(happy electronic music) - Hello and welcome to the journal, I'm Steve Kendall.

This week on the journal, lots of activity in Columbus.

There's been a historic moment with one of the members being expelled the first time that's happened in quite a while.

The Ohio house and Senate will now try and iron out the differences in each version of their budget.

And of course, as usual with the legislator legislators there are lots of other topics on their agenda here to bring us up to date on that as the host of the state of Ohio which has seen at 12 o'clock noon every Sunday here in WB UPS, we have Karen Kasler.

Karen let's talk about Larry householder historic moment the first time in more than a hundred years or quite some time that a member of the Ohio house was expelled by his peers.

So talk a little bit about that and how that came about because it was a bipartisan vote.

It wasn't just one side pushing it.

They all, for the most part, they all came together and said, you need to leave for the timing.

So talk a little bit about Larry householder situation and that historic moment in the house.

- Well, first of all, I'm having a hard time thinking of a person who has been a more towering and historic figure in Ohio politics in the last 20 years than Larry householder.

And not necessarily for the reasons that you'd want to be considered towering in historic figure.

I mean, Larry householder was the first person in 60 years to be speaker two separate times.

He was speaker in the early two thousands left during term limits but also because there was a cloud of investigation from the FBI around him, there were no charges ever filed.

He always said he was innocent of that.

He laid low for a couple of years back in Perry county where he lives ran for local office came back to the Ohio state house.

And it was clear from the time he arrived that he wanted to become speaker again.

And he found his opportunity in 2018, when then speaker Cliff Rosenberger was also under FBI investigation for some legislation regarding payday lending and payday loans, and no charges were ever filed there but he resigned once he resigned that started a battle for the speakership.

Larry Householder kind of stepped back and let Ryan Smith end up winning though A lot of household supporters were still in his corner and then launched a full on attack to become speaker in 2019, he and Ryan Smith ran against each other in the house and Householder or built a coalition of Republicans and Democrats, an even split of Republicans and Democrats to win the speakership which was really very unusual.

More Republicans voted for Ryan Smith but Larry Householder became speaker.

And he was the third speaker in the course of a year in 2019.

And so it was just a really extraordinary time period from the time that he took office it was very clear that he wanted to do a couple of things.

School funding was one which he didn't get done but there was this sweeping energy bill that he proposed house bill six, a bail out of a nuclear power plants which they had wanted for a long time coupled with bailouts, for coal fire, power plants and some removal of things that power companies didn't want like energy efficiency programs, and renewable energy standards, also some things on solar projects this bill was huge.

He passed it, and then that's the federal prosecutors say when they got involved, because they say that he was at the head of this pay to play bribery scheme that they say is the largest public corruption scandal in state history, Larry Householder and four other defendants, along with a nonprofit and a utility widely believed the first energy involved.

So that happened last summer, Larry Householder was arrested and he was removed from leadership but he was still in the house - (Steve) right - He was reelected to his seat in November.

- (Steve) In November, right - Yeah.

Now he was in running in a very Republican district.

He had no organized opposition.

He had right in opposition.

So he won, but it was expected.

And then that accelerated the talk of whether to expel him, and speaker Bob Cup we asked him, reporters asked him repeatedly what's going on with that?

The caucus met in March to discuss whether Larry Householder should be removed because you said he is innocent, he is still awaiting trial, but finally it came to a point where two Republicans in adjoining districts of householders proposed a resolution to remove him.

And it was very close to bring that resolution to the floor but they got the super majority they needed to bring it to the floor.

And then it was 75 votes to remove him 21 votes to keep him, all but one of those 21 were Republicans who wanted to keep him or at least thought he deserved a chance to stay.

So it was first time since 1857 that a member of the house had been removed from his his position in house.

- (Steve) Yeah, and That was for a physical altercation with another house member.

If you, if you can can you explain Larry Householders basically control of the Ohio house?

Why was, why was he such a popular choice ultimately to become speaker once again?

What, what hole does he have or what is his influence?

Where does that stem from that?

He, he could bring people around and even under this situation almost be able to avoid being expelled at least at the committee level, anyway.

