Support for the statewide 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 Medda Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of PorterWright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, PorterWright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community, Morad PorterWright Dotcom and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at O H E A dot org.

The process of drawing lines for Ohio's state House and congressional districts is set to begin.

The number of covid cases in Ohio have more than doubled in the past couple of weeks, and that's prompting schools and businesses to require students and customers to wear masks or get vaccines.

And a small number of voters decided contentious primaries for two congressional seats.

We'll talk about those topics and more on this edition of the state of Ohio.

Welcome to The State of Ohio, I'm Jo Ingles.

State officials are taking the first major steps in drawing new congressional and state legislative district maps.

The process was created through amendments approved by voters in 2015 and 2018 to avoid gerrymandering, where district maps are drawn to favor one party over another.

As statehouse correspondent Andy Chow reports, the Ohio Redistricting Commission faces some challenges right off the bat.

The commission is in charge of drawing the new maps for the Ohio House and Senate districts, as well as stepping in to approve a map for congressional districts if the General Assembly fails to do so.

The official start of the redistricting commission is a big deal because it means Ohio voters will begin to see the changes they approved up to six years ago.

Take form.

Jenn Miller with the League of Women Voters of Ohio, joined by her dog Marley, says this includes the mechanisms for transparency and accountability.

And so this implementation period is so critical.

This is the chance for the public to be engaging, making sure that map makers are upholding the letter and spirit of those ballot initiatives.

Fairness, Marle, fairness, bipartisanship, transparency, public participation.

These are all pieces of the that should be part of the process, making sure that the maps really more mirror what the population looks like.

So, you know, Ohio is slightly more Republican than Democrat in terms of votes cast and a lot of elections statewide.

Yet we continue to see much higher margins of the seats going to Republicans than that.

And that's a good indication that these maps have been manipulated.

Bottom line, maps that are manipulated to secure party outcomes hurt all voters, Republicans, Democrats, independent, gerrymandered, partizan, gerrymandered maps hurt every voter because when your lawmaker knows that they are guaranteed reelection, you don't have to listen to you and your needs.

Instead, they can play to the extremes of their party and their major donors.

The redistricting commission is made up of the governor, auditor, secretary of state and a member of the Senate and House from both parties.

Representing the Republican caucuses will be Senate President Matt Huffman and House Speaker Bob Cup.

As for the Democratic caucuses, it'll be House leader Amelia Sykes and Senator Vernon Sykes.

Huffman and Vernon Sykes helped bring the reform across the finish line in the legislature six years ago.

Huffman says the commission will be working against the clock to get maps done, a challenge made even more difficult because of the four month delay in census data.

Yeah, there's a couple of things that we're doing now.

One is we want to establish statewide meetings where individual folks can come in and give whatever opinion they have about.

And some of these opinions are very local.

You know, if you go to Toledo, some folks won't talk about Toledo.

They don't care what the rest of the map looks like.

And so we're going to have planned to have eight locations around the state, probably the week after the expected delivery of the data.

So that needs to get organized.

The the different caucuses, the majority party, the minority party, have already purchased a variety of equipment.

I don't know what these things are.

That's up to smart, smarter people in me, computers, software, map making equipment.

And both sides have done that already and preparation.

And then we we sort of have to begin backing off of that September 15th date, things that have to happen, a final approval of the map.

Inevitably, there are amendments that have to make it because, you know, you actually have to have in meet's and bounds every one of these districts, which is a tremendously complicated and huge job.

It usually takes eight or nine days just to get that done.

And so we're looking at that September 16th date, the turn around with Ohio University.

And that's all sort of compacted in that that time frame.

So, you know, I guess the one thing is we're all assuming August 16th and for now, that's the plan.

The new map making process has rules that prevent the possibility of gerrymandering, which includes keeping most counties whole and only splitting the five largest counties twice, but along with those guardrails.

Map makers must also include public participation, Democratic Representative Thomas West says that's a key difference compared to the redistricting process 10 years ago.

I think it's vitally important for us to have insight so that the of course, the voters are picking their legislators versus the other way around.

You know, I constantly tell people, you know, this is not about red and blue.

It's about red, white and blue.

It's about their districts so that we all have access.

This is this goes beyond just a Republican Democrat thing.

This deals with our education.

This deals with our neighborhoods.

This deals with our communities.

And the selection of our elected officials impacts everything that we do.

That's why I think this is so vitally important.

