(bright music) - [Mike] Ohio voters made their voices heard in 2023, favoring abortion access and legal marijuana.

Lawmakers introduced a number of measures this year that advocates say are harmful to the LGBTQ+ community, and both Akron and Cleveland faced difficulty meeting demands from citizens for more accountability for police.

Ideas: The Year End Edition is next.

(dramatic music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Today, we'll look back on some of the top stories of 2023.

We'll start with how voters in Ohio set the agenda by approving abortion rights and marijuana legalization measures that were opposed by majority Republican lawmakers.

Voters also said no to making it harder to amend the state constitution.

LGBTQ+ issues were front and center at the State House this year with the passage of a bill that bans gender-affirming healthcare for minors and prevents transgender females from playing on girls' and women's sports teams.

Akron dealt with protest after a grand jury cleared the officers who shot Jayland Walker and both Cleveland and Akron wrestled with implementing voter-approved policing reforms.

Joining me for this year-end look at the news of 2023, first up, State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler, and Buckeye Flame Editor Ken Schneck.

Later, Idea Stream Public Media Supervising Producer of Newscast Glenn Forbes and Akron Canton Reporter Anna Huntsman.

Let's get ready to round table.

There are two numbers that sum up the year in politics in 2023: 1 and 2.

Over the span of three months, Ohio voters voted twice on State Issue 1 and once on State Issue 2.

The results?

A majority will still decide constitutional amendments, abortion rights are enshrined in the constitution, and recreational marijuana is legal.

Karen, what's interesting is that in each case, the margin of defeat or passage was roughly the same.

Voters were very consistent.

- Yeah.

They appeared to be.

I mean, that 60% voter-approval threshold in Issue 1 in August was not chosen at random because other states had shown about 57% of voters seem to be on board with enshrining abortion rights in the constitution.

Another thing that I think is interesting about that is that Ohio passed its abortion rights amendment by about 57% in a state where Donald Trump has won the state twice.

It's a pretty red state.

Our pretty popular governor who won all but three counties last year in 2022, he was opposed to Issue 1.

You look at Michigan where they passed almost the same thing a year before where a democratic state, the governor there was supportive of it, and yet Ohio passed it by a slightly larger margin than Michigan did.

So I think it's really interesting and it speaks potentially to what kind of an issue abortion is for Republicans in particular.

- And when you look at that, Ken, the abortion issue and the marijuana issue, the will of the voters as opposed to the direction that the legislature had gone in, it seems like we're seeing even more of that divergence.

- Yeah, I mean, you see it just in the lawn signs that are out there and I think that (laughs) some people made a lot of money on lawn signs this year 'cause they were everywhere.

But yes, I think that's the big notable point there is the gap between the will of the legislature, which does not run in the same percentages as the voters voted.

The big questions coming up are what actions the legislature will take in order to perhaps thwart the will of the voters in both of these issues.

- You're right about the yard signs.

Usually, it looks to me like Keller Williams might beat Howard Hanna in yard signs in Northeast Iowa, but this time, it was a lot of Issue 1, Issue 2 yes and no signs.

- And you saw posts online characterizing different communities based on the number of lawn signs.

They were saying it wasn't just decoration, there was a lot of analysis going on based on what people were seeing.

- And there were different messages.

It wasn't always just the same one.

And what of course got confusing to people was, if you voted for Issue 1 in August, you have to vote against Issue 1 in November and vice versa, and so sometimes, if those signs didn't come down, then it was sending a different message toward the November campaign versus the August campaign.

- It's one thing to have an election and the voters say, "This is what we want."

But then after that, there's a lot of mechanical stuff that needs to happen.

So as we speak here, it still isn't clarified how the abortion amendment is going to be applied, whether or not there's gonna be some changes to existing law or we're gonna wait for challenges in court.

We don't know about the marijuana legislation and what the limits will be and where you might be able to purchase it.

There's still a lot of work to do well after the November election.

- What we do know is that the abortion amendment went into effect on December 7th and the legalization of recreational marijuana went into effect on December 7th.

The law on marijuana can be changed by the state legislature and already the Senate has passed some changes to it, which limit the number of home-grown plants to six.

Also would allow existing medical marijuana dispensaries to sell recreational marijuana.

The House has not done anything on that.

And when I spoke with House Speaker Jason Stevens about that, he said he wants to be a little bit more deliberative about this and that bad legislation can happen when you rush things through 'cause we've never seen that at the State House at all.

