(bright music playing) - Hello and welcome to Journal, I'm Steve Kendall.

Ohio's been in the news recently and unfortunately, sometimes not for the best of reasons.

We're joined by the host of the State of Ohio, Karen Kassler kind of bring us up to date with what's going on in Columbus.

Karen, wanna thank you again for joining us here on the Journal today.

- Hey, it's always great to talk to you.

- Now, obviously, we'll get to this a little bit too, but there still is an ongoing sort of a civil war among the House Republicans about who's in charge depending on what particular thing you're talking about.

But I thought one of the things that I noticed when you were doing your show the other day, the State of Ohio, there of course is that large discussion about the state, and the effort to put reproductive rights in ballot initiatives on the ballot.

You talked with people on both sides of that.

So talk a little about where that stands right now versus when we may see that on the ballot in if we're going to see it on the ballot in Ohio.

- Well, ever since the Dobbs decision, the US Supreme Court decision last summer, there's been some concern among abortion rights, and reproductive rights groups to try to put something before voters that would put access to abortion, fertility treatments, contraception, all that in Ohio's Constitution.

And it's worked in other states, even though Ohio is a very red state.

They've seen it work in other states, Kansas being a primary example.

And so there's been a lot of question about when reproductive rights advocates in Ohio would go ahead and try to put something before voters.

It takes a lot, it takes a lot of money, and it takes a lot of time and in a lot of effort to get even a ballot issue proposed, I mean, you've gotta come up with the language, which they have, come up with a thousand signatures, which they say they got 7,000 signatures in the first weekend that they were trying to gather signatures, they've turned all that language over to the Ohio Attorney General who has to prove it.

Then it has to go to the state ballot board, and then they can potentially get the go ahead to gather 413,000 signatures from 44 counties in Ohio.

So that's a lot, and so these two groups, there was a group of doctors and a group of advocates that were both working on a constitutional amendment.

They decided to team up and said that they wanted to put this on the ballot this year because of concern about a resolution that's been proposed in the Ohio House that would require a 60% voter approval at the ballot box to amend Ohio's constitution.

They're very concerned about that potentially being something that could hurt a reproductive rights issue, and certainly Republicans who want that 60% threshold have said that abortion and redistricting, those are the two issues that they're concerned about people bringing to the ballot.

- And when you mentioned that particular part of it too, because I know you mentioned the fact that there is this other discussion about requiring a 60% voting majority to approve a new in addition to the Constitution.

That's also somewhat, and as we get in this somewhat at the heart of the Republicans in the House arguing over that point, some of them are much more, that's priority one for them, maybe for the Speaker that isn't necessarily priority one.

It's on his list, but not at the top of the list.

And I picked up the other day when I was watching, watching you talk with Derek Merrin, who is a Republican from Northwest Ohio, that he felt that quite that, that the Speaker maybe wasn't going to push that the way he would have if he had been Speaker.

Is that a realistic read on the argument about that particular thing, that's become the flashpoint to some degree?

- Well, just to refresh everyone's memory here, we're talking about two people who both wanted to be House Speaker.

Derek Merrin had won a vote among Republicans only in November after November election.

So he came into the first session of the House this year, the new two year session of General Assembly, thinking he was gonna win the vote for Speaker.

Well, behind the scenes, Jason Stevens had been angling, and working and talking to people to try to get votes to his side because he still wanted to be Speaker.

He and Merrin and another man, Phil Plummer from the Dayton area had all lied to be Speaker in that Republican only vote.

And Jason Stevens ended up getting 22 Republican votes, but all 32 Democratic votes, so he ended up winning whereas Derek Merrin had 43 Republican votes, so he is now claiming that he is the leader of Republicans in the Ohio House because he got more Republican votes than the person who became Speaker Jason Stevens.

And this keeps going back and forth.

One of the big things about this is control of the Ohio House Republican campaign account because certainly that money could be used potentially to run primaries against candidates that perhaps one side or the other doesn't support or appreciate what happened on the House floor.

And that whole question though, that you asked about the Constitutional Amendment, the proposal to require 60% voter approval, Derek Merrin says that's his top priority.

He thinks that's the most important thing because of his concerns about a ballot issue on abortion rights.

Jason Stevens, as Speaker, has controlled the legislative agenda, he released his list of priority bills that was not on that list, but he has taken that House resolution that would require the 60% voter approval, sent it to a committee, which is chaired by a Merrin supporter by the way.

