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.

The state gets sued over the proof of citizenship requirement to register to vote at the BMV.

Mental health professionals are in more demand than ever, and there's not enough of them in Ohio to meet it.

And as Ohio State football starts at season, its former coach now lieutenant governor, is touching down in middle schools with some goals for those students.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen, counselor.

It is illegal for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections.

And Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment reiterating that in 2022, a new law that requires Ohioans prove their citizenship when registering to vote at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles is being challenged in federal court.

The lawsuit claims that provision of the transportation budget, which took effect in June, violates the National Voter Registration Act, known as the Motor Voter Law.

And the plaintiffs argue the provision will make registering harder for women who've had a change in marital status.

Anyone who doesn't have easy access to their citizenship documents and new residents.

The suit was filed against Republican Secretary of State Frank Larose and Ohio's Registrar of Motor Vehicles, Charles Norman II.

Red Wine and Blue, a national left leaning group aimed at suburban women.

It was founded by Katy Perry of Northeast Ohio.

this is really personal for me.

You know, as an Ohioan who loves Ohio, this is about standing up for the right of everyone who lives here in Ohio to have the right to vote.

And the problem with this proof of citizenship requirement is that it makes registering to vote harder.

We need to be removing obstacles that make it so hard to vote in the state of Ohio.

There are too many already.

We don't need to be adding more.

There are some concerns about people who innocently register to vote, non-citizens who think that they can, or maybe they're even offered.

Here's a register to vote opportunity here.

And they get caught in that where they're registering illegally.

Wouldn't this prevent that mistake from happening and keep those folks from getting in trouble?

So all the studies that have looked at this, and, you know, even politicians in our own state have looked really closely at this and what they found again and again and again is that it is not a problem.

In 2024, over 6 million Ohio voters cast a vote.

At the end of the day, they found six people where there was a problem.

I can't even count as low as the small percentage that is happening.

You know, it is more likely that you and I, on our way home, get struck by lightning.

Then there is the chance of there being voter fraud.

In Ohio, Secretary of State Frank Rose says that you're funded by dark money group that wants to challenge the law that's preventing non-citizens from registering to vote.

And it's just the latest attempt by activists to cause chaos in Ohio's election system.

I just wanted to get your thoughts on on that response there.

Listen, there has been chaos caused in our voting system in this state, and I hate to say it, but it's because Frank Rose has been making it harder for people to vote, including with these last minute purges where people show up at the polls, they think they're all set to vote, then they're told they got to go home, that they can't.

This is chaotic in states where they make it a lot easier in most of our neighboring states do, with things like automatic voter registration, same day registration.

We don't have any of that here in Ohio.

So again, we need to be making it easier for eligible, lawful Ohio citizens to be able to vote, not making it harder.

There seems to be a national move to enact laws like this.

Wyoming and Arizona have similar laws.

There's a federal law that's been discussed here.

Are you concerned about that?

I mean, the laws have been pretty clear on non-citizens do not have the right to vote.

Are you concerned about these laws that are being discussed nationwide?

Yeah, that's exactly why we why we filed this suit.

We are seeing this happen not just in our state, but across the country and at the federal level.

Now, we and so many other Americans have been pushing back against that effort at the federal level.

And we've been successful so far because politicians realize how unpopular it actually is to come after the votes of married women, rural voters, senior citizens, people with disabilities, they see this is actually bad politics.

People want to be able to have a voice in their government.

We feel that way too, in Ohio.

So we're going to stand up for ourselves.

What do you think is the way to prevent people who shouldn't be voting from being able to register to vote?

I mean, how do you stop non-citizens who the losses can't vote?

How do you stop them from not only voting, but even registering to vote and getting in the system?

Yeah.

So only Ohio citizens, lawful eligible voters should be able to vote.

And the great news is, is that the systems that we have in place today are working.

There is a vanishingly small, tiny evidence of voter fraud in Ohio.

So what I would like to ask of my state and our leaders is to focus on the very real problems we have in our state of rising costs, public education needing so much more support.

I could go on and on.

Karen, this state has issues that we need to address, and making political hay out of this minutia is not the best way forward for our state.

There have been some communities that have talked about having local elections potentially include non-citizens, because they're obviously affected by things like tax increases and that sort of thing.

Is that an effort that you would support in terms of non-citizens being able to vote at the local level?

Could that cause chaos?

This lawsuit has nothing to do with that.

Here in Ohio, we are focused on making sure that lawful, eligible Ohio citizens can vote.

And right now that right to vote for those of us like you and me, who are these eligible, lawful citizens, this is under threat just simply because we may have changed our name with marriage.

Or like I said, senior citizen students.

All of these folks are less likely to have the documentation like, let's start there.

Let's start with the basics.