When it comes to the abortion amendment, that's an amendment and it doesn't automatically repeal existing abortion laws, but that's gonna happen through the court system because the legislature has no appetite to do what some Democrats wanna do and repeal certain laws that are already in place.

So right now, as we speak on December 20th, the six-week abortion ban, the so-called heartbeat ban, has been sent back to Hamilton County Court by virtue of the fact that the Ohio Supreme Court and Attorney General Dave Yost have said it is unconstitutional under Issue 1.

So now, as we speak, Hamilton County gets to decide whether that ban goes into effect or not and Hamilton County sent the case to the Ohio Supreme Court, so it's almost certainly gonna say it's unconstitutional.

- We talked about how the voters were opposite of a lot of what the Republican majority has been saying at the State House, but the Republican majority at the State House has not been in lockstep either.

This caps a year, of 2023, of a lot of infighting in the GOP.

- And I think that split has been an undercurrent for everything that's happened at the State House.

It has been the least productive year for state lawmakers since 1955.

12 bills have passed and been signed into law, which, out of hundreds that have been introduced, that's pretty extraordinary.

But what you're talking about and what we're talking about here is the split among Republicans versus Jason Stevens, the speaker, who was elected with 22 Republicans and all of the Democrats and Derek Merrin, who had been the speaker elect at this time last year and he got more Republican votes, but fewer votes on the floor.

So he's claimed he's the leader of the Republican caucus.

Jason Stephens has claimed he's the speaker, so he's the leader of everybody, but it's this undercurrent of who's really in charge.

And of course there's a fight over the campaign funds.

We have candidates coming in to try to primary Jason Stephens.

It's gotten very political and it kind of slows things down.

Some people might say that's a good thing though.

(dramatic music) - From the overhaul of the State Board of Education to the expansion of private tuition vouchers to a push to scrub so-called woke culture from college campuses, lawmakers had a lot of input into education in 2023.

Karen, let's talk first about that overhaul and the creation of the Department of Education and Workforce.

How is that taking shape now?

And there were members of the school board who actually had protested that filed suit about it.

Where does any of that stand?

- Well, the Ohio Department of Education, as an agency, does not exist anymore.

It is now the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, or DEW, as people call it.

And what this overhaul tried to do was to take some of the power that the... Well, really, most of the power that the state school board has away from the appointed and elected members of the school board and move it into the governor's office.

The rationale had been people vote for governor in many ways because of education and the governor needs to have more accountability and responsibility.

And governors have wanted this going back to Celeste and Voinovich, they've wanted more control over education in Ohio.

So in early October, when the budget took effect, the Ohio Department of Education ended, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce began, and the power started being transferred after there was a court hearing, like you mentioned, that the democratic-leaning members of the state school board had filed to try to stop all this saying it's unconstitutional.

Well, it's gone forward now.

The courts have allowed it to go forward.

The lawsuit is still out there.

So I suppose, at some point, when it gets to the Ohio Supreme Court, it could be ruled unconstitutional, but at that point, we will have had this new agency with this new director with all these new responsibilities that have been removed from the state school board.

- Ken, wouldn't you love to have a title Director of DEW?

- I really wouldn't.

(Karen laughing) I think it's a terrible acronym.

I just would like to put that.

When you said that, I thought, well, D-O would work if that's like, "Let's do something."

But DEW, there's, unless there's a logo in mind, no.

- Let me ask you, Ken, about Senate Bill 83.

That's the measure that would address what Republican-sponsored Senator Jerry Cirino sees as liberal bias in higher education, the woke culture.

Students and university professors have pushed back on this one.

It's still winding its way through.

What do we see here?

- Yeah, this is an all-encompassing bill in kind of a third-rail issue of we're really seeing the legislature dip its toes into how can we manage higher ed?

And not just public higher education, but also private higher education, which is quite surprising in a lot of these bills.

Significant about SB 83 is that it's based on anecdotes.

There's no actual research that has been presented out there that there is this liberal bias on college campuses, that there's this woke culture.

And what Senator Cirino has said over and over is that he has heard from people.

He has heard from some people that they have struggled in college classrooms to articulate a conservative point of view.

And so in answer to that, it bans all DEI initiatives on college campuses.

- [Mike] Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

- Thank you.

Yeah.

And belonging.

It mandates one of the most fascinating pieces.

It mandates a course that all students would have to take in history, in American history, and pass.

