During the Savings and Loan Crisis in the 1980s, Batchelder worked with Democratic Governor Dick Celeste to draft legislation to save depositors' savings at stricken Savings and loan associations, causing Celeste to thank Batchelder during his State of the State speech. During the pay-to-play scandal of the mid 1990s, as chair of the Joint Committee on Ethics, Batchelder referred both the Republican President of the Ohio Senate and the Democratic Ohio Speaker of the House to a prosecutor; both were convicted. He is the only ethics committee chair ever to have referred the heads of both legislative chambers to a prosecutor.