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No news isn't good for the hundreds.

Still working at the Chillicothe Paper Mill.

Prosecutors make their cases for and against the death penalty.

Guns and more.

I'm Joe Ingles in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, where we're looking at a program for medically challenged children that Ohio doesn't have.

some lawmakers are trying to change that.

this week on the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Many families in Ohio struggle to find affordable childcare.

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce has a lack of childcare options.

Cost nearly $5.5 billion in lost economic activity in Ohio each year.

But for families who have children with complex medical needs, childcare centers are often not an option at all.

A bipartisan bill could change that by allowing for prescribed pediatric extended care or PPC centers, which could be paid for by Medicaid.

They're available in Kentucky now.

State House correspondent Joe Ingles traveled there to check one out.

They say.

At first glance, you might think this is an ordinary daycare playroom, but it's not.

It's part of the prescribed pediatric child care facility at Easterseals Redwood in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, where children with serious medical conditions can receive treatment and care on site.

Children like four year old Boone Studer.

He's got a rare genetic skin disorder called epidermolysis bullosa.

He doesn't produce enough protein in his skin called collagen seven, so his skin is extremely fragile.

It shears or blisters with, any type of, hard contact or, friction.

And, it also affects the inside of his body, his mouth, his esophagus, his GI tract.

And, yeah, he's a he's a warrior.

Four year old Bradley Biegel of Hebron, Kentucky, also goes to this child care.

He has down syndrome.

He has a feeding tube.

He gets therapies.

He gets speech.

Where are you going?

Chevonne Magnuson says she's lucky that her son George is one of three slots available to Ohio kids in this day care.

He was getting care at Cincinnati Children's Hospital before coming here.

He doesn't have a corpus callosum, which is the part of the brain that you know that communicates the two lobes together.

He also has cerebral palsy and some hormone things and a lot of development issues.

So right now he's learning how to set up and walk in his gay trainer.

The parents say their children learn a lot here, especially since the center also accepts typical healthy children.

There's not a greater motivator for a child who is unable to walk or to be in a classroom with five, six, seven other kids their age walking and climbing.

A child is not able to use a spoon, and they're sitting around a table while their friends are using a spoon.

Man, they're ready to try that spoon now.

Yet in Ohio, most medically fragile children don't get that experience.

Republican representative Cindy Abrams is co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill that would change that.

She says many of these kids spend a lot of time in hospitals because there isn't an option for specialized care outside of that setting.

Who on earth would say no to granting a child to go to, you know, a place during the day to be educated, you know, get all of their medical needs met, and then go back home to sleep in their own bed.

Who would say no to that?

The bill she sponsored with Democratic Representative Rachel Baker would create licenses for prescribed pediatric extended care facilities like this and define them as prescribed Medicaid services.

They'd have nurses on staff and medical facilities on site, and would provide daycare for medically fragile kids until they go to school and before and after school care, too.

The bill passed the House unanimously and is awaiting action in the Senate.

These centers have been funded and exist in many other states, and most states have found a cost savings.

And the reason is that most of these kids are eligible and get Medicaid waivers to pay for one on one nursing at home.

So if we look at the cost of having a one on one nurse nurse, you know, all day, all night at your house for all these kids versus kids being able to come to a center where multiple nurses work and can take care of lots of kids.

That's the savings.

Ohio's Medicaid director says there's a lot happening with Medicaid at the local, state, and federal levels right now.

She says she doesn't know how much this will cost, and added, a lot will depend on how it would be implemented.

You know, there's no question about the need.

There is concern about the cost.

And certainly, you know, any other options that we look to explore.

You know, the general Assembly wants to be sure that we're going to save money in the process, rightfully.

Then Studer says there is another savings to consider.

Being able to put Boone in child care gives his wife a break and allows her to work a part time job.

It saved our family and and it gave me.

It gave my child a chance to be a kid.

Some parents of medically challenged children in Ohio say they're hoping this bill will pass soon so they can have facilities like this one in Ohio.

Joe Ingles, statehouse news bureau.

Here's an update to a story reported by our colleague Sarah Donaldson And it's not the news many were hoping to hear.

The private equity firm HIG capital says it will cease all production at the Pixel Specialty Solutions paper mill in Chillicothe in less than two weeks, leaving hundreds of Ohioans out of work at a plant that's been running for over a century.

Governor Mike DeWine says the state has been trying to help sell the plant, but so far, no bytes.

we have, been aggressive, particularly through jobs Ohio JP initiative, to bring companies in to look at this site.

So far, we've we've got no interest.

So I don't have anything good to report.

We will continue to do that.

