(upbeat music) (graphic pops) (upbeat music continues) - Hello, and welcome to "Journal," I'm Steve Kendall.

The wheels of government continue to spin in DC and in Columbus.

What does all of it mean to you?

What does it mean in general?

Joining us to talk about that will be the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler, and also Dr. Nicole Kalif-Hughes and Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University.

Karen, let's start with you.

A lot of things going on in Columbus, the budget, school funding, you can pretty much throw a dart and hit something that's a major topic right now.

But let's talk about something that's gonna be coming up in front of the voters in just a couple of weeks, which is state issue two, which is something that's been around, has been passed multiple times in Ohio's history, But this year, there was actually some opposition in the General Assembly to moving that forward.

So talk a little about what State Issue 2 is, and how it's being shaped now on the positive side and the anti-side.

- Well, Issue 2 is a renewal of an almost 40-year-old initiative that would allow the state to issue bonds to help local communities pay for road, bridges, water, and sewer projects.

And it was known as the Public Works Project, it's for what's called the State Capital Improvements Program.

And it really does help local communities with projects that are incredibly expensive.

And the sponsors of it have said over the years that some local officials have said, without this funding, they would not have been able to pay for some of these projects.

And so this was one of those issues that, for a long time, was just kind of a given, it was bipartisan support, it's passed on the ballot.

In the four times that it's passed, three of those times has been by more than two-thirds of voters.

But yeah, this time when lawmakers voted to put this constitutional amendment on the ballot, there were a few Republicans who voted against it, saying they were concerned about the spending involved.

This is a $2.5 billion borrowing authority over 10 years, and one of the representatives I talked to, Representative Jennifer Gross, from West Chester, near Cincinnati, said she's part of the so-called DOGE Caucus, that's happening in the State House and is very concerned about spending in general.

She thinks this is a revenue stream that is confusing to voters, and she thinks that these projects could be paid for in other ways.

- Yeah, and I know that when you were talking to her, because I watched the interview, when you ask her, what is the alternative, if this money goes away, where does the money come from then to fill that void?

What was her response to that?

Because, obviously, someone has to find that money somewhere, so what was her response to, "Here's where we'll get the money that we're taking away if we don't go with State Issue 2."

- Well, I don't think she had a real clear response, because I think she expected that her vote would be just one of a few nos and this was gonna go before the voters.

I think she, and other critics of this, have talked about, and this is a very small group of critics, this issue does not have organized opposition, but the people who are concerned about it say Ohio already has a transportation budget, which is funded by gas taxes, why can't these projects be in there?

Ohio has a capital budget funded by the General Revenue Fund, which is sales taxes and income taxes, why can't it be funded there?

But then you run up against other priorities when you start moving that funding.

Like the gas tax, for instance, ODOT, the Ohio Depart of Transportation, has already said the gas tax is not buying what it used to when it comes to the cost of these projects.

So that's difficult.

And when it comes to Issue 2, those funds to pay back those bonds are already built into the budget.

So I think there's some concern about this kind of criticism, as well as concern about the $600 million in bonds for the Cleveland Brown Stadium in Brook Park.

The House budget included that, Issue 2 has nothing to do with that, but there might be some confusion over whether Issue 2 can be used in that way, and it can't.

- Yeah, and I think you were mentioning too the fact that that muddies the waters on this, because some people would say, "Hey, I'm okay voting with money that's gonna help with infrastructure, but I'm not gonna pay for the Brown Stadium.

Let them pay for that."

And yet that could become part of this muddled discussion about what State Issue 2 really is.

David, is that part and parcel now of just what happens with things that used to be, I mean, this used to be, as Karen said, a slam dunk.

Usually two out of three voters said, "No problem.

Do this."

Now you're starting to hear rumblings and ways to confuse what is just a proforma issue for the most part.

- Well, I think that last point is one that needs stressing again, you know, we know that anecdotes can tell us something.

