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lame duck legislating is well underway.

With less than a week left before the planned end of the two year session and a conversation with a longtime lawmaker on his way home for good.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Just.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

It's lame duck season, and lawmakers are counting down the days till the end of the two year session.

They stay a little late this week, passing some measures and working on others with a few big issues remaining to be resolved among the bills headed to governor Mike DeWine after clearing both chambers is one that adds nuclear energy to the state's definition of green energy, and extends the standard lease terms of contracts to frack under state parks.

Another bill would toughen the penalties for third degree felony domestic violence convictions, starting next year, also increasing sentences and creating presumptive prison terms for those with prior convictions.

But there are still a lot of bills left, though few that stand a real chance of passing both the House and the Senate by the middle of next week.

One is House Bill eight, the so-called parents Bill of rights.

It would require parents to be notified of any content or discussion about sexuality in public K-12 schools so they can remove their child.

The bill would also require school personnel to report if there are changes in a student's mental or physical health, such as if they ask about counseling.

A Senate committee added in the requirement this week that schools allow students to leave during the day for religious education classes off campus.

Neither the Senate president nor the House speaker will predict what will happen with that bill.

The question is what are the other things that are going into it at the we don't want to just pass a bill to say, yeah, we want to pass a bill that the House is going to concur on.

There are multiple things that the the chair and the committee are considering, that House members want or don't want, and some Senate members don't or don't want.

So I think it's one of those big lame duck bills where we want to accomplish something.

And so we're going to try to, work through that the next week.

So I think it's important when you have a bill like the parents Bill of rights, where you have, other types of bills that are that touch a lot of those types of things.

It's very important to be, I think you say more by saying less, in a lot of language, if that makes sense, and by being specific and adding on a lot of other things, it can be, there may be unintended consequences of there may be things in, in a bill like that that may have not been thoroughly vetted or discussed or have, you know, turn around and mess something else up.

Especially especially this now or, you know, the parents Bill of rights was, you know, House Bill eight.

So it's one of our priority bills.

We could have easily loaded it up with a lot of different things on our side, but we wanted to make a clear, clean statement with that legislation that parents have a right to know what's going on in the schools, with their children.

That's pretty much it.

It's pretty basic.

And to complicate it and make it more complex, because the underlying bill is, is pretty straightforward.

I think, makes it harder to make that fair statement.

So Democrats in the House and Senate are opposed to the provisions in the parents Bill of rights.

There's also no agreement on regulation of delta eight THC, also known as intoxicating hemp, which is not regulated like marijuana.

DeWine has called for some restrictions on the sale of Delta eight for nearly a year, noting that it's available at gas stations and convenience stores where kids have been able to buy it.

But a bill that addresses that seems unlikely to make it to his desk.

we've been pretty clear on our think so on our, position on Delta is it's pretty much treated like you would, tobacco, you know, 20 minute limit on it, put it in a place that, kids are not allowed to, to access, but still make it available for a lot of folks, use those products.

But we want to make sure that it's not falling into the hands of kids.

Whether there's more dispensaries or or we restrict the number of dispensaries to, a number in a particular city.

Those are things that can all be discussed.

I don't, at least from what I've heard.

I don't think the House is interested in doing that.

That shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, because they weren't interested in what we, the governor in the Senate, sent over in December of a year ago, trying to clear up some of the problems with the marijuana, initiative.

So, I think if the answer simply is we're not going to pass anything regarding restricting hemp, and we're not going to restrict people from selling these things for anything, well, then we'll probably pass the bill that we think is the best and say, we've done our job.

There's only so much we can do.

So A bill that got bipartisan support in the House was an enhanced property tax credit for some older and disabled Ohioans.

It nearly doubles the state's homestead exemption, expanding it to $50,000 of a home's fair market value.

The homestead exemption assists property owners who are over 65 permanently and totally disabled or 59 and older, and the surviving partner of a person who previously received it.

It's now headed to the Senate.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle admit it's just scratching the surface and that more needs to be done on property tax relief, the Senate approved a bill that seeks to define antisemitism and state law for universities and state agencies, investigating whether ethnic intimidation has been committed.

Pro-Palestinian activists walked out of the Senate chamber after it passed 27 to 4.

Backers say the bill is needed following pro Gaza protests on campuses around the Israel-hamas war earlier this year, which sponsoring Republican Senator Terry Johnson said showed, quote, disturbing displays of aggression and intolerance, and that, he said targeted Jewish students.

Many prominent Jewish groups support the bill, but critics, including the ACLU of Ohio and those who demonstrated on campus, say this bill would criminalize free speech.

The bill has not had a hearing in the House, so with the two year session ending next week, it's unlikely the bill will pass that chamber in time.