- Well, Larry Householder did leave because of term limits but term limits are interesting here at the state house because you're limited in how long you can stay in each chamber, but you can go back forth.

So there were some people who were in the house who had been in the house when they were householders here back in the early two thousands.

So he had some friendships there.

Again, he built that coalition of Republicans and Democrats and at least initially Democrats were really happy to have somebody who they felt was listening to their concerns because they felt that Republican leadership for so many years and completely ignored them.

And Larry Householder talked about bringing Democrats into more roles on committees and moving more democratic bills forward.

And, and so there was a relationship developing there until the whole house bill six scandal erupted.

And the Democrats immediately backed away from him saying this is a problem.

Republican corruption is a problem.

That's what Democrats were saying.

But there was obviously a current of support going on behind the scenes for Larry Householder even after he was removed from his leadership position there were people who defended him saying he is not been convicted of anything.

Then the process needs to work itself out.

But there I think were other people who do support the things that Larry Householder stands for.

He's very strongly supportive of former president Trump.

He really taps into that whole Trump vein of of activism and, and attitude.

And, and so I think that there were people who supported him on that, but that that was the real issue was trying to get that to the floor and getting all 99 house members on the record whether they supported Larry Householder staying in the house or being kicked out.

And like you said this is the first time it's happened to take the 1857, and that was because of a physical altercation.

And that's what Householder keeps saying is the only reason you can kick somebody out is for disorderly conduct.

And he maintains he hasn't done anything that was disorderly conduct.

Again, he's been accused in what is considered the largest public corruption scandal in Ohio history but he did not indeed punch anyone on the floor.

- (Steve) And I know that the people arguing for his expulsion to Republicans and Democrats said that, well this is disruptive.

This is disorderly because it has brought, you know it brought a lack of trust about all of us now because this gentleman is still sitting as a member of the house.

It reflects on all of us.

How can anybody trust any of us when we have him here?

And he's just saying, well, wait a minute, that's not a crime.

You can say that.

Well, people don't like the fact that I'm here I haven't been convicted of anything.

And I know he played, he did play the I'm being, you know I'm being wrongly persecuted or prosecuted here and brought up impeachment and some other things.

So he, as you said, he tapped into not only the the Trump agenda, the things, the policies but also then that I'm being victimized here.

And, and that was kind of an interesting approach for a man who's really been in charge of, as you said a long time member of the house and really a power broker in Ohio politics, So yeah.

- And yeah, yeah, go ahead.

- After he was escorted out of the house he of course talked to reporters he was standing there waiting to speak with him including me and my colleague, my state office colleague Andy chow.

And he talked about that there was this conspiracy theory kind of thing, going on that there were things that he couldn't talk about.

It was all politics, but you know, it's important to note that in the house, bill six, federal trial, I mean you had two defendants who have pleaded guilty.

The nonprofit has also entered a plea deal.

The first energy, which is the utility widely believed to be involved in this has a major changes to their operation including firing a lot of their corporate executives.

And one of the people involved who was accused died by suicide.

So there are only two people here who have not pleaded guilty, who maintained their innocence Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican party chair Matt Borges.

They both say they never took any bribes.

They never offered any bribes, but boy, you read that federal affidavits.

And it really sounds like the federal government has at least made a basic case.

Now, again, they've both pleaded in a sense, we'll find out more when the trial happens in Cincinnati later this year, maybe even next year.

So that's something to, and unfortunately since it's a federal trial, we won't be able to see what happens in the courtroom, but it will be interesting.

- (Steven) Right, right now when we come back and we talk a little bit about what Lee, and again, neither one of us are attorneys, We should make that clear.

This did he make any mention of how we might challenge it?

And we come back, let's talk about that and see I'm not sure that he did, but let's let's see what were Larry Householder wants to go from here.

We'll be back in just a moment with Karen Kasler our guests, the host of the state of Ohio back in a moment on the journal.

Thank you for staying with us around the journal.

Our host, excuse me our guest is the host of the state of Ohio, Karen Kasler.

And we're talking about things going on in Columbus.

Obviously it's the legislature in session but as we were talking that first segment Larry householder power broker long time member of the house twice speaker of the house has been expelled by his peers.

Has he made any, I know that you said he talked to your colleague on the way out and all the other reporters too.

