drive, initially collecting them door to door and at a local food festival. On June 22, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass a bill adopting his motto, after he was given the unprecedented privilege of addressing the House from the speaker's podium. Governor Michael DiSalle signed 103 SB 193 into law in July, effective October 1, 1959. The motto made its first appearance on a state publication the following year, when the Secretary of State's office distributed a pamphlet about state symbols to schoolchildren. Although the motto is widely understood to come from Jesus' words in an encounter with a rich young man, Mastronardo told reporters that he simply proposed his mother's favorite saying, unaware of its Biblical origin. At a statewide meeting of elections officials, Brown presented him with a Citation Award while a surprise guest, comedian Joe E. Brown, praised the twelve-year-old for his efforts. Mastronardo also received an Ohio flag embroidered with the motto. Controversy In April 1996, Governor George Voinovich returned from a trade mission to India, where he had seen the inscription "Government Work Is God's Work" () prominently displayed on the Vidhana Soudha, the state capitol of Karnataka in Bangalore. This display gave him the idea for a similar inscription of Ohio's motto on the Statehouse in Columbus, as part of a $ renovation project that was nearing completion. He went public with the proposal at an observance of the National Day of Prayer in May. In November, the Capitol Square Review & Advisory Board decided to instead install a seal and motto on a plaza adjoining the Statehouse. In 1997, just before the bronze fixture was to be installed, the Ohio affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the board, Voinovich, Secretary of State Bob Taft, and several other state officials. The ACLU alleged that the state had violated the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a similar clause in the Ohio Constitution. The state argued that its motto was not explicitly Christian, likening it to the national motto, "In God We Trust", and the use of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. It was explained as "a compelling symbol of hope, inspiration and stick-to-it-iveness". The ACLU represented a Cleveland-area Presbyterian associate minister who objected to the state's trivialization of a quote attributed to Jesus. An ACLU-sponsored poll in the spring of 1997