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.

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Another week with more battling over redistricting, we'll have the latest on what's happening with the maps for Ohio House and Senate and Congress.

And with the May third primary and a leader in the fight against how communities raise millions, do traffic cameras explains Why are you still waging war on those devices, which supporters say save lives?

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

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

The May third primary will feature all statewide offices along with legislative and congressional candidates.

That's as of now because the Ohio Redistricting Commission has passed both sets of maps, and the Secretary of State has directed boards of elections to add the candidates in the new House, Senate and congressional districts to the ballot.

But those Republican drawn maps, which passed only with Republican support, are still facing legal challenges that could force the primary into chaos, causing it to be split into two events or moved entirely.

Here are State House correspondent Andy Chow with what happened this week in redistricting.

The commission approved a congressional map that creates ten Republican districts, three Democratic districts and two very competitive districts that lean in favor of the Democratic candidates.

The map was adopted by a vote of five to two, with only Republican commissioners approving the plan.

That means the map would only last for years.

Now, Democratic commissioners raised objections to the map, saying it did not reflect Ohio's voter preference in proportion to the 15 districts.

About 54% of Ohioans vote Republican, but the GOP has the advantage and more than 66% of the districts we can right now meet and discuss.

As long as it takes to get this done, to come to some agreement, get to a map that will pass constitutional muster that will get bipartisan support will be in effect for ten years.

And will allow us to conduct elections.

And it's really that simple.

Republican Senate President Matt Hoffman argued that the commission followed the anti gerrymandering requirements they are bound to follow by the Constitution.

He says the section of the Constitution that says a map must not unduly favor one party over another does not apply to mat making this far into the process.

The Constitution says if there are specific districts that the court has criticisms, then you need to address that.

That's exactly what we did.

The Congressional District Plan is now subject to possible objection by voter rights advocates, community organizations and a national democratic group and the Ohio Supreme Court.

The Republican commissioners say Ohio will still be able to hold a primary on May third, as long as the court doesn't take any further action on their state legislative and congressional district maps.

The legislative maps are already being challenged.

Lawmakers appropriated an additional $9 million in funds for local boards of elections to make up for the time lost, with the maps in limbo.

The Ohio Association of Elections Officials said in a letter that they're grateful to have additional money to hire more people, but what they really need is more time.

They've asked for the primary to be moved, saying many counties no longer have the ability to run a successful full primary on that date.

Andy Chow, Statehouse News Bureau The Ohio House and Senate were unanimous this week.

They both passed resolutions condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and several were dressed to show support for Ukrainians.

Attorney General Dave Yost and Governor Mike DeWine are calling for Ohio's five public pension systems to pull all $112 million in their Russian based investments out to put economic pressure on Russia, but also to stop those investments from further plummeting in value as the Russian economy craters.

But for that to be required, state law would have to be changed.

Elected pension fund boards of trustees who are the fiduciaries of the funds make decisions for those systems in consultation with their investment experts, which is how they ended up investing in Russian backed assets or any others.

All of this comes a week after Ohio became one of the first US states to halt the buying or selling of Russian made vodka.

Over 35,000 Ohio K through twelve students have applied for state funded vouchers to attend private schools under the ED Choice program, double the number in that program from eight years ago.

But there's a new bill that just got its first hearing that would make it possible for all of the state students to get vouchers if they want them.

But as statehouse correspondent Joe Ingles reported in October, that would come with a huge bill for the state.

Columbus resident Ben Douglas says his second grade daughter was suffering from debilitating anxiety that kept her from even getting out of bed, so he removed her from the public school she was attending and enrolled her in a private one with a voucher from the ED Choice program.

Her test scores are incredible.

Her happiness is great.

Emotionally, academically, even spiritually.

She's just flourishing and feels so comfortable where where she's at.

Because his daughter's public school building was considered failing and because his family made less than 250% of the federal poverty level, Douglas qualified for the end choice program.

But many Ohioans don't because they make too much money or live in a school district that's too high performing.

Republican Representative Reardon McClain says his bill to create a universal voucher program changes that we want to fund students, not systems, and empower parents to make the best decision for their children.

Representative Marilyn Johns says the way it stands now, some students get left behind in public schools, and she says that's unacceptable.

one size fits all doesn't work.

It doesn't work for most things.

It certainly does not work for education, and the backpack bill solves that problem.

The Center for Christian Virtue, which calls itself Ohio's largest Christian public policy organization, supports the bill.

Its president says the bill will allow parents to choose schools that align with their values.

For example, he says parents in the Upper Arlington School District who were upset when the schools implement a gender neutral bathrooms, had no recourse but to accept that decision.

