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

It's the eve of the general election here in Ohio, and many elected officials are preparing for that, but the general assembly and Governor DeWine have been busy recently and here to get us caught up on the activities down at the State House is our News Bureau, Chief Karen Kasler also the host of the state of Ohio.

Let's talk about what's going on in Columbus.

Of course, one of the big things since we last talked and it was underway when we talked a month or two ago, redistricting.

So brings us up to speed on where redistrict is in Ohio, because it became the convoluted process we all thought it would be.

So let's talk about that a little bit.

- Well, I think there were high hopes for what was gonna happen with the Ohio House and Senate district maps, and then the congressional map when voters approved changing the way those maps were drawn in 2015 and 2018, those were approved by huge margins.

And so I think there were a lot of people who really hoping that the partisan bickering over the maps would be ending and that the maps would go forward.

The process would change and it would be a little bit more bi-partisan with some more minority party buy-in.

That's not the way things have happened.

Right now we have no congressional map at all.

The deadline to draw that map is the end of November, and so now it's starting to look like the congressional map, which again, will go from 16 districts to 15 will have to be drawn by state lawmakers, not the Ohio Redistricting Commission, even though it got kicked to them because of another rule in this whole process.

The redistricting commission has not had any hearings, has not had any meetings.

All we're told is that there is work going on on the map, but nothing public is happening.

And so that may end up going to state lawmakers to draw.

They've got to decide by the end of this week, essentially, what's gonna happen with that.

And again, that's a huge deal because one member of Congress from Ohio will lose his or her job.

So this is a big deal, and everybody wants to know who that is.

And people wanna know what their districts are gonna look like, how they're gonna be redrawn.

So there's that.

Separately there's the Ohio House and Senate maps, which were approved a couple of weeks ago.

Then there were three lawsuits filed against those.

Both sides are now preparing for the Ohio Supreme Court arguments over the Ohio House and Senate maps.

Those will happen in early December, those arguments and we're hearing and seeing some information about the depositions that are happening, where Secretary of State Frank Rose and autarchy favor, and Governor Mike DeWine have all been deposed and said that they really didn't have a whole lot of involvement in drawing those maps, even though the maps were approved by them, and by the other two members of the redistrict commission who were Republicans, House Speaker Bob Cupp and Senate President Matt Huffman.

And so all of this is kind of in limbo here, as we're approaching the deadlines for filing paperwork to run for Ohio House and Senate and to run for Congress.

And so it seems like it's a long way away those February filing deadlines, but they're really not when you start talking about court battles and that sort of thing.

- Right now, the current house and state maps, the state maps, how long are those in effect because I know as we looked at that legislation in the way that was all drawn out, there were four year plans and ten-year plans and all kinds of combinations.

Assuming those maps pass muster, how long will they be in effect?

- Well, obviously the current maps, the maps that we're living under right now, which some people call it some of the most gerrymandered maps in the country.

- [Steve] Right.

- Those maps expire because U.S. census data says that our population has changed.

Our population grew slightly, but not enough to keep up with other states, and so that's why we're losing a congressional seat.

So we have to draw new maps.

Those have to be drawn and put in place for the 2022 elections.

Now the Ohio House and Senate maps that were approved by the Ohio Redistricting Commission are only four year maps because they didn't get any sort of minority party buy-in.

And the whole goal of that was supposed to be a ten-year map, which is more, it's less chaotic, more stable.

The whole idea of getting that ten-year map was really to bring in that minority party members, the two Democrats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, they did not go along with those maps because those maps really do guarantee Republican super majorities in the house and Senate and Republicans even admit that.

And so now the question is, of course, does that go against the constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2015 that would say that no, no, no, you can't do that, you can't unconstitutionally gerrymandered and draw the map to favor one party over another.

- Yeah, and as you mentioned earlier, Ohio, and I've seen various comments on this or various ratings, generally Ohio's current maps are among the most, if not the most are always close to the top of the most gerrymandered across the country.

And it appears as you're describing, as we look at what's going on, that that's not going to change a great deal.

They may have modified things, may have cleaned it up around the edges a little bit in terms of the way the districts look, but they're still, as you said, going to guarantee the current majority party a pretty solid chance to maintain that super majority.

So the 15 and 18 laws haven't really led to where we thought we would be at this point.

