(upbeat music) (word bubbles blip) - Hello and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

It's a busy time in Columbus and there are deadlines coming up and there are a lot of big issues.

Normally it would be the state budget, but that's kind of taken a back burner.

Joining us from the state of Ohio, hosted the program here on WBGU-PBS every Sunday at noon is Karen Kasler to get us all caught up on what's gonna happen over the next few days in Columbus as the legislature tackles a couple of issues that are very important to them and everybody else in the state of Ohio.

So again, Karen, thank you for being here.

- Hey, it's great to be here.

Thanks.

- Yeah.

Now people have heard a lot about this.

It's been talked about a lot, but one of the big things that's coming up is the effort to say, if you want to amend the Ohio Constitution moving forward, you have to have a 60% majority, not a 51% majority to change that.

So talk about that issue, where it stands, how it's evolved its way through the legislature.

And obviously we've got a deadline coming 'cause this wants to be on the August 2023 ballot.

That's the goal of the supporters, the proponents.

- Well, a little bit of the history here, this first started back in November, and that was when we were in lame-duck session, so when the legislature, after the election, before the session ended, and there was an attempt to try to move this forward.

It moved through the house and then it stalled in the Senate.

And so it didn't move.

Now what they're talking about here is a resolution that would require 60% voter approval statewide to amend the Constitution.

And this time in the new version of this, it would also require that signatures for putting a constitutional amendment before voters come from all 88 counties.

Right now it's only 44.

And it would also eliminate a period, there's a 10 day period where if you submit signatures and you don't have enough valid signatures, you can go out and get more signatures.

It would eliminate that.

That's the proposal that came forward in January.

And let's be clear about what this is about.

I mean, the supporters of this have said that this is about protecting Ohio's constitution from big money out of state special interests.

But it was clear that one of the sponsors, Representative Brian Stewart, he had written a letter to his fellow Republican lawmakers saying that really the driving issues here were about keeping amendments on abortion and gerrymandering out of the Ohio Constitution.

So that's really why there's this push here.

There are two groups that are working together now to put a reproductive rights and abortion access amendment on the ballot in November.

And lawmakers wanna get this 60% threshold in place because that will make it so much harder for that abortion amendment to pass in November.

And so May 10th is the deadline to make the August ballot, they missed the May ballot.

- [Steve] Right, right.

- May primary.

So this would be the August special election, which they also have to create because they banned most August special elections during lame-duck last year.

- Right.

Yeah.

It's an interesting turnaround because several people who are currently the governor, people like that, the Secretary of State were very supportive of eliminating August elections.

It was unneeded, it was a waste of taxpayer money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Now they're in favor of, at this time around.

And I guess when you think about it, and we've talked about this before, we had an August special election last year even because of the redistricting issues that arose.

When you look at that, where does this stand right now in terms of what we think is going to happen?

Because the governor said, if this comes to my desk, I will sign it.

Is it on track to make it to his desk at this point?

- That's the real question here.

The legislature does have to pass both the resolution and that then once the Senate passes the resolution, it's done and the governor doesn't need to sign it.

But the governor said he would sign the bill to create the August special election.

- Right.

- He's strongly anti-abortion.

And so that's why he would sign that, even though certainly it looks like a flip flop, because again, lawmakers last year, just in December, the law took effect on April 7th [Steve] Right.

- just last year banned most August special elections because they had low turnout.

[Steve] Right.

- And high cost comparatively.

And it's interesting that the legislature has now potentially will use the August special election in two successive years where school boards and local governments have been urged to avoid the August special election because of those high costs and low turnout.

Last year, you mentioned the primary, [Steve] Redistricting.

- the statewide primary, [Steve] Yeah, the primary.

- and that was a result of the inability of the Republican dominated Ohio Redistricting Commission to come up with maps that were ruled constitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The supporters of those maps then took those to federal court, and that was the order was to have this August special election, turnout was 7.9%.

Now, people who support this time having an August special election, the vote on the 60% threshold, they say, oh, no.

It's gonna be a lot bigger this time because we're all talking about this.

A lot of attention is on this.

It's also August and August is a time when people are on vacation.