All of their high schools and I believe their middle schools as well decided they were going to have single sex bathrooms, so boys were going to have to be allowed to use the stalls right next to a girl through those developmental times of life.

And all of those children in Upper Arlington were forced to now use those restrooms, whether the parents liked it or not, and they had no option to go elsewhere.

Most of those families were not eligible for ED choice.

A bill like this would be able to say, Look Upper Arlington if this is what you want to do, if this is the policy you want to have, OK, but now we're going to take those families.

Are allowed to go elsewhere.

Backers of the bill say vouchers up to $7,500 would follow each child to the private school they choose.

But even though 164,000 kids in Ohio attend private schools, along with 60,000 that use some sort of state paid voucher.

Supporters of the bill claim that won't take a lot of money away from public schools.

The value of ED Choice vouchers was increased in the most recent state budget.

An analysis of that increase by the Ohio Education Policy Institute, which does research for the major public education groups, shows those increases could cost the state nearly $283 million over the next two years.

And this bill would add to that.

Bill Phillips is a longtime public school advocate whose lawsuit over the property tax base way of paying for schools got the system declared unconstitutional in 1997.

The state has been trying to come up with a way to fund schools fairly ever since.

Phillips says the goal of this bill is to dismantle common public education.

It's a global attempt to take stuff away from the public and put it into the private.

And when that happens, people end up with the short end of the stick.

Phillips says any way you cut it, this would take money away from public schools.

If Upper Arlington is getting $2,000 from the state and it takes 7500 for a high school student to go to a scholarship that's taking money out of the state pool, it's not going to be available across the state to do the other districts .

This idea that isn't going to cost any more is just a sham.

In fact, if the bill becomes law could cost the state more than $1,000,000,000 to cover all 164,000 students in private schools.

Now, some of those kids are already in one of the state's five voucher programs.

But the new state budget requires direct funding of those vouchers, rather than the money being removed from school districts budgets.

If all 1.7 million public school students were eligible, the cost would explode.

And Phillips says the money will be ripe for misuse and abuse as opportunists quickly set up fly by night schools to turn a profit and give parents the opportunity to homeschool and give them about a voucher for home schooling.

There will be a proliferation of that sort of thing going on, and instead of using the money for education, some of the parents now we we we have great confidence in most pairs, but some of the parents would be buying off track four wheelers as opposed to providing the money for education.

We know that there are those parents out there that resist this whole compulsory education idea.

Supporters of this bill say the state will have oversight of those dollars, but that's no consolation to Phillips.

We know that the state doesn't really monitor, um, you know, ACORN is a good example.

The state doesn't really monitor these private operations.

It can't go on court with a 60 million dollar fraud one year.

Well, they were operating that same way for 15 previous years, and the state had no clue about it or they chose to have no clue about it.

But this bill would not cover students who want to go to a different public school, so it wouldn't require school districts that don't allow open enrollment to do so.

Joe Ingles Statehouse News Bureau.

The battle over whether the state or communities have the power to regulate red light and speed cameras has raged at the State House and in local governments for 15 years.

Last month, the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments in yet another case involving traffic cameras, this time whether the state could withhold local government fund money from communities that raise revenue from these cameras, which they say they install to save lives.

one of the generals in this fight is Tom Patton, a Republican from Strongsville, whose proposed legislation to put limits on what communities can do with those cameras.

When he was in both the Senate and the House, Payton has proposed seven bills banning camera programs from communities that don't have fire departments or EMS that have fewer than 200 residents, limiting the total number of tickets to two times the population, capping revenue generated at 30%, requiring 80% of revenue.

Go to law enforcement and banning cameras within a half a mile of an interstate on or off ramp or for use on interstates.

I asked Tom Patton why he's still going strong against traffic cameras.

This is absolutely about not having people break the law, not having people speed.

It's enforcing it in a different way.

A camera ticket is issued and you get the results of it in the mail three days later.

How did it help the erratic driver?

You know, that may put people's lives at risk.

You know, to get a ticket.

If he survives, he or she survives 30 days later.

This is about the need to have true public safety.

And when you have like a little town has 150 people.

They don't have a fire department.

They call Cleveland Fire.

They don't have any EMS.

They call, they send their kids to clean the school, but they want to put their big boy pants on and write traffic tickets.

94% of this town's revenue is derived from speed tickets.

And again, that's up signs.

We say this town, you're talking about Allendale specifically.

Well, if you want, if you've got to be specific, yes, you know, and but you know, they're not the only, you know, in my my my opinion called bad actor, we have another town that's got about 19 other folks, and they wrote 59,000 tickets last year and A77 and and I think they have another camp within the city.

And it's, you know, these are the type of things that we had said.

