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

This week, the 135 Ohio General Assembly got underway.

Well, what can we expect from them?

There was a lame-duck session, they enacted a lot of things and, of course, worked with the governor on whether or not he would approve or veto them.

There's a lot on tap for this year and we're joined by the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler, to kind of bring us up to speed on what the Legislature did at the end of last year in their lame-duck session, where they believe they're headed, and where the governor believes the state is headed.

Karen, thanks for being here.

It's the new year and we appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk with us again.

- Happy 2023!

[Steve] Yeah, you too!

And yeah, we're into the new year and that brings us to a new General Assembly.

And obviously, we're off to an interesting start.

The Ohio Senate took care of their business, but when it came to the House of Representatives, it didn't go according to what people thought the plan was going to be when it came to electing a Speaker, which we're sort of familiar with on the national level, but Ohio had its own little bit of drama when this took place.

So, talk a little bit about that.

- Yeah, it didn't go 15 rounds in Ohio, but it did result in a little bit of a surprise for some people.

People who had been watching this for a while weren't terribly surprised, though, because there was dissension among Republicans over who was gonna be Speaker.

There was a vote taken after the November election where Speaker Derek Merrin from the Northwest Ohio area had won that vote.

And it was a three-way race, he apparently won by a very slim margin, but he was considered the Speaker-elect.

And then we fast-forward to the first day of session last week, last Tuesday, right after the holiday, and there had been some behind-the-scenes action going on, especially leading up to that initial session where there had been concerns raised by Republicans who felt like Merrin had not let certain things happen during lame duck, had let certain things happen during lame duck.

And Jason Stephens, one of the three people who vied for that Speaker title in that vote back in November, he started calling Republicans and Democrats to try to ask them if they would support him as Speaker, and that's exactly what happened.

He ended up getting a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to support him.

He actually got more Democratic votes than Republican votes.

Democrats voted as a bloc.

All 32 of them voted for Jason Stephens, along with 21 Republicans.

And then Derek Merrin got 43- I'm sorry, 22 Republicans.

Derek Merrin got 43 Republican votes, more Republican votes for him, but it's an overall majority.

(Steve laughing) - Yeah and, again, as you said, for people around there in Columbus maybe expected because they knew the dynamics that were behind the scenes, but the assumption was to the general public, I think, or people who were paying even limited attention was that this was gonna be a slam dunk for Derek Merrin.

He had, as you said, sort of held the post and kind of was the next in line.

And again, especially these days, to see anyone reach across the boundary line between two parties is pretty surprising.

But in this case, yeah, more Democrats voted for Stephens.

And I guess it just, it was kind of a surprise to everybody because the Legislature's been pretty partisan.

I mean, there's been party-line votes on a lot of things, so this was different.

- Well, and I think Democrats, I mean, certainly Democrats have realized that, and this is not the first time that Democrats did this.

Back in 2019 when Larry Householder and Ryan Smith were vying for the position of Speaker, Ryan Smith was the incoming Speaker of the House, Larry Householder was the challenger, and Householder did the same thing, got a bipartisan coalition of 26 Republicans and 26 Democrats to vote for him for Speaker.

That implies concessions, and certainly there were some then that were made.

Of course, Larry Householder then, 18 months after he became Speaker, was indicted in the federal corruption scandal.

We'll start seeing the trial for that for Larry Householder, who has pleaded innocent, coming up later this month out of Cincinnati.

But then, fast-forward to now and that's the same kind of thing that we're hearing, that Democrats are saying that there were certain things that were talked about with Jason Stephens, specifically on education.

Derek Merrin is a huge supporter of vouchers, as is Senate President Matt Huffman from Lima.

So, the two of them together would've been really a boon for the voucher industry, so to speak.

So, Democrats were very concerned about that, reached out to Jason Stephens about that, and apparently got some reassurances that it wasn't going to be the same kind of a situation as it would be under a Speaker Merrin.

Merrin had said he wasn't willing to move on vouchers.

He wasn't willing to move on the 60% voter threshold for a constitutional amendment, which still could come up.

And so, these are the kind of things, the behind-the-scenes dealing, that apparently was going on.

- Yeah and, of course, the education funding, whether it's vouchers and, of course, the lawsuit with the Ohio Adequacy and Equity for Funding group, we've had both those groups on the show and they all agree on making education better in Ohio, but then they obviously have two divergent opinions.