I was speaking with a very, very informed voter who pays attention to things at a higher level than a typical voter probably would, and there was still some confusion in there because of the use of the word "bond" related to, is this something that's, "Am I voting for the Browns to leave Cleveland by voting for this?"

And, and the answer, of course, was no.

But I think that goes to two issues then, which is the general sort of mixture of things that are not in fact the same (chuckles) that's tending to happen, and the everything being on the table in ways that everything didn't seem to be on the table in previous times.

That the national leadership in Washington has a philosophy, mentioning that particular caucus in Columbus, "Move fast and break things."

And that's a new approach to politics.

(laughs) - [Steve] It's a government approach.

- It certainly isn't a conservative approach.

In my American Political Thought class, I assign Russell Kirk's 10 Conservative Principles, and you can look in there, and you won't find, "Move fast and break things" (laughs) as one of the traditional conservative principles.

But the point is, with everything being on the table and everything being thought about in extremely different ways, and nothing being taken for granted, and every single thing that happens being viewed completely and utterly through the lens of partisan politics, we will see increased confusion and increased polarization.

- Well, and Karen, going back to what you talked about, there were a handful of Republicans who not only had concerns about Issue 2, but the budget in general.

Real briefly, if we just got a moment or two here, that is sort of what we've seen over the past few years in the General Assembly.

There have been factions within the party that's in control, and seriously in control, having these little blips of people saying, "Well, I don't care if 95% of you thinks it's a good idea, I'm gonna go against you here."

Which then creates this concern that, for voters, that confuses them.

"Well, gee, if they're not even all agreeing on it, maybe I should look at this differently."

So this is kind of a continuation of what we've seen over the last number of years.

- Yeah, unanimous votes are becoming more and more rare.

I mean, there were unanimous votes on the transportation budget, even though there were democratic concerns about some things in it, so that was one thing.

But then when it comes to the House budget, for instance, there were some Republicans who voted against it because of that Brown Stadium provision, which suggests that if, indeed, it goes through and Governor Mike DeWine vetoes it, it might not survive a veto override vote.

So there is actually some instructional part of this as well to try to figure out where everybody stands on some of these issues.

In a huge document like the budget, there's opposition to little bits and pieces here.

- Okay, when we come back, we can talk more about that, and then we've got a couple of other things.

Because, obviously, I joke about the fact that redistricting is Ohio's evergreen issue, but actually, something predates that, it's school funding, (laughs) which again is back on the table it seems in Ohio in some different ways than we've experienced in the past.

Back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalif-Hughes, and the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler, here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Karen Kasler, from "The state of Ohio," also Nicole Kalif-Hughes and David Jackson from the Political Science Department, Bowling Green State University.

Nicole, we talked a lot about budgeting and policies and things like that.

When we look at the way the state is addressing the budget, for instance, we know that embedded in there are gonna be policy things, but it seems, and David mentioned too, it seems like there are a lot of things now that are being placed into the budget that are not necessarily budget items, but the budget's being used as a mechanism to address policy maybe much more than it has in the past.

- So the Ohio budget is unique, in that it's a two-year budget cycle.

- [Steve] Okay.

- It's the largest public entity in the U.S. to use a two-year budget cycle, and so that means they have to forecast really far in advance.

- [Steve] Right.

- Because you're not working on like, that annual, typical fiscal year calendar, you've got two.

So there's an opportunity in there, this mid-biennium review, to review, and theoretically, adjust your financial forecast up or down depending on what the financial situation in the state looks like.

However, what you also have, unique to Ohio, is you have legislators who then use this kind of review point to throw policy into this mid-biennium review.

- [Steve] Okay.

- And so you end up with things that are not necessarily directly related to the budget or necessarily related to fiscal policy, that are completely kind of other policy objectives, into this budget.

And if you go back maybe 10 years, I could be getting that date wrong, 'cause it's kind of blurring together at this point, but we really started seeing this early on with efforts to restrict abortion were tucked into the budget with the goal of kind of, it just slides through, voters don't realize it.

