Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

Moore and Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.ORG Election 2022 launches with candidates for governor naming their running mates a new mission for the Ohio National Guard, helping hospitals overwhelmed by COVID patients and staff shortages, and remembering January sixth one year later.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio, I'm Karen Kasler.

The 2022 election year is underway with a trio of candidates for governor announcing their running mates this week.

Wednesday was the big day for the major Democratic candidates.

Former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley introduced former Cleveland Heights Mayor Cheryl Stevens, who's now on Cuyahoga County Council, as her potential lieutenant governor.

An hour before that, ex Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley revealed he selected longtime lawmaker Senator Teresa Fedor, an Air Force veteran and former teacher, as his running mate.

Though his Columbus press conference was a few hours after Wales, the announcements from Cranley and Whaley were three days after Republican candidate Joe Blystone went on Fox News on Sunday with his choice.

Retired Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Jeremiah Workman of Union County.

Neither Blystone nor Workman have held elective office.

After months of talking about it, a coalition of public school districts is suing over the state's ED Choice voucher program.

five public school districts are listed as plaintiffs in the suit, saying the program is siphoning taxpayer money from their districts in order to pay for students who choose to go to private schools instead.

They say that goes against the section of the state constitution that says Ohio must quote secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.

Supporters of vouchers have said this is school choice and helps lower income families escape failing public schools.

But some districts say nearly all those ED Choice vouchers are going to students who have never attended a public school.

So contrary to the narrative, these families are not fleeing a failing school.

The only thing that they're fleeing is a tuition bill, a private school tuition bill that's now being paid by Ohio's taxpayers.

A state fiscal review of the latest changes to expand the ED Choice program determined that it could cost the state as much as $250 million in additional funds over the next two years.

The lawsuit has been filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, but could likely find its way to the Ohio Supreme Court this year.

Started with record COVID case numbers and hospitalizations.

The number of COVID patients soared above 6000 for the first time this week, and they're taking up around a quarter of all Ohio hospital beds and COVID patients in intensive care and on ventilators jumped past record set in December 2020.

As mentioned here last week, Governor Mike DeWine has deployed another twelve hundred and 50 members of the Ohio National Guard to those hospitals.

They are struggling with rising patient counts and falling staffing levels thanks to COVID infection and exposure resignations and firings because of vaccine requirements.

Departures by staff for high paying, traveling, medical professional positions and burnout.

They're really focused in three areas with medics and clinical support.

But the non-clinical support in the areas of food service, environmental services and then transportation helping to get patients around the facility.

And so that in the context of those work responsibilities, we've seen really a lot of hospital step forward with requests to have National Guard.

And right now, we have about 140 medics at our hospitals right now and about 829 medics that are currently deployed.

We have about 1000 in the queue, so to speak, of where we're getting requests, where we're getting availability, as far as how soon the guard members can be called up and deployed.

And so, you know, here in the next couple of weeks, you're going to see more of that activity occurring and help to make sure really hospitals are able to still meet the needs of the community.

The health care needs, I mean, making sure the facilities accessible and ready to go, equipment set up supplies, food service, prep.

There's been a lot of support and work around that, with the guard members helping with food prep.

When you have so many patients in the hospital, you know a lot of people don't realize we're operating in the high eighties capacity.

I mean, the hospitals truly are full from the aid to the inpatient to the ICU, and to the extent that you know, food services need to be operating to meet that demand.

It takes a big toll, so they're making a huge difference in their work.

I don't know if you can address this specifically, because I imagine every hospital does it differently, but will they be visible?

Will these personnel be visible to people who are in the hospital patients?

I know some visitor restrictions are in place, but are they in uniform?

Are they in scrubs?

Will people know that these are National Guard personnel?

Yeah, and depending on where you're at, so on the testing side, we're getting a lot of testing centers set up, it's been very heavily utilized in the Cleveland area and then Akron was summa health.

You'll definitely notice the guard and the camouflage in that area.

On the clinical side, with the Air Guardsmen, you'll definitely see the abdomen scrubs and the protective gear because of the nature of their work.

So you'll definitely see that activity happening.

It's, you know, it's really been nice because of the reception that the guards are receiving at our hospitals.