And the Legislature seemed to be leaning toward being much more appreciative of the voucher programs and to invest more money in that, it seemed.

[Karen] Yeah, Derek Merrin was a sponsor of the so-called Backpack Bill, which would be universal vouchers.

This is something that teachers unions and education professionals have said would not be good, would cost the state millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars potentially, and so that apparently is something that was a point of discussion.

[Steve] Wow.

Yeah, because the assumption would've been that everybody was in line on the Republican side with Merrin's opinion or Merrin's thoughts on that and obviously there was some dissension within the party a little bit about how far to go, maybe, with vouchers.

- And as we've seen on the national level, that's the same kind of fracturing that's happening in the Republican Party.

Over the last couple of days, after that Speaker battle, there was a debate over who was gonna head the Ohio Republican Party, the actual party mechanism.

And there was a contest, a four-way contest, to see who was gonna actually lead that since Bob Paduchik, who was former President Trump's advisor and was heading the Ohio Republican Party last year, decided right after the election that he was gonna step down.

So, there ended up being a little bit of a battle going on at the Ohio Republican Party over who's gonna head that.

They finally chose Hamilton County, former now Hamilton County Republican Party Chair Alex Trianap- Oh dear.

[Steve] Yes.

- Triantafilou, there we go.

Alex Triantafilou, and he's gonna be the Ohio Republican Party chair, but once again we have this split here that just seems to be happening at the national level and trickling down to the state level as well.

- Yeah, and it's interesting because the Republicans hold all the statewide offices, they hold supermajorities in both houses down in Columbus in the General Assembly, and yet within those groups, they're obviously- It's almost like there's two Republican parties working here within each of those organizations.

- Yeah and, obviously, as Triantafilou was saying at the Ohio Republican Party meeting, there is the going forward in 2024, Sherrod Brown, who is the only Democrat, really, in statewide office at this point, he's gonna be on the ballot and the question is: "Can Republicans take that seat as well?"

And it's certainly trending that way, but, obviously, Democrats are looking at what they have to work with and trying to figure out how to keep Sherrod Brown in that position.

But this fracturing that we're seeing nationally and at the state level among Republicans really does matter, I think, when it comes to coming up with coalitions to try to get things moving forward that they wanna see happen.

- Yeah.

When we come back, let's talk about that.

Will we see more reaching across the partisan line for Republicans who want to accomplish what they want to accomplish?

Will they need Democratic votes versus the bloc voting that we had seen a lot of times?

Back in just a moment with Karen Kasler, "The State of Ohio," here on "The Journal."

And thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

Our guest is Karen Kasler, the host of "The State of Ohio."

You can see that program every Sunday at 12 o'clock noon here on WBGU-PBS.

We were talking about the Legislature and, obviously, some of the machinations with the House Speaker election.

They tried to do a lot of things in the lame duck, which is not unusual for the lame-duck sessions to be full of things that kind of get done at the last minute.

Talk a little about the lame-duck session, what they tried to accomplish, what they did send on to the governor, and things that maybe they thought they were gonna get done but now looks like they'll have to deal with in the new General Assembly.

- Well, a little behind-the scenes glimpse here: That interview that I did with Governor Mike DeWine was the morning after the long day that ended the lame-duck legislative session, 16 hours.

It finally ended around 6:00 in the morning, so there was a lot of action going on that day.

And DeWine even had said later that the Legislature sent him about 40 bills and some of them were big deals.

In fact, he signed two of the most controversial just over the weekend, just before his inauguration weekend began.

One of those bills would speed up the process of allowing permits for oil and gas drilling on state lands, including in state parks.

He hinted in that interview that he would sign that, and he did.

And the other one that Democrats, civil rights groups, veterans groups, other groups had asked him to veto, which he did sign, is a bill that makes big changes in voting laws.

For instance, it allows only one ballot drop box per county.

It requires voters to show photo ID.

Right now, voters do have to show ID, they just don't have to show photo ID.

[Steve] Right.

And photo ID was something that even now-Lieutenant Governor John Husted, when he was the Secretary of State, had opposed, but Governor DeWine signed that.