Let's just make sure that as many of us as possible can exercise our right to vote in the state.

What's the next step for the lawsuit?

I I'm kind of wondering why you file it after it took effect, instead of trying to stop it from taking effect.

But what's the next step here?

Well, we had to look at what is the impact of this going to be.

And it turns out it is very real.

So now we are working with our legal team on those next steps.

We're waiting to hear back from the state.

And in the meantime, we are making sure that members of Red, White and blue and women and men all across the state of Ohio understand exactly what is at stake here.

We know that everyone wants to be able to have that right to vote, be able to have a voice in our government no matter who you are, no matter where you live.

So we're making sure that everybody knows about this.

some contacts.

There are more than 8.2 million registered voters in Ohio last August, 597 suspected cases of voter fraud were referred for prosecution, which set off a dispute between Leros and county prosecutors, who said most of the cases were two week, two weeks before the 2024 general election.

Laroche and Attorney General Dave Yost announced six indictments for illegal voting going back to 2008.

One of those named in that announcement died in 2022.

This June, Larose announced he was referring evidence of 30 voter registrations by non-citizens for prosecution, as well as evidence of double voting by 11 non Ohioans, Lareau said in a statement about this lawsuit, quoting here.

I won't apologize for or backed down from the work we do to ensure the integrity of our voter rolls.

We will win this case, just like we fought off the other baseless actions that such groups have brought against us In the last dozen years, the demand for behavioral health services has increased 350% in Ohio.

But along with that, soaring demand, there's a shortage of behavioral health professionals.

The upshot is that more than 2.4 million Ohioans have inadequate access to mental health care.

The state's mental health agency is trying to address that and doing it with less money than was requested, while also managing the state's 988 suicide crisis line and problem gambling services.

And Ohio's continuing response to the opioid crisis, which killed 3664 Ohioans in 2023.

And to add to this, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services is changing its name to the Department of Behavioral Health.

I spoke with Director Leanne Cornett about all of this.

Starting with that ballooning demand from Ohioans and the supply of providers that's falling short.

Well, we've actually done a really great job growing our behavioral health workforce.

In fact, since 2013, that same time period, we've almost doubled it.

But as you mentioned, the demand for services, the need for behavioral health supports has grown twice as fast as our supply.

And so I think we can attribute some of that growth to the fact that we've done such an incredible job in the state of Ohio under Governor DeWine's leadership, really trying to tackle stigma.

We know that stigma is the thing that holds so many people back from seeking out behavioral health care.

And through our Beat the Stigma campaign, we know that more than 90% of Ohioans saw those commercials.

And when you asked them if they recall the messaging, almost 100% of Ohioans said that they recalled the message.

So we know we've done a great job helping to address stigma, and more people are reaching out for help.

So that's a good thing.

We just need more compassionate behavioral health care providers in the field to deal with that increase in demand.

And how do you recruit those folks?

Because I think there's a perception that these are people who are underpaid.

They're they've got a lot of work on their plates.

They're having to help people with their problems, even as they struggle with their own problems.

Well, that's why we launched this wellness workforce campaign.

And I think what's so special and unique about it is that it features real life Ohioans who are in these jobs all across the state, and they're speaking to the challenges.

Of course, it can feel heavy sometimes, but also the really positive feeling that you have from helping someone transform their life, helping to see them go from some of the darkest days to living their full potential.

So I think that there are a lot of positive attributes to it too.

How does this initiative work?

How are you going to be luring people with?

I don't I shouldn't say luring me, but how are you going to be encouraging people, especially people who are considering career changes and that sort of thing, to come into this field when there's a shortage already, there's a lot of demand and there's a lot of pressure here and maybe not the biggest paycheck involved.

So we're doing a whole host of things at the department to really try to incentivize individuals to come back into the behavioral health field.

If they left.

In fact, we have our Welcome Back campaign, which continues through 2026.

If you were previously a behavioral health worker, we'll provide you, a stipend, sign-on bonus to come back into the field.

We also have, our Great Minds Fellowship program, which is helping to recruit young people who are in their, their final or second to final year of undergrad who are thinking about pursuing careers in community behavioral health.

We're providing them with scholarships if they commit to serving in the field for one year.

We're also creating our Workforce Technical Assistance office so that individuals who go into the field, we don't just want to recruit people in, we want to retain them, too.

And so often what we hear from professionals is when they leave the field, it's because they didn't feel like they had the right skills.

So our Workforce Technical Assistance Center is really investing in building out additional resources to help upskill people, to make sure that they feel confident and the delivery of care that they're providing to Ohioans as well.

Now, all this is happening as you got less funding than governor DeWine had asked for between his budget and then the final version of the budget.

How will less funding that's available affect people who are in crisis, who are looking for mental health support?