If your revenue was so great, you know, applied towards law enforcement by more police who actually on the highway because , as I say, we don't want people to speak.

But if you see a police car, you know, everybody always at least make sure if they're not driving the speed, they make sure they're driving the speed limit.

And that's kind of like a wake up call.

If you can, you know, daydreamed are going a little too fast, you know, but if you are speeding, stop.

No right, the ticket.

No drunk driver.

Find out now.

Arrest him now.

Get him off the road before he can kill somebody.

And you know, that's why the series of bills is kind of like, we're going to see which one bites stick, you know, and which one might have some rhythm.

But I really think that like to two tickets per resident.

I mean, that gives a whole sway.

The one town Linda would be able to write 300 tickets.

They do that in about four days, you know, and so we just, you know, we want law enforcement to have every tool possible.

This is a tool that.

The police chief could sit back at his desk.

All right, that town of 150 with eleven police officers, that's one for every 15 people and makes well in the six figures what we're being told.

You know, and all he does is wait for the checks to arrive from the counties out of potentially out of I don't know exactly, but it's out of state.

But there's some Australian companies that are our partners in that.

So 40% of the revenue is going potentially out of the country at minimum out of the state, you know, and I'll share one story.

We had a couple from Ohio, an older couple on a fixed income and they call me in September.

And you know, Mr Patton, I don't know what to do.

She goes, We saved $40 so we can take our grandkids to Kitty Park, which is located in Brooklyn, which is a suburb next to Linda, that you have to drive through Linda to get to it, from my district, from my area.

And they said we had $40.

We took the kids had agreed to even had no money left over by an ice cream cone.

It was a great memory.

And then 30 days later, we got a ticket in the mail for both coming into Lyndale and going out Allendale.

$300, 150 each goes that $40 a day is a 340 dollar a day.

So, Mr Perrin, how am I going to buy my medicine this month?

What do you say to those folks?

And I know that's a concern.

The delay in finding out the cost of these tickets, the surveillance aspect of it, these are all the due process of it.

You don't get to talk to an officer who's writing you the ticket.

These are all concerns that have been raised.

And I think the other community that you mentioned, Newburgh Heights, that that's one a community that's challenged this in the Ohio Supreme Court.

You've tried some of these things before, though.

What makes you think that one of these or two of these or however many of these seven bills is going to stick this time, as you put it?

You know, I think that the subject of distracted driving is getting a lot of attention.

Currently, we're actually looking at a bill very strongly on my ride to Columbus.

You know, no exaggeration.

I could write myself five or six tickets, you know, because they'll end up in the passing lane, doing ten miles or less in the car.

If they're not in the past and they they tend to drift left and because their heads down, they're not paying attention or speed.

That's why they slowed down.

And you can't even get their attention when you drive by them to say, you know what?

You're you're going so distracted.

Driving is is is currently a topic.

And so I think that if we're talking about, you know, something that has to do with driving, let's talk about safety.

If we're talking about safety, let's talk about putting more money into policemen on the road in my county of Cuyahoga.

We're blessed to have a super post of the highway patrol and absent the highway patrol.

We have 59 other police departments in Cuyahoga County that includes the Cleveland Clinic police, Cleveland State Police.

But the other little burbs all have their town.

And so but having said that, we have that Super Bowl.

So if we're having problems and 77 through Lindbergh, we're on to 71 now with a shooting traffic ticket, as I'm told.

And from Mayfield Heights, if there's a problem spot as to patrol, I talked to folks in the police all they let us know where they have some problems.

So we will man those highways will special attention those roads and we will make the traffic public safer now.

Some of these bills appear to be targeted at Allendale, which has gotten a national reputation as a speed trap and a place where red light and speed cameras are used, specifically speed cameras.

But why craft legislation that seems aimed at just one community or handful communities that feels like the definition of special interest legislation?

Well, I think that, you know, I'm we don't know what other Linn deals are there in Ohio.

You know, I mean, I can't I only know that in areas where people have had the opportunity to vote like Cleveland or Columbus, they have voted against traffic cameras.

Cleveland voted to keep theirs, though, you know, and that's that's a good point, because East Cleveland, right two tickets to mile two miles an hour over the speed limit .

25 zone, you get a ticket at 27 and that's a huge source of their income.

It goes back once again to just how much of your income can be derived from these cameras if you're if you're existing because of the fact that you are so.

Eager, you know, to just catch you, you know, grab someone to three miles an hour speed limit, you know?

But then the residents there think, Well, if you don't have this money coming in, who's going to pick up our trash?