So now that this commission is now being formed, let's have them take that census data and really start focusing on how we can get the most fair districts so that whether you're Republican or whether you're a Democrat, you have a shot to win.

The redistricting commission must have a final plan by September 1st, which can then be subject to public hearing and changes.

The General Assembly has until September 30th to create a new congressional map, which will have 15 districts since Ohio lost a congressional seat based on the latest census.

If those groups can't reach an agreement, a different map can pass for a four year term, after which the commission will have to reconvene Andy Chow Statehouse News Bureau to important congressional primaries that got national attention were decided this week by a small number of voters.

One was in the 11th Congressional District in northeast Ohio, vacated by former Representative Marcia Fudge when she was tapped by President Biden to be the secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

About 14 percent of voters there chose Cuyahoga County Council member and County Democratic Party Chair Shantelle Brown over Nina Turner, a former state senator.

The vote was fifty to forty five percent in a race that got a lot of money and high profile endorsements.

It was seen as a battle between a moderate Democrat who tied herself to President Biden and the party establishment and then a progressive who cochaired Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders presidential campaign last year.

Brown will go on to face Republican Laverne Gore this November for this congressional seat that is heavily gerrymandered to favor Democrats.

Last year, Fudge won reelection and beat Gore by winning more than 80 percent of the vote.

About eight and a half percent of voters decided the other hotly contested race, the 15th Congressional District in central Ohio, 11 Republicans were vying to be the party's nominee in November and to replace Steve Stivers, who left Congress earlier this year to lead the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

Stivers endorsed Republican Representative Jeff Luray, who got about 13 percent of the vote.

But coal lobbyist Mike Carey, who was endorsed by former President Trump, won nearly thirty seven percent of the vote, far more than his competitors.

However, just over a third of Republican voters chose the Trump backed candidate, though some of Kerry's GOP opponents also tried to tie themselves to Trump, leading him to issue a statement calling them a gang of rhinos.

Kerry will go on to face Democratic Representative Alison Russo in November and this Republican leaning district that Stivers won with two thirds of the vote last year, covid cases are up, way up.

More than twenty one hundred total covid cases were reported on Wednesday alone, and that's the highest since April.

This week, Ohio State University announced it's bringing back its Marzook mandates for buildings.

And now we are reinstating it indoors because of the Delta variant and some of the other changes in the status of the virus, in the transmissibility of the virus here in our community.

OSU isn't alone.

Ohio University, Kent State University, Otterbein University and Capital University also implemented Marzook Mandates for the start of school this fall.

Several K through 12 school districts are also instituting mask requirements for the upcoming school year, including Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Akron.

Though there's a bill pending in the legislature that would ban K through 12 schools from requiring mask, some colleges are going one step further.

Ohio Wesleyan and Denison University are requiring their students and staff to be vaccinated.

So this week, many businesses, including grocery stores and restaurants, say they'd require customers to wear masks or be vaccinated or both, less than half of all Ohioans are fully vaccinated.

The families of people killed in a 12 19 mass shooting in Dayton have filed a lawsuit against a Korean company that made the magazine used by the shooter.

The Brady Organization, which lobbies to prevent gun violence, says many mass shootings have been possible because of high capacity magazines that let shooters fire off so many rounds without reloading.

This is unacceptable.

There is a reason why so many places in America are being transformed into war zones.

And that's because there are companies.

That are recklessly marketing tools of war to the public, Lowy says the plaintiffs are seeking damages for the injuries and an injunction to prevent manufacturers from continuing to sell this ammo to the public.

And just before the Dayton shooting anniversary.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined 15 other Republican AGs in asking a federal court to overturn a 12 19 ban on Bumpe stocks.

Bumpe stocks are added to semiautomatic weapons to make them fire like machine guns.

Columbus and Cincinnati both tried to ban bump stocks.

The Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to that ban, but Cincinnati's was struck down by an appeals court.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has added two big names to his civil suit related to the sixty one million dollar nuclear bailout bribery case.

It now includes former CEO chair Sam Randazzo, former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and another company executive, none of whom have been charged with a crime at this point.

Yost is seeking restitution from the trio, saying it's important to send a message that engaging in corruption and The State of Ohio will ruin you.

The three were named and First Energy's recent deferred prosecution agreement.

Ohio collegiate athletes have begun entering contracts to sell their name, image and likeness, which was allowed through an executive order from Gov.

Mike DeWine and in the new state budget.