Well, we're very fortunate that under Governor DeWine's leadership and through investment from the General Assembly, we are actually building the crisis system that has so desperately been needed in this state.

And we're very fortunate to have received resources to sustain a program called Mobile Response and Stabilization Services, which is a mobile crisis service for young people ages 20 and under, very shortly.

That program will go live in every single county across the state.

And that means if a child or a young person is having a behavioral health crisis, care is no more than one hour from that young person and it will come right to them.

Families don't have to choose between going to an emergency department or calling 911.

And we hope to build a very similar service for adults by the end of 2026.

And so that means that for every single Ohioan, there is no more than one hour away when you absolutely need it the most.

How do you do that with less money?

Well, we were very fortunate to have all of that fully funded in the governor's executive budget.

Let me ask you about another number 988 Ohio's and the national Suicide Hotline number.

There was a gap of $31.5 million from what the governor had asked for versus the final version here.

Meanwhile, the line is averaging 20,000 communications a month.

Those lines, those communications in Ohio, are answered in an average of 23 seconds, which the national average is 34 seconds.

So in Ohio, you get a quicker answer to those communications.

Schools are now required to share that nine eight, eight information with students.

So how do you handle this volume and potentially even more volume, when schools will now be sharing that number with less funding?

Well, we, did receive less funding than the governor requested in his executive budget proposal.

However, what I can say is Ohio continues to be one of the most well resourced 988 statewide systems in the entire nation.

And so we are very fortunate to have a significant investment.

We right now are taking a look at all of our call volume, where it's coming in, which call centers it's coming into, and really trying to do a deep dive into the data.

Fortunately, we have adequate resources to continue to sustain our program and our system as it looks like today.

And we're going to be very thoughtful to make sure that no Ohioan who has come to, you know, depend on our nine, eight, eight services or any Ohioan who may not know that it exists and may be calling in the future, receives any reduction in the quality of care that they're that they're getting through.

Nine, eight, eight.

In fact, we're very excited.

We just integrated into our nine eight, eight call center.

So we know that that's going to increase call volume.

But we've seen no reduction in, you know, speed to answer rates or calls, you know, dipping over into the national line or the backup line.

So we feel very confident that we're going to be able to continue to deliver the high quality service that Ohioans have come to expect.

The people who staff those communications are they volunteers?

Are they paid?

Who are those folks?

These are trained professionals, and we have a variety of people answering phone calls, but every single one of them has to go through very robust training that is nationally standardized through CMS.

Is national vendor vibrant.

And so they are highly trained individuals who are skilled in de-escalation techniques and connecting individuals to localized resources.

We have about 400 incredibly well trained staff all across the state answering calls.

Another area that is a lot of what you folks do at your agency is criminal justice services.

And that also got less funding.

But that's an area that we keep hearing from law enforcement and from prisons and jails that mental health services for people who are in those facilities are incredibly important.

Oh, absolutely.

I can't tell you the number of county sheriffs I have spoken to about the acuity of the mental illness that they're seeing in their jails.

And one of the areas that we received additional funding in was our Behavioral Health drug Reimbursement program.

And this is a vital source of funding to our local communities that provides them with the with the finances they need to purchase, often very costly medications for psychotic disorders or for medication assisted treatment.

You know, just anecdotally, there's one sheriff who who told me that he helped to detox more than 3000 individuals in his jail every single year.

And so providing them those resources to help connect that person to substance use disorder treatment, so that hopefully when they leave that jail, they're on a better path to recovery.

And so we were able to receive an increase in that funding line.

And we're very excited about that.

But there's so much more that we can and should be doing, because right now in our state psychiatric hospitals, we know that we're at over 90% capacity.

And more than nine out of ten of those beds are occupied by somebody sent to us from the criminal justice system.

So there is immense need in this space.

You are going through a rebranding in the budget.

Your agency has changed from mental health and addiction services to the Department of Behavioral Health.

Why that change?

Well, we know that words matter.

And when we looked across the nation, what we found was that we were only a handful of states that had addiction.

And the name of our agency.

And the governor has done so much to address stigma.

And we felt like that continued to stigmatize the work that we did.

And in fact, we went out and surveyed providers in our community, our local boards of alcohol, drug and mental health.

And the feedback we heard was more than 70% of them agreed that the name behavioral health was more encompassing of the integration of mental well-being and substance use disorder, but also helping to put behavioral health on par with physical health, which we know are so deeply connected.

You can't be, mentally well if you're not physically well and vice versa.

And so we were very excited that the legislature gave us the authority to change our name.

It will go into effect on October 1st.

And so we're already starting to try to build awareness about our rebrand.

And about 25% of your agency's budget is from federal funding.

So how will the mega bill, the one that's been called the One Big beautiful Bill?

How will that affect your agency's funding?