For most of the past 25 years, Bill Seitz has been a fixture at the state House.

The conservative Republican from Cincinnati has served in the House, then the Senate, and now he's finishing up eight years back in the House.

He's visible, vocal and a firebrand on issues such as his support for criminal justice reform, legalized gambling and vouchers, and his opposition to traffic cameras, Ohio's month long early voting period, and state mandates in general.

His encyclopedic knowledge of state law and his outspoken and sometimes combative style have made him someone to watch in committee and on the floor.

He's been long associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which drafts right leaning model legislation on guns, LGBTQ rights, school choice and tax cuts.

And he has weathered some controversies.

For instance, some women lawmakers wanted his resignation for comments at a private after hours party several years ago for which he apologized.

Well, Seitz has clashed with Democrats over the years.

He's also criticized some fellow Republicans, but his two and a half decades at the state House have also resulted in bipartisan friendships.

I talked with Bill Seitz this week.

you were in the house and you're in the Senate and eight years in the House.

So why did you choose to retire instead of running again as some of your colleagues have?

Well, well, I would have to run for the Senate.

And in order to do that, I would have to run against my very good friend, Bill blessing, who is our current senator.

And as you may recall, I served with and greatly admire his dad.

And then Bill, too.

And Heather, his wife, who is in our legal department in the House.

So I wasn't about to do that.

And I'm 70 years old now, so I figured, well, you know, there's there's the game of musical chairs has ended for me, and there's no open chairs, so.

So, I will go on and pursue other interests, too, now.

Right.

You have taken some controversial positions.

You voted against a crackdown on payday lenders, against closing the marital rape loophole, against the collective bargaining law known as Senate Bill five, against academic distress commissions.

You did not vote for Larry Householder for speaker.

And proposed the measure to remove him as speaker.

But you oppose the effort to expel him from the House.

You have said on this show that you regret your vote to extend 28 days of early absentee voting.

Are there any positions or other things that you would like to take back that you wish you hadn't done?

Well, the ultimately the marital rape exception bill I voted for, okay, I was not happy with the wording of some of the prior attempts.

We finally got it right.

We passed it.

I'm very proud to have stood against Senate Bill five.

I tried to tell my Republican colleagues that they were overshooting the mark, and that this would end badly and blow up in their faces.

A truer words were never spoken.

And so we were able to rebut that.

As far as academic distress commissions, I just felt like, that was administering the guillotine to school districts when we should be trying to work with them to improve their performance.

So I, I don't I don't take I don't take that back.

And, you know, you've mentioned all the things I voted against, but but there's plenty of other things that I voted for there.

Get to that.

That became, that became law and are still law today.

And and even as we speak, are being upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Just yesterday, for example, they upheld the, product liability law that we passed as part of our tort reform efforts back in the beginning of the 2000.

So, you know, that's been on a lot of things I voted against, but a lot of things I voted for.

And on the election, 28 days, remember, it was 35 days originally, and they were having a situation where you could register to vote and vote on the same day, so called golden week.

Golden week.

So I led the charge to pare that back, which we did.

I still think we offered, way too many days, of, of early voting.

And the irony is when when we did that originally the the reason was to cut down on long lines on election day.

Made sense.

Right.

Well, now you have long lines outside the early vote centers.

So what was really gained other than having 28 days to do it?

So and the lines at the polls are not so long now.

So, you know, I just think it should be Election Day.

I don't believe it should be election month.

I do think no fault absentee voting has a place, but 28 days is too long.

And, you know, I've been very active in the election space.

Working with a secretary, Lee Rose, both when he was in the Senate and now that he's been secretary of state and working with the election officials, who I think should be listened to more than we do, because they're the people that actually have to administer these things.

I was just going to ask you, you've done a lot on election loss.

For instance, what you just said there, you had a bill to shorten the actual, period in which people could use ballot drop boxes.

You did, back in 2016, sponsor a law that would require polling places that would stay open past 730 to post a bond.

John Kasich vetoed that.

Is there anything what would you like to see your colleagues do on election related laws now?

Is there any changes that you'd like to see made other than perhaps shortening that early?

Well, yes.

My understanding is the Senate just this week, put four election related, efforts into a bill, one one is to make sure the, the voting machine examiners examine all of the technology and all of the, equipment that is used.

there are those changes that are good.

And I also just, you know, I'm a fair guy.

Lynn Rose proposed getting rid of drop boxes altogether.

And I said, well, you know what?

I would be for that.

But my advice would be, don't try to pull that off in lame duck with no process and no discussion.

I said we would be run through the coals for having done something of that significance with no real discussion.

I do think they should be abolished, because we saw in this past election in Oregon and other places, people did exactly what I apprehended through to flammable things into the drop box and burned up hundreds of votes.

