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(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, Chief Executive here, and a proud member, and it's March 19th, here with another virtual City Club forum, though today we are live from the City Club itself.

Big thanks again to our production partners at Idea Stream for helping us bring the forum back to the City Club.

We don't have an audience here today but we feel really great about being back in this room.

It has been a little over one year since the COVID-19 pandemic entered Ohio.

It was a year and one week ago, March 11th, 2020, that the world health organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

A few days prior to that, Governor Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency in Ohio.

And on March 23rd, the Governor and Health Director Amy Acton, issued the stay at home order.

Non-essential businesses shut down, the economy slowed, much of daily life seemed to stand still.

At the time we were focused on flattening the curve, remember that, and we did it, back in April.

Most of the nation did it, but the virus never left.

There was a bump of cases in July, and then in November and December an enormous surge.

To date nearly 1 million Ohioans have contracted COVID-19, and about 18,000 of our neighbors have died.

Now on March 19th, 2021, and it's starting to feel, as though we just might be at the beginning of the end of this pandemic.

Vaccine distribution is accelerating, confirmed cases and positivity rates are declining, schools are returning to in-person learning.

and some restrictions are being lifted.

In fact, there's a mass vaccination site just down the street, at the Wolstein center, on Cleveland State University's campus.

They're administering up to 6,000 doses of vaccine every day.

Beginning on March 29th, anyone over the age of 16 will be eligible to receive a vaccine, as the state supplies expected to increase to a half a million doses per week.

Today at the City Club, we are joined by Ohio governor Mike DeWine.

In his last 12 months no single person has been more important to our daily lives than Governor DeWine.

He's joining us to look back at the last year and look ahead to the hard work of recovery.

Governor DeWine who has been fully vaccinated will be interviewed by someone else who is also been fully vaccinated.

Retired journalist and City Club member, Tom Beres.

You may remember him from the 43 years he spent covering Ohio and Cleveland politics.

He has moderated debates between senatorial on Cleveland mayoral candidates.

He's won five regional Emmy awards, and was inducted into the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame.

He retired in 2016 from WKYC channel 3.

If you have questions for Governor DeWine, please text them to (330) 541-5794.

That's (330) 541-5794.

And you can also tweet them @thecityclub.

We will do our best to work them into the second half of the program.

And with that ladies and gentlemen, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, I give you Governor Mike DeWine and moderator Tom Beres.

- Thanks very much, Dan.

Governor good to see you.

Welcome to City Club.

- Good to see you Tom.

- So you and president DeWine seem to be- Excuse me President DeWine, Freddy and slip, you and President Biden seem to be very much on the same page in regard to, looking at the 4th of July, as a possible double celebration holiday, both of independence and increasing freedom from the pandemic.

Don't know whether you're a betting man, but what do you think is the likelihood of that coming to pass?

- Well, I think very good, Tom.

You know what's driving this down is the vaccine.

We've vaccinated now 2.6 million Ohioans, and we're moving forward, and we feel pretty good about where we are.

We have to continue to wear the mask.

This is defense.

The offense is the vaccination.

The only kinda dark cloud out there, frankly, is the variant that is spreading in Ohio.

- So that's the biggest wild card.

- That's the biggest wild card, and something we've seen in the last several days, which is very concerning is what's going on in Michigan, and what's going on in West Virginia too, of our neighboring States.

We've seen a really a significant increase in parts of Michigan.

And that is very... - [Tom] Genuine concern.

- Genuine, genuine concern.

And in a sense, Tom, we're kind of in a race, how fast can we get this vaccine out?

Because the cycle of this has been ups and downs.

We've seen the cycle.

It's usually a 90 day, 120 day cycle.

So the cycle would indicate this should be coming back up.

So far we are still moving in the right direction, but we're concerned.

- Okay.

What kind of job do you think president Biden's team is doing, getting a largely Republican state with a Republican governor, and a Republican controlled legislature, the vaccine and the help that it needs in a timely fashion?

- Well, we're one of a handful of States so far that have been awarded the mass vaccination site.

They came to us a number of weeks ago and said we wanna put one in Ohio.

We started talking with them, came to the conclusion that really the logical place was in Cleveland and ended up at Cleveland State.

We think the Waldstein center is a great site for this.

So we're very fortunate.

Our first question Tom was kind of a practical one, with this site does that come with extra vaccine?

And the answer was yes.

So 6,000 doses.

Today should be up to about 6,000 a day.

This is something that's gonna run for eight weeks.

So this is a significant boost for us in Ohio.

It's extra vaccine that we're getting.

- So that's a big plus.

- That's a big plus.

- Democrat Republican, not withstanding, what kinda grade would you give President Biden's team for having their act together?

- Look, I think they've done a good job.

I think the Trump administration we had a very good relationship with them.

The vice president, Pence, we talk with him every single week.

All the governors did.

That was a good relationship.

Whenever I asked the White House to do something, they tried to do it.

Many times they were able to do it.