There are some other things in that bill that have veterans groups especially concerned because it shortens the period after which ballots can be counted when they're mailed back in.

[Steve] Oh.

Military ballots and overseas ballots sometimes take longer to get to Ohio [Steve] Sure.

than maybe local ballots do.

So, but DeWine did sign this.

That is now the subject of a lawsuit by some of these groups.

But there was some other things that didn't pass.

For instance, there was this attempt to try to give the governor more authority over the Ohio State Board of Education.

[Steve] Right.

- And this is something that governors, not just DeWine but governors for years have really advocated for.

They wanted more control of this because, frankly, people judge whether a governor's doing a good job or not by the schools quite often.

And this bill stalled because at the last minute, about 200 pages were added that included that controversial bill on trans athletes participating in girls' sports.

It would ban trans athletes from participating in high school girls' sports.

And so, that kinda stalled that bill out.

The other proposal that got stalled out that didn't move is a proposal that would require a 60% majority of Ohio voters to approve a constitutional amendment.

That didn't move, but that could still potentially come forward.

And so, we're watching to see, because the deadline is February 1st [Steve] Ah... for that to pass the Legislature to get onto the May ballot.

And so, we're still watching for that one.

- Now, let's go back to the voter ID because, and I've mentioned a couple of times on the program that I've done poll work the last, well, during 2022, all three elections that were held in 2022.

And yeah, Ohio had seven or eight different ways you could demonstrate identification, one of which was a photo ID.

Most people show you their driver's license.

But again, we know that not everyone has a driver's license.

I know the state has said you can go into a, I believe, a BMV and get a state identification photo ID.

I believe that's how it's going to work.

But people could show utility bills or a property tax bill that identified their address and that sort of thing.

And some people, of course, said this was a solution in search of a problem because Frank LaRose will tell you the elections ran pretty well in Ohio and there wasn't an issue with with voter ID, and yet we have now a much more tightened voter ID.

And of course, the voting length of time before elections, the one drop box, all seen by some people- Other people think it's a great idea because they believe it will help make elections more accurate, more controlled.

Other people see it as restricting voting rights.

So, the governor obviously sided with saying, "Yep, we need better voter ID, we need fewer drop boxes, "we need more control over our election process."

- Yeah, and for some people, the ballot drop box issue is an important one because depending on where you live in your county, it may take a while for you to get to your Board of Elections to drop off your ballot in that secure ballot drop box.

And you may not, say, wanna trust the mail system to get your ballot, if you're voting early, to get your ballot to its intended location.

But yeah, the photo ID thing has been really interesting and there is a mechanism at least talked about in the bill to provide free photo ID for people who need it.

But yeah, the question is, of course, "How do you make that happen?"

And a lot of people who do not have photo ID quite often are in positions where getting to the Board of Elections or getting to a state office to acquire a photo ID would be very difficult.

And the whole idea of "election integrity," and I use the air quotes with that because that's been a buzzword for Republicans, but yet Democrats have pointed out that Republicans have been saying for years that Ohio's elections have been well done, well run, very secure.

"Well, why did these changes need to be made?"

So, once again, this is the subject of a lawsuit, so we are expecting to see some- and this is the same group, the same lawyer who's representing this group who's suing, his name is Marc Elias, he's a Democratic lawyer, and he was involved in some of the lawsuits over Ohio's redistricting process, which we get to start again sometime.

[Steve] Oh boy.

(laughing) And then also- And then was also involved in many of the lawsuits that former President Trump filed after he lost the 2020 election.

So, he's got some experience in this area.

One thing I wanna say, DeWine only issued, as far as I can tell, two vetoes in this package of more than 40 bills.

One was a pretty minor veto, the other was a pretty big deal.

This was a veto of a bill that would have banned local communities from banning flavored tobacco.

Columbus is the most notable example that had put out a ban on flavored tobacco, saying that it was really being targeted toward kids.

And DeWine vetoed the Legislature's attempt to stop communities from trying to prevent flavored tobacco from being sold in their communities.

Of course, the industry that represents vaping and the flavored tobacco makers are concerned, but there are some real- There's some evidence that shows that kids do use flavored tobacco as kind of a way to start vaping, to start smoking, to start using tobacco products.

- Well, and if you're of a certain age, you remember that back in the day you could buy candy cigarettes, you could buy bubblegum cigars.

