Support for the state wide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than one point four million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Medd Mut.

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.

Morad Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who worked to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA dot org, Covid cases are back up to levels not seen in six months as kids, most of whom can't be vaccinated, go back to school.

And as a surprise, hearing is planned on a bill to ban all mandatory vaccines.

A new contender enters the race for governor on the Democratic side, and the process to draw new maps for state lawmakers and members of Congress gets underway with a very short meeting.

But how much has been done already?

All this week in the state of Ohio?

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

The Delta variant of COVID 19 is tearing through Ohio.

Confirmed cases in Ohio have gone from one hundred and eight on July 6th to just over 2600 on Wednesday.

The highest number of confirmed cases since February six.

More than ninety nine percent of all Covid deaths in Ohio have been in unvaccinated people.

Covid hospitalizations in Ohio have increased by a third in the last week.

There's been a two hundred and six percent increase in Koven hospitalizations in just the last three weeks.

And unlike the surge last fall, which was devastating in older patients this summer, Spike is making younger people sicker, quicker.

I was looking at the years of births and of our patients.

And we've got patients born after two thousand several born after the 90s.

Several born in the 80s.

A whole bunch born in the 70s.

And that is very different than what we we So we're seeing younger people and they many of them don't have a reason to.

This is not young people with cancer.

This is not young people with HIV.

This is young people who are working in a factory two, three weeks ago before they got Covid.

The one risk factor that we consistently see is obesity.

Many of our younger patients that are critically ill are overweight.

And that is appears to be in the literature since day one has been very consistent with that.

But if you are an unvaccinated, overweight young person and you get Covid you have a very significant chance of having a very complicated course and potentially a bad outcome.

Two months ago, one in twenty eight Ohio hospital patients was Covid positive.

Today, it's one in 10.

Meanwhile, kids are going back to school states as around fifty four and a half percent of all Ohioans, over 12 are fully vaccinated.

But the percentage of teens who've had Covid shots is low.

With that in mind, Ohio Department of Health medical director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff says mask wearing in schools is a good idea, even as Republican Senator Andrew Brunner and Republican Representative Mike Loie, Czech are working on bills to prohibit districts from requiring masks.

Our best recommendation is that you get vaccinated if you're eligible, if you're a student is eligible.

Parents should have that child vaccinated if they choose not to or if they are not eligible for receiving the vaccine.

It is our best recommendation that those students wear a mask to reduce transmission, to reduce their risk and the risk to others.

This week, Governor Mike DeWine announced Vanderhoff will take over as the director of the Ohio Department of Health on Monday with Stephanie McLeod, who's been heading for the last nine months, returning to her previous job as administrator at the Bureau of Workers Compensation.

Both doctors were also asked this week about a bill that could ban all mandatory vaccines, not just the Covid shot, but also childhood vaccines and the meningitis vaccine.

Vanderhoff didn't comment, but Baudette had some thoughts specifically about the Covid shots within health care.

We have it is not new to require a vaccine.

Hepatitis B has been required for health care workers for a long time.

For years now, we've been doing influenza, OK. We have processes in place for exemptions.

So if there is a medical process for a reason that you can't be vaccinated, if there is a religious process or religious reason, you cannot be vaccinated.

We have that built in to the health care system for those health care workers.

But I'm going to be this is a very important thing.

I'm sick and tired of losing colleagues, OK?

I'm tired of having doctors die.

I'm tired of seeing respiratory therapist die.

I'm tired of seeing nurses die.

I'm tired of seeing patient care techs and medical assistance die of Covid.

OK, I've lost colleagues, I've lost friends.

I've lost peers in this area and across the country.

The only way we can stop that from happening is with vaccination.

An unusual hearing on that ban on mandatory vaccines is coming up on August twenty fourth, just on that bill alone and during a legislative break.

The decision to hold a hearing on House Bill two forty eight was made after what Health Committee Chair Scott Lipps called urgent requests in an email, and Democratic Committee member Representative Beth listIn called it an emergency.

That bill was the topic of this show two weeks ago.

Lip's office guidance for people to submit testimony for the August twenty fourth hearing, which will last for hours while House Bill two forty eight deals with all mandatory vaccines.

It would not have an effect on the Covid vaccine right now, because that's already banned under a bill signed by Governor Mike DeWine last month.

Though some.

Schools and entities are requiring those vaccines now before the law takes effect in October.