- Right, and Republicans, when they had to put out a statement defending those four year maps, which was required, they said that they had the right to do it this way because they took the last 10 years of votes essentially, and only statewide votes and said that that allowed them to do these super majorities in the Ohio House and Senate.

Well, a lot of voters will say, "Hey, wait a minute.

What about all the presidential votes?

What about the fact that President Obama won Ohio in 2012?"

These sorts of things have come into play here a little bit.

And so I think that that's what a lot of people are waiting on is the Supreme Court arguments.

And then once the Supreme Court is gonna have to decide fairly quickly on the Ohio House and Senate maps.

Again, there are three lawsuits.

They may end up being kind of put together into a single ruling, but we were not certain about that yet, but we don't have anything on the congressional map yet, nothing at all, and that's the one that a lot of national experts pointed to as being extremely gerrymandered.

The one that has the district that goes all the way from Toledo all the way over into Cleveland, the snake on the lake, that map is expiring, and so far, there's nothing that we've seen to replace that.

- Yeah, and again, that was the intent of those 2015 and 2018 citizens' initiatives or however you wanna describe them was to try and get that fixed by the time 2022 rolled around.

And typically, as we look at what will happen, given that the people drawing the maps are predominantly of one party, just the way it happens to be.

Ohio right now has a real Republican leaning congressional group.

I guess if you look at it from a common sense point of view, or at least a human nature point of view, it's unlikely that one of the Republicans who currently is a congressperson will lose their seat.

It's probably going to be drawn, so there'll be possibly fewer people of the minority party in that drawing in the end.

- Well, and that's what's interesting here is because we have a 12 to four Republican versus Democratic congressional delegation.

Do you take Ohio down to 12 to three, 12 Republicans and three Democrats?

I mean, that almost seems like a lot of Democrats would certainly push back on that.

And plus how do you pack all three of Ohio's urban areas into three congressional districts?

So there are specific rules on how those maps is supposed to be drawn in terms of breaking up counties and keeping communities of interest together.

So it may not be possible to do that, but certainly that's one of many, many questions that are being asked about what are those maps gonna look like?

And the biggest question being, when are we gonna see a map, so that voters and people who are concerned about this, experts who look at gerrymandering and look at how congressional districts are drawn, would be able to weigh in and say what they feel about these maps.

- Yeah, and I know that originally there was, as far as Ohio was concerned, there was discussion that because the census data was delayed, that slowed down the redistricting discussions and process, but we're past that now.

That isn't an issue at this stage.

It's more, can people get together and put together these congressional maps?

- Absolutely.

I mean, the census data did arrive in Ohio and was processed by Ohio University in August.

And so, yeah, it did slow down things a little bit, but there's a real question now as to whether there's even some negotiation going on.

I mean, two Democrats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, Senator Vernon Sykes, and his daughter, House Minority Leader, Emilia Sykes, they really have pushed back on what's been happening and have called for meetings, have said, "We have to start doing this stuff out in public."

And of course, the same groups that are suing over the Ohio House and Senate maps are looking at all this as well, and wondering whether the same kinds of issues that happened in the negotiations over the Ohio House and Senate maps, lack of transparency and the whole question of whether they're gerrymandered or not, are those gonna be the same issues that are gonna have to be faced in dealing with the Ohio congressional district map.

- Well, obviously we'll be talking about that again when we get together, but we'll just have to see how it all eventually shakes out yeah, at the Supreme Court, and of course, we always like to think of our courts as being non-partisan, but those are elected officials from various parties who sit on the Supreme Court too, so that comes into play a little bit.

- And one of the thing I should add here is a little note about the Ohio Supreme Court.

One of the justices is Pat DeWine.

He is the son of Governor Mike DeWine, who was one of the defendants in these law suits.

And so far he has resisted calls to recuse himself.

And that's a real question of whether the son of a person who's being sued should be allowed to hear that case.

And he says, there's no reason he can't, but there are a lot of real concerns about that.

- Sure, well, and even just legalities aside, whether it's whatever optics would not be in their favor at that point too.

When we come back, let's talk a little about too, because there's a couple of other things going on down there.

One of which, and I know that sooner or later, we won't be talking about COVID and vaccines and mandates and things, but we come back, let's talk about where the legislature is with mandates for a vaccination back on "The Journal" in just a moment with Karen Kasler.

Thanks for staying with us here on "The Journal".