- [Steve] Hmm, okay.

- And assigned it a number House joint resolution one, and said that, you know, it's going to be looked at, and it could potentially even be on the November ballot.

The Barron supporters, of course, had wanted it to be on the May ballot, so it would affect potentially ballot issues coming forward like in November.

- [Steve] Right, yeah, and I know that, and when you were talking with Mr. Merrin, he said the effect of this was a delaying tactic to prevent it from getting on the May ballot by the Speaker of the House.

So obviously, they're still kind of discussing this amongst themselves a little bit there.

They've not reached an agreement on this.

Is there potential there?- - There's a been, let me just add one thing here really quick.

There's been a lot of lobbying behind the scenes on that particular piece of legislation there, because to raise that voter threshold of 60%, that's a big deal.

There's been a lot of potential constitutional amendments that would, or ones that did pass that did not get that 60%.

And there's some real questions about how that 60% threshold would affect bond issues, things for infrastructure, the third Frontier project that Ohio did, it was a high tech development project.

I mean, these are all things that could potentially be affected by that 60% voter threshold.

And so that question of what happens with that is a big one, and also this resolution would require not only signatures from 44 counties, it's half of Ohio's counties, but all 88 counties, which is a real challenge to advocates who are trying to put together those signatures.

And it would also eliminate the 10 day period in which groups can submit their 413,000 signatures in this case, then those signatures are verified.

There's always signatures that are thrown out because people move,- - Sure.

- And die and that sort of thing.

And they have a 10 day period to go out, and get the rest of those signatures to get that on the ballot.

That would be eliminated under this resolution.

So all of these questions are a part of that concern about throwing this onto the ballot quickly versus taking some time and looking at it, and making a decision in a longer format.

- Yeah, and one of the things this came up when I was talking with some other people on another show, another Journal program, and they looked at it and viewed it, and again, their perspective was that the 60% threshold was not a good thing because it seemed to take democracy out of the hands of the voters that it, you know, we've always been, you win with 51% and you win, not you win with, it's be like a baseball game.

You have to win six to four, not five to four kind of.

And they said that's just a interesting situation that's developed, but and again, we come back just because it's gone on the committee, let's talk about that.

That doesn't mean it's ever gonna see it.

It will see the light of day, is that a possibility?

We can talk about that in a moment.

Back in just a moment with Karen Kassler here on the Journal on WBGU-PBS.

Thank you for staying with us around the journal.

Our guest is Karen Kassler, the host of the State of Ohio, which you can see every Sunday at 12 noon here on WBGU-PBS.

You mentioned in the first segment, Karen, that the Speaker of the House has taken this 60% ballot proposal language, and assigned it to a committee chaired by a Merrin supporter in this case.

That doesn't necessarily mean though, that anything will ever come out of that committee, or get to the floor, does it?

There's no guarantee simply because he said, "Yes, I'm putting in a committee."

Cuz sometimes isn't that used to just bury things?

It never, that they never quite see the light of day again.

- Hundreds of bills are proposed every year in the Ohio House and Senate, hundreds, and that's not how many pass.

So a lot of times, I mean most of the time, I think it's safe to say a bill is proposed, it goes to committee and it just kind of dies there.

Now if it actually passes committee, then it's very likely to go to the floor, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna pass and become law because it still has to go to the other chamber where there might be opposition to it.

When it comes to the 60% voter approval, Representative Scott Wiggam, who is the Chair of that committee, again, he's a Merrin supporter, he's advocated for this, but there of course are still some questions about the specifics that I mentioned before the break.- - [Steve] Sure.

- And also one of the things that's interesting is when this proposal happened in Lame duck back in December, it did pass out of committee, but it passed by less than a 60% margin, which a lot of people noted was really interesting when you're talking about requiring 60% voter approval, but then you pass it by less than 60%.

- Yeah, it's sort of a, well, it's an interesting scenario because we've gotten used to the, I say the idea that you, it isn't by how much you win, you just have to have one more vote than the other person, or in this case one more vote on a particular issue, and this sort of changes that around.

And most people probably aren't aware that there are situations where that is part of the legislative process at times, but not necessarily something we'd seen for a ballot issue per se.