But testimony in June, what about House Bill two forty eight included discussions about Covid vaccines and brought out false claims and disinformation that got national attention, including false suggestions that the vaccine magnetize is people and interfaces with five G cell towers.

The race for governor got more crowded this week with another candidate, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley.

We've been talking about jumping into the contest for the Democratic nomination for months.

Cranley is challenging fellow Democratic Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, who's been in the race since April.

Both say the other is a friend.

But Cranley told Statehouse correspondent Jo Ingles he has some things he wants to accomplish.

Ohio needs a comeback.

The Republicans under Mike DeWine and for decades have shrunk the middle class.

Young people are moving.

We lost a congressional seat.

Their policies have failed.

We need a new, better deal with specific detailed plans to rebuild the middle class.

I have three big ideas.

One, to guarantee 30000 jobs each year that pay sixty thousand dollars a year.

That's a middle class salary.

Those jobs will be to fix roads and bridges.

They could get high speed broadband Wi-Fi to the whole state to replace lead pipes and to invest in clean energy.

Second, I'm going to legalize marijuana, which will create jobs.

But the new tax revenues will pay for those jobs that I just described.

And three, I'm going to create the first of its kind dividend for the people of Ohio from the natural gas energy profits in Ohio, Alaska and North Dakota have dividends.

And it's high time, the middle class benefit from the energy rich ground under our feet that God put there.

So there's two issues that a lot of voters concentrate on to decide how they're voting.

One is abortion.

The other is guns.

Tell me, where do you stand on abortion?

Where do you stand on gun control?

I am pro-choice and.

On the issue of gun violence, I'm proud to say first and foremost that we're one of the only major cities in America where shootings are down this year, not up.

Think about it, New York, Chicago, the headlines.

Most cities in Ohio have seen record shootings increase.

Hours have gone down.

Why?

Because we've put more cops on the street.

We've reformed a culture of our police department, were considered a role model for community oriented policing.

And it's working.

It's working.

I'm incredibly proud of that.

And and we focus on on putting away, repeat violent offenders for gun for federal gun possession violations and enforcing that is really important.

I also believe in universal background checks.

I also believe in red flags.

We had a mass shooting in Fountain Square in Cincinnati and the shooter's mother.

Tried to get him a judge to take away his guns.

But in Florida and Ohio, there's no red flag.

And so they were unable to do it.

Indiana, a very conservative state, has a red flag law.

We should have a red flag law as well.

Now, you said that you are pro-choice, but you haven't always been pro-choice, correct?

I was raised Catholic and a man of faith.

But about 15 years ago, as my wife and I were starting a family for very personal reasons, I really evolved and decided that government should not have a role.

On the Republican side, Mike DeWine has said he is running for reelection but hasn't formally launched his campaign.

He'll be challenged by at least two others running to his right.

Former Congressman Jim Racey and central Ohio farmer Joe Blystone.

A big shift is coming at the Ohio Department of Education as the state's deputy state school superintendent, Dr John Richard, has announced he's stepping down October 8th.

Not long after Superintendent Paula DeMaria leaves on September 24th, openings that these two top positions is a big deal for education in Ohio.

Richard has been deputy state superintendent since twenty seventeen a year after De Maria became state school superintendent.

The State Board of Education will hire a replacement for DeMaria.

Superintendents are not appointed by the governor, but picked by the board of 11 elected members and eight governor appointed members.

The unions representing Ohio's educators say they're watching this very carefully.

All of us fired on a unanimous vote.

You had very liberal Democrats, some very conservative Republicans that all recognized the strong leadership that he was bringing to the table.

I think if they take that spirit and that approach into the process this time, then we'll all be winners.

Being superintendent of public education in Ohio is a very important position and is not one that should be controlled by political ideology.

It is a position where a person needs to be in touch with those people who are doing this work on a day to day basis.

So, yes, we're always concerned when this position opens up that it will be replaced with a political person who is simply following the will of the of a legislator of a governor.

In full disclosure, the Ohio Education Association is an underwriter of this program.

A group of school districts say they're close to filing a lawsuit that's been months in the making, claiming the state is illegally pouring money into school choice rather than funding the fair and efficient system of common schools as required by the Ohio Constitution.

The group Vouchers Hurt Ohio includes seventy districts and is headed by Bill Phillips, who sued the state over school funding in 1997 and won.

This state has invested more than 20 billion dollars in vouchers, charter schools and direct funding of private schools.

Now, that's unconscionable.

When all this time we've had an unconstitutional school funding system.

Phillips said the new budget is of particular concern to the group since lawmakers upped the dollar amounts for vouchers in it.