I mean, there's like an assembly as far as when they're coming into the building, welcoming them, they're going through orientation, they're becoming familiar with the facility, the safety protocols that are involved.

And so it's just not a matter of them coming in and just jumping right into it.

We do in orientation to make sure they're familiar with everything, given the kind of the lay of the land, what the situation is like, what being a very active hospital.

You know, it can be intimidating.

And obviously the guard are up for any challenge and any opportunity.

And and it's just been a nice reception so far over the last couple of weeks.

I also talked to the adjutant general of the Ohio National Guard about the mission and about who's ready for it, who isn't and what can be done about it.

So the Pentagon issued a vaccination mandate, the Cobra vaccination mandate, in November, saying members must be fully vaccinated by June 2022.

But the vaccination status of Ohio National Guard members is low enough that it's really limiting the numbers of people that you can send out for this for these hospital missions, even though many hospital systems have also suspended their vaccine mandates.

Tell me about the vaccination status rate among National Guard members.

Well, for our Army National Guard, which has what's the mandate hasn't gone into effect yet for all Army National Guardsmen, we're at about 52 or 53% for our Air National Guard, which has already passed the mandate.

That's about 92%.

So 93% with the number of medical exemptions and religious exemptions still outstanding.

And a few outright refusals.

But the vaccination rate for the Eric artist is pretty high.

But when it comes to the Army National Guard, that means like almost half of the people that you might be looking at for, these missions are not available to do that right.

That's the challenge created by unvaccinated soldiers is it certainly makes this operation more complex for us and as an example of why EOD put the mandate in place.

This is about readiness.

Our job in the National Guard and the Department of Defense is to generate readiness or or they're generating readiness or consuming readiness.

And operations like this obviously are consuming readiness.

But our job is to be ready.

And the mandate, the mandate, the vaccine mandate, all medical readiness is a part of that requirement and the complexity that this creates for us as we look at bringing people onto missions, are they vaccinated or are they not vaccinated?

Can they do this mission and not that mission said.

Can they go in this facility?

Maybe not that facility.

What are their PPE requirements compared to other PPE requirements?

It exponentially increases the complexity of this operation.

And and quite frankly, it's even more challenging for us as we respond here in the homeland as we prepare for federal deployment.

We have time to plan for that, get our folks vaccinated, all the shots they need.

Every time a soldier airman goes into theater, they know that they're going to need vaccinations in homelan It's come as you are.

We have to be prepared for the call of the governor now.

And so anything else around this vaccine mandate is background noise to me because the issue is readiness, readiness, readiness, and that's all it's about and our soldiers and airmen understand that obligation.

And I'm just sorry that there's so much other noise around this vaccine issue.

What can you do about it?

Have you moved up the vaccination mandate from June 20 to to a different date.

For for our Army National Guard?

I've put a 31 March mandate into place.

I have moved that up simply because we have to be ready and the unpredictability of this disease, this spike that we're seeing right now, the Omicron variant.

These are all unknowns.

And so as I said, we have to be able to respond as we are, and that means we have to be ready.

So waiting until June to get ready is unacceptable for me, quite frankly.

End of March is a long time to wait to get ready, but I'm given I'm giving the soldiers the benefit of the doubt.

But this is a medical readiness is not nothing new.

Our soldiers understand medical readiness, our airmen understand medical readiness, and this is just another piece of medical readiness as the environment changes and this vaccine becomes a factor for us.

You've been working with hospitals throughout this pandemic in terms of standing up facilities and doing some work in those hospitals.

Is it your understanding that you're being brought in, not just because these numbers are increasing awareness is.

Hospitalizations, but also the hospitals are losing staff because people are leaving because of vaccine mandates or people are leaving to become traveling medical professionals where they can make more money.

Why are there such short staffs?

We are understanding.

Well, I know the terms overused.

But when we talked to the CEOs, the medical directors, these hospitals, they use that term perfect storm because they are experiencing, of course, COVID positives and the quarantining isolation associated with that, coupled with with the mandate and mandate refusals.

But most of much of it, believe it or not, is just burnout.

The people in these hospitals who have been doing this for for almost two years now.

And this is not only physically challenging for the folks.

one of the things that my, my soldiers have told us when they go on these hospitals that they were kind of unprepared.