The same way with the Biden white house, and the Biden administration.

They started reaching out to us long before the president took office on January 20th.

They wanted to listen, they wanted to hear what we had to say, what we saw is our problems.

So it's been great.

- Does it restore confidence?

Maybe government can handle a big a big challenge.

- You know, Tom, this is an area where politics we shouldn't have anything to do with this and we should follow the science.

We all have a job to do.

And I think everyone gets it.

Trump administration did a good job in working for the development of the vaccine, Biden team has done a good job getting it out, we work with them literally every day.

So it's been a good relationship.

What we're seeing at the Waldstein center right now has been I think something that's worked out exceedingly well.

You have FEMA in from the federal government, you also have regular troops in.

We have our national guard involved.

Our team is involved.

The local community has been great.

- It's good to see a collaborations.

- It's a good collaboration and it's working.

- The most consistent criticism of your vaccine plan I think has been that it lacked a central simple registration system.

Instead you had that frustrating vaccine roulette with everybody trying to get online and check every drug store and every grocery store and every health center.

And we all know what a chaotic situation that was.

And even the new Statewide Central Portal, a lot of people say, well, it's just a glorified address book.

Do you deserve all the flack that you've been getting on this?

And why didn't you go to a central registration system like other States have?

- Yeah, well, we've first looked at this Tom, and just see what was out there on the market, as far as the central registration system.

Our team looked at it and came to the conclusion that the ones that were out there on the market were very iffy and they might not work very well.

We've seen other States that have tried those and they have not worked very well.

So we decided to try to build our own.

We have built our own, building it as we go, and we now have a number of the providers.

We have a number of providers out there who have signed up for it.

It's not perfect.

- Okay.

You agree there's a lot to be desired here.

- There is.

But this is not a perfect world we're living in.

And many States, you know, we've been criticized.

Many States, people say, "Why didn't you come up with a mass vaccination site initially?"

And the answer is, this is Ohio.

This is a different state.

We have seven different majors, media markets, in the state of Ohio.

We have 88 separate counties.

So what we decided to do... - [Tom] The landscape is different.

- What we decide to do is to build a system from the ground up.

We started with 700 sites.

So everybody in every County, no matter where you live, you had sites that you could go to.

You don't have to drive an hour or two to do that.

We then took that up to 1250.

Now we're at 1300.

Now we're layering over the top of that, now that we have more vaccine, these mass vaccination sites, not just in Cleveland, but we're doing some state vaccination sites in other 15 around the state.

So the experience, Tom, you're right, the experience has been difficult for some people who can't navigate the internet.

It's been difficult for people, they've had to go different places, but once they get the registration, once they get it scheduled, people's experiences have been, I think, very, very good.

And we avoided what we saw in some other States where people were lined up for six, seven, eight hours at a time, in the heat or in the cold.

So not a perfect system, but it's a uniquely Ohio system.

And I wish we could have flipped a switch on day one and gone into a central system.

But that was simply not available - Early on it was apparent that minority groups were not getting their fair share or rightful share of the vaccine.

Is there more equity now?

What have you done to make sure that blacks, Hispanics, native Americans, are getting the vaccine in the quantities they should?

- Yeah.

It's an ongoing process.

We're working very, very closely with the mayors.

We're working very closely with the local community.

I'll just tell you what we've done in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.

With this mass vaccination site, we have set aside several thousand doses every single day and provided access codes basically to about 60 different organizations in the community, Urban League, for example, NAACP.

We're working with African-American churches.

And the goal has been to get their members, minority population, underserved population, we look at this by zip code too, and so we know where the underserved populations are and to give them access every day.

And so they can fill that up to that amount.

And it's again, it's a work in progress.

I think it's getting better.

We've also looked at other ways of doing this.

We have some- We've gone into virtually every community with drug stores where people will have the opportunity in that community to go.

As I said, we have over 1300 sites... - They have made a lot of headway - Tom we've made headway, but it's a work in progress.

What I believe is communities are really coming together in the state, and we're working directly with mayors, we're working directly with County commissioners, we're working directly with non-profits, because they're the ones who have the ability to penetrate into the community and make sure that there's no one left behind.

- If you're just joining us, you were with the City Club, Friday forum I'm Tom Beres with the Governor, Mike DeWine.

If you have questions for Governor DeWine text them to (330) 541-5794, that's (330) 541-5794.

You can also tweet them @thecityclub, and we will try to get them in the second half hour.

On hindsight being 2020, what would you have done differently if you knew then what you know now in battling the pandemic?

- Well, that's a good question.

It was probably almost every day that I tell my team kind of jokingly, "Look the next pandemic will do this differently.

Or the next pandemic we'll know what what to do."

Tom I think that we've learned a lot over the last year.

Probably the biggest thing that we have learned, not just us, but everyone, is the power of these mask.

They've been phenomenally successful.

We did not know that.

I don't think the medical science didn't really know that at the beginning of this pandemic.

Giving an example, schools, we have gone for some schools that have been in school.