But I don't have any, you know, any anything that would, give us any options at this point.

But we're still open to bringing companies in.

We've brought thousands of them in.

And, you know, we will continue to show that that site.

Earlier this year, Republican U.S.

Senator Bernie Marino said he convinced AIG to delay shuttering until December.

AIG later confirmed its August 10th closure and a government mandated warn mass layoff notice.

More than 700 workers will be unemployed unless an 11th hour buyer is found.

The budget was one of the top ten bills to watch for many statewide interests, including Ohio's prosecuting attorneys.

But the death penalty drugs, including marijuana, gun regulations, elections law and even the definition of burglary are among the issues that have prosecutors attention.

I talked about some of those with the executive director of the state's prosecuting attorneys association.

So let's start with the death penalty.

We have not seen an execution in Ohio since 2018, though.

Capital punishment is still on the books.

In Ohio, there are 113 men on death row.

There are three bills that would abolish the death penalty.

We're still waiting on one that was supposed to abolish the death penalty and be tied with abortion as well.

And the attorney general's annual capital crimes report, AG Dave Yost, wrote that there's been no change in the death penalty in Ohio, except the killers got a year older.

And he also wrote, there needs to be some real progress.

Until that happens, Ohio cannot fulfill its promise of justice.

Do you agree?

What do you want to see happening with the death penalty in Ohio?

Well, our association still thinks that there's a place for the death penalty and a need for the death penalty.

And we think that enforcement of it needs to be resumed, and that all of this undue delay that there has been over the last six and a half years is really unfair to the victims of these crimes.

It's really unfair to the communities where these crimes occurred, to the loved ones and families of the victims.

And so we need to find a path to justice for these people.

The issue needs to be resolved.

We need to find a way forward.

You know, I think the public public polling on the death penalty supports our position on this.

I think most polling, traditional polling will show you that there's at least more than 50% of the public supports having a death penalty.

But I think when you start to ask them about the specific types of crimes that people commit that lead to the death penalty, public support gets even higher.

And so when you start to ask them about the murder of children, the murder of police officers, multiple murders or acts of terrorism, support for the death penalty is, you know, in the 70 to 80% range.

But you do have some conservatives who say it costs a lot of money to go through the death penalty process because each one of those people gets a full appeals process all the way up to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Sometimes in the US Supreme Court.

Yeah, it is expensive.

It is more expensive than, a traditional, murder trial, a life without parole sentence.

But we want to make sure that we're providing people with super due process because death is final.

And, you know, we have a justice system that, I think, fortunately, death sentences are sort rarely, they're imposed rarely.

And they really are reserved for people who have sacrificed the right to be in a civilized society.

And so I think they spent the expense is is worth it.

You mentioned the death sentences are sought rarely and opposed rarely.

Very rare in Ohio, it seems like in the last couple of years.

Is that because there haven't been any executions carried out?

Yeah, I think that is part of it.

I think prosecutors are probably more reluctant to seek a death sentence these days, because they don't want to put the victim's families through, all the uncertainty that's going on.

And I think that's another reason that we need to find a path forward on this issue.

I want to ask you about a bill.

It's known as the Second Amendment Protection Act, which prosecutors have spoken out against.

It would prevent federal agents from taking Ohioans guns.

It got some changes in the last few weeks, but you, along with the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police, still have concerns about how it would affect cooperation with federal officials efforts to go after violent criminals.

What are your concerns about this particular.

Yeah, well, I think first of all, you know, protecting Second Amendment rights is a totally legitimate policy goal.

And I appreciate the fact that the sponsor of this new version of the bill has tried to make some changes to it that he thinks alleviates some of the issues that we brought up in the last General Assembly.

But but the reality is this this has been this is ostensibly about what you said.

It's ostensibly about preventing federal officials from coming to Ohio and taking people's guns and from using our state resources to do that.

But in practice, it goes way beyond that, and it's going to proactively interfere with voluntary cooperative efforts that we have with federal officials to investigate and prosecute violent criminals who are using guns.

And, you know, I can't express enough how dangerous and how foolish that is.

These are relationships that our law enforcement wants to have with the federal government because it promotes the safety of our communities.

And is there a threat of this happening?

I mean, we have a Republican White House, a Republican Congress.

Is there a threat of what the Second Amendment Protection Act is trying to prevent from actually happening?

I would say certainly not right now.

I want to ask you about, this definition of burglary.

There was an Ohio Supreme Court case in which a man who stole, he literally walked into a garage in front of the homeowner, stole a leaf blower out of the garage in front of the homeowner.