So, in a way, I'm not saying that was a gateway to smoking, but there is sort of a little link there.

This is obviously a situation and it's one of those things, and it's a story for another time or a debate for another time, the centralization of government in Ohio versus allowing communities to make those kind of decisions.

It seems as if at times legislatures, whether they're Republican-controlled or Democratic, always wanna pull a little more power back to Columbus, for instance, like that where they say, "Well, we think the state needs an overall rule.

We don't wanna let the city of Bowling Green or the city of Pickerington do whatever.

We wanna have one uniform rule."

And some people see that as a lack of local control then, so that's a discussion for another time.

[Karen] And that's the whole issue of home rule and how much- Ohio is a home rule state, but how much rule does each home have in a sense?

- Yeah, exactly.

So, when we come back, there's obviously a number of other things we wanna talk about, but back in just a moment with Karen Kasler, host of "The State of Ohio," here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

We have the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler, with us and we're talking about 2023 in Columbus and a little bit beyond that.

You sat down with the governor, as you mentioned before, and had a pretty lengthy discussion with him about his ideas about what he wants to accomplish in the last what I know you termed as his maybe last public office, elected office-holding situation, and he covered a number of things.

Obviously, you talked about the things the Legislature had done and things that he had reacted to and either supported or vetoed.

But I thought it was interesting too, he's obviously gotta work with this Legislature to get a budget passed this year, and he pointed out three things that are at the top of his list.

He said, not necessarily in this order, but he talked about jobs because jobs can cure or at least help cure a lot of social ills.

Education was obviously one, he talked about early childhood.

And then he talked about mental health.

So, kind of expand on where he went with those topics.

He sees those as the three kind of building blocks for this last term he has as governor.

- Yeah, and when he signed a bill last week that would have spent Ohio's remaining American Rescue Plan money, that big pot of federal money that was supposed to be pandemic economic assistance, there's a little bit of state money in there as well, he specifically cited some things in there about mental health, for instance, and about helping communities do the things that they need to do in terms of spending some money.

K-12 schools was part of that, part of the reason that he signed all that.

There were some things in that bill that he could have vetoed that some advocates for affordable housing had asked him to veto because they said that that bill would make it more difficult to build affordable housing units.

He says he's gonna pick that up in his budget.

And we expect the budget, he said it's gonna come out January 31st or somewhere around there.

That's also the date that he had set for his "State of the State" speech.

I actually heard that from Senate President Matt Huffman rather than from the governor's office, which is interesting because I remember when John Kasich was governor, it was a big deal that he was gonna bring his "State of the State" speech all around the state and it was a big secret when the speech was gonna be and everything, and now it's just like somebody drops it into a conversation.

It's not as big an event as it used to be, but it's still an important moment because then you get to hear what the governor, whoever that is, views are his important things to look out for.

And that coming right around the time that his budget is gonna be released, it'll give us a clue of his priorities.

And budgets are documents that really do show a governor's priority.

Getting that budget through this Legislature, which we were just talking about has some divisions among Republicans, is potentially going to be a challenge depending on what DeWine proposes and what the Legislature wants to add in there.

- Yeah, and you mention that and, of course, the budget being one aspect, we typically don't think of our governmental system as being one of coalitions.

We look at that as more like a parliamentary form of government, something like that, but we have bits and pieces that, and maybe now it's because we hear more about it, it's probably always gone on, obviously, behind the scenes, but it just seems like the discussions of coalitions is something that hasn't been necessarily a part of American governance in that clear-cut a way.

And so, here you have Democrats and Republicans, the governor may need Democrats to get the budget he wants passed possibly, which would be really un- Well, seems really unusual.

Maybe it's not, I don't know.

[Karen] Well, when it comes to budgets, quite often you get close to unanimous votes because there is supposed to be something in budgets- [Steve] For everyone.

[Karen] That really benefits everyone.

And so, DeWine has talked about how he wants that to be a bipartisan vote and he wants to bring Democrats into that.

The question is: If there are other things that are added into the budget, specifically dealing with, say, abortion or something else, that might be areas where Democrats would say, "We disagree, we're not gonna support this."

And we've seen that over the last couple years.