We have 600 some school districts in the State.

Some of them have been in school the entire time, physically five days a week.

And we made a decision last August that every kid would have to wear a mask.

We said, K through 12.

We called a bunch of help for it.

People said kids won't wear a mask.

They can't wear a mask.

And we said, no, look, if Evan says they can wear a mask, they will wear a mask.

And this is the way we stop the spread.

So what we started learning is that in the classroom itself we were not seeing much spread at all.

And here's how we knew this.

When someone came down with the COVID, and usually were bringing it from home, and we say Sally in class has got COVID, and Johnny is over here and he's within six feet from her in a classroom, and they're all wearing masks, Well, the CDC said, "You gotta isolate those kids.

Any kid who's with within six feet, even though they're a mask."

So we implement.

That's what we told schools to do.

After a month or two schools started calling me and saying, "Look, no one's getting sick.

These kids are not getting sick.

We're taking them out of class for a couple of weeks, but they never get sick."

So what we did is we actually did a trial, did a task.

We went into seven different schools, tested.

What we found Tom was those teachers, those principals were absolutely right.

It was not spreading, even though they were within six feet, even though they're sitting there an hour, sometimes six hours a day.

So the power of these masks is something that we know today, that we did not know before.

- Are there things you wanted to do but thought better of, and didn't do because you were worried about political pushback.

- Yeah.

I don't know, Tom, if I described it as political pushback.

What I would describe it as public acceptance.

We had to bring people along.

We can only take people as far as they're willing to come because all of our orders virtually depend on self policing and they depend on people actually being willing to do it.

So we looked at this at some point and said, okay, "Businesses going back and retail businesses should they wear a mask?"

And we thought, yeah, that's a great idea.

But it became apparent to me very quickly that we were not ready for this.

The state was simply not ready for it.

We recommended mass, but to actually mandate mask at that time seemed like, I think I described it at the time as a bridge too far.

We got further into it, and we were seeing more spread.

And at some point we put on a mask order, and we put on originally in our urban counties that were having the most spread.

Then we spread out to all 88 counties.

But what Ohio has done differently, and the reason this is working in Ohio compared to other States, and we are now still running about 93%, no matter wherever you go in the state of Ohio on average 93% of the people who are in retail, not the people who are working there, they have them, but the people who go there are wearing masks.

And the way we've done that is we have literally taken workers' compensation employees out to check on this every, every single day.

So we've kept it up around 93%.

It's been one the main reasons I think that we've kept the spread down.

- Let's switch to the big bundle of money coming Ohio's way under the President's recovery plan, $5.5 billion dollars roughly.

I mean, will that make Ohio whole financially for all of its losses during the pandemic?

- Well, so it's a lot of money for Ohio.

It's a lot of money for the counties.

Townships were left out, which is we have some big townships who are not gonna get anything under this, but a lot of money coming into the State of Ohio, a lot of money coming into our schools as well, which is going to be a real opportunity for schools and for local communities and for the State to look at this and say, "How do we catch kids back up?"

Because we have some schools, are urban schools primarily, that been kids have been out of school for 11 months.

And one of the reasons we said they all need to get back in the school was just that great concern.

So how do we catch kids up is something that is a very legit debate that we're going to have to have in Ohio.

- I know you have required schools to come up with a plan for how you're gonna help the kids who maybe fell behind with lacking actual time in the classroom, should a lot of students expect to be in school this summer?

- I think there is a discussion that yes, has to take place with the schools that these kids have to get caught up somehow.

Some kids, Tom, do very well remotely, some thrive on it, frankly, but there's a lot of kids out there who don't do that well remotely, and they have been behind.

And how do I know that?

'Cause I talk to parents and I talk to teachers and I talk to educators.

So when you look at the money coming into Ohio, I think that it answers your question, how the schools spend the money, how this has spent to get our kids caught back up is probably the most important thing.

I think another way of looking at the rest of the money, Tom is it's one-time money.

And so we should not create more bureaucracy, we should not create more employees.

What we ought to do is take that money, one time money, spend it in a one-time way.

For example, infrastructure.

We can vastly improve our infrastructure.

And an infrastructure would certainly include broadband, is something in the budget that we've already presented to the General Assembly.

We've got a lot of people in this State who are denied full ability to participate in this state because they don't have that facility and that ability to do it.

I was with the Mayor if I just- I won't go on too long, but I was with the mayor of East Cleveland six months ago, and he was taking me, we were looking at a problem in regard ODOT and some things, and they wanted me to look at, and I did.

But he brought up the fact that broadband stops literally at the city of East Cleveland.

And so Lieutenant Governor Houston and the mayor, and... - Fairly knows what needs to be done.

- We know what needs to be done.

So this one-time money, we got to spend a one-time problem.

- If you were in the Senate, would you have voted for the president's package?

- No, probably not.

I wish that it would have been a bipartisan bill.

I think when were dealing with things like this, it is better for the country if we can pull people together and to... - So you think there's a lot of money in there throwing at issues and problems that maybe aren't appropriate.