Luke Phelim, a sports attorney in Columbus, believes college athletes who enter deals need to know the repercussions that could come with those benefits because name, image and likeness is uncharted territory.

We were speaking to a doing an engagement with a Power five school and their basketball program, and we were on Zoome presenting to the team their coaching staff.

And then we also had parents on the Zoome as well.

And the question came up by by one of the student athletes.

They said, Hey, what about car deals?

How do car deals work?

Like I might want to do that.

And so I asked, like, does anybody in here kind of know how a car deal in a traditional kind of sports marketing type of scenario, how it works and nobody really knew how it works.

So I shared about how it's typically a lease.

It's for, you know, usually a year, maybe two years.

And the owner of the dealership will pay those make those lease payments.

And they're like, that sounds great.

I'm like, yeah, it does.

Until we start talking about the fact that you get taxed on those on what they paid on your behalf.

Right.

So that's one thing.

And then to insurance.

Let's talk about insurance, because you're not they're not leasing you the twenty nine version 2009 version.

Right.

Of of a beat up car.

They're going to lease for you a twenty twenty one, a twenty twenty two model.

And you're a college student, so your insurance is going to be through the roof.

In the best part of the conversation was they said, OK, well I'm on my parent's insurance so my parents are going to just pay.

Right.

And the parents are on the Zoome like, no, we're not.

And I think that just gets to the point that there is so much education that has to occur.

I mean, just with all of us.

Right.

It's new.

It's new to college athletic departments.

It's new to parents.

It's definitely new to the student athletes.

It's new to the coaches.

So there has to be some education to help prepare them so that student athletes end up in a better spot when they leave school.

Since we know eight percent of them are not going pro that they're in a better spot when they leave school than when they started.

At a recent Columbus Metropolitan Club forum, Thad Allen said without more specific information about name, image and likeness deals, students could end up with tax problems or other unintended consequences.

There's a new lease agreement for a progressive field home of the Cleveland Indians, soon to be the guardians.

The four hundred thirty five million dollar deal involves a combination of money from the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, the team and the state.

Governor, Mike DeWine says the thirty million dollar investment the state will be making as part of this new lease agreement is well worth it.

The deal is a 15 year lease, but DeWine says that could be extended to twenty five years.

I think this is a good victory, frankly, for everyone.

It's good for the team.

It's good for the city.

Good for the county, good for the state.

And very good for the fans.

The deal is a 15 year lease, but DeWine says that could be extended to twenty five years.

The need for broadband and the lack of it, in many cases has been illuminated by the pandemic, Ohio's new two year state budget contains two hundred fifty million dollars to expand broadband to pockets of the state where Ohioans cannot access it.

Though the House version of the budget included less money for broadband and the Senate had none at all.

Lieutenant Governor John Newstead says the governor's office was able to negotiate with lawmakers.

In the end, we won.

We got the two hundred and fifty million dollars.

We also got them to eliminate any of the restrictive language that was in there on how the grant dollars could be used.

And so the way that this will work is that we will go out for bid for projects.

We will see what we get back and we will find out how many people can they cover, at what price, how quickly can they get it done.

And we will evaluate based on need and and those other factors to get the money out the door to communities, schools, not for profits, and others who will help expand Internet to people that don't have it with a focus on access, meaning those who don't have it, and affordability because affordability is an essential part of it.

You can't provide it if it's not affordable and expect people who don't who who are struggling to truly have reliable access to the Internet.

Houston says that is just part of an overall plan to expand broadband at Ohio.

The state is also working with businesses to develop related services.

You have an economy that's changing rapidly with innovation.

And when you have the nature of work changes, the nature of your workforce needs to change.

And so we're trying to run those in tandem.

I'll give you a great example of this.

Nationwide, people are talking about we want to expand broadband and we certainly want to do that in Ohio.

But nobody's talking about do we actually have the people who can put up the antennas, put the fiber in the in the ground, put the antennas up on the poles?

That conversation is not happening around the country.

It's happening in Ohio because our innovation team and our workforce team are collaborating on standing up new programs to train a workforce to do that.

Believe it or not, there's only one program in Ohio up in Atara in northwest Ohio that actually trains people to do this.

Hopefully by the fall we're going to have several other partners and standing up these programs, what Ohio's doing is a national model.

We're getting some attention from people around the country who are asking about this.

But this is that's a good example of how it works together.