So that's voter suppression of the most lethal kind.

And so I don't think we need drop boxes.

You can simply walk into the Board of Elections and cast your vote securely.

But I again, I did not think it would be appropriate for us to do something like that in Lame duck.

And they're not doing that in Lame Duck.

You've been vocal on a lot of issues, such as traffic cameras, green energy mandates.

Oh, you admitted you voted for the law that created those mandates, and you've put solar panels on your house.

That's right.

You support vouchers, but have also supported restrictions.

And, then in terms of transparency and requiring that, what issues do you feel are being left unresolved energy.

We are running out of electricity.

We have demand that is going like this because of AI, crypto mining, data centers and electric vehicles.

So demand is up.

The supply of baseload thermal power plants is going down because of federal and blue state headwinds that make it difficult to construct gas powered new power plants and make it all but impossible to continue to operate coal plants.

So, when that happens, when demand is here and supply is here, only two things can happen.

And neither one of them are good.

You either have prices that will skyrocket, or you will have to ration the available commodity, to people, which means brownouts, which means blackouts.

For example, in December 2022, only two days before Christmas, there was something called winter Storm Elliot.

And in that, in that instance, the gas fired power plants were not working.

Thank God we had the two nuclear plants that we tried to save and House Bill six.

Thank God we had the ovac coal plants that were still operating.

Otherwise, people would have awoke on Christmas morning and found no power.

Okay.

So I believe in fuel diversification.

I believe we need a good, diverse supply of fuel with which to make electricity, including energy.

Green energy, including green energy.

Look, green energy is great if they ever can solve the intermittency problem.

The intermittency problem is very simply stated.

When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, these resources do not show up for work.

So what we have to do, and they've yet to do it, is to come up with a cost effective method of storing the energy.

When the wind does blow and the sun does shine, then you'd have something to talk about.

But until that time, it would be foolish in the extreme to rely solely on renewable energy, because when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, you have to fall back on your thermal baseload power plants, be they nuclear, coal or gas.

You have been here for almost 25 years, 24 years at this point.

You've been in leadership your entire last term in the House here.

This legislature has been called the most unproductive in a half a century.

Is that fair?

Do you agree with that?

Well, I look, it has been less productive than many previous general assemblies.

And I will say when speaker, householder was speaker and speaker, he stood with speaker, and he.

Speaker Rosenberger was speaker.

We got a lot more done.

But you do not judge the quality of a general assembly by the number of bills that pass, but rather by the significance of the bills that do and falling back on our most recent biennial budget.

I'm very proud of the fact that we not only adopted universal school choice vouchers, which I support, but also made sure we continued to fully fund the Cut Patterson Fair School funding plan for our public schools.

That was a big argument.

The Senate wanted universal vouchers.

Speaker Stevens and I and others said, well, that's fine as long as we're doing right by the public schools.

And so we did.

That's good.

We delivered massive tax cuts in that budget.

Income tax cuts and got tax reductions.

So that was very positive.

Our transportation budgets have been very robust.

That's important infrastructure.

I've always said I'm an infrastructure Republican.

And I believe that we need, to focus on that as one of our primary functions of government.

So those things have been good.

You've seen it and I've seen it.

There was a somewhat fractious situation in the Ohio House Republican caucus, and that probably impeded progress on some of these bills because, well, if it's a if it's your side's bill, we're not for it.

And if it's your side's bill, we're not for it.

And that's just been unfortunate.

Okay.

That was just an unfortunate, event.

So what can I say?

Life goes on, right?

For those people who are not familiar with your work on the floor, you have quoted or sang The Tax Man, The Gambler, Beverly Hillbillies, the $5 foot long jingle, including you actually brought a $5 foot long to a farewell speech you gave.

Yes.

You have some catchphrases.

The national nanny state mandate mountain, the intersection of gin and vermouth.

You have some really interesting ways of presenting ideas on the floor.

I think, Karen, I think that's very important, because the purpose of floor speeches is not just to dryly go through what is in the bill.

The purpose is to not only educate people as to the details of the bill, but do so with a little bit of humor and panache.

Okay.

A little bit of humor goes a long way.

A great example is that Beverly Hillbillies issue.

That issue, as you recall, came up when we were first discussing fracking.

And, and, Senator Shindell, who was a big environmentalist, was giving a long, eloquent speech about all the perceived dangers of fracking environmentally.

And I made a calculated decision then and there that I was not going to engage with him in that kind of discussion.

I was rather going to point to the larger issue that by reason of fracking, a large part of Ohio that had been ignored and was poor as a church mouse for the last hundred years, was all of a sudden going to become quite wealthy.