- I think we would all been better off with bipartisan bill.

I think some of the parts of it, I certainly would have agreed to.

But I'll be candid with you, I'm no longer in the Senate, I'm not studying those bills every day, I'm not living it every day, I'm focused on what we're doing in Ohio.

- Okay.

Just asking for a visceral reaction there.

The state is now partnering with the Cleveland clinic and universities and hospitals here to create a new innovation district for health and pathogen research.

Does this seem to be like the right project at the right time that could have a massive impact over Northeast Ohio - Tom, I can't tell you how excited we are about this.

This is a real partnership.

Think about how long have we said that if we get the Cleveland Clinic work together with UAH, and Metro and Case and Cleveland State, if we get everybody to work together, we could do so much.

This is an example of all five of those institutions coming together.

Significant amount of money coming in from jobs Ohio, significant amount of money coming in from the State of Ohio, a lot of money coming in from these different institutions, just to take one part of it, something that Cleveland Clinic is taking the lead on in, but the other ones will be involved in.

And that's a worldwide pathogen study research.

- Well, this is like a wheelhouse of writing needs to be done now.

- Absolutely.

And you're building on, I've always felt if you can build on the resources that you already have, the expertise you already have, and build from there on.

It's a great thing.

So we're excited about that.

We're not only doing something in Cleveland, we have one of the innovation districts in Cincinnati.

We have one in Columbus as well.

And it's very exciting - Politics.

Yesterday you announced the election dates for the 11th District Congressional elections to replace Congresswoman Fudge, the dates that you announced means that the people in that district are gonna have a vacant seat, no representation for 229 days, is that acceptable?

- Much too long, much too long.

We consulted with the secretary of State Frank LaRose, and he explained, and his staff explained all the lead up that you need.

First of all you got to set a date where people can take out their petitions, and you've gotta walk through all the way through there.

And then towards the end, you've gotta have enough time for people overseas, for those ballots to be send out overseas.

So when you looked at all that, they came back and made the recommendation of the two dates that I came up with.

I went back to them and said, "Can't we figure out some way to get this election done sooner?

The people of that district deserve to have a member of Congress."

- So this was the best of some lousy options.

- It was the best of bad options.

- Question for you, regarding former president Trump.

Have you spoken with him at all since January 6th?

No.

- I spoken with the vice-president.

Vice-president, Pence.

Spoke to him just a few days ago, but I've not spoken to the president.

- Not that it seems likely given the way things are, seems to be evolving here.

But if you were had the possibility of getting former president Trump's endorsement in your reelection, would you be interested in that?

- Well, sure, sure.

- No second thoughts at all?

- No.

Look, my experience has been, and you've covered politics for a few years, that endorsements are interesting but ultimately people make a decision who they want to be their governor or their Senator.

And I'm not sure endorsements plays such a huge role.

- But in your mind his role in whatever transpired in the March and the ballot of the capital, that is not so overwhelming that you would want to distance yourself from him?

- No one was happy with that day, is one of the saddest days, saddest things I've ever seen.

Someone who served in Congress for 20 years and served in that building for 20 years.

It was a horrible, horrible day, and he should have done more to pull that up.

- Do you agree with those Ohio Republicans who think that my Congressman, Anthony Gonzalez, deserves to lose his job for voting to impeach president Trump.

- No.

- Because?

- He was voting his conscience.

He made that call.

That was his decision.

Think he'd been a good member of Congress.

No, he should not resign.

- You make get a tougher fight from Republicans in your reelection campaign.

By the way you are running for reelection?

- [DeWine] Yes I am.

- Okay.

You have a situation now where the people running for Senate are trying to out trump each other, and you're being called every name in the book by some people, what kind of recipe is that for the party in 2022 where there's no unity and it's a crossfire with people at the top of the ticket shooting at each other?

What do you see happening if that plays out?

- Look, this is the political season.

They were running in a primary.

one particular member has decided that- One person running has decided that he wants to act like he's running against me, but look, it's okay.

- It doesn't bother me being called squishy?

- No.

Tom, I've been called so many things.

My career I've been called so many things- - That's worse than that.

- Particularly in the last year.

So look, it's politics.

My focus has got to stay on Ohio and getting us through this pandemic and moving on.

- Ohio Jobs for automakers very much in the news lately, a story about Ford, apparently we never got on a deal with the United Auto Workers up in Avon.

What are you gonna do about that?

How are we gonna try to intervene?

- We've been talking with Ford about that.

They have assured us that the future of Ford, as far as in Ohio, is very good.

That the jobs that are in there now are not in jeopardy in any way, shape or form.

What we're talking to them about is their future plans in Ohio and what they wanna do.

And they've assured us that we will be part of that, and will stay part of that discussion.

So that's my job as governor to continue that relationship.

- If that deal does not come to pass was there any state incentives in there that could be at risk or seek a back up?

- Well, I don't think that's gonna happen.

We've got no indication from Ford that that's gonna happen at all.