Are there other areas where the Speaker, and Mr. Merrin are still have they found any common ground really?

Or is this still, is this holding up?

Is this holding up other things that should be getting done down there?

- Well, the biggest thing right now of course is the two year operating budget.

And that is in House finance committee, it's being heard.

There's testimony from the various agency directors who are coming in to talk, so that is progressing, but there is a deadline on that, June 30th.

Right now the legislature has gone pasted that deadline in the past, in fact, Governor Mike DeWine's first budget did not get to that deadline, it went over because there was a real debate over raising the gas tax.

You might remember that a couple years ago.- - [Steve] Oh, yeah.

- But the transportation budget for instance, that's another one.

The state has four budgets in total, and those are two of them.

The transportation budget is actually moving.

It could potentially go to the House floor very shortly.

So some things are moving along, and it should be said here that Derek Merrin and Jason Stevens are both Conservative Republicans.- - [Steve] Right.

- They do have a lot in common in terms of the issues that they both support.

In their individual priority lists, for instance, a ban on trans athletes and girls sports, that's on both priority lists.

- [Steve] Okay.

- They both have economic development as a priority.

They both have the universal voucher program known as the Backpack bill, both of those that's on both of their lists.

But where they differ is, for instance, the bills that are the top priority, as I mentioned before the break, Derek Merrin's top priority is the 60% voter approval for Constitutional Amendments.

Jason Stevens top priority is a bill that would create a two and three quarter percent flat tax, and would make some property tax changes.

He wants to separate, as he says, the income tax from the property tax.

And this is a very complicated bill, but bottom line is its own sponsor says it will cost local governments and schools 1.2 billion a year.

So that's gonna be a hurdle potentially that they're gonna have to overcome, but Derek Merrin has his own tax proposal.

- [Steve] Right.

- Which would create a flat tax, and then eliminate the state income tax that also will cost the state over a billion dollars.

So both of these proposals are out there, and are are pretty, pretty big.

- Yeah, and it's interesting because the effect obviously would appear in Columbus if we went with the proposed tax proposals.

But as you said, for local government, that's a whole different thing.

And I thought that I heard Mr. Merrin say that he would also advocate for providing more money for the local government fund as a way to offset some of that.

But you know, the devil's in the details there.

Was there any clarity in what it meant with the property tax?

Was it going to reduce the property tax?

I mean, cuz typically that's a local function.

The state though weighs in and says has certain comments on local property taxes.

But what's that all about?

If we can summarize it in, in Layman's terms maybe?

- Well, yeah.

This is a very truncated explanation here, but back when the state passed the state income tax, it also created a 10% rollback on property tax to kind of balance those two things out.

And Stevens, who's a former county auditor, says he wants to separate that, which in a way they're not really, they're not really tied together, but he says he wants those things to be different.

But there are some other property tax changes in this that could, according to an economist, who does analyses for Ohio's public schools, could raise people's property taxes.

So he says there are only this economist, Howard Fleeter, says there are only two possible outcomes here that either schools and local governments will lose lots and lots of money, or the property taxes that people are paying, and businesses are paying, and that sort of thing could go up.

So that's again, like you said, the devil in the details here to try to figure out exactly how all that's gonna work.

When you mentioned Derek Merrin on the local government fund, he wants to increase almost double the amount that local governments are getting from the State's General Revenue Fund.

You might remember former Governor John Kasich cut the local government fund pretty significantly, and local governments have been advocating for restoring that state funding for a long time.

Derek Merrin says he'll bring it back at least a little bit.

There's no proposal like that in Jason Steven's priority list.

- So yeah, it does leave, yeah.

And I know that was the one question, I know, you addressed with both of them, you talked to them is, yeah, how do you fill that potential loss of funding and, - Well and that.- - Yeah, yeah.

- That doesn't answer that question unfortunately because just cuz you propose it, doesn't mean that the money's gonna be there.

This is one area though that I would say that Derek Merrin whose proposals are very conservative, this is an area where he could find agreement with Democrats because Democrats have always wanted to see more money go to the local Government fund.

Democrats typically represent larger communities that are benefiting from the local government fund.

But pretty much the rest of Derek Merrin's list, Democrats are likely gonna consider non-starters.

And then Jason Stevens list he has of his 12 priority bills, six of them are co-sponsored by Democrats, which Merrin criticized, but House minority leader Alison Russo, who's on this weekend show, said it shows that there is some potential of working together.