Do you know yet?

So we at this point, feel very confident that we will continue to receive, our major sources of funding through the federal government, which are our mental health block grant, our substance use prevention, treatment and recovery services block grant, and then our state Opioid and stimulant response grant.

And so as of this point, those resources are relatively untouched.

But obviously it's too soon to see what's going to happen in the Senate and in Congress.

Criticism continues against governor Mike DeWine decision to deploy 150 Ohio National Guard members to Washington, D.C. to join troops from five other Republican run states in response to what President Trump has called a crime emergency in the nation's capital.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause Ohio and the Ohio Council of Churches raised concerns.

Along with retired Judge Advocate General, colonel and Democratic former State Representative Adam Miller.

This political theater has got to end.

Our National Guard families and our soldiers deserve better.

And all of the veterans on that veteran's wall around the corner.

We we damage their reputation when we act in an immoral, unlawful and unethical way.

But DeWine noted in an interview he fulfilled requests for troops to be sent to Ohio cities and Minnesota for protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and after storms in several southern states.

You know, getting a call from the secretary of the Army's office.

Direct request to send, troops out there to be in direct support, of the district coming National Guard.

You know, I'm not going to I'm not going to turn down that request to do that.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order to create a force within the National Guard that could quickly be deployed anywhere in response to what's termed civil disturbances.

Some guards members in D.C. haven't seen picking up trash, which the office overseeing them says is consistent with their mission.

And now updates to two stories we told you about earlier this year.

First, a new exhibit devoted to the accomplishments of Ohio women in the law has opened in the basement at the Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center in downtown Columbus.

This is one time.

This is the first time this place.

Very, very.

Yes.

Here.

So this is.

Very similar to the.

Idea.

Nearly all the women who are serving or have served on the Ohio Supreme Court were there for the opening, with one notable exception Maureen O'Connor, the first woman chief justice who retired in 2022 because of the court's age limit.

Earlier this year, her portrait had been moved from the main floor to this exhibit as it was being built.

She was one of our invite last year.

So I'm not sure.

Tell us about that.

We saw that there was this is just.

O'Connor joined the court's Democrats in 2021, in 2022, and ruled against legislative and congressional maps that GOP lawmakers had approved, which led some of her fellow Republicans to suggest she should be impeached.

O'Connor and Democratic former justice if that.

Maggie Brown, who was there for the opening, helped write the constitutional amendment that voters rejected last year, which would have created a commission of citizens to draw those maps.

And Ohio's former national champion college football coach turned lieutenant governor has been recruiting throughout Ohio this week.

Jim Tressel has been huddling with middle school students about physical and mental fitness, which he first talked about before he was sworn in February.

Tressel was at Johnson Park Middle School in Columbus with his former players Ted Ginn Junior, Roy Hall and Antonio Pittman, who all went on to play in the NFL.

He pulled in Ohio Department of Health director doctor Bruce Vanderhoff and Democratic Representatives Don Travis, Gerald and Latina Humphrey, along with student volunteers to demonstrate pushups, planks and a yoga pose saying, you know, we have to do something a little different.

We want to meet people where they are.

We want to help them improve their fitness level, improve their nutritional, outlook, do a better job with their sleep and just help them progress.

And so we went and got with a lot of educators and they said, you know, a good target would be fourth through eighth grade because, you know, the younger ones are a little bit harder to corral.

The older ones.

It's not cool maybe.

And so this might be the sweet spot.

So this is a pilot 90 days.

We're going to have a pilot in the late winter or early spring.

We're going to have a pilot next fall.

Figure out where's the best impact.

And hopefully it becomes a tradition in the state of Ohio.

in his Team Tressel Fitness Challenge.

Kids in fourth through eighth grade and work through bronze, silver and gold medal levels and cardio, nutrition and sleep.

we wanted to make sure that everyone knows, regardless of their situation.

We have adapted demonstrations.

We had a kid two schools ago in his wheelchair, and, I mean, he was in the strength portion.

He was pumping out the dips on his wheelchair, and he was proud that there are activities for him in this.

So we wanted to make sure, in, in I guess the visibility is that this is for everyone, regardless of what your physical situation is.

And we want everyone involved.

And and so throughout here it gives you a lot of different choices, gives you a lot of goals to set.

And we were fortunate that we were allowed to print the first, the inaugural pilot.

I'm guessing in the future this will all be online and in there, Chromebooks and all that stuff.

But, The fitness challenge starts on September 8th and runs for 90 days.

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

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News Talk or find us online by searching the state of Ohio Show.

You can stay in the know by registering for Ohio State House alerts through this QR code, or by texting state news to this number.

And you can also hear more from us on our podcast, The Ohio State House scoop every Monday morning.

Happy Labor Day, and please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

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.