So, we look, Tom, we look to the future.

Ford has been a good partner.

Ford's important for the future of the state of Ohio.

And, once we saw the stories, we continued to stay in touch with Ford and Lieutenant governor in fact, reached out two days ago, in my request to have conversation with them.

- The House Bill 6 FirstEnergy picture just got a lot darker this week with the apparent suicide of lobbyists, Neil Clark one of those who was charged, and all of this legislature seems to be dithering on whether what they're gonna do or not do with House Bill 6.

Are you gonna intervene here and try to get something done?

- I think the legislature is going to pass the bill.

And I think that's important.

My position has been consistent, going back to the campaign and even before, that nuclear energy should be a part of the mix in Ohio.

Our position has been kind of all the above.

We want all different forms of energy.

We cannot, currently with the ability of wind and solar, although they're moving up, carbon free energy production in Ohio, 90% of it depends on having nuclear energy in the State of Ohio.

So we need to keep those plants going.

Those are significant jobs.

- The recent Dayton Daily News story traced more than a million dollars that came from FirstEnergy that went to an assortment of organizations campaign, helping your reelection campaign.

The dots here could all be connected in a way that's not terribly flattered onto you in some respects?

Do you have any thoughts about your association with FirstEnergy?

Have you been too cozy with them?

- Tom, my position on nuclear energy has nothing to do with any campaign contributions.

I can take you back to speeches I gave in the Congress, in support of nuclear energy.

So this was a well-stated position during the campaign.

Richard Cordray had a similar position in favor of our nuclear plants here in Ohio.

So we've been very very consistent in that position.

- There are calls now to have more regulation dealing with so-called dark money to have more transparency on lobbyist activities.

What do you think needs to be done in these areas?

- Tom, I think the more transparency, the more light you can shed on things, the better.

So we do as we propose any legislation.

United States Supreme court has... - Created this situation.

- They've created the situation and we have to follow.

We live in a country of rule of law and we have to follow basically the outline by the United States supreme court.

So we couldn't pass a bill that would violate that.

But I'm always the more open disclosure and that's very important.

- Okay.

Final question back to the pandemic.

For a year you've been making decisions every single day, that had life or death implications, depended whether or not certain companies, businesses survive, whether workers had their jobs, what kind of toll has that stress and that pressure taken on you personally?

- Well, I have a great spouse.

I have a great wife, Fran and- - [Tom] We know that.

- She's been the rock throughout this.

And we've been very difficult for me to do this, frankly, without her.

I think you run for office, Tom, because you wanna make decisions.

You run for office because you think that you have something to contribute.

None of us knew when I ran for office that we would be dealing with this once in 100 year pandemic.

I've had to make a lot of different decisions.

I think what's different candidly about the pandemic decisions that you're making is that every day the decisions you make are in a sense life and death decisions.

You're making decisions, who's gonna get vaccinated, how are you going to do that.

And if you do it the wrong way, maybe somebody dies as a result of that.

And more people do.

So all these decisions, directly impact people's lives more than a lifetime.

The last year, we've had more decisions.

I've made more decisions impacting people's lives, than I have probably in a whole lifetime.

So, yeah, there's a lot of pressure on that, but that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

- All right.

Now the favorite time, open season here from questions from the audience.

- Now, Tom, let me add one more thing.

- You're about to get back to FirstEnergy if I might.

- Okay.

- You have to appoint somebody to run the PUCO pretty soon.

Are you close to it?

- Yes.

We're ready to make an announcement, that will be former judge, Jenifer French.

We will name her today to the PUCO and I will name her as the chair.

So she will become the chair.

And let me just explain a little bit, if I could, about her.

What I have found in talking to people who have gone before her, people who know her, a very smart judge, someone who has a reputation for studying the facts, taking very complex set of facts, digging through that to come to a just resolution.

- Okay.

- And that's what I'm looking for.

- She would not be vulnerable to people who say, "Well she's in FirstEnergy's pocket."

- She has no background in the industry, period, which I think in this unique point in time is a real asset.

- All right.

Questions from the audience.

What do you anticipate, the date, the state will open for major outside events like concerts, fairs and even theaters like Playhouse Square?

- I think it's gonna be a very good summer.

I think it's gonna be a good spring.

I told the Indians, for example, 30% to start, but I can see as we move into the season further, those numbers should certainly, certainly go up.

The reason we can do that is because of the vaccine and because people have continued to wear their mask, and we will get to the point, we've set a target of 50 cases per 100,000, for two week period of time, it's a standard measurement, and we are going to that.

We're moving to that.

And when we get to that point, we will take off all health orders.

- And that's within sight in the binoculars, you think?

- Yeah.

I may say it's in sight, but Tom look, it's a race.

Again, as we said, we had this variant out here, we're seeing what's going on in Michigan, we're seeing what's going on at West Virginia.

That's really what our big concern is.

And so the faster we can get a vaccine in people's arms, the faster we're gonna be able to get out of this and to get back to normal.