- Yeah, and it is an interesting thing because you would think that having that bipartisan support would be a positive, but we know that in this day and age that sometimes is not viewed that way.

And obviously right now in Columbus for the one particular group, they see that as you said, mentioned that that could be a situation where whoever controls that funding, that Caucus funding could primary people who they feel didn't support whatever.

And I know that seems to be, and I know that I've seen editorials, it's like middle school kids on the playground, let's focus on what we're supposed to be doing here instead of doing that, but that's how, that's politics work sometimes.

- And when I ask Derek Merrin about that specifically because he claims as the leader of the House Republican Caucus, which is typically a title that's reserved for the Speaker of the House,- - [Steve] The Speaker.

- Or the minority leader if Republicans are in the minority, he says that, you know, who has the control over that campaign account.

And that Phil Plummer, who I mentioned earlier, is the person who's the chair of that campaign account.

And he's talked about how he doesn't want Democrats to have wins, he wants Republicans to have wins, Republicans to sponsor all the big bills, Republicans to get credit for all this.

And he says that Jason Stevens as the Speaker owes him an apology for not being more respectful, and serious about Derek Merrin's control of, and leadership of the Ohio House Republican Caucus.

That's an interesting and almost unreal thing to say because you've got these two people who are both claiming leadership.

And one is saying, you need to apologize to me.

- Yeah, and that's unlikely to happen, at least in this situation.

We have to take a quick break, back in just a moment with Karen Kassler here on the Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on the Journal.

Our guest is Karen Kassler, host of the State of Ohio.

We've talked a lot about the multiple Republicans agendas.

What about the Democrats?

Because they obviously played a role in electing this Speaker.

Do they have an agenda, a list of legislative items that are, are different from his, I mean there must be some items that they sort of agree with him on somewhat, but not a lot.

But then do they have other ideas that of course, given the fact that they're a super minority, it's gonna be a little difficult to any of those things probably to even see the floor at any point, correct?

- Yeah, they are deep in the minority, 32 Democrats out of 99 House members.

So they don't have a ton of power.

But as you mentioned, they did have enough power to get Jason Stevens elected.- - [Steve] Right.

- Now, once again, Stevens and Merrin are very conservative.

They have a lot of issues in common that Democrats probably don't like.

And so working with Stevens over Merrin I think was a choice that they made to try to get some of their ideas through.

I mean on Merrin's list I could say that Democrats certainly support the fair school funding formula, the Cupp-Patterson formula for schools.

And that's actually something that Jason Steven supports as well, so everybody seems to be in agreement on that one, though that is a very expensive, - [Steve] Right.- - Option there.

They also, I mentioned, could be supportive of a local government fund.

They also mentioned one of Derek Merrin's big issues with ethics reform and changing state ethics laws.

And when I talked to minority leader Allison Russo for this weekend show, she talked about how that is an issue the Democrats support because Democrats have proposed that before because of the whole House Bill six, and Larry Householder scandal that erupted there.

But House Democrats also wanna propose things that really are unlikely to see the light of day things that, you know, childcare and things that specifically target working families, and areas that really are more talking points for Democrats that Republicans are probably just going to push off.

- Yeah, now with regard to fair school funding, that was, you said was partially funded, but it's as very expensive.

So there's obviously then the thought that they will fund it going forward to some degree, again, maybe not the whole billions of dollars that were talked about, but enough to keep that moving in the direction that Cupp and Patterson hoped it would move in one step, but at least that's still, - Right.

- That's a positive at that point for that, yeah.

- Well, and, and everybody seems to be in agreement that the fair school funding plan is the way to go.

This is a course a plan that would take property tax as well as personal income or Household income, and put those things together to try to come up with funding for different school districts cuz of course we have wealthy school districts, and we have poor school districts, all around the state.

So this was trying to bridge that gap, so to speak, and make state school funding constitutional, which has been a goal since 1997, I think, when the Daryl case was decided.

- [Steve] Right.

- But the, because of the cost, and the difficulty of phasing this in, it was gonna be a six year phase in, that was passed.

And so the last budget funded it for two years, and then kinda left the rest of it down the road.

So now the proposal that's out there now from Speaker Jason Stevens would fund it for another two years.

The question though is, again, this is an expensive proposition.