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

And of course, a familiar face to you folks here on "The Journal" as well, bringing us all up to speed on what's going down in Columbus.

We've talked about this for the last year and a half every time that we've gotten together.

Let's talk about the legislature and vaccine mandates and all of the things related to COVID.

But there, once again, looking at what to do with mandate.

So tell us where we've been and where we are now at that point, because it, it can get a little confusing after a while.

- Well, the good news is that COVID cases are dropping in Ohio over the last couple of months, which is great.

COVID deaths on the other hand have not been dropping significantly.

That's a real concern, but when it comes to vaccine mandates, I mean, you've got a rule from the federal government that's potentially coming down shortly, that would require businesses with over a hundred employees to make sure that their employees are either vaccinated against COVID or are being regularly tested.

And that rule has gotten a lot of concern from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and on our TV show, "The state of Ohio" this past weekend, I talked to President and CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Steve Stivers, a former Republican Congressman from Central Ohio.

And he said that our chamber of commerce is really concerned about this mandate to either test or vaccinate.

Even though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has not been opposed to the rule, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce is very concerned about it and is pushing back on it saying that they're worried about the fine structure and these sorts of things.

Well, what's interesting here is while they do not want a required vaccine mandated at the federal level, they do not want a state level ban on vaccine mandates.

And they've really argued against two specific bills that would ban vaccine mandates for COVID and also would ban all mandatory vaccines.

These are two separate bills.

The one that would ban all mandatory vaccines, we're talking about from childhood shots, all the way up to the COVID vaccine, that bill's gotten a lot of attention.

Some of it national attention.

There was some video of a committee hearing where a doctor from Northeast Ohio claimed that the COVID vaccine, there was investigation that it was interfacing with 5G cell towers and that it magnetized people, all of that is completely false of course, but that got Ohio some interesting national attention.

That's part of that bill that would ban all mandatory vaccines.

That feels kind of instead of side here, because Republican House Speaker, Bob Cupp has said, "We don't wanna deal with that anymore."

There was a compromise bill or what was seen to be a compromised bill that would allow for broad exemptions for people who don't want to be vaccinated for COVID, broad exemptions to the point where anybody who wanted an exemption could get one without any sort of paperwork or explanation or anything.

That built twice.

Republicans tried to bring that to a floor vote, and both times got so much opposition from the chamber of commerce, from hospital groups, from other groups that said, "We don't want this not only because of public health reasons," which is what the hospital associations and the health systems were saying, "but also because of the impact on business," which is what the business groups were saying.

So both of these bills are kind of in a holding pattern right now.

But we're in an interesting place here where we're talking about banning mandatory vaccines, banning any sort of ability to mandate vaccines, that's a real interesting look at where Ohio is right now when it comes to not just the COVID shot, but also some potential other shots as well.

- Sure, and vaccines that we've grown accustomed to, which have at least, I think most people believe have been effective in preventing and doing away with some of the epidemics and some of the diseases that we dealt with.

And you raised an interesting point because the chamber of commerce is concerned, it seems about what they see as an overreach by the legislature into literally their business, which normally the chamber of commerce, whether it's the state or the national are usually aligned pretty much with their Republican representatives.

But in this case, they're concerned about the legislature overreaching into the private sector, which has kind of an unusual set of circumstances, both for the elected officials and for the chamber of commerce.

- And we're getting into this debate here of the personal responsibility that people are claiming, even though vaccines save lives.

And that's been established over decades and decades.

I mean, going to polio and measles and all of these other vaccines.

Vaccines save lives, and there's plenty of evidence that backs that up.

And yet the legislature has moved toward allowing more exemptions and more people to say that they don't wanna get the vaccine for whatever reason.

The state has always had vaccine exemptions in law, but typically they were pretty narrow.

And so the move has been to try to broaden those beds and businesses again have pushed back saying, "Hey, wait, we wanna be able to have the option if we are a business owner to require people to be vaccinated, to require people to wear masks, to require people to do this, that, or the other thing, and we don't want the government telling us what we can and can't require."

So this is just a really unique debate, and it's almost all exclusively on the Republican side.

Democrats have been unanimously for the most part opposed to any sort of broadening of exemptions to any sort of ban on mandatory vaccines.

They have cited pretty strongly with public health experts who have said vaccines work, they save lives and getting vaccinated against COVID is the best way to get us out of the pandemic.