So if I could make one plea today, when it's your turn to get the vaccine, once you're trying to get the vaccine, please take it.

- [Tom] Grab it.

- Because we can- This is not only important for you, but it's also very important for all of us.

We are truly in regard to that, all in this together, because reaching that herd immunity, reaching that point where we're driving this virus down.

So it can't go from one person.

There's no people for it to go back and forth to, is really the key.

- How can you justify your proposed budget seeking to spend $50 million on an advertising campaign to try to get people from other States to move to Ohio, when there are so many businesses and projects here that could use the money, reference here to the deep cuts in public transit?

Wouldn't you be better off spending it on the established first companies and residents that have real problems here?

- Yeah.

First of all, we've proposed to the general assembly a very significant bill investment in Ohio, separate apart from the question, $1 billion.

It's one-time money.

We're not gonna have it again.

But what we've said is basically half of that money is gonna go to cities like Mansfield, like Lima, some of our urban areas, to give them the ability to take Brownfield area and to open it up for for development and to create jobs.

Second part of that bill, about the other half of that bill, that half a billion dollars, is gonna go directly back to Ohioans, to Ohio businesses, and others who have been hurt by this pandemic.

50 million out of that, is what we've set aside and said we wanna promote Ohio.

I think it's very- We have Tom, you've lived here long, long time- - [Tom] Whole life.

- You and I both lived our whole lives.

We're Ohioans.

We don't brag a whole lot, but this is the greatest place I think in the world to live.

The quality of life, the cost of living, I think it's just a wonderful place to live.

We wanna share that.

And for us to move forward, we have to grow.

We have to have more people in Ohio.

Our population has been fairly flat now for 50, 60 years.

We wanna attract the best and brightest people to come into Ohio, 'cause they will be the ones that will create more jobs.

And I'll give you one example.

We are a net importer of college students.

If we could keep 10% more, or 5% more of the college students who come into Ohio and we're working to try to do that, they will give more vibrancy to the state, create more jobs and push us down the road.

So telling our stories, Midwesterners we're kind of shy, we don't brag about Ohio.

We got a lot to brag about, and we wanna do that to attract businesses to come in here, and to attract both creative people that we can find.

- What kind of results would that have to deliver for you to consider it money well spent, is fixed number of people moving here, just general buzz about the virtues of Ohio?

- Look, If we didn't get people to understand what Ohio is like, we're gonna have more people moving here, and people who will do things, get things done.

I'll tell you a story.

I know you've had this same experience that I have.

You talk to multinational companies who are in Cleveland or Cincinnati or Columbus or Toledo.

And you talk to them, you say, okay, "How is it when you bring people in here?"

And what they'll usually say to you is, "I was trying to transfer this guy and he didn't wanna come.

He said, "Oh, I don't wanna come to Cleveland.

I don't wanna come to Cincinnati.

I don't wanna come to Ohio."

We got him in here.

We couldn't get rid of him.

He said he wants to stay.

People wanna stay when they get into Ohio and they see what we have.

- Gun control question.

Why did you sign the Ohio 'Stand Your Ground' law instead of pushing harder for the common sense gun reforms that you proposed after the mass shootings in Dayton?

Is that plan- Are you throwing in the towel on that plan... - No, not absolutely, not throwing in the towel at all.

We have a proposal in front of the general assembly, that will absolutely save lives.

There's no doubt about it.

And I just give you a couple, Tom, a couple of examples.

Violent repeat offenders are wrecking havoc in our cities, across the state of Ohio.

When you talk to chiefs of police, when you talk to mayors, Democrat, Republican, it doesn't matter.

One of the things that they tell you is there's a small number of people in the community.

And if we could target them, go after them, when they commit a crime, get them out of here, we will save a lot of lives.

Our bill would do that.

The bill provides that someone who has a gun, and when you are convicted of a violent offense in Ohio, you no longer can own a gun.

Yet we're still finding people who are in the communities, who have these guns and the ability to segregate them out, get them out from us, we'll save an awful lot of lives.

Another example is outstanding criminal warrants.

Somebody commits a crime in Cleveland, someone commits a crime in Cincinnati, and it's a serious crime, that should go into a national database, It doesn't many times today.

So requiring that to go into a national database is another thing that we can do and that we should do, and that our bill does - People who are in support of your package though, if they agree with the merits and the the positives of everything it could do, but they don't they don't seem to see much possibility of a path of getting it through the current cast of characters of the legislature.

- I'm still optimistic and we're still pushing it, and we will continue to push it - So is it your goal to get that done by the end of the first term?

- Look, it's my goal to get it done, absolutely.

- Why do you prefer to- This is the choice of language in question here.

Why do you prefer to use the Rainy Day fund as a slush fund and sell instead of helping Ohioans dealing with the pandemic?

- Well, we're not using as a slush fund.

We've not taken any money out of it at all.

We thought we were going to have to.

What happened Tom was the federal government came in and they're paying a significant amount of the Medicaid funding.