Again, bringing back former Governor John Kasich, his budgets quite often added things in, especially related to abortion policy, that were concerning for Democrats and they would push back on those.

So, I think it's gonna be interesting to watch, again, not only what DeWine proposes, but also what the Legislature wants to add into the budget.

The budget is a Christmas tree document in a way.

Everybody hangs an ornament on there of what they want because the budget has to pass.

And so, watching that will be a process that will pick up now that the Speaker battle is temporarily over, though I don't know that it's permanently over.

The folks who- [Steve] Um.

Okay.

The folks who voted for Derek Merrin are frustrated and angry.

They're backed by some powerful groups.

And so, we could see a revisiting of that at some point and maybe an attempt to try to hold a different vote.

I don't know what's gonna happen on that.

- Oh, well, that'll be interesting because that would seem to be- Yeah, I guess we like to think of it as, "Oh, we've settled the Speaker situation," but maybe we haven't.

One of the things the governor I mentioned was really focused on, he believes a lot in early childhood education.

That seems to be one of the bedrock pieces of his education policy.

And of course, his spouse has been involved in that especially.

Where does he see that going?

Is there any more detail on what that would mean in his budget proposals or not?

- I don't know, I think that's something to watch out for.

He's also talked about over the years wraparound services for kids who are at risk.

These are all areas that certainly are of concern.

Again, watching how the Legislature might react to that because we're gonna approach here with this budget the new funding for the new school funding plan that passed last time around.

It was only funded for two years, but it was a different way of funding public schools that added in not only property tax wealth but also income.

And so, whether the Legislature continues that or goes back to its old way of funding schools, which was ruled unconstitutional several times, that will be something to look out for.

So, I think the whole piece of education is really important here, and DeWine talking about that really implies that that's gonna be something that he's gonna be looking at in his budget right away.

- Yeah, and that's the Cupp-Patterson plan that, as you said, only- The expectation was or at least the hope was that would maybe lay to rest Ohio's school funding controversy, which has been going on since, what, 1996 or 1991?

I mean, it goes back quite a ways, and again- [Karen] The problem is it's expensive to do this.

It's a lot of money to fully fund public education to this point.

I mean, the Cupp-Patterson plan was gonna be like a billion dollars more being spent on public education.

That's a lot of money.

And so, the Legislature and the governor are gonna be wrestling with that issue and really trying to look at what we're gonna do with school funding in Ohio.

[Steve] Yeah.

But it is, it's interesting.

I mean, it's one of those questions that never goes away.

I mean, as we said, it's gone on now for 30, close to 30-some years.

[Karen] Yep, yep.

[Steve] And it probably wasn't really solved prior to that, it's just that we've moved it to the front of the table a little bit more.

We've got just a minute or two.

Is there anything with your connections in Columbus that you see that might surprise people or something that's going to come up that maybe we haven't heard about yet?

Is there any rumblings about some other initiative or will the budget sort of detail all of that for us?

- I think that that's the really big question and, of course, the issue of whether there will be a 60% voter threshold to pass constitutional amendments.

I don't know what the future of that one's gonna be because, again, Democrats had said they didn't want that because Democrats are tied to groups that wanna bring a ballot issue, a constitutional amendment that would protect abortion rights and reproductive rights access and also a constitutional amendment that would clarify redistricting [Steve] Oh...Right.

[Karen] and what the two previous redistricting amendments apparently didn't clarify because we're back in this situation where we voted last year under unconstitutional maps for both the State House and for Congress.

Those are gonna need to be redrawn and approved by the Ohio Supreme Court, which is now dominated by Republicans.

So, there are groups that wanna put this back before voters and say, "We want the politics taken out of this process "and potentially handed over to an independent commission."

- Yeah, okay, well that's something we'll look forward because that's sort of fallen off the radar with all the things that have gone on in the Legislature, but it obviously is an extremely important thing because, again, that will affect not only the congressional races, but also the local races, state races, State House races, so yeah.

Karen Kasler, thank you so much for being here.

We'll touch base again soon because, obviously, the Legislature will become pretty busy over the next few weeks and they'll accomplish some of these things or try to do some things that they didn't get done in 2022.

And obviously, the governor has big plans as well, so we'll touch base and get caught up on that again soon.

Thank you so much.

- Sounds great, nice to talk to you.

- And you can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

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