Has he made any indication that you might challenge his expulsion in court?

Anything of that nature where he's going to go outside the rules of the legislature and say you can't do this to me, the law isn't the way it's being interpreted by the house.

- (Karen) Sure, I mean, he said at the time that he wasn't sure what he was going to do.

The one that he said he was going to do was tour the state and talked to voters, leaving open the door for the possibility that he could run again because he could, I mean, as long as he's not convicted of of that federal crime during that trial, he could run again.

And he said he's going to try to send his message on through voters.

And also he even told me personally he wants to be on the state of Ohio to talk about his issues and things that are important to him.

And he told reporters that he doesn't intend to go away and be silent.

That if they didn't like public citizen Householder or they really won't like private citizen Householder or because he intends to keep speaking out.

Now, the question is who's listening because private citizens, you know, they can speak out on anything, but there's not necessarily an obligation to cover what they're saying.

So, you know, and Larry Householder has has always been a real political animal.

I mean, he has really seen political opportunities in so many different areas and, and he certainly built relationships with journalists and others to that end.

And so I expect to see Larry Householder until that trial potentially trying to make his way out in public.

I mean, like you are almost seeing Donald Trump doing right where you know, he's been shut out of social media but yet he's still trying to do rallies and events to try to bring out his agenda and his message.

But the question is, of course who's listening.

- (Steve) Yeah, and reminder our viewers again too, is that trial has as a date set yet or not, or is that still out there?

That's just floating around out there.

Okay - Yeah, A former us attorney for the Southern district of Ohio David Devillers, who resigned in a mass resignation of us attorneys when president Biden came into office he is now working for the state working on, for instance the bowling green, the hazing case and doing some other things.

But when I spoke to him earlier this year he said that COVID has really delayed a lot of things in the federal court system like it has in the state court system.

And so that's pushed back trials.

We don't have a trial date yet but certainly that's something that we're looking for if not this year then I would expect next year.

- (Steve) Yeah, and one of the reasons I ask is, of course you mentioned the fact that Larry Householder is traveling around the state.

He has all of those connections, both with politicians the news media, that sort of thing.

Governor DeWine's up for re-election is, is there any I mean, would you would Larry Householder I know we can't get into his mind right now but would he consider running as maybe challenging DeWine for the governorship for the Republican nomination, but with all that stuff floating around that it would seem like that would be very difficult to do, but he's not shown any, any instance of backing away from this though.

I don't know if he, if he's thinking even of that, maybe - Anything can happen.

I mean, I I've stopped predicting anything, but I will say that when he spoke to reporters after he was removed from the house, he spoke at length about his concerns about DeWine and the COVID shutdowns, and some of the things that he feel, he feels the DeWine really kind of broke state law on some of these things.

So, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he would do something, some sort of announcement or certainly campaigning for, there are two people now who were running well, three people, I think they were running against Mike DeWine that the most common the biggest names though, are former Congressman Jim Renacci who has also spoken out against the DeWine shutdowns.

And then also Joe Blystone, who was at central Ohio farmer.

And his main issue has been about masks and the public health orders and everything which will be an interesting campaign to see because by the time the governor's race is really in full swing next year, how big a deal are those things going to be to people?

Are people ready to put all the pandemic stuff behind them and look forward?

Or are they still going to be smarting over what happened during 2020?

- (Steven) Yeah, and probably the only thing, one of the things that could make that come back is if we would suddenly have to, although, and we can talk about this a little bit way the legislature has pulled back the executive powers on that.

If, if we would hopefully never deal with this again but should we see another wave of COVID in some fashion that might make that issue more important than whereas right now, as you said it might become like, okay, yes we don't want to hear any more about that.

Things are back to normal and that would be a one less campaign issue for some people.

So, yeah, I guess we could shift gears here and talk a little bit since we kind of got into the COVID thing a little bit in the fact that one candidate for governor is sort of making that a keystone of their campaign, the legislature, as it as it threatened to do and was overruled.

It was vetoed once by the governor did restrict the executive powers of the governor in terms of dealing with health crises like this.

So talk a little bit about that and how that came about and what it means for future governors maybe Mike DeWine or someone who follows him.