And that will Tom will run out on December 31st.

So the money that we were going to take out because of the pandemic, out of the Rainy Day fund we've not had to do that because the federal government stepped up and is paying more money in regard to Medicaid.

But that will run out on the 31st of December.

And so we have to continue to have that Rainy Day fund, and we certainly, if that occurs we will tap into what next year?

- What kind of adjustments will the Workforce Development Ecosystem need to make to support a post COVID recovery?

- No, I think the basic principles, Tom are the same.

And, we believe that the most important thing is to make sure that every Ohioan has the ability to grow in whatever job they have, every Ohioan has the ability to live up to their God-given potential.

And so job training, we have a unique job training plan that relies on businesses, when they wanna upscale someone's talents, we will pay for that.

And what we're actually paying for is results.

If they get that certificate- And that certificate by the way for the employee has to be an industry level certificate, which means that if they get laid off or if they want change jobs, they can take that certificate with them.

That's been something that's been very unique.

The Lieutenant governor has spearheaded that for us, and it's a plan that works exceedingly well.

So I think focusing on education, focusing on job training, and talking about education from a broad point of view, from the point of view of pre-K through 12, but also continuing education for workers during their lifetime.

- I'd like to just inject a question here, getting back to worker training and the automotive industry.

General Motors announcement that it plans to go to all electric cars within 14 years, thousands of Ohio auto workers are making parts and putting cars together that run out of gasoline or worried about their jobs going, becoming obsolete, what's being done to anticipate that?

- Well, we've been working with General Motors.

You saw what happened.

The battery plant in the Lordstown area that was very, very significant, now getting ready to make electric trucks over there.

We find that to be very exciting as well.

Tom, whenever you see a change, there's always change.

And when you see an industry change, we have to hail change with it.

We have to be willing to work with those who are looking to the future and looking at more electric as we move forward.

We just implemented a provision for more money out there, for charging stations around the State of Ohio.

Ohio needs to be the most friendly state for electric cars, battery charged cars.

And that's what we're doing.

- Do you feel we have a leg up in any way on States that already have significant presence from that, the car makers?

- We already have a big presence, we have a good relationship with them.

We already see what's happening in Lordstown.

We're very happy about that.

We have to build on that - As the state turns to recovery, the mental health of older adults who have been isolated home will be of critical importance yet in the latest state budget proposal there was no new funding specifically for seniors at home.

Governor DeWine, you have said that you wanna build the public health safety net, so what is the plan to invest state resources specifically for the wellbeing of Ohio's older adults?

- Yeah.

There is specific money in there for our older citizens, in regard to mental health.

If you look at the budget for aging budget, Director McElroy came to us with some very significant recommendations, and we are funding those recommendations in the budget that we proposed to the general assembly.

So there's that absolutely correct.

We're gonna continue to see mental health problems.

We're seeing it not only among the elderly who have been isolated, we're certainly seeing it among kids.

One of the things Tom that we have done in our previous budget and this budget is set aside a very significant amount of money in our schools in regard to mental health, in regard to what we call it wrap around services, wellness dollars, so that schools have some flexibility, but they have to put that into things that make sure that the child is actually ready to learn inside the classroom.

- So you think mental health issues are being properly addressed with the necessary funding?

- It's, Tom, it's also a work in progress.

Our budget significantly increases mental health funding but we have to continue to work on this.

It's very, very important today.

- Republican Senate hopeful, Josh Mendell is calling on you to lift all mask mandates and COVID restrictions.

How do you convince the extreme right wing of your party that mass vaccination centers and the rapid expansion of eligibility to younger Ohioans is a means to that end?

- Well, the science shows that it is, the facts show that it is.

And we're not gonna convince everybody of that fact, but for anyone who really wants to get back to normal in Ohio, which everybody does, the fastest way to do it is to encourage more vaccinations and to continue to wear a mask until we get to that point where we are able to knock this virus down, and we're gonna get back to normal.

Look, Tom, I look for summer of County fairs, I look for summer of festivals and Cleveland and Cuyahoga County and this part of the state.

And I think it's gonna get back to normal.

- We're close, we can almost read out and touch it.

- And here's kind of my football analogy.

We're on the four yard line, the other guy's four yard line, we're driving.

Let's don't walk off the field with four yards to go.

We're almost there.

- There has been a push by legislatures in other States for election, more restrictive election laws.

What steps is Ohio taking to ensure there is election integrity and to make sure that issues of any possible irregularities do not take place?

And my addendum question here, would you be in favor of the kinds of laws that are getting passed in other States, dealing with shortening the number of days for early voting, doing away with no excuse early voting, those kinds of ratcheting back of measures now in place?

- Tom, I think we're doing very well in Ohio.

We've had good secretaries of States, Democrat and Republican.

Our elections, as you know, are run by Democrats and Republicans all the way down to the County Board, and then down to the precinct level.