They increase the value of high school vouchers from six thousand dollars to seventy five hundred dollars, which is a 25 percent increase.

I've been involved in school funding issues for a few years and fact a few decades, and I've never seen a twenty five percent increase go to the public system.

Then on the K-12 level, the value of the voucher has increased from forty five hundred fifty five hundred, about a twenty two percent increase.

The US Supreme Court ruled in two thousand two that the Cleveland scholarship program is constitutional and a matter of true private choice.

If it and other voucher programs are run based on financial need and residents within a school district and without favoring religious schools over secular ones, and voucher supporters in Ohio said since they are taxpayers, they are entitled to get that money because they're not sending their kids to traditional public schools.

This is the week that US census data that states need to draw new maps for lawmakers will be released.

Having been delayed for months by the pandemic and during the census process by the former Trump administration last week, the members of the state's redistricting commission got together for their long awaited first public session, which lasted seven minutes.

That led to a lot of frustration and confusion over how those maps for Ohio House and Senate and for Congress will be drawn, especially with Ohio losing a congressional seat and with Republicans in supermajorities in the House and Senate and dominating the redistricting panel.

I talked with Senator Vernon Sykes, longtime Democratic lawmaker and member of the redistricting commission, about those concerns.

I know a lot of people were not encouraged by the length of the first meeting at just seven minutes.

Why was that meeting so short?

It was just organizational meeting.

The governor needed to explain and express what the sentiments are to make sure that the members are appointed properly and then turn it over to the co-chairs and the committee for the other activities.

Now, of course, the redistricting commission that you're a part of will draw the state house and.

Eight Senate seats and then state lawmakers.

You're a part of that group, too, will draw the congressional maps.

Have you had any indication of what's going to happen with those Congress, that congressional map?

Because I know that's a lot of people's top of mind issue, because Ohio's going to lose a congressional seat.

Any indication of which party is likely to be the one that loses?

That's yet to be determined?

We have not looked at the census data yet.

And we're hopeful that if the maps are fair, that the lines are fair, that there would be some increase in Democratic districts.

So that's kind of the inclination right now.

Now, of course, Ohio has 12 Republican members of Congress and four Democratic members of Congress, and those have stayed the same since the last redistricting cycle.

There was a special primary election in the 11th Congressional District, and with the Democratic winner and likely winner of the race in November being Shantelle Brown.

And that district is heavily Democratic.

It's Marcia Fudge is former district.

What is your and the Democratic Party's commitment to keeping that district in particular as it is?

I mean, I know, for instance, your daughter, House Minority Leader Amelia Sykes, who's on the commission as well, had expressed an interest in running for that seat.

Is that a district that there's there's a real strong interest in keeping the way it is?

There's a lot of issues that have to be considered.

There are new rules and guidelines about crossing county lines.

There is the Voter Rights Act and trying to maximize minority participation.

So there are a lot of different considerations and will have to for the first time consider all of those at one time.

The process is supposed to be transparent, and that was supposed to be guaranteed in the congressional and the constitutional amendments that were approved by voters.

But there's already a lawsuit by the ACLU saying records they've asked for from Republican leaders in February haven't been turned over.

So have there been other meetings of the members of the redistricting commission that you're a part of or any other meetings that have considered how to draw these maps?

No, there has not been.

Everyone was waiting until we get the data, which will be released hopefully later today as we're doing this August 12.

Yeah, absolutely.

But there has been no meetings.

So the first bipartisan meeting that we had was with the commission appointment.

So no caucus meetings, no meetings that you're aware of that have included discussions about how to draw these maps.

All the all caucuses, all four of the caucuses have been working and trying to deal with bringing the members up to speed on when we were going to have to make decisions.

So there's training information about the constitutional provisions.

I understanding with the guy, like all four caucuses have been working on that, but we have not worked together in a collaborative fashion.

And that's what this process starts.

The collaborative fashion is what's needed for there to be the long term maps, the 10 year maps.

And there's been some speculation about whether there might be short term maps, because we are dealing with a shortened timeframe here.

How confident are you that we're going to end up with 10 year maps either for Congress or for state House and Senate?

I am confident that we're going to make it in a tin.

That we're going to make an attempt, I think, with both sides of the aisle, will make an attempt to agree on a 10 year plan.

But there is the possibility that we could be doing this again in four years, because these are short.

This could be short term.

Absolutely.

And that's, I imagine, frustrating for people.