Which includes a good chunk of the Federalist Papers.

And as I've said many times before, Alexander Hamilton, not short winded.

- [Mike] He's a heck of a singer.

- Heck of a singer.

Really quite impressive.

Really Tony Award winning.

- The Federalist Papers in Hamilton are not the same.

(everyone laughing) - And that's just one of the required pieces.

And there are pieces about China in the bill, the parts about unions, about banning unions was taken out, but it sounds like it's probably gonna be coming back.

So there's a lot in this bill that is all-encompassing.

And as you said earlier, the opposition to this is like some of the State House have said they've never seen before of this number of pieces of opponent testimony to a particular bill.

- So that's a chance for us to look ahead.

2024, is gonna be a priority, Karen, in the house?

- I think it's gonna... 2024 is an election year.

This is an issue that Republicans have really seized on as being something they wanna talk about, so I would expect this to come back.

It's past the Senate.

And the question is, does it have the votes in the house?

Jerry Cirino says it does.

House Speaker Jason Stephens says it doesn't.

It goes back to that whole thing that we were just talking about.

The struggle between the Marin folks and the Stevens folks, I think that's part of this as well.

But Cirino has also said to me that if it doesn't pass, he's gonna bring it back again and he is likely not gonna make the concessions that he says he's made this time.

Which means that colleges and universities have to look at it and there's a lot in this bill.

You're absolutely right, Ken.

It's a sweeping piece of legislation and it names specific topics that intellectual diversity, as it puts in the bill, have to be considered in.

I mean, things like abortion and marriage and immigration policies and electoral politics, things that are kind of settled.

I mean these, these are not controversial issues.

At least they shouldn't be in terms of this is the law, these are the facts.

- It bans colleges from making statements, public statements on controversial issues.

And the bill defines controversial issues as issues related to controversy.

(Karen and Mike laughing) - There's a loop for you.

All right, let me move on to what you cover on a day-in and day-out basis at The Buckeye Flame.

That is LGBTQ+ issues.

The ACLU is tracking a record 508 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States in 2023.

In Ohio, 10 bills were introduced in Columbus this year, currently stand in various stages of the legislative process.

You've been covering them all, so let's dive into quickly into some of the highlights, Ken.

First, talk about timing.

There was a flurry of action at the start of June and then in mid-December.

Which bills are furthest along?

- Yeah.

And that is not a coincidence in timing.

You see these flurries of activity in June and December 'cause it's right before the legislators are headed back to their districts.

And so they're able to go back to their districts and say, "Hey, we took action on saving children."

Almost all of them are about quote, unquote "saving children."

- It's either parental rights or saving children.

- Exactly.

And no in both of those cases.

Yeah, absolutely.

So furthest along right now is HB 68.

HB 68 has passed both the House and the Senate.

And that is a combo platter bill.

LGBTQ+ activists call it an anti-trans omnibus bill.

It is the safe act that bans gender-affirming care for minors in Ohio and also would ban trans female athletes participating in not just K-12, but also college, higher education in Ohio as well.

At the time of this taping right now, we are waiting to see whether the governor signs it into law.

- Ken, let's talk about some other bills.

There are the Parents Bill of Rights, the Bathroom Bill, the Drag Bill.

Tell me about those.

- Yeah.

Various stages of passing right now.

All of them are still in the House.

No, excuse me, the Parents Bill of Rights has passed out of the House and is now in the Senate.

That's the one that would force all teachers and school staff, including psychologists, social workers, and school counselors to out LGBTQ youth to their parents.

So that passed the House.

That's in the Senate.

The Bathroom Bill is still moving quite quickly and that would apply to both K-12 and higher ed.

And that would require that all individuals use the restroom, in any multi-person restroom, use the restroom that corresponds to the birth certificate as issued by their birth.

Because as we know, all of us in the studio carry that around with us at all times.

- I still have my vaccination card.

- I have mine too.

I have mine too.

That's my bookmark.

(Karen laughs) And also the Drag Bill, which would ban public drag performances that take place in front of minors.

So those are all still moving.

The Parents Bill of Rights is the furthest one along and that's the one we expect might make its way through.

- There are a few pro-LGBTQ+ bills that were introduced as well.

The Fairness Act, Pride Month, Conversion Therapy.

Banning that.

- [Ken] Banning it.

Yes.

- So let's talk about those.

- Yeah, so the Fairness Act, this is the 11th year in a row that the Fairness Act has passed.