People are not thinking about politics.

The special election in August would potentially be a very low turnout.

[Steve] Right.

- I would think.

- And yeah, and having done poll work and worked all three of the elections in Ohio in 2022, yeah.

That was a fairly quiet day.

People weren't all that enthused about primary races for those particular things.

Now, it is possible because this issue has gotten a lot more attention that maybe we'll see a better turnout.

But the reality is it's not gonna be as if it was on the November ballot, which has always been the argument.

You wanna put it on November when people are accustomed to voting, therefore you'll get turnout that is more representative of what the voters want.

This runs in the face of that.

And especially when numerous, well previous governors and previous secretaries of state to a person, I believe the last five or six in each category, the ones that are alive obviously have said this is not a good idea.

The 60% part, they haven't really talked much about the August part, but they really aren't in favor of the 60% constitutional amendment margin.

- Well, yeah, I think the question is how you're going to do this.

That the idea of doing this in an August special election when turnout is typically very low.

[Steve] Right.

- It's been viewed as bad policy that if you're gonna make something, such a major change to the Constitution, that will be potentially permanent unless another constitutional amendment overturns it, [Steve] Yeah.

- you have to have the widest number of voters possible.

And there's even, I mean, the groups that are against this, it's an army of opponents.

And while there are groups that support it, for instance, evangelical Christian groups, anti-abortion groups, gun rights groups, the Ohio Restaurant Association, because they're concerned about a minimum wage amendment.

Those are the supporters of the 60% threshold.

The opponents, it's hundreds of groups from all across the spectrum.

Like you just mentioned, Ohio's four living ex governors, Republican and Democrat, five of the last former state attorneys general, the only two who were not on that letter were Mark Dan, who you might remember was a Democratic Attorney General for about a year till he resigned because of scandal and Mike DeWine, who's the current governor, [Steve] Current governor.

- and apparently supports this, but you've got the Libertarian party say they like the idea or they are opposed to the idea, the Ohio Association of Elections Officials opposed to the idea.

So the opposition has been just huge on this.

And it's really like nothing I've seen.

- Yeah.

And yet still, it looks like we're moving forward.

And I know there were protests.

You watched the show on Sunday, there were lots of people out in front of the State House as this has moved forward saying this is a bad idea.

We've got just like 30 seconds here before we go to the break.

Does that seem, and there was a huge amount of testimony, did that seemingly have any impact on anyone sitting on that committee?

Or was that sort of gonna be proforma just to do through it?

The vote went basically party line.

With maybe one possible exception if I'm keeping all this pieces together.

- I'm not sure that voter outrage or protests really make that much of a difference.

But I recall Senate Bill five, the collected bargaining law that affected police officers, firefighters, that sort of thing in 2011.

There were huge protests about that.

It still passed, then they went to the ballot and overturned it.

[Steve] Right.

- So, this has a vibe of that where people are really concerned and showing their concern by coming to the State House and testifying and writing letters and doing all that.

- Okay.

Well we come back to talk a little bit more about that.

And then obviously Senate Bill 83 is another hot topic as well.

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

Thank you for staying here with us on The Journal.

Our guest is Karen Kasler, the host of the program, The State of Ohio, which is seen every Sunday at noon here on WBGU-PBS.

Karen, one of the things that's ironic about this is, and I know when you talk about the constitutional amendment, the 60% voter approval package, one of the reasons that the supporters have stated is this will keep large money outside influence from coming in and skewing election in a way that the voters of Ohio don't want.

With we're 51%, we're on that tipping point.

But one of the things that has come out as this has evolved through is that one of the big supporters of the 60% voter approval margin is an out-of-state big money donor, which would seem to be exactly the kind of thing you don't want to have happen here.

But talk a little bit about that.

- Yeah.

There's a political action committee called Save Our Constitution PAC that's been set up to try to pressure House Speaker Jason Stevens to call for a house vote on this because Stevens has been kind of the wild card here.

I mean, obviously as a speaker he has tremendous power and if he doesn't want something to come to the floor, it's not gonna come to the floor.

And at first, back in March, he said that he didn't wanna have an August special election.