- Yeah, and I guess, and again, not being a business person, but if I owned a business, I would like to have, and I guess this is where this gets iffy for people.

I guess, as a business owner, I would think I would like to be able to know that when I'm hiring people and I employ people that they're going to be available to work and they see this, I think in some cases it's saying, "Gee, you're gonna remove my ability to say, 'Gee, if you're not available to work for me, where does that leave me in terms of running my business?'"

And it is kind of interesting that again, the legislature on the Republican side, which is generally less regulation, let business do its thing in this case it's now saying, no, no, we wanna make sure you're not allowed to do this, which I say is just a little different than the normal conversation we have about this.

- Yeah, again, it's the whole pushback of business versus what has been called on the Republican side as personal rights to personal freedom.

Public health though is still pretty much (laughs)... - [Steve] Sure.

(laughs) - Public health is right in the middle of of saying, "Wait a minute, the vaccines work, social distancing has worked.

Masks have worked."

And that's been the message that we keep hearing from say the Ohio Department of Health, which has been kind of caught in the middle because Governor Mike DeWine appoints the head of the Ohio Department of Health, the Ohio Department of Health has certainly been suggesting that for instance, masks mandates are a good idea, especially in schools.

And yet the legislature has continually looked into what can be done about maybe banning mask mandates or limiting mask mandates, limiting any sort of emergency orders.

I mean, there is a bill that would ban schools from instituting mask mandates.

That's not going anywhere yet, but it's still out there.

And there are some high-profile Republican leaders and there are some Republicans who are running for the U.S. Senate, just had a forum on Sunday night talking about their concerns and opposition to mask mandates, and some of these things that are happening in schools when it comes to COVID protocols.

- Yeah, and as I said, we are gonna be a little short on time on this break, but it is interesting that it is a situation where, especially we talk about mask mandates, you see the spectrum in our area, in Northwest Ohio, with schools that are with mask mandates, other ones that are doing optional, those sorts of things.

And some of the schools see it as a way to make sure they don't have to quarantine students.

So even though you can argue a discussion if you want to about the effectiveness of masks, it does allow students to stay in school, and that should be one of the most important things I think that we deal with, but as we know with this, there's so many facets to this from personal freedom to public health, to everything in between, so it's gonna be... And I'm sure we're gonna be talking about it again when we get together in a few weeks, again.

When we come back, there's a couple of other things that are going on.

One of them a little bit humorous, the state license plate, sort of discussion about the Wright brothers and a couple of other things we'll talk about.

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

You're with us here on "The Journal".

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

A couple of things we'll want to touch on, start out with one that's a little more lighthearted, at least considering some of the other topics.

The state issued a new design for the license plate.

And there was a little confusion over the Wright brothers and the direction they were flying on the license plate.

So talk a little bit about that.

I mean, it's one of those...

Most people would look at that point and probably not know it was oriented incorrectly.

But talk about that a little bit.

- Yeah, if you've ever seen the Wright brothers plane, what looks like the tail of the plane is actually where the pilot's head is.

- [Steve] Right.

- And so when the license plate was unveiled, the plane was actually backwards.

It looked right, but it was actually backwards and historical people, nerds, whatever you wanna call it went on social media and pointed this out.

And for the first time in a long time, social media actually fixed a problem (Steve laughs) because it wasn't too long after that, that the state came out with a new design with the new license plate flipping the plane.

So it was look, that would be historically accurate.

However, there were about 30,000 plates apparently that had been produced - Already been produced.

- with the wrong design there.

But then there are some questions about the whole layout.

I mean, this, this is a busy license plate.

This license plate features a sunrise, a wheat field, a city skyline, a river, rolling hills, and a little girl with a dog.

There's a lot going on in this license plate, as well as the airplane's plane.

- The airplane, yeah.

Well, it is interesting the fact that 30,000 have already been manufactured, the question is, will those actually then get issued or will those have to be destroyed or are they just now 30,000 collector items of a plate that never will hit the street?

(laughs) - And that's what I wonder if they might not be sold or in some way distributed as collector's items.

- Yeah.

Well, somewhere in North Carolina, because of course, the State of North Carolina and Ohio go back and forth on really who is the beginning of flight.

They're probably chuckling a little bit about Ohio.

See they really can't even get the plane the right way on their license plate, so it's one of those things.

- Yeah, there was a tweet about that saying that, "Well, of course, Ohio got the plane wrong.