LGBTQ+ advocates say it has bipartisan support, but there doesn't seem to be a plan for actually passing it here in the 11th year whether or not it has the support.

A ban on conversion therapy.

Currently 25% of Ohioans live in municipalities where conversion therapy is banned, but that leaves 75% living in places where this very harmful practice that doesn't work is still legal.

So that is a possibility, but it doesn't look like that's going anywhere.

And then just a resolution to acknowledge that Pride Month is June keeps being proposed.

I think this is the third or fourth year.

Can't seem to make its way through.

(dramatic music) - One of the biggest stories of the year began on the night of February 3rd, when a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine.

Anna, the picture of the towering black mushroom cloud over East Palestine is an image I don't think any of us will forget.

- No, Mike.

I mean, it almost looked kind of dystopian.

It's like something you would see in a movie, not a small town in Ohio that I know many of us hadn't really even heard of until this.

And I know for sure the residents of East Palestine certainly aren't forgetting it because they're still living it every day.

You know, many of them had to relocate temporarily.

Most people are back now, but some people are dealing with lingering health effects that may or may not be attributed to what happened there in East Palestine.

So yeah, this was a huge deal, huge story.

- And as you're listening, we continue to have regular stories from the Kent State University Collaborative News Lab here on Idea Stream Public Media about what's going on in East Palestine now.

The decision to burn off the hazardous chemicals has been second guessed in the disaster's aftermath.

I mean, that's really something that put all that nastiness up into the air.

- Exactly.

So this had been ongoing for a few days.

The cars that had derailed, they caught on fire and then that was going down.

And then there were these other five cars where the people on the scene, the emergency management officials were saying, "We're seeing the temperature rising in these cars.

There's vinyl chloride, there's all kinds of chemicals.

We're fearing a chemical reaction where it could explode."

And the fear was that, you know, shrapnel would go in the surrounding neighborhoods.

So they decided to do this vent and burn where it was a controlled release of the materials.

They maintained that, at the time, this was, with the information they had, the best possible decision they could have made.

After the fact, in these hearings with the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents, some chemists and experts were saying, actually, that wasn't really what would've happened given the temperature, given the details we now know.

But again, the people on the scene still say, "This is what we had to do."

- We've seen soil and air testing and water testing since then.

We've seen officials, including the EPA, saying things are safe.

And yet residents who are saying, "We're feeling effects of this."

So this is, and we said this the minute it happened, this is not something that on the year-end wrap-up show anyone's done with.

- Correct.

And again, as you mentioned, testing has been done.

The soil was removed.

I think that process ended in October.

So most people have relocated.

There are still some folks who haven't.

And the Norfolk Southern, the train company actually has been, I think, given millions of dollars to people to help with relocation costs and I know that they're also offering to clean their homes and there's been different recovery programs, but that money is actually going to stop.

So we learned, I think it was, you know, in December, we learned that they're going to not pay this out anymore starting around the anniversary, which is in February.

- Hmm.

Glenn, let's talk about rail safety because this prompted a lot of talk about rail safety, some action on it.

As we look back, what do we assess?

What has changed?

- Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because the Railway Safety Act, I mean, that was something that had a lot of momentum out of the gate.

You had people on both sides of the aisle agreeing.

I mean, JD Vance and Sherrod Brown and Emelia Strong Sykes and Max Miller.

And you think, boy, if you can get those people to agree, everybody's gonna agree.

But that's Ohio, and it didn't go very far, you know, when it comes to the rest of the country.

And the rest of the representatives, a couple of these things were like more sensors to detect some of these problems more frequently, at more intervals, regular intervals notifying local first responders.

Now communication has picked up, and you know, federal officials have encouraged using this app, basically, that talks about, you know, where these hazardous materials are gonna be, when they're gonna be coming through the town.

The sticking point for that big Railway Safety Act was this two-person crew, a mandated two-person crew.

Railways say, "We're not gonna do this."

You know, derailments are down 30% since 2000, chemical spills are off by more than 70%.

We actually had a very safe year, East Palestine notwithstanding.

- Well, it does take one.

- It does take one.

And that's what the Ohio delegation is saying, you know, for that community.

But that two-person mandate for the crew seems to be the sticking point.

Rail companies say, "Hey, if we can negotiate with the you.

First of all, they say the East Palestine train had three members on it.

So, you know, that didn't make a difference there.

And if we can negotiate with the union with technology as well, that we only need one person on that train, we should be able to do that."