And, this came to the Ohio Supreme Court, which said that burglary requires the use of stealth, force or deception into a structure with the intent of committing a crime.

So this wasn't burglary, is that right?

We think it was burglary.

Frankly, we think the Supreme Court got the decision wrong.

There was evidence presented in this case that the the offender drove by his victim's house.

You noticed the open garage door.

He had a noisy car.

He turns the car around, he parks up the street, and he walks back down and walks into this guy's garage and takes a leaf blower.

And so there is evidence presented that him parking the car up the street because he knew it was noisy, he knew it was more likely to draw attention.

That was the stealth, and we don't we don't think appellate court should be replacing their own factual opinions with, with the decisions of juries.

But, you know, at the end of the day, the decision is what it is.

We think the law should be changed to get rid of the requirement that there be for stealth or deception.

Our burglary laws are about protecting the sanctity of the home and, recognizing the increased danger when people enter the home through any means with whatever their intent is.

And so we, we think people would be shocked to know that somebody could do what they did with what this guy did in the Bertram case and walk away with a misdemeanor trespass.

I want to ask you about marijuana.

There's been obviously the, voter approved law that went into effect, but there's been talk of changing that law.

What what's it been like to prosecute cases related to marijuana and keep up with everything that's going on with that?

We support some legislative action on this.

You know, I think we would like to see the number of home grow plants reduced from 12 at least to six.

And I think we need to see, some additional statutory regulation on how, in particular, edibles are produced and marketed to children.

They shouldn't be produced and marketed in ways that are attractive to kids.

But, overall, I would say it has gotten a lot more difficult to prosecute marijuana cases.

There's there's a huge delay, even in testing whether something is marijuana versus hemp.

At the attorney at BCI and at the attorney general's office, just because there's so much product around.

Obviously there are new challenges with, proving whether somebody illegally purchased the marijuana or illegally purchased the marijuana now.

So it has created a variety of challenges for prosecutors and for law enforcement.

I want to turn to, juvenile justice.

Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a provision of the state budget that would have transferred youth offenders convicted in adult court to the Department of Youth Services, he said.

That would have force kids who've committed lower level crimes to, in his words, interact with incredibly dangerous offenders.

Is that a veto that you support?

Oppose?

What do you think should happen to these kids who are tried in adult court but they are still kids?

Yeah, I certainly I don't disagree with the governor's veto, that juveniles who are tried as adults and are sentenced to prison are housed in separate units at DRC.

Anyway, so I don't think that there is a huge impact on them until they, until they turn 18 in terms of whether their house that this or DRC.

But look, I think overall juvenile crime is a lot of our prosecutors will tell you is the number one criminal justice issue they face in their communities.

I think there's a huge lack of accountability for some repeat juvenile offenders, even even violent repeat juvenile offenders.

You can see this in the stories about all the cars that are stolen by the choirboys and other groups of kids.

All the vandalism that occurs in the Break-Ins of cars.

And so I think we need, at the end of the day, kids who are committing these things and doing it over and over and over again without any consequences.

Not only is it bad for the community, it's bad for the juvenile themself, because what's happening is they're learning that there aren't consequences for their actions, and eventually they're committing an aggravated robbery or some sort of a homicide offense, and they are transferred to adult court and they're facing serious time.

And so we think we need to change the incentives for juvenile judges to, you know, we're not talking about locking up the locking up kids and throwing away the key.

We're not talking about transferring everybody to adult court, but some additional accountability when we have these repeat crimes.

There is this balancing act, though.

When kids are in the juvenile justice system, there's the emphasis on rehabilitation, whereas in the adult court system there's a little bit more punishment.

And so you're trying to balance that out, aren't you?

Yes.

And there does need to be a balance.

And there's there are absolutely benefits to keeping kids in the juvenile justice system.

You know, up to a certain point, and there are absolutely benefits to keeping a lot of kids in a community setting on probation, up to a certain point.

But when you have when you have kids whose the seriousness of their offenses are escalated and they're being arrested and released the next day or within a few days, and they're going back out and doing it again.

You've described this as a revolving door, as a revolving door, or catch and release.

It there should be some detention and some consequence for that.

Because otherwise you're putting the kid at risk and you're putting the community at risk of greater harm.

You and Secretary of State Frank La Roche had a prickly public disagreement last year when he accused local prosecutors of languishing and going after 633 cases of alleged voter fraud.

You defended those prosecutors, saying the cases often lacked minimal evidence to even pursue an indictment, much less get a conviction.

Governor DeWine vetoed a provision in the budget on an election integrity unit, and the requirement that prosecutors must take action within a year.

You had concerns about a bill that would require that action within a year.