And then, all of a sudden, we have a new budget with new policies that has been signed into law by the governor with things that don't look like the budget.

- Right.

Now, is the state of Ohio unique?

I know we can't be aware of everything going on in all other 50 states, but is this somewhat of a trend that state legislatures are using, this as more of a mechanism, or is Ohio just late to the table on this, kind of, and other places have been doing it like this for a long time?

- This is a little bit unique because of the two-year- - [Steve] The two year window.

- Because of the two-year window.

All states are gonna try to like sneak certain things in.

Most states do have like what's known as a single subject rule, which Ohio does as well.

That would theoretically prevent this kind of stuff, but because of the two-year budget cycle, Ohio has more leeway than if you were operating on a traditional like one-year calendar.

- [Steve] Yeah.

So people have to be more informed than ever when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Karen, you've talked to obviously numerous people on this issue on your program from all sides of the budget.

The change in leadership in the General Assembly has moved some of this forward, where it was being held up, or some in some people's mind, being held up by the previous Speaker of the House and that sort of thing.

So this has sort of opened the gates now with that change in leadership for these things to move where they had been sort of held back in the last year or two.

- Yeah, and some of these items are added to the budget, I think, because the budget is a must-pass piece of legislation.

You have to pass the budget, and so things get added in there that lawmakers wanna enact quickly, or that lawmakers don't wanna spend the whole two-year session doing a standalone bill on.

And that's what you saw, it's exactly correct, there were all sorts of policies related to abortion that were put in the last several budget cycles under Republican former Governor John Kasich.

And so we are seeing some things added to the House budget that may not go as well as maybe Republicans wanted them to if they were stand alone, for example, the $600 million package of bonds for the Cleveland Brown Stadium, Monroe Park.

There are Republicans who are seriously opposed to it, there are Democrats, all Democrats are opposed to it, is that the kind of thing that would stand alone by itself?

That's a real question.

But as part of the budget, it's more likely to go through.

- Right.

Well, and I know too, and you had a clip on of Governor DeWine mentioning too that this isn't the last stadium bond discussion we're going to have, because Ohio has many more sports teams than it had several years ago, all of them want to continue to update, and upgrade, and build new stadiums.

So he was saying the state now has to develop a mechanism to fund the building of sports complexes because we have all these sports teams.

So that's another piece that maybe we weren't talking about 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago that now suddenly is part of this whole discussion of how the state spends its money.

- He did have a proposal to fund stadiums through a doubling of the tax on sports gambling operators.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Which not only was a way to fund sports stadiums, I think, for DeWine, but also it was a way to put some policy in place.

He's not been very appreciative of what sports gambling operators have done in Ohio when it comes to the way that they've marketed and that sort of thing, his tax increases on that, on marijuana, and on cigarettes, really kind of hint at both a policy thing that he would like to do as well as a tax raising, or a fundraising thing that he would like to do for projects that he thinks are more important, like the cigarette tax that he had proposed that Republicans cut out would've created a $1,000 childcare tax credit for children under six.

- So, yeah, so that's an example too of policy, and tax policy, funding policy, yeah, early child, all that sort of thing coming together there.

David, when you look at the political landscape and the field of this, is this another indication of maybe the central government in this case, the state government maybe overreaching, or in some people's minds, overreaching into the local area to deal with things?

I mean, should the legislature be concerned about building a stadium in Cleveland, Ohio?

Is that a state function, or should that be a local function?

- Well, and the research, is mixed as it is on most things.

But you know, there are a lot of, you know, development economists who would make the case that if you have several hundred million dollars sitting around for economic development, there are better ways to promote economic development than through stadium construction, which, it is argued, produces short term construction jobs, which is a good thing, but then, long term, many of the jobs that are created are really not created, they're just maintained in this case, and many of the jobs are seasonal, and many of the jobs are not particularly high-paying jobs.

And so, just from a development standpoint, there certainly is a case that's made by many economists that, beyond the issue of the central government and the constituent elements of the government, that goes to the question of, is this the best way to spend to spend that tax money?