- Yeah.

And that's a really interesting point to mention there is when the legislature starts talking about overriding health orders or restricting the executive authority, I mean, yes they were spot, they those bills were sparked by what was happening during COVID but they have long-term effects.

And that's what DeWine has said, that this is his concerns.

Obviously his concerns have to be for his own power but certainly his concerns are for future governors and what might happen later on down the road.

And so, yeah there was this bill that passed earlier this year it takes effect this week that would allow state lawmakers to override the governor's health orders.

And it would ban local health departments from instituting their own health orders.

- (Steve) Right - And that's going to be really important if there is, like you said another surge because DeWine has now basically pulled off all of his health orders.

I mean the state of emergency, he lifted it last week and that was the last thing that was out there.

The mask mandate's gone, all these other orders are gone.

So there's really nothing for the legislature to act on once this law takes effect.

And I think that may have been by design for the governor to do that though, DeWine has always said that he's been looking at the science and certainly the numbers that we have of confirmed cases and total cases and deaths have been really falling off which is great news, no matter how you look at COVID and everything - (Steve) Oh sure, absolutely - But the long-term effects here, I think there are some people in the legislature who are very concerned about what DeWine did during COVID and they want to make some rules in case there is a surge, there is a return.

The variant that's been spreading might really have a major impact later this year, especially in the fall when we get kids back to school and all that.

But I think it would be really, really difficult for DeWine to try to put in any new shutdowns or orders because of the way people reacted to the orders he put in place in the first place.

- (Steve) And as you said, and I think the governor's concerned not for just his immediate situation, but the fact that this is a large, I mean, this reaches a huge overarching concept that really stripped the governor future governors of their power.

And as you said, local health departments too.

So whether it's COVID or some other health challenge that could be an issue.

So, Okay.

- This has been building too for a while.

I mean, even under former governor Kasich you had the legislature really pushing back on what they felt was overreach by the executive.

When Kasich, for instance, expanded Medicaid there were lawmakers who were very frustrated with that.

And so they really looked for opportunities to try to bring there bring some authority back to the legislative branch.

So this is a continuing struggle, I think and I almost expect some of these things to end up in the Ohio Supreme court.

I'm really surprised that that bill that I just mentioned that gave the legislature the power to overturn the governor's health orders.

I'm really surprised that didn't get a legal challenge because I think that would have been some really interesting arguments before the Ohio Supreme court about who really has the authority to do these things and can one branch really check the other branch in that way - (Steve) Yeah to that extent.

The other thing that's going on, and we touched on it briefly at the beginning, when we come back let's talk about the state budget because when we talked the last time the house had proposed a budget and it seemed as if, oh it touched a lot of things that everybody was comfortable with when it got to the Senate they didn't see it quite that way.

So we come back, let's talk about the argument, the discussion that's going to go on between the house and Senate conference groups on trying to find a budget for the state.

So back in just a moment with Karen Kasler host of the state of Ohio here on the journal.

Thank you for staying with us on the journal.

Our guest is the host of the state of Ohio.

Karen Kasler, the state legislature, of course has dealt with all the issues we've talked about.

And a lot of other ones, the big one that sits in front of them now, both in the Senate and the house are there respective budgets that each has proposed?

So take us back a little bit, talk about what the house proposed and then how the Senate viewed that when it came to them and where we stand right now.

- Well, yeah, the house budget passed in April and the budget process usually goes like this.

The budget is introduced in March by governor Mike DeWine or whoever the governor is.

And then it goes to the house.

The house makes some changes.

They pass their own budget, they send it over to the Senate and the Senate make some changes.

They pass their budget, it comes to a conference committee.

And then that conference committee has to work out the differences between those two budgets and send it on to the governor by June 30th.

So we're, we're starting to get close here.

- (Steve) Right - And it's not that unusual, the last budget went 17 days past the deadline before it was signed.

So it's, and that was at a time when DeWine had a better relationship with the legislature arguably than he does right now.

So I'm not really, I'm not really expecting to see a budget by June 30th, though, as I said in the last segment I'm no longer predicting anything, anything could happen.

- (Steve) Sure.