And that's exactly what the story of The Beverly Hillbillies was all about.

So I figured the best way to refute Senator Shindell and to make the point is to sing the Old Beverly Hillbillies song.

And by the by the way, by the time we got done with it, I had half of the Republicans joining in.

Okay, so that was a lot of fun.

You have clashed with members of the, Democratic Party in very various times, in committee hearings, even on the floor.

But you've also been asked and not participated in farewell speeches.

Chris Redfern, the former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, gave, an introduction to you.

You offered a farewell for Representative Martin Sweeney.

That was pretty hilarious to listen to.

Is that kind of by partizanship going away?

Look, not with me.

I think if you look at this last General Assembly session that is drawing to a close, I will.

I will bet you a dollars to donuts that no one other than me has co-sponsored more bills with Democrats.

All right, in the House, nobody.

Okay.

So my joint co-sponsor was, Democrat on many of these bills.

Look, we're going to disagree with Republicans and Democrats on things like abortion and guns and maybe election law and probably tax policy.

But there's a lot we can agree on.

There's a lot in the criminal justice space that I've done with Democrats, of which I'm very proud.

We all believe in giving people second chances and in trying to reduce the rate of recidivism, repeat offenses through programs that get people trained and educated while they're in prison, so that when they're out, they don't immediately revert to a life of crime.

That's just one example of an area where hours and days can collaborate, perhaps for different reasons.

But we've collaborated and, you know, so many of those bills I did with Senator Shirlee Smith back in the day.

It would be a good example of that.

I've done two bills this session with, representative LaTanya Humphrey, an African-American.

I did a bill with, Dan Davis.

Gerald's, which is a great bill.

I'm sad the Senate didn't take it up, but it's a bill that creates a foster scholarship program for higher ed for kids that were in foster care, from and after age 13.

Those people have a rough way to go.

And I.

And so Dan Tobias and I said, let's do what 33 other states have already done, and that is create a separate scholarship fund for those kids to go to college, community college, get a certificate, get a trade school, all that stuff.

Great.

Great idea.

But the Senate came back and said, well, we're not going to do that because there's an appropriation in there and we're not going to appropriate any more money this year, and we'll have to deal with that next year.

Said, well, okay.

And in fact, Governor Strickland, Democratic governor, was at your farewell party.

Yes.

Along with, Governor Taft and other, yes.

Yeah, we we had quite a we had quite a long list of hours and days.

Marty Sweeney came down from, from, Cleveland and offered the closing toast with his usual, Irish panache.

My old friend, Senator John Eklund, now a judge, came down from Georgia County.

I even had one of my former aides who now lives in Chicago, catch a plane and come down here.

And that was just a, a real, a real joy to see all those people.

So, you know, it's been a great career.

The, the best part of this is meeting so many wonderful people.

And, doesn't mean you always agree with them, but they've been a great opportunity to meet folks.

And, when you're in this business, you have to kind of be a people person.

Well, we see you again.

Are you are you running at the state House?

Well, I'm not dead.

You know, and I don't know what I'm going to do.

And as you know, there are ethical restrictions on what you can try to line up for yourself while you're still in office.

So I haven't really done much in that regard.

I've been fortunate to have been a, a member of two very large law firms over my career, going back to 1978.

I'm still at the Densmore civil law firm down in Cincinnati.

I will be there, practicing law as I've done throughout the whole 24 years.

I've had two jobs.

I've had my statehouse job and my law job.

So that's a lot to do.

I said, and all told, I've had 34 years of service in elected office continuously between the Cincinnati School Board being township trustee and then the 24 years up here.

That's a pretty long career, you know?

So, I don't think I'll ever run for office again.

People have said, well, why don't you why don't you put your name in for U.S. Senate with DeWine?

They're not going to pick a 70 year old.

They want somebody that's young, that is going to hold that seat for three terms.

So they're not going to do that.

They said, well, why don't you become a judge?

You can't become a judge once you're 70 years old.

You're aged out.

So that's not in the cards.

And, you know, but there's other ways to be influential in the making of public policy, which I've greatly enjoyed and which I will probably pursue in some capacity or another.

You know.

cites as his work on tort reform to reduce personal injury civil lawsuits is what he's most proud of.

He notes that before a law limiting asbestos cases, by requiring people who file them be currently sick with asbestos related disease passed in 2003, there were 45,000 pending asbestos cases in Cuyahoga County and within a year that number dropped to 8000.

Another veteran lawmaker leaving the legislature is Democratic Representative and former Senator Michael Swindle.

We'll hear from him in an upcoming show.

And that's 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 State of Ohio Show.

You can also hear more from the Bureau on our podcast, The Ohio State House scoop.

Look for it every Monday morning wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for watching and please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Just.

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.