[Steve] Right.

- And that boards of elections in counties have told him they don't want one either.

And then about a week later he backtracked on that saying it's possible we could do it.

And so there's this group Save Our Constitution PAC, which is almost exclusively funded by Richard Uihlein, who is a Republican billionaire mega donor from Illinois.

[Steve] Ah.

- And so, yeah, it sounds like an out-of-state special interest.

When we asked one of the sponsors of these resolutions, Representative Brian Stewart, a Republican, about, hey, what's the deal on this?

This is an out-of-state special interest who's funding the campaign to try to put this forward.

He said, well, that kind of proves the point that we're trying to make here.

[Steve] Oh, okay.

- Which I thought was interesting to I guess own that.

[Steve] Yeah.

- But certainly the casinos have been the big thing that have often been pointed to about the out-of-state big money special interests.

[Steve] Right.

- But one thing that does stand to be noted here is that if the legislature wanted to have done something about casinos, they could have put their own constitutional amendment before voters, after the casinos were put into place and made some changes.

They never chose to do that.

[Steve] Chose not to.

Chose not to.

One of the things too, when you talk with people who watch politics, of course you get all different, you get different perspectives on this.

They look at the 60% margin as being removing democracy from the state of Ohio in one fashion.

Because we've always been told, you just have to win by one vote.

You win by one, you win.

Now you have to win 60/40 to actually win in essence or have a 60% approval, [Karen] Yeah.

- not 51 and some people see that as being anti-democracy because of that.

Of course again, other people, as you said, the supporters have a different view of how that works.

- Right.

I mean, the supporters say that they want there to be a higher threshold and there have been arguments for a higher threshold.

There are two states that do allow, that do require 60% voter approval to amend their constitutions.

10 years ago, the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission took up this discussion and there was a recommendation to go to 55%.

[Steve] Okay.

- But there was also, they would pair it with some other things to try to urge groups to use the initiated statute route, which is to try to create a law rather than a constitutional amendment.

The concern about creating a law though is if you put a law, say for instance, there's likely to be a recreational marijuana law proposed on this November's ballot.

[Steve] Right.

- There's a worry that if that passes, then the legislature could just repeal that law.

- [Steve] Right.

- And so the question would be how do you combine these two things to still guarantee some sense of democracy?

But the idea of 60%, the opponents say it's very clear that 40% of people then will basically would get to decide whether this goes forward or not, whether this goes into the Constitution or not.

Whereas a simple majority of 50% plus one is fairer.

That's what we use for deciding, for instance, races for candidates.

And everything [Steve] Yeah.

- from the president on down.

- Yeah, exactly.

That's been the mantra is you have to win 51% of the vote or 50.5 or 50 just barely.

If you have 50.1%, you win.

[Karen] 50% plus one vote - Yeah.

- Plus one vote, yeah.

[Karen] That's what you need.

- And I think the other thing now, you've got these two pieces here.

You've got the voter approval, the constitutional amendment portion, and then you've got this special election.

Because obviously if you do the 60% and that gets approved, but you don't approve the August election that confuses us even more.

Does that mean then they'd have to talk about doing it in November, which then raises another whole issue if something would pass by 51% in November, and yet they approve a 60% approval rating?

That's why this August thing is so important to supporters, obviously.

- Right, because the proposal to make it 60% to amend the Constitution, you'd only need 50% plus one to get that get passed.

- To get that, yeah.

- Right.

But that would not affect other potential constitutional amendments on the same ballot.

[Steve] Okay.

- And so there's a real question about whether, if there is not an August special election, could that vote go on the same ballot as the reproductive rights amendment?

But there's also the question of whether lawmakers want to do that because they're doing this ideally for the abortion and gerrymandering amendments.

But what about other things that maybe Republicans want to see done?

I mean, there's a group of Republicans, pretty far right Republicans who wanna see a constitutional amendment that would ban mandatory vaccines.

That's probably not gonna get 60% support.

So there's some concern about, hey, do we want 60% requirement forever?

And even my State House News Bureau colleague Joe Engles, asked Senate president Matt Huffman, hey, if the abortion amendment passes, are you still gonna try to do the 60% approval if you haven't already gotten that in place?