They weren't here when the plane actually flew the first time."

(laughs) - So it's understandable that we wouldn't know which direction it was flying 'cause you weren't here.

It happened in North Carolina, but well, the Wright brothers are from Ohio, so wish they're gonna claim that.

- [Karen] Absolutely.

- More serious note, one of the state's largest public retirement systems is gonna be the subject of a, what appears to be a special audit.

So tell us a little bit about that because that's obviously covers the entire state.

A lot of people will be interested in that.

- It's a story I've been following for a while.

And I actually broke the story last week about how the auditor's office is gonna do a special audit.

After getting numerous complaints about the state teachers retirement system.

When retired teachers had hired someone to come in and kind of look into STRS' claims about how the system is performing and the fees they're happening because teachers have not gotten the cost of living adjustments since 2017.

They've been very concerned about that saying that the bonuses that are being paid, millions of dollars in fees are being paid, those could actually be going to say paying cost of living adjustments.

And so the state auditor's office says they're gonna look into this.

The question is now how long that will take and really what they'll find out.

And there's also the possibility that this could spread to other of the state's five pension funds.

I heard some evidence that suggests that one of the other funds is also gonna hire this particular individual.

His name is Ted Savelle.

He works for Benchmark Financial Services and is investigated a couple of different pension funds.

STRS says his report is baseless and has allegations that have no basis in fact.

I guess the state auditor's office is gonna have to figure that out.

- Yeah, that'll be an interest story to follow because we say it affects tens of thousands, about hundreds of thousands of people in the state and those who no longer live in the state, but our STRS recipients and families.

The other area that the states, again, likes to visit a lot is the whole question of trans and LBGT and all of that.

So again, they're looking at another, an issue regarding transgender and medical approaches to trans.

So talk a little bit about that if you would.

- Yeah, there's a bill that's been proposed, it's about the third time that something similar has been proposed and it really comes from a case down in Cincinnati in 2018, where there was a fight among family members about a child who wanted to transition.

And so this would be a bill that would ban any hospital system or healthcare system from providing treatment to help a child under 18 transition from one gender to another, even if that child had parental permission.

And this is again about the third time that we've seen something like this.

It can be looked at alongside another bill that would ban trans women from competing in girl's and women's sports.

So there's definitely these sorts of issues that are coming up.

There's some talk about some abortion bills and that sort of thing as well, because we're approaching an election year and certainly Republican candidates, these are big talking points for them.

And Democrats are strongly opposed to any sort of bill that would ban trans youth from getting treatments, getting medical help for a transition for participating in sports.

They say these are harmful to trans youth.

- Yeah, and it does seem that this, and I guess, some people would question if this is a solution in search of a problem, but it is a controversial issue on rightly or wrongly, and obviously it impacts a lot of people as well.

We've just got a moment or two.

In terms of the gubernatorial election that's coming up, and of course, the Republican primary on the Senate side, what's the read on that?

Where is the governor stand right now?

He obviously has a couple of people who wanna challenge him and he's had in his very interesting ten-year, the last couple of years.

So briefly, what's his status' perspective right now?

Where does he stand do you think?

- Well, he hasn't officially announced that he's running for election, but he's said he's gonna run for election.

However, I've noticed that he's been doing a lot of traveling around the State of Ohio.

So that certainly suggests that there will be an announcement coming shortly from Governor Mike DeWine, Lieutenant Governor John Houstoun, again, running as a real unified ticket.

You might remember before the last gubernatorial race, the two of them were going to be running one another in the primary and then the unified.

They have an opponent or Dwayne has two opponents, Jim Renacci, the former Congressman who ran and lost against Sherrod Brown.

And then Joe Blystone was a Central Ohio farmer.

Both of those people are running very strongly to the right of Dwayne.

There's also a democratic primary for governor as well.

You've got Nan Whaley, the Mayor of Dayton who was running against Cincinnati Mayor, John Cranley.

And there's been some back and forth on the Democratic side of people coming out and supporting one or the other.

And so there potentially could be an interesting primary on that side as well.

- Yeah, so it's going to be exciting times in all different areas in Ohio.

Karen Kasler, thank you so much for being here.

Of course, you can now watch "The State of Ohio" every Sunday at 12:30 here on WBGU-PBS, and keep in mind, of course, you can watch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock.

Check us out on wbgu.org.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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