You can't say we're going to make a big investment here without the talent to actually accomplish it.

And so those two have to run in tandem.

That's how our administration looks at economic development.

There's a human aspect of it.

There's an infrastructure aspect of it, and there's an attraction of private capital to that conversation.

We're doing all of those in this budget.

Houston says the state is also looking to new technologies to provide service in hard to reach pockets of the state that are currently underserved.

The startling pilot program that we launched earlier out in in the Marysville area that works, that's satellite technology, 100 megabits down download and in it.

And it's proven to be successful and anybody can purchase it.

But it's expensive.

It's a five hundred dollar initial investment with one hundred dollars a month additionally to fund that.

So we believe right now the technology exists to give anyone in the state who wants access to the Internet, access to it, but it's not affordable.

And so what we're going to focus on are those places that are lower income that that where people can't afford that kind of technology to use the wireless antenna technology that can take it from where they do have it and expand it in mile and a half, bursts out across to rural and urban Ohio and places they don't have it.

Houston says he can't give a timetable for getting the projects finished because there are too many variables.

And he says this isn't enough money to serve the more than a million households that still need it.

So who will get it?

Two hundred fifty million dollars is a good start.

It is not enough money to solve all these problems, but we know how to do it and we're going to invest those dollars in where we have projects that are ready to go.

If you're not ready to go, then we need to work with those communities to tee something up so that they have it.

But we can't we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

We've got to go with this money in the places that they're ready to start.

Additional dollars for broadband could be coming and a bipartisan infrastructure bill being considered by Congress.

There's a bill under consideration.

It would repeal to election law changes in the Ohio budget.

One of those prevents election officials from collaboration with private companies for voter education, get out the vote efforts and more the other bands, legal settlements between public officials and third parties that could lead to costly lawsuits.

Democratic Representative Brad Rose Sweeney says both provisions were passed hastily as part of the state budget without proper testimony and debate.

That's not how the process should work.

That's not what the state budget is should be about making that policy changes in the dark of night.

Sweeney says she doubts either bill would have passed on their own merits.

In past elections, officials have worked with various voter information programs and businesses and nonprofits.

Even Ohio's Secretary of State Frank Leros, did this last year when his office collaborated with small breweries throughout Ohio by putting election related messages on beer cans and bottle tops.

So earlier this week, I got a chance to talk to Republican Secretary of State Frank Leros about this repeal effort.

When the members of the House and Senate passed a provision in the budget that their intention was clearly to limit these outside groups that would come in and spend massive sums of money, the concern being that that could be used in a way that could influence an election.

Of course, that's not the way that played out here in Ohio last year when there was philanthropic money made available.

We made sure that it was fair and even handed way it really on pretty innocuous things like Plexiglas barriers and personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer.

And so we saw the county board of elections.

They had two machines that could open envelopes and that kind of thing.

But that's the kind of thing that those dollars were used for in Ohio.

But anyway, the General Assembly decided going forward that they wanted to prohibit private money being used in elections.

And that's fine if if they in their attempt to do that overreach, then it's up to them to decide if they want to correct it or not.

But I can tell you that the intention was not to prohibit me from working with outside nonprofit groups.

That's been made very clear to me by Senate leadership.

And so we intend to continue doing what we've always done and what other secretaries of state have always done in making sure that we can maximize participation by Ohioans that want to make their voice heard.

You're not worried about this being arbitrarily applied to certain areas by people and and honestly, do you think the legislature would come back and correct it if there was that kind of problem?

Well, two different questions there, Joe.

One is, of course, I'm always concerned about anything that's done in an arbitrary or targeted way to try to give advantage to one side or the other.

This idea of constantly trying to run to the courthouse and use litigation as a tool to give yourself an advantage in an election is a dangerous precedent and something that people on both sides of the aisle should be opposed to.

As far as the legislature coming back and revising the work they had done previously.

But that's a common thing.

In fact, during my eight years in the legislature, we very frequently revisited pieces of legislation that we had passed to make corrections to to to update the way that something was carried out.

So, listen, if there is a legitimate concern about about this amendment that was included in the budget a few months ago, the House and Senate leadership should talk about how they want to correct this.

And that's it for us this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau.

Thanks for watching.

Be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter and our website at statenews.org.

And be sure to join us next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide 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 Medda Mutual dotcom slash Ohio by the law offices of PorterWright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, PorterWright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community, Morad PorterWright Dotcom 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 O H E A dot org.