(dramatic music) - A 2022 police shooting death of Jayland Walker echoed into 2023.

In April, a grand jury determined that the eight officers who opened fire on Walker were legally justified.

The grand jury's decision to not indict the officers set off protests.

And a city came under criticism for how it prepared for the grand jury's decision.

Boarding up buildings, restricting public access, getting ready for riots, basically.

- Essentially.

And so it sent kind of a message to...

This is what I heard from people who are activists and you know, being in the community.

It sent the message that, well, we already know what the decision's gonna be, so we're gonna just board up the windows now.

They also had this...

I can't remember what it was called.

It was like a demonstration zone maybe, where they blocked off the streets downtown and basically saying this is a safe place where you can protest.

But people were saying, "We're gonna do whatever we want.

We'll protest wherever we want," and they did.

- And meanwhile, in those protests, there was a lot of criticism about how the police handled that, especially in West Akron where officers used pepper spray on protesters, including our own Idea Stream staff members who were identified as media and were just blasted in the face.

- Yes, that was a very controversial night when this happened.

There was a big protest on Copley Road and the police were saying that water bottles were thrown at them and so therefore they pepper sprayed.

And some pictures from our journalists and other journalists show that maybe that wasn't the case.

But it kind of, it's one of those situations where you don't really know exactly what happened.

But that was kind of what unfolded.

- The police chief is now leaving.

There'll be a new chief that's going to be appointed by the new mayor, Shammas Malik.

Akron also implemented its Citizen Police Oversight Board as a result of the Walker shooting, but getting that off the ground has been slow going.

- It has.

It started off slow because a certain member that was on the slate of candidates, city council couldn't get him approved.

The Fraternal Order of Police, the police union did not like this person, so that delayed it right off the bat.

Then they start doing these meetings and there was a lot of groundwork that had to be, you know, laying the foundation at first.

What are the board's powers?

Of course, there's a charter amendment that got the board formed that voters approved.

But the language in that isn't exactly super clear about the board's investigatory powers.

And so it's been up to the board to write their own rules.

Now, things are kind of happening where they passed the rules internally saying, "Yes, we can investigate at the same time as police."

The police union says, "No, that violates our collective bargaining agreement."

And they tried to get the rules passed, which is required by city council, and that didn't happen.

- And Glenn, a lot of problem with the Community Police Commission in Cleveland too.

- It was a rough year for the Community Police Commission in Cleveland.

There was infighting over the summer, accusations of sexual harassment and things of that nature toward the executive director.

Now, there's this issue of, kind of like Anna was saying with Akron, what are our powers, exactly, motions being presented to get more power.

And reading between the lines here, it seems like the Community Police Commission feels a little left out.

The mayor's office and the police department have made progress on some contractual things that we'll get into.

The Community Police Commission is saying, "Wait a minute.

we're supposed to have oversight over these policies."

The mayor's office is saying, "You need to talk more with the police representatives.

The Community Police Commission should talk more with the police representatives."

They're just kind of caught in the middle and they haven't made a lot of progress in 2023.

(dramatic music) - PFAS.

If you hadn't heard that acronym, you will beginning in January.

Idea Stream's Deputy Editor of News Andrew Meyers, sets up the year ahead.

It stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Thank you, Leigh Barr.

- [Ken] Well done.

She knows it off the top of her head.

And they are a group of synthetic chemicals dubbed "forever chemicals" because they don't go away.

Andrew, we're starting with a big reporting project on that.

- That's right.

And really, what sparked this was a study about fish.

Because we've known about PFAS for quite some time.

In fact, there's an incredible book that a Cincinnati attorney wrote about his 20-year quest to try and get some justice for a community in West Virginia whose water supply had been contaminated by nearby DuPont Plant.

Now, what we found in this recent fish study was that not only are PFAS in the water and they can get there from a variety of sources, but they're now in the fish too and they're in the perch and they're in the walleye.

And the basic motivator there, the idea is that you shouldn't be eating the fish, not in any regularity and you know, limited quantities at best.

So that really got us to thinking we need to do some digging on this because it's been around for 20 years, at least, the recognition of PFAS, but not all that well-reported.

(dramatic music) - Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89.7 WKSU, the team is off for the New Year's holiday.

In our time slot, you can catch Unwrapping the Holidays, a selection of short stories that gives new perspective on the holiday season.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching all year long and stay safe.

(bright music)