I'm certain it's frustrating for people I've been hearing about who want to see these maps drawn and drawn fairly.

But it's got to be frustrating for you.

You've been working on this issue for a very long time.

Yeah.

And one of the more challenging aspects is the data we just haven't got today.

Usually we have a four month period and now we've got two weeks.

And once we get this data, it will be it will go to our university and then they still have to add our precinct information before we can actually use it for map drawing purposes.

So it's going to take a while for us to get access to the actual data that we need to draw maps, because this data is very precise.

You have to have the precise number of people in each district.

I mean, it's it's not a guess process.

Yes.

So the variance is only five percent in state legislative districts and is less than one percent in the congressional districts.

You again fought for the constitutional amendments the voters approved in twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen for this.

How confident are you that the maps that will be produced will not be gerrymandered and that Republicans will negotiate in good faith and that Democrats win if they're in charge, we'll negotiate in good faith as these two constitutional amendments said they would.

I am confident that there will be less opportunity for gerrymandering.

The districts will be fair.

Now, how much fear is going to be depended upon in negotiations that we have between the parties?

But definitely, absolutely, there will not be able to gerrymander as much as they have in the past.

So we can expect to not see another snake on the lake, another district that goes from one part of the state all the way up to the other, those kind of things that have brought Ohio national attention and not in a good way for the way that our map looks.

Those kind of things would not happen under this process.

They're not permitted.

And what can people do who are concerned?

I'm hearing from people who say they want to make sure this is a fair process.

They want to be more involved.

Is there any way for people who feel that this is incredibly important because those maps determine members of Congress and state House and Senate leaders, they can affect ideology and extremism.

How can people.

Is there any way for people to get involved?

Well, we are going to start posthaste.

We're organizing now and scheduling hearings that will be held all over the state.

And we're encouraging people to participate, to give us information.

There'll be opportunities to submit written testimony if you can't come to a meeting.

There'll be ample opportunity to express your interests.

Also, please contact your legislators, the state legislators of senators and members of the House talk with them.

They live in your area by requirement, by law.

Go visit them.

Make arrangements to have meetings with them and share information, do letters to the editor.

There are a lot of coalitions of organizations that have been working and disseminating information.

That is a lot of ways to get involved.

And finally, I know a lot of people have asked this in the past, why not just turn this over to a computer?

Why why are lawmakers involved in this process of drawing these maps, which inevitably means that there could be political considerations?

I don't believe you could ever totally remove the political considerations where you can't turn it over to a computer because there are other kinds of issues that must be considered.

And that's why we are elected to help are involved in the discussion.

All of the issues that that concerns and affect the people, the constituents in our districts.

And there are lawmakers who believe that this is part of your job to draw these maps.

This is one of the reasons you're elected duting, and that this can't be just that authority can't be given to someone else or an electronic someone else.

And I believe it is is almost impossible to remove totally the partizanship.

So that's why we've been promoting bipartisanship, to make sure that everybody's at the table.

And it has to be a collaboration in order to get the 10 year maps.

But Democrats are way in the minority in those conversations.

Yes.

And we're hopeful that the maps that are generated will generate a fair opportunity so that we may not be able to have the.

Super minority caucuses in the future.

Should people maybe adjust their expectations, we're not going to end up with a map that's even for Republicans and Democrats.

No matter what happens with fairness and we look at fair representation and look at the purpose of the people of the state that have been expressed over the last 10 years.

Still, the Republicans will have an advantage.

So the fair the maps are still going to give the Republican Party an advantage.

So we're not talking about an even amount, an equal amount of district, Republican and Democrat.

We're looking at the preferences of the people that are expressed in elections over the last 10 years.

And potentially maybe there won't be these lopsided wins by one party or another in a particular district.

You have some districts where you have candidates that win by 30, 40.

I mean, Marcia Fudge won by like 80 points.

The plan would be to have more competitive districts.

But there will always be, some say, for districts than others because of the geographic demographic distribution of people within the state.

But we planned on having with fair districts, there will be more competitive districts.

Yeah, I just said Marcia Fudge won by 80 points.

She won by 80 with 80 percent.

So and that's the idea, though, is to get those districts to be a little bit fairer, more competitive, so people have opportunity.

It's not just automatically the incumbent wins or the winner of a primary.

You want the people to select the legislators, not the legislators, to select the people they want to serve.

And that is 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 Web site 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.

Support for the state wide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than one point four million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Medd Mut.

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.

Morad Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who worked to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA dot org.