- To spend that money.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

When we come back, one of the things I wanna touch on too a little bit is this whole school funding issue, because that is part of this whole array of things that's going on in Columbus.

And then talk about, because obviously, from a national perspective, there's been a huge amount of activity, almost unprecedented compared to, as you mentioned to earlier, "Move fast and break things," to talk about how that is actually playing in the state of Ohio, at least initial responses to surveys that are out there.

So, back in just a moment with Karen Kasler, Nicole Kalaf-Hughes and David Jackson here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal," our guests are Karen Kasler, Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and David Jackson.

Karen, the other big issue that of course comes around, I don't know, every couple of weeks it seems like in Ohio, once again, we have another way of trying to figure out how to fund the state's public schools and charter schools as well.

But talk about where we are right now with this year's version of school funding.

A couple of years ago, we had the Fair School Funding package, that's still sort of there, but now we've got an overlay on top of it.

So talk about where we are with school funding in Ohio today.

- Well, Republicans, who created the House budget and passed it, said that they were concerned about the Fair School Funding plan because there would be schools that would actually lose money under it.

So they say that is now the bedrock of the funding formula that they're going forward with, but what they're doing right now in this particular budget is what they're calling a bridge formula.

Not sure where that bridge is gonna lead in two years, because if they had fully funded the Fair School Funding plan, it would've been fully implemented over the six-year phase-in that it was designed to be phased in over.

But that's kind of to the side here, now Republicans say that every school district is going to get more money.

Now, at the same time they're doing that, they also have a provision in the budget that they say will provide immediate property tax relief by capping the amount of cash reserves that each school district can hold, from the property taxes they collect, at 30%.

And they said that if school districts get above that 30%, that will trigger an automatic property tax refund to the taxpayers who paid it.

The problem, that schools are saying, is that that's going to trigger a cycle of refund, levy, refund, levy that's basically going to force schools into incredible instability.

And I've heard from school leaders saying this is the biggest threat to school funding that they have seen, and they had no time to really talk about how detrimental this could be, because this came out of the blue, this came out of the House Republicans introduction of the budget a couple of weeks ago, and they're still struggling to get a grip on how much money this is gonna cost.

At least $5 billion, $4 billion rather, they say this is gonna cost school districts right now.

Republicans say they have $10 billion they're sitting on, so they can afford it.

- Yeah, okay.

Well, and it's interesting, because, as we said, school funding, if you go back into the early '90s, has been basically a political football, it's been kicked around.

The State Supreme Court still considers most of the funding plans the state has in place as unconstitutional.

The legislatures tend to just kind of go, "Yeah, thank you, we'll take that under advisement," and then goes their own way.

This is kind of another version of that.

They're just saying, "Well, this is our version of funding, and whether it addresses that whole DeRolph situation is not our problem."

Nicole, this is politics at its best, you've got local entities passing levies, and now you've got the state of Ohio, or the General Assembly, saying, we're passing a law saying, yeah, you passed that levy for this amount over this time period, but now we're gonna say you need to give some of that back.

Columbus telling you to give it back, not you giving it back locally.

So what does that say about how we're dealing with local control versus centralized control in the state?

- Well, I think, it's kind of important to remember that Ohio is one of the only states that funds their schools this way.

And you essentially rely on the voters to fund these school levies to keep schools open.

And across the country, this idea of local control of education is something that Americans tend to really value, we rank it really highly.

We like having a local control of our schools in terms of curriculum, and scheduling, and all of that kind of stuff.

We tend to value it, like, we, broadly, in the aggregate.

But the risk of that is that when you have a locality that doesn't necessarily support a levy, or support public education, you're putting the students who live in that community at risk, and at kind of a really big disadvantage relative to their peers elsewhere in the state.

And so right now, when you have levies that don't pass, or if you look at essentially like, all of northern Ohio in November, where I think very few, if any, levies passed.

- [Steve] Right.