Or, you know, some of the other cities services East Cleveland long before the ticker cram, as cameras came out, said the city was always struggling, you know, and it's the town that I helped work on some legislation at the behest of the city of Cleveland in some negotiations to make it easier for that city to merge.

And those negotiations broke down.

You know, over there, Councilman wanted, you know, other things that kind of broke the deal, but there was some interest at some point because he's Cleveland is just it's a troubled, troubled city.

And I don't know how you fix it.

You have a lot of history with law enforcement.

Your brother was a homicide detective.

Your son was a police officer.

Last time we talked, you talked about having nephews on the job in Cleveland.

Law enforcement has been largely supportive of these because of the safety issues.

What of people in law enforcement been telling you about cameras?

And they don't like them, they don't like they don't like them, because anytime you get a traffic ticket, you know, that's one of the tougher parts of the job.

When my son was alive, I used to ask him about, you know, he said, Dad, I hate it.

He goes that the people are nice to let him go.

He said, You know, the tickets have to start.

You only pull me over.

The sports car only pulled me over because the car red, you know, or, you know, and whatever reason he goes, in those cases, he'd say, OK, I'll have to write the ticket and they're expected to write something.

So the chief knew they were working, but he hated that part of the job.

And I think that I've not I've not had one single solitary policeman come up to me and say, You really should leave those cameras alone.

We think they help us.

You know, I've suggested to mayors of these differences park an empty police car with black windows parking on the highway in the middle of the morning and pick it up late at night, you know, and when people drive by a window black windowed police car, they're going to slow down.

They don't know there's nobody inside their police car, and that would be a true safety measure to really looking for safety.

How much of an effort is there?

You know, police to drop it off and the other police and take them back and do some other police work?

You know, and as I say, this is there's so many things.

And again, it's it's some of these bills look aimed at Linda, but we're looking at any small town that's going to keep themselves alive and in the cases.

one of the other news stations in Cleveland is death for public record to the salaries of the chief, the mayor and public safety and have not gotten them since it's been several weeks.

And so, you know, what are they hiding?

You know, I mean, that's the question you have to ask, you know?

On the issue of safety, you've said that there's zero evidence that these make streets safer these cameras.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says 846 people were killed in crashes involving red lights in 2019.

An eye study found that cameras reduce the fatal red light running crash rate of large cities by 21%.

And also in 2015, IHS had a study showing speed cameras cut the likelihood of a driver exceeding the speed limit by more than ten miles per hour by more than half.

So do you have any studies that show that there is zero evidence?

I mean, it seems like everybody's got a study to support their side.

Do you have any studies that show that there is no evidence that traffic cameras make streets safer?

Well, two things.

Number one, you talk about red light cameras.

None of the issues that arrive by these cities that we're trying to target are running red light cameras are running speed cameras that separate apart.

By the way, I do think we should have speed cameras at schools, and I'm all for having a speed camera in every school zone.

I truly believe in that.

That I think is a noble thing as far as studies and numbers.

It's like doing a poll.

If you do your own poll, you're going to get your own numbers.

So, you know, you know, the facts, facts and then those damn facts.

And you know, I I just know that in the case of the one little town, if 94% of their revenue, that allows them to pay six digit numbers, six figures to the mayor, the police chief and the clerk of courts, you know, and yet they have no fire department, you know, they have no EMS, you know, they just want to be policemen.

So they to this is the same town that for 57 years patrol they 71 like it was their duty and responsibility, you know, and we were successful as far as being able to, you know, take away that trap because there was never any lights under the bridge that they were on.

And so they kind of a history, you know, of kind of playing loose and things like that.

And but you know, I as I said at the onset of this program, I want people to drive safe.

I want people to be punished if they drive fast.

I want people to obey all the traffic laws.

I just don't want cities or villages and townships getting rich.

And the fact that they're able to negotiate with the of state added out of the country company that comes in does all the work.

They do nothing except come back and take their dividend checks.

The hundred dollar ticket, you know, the city gets 60, but some is getting forward, you know, and it's the poor folks that, you know, if you're living on a budget, you living on a fixed income like that old a couple I mentioned as an example, you know , it's $150 ticket in the middle of the month just hits where you live.

Do you think these bills and the whole idea of regulating traffic cameras run up against the idea of home rule where a community has the power to say, run a camera operation program?

I think anytime somebody does something that's subject to the idea, are you what you're really doing?

Is it appropriate?

Is it really something that you're really doing for public safety?

Are you doing it for the cash grab and they might hide behind the home rule aspect of it, you know?

But then in the next breath, they're complaining about local government funds from the state.

You know, keiki needed to time.

And that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State Newstalk.

And you can follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

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

We leave you this week with images from a demonstration showing support for Ukraine at the State House last weekend.

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.