- But I have to say that the house budget and the Senate budget are so far apart on such big issues that the conference committee really has a mountain of work ahead of it.

I mean, just starting with there's a income tax cut in both the house and the Senate budgets 2% in the house, 5% in the Senate.

Not that big a difference, I guess, especially when you start considering that the state has now said that its revenues it's got about a billion, a little over a billion dollars, more in revenues than it expected it would have, the state expected to have a $2 billion dollar shortfall by this time when the predictions were initially done.

So they've got, it's basically a $3 billion dollar swing that they weren't expecting.

So that's, now DeWine has cautioned lawmakers not to look at that money as potential tax cut money.

- (Steve) Right - Because it's one time money it's money from the federal government and, and you know the improvement in the economy since the pandemic.

So it's not the kind of thing that you would expect every year.

So that's just one of the differences.

The major differences, I think here with a big one is the school funding plan - (Steve) Right - The house plan passed the school funding plan, very similar to the cup Patterson plan that passed last year overwhelmingly in the house.

And it really tears apart the existing school funding formula and comes up with a new formula to calculate state aid for schools based and this is very simplified 60% property taxes and 40% income.

That's the basics of it.

And it'll be phased in over six years, because it costs at least probably about $2 billion dollars to fully phase in.

So the house sent that over to the Senate the Senate didn't like the costs.

They didn't like any of this.

They ripped it apart and came up with a school funding formula.

That's very similar to the existing one.

The one that everybody's complained about.

So the one that everybody says doesn't work because most schools get either more than the formula says they should or less than the formula says they should.

And so now you've got these major differences between these two school funding formulas and there are some other things that the Senate budget added, for instance, it does it basically dismantles the step-up quality program that is in daycares where daycares get on that program so that they can take in kids who are getting state assistance.

So it basically dismantles that whole thing.

It adds more people potentially to it but it really potentially critics of this say it could really change the quality really reduce the quality of early childhood education.

It also allows for means testing for some people getting what the food stamp program allows, you know puts a cap on how much they can have in assets including a cap on the value of their cars at like $4,650, which, you know, there are parts of the state where you need a car to get to work.

- (Steve) Sure, yeah - And it also the Senate budget bands municipalities from running their own broadband programs.

It also bands local communities from instituting fees on using plastic bags.

There's a lot of things in the Senate budget that are really kind of surprising.

And I think that that's going to be those are some of the sticking points.

I think that maybe the conference committee is going to have to work on - (Steve) Yeah, Now we have just a couple of minutes, the state school fund.

Cause I know we talked about this every time we've talked this year about this.

And I, I initially everybody felt pretty optimistic.

I said, oh, finally, we're going to get stunned.

And you were, you were pretty well, let's just see.

And it turns out you were right about that.

Here we are.

And once again, we really don't have a school funding a consensus on a school funding plan.

So Yeah, and as you said, the two are dramatically different.

The formula we currently have doesn't work.

So this is like the never-ending story.

Every, I think if we were here 20 years from now we'd be talking about school funding in the state of Ohio.

It's just the strangest thing.

It is the strangest thing.

And this goes back to what 91 or something.

Now the extra case 97.

Okay.

- You said, when was the first ruling from the Ohio Supreme court that said that the state's reliance on property taxes to pay for public education was unconstitutional.

There were three further rulings after that and the justices kicked it back to the legislature and said, you figure it out.

And so the cup Patterson plan came out of months and months and months of work to try to come up with something different.

And then of course the Senate has raised concerns about the cost.

And so it really almost always seems to come down to money and the difficulties on how to balance out each district, how to make it work.

And it's, it's, I don't have high hopes for major change this time but I could be wrong.

- (Steve) Yeah, Well I'm sure.

Hopefully the next time we talk there'll be a school funding plan in place that that most people believe will work and we'll we'll see where it's at.

So we'll have to leave it at that.

Thank you again, Karen, for being on and bringing us up to date on a few things that are going on in Columbus.

There's not a lot to talk about down there at the moment, but oh, well no.

Oh, we'll see.

So good.

You can check us out at wbgu.org and of course you can watch this every Thursday at eight o'clock on WBGU PBS.

We'll see you again next time on the journal.

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