Yeah.

So what we we support what the governor did in his veto.

He didn't veto the election integrity Unit in its entirety.

So there is going to be the statutory entity and the Secretary of State's office.

That's going to be charged with receiving, investigating, allegations of elections, fraud.

The two things that the governor vetoed were the two things that really were the biggest concerns to us.

One was this idea that if a county prosecutor declines to prosecute one of these cases, the attorney general would be able to review that and come to his own conclusion.

The attorney general's never been like an appellate reviewing body for prosecutor charging decisions in Ohio one and two that created the possibility of forum shopping.

So you don't like the conclusion that the county prosecutor comes to you?

Take it to a different entity and see if he comes to a different conclusion.

And then secondly, the expectation from, the other thing that was vetoed was that prosecutors would pursue these cases and seek indictments based on a minimal level of, of evidence, something that's enough to in and up to obtain the indictment, but not enough it would be to obtain a conviction.

And so prosecutors are ethically obligated to only present things to a grand jury and only proceed to trial if they're reasonably confident that there's going to be evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to obtain a conviction.

And there was language in there that was basically requiring us to seek an indictment before we were assured of that.

So this whole idea that prosecutors could indict a ham sandwich if they wanted to, you hold yourself to a higher standard.

I would say that's not true, that they could, but ethically, they would not do that.

The the last thing I'll say about that is, you know, we totally agree with the Secretary of State that these offenses need to be taken seriously.

There are a small number of them, but there are a small number of other types of crimes, and prosecutors need to prosecute those two.

Election integrity is real.

We need to be sensitive to election fraud.

Voters don't like it.

And I'm optimistic that the governor has struck a good balance between what we wanted and what the secretary of state wanted, and then we can have a collaborative effort going forward.

What is the workload like for county prosecutors?

Because there seem to be some efforts to try to turn a lot of things over to local county prosecutors to take care of them.

What's the workload like for county prosecutor?

They have heavy workload right now.

And one of the bigger issues that prosecutors are facing today is recruitment and retention.

And so a lot of offices are understaffed.

You know, they're working long hours.

Most prosecutors and assistant prosecutors are working well beyond a 40 hour workweek.

And so we are sensitive to, kind of new responsibilities and new workload being given to us.

Do you have kids who are coming out of law school who are looking at positions in big firms rather than, I mean, that's going to pay more than what you pay?

Yeah, that that is certainly part of it.

You know, they are they're long hours.

They're emotionally charged issues.

They're difficult issues with weighty decisions.

And, and like you said, most often for not as much pay as you could go make in the private sector.

And so that is certainly part of it.

And that's something you share with, for instance, judges in the system.

Yeah.

At the same challenge there, I think.

Absolutely.

On that note, I want to ask you about a group that wants to end qualified immunity in Ohio.

For government employees that would include police officers, prosecutors potentially, they're gathering signatures to put an issue on next year's ballot.

That idea may have some support among people who say that they want police officers and others to be held more accountable to some of the things that, the high profile things that have been happening.

Are you concerned about that issue getting on the ballot?

We are very concerned about it.

It would be absolutely devastating to law enforcement and absolutely devastating to prosecutors and consequently devastating for public safety in the state of Ohio.

And it does tie in to the recruitment and retention like I said, these are these are very difficult jobs being a police officer or being a prosecutor, long hours, emotionally charged and emotionally, emotionally intense cases.

And it's going to be even more difficult, if not impossible for us to recruit people to these jobs if they're constantly worried about a lawsuit hanging over their head.

And I think beyond recruitment and retention, it's going to reduce the effectiveness of the law enforcement and prosecutors that we currently have and that we can convince to become prosecutors and law enforcement.

You're going to have law enforcement that hesitates to, to engage in certain situations or decides not to engage at all.

You're going to have prosecutors who are reluctant to take on complex cases or controversial cases because of fear, fear of a lawsuit.

You're going to have bad actors who use lawsuits to intimidate prosecutors or law enforcement or tie them up in litigation, and you're going to have people who are, who suffer reputational damage because of lawsuits, who have done nothing wrong, you know, the whole the whole purpose behind and policy behind qualified immunity is that we want to encourage public servants, to be able to do their jobs.

They have difficult jobs.

They have to make difficult choices, on behalf of the public good.

And we want them to be able to do that without fear of constantly being sued.

And we have to recognize that this is a human system.

Humans make mistakes once in a while.

We can't have the public being sued all the time for for mistakes that are made.

And that is it for this week, for my colleagues at the statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

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Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at porterwright.com.

Porter Wright inspired Every day in Ohio Education Association, representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org.