And he said, no.

I think that's pretty telling of what this is really aimed at.

- Yeah.

And I guess that's been part of it too.

This is one of those things where the discussion has been, well it's good government, but the reason it came forward really happened after the change at the states, at the US Supreme Court.

And then you saw some states really unsurprising, like Kansas actually put that into their constitution, with locking in reproductive rights, which I think probably surprised people because of that, well, that'll never happen, especially in Kansas.

They're very conservative, they're very pro-life.

And yet that kind of lit a fire then for the folks who were saying, well, wait a minute that could happen here in Ohio.

And obviously not everybody, not a lot of people like that, or some people didn't like that thought.

- Well, it's passed in the states that have put reproductive rights into their constitutions.

It's passed in blue states and democratic states pretty strongly.

[Steve] Sure.

- In red states it's also passed.

[Steve] Right.

- But not by 60%.

And that is the key.

[Steve] That's the key.

- That is the point to try to make sure that it doesn't pass that 60% that doesn't pass.

You raise that threshold and then it might not pass.

And so that's why they want it in place.

- Yeah.

Well I mean, this and what it's background is an incredible, that cliche, it's an incredible wedge issue that's gonna be out there for voters to look at maybe in August and something in November, who knows?

When we come back, obviously the other thing that has maybe attracted a certain amount of attention is Senate Bill 83, which deals with higher education and the way that will function moving forward.

So when we come back, we can talk a little about that as well, okay.

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

Thanks for staying with us here on The Journal.

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

Karen, the other large issue that's looming at the legislature and has been now is basically a way to look at redesigning higher education in the state of Ohio.

And it's Senate bill 83, the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act.

So talk about that.

And we know that's a three hour show in and of itself, just going through what's in that.

But see if you can condense it in a way that makes it digestible for the real world, I guess.

- Well, what this bill really seeks to do is address some of the concerns that conservatives have had about higher education.

There's a real feeling among conservatives that there is indoctrination going on on college campuses.

The conservative students can't really share their views without being derided or punished in some way.

And so this bill really seeks to try to go after some of that.

And it does it with some pretty specific ways.

For instance, it would prohibit mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI training programs.

It would require that universities cannot take positions on controversial issues.

It would prohibit any sort of partnerships with the government of China.

It bans what are called litmus tests, ideological or political litmus tests in hiring.

It prohibits faculty members from striking.

It requires post-tenure review for faculty members that can include student evaluations.

Universities are gonna be required to submit a four point statement that when they apply for funding that says this is all the stuff that we're doing and that we do not require mandatory DEI training and that course outlines or syllabi are published online.

That's just some of what it does.

[Steve] Right.

- But it really is designed to try to go after some of the concerns that conservatives have had about what they consider to be a lack of free speech on campus, at least free speech from the conservative perspective.

- Yeah.

And I know when you've had both Jerry Sereno who's the driving force behind as he's the bill's number one proponent and people who are opposed to it.

And the argument coming back at him was, well, you're actually censoring, you're actually lowering the ability to have free speech in the classroom by putting these limits on what we can say or how we can say it.

But he didn't seem phased by that at all and said, no, this is gonna be a good thing all the way around.

And yeah, and I think it is interesting because the one thing you mentioned the DEI part of it, universities, public universities typically and some private universities too, get federal dollars.

And sometimes that federal dollars is linked to a statement that would be actually the opposite of what would be required by this particular Senate bill, which says you can't do that.

The federal government saying if you aren't doing that, you don't get this money.

You're in violation of this part of.

Because I think even Title IX came up somewhere as a part of this.

But that was the reality too, that well, wait a minute.

How do you deal with this?

The feds are saying, you must say this.

The state's saying, no, you are not, you will not say that.

So it puts the universities in a real spot.

- Right, right.

And there's even a section of the bill that talks about controversial issues and presenting two sides of controversial issues where there are some issues that are really kind of settled.

And Jerry Sereno, Senator Sereno in my interview even said that there are gonna be changes to this particular piece of legislation.

For instance, in the bill it talks about controversial issues and presenting both sides on climate change.