- You have schools that are going to be shuttering programs, and in some instances, if it fails enough, people's property taxes are still gonna go up, which is what we're kind of seeing in Anthony Wayne.

Or you're gonna end up with smaller districts actually closing and being forced to merge.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And so students end up kind of on the losing end of this stick regardless.

And it's really Ohio students that are losing.

And when you combine this too with the fact that now, across the country, but a lot in Ohio, you're actually seeing funding coming in from outside groups to fund groups that are working to kind of push against public education and the funding of public education, even at the most local level, which, traditionally, has been kind of more isolated from partisan politics.

- [Steve] Right.

- It creates a really local microcosm of what we're seeing at the state level, and the same kind of polarization challenges that go with it.

- Yeah.

And I think we look at that too, because I know when Karen was talking to Jennifer Gross, the state representative, she mentioned DOGE with regard to State Issue 2.

We will shift a little bit here, because, obviously, you've seen the influence of DC national politics driving down into legislature, now you're saying down even at these more local levels.

David, talk about how what we've seen in Washington DC is playing in the state of Ohio right now, because, obviously, the state voted for Donald Trump and JD Vance, to send them to Washington, how is that playing now with what they've done down there?

Because there's at least some preliminary information out there.

So talk a little bit about that.

- Sure, so the Democracy and Public Policy Research Network at BGSU did a survey in mid-February of Ohio voters.

And the survey was weighted to the 2024 election results, which Donald Trump carried Ohio by 11 points after carrying it by 8 points in the two previous elections.

So the sample is a group of people who are, you know, +11 for Donald Trump.

- [Steve] Right.

- And right now his approval rating in Ohio is higher, well, it was at that point, higher than it was nationally, he was at 50% approved, but at 44% disapproved.

Not surprisingly, this was highly influenced by partisanship, where 89% of Republicans approve, 92% of Democrats disapprove.

(Steve laughing) So everything is driven that way.

- [Steve] As we've seen, yeah.

(laughs) - And then we also surveyed various executive orders and policies, and some are more popular than others.

So, for example, the one that he says, federal recognition that there are only two sexes, this group of Ohio voters supports that 61 to 32.

- [Steve] Ah.

- [David] Ending work at home policies for federal employees, 50 to 40% approval.

Banning TikTok unless it's sold to a non-Chinese company, 51% to 32%.

A few were a little less popular.

So changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, that was at 51-36% disapprove, withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, 51% to 38% disapprove.

And even on the question of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, ending those at the federal level, that's at 49% approve, 42% disapprove.

So even among an electorate, or a sample that is Trump +11, of Ohio voters, the President remains a popular, divisive figure, and in terms of approval of his policies, they're very much all over the place in terms of the level of approval or disapproval of those policies.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And we know that things have even evolved, there's been some other things come into play since that survey that may change those numbers, maybe even in a way possibly more negatively than even those numbers are in some cases.

And you mentioned the fact too, and I know Karen, we touched on this a little bit, we didn't talk a little about intellectual diversity in Senate Bill 1, but DEI has become, and we've got just like 30 seconds, but DEI has become a part of Ohio's discussion now at all levels of education too.

So you have 30 seconds to tell us all about that.

(laughs) - Well, that's of course Senate Bill 1, you're talking about the anti-DEI bill, law now, targeted at higher education.

There is a repeal effort going on, and while they won't have a whole lot of trouble, I think, getting signatures to get it through the initial steps, they could have a serious problem with Republican leadership and trying to get that repeal language to the ballot.

So I think that's gonna be an effort we're gonna see going forward on, especially from university professors, and from student groups, and from democratic groups.

- Yeah.

Okay, great.

Well, we're gonna have to leave it there, because we're out of time.

I wanna thank Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, Dr. David Jackson, from Bowling Green State University, and Karen Kasler, host of "The State of Ohio."

We will see you again next time on "The Journal."

Check us out on wbgu.org, and, of course, every Thursday night at eight o'clock on WBGU-PBS.

Goodnight, and good luck.

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