COLUMBUS — A Harveysburg resident testified at an Ohio House committee hearing Wednesday on the need for a better way to enforce state group home regulations.

        “I spent literally hours on the phone every day for 10 months trying to find somebody who could enforce these laws,” Michele Cochran said of her efforts to get an unlicensed group home called Teen Reach removed from the northern Warren County village.

        The House Health and Family Services Committee is considering a bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Raga, R-Deerfield Township, that would allow the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to seek court action against unlicensed group homes. It also allows the department to penalize illegal operations up to $1,000.

        The issue arose in Harveysburg in 2000, when Teen Reach refused to allow Job and Family Services to inspect a residence where it was allegedly caring for a dozen or more troubled youths.

        The group left voluntarily in early 2001, after The Cincinnati Enquirer exposed problems with Teen Reach and state agencies' oversight of it. Teen Reach was not licensed as a group home or registered as a nonchartered school. It was cited by the state fire marshal and sued by the village for alleged zoning and fire code violations.

        Teen Reach is one of a dozen programs that Job and Family Services has found operating adoption, foster care or residential programs without proper certification in the past two years, department official Richard Bitonte said Wednesday.

        The committee will likely vote on the bill next week, Chairman Greg Jolivette, R-Hamilton, said after Ms. Cochran spoke.

        Ms. Cochran looks forward to it.

        “I would never want to see another town go through what we went through,” she said.

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