Well, he said climate change is settled, so we're gonna change that to climate policy.

[Steve] Okay.

- He said that there's this idea of all Chinese students being banned.

He said that's not the case.

He's gonna clarify that.

[Steve] Right.

- But some of the things that are not gonna change are, for instance, the mandatory DEI training.

He says he wants DEI training to be voluntary.

But you bring up that point that there are some federal ties between DEI training and money, and also a lot of corporations are requiring DEI training.

So if you're trying to train students for jobs of the future, you have to get them prepared for DEI training that they're gonna see on the job.

[Steve] Right.

- And he also said that the ban on ideological litmus test will stay because he said that conservative faculty members are not being hired.

I don't know how he proved some of this.

[Steve] Right.

- But he said that if we open this up and get rid of these litmus tests, we'll have more quality faculty.

A lot of this bill really doesn't have, in fact, none of it seems to have any sort of data attached to it [Steve] That's what I was gonna say.

- to prove the point.

[Steve] Yeah.

- Yeah, I mean, and the professors that I've talked to, the students that I've talked to, there was a seven hour hearing where people who oppose this showed up and testified.

And the concern about the lack of real data showing what Senator Sereno says is happening is actually happening, is a concern here and there's a real thought that some of these things that he's talking about could edge into areas where they would get rid of certain programs like gender studies and African American studies and Sereno says that's not the case.

[Steve] And women's studies.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

- Yeah.

It's just, there's a lot.

Yes.

- Well, and I think one of the things that was interesting, and you mentioned the fact that not taking positions on controversial issues is part of that.

And just by chance a few weeks ago we were going through some files and pulled up the student newspaper from, I'm trying to think, 1987.

I don't know why it was in the file, but it was, and in there was a situation where the university was discussing whether or not to oppose South African apartheid.

Under this, you would not be allowed to take a stand against segregation, for instance.

Uh, yeah.

- And specifically boycotts are banned in this.

- Yeah.

- The university cannot do boycotts.

And so yeah, there have been some movements that have really, the universities have been a big part of them, but this is the kind of thing that would not be allowed under this bill.

Again, Senator Sereno says, changes are coming.

We have not seen those changes yet, but I imagine that some of these things are going to stay.

And the question is, is it going to be something that can be qualified and quantified?

And if it isn't, what's that gonna do?

And colleges and universities say that they're concerned about the hiring of administrators to make all this mandate and stuff happen, and that's gonna drive up the cost of higher education.

- Yeah.

Well, and then the other aspect is, and again, I don't, this is all anecdotal, you would wonder if this would make it difficult to hire people to come to work at University of Ohio because they'll say, well, wait a minute.

Again, same thing.

If I've got an offer here and an offer here, this one seems a lot more restrictive to me on what I can do in the classroom.

Everything else being equal, they're probably gonna opt for the other position.

And at the same time, we're trying to attract people to come to Ohio.

So, yeah.

And it's not an easy mix to put together, everybody understands that.

But that would seem to make it difficult to recruit if nothing else.

- There are certainly conservatives who would say, hey, wait a minute, I would think that this would allow me more freedom because my conservative views would be embraced a little bit more.

But there are other people who see this as being a policy that just verges in toward racism and gender bias and all the things that we're trying to move away from.

- Yeah.

It seems like this is a great education social experiment, which usually is a bad word in certain parts of the political spectrum, but maybe not in this case.

That's where we'll have to leave it.

- Opponents are calling it the Ohio.

- Yeah.

- Opponents are calling it the Ohio Higher Education Destruction Act.

- Yeah.

- And I think that's interesting.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it shows you the divide, the perspectives on this.

So we'll have to leave it there, Karen.

We'll get back in touch with you again downstream a little bit and see how.

- On the state budget.

- Yes, state budget.

Yeah, that small thing the state budget.

No big deal going on there.

Everything's cool.

We'll see with that.

So yeah, we'll touch base again in the future and get caught up on how all of this all evolved over the next few days and see where Ohio is come the end of May and into going into June as we look at the legislature in Columbus.

So thanks again for being here.

- Great to be here.

Thanks.

- You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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