When you go in there, there's Republican sitting there, there's Democrats sitting there, we have expansive voting and we've done it for a long time, four weeks, basically four weeks of voting, where you can go in, any of those days, go into the Board of Elections and vote, or you can get a ballot and you don't have to give any reason for that ballot.

So some of the era regularities that we've seen in other States, some of the great delays that we saw in this last election, they don't occur in Ohio.

We're not perfect, but I think we run a very, very good election.

- So your approach is basically, it's not broke on fiction.

- It is not broken, it is working.

There's always possibilities of improving things.

I'm not saying that but I think it's a very good system that we have in Ohio, and we have people who know how to run it at the local level.

- Obviously a very personal question here from a healthcare worker.

I would like Governor DeWine to explain to all healthcare workers, why we couldn't get vaccinated for two months, why we were putting ourselves on the line taking care of COVID patients, and yet we could not get vaccinated?

- Healthcare workers started to be vaccinated on the first day, the first day.

What we were trying to do, and let me just outline it quickly.

We had three goals.

One is to protect our healthcare workers, 'cause they're protecting us, two is to get our kids back in school, and so we vaccinated 200,000 teachers to get our kids back in school by March 1, and three overriding everything is to is to protect lives.

So on day one, we started with our healthcare workers, but we also started in our nursing homes.

And we started with those 80 years of age and older.

It has worked well.

We've taken deaths down dramatically.

We have seen in our nursing homes for example, is we had a fraction, a small fraction of the cases.

And we go down every single week because we not only vaccinate everybody in the nursing homes, but we have continued to put vaccine in those nursing homes into the future.

What our person who called that in maybe referring to is we told the hospitals, for example, you can only vaccinate people.

You can't vaccinate a clerk.

You can't vaccinate someone who is not indirect contact with COVID patients.

And frankly, what we saw happening in some cases was they were going beyond that.

And so we told them the whole back, pull back a little bit.

And so that may be what this person is referring to.

But we have vaccinated tens of thousands of healthcare workers.

And we started doing that the very first day.

Look, no one could be more grateful than I am to our healthcare workers for what they have done.

They have done a phenomenal job and with tremendous, tremendous emotional stress that has to be on that day after day after day.

So God blessed them and I thank them.

- Can't say enough about them.

- You cannot say enough about them.

- Do you support Ohio Attorney General Yost lawsuit against the recovery act because it won't let States use the money for tax cuts?

- Yes, I think it needs to be clarified.

I think it needs to be clarified.

We're starting to get some guidance from the treasury and we're taking a look at that, but it was not frankly clear.

Exactly did they really mean to tell a school district, or do they mean to tell a County that they could not cut taxes?

And I don't think that's what the federal government should be involved in.

We're grateful for the money.

- [Tom] But that's overreaching.

- I think that's overreaching, if that's really what they were doing.

(Tom sighs) - Regarding the 50 cases per 100,000 goal, what consideration will be paid to 'probable cases' as well as false positives.

- Look, this we're simply following what every other state is following, which is the CDCs recommendations of how they count cases.

Throughout this epidemic, Tom, there've been skeptics who have said the numbers are wrong, they're made up.

Look, we see the trends.

The trends are clear.

And when we see cases going up, Tom, and a couple of weeks after that, we see people going into hospital going up.

So, these numbers, nothing is perfect, but the trend lines are very, very clear.

And so when we set it at 50, we were at one point over 700, we're now at 145 roughly.

And that's come down dramatically and continues to come down.

So I'm optimistic that we'll be able to get that number down and we'll be able to get the health orders off.

- Should representative householder be expelled from his job?

- First of all, it was up to the voters, who reelected him.

Now it is up to the- - [Tom] They reelected him against virtually.

- Yes, that's true.

No, I understand.

But they still reelected him.

I look at this decision as the House's decision, and not my decision.

This is a separate branch of government, and I'm not gonna get into that discussion.

- I think we've hit the finish line here governor.

I know you wanted to make some walk-off thoughts about an athletic event later today, Cleveland State.

- Basketball tonight.

It's good to have Cleveland State in and it's... - [Tom] Go Vikings.

- Go Vikings.

You and I talked about that and it's exciting.

So... - Yeah.

Governor thanks very much.

Thanks very much for submitting to this random interrogation and... - Tom, good to see you again.

Thank you very much.

- Good to see you governor.

- And thank you for joining us for our Friday forum here at the City Club, here at the City Club with governor Mike DeWine, the 70th governor of the State of Ohio.

He has been interviewed as you know by retired journalist and City Club member, Tom Beres.

Our forum today is the annual Bolton forum on national politics, which celebrates the lives of Chester Bolton, his wife Frances Payne Bolton, and their son Oliver Bolton.

All three family members served in the U.S. House of Representatives with Francis and Oliver serving simultaneously making them the first and only mother-son pair to serve in Congress.

We're grateful for the support of the Bolton family which makes our forum possible.

Thanks also to member sponsors and donors and others who support our mission to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, stay strong, stay healthy.

Please get the vaccine my friends.

Our form is now adjourned.

(bell rings) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

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