They hadn't brace themselves for the emotional shock of doing this mission, working in ICU, working in emergency departments and in some cases losing people unnecessarily when they see death.

That doesn't have to be.

It certainly takes a toll on the people working in those works.

With that in mind, how sustainable is this mission?

I mean, you've got people who are leaving their homes to go do these missions, they're seeing this kind of really heavy work.

How sustainable is this mission?

Well, I will tell you, I see this as a short term.

We will stay here as long as we need to be here and not a day longer because frankly, we have to get these people back to work.

The hospital is not the only market segment that's suffering from from workforce shortages.

And and we are we are simply moving people to a greater area of the crisis.

But every group, every person I mobilize, I'm taking from somewhere else.

I'm taking not only from their families, but I'm taking from some other segment of the workforce that need them just as badly.

So as soon as as soon as the Department of Health and Hospital Association say, we think that we're through the crisis.

I will tell you, it's my intent to get our folks back to work because they're needed as much.

They're unfortunately maybe not needed as much because this crisis in the hospitals is dire, but their employers want them back and their families want them back, and it's my attempt to get them back as quickly as possible.

The guard has been critical to the state's operations throughout this pandemic.

You've worked in food bank to administer tests, nursing homes, help in hospitals and prisons.

You helped out with security at the U.S. Capitol around the inauguration earlier this year or in 2020. one rather, you were in communities throughout the summer of 2020 during demonstrations after the killing of George Floyd deployed for all of us.

All of these different missions, I mean, are your incoming guard members?

Were they expecting to have this variety of things that they are being expected to do?

And are there any surprises for some of these folks that these are the things that they are doing now?

Maybe they didn't expect this when they signed up for the service?

Well, just about everything you mentioned is unexpected to a service member when they sign up for the service.

Nobody looks at a recruiting poster and says, Hey, look, you can work in a food bank or, Hey, look at this, you can.

You might find yourself in a nursing home on no notice the same night, you know, get a call and expect to be on duty the same evening.

But that's our plight, and that's that's the beauty of the National Guard is that the folks are incredibly, incredibly mature and seasoned, even even the younger people.

You know, these folks have civilian jobs, they have their guard duties and they have and many of them are in school.

So they've had life experiences that probably season them a little bit more than their peers.

And that that bodes well for us when we take on these mission sets that we never expected.

But, but but just about everything we've done during this global pandemic has been a novel mission for us.

And but the beauty of being being a military organization that we have planning systems in place, we have a structure fo doing that.

We have processes f And so when we assume these missions, we can still apply military decision making as we still apply the fundamentals of having discipline cohesive, trusting teams.

And if you can take that template, you can load of overlay it over just about any mission set and be successful at it as long as you have the right people who are committed to the mission.

And we are fortunate here in Ohio, we have a very large National Guard.

We have a National Guard that's comprised of great, great professionals.

I think I have read that you were the fifth largest National Guard in the country, Ohio has the largest National Guard in the country, with Ohio having the fifth largest National Guard in the country.

Is there a concern that once all of this work, some of it very heavy, some very serious working in hospitals, dealing with gas and disease?

Are you losing people to signing up again or even to joining the first time?

Are you concerned that this is taking a toll on your numbers and on your recruitment of a future guard?

Over the course of over the course of this response, we have relied very heavily on our National Guard and keep in mind, this is not the only thing we're doing.

Of course, we're deploying units to the southwest border.

We we've we've constantly continuously deployed deployed teams and units to to support the war on terror, either in the CENTCOM area of responsibility or other places around the world.

So all those persistent and the old model of being in the National Guard one on one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer is certainly in the rearview mirror.

So what we call the operational tempo is very high for our people.

Our military police officers, for example, respond to three times in the last twelve months for for various cases of expected civil unrest, both in the wake of George Floyd and then the January six.

When you were at the Capitol and put folks in D.C. And then for the inauguration, we we put folks in D.C. as well as in our own capital and in anticipation of preparation for potential violence.

So if you're that if you're that person, you've been called to duty three times, that certainly does put a strain on you .

It puts a strain on your family.

If you're a college student, it certainly puts a strain on your ability to complete your curriculum and stay on schedule with school.

So we are working very hard to mitigate those things so we don't have a mass exodus out of the back door when it's when it's time for these people to re-enlist because we need them, their talent, their experience now and we need that experience.

