ground floor's north corridor) was named in honor of Netzley.

Netzley, for manyof his years in the House, had a work space the word "office" can't be stretched that far in the southeast corner of the Statehouse Annex's (now Senate Building's) ground floor. Heaps of clippings, legislative documents and budget spreadsheets grew like stalagmites on and around Netzley's desk.

For any question about Ohio's budget, or taxes, or the history of Controlling Board decisions, Netzley had the answer somewhere. What's more, he could find it.

As bystanders knew, Netzley could inspire fear when, at Controlling Board meetings, he cross-examined executive branch aides about their agencies' spending requests. But Bob Netzley also inspired respect. That was because he knew his stuff. That was also because, though Netzley was a committed partisan, he, unlike too many people on both sides of today's political divide, wasn't vicious. Netzley believed in checks and balances, not chokeholds and sucker punches.

To call Netzley a prophet might be gilding the cornstalk (the emblem of rural legislators' "Cornstalk Brigade"). But Netzley was a conservative who looked not just backward, but also forward. In 1965, for instance, when the General Assembly, with Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes' approval, passed a 100-word bill creating Ohio's Medicaid program, Netzley cast one of just three "no" votes in the entire legislature.

Then, Netzley was nearly alone in his concerns about Medicaid. But Netzley seemed to have a hunch about the future: Today, in the 60-member House Republican caucus, it'd be tough to get anywhere nearly enough "yeses" to match the 1965 Medicaid vote. That was proven by last year's fight over Medicaid expansion, finally accomplished when in one of the Statehouse's bigger political ironies expansion backers resorted to the very Controlling Boardwhere Netzley had been inquisitor-in-chief.

Netzley was a fierce opponent of Ohio's income tax, sought by Democratic Gov. John J. Gilligan. The income tax became law in December 1971 only because enough Republicans in the Republican-controlled General Assembly voted for it. Netzley wasn't one of them, and as late as the mid-1990s could still grouse about what he was too polite to call what he thought it was: A betrayal.

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The late Bob Netzley, an Ohio legislator whose lawn-mowing conservatism was both forward-looking and puckish: Thomas ...