We're talking about, you know, more than a billion dollars here for school funding.

What happens then to other proposals such as universal vouchers or the Backpack bill?

The Backpack bill is a program that would allow all K through 12 kids in Ohio to have taxpayer paid vouchers to go to private schools.

And it's not expected that every kid would take advantage of that, but certainly that is potentially something that the state would be on the hook for, and so Democrats are very concerned about that.

They say it takes money from public education.

Republicans say bringing in more vouchers actually improves education because it brings in competition; though charter schools, in particular, are typically not as well regulated, and not as well overseen as public schools are.

But they also talk about how that funding is not then available for public schools, for instance, that's what Democrats will say.

Republicans will say that money is now away from public schools, they have more, those students are away from public schools.

They have more money to spend on the students that are still there.

- Yeah, and it is interesting that here we are, you know, as you said, set a couple of decades downstream.

Now obviously the Supreme Court, back in the nineties, said that school funding mechanism the state used was not Constitutional.

The current makeup of this particular Supreme Court might be more inclined to say the plan that comes out if it was ever challenged, like you talk about backpack and things like that because I know there are groups that are opposing that.

Chances are, they might look at it differently this time, and say, well this plan is constitutional, Backpack is constitutional, everybody should be happy, which we know obviously isn't gonna be the case, but yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, the makeup of the Ohio Supreme Court is interesting.

Now we're back to four Republicans and three Democrats.

And I mean the swing vote for a while was Chief Justice Marin O'Connor who cited with the Democrats and ruling, for instance, that redistricting, all those maps that were submitted last year were not Constitutional, they didn't follow the constitutional guidelines on how to draw districts that are fair.

Now, Chief Justice is Sharon Kennedy, she's more conservative.

And so it's largely considered, this is gonna be a pretty Republican, and pretty conservative Ohio Supreme Court.

- Right, and of course we know that we're gonna be talking about redistricting again because of what we didn't achieve the first time around, we didn't hit some of,- - Yep.

- The Benchmarks that would've put this into effect for a longer amount of time.

So that's a question that could end up back in front of that Supreme Court again.

And I noticed that one of the newspaper chains in Ohio, talked to Mike DeWine about that, and he was sort of saying, I don't really want to get involved, at least the way it was stated that he felt redistricting shouldn't be his responsibility, or he shouldn't have have to be involved in it again.

Which was kind of an interesting, because he sits on that panel, it's just one of those things that he can't really walk away from, I don't think, but yet he almost wanted to say, let's not talk about redistricting, but, - Well, and I asked him about redistricting, but I did my year end interview for the State of Ohio with Governor DeWine and asked him did he support, say Maureen O'Connor's proposal that it should be an independent commission.

And he seemed to be showing that there might be some interest on his part because I don't think he wants to sit on that board.

- [Steve] Again.

- Because it is a very partisan panel, and he, as the governor, has other things that he wants to do.

But you know, having that's in the constitution, those folks sit on that panel, sit on that redistricting commission.

And so to change that would again go back to the constitution, and it would take an effort by a group, or individuals to try to bring that before voters.

- As we look as we've got just a moment here, is there something that we should expect to see happen in Columbus over the next few weeks in terms of legislative movement on anything?

Is there one item that should start to see the light of day down there beyond the ones you've mentioned?

- Well, I mean the transportation budget's gonna happen.

It has to pass by March 31st, so the time is really growing short.

The state budget, we're gonna see some changes in the state budget from what Governor DeWine proposed to what lawmakers come up with.

I wouldn't be surprised to see one of those tax proposals like Jason Stevens tax proposal on the flat tax, and the property tax changes to be folded into that budget.

And certainly there's gonna be a lot of pretty conservative bills that are gonna be proposed, and Democrats are gonna try to get theirs out there as well.

- Okay, well, good.

Karen, thank you so much again for being with us, and keeping us surprised of what's going on in Columbus cuz obviously it's been a busier time than usual for them, and what I think was probably considered to be a little more volatile than we thought it might be.

But sometimes when you have such a large majority keeping everybody focused on the plan is obviously it's turned out to be a little, so thanks again for bringing us up to speed, and we'll be in touch again as things progress down in Columbus.

So thank you very much.

- [Karen] Great to talk to you.

- You can check us out at wbgu.org, and you can also watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time, good night and good luck.

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