So outreach to employers, outreach to the educational ins to their colleges and universities open the aperture on a scholarship program so that people who may not necessarily want to be in a degree granting program but pursue a vocation skilled trade.

We want to help them do that.

Our goal is to help everybody meet their full potential and.

In spite of in spite of the operational tempo and the requirements we've placed on them, so it's my hope that our mitigation measures work because we're always going to be people focused even on a mission like this.

If if there is, we don't want people missing, you know, an important wedding or an important event.

And that's part of being in the military and our people do that all the time.

But if they're here in Ohio and we can get them to those events, we're going to do that to mitigate again that the impact on the individual, on the people because we are always people focused in spite of the mission.

When you talk about people focused, it feels like you've had an unprecedented level of dealing with the public throughout this pandemic.

Were you getting food banks?

You've been in nursing homes, you've had this really big opportunity to engage with people.

There's a perception among some people in the population that the military is just not the greatest organization.

There's a perception among some older Ohioans that the Ohio National Guard is still fighting from the situa an opportunity for you to kind of change people's minds about what the guard is and what you do ?

Well, it's certain it certainly has, and I love I love when people talk to our National Guard.

And no one, when they talk to our people about the experience they've had, not just here in the homeland, but globally.

It's kind of staggering for some people to realize that our guard has deployed as much as it has and our people have the experience.

And but I want people to know that that the leadership, the depth of the leadership experience and the leadership acumen that our people not only bring from the National Guard but take to the workplace.

It's important for employers to understand that, especially since the employers are are missing their employees a few times a year or so.

So the offset is you're getting you're getting a season later with a world, a wealth of experiences.

But but it's also important we still yes.

Yes, we still deal sometimes with that with the with the association with Kent State.

In spite of the fact that we've trained significantly, we have specialized forces now to deal with those sort of civil disturbances.

We still deal with the hangover from Kent State.

We still deal sometimes with the old stereotypes of the National Guard, the weekend warrior stereotype of the National Guard.

And I think for the most part, that's gone where wherever we go now, the outpouring of support that the people who respond positively thank you for the service and the organizations, the way they respond and recognize and reward our people for the duty that they've done there.

It's very uplifting.

And I think again, we've outrun that stereotype of the old weekend warrior National Guard.

Some Ohio National Guard personnel met with Governor Mike DeWine this week as they reported for their hospital deployments.

Since our interview, Harris says the COVID vaccination rate for the Ohio Army National Guard has gone from 53% to 56%.

And he says another 11% have gotten their first dose, but that's still below Ohio's statewide vaccination rate.

Just under 59% of Ohioans over five have had both COVID shots, and it's below the National Guard's national average of just over 61%.

A year ago, this week on January sixth, a mob of extremist supporters of now former President Trump stormed the US Capitol and an attempted insurrection as Congress met to certify President elect Joe Biden's Electoral College win, a vote that five of Ohio's twelve Republican congressmen opposed.

They are Jim Jordan, Steve Chabot, Warren Davidson, Bob Gibbs and Bill Johnson.

A few hours earlier, a few dozen pro-Trump protesters, including the far right white nationalist Proud Boys, chanted, screamed obscenities and waved Trump banners on Capitol Square in Columbus.

The group turned violent against a handful of counterprotesters.

But unlike in D.C. and other states, the group never tried to take over the statehouse.

On the anniversary of January sixth, the State House a different scene a candlelight vigil in the cold and dark.

one of more than 220 events planned around the country by civil rights government watchdog and faith based groups on the opposite side of the violent protesters who stormed the Capitol a year ago.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

He'll be here tonight.

Really appreciate it.

From Chile, so they know how to do it warm down there.

Was.

I'm Pastor Hank Paulson, thank you for braving the call to get out here and the traffic and the snow, and we are still waiting on some of our speakers who are delayed by the weather, so.

All right, everybody.

I think we're going to get started organizing team for this Columbus site Adobe that evening.

My name is Mindy Hedges and I've been an activist and volunteer from the age of twelve before recently.

I no, no, no, no, no, I'm.

Thank you.

Yeah, you've really.

Got to.

Really?

And that's it for this week.

My colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our web site at State News Talk and you can follow us and show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.ORG