Support for the state House 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 Rt.com.

The Law Offices of Porter Wright Morrison, Arthur LLP.

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

More at Porter right Rt.com Porter Wright inspired every day the 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.

Ohio voters played a key role in policymaking in 2023 on amending the Constitution on abortion, access and reproductive rights, and on recreational marijuana and their decisions went against the views of the governor, who was reelected in a landslide a year ago.

We're here at the governor's residents to talk to Mike DeWine about that and more this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler this week with Governor Mike dewine.

Governor, thank you for being here.

Be with you.

Thank you.

So as we go into Christmas, you have not announced your decision.

The House bill 68, which would ban gender transition treatment for minors and ban trans athletes for girls sports.

I'd love to know whether you're going to sign it.

I don't expect that you're going to tell me because you said you're going to you're still making that decision.

But I want to ask you, what are some of the factors involved in what you're considering here?

Well, I think this is a very important decision.

You know, we're dealing with a very small number of minors, children.

And, you know, there each one of them is going through a challenging certainly a very, very challenging time and challenging for the family.

So I think it's very, very important, even though it's a small, small number of of our kids in the state of Ohio.

So what I'm doing is, I think what you expect me to do, and that is trying to find out what the facts are.

I spent a part of a day at Akron Children's Hospital talking to the people who are directly involved in this program.

I did the same thing at the University of Cincinnati since I scrimmaged Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and I do that in Nationwide Children's Hospital here in Columbus three different days.

I did that.

I'm also talking frankly to people who testified in favor of the bill.

I talked this morning to a woman who who came in and testified in favor of the bill.

I'm talking to, you know, medical doctors.

I'm talking to anybody that I can find that I think, you know, would help me better understand exactly what what we are dealing with here.

But so I'm going to continue to do that.

I've not made a decision as as we record this, I'm going to continue to to read.

I've got a binder to go through of some of the testimony and other things.

So.

But next week, when the time is appropriate, you know, I will make a decision.

I'll do a press conference and I'll explain, you know, what I'm doing and why.

You had said you had said in your first inaugural address in 2019 that you want to be the governor for all the people of our state.

If you sign this bill, there are going to be people, trans kids, their parents, who are not going to feel that you are caring about them.

What do you say to them?

Well, I think, you know, again, I'm listening to people.

You know, I've met with some of the families of people, young kids who are in this going through this right now, working with one of the children's hospitals, the doctors who are there.

I've also talked to families who were they were not happy with what happened and the experience that they're that their child had.

So I think my job is is to get as much information as I can, try to try to sort that out and come up with a decision.

That's a fair, fair decision.

But again, you know, I'm taking a lot of time to do this.

You know, I was scheduled to start these series of interviews a few days ago, and I postponed that.

I needed the days to actually travel around the state and go to the different children's hospitals and to to talk to other people.

So it's a it's a very, very important thing.

And, you know, these young people's lives and in their family's lives, I mean, look, just, you know, look, there's nothing more important in your life than your children.

And so I think this has to be approached with, you know, very, very great deal of seriousness.

I want to ask you about issue to the law on recreational marijuana that voters approved.

You urged lawmakers to pass changes to the law to allow marijuana to be sold at existing medical marijuana dispensaries, saying the law makes the product legal but not the selling of the product.

Legal.

You opposed issue two.

What's the problem with not having places to buy marijuana?

I would think that you and other people who opposed as you do work with that.

Look, I still think it's a bad idea.

I voted against it.

I talked against it.

But 57%, I think of the people say Ohio said, no, we want legal marijuana, recreational marijuana.

Stay while we have to respect we have to respect that.

But I don't think the people who voted for this intended to have the situation that we have today is a ridiculous situation.

Today, you can possess marijuana.

You can use marijuana legally in the state of Ohio, and you can grow marijuana legally in the state of Ohio, but you can't buy the seeds to grow marijuana legally.

And you can't buy marijuana legally in the state of Ohio now.

That's just stupid.

Now, why should I worry about that?

If you say as someone who was against it, because what is going to grow up and you already starting to see signs of it is a black market where people think it's legal.

Very understandably, people think it's legal to go buy it in the state of Ohio.

But we know that under the current law, without change, we will not be able to see legal marijuana sold in the state of Ohio until late, late, late 2024.

So it's almost a year away probably.

And so what will happen is we're starting to see signs of a black market grow up.

And if you look at New York State as a good example, what happened in New York State, they had this long period of time to where you couldn't buy it, but you could use it.

Thousands of these shops popped up in shopping centers and loopholes over here and were and it was all illegal and no one knew what the quality was.

There was no way to to control that, to measure it.

You could have had pesticides in that marijuana.

You could have had some other drug mixed in with that that marijuana.

So that's not a good situation at all.

The other problem we have, and I've expressed this to the legislature is what has been you're seeing sold today in filling stations, for example, gas stations around the state and other places.

As I have a derivative that is Delta eight, Delta nine, which is highly emotional genic.

And there's a big gap in the whole in the law today.

We can't regulate that legally in Ohio today.

We must be able to regulate it.

And so in addition to this problem with marijuana, I've asked them to help me be able to regulate that.

But we have to have a change in the law.

We have kids walking in there, 12, 14, 15 years of age who legally can buy this junk today.

And they take it and they you know, they get high on it.

A 16 year old, 17 year old who's got a driver's license or a 40 year old who's got a driver's license, could go and buy this stuff, take it and then drive away.

And, you know, we have more wrecks on the highway.

So there ought to be a sense, I think, of urgency about let's fix these problems.

I want to ask you about the two issue ones that we had issue one in August, and the issue one in November.

The ISSUE one in August was the requirement of 60% voter approval for future constitutional amendments.

You and other Republicans have supported it, saying it's too easy to amend the Constitution and the Constitution needs to be protected.

So I want to ask you.

Should lawmakers try to raise that voter approval again to protect the Constitution?

Should that be something that comes forward next year?

I think the vote was overwhelming in regard to that.

I do not anticipate, you know, changing the law in regard to a referendum from 50% needed to 60%.

I don't think that's going to come back up again.

It is the one in November was the Reproductive Rights and Abortion Access Amendment.

You were strongly opposed and you had suggested for more than a year that the legislature should make some changes to the existing so-called heartbeat ban, the six week abortion ban to try to get something that was more sustainable that voters might appreciate more.

Are you disappointed that there were no changes made in this report?

Well, I don't like to look back.

I mean, I expressed my concerns about that.

And, you know, we I was not you know, they didn't listen to me on that.

So we are where we are.

You have advocated against abortion your entire political career in your term as governor of the state passed one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country.

And then issue one, the abortion rights amendment also passed in your term as governor, and that reversed the ban back to viability, essentially.

What what do you think this.

How do you feel about this when it comes to your legacy and people looking back at your time in governor as governor with this?

You know, I think it's important for us to protect the most vulnerable among us.

One of the things I'm very proud of is what we have done in regard to women who are poor, women who, for whatever reason, can't get medical access and they're pregnant.

You know, we've dramatically increased the ability to get good care.

We're not only continuing to do that or speed that up and do even even more.

I think it's important for us to be as compassionate as we can.

And to, again, women who are in a difficult situation, the law lawyers today, they can certainly make a decision about to have an abortion.

That's what was passed by the voters.

But I think, you know, those of us who feel strongly about this, we have to continue to look around and say, what else can we do to assist them?

They'll make the choice, but what could we do to assist them to make it easier for them to be able to have the child and not just have the child, but be able to to raise that that child?

One of the things that I don't think we've done enough in candidly, has to do with child care.

We need to do more in this area.

It's important, I think, for these families to be able to raise their children, get the help they need.

The mom wants to work.

The dad wants to work.

Both of them want to work.

Whatever their situation is.

They need good they need good child care.

So important for to have more people to work.

But it's also important that that child get good stimulation and good daycare because that's going to impact how they start kindergarten.

And, you know, as Fran, I have traveled around the state and gone from seeing a lot of kindergartners live, first grade second graders.

We looked at this whole issue of the science of reading.

One of the things that was pointed out to us almost everyplace was that if you want the child to be ready to start kindergarten, you know, having good daycare is one of the component parts that's important.

You've been outspoken against flavored tobacco and vapes and twice vetoed Republican state lawmakers efforts to stop communities from being able to ban flavored tobacco and vapes.

Your veto in that budget was just overridden by the House speaker, Jason Stephens, that he wants to look at this as more of a state wide level.

You've suggested a statewide ban.

Why isn't this moving forward?

And do you support home rule for this, but maybe not for other things?

Well, I think if you look at my position on home rule, I think it's a case by case situation.

I mean, I think that the preference always should be for home rule.

But there are some areas where because of the issue, because of the circumstances, having a statewide uniformity makes sense.

I think the most important thing we have in this discussion, though, is making sure that young people do not become addicted to nicotine.

We've seen and we've seen a huge, huge change.

Great news.

We got fewer, fewer kids today who are smoking going cigarets going down significantly.

At the same time, the number of kids who are vaping with flavors and so almost always with flavors and getting addicted to nicotine is going up dramatically.

Talk to any high school teacher or talk to any junior high teacher and they'll tell you about the problems are having.

And it's not just a school problem.

This kid's becoming addicted to something that's highly addictive and that is nicotine.

And one or two things are probably going to happen.

They're either going to stay on vaping, which we know long term.

It could be very, very dangerous.

We don't know fully all the problems connected with it, but the more the scientists look at, the more they think there's problems long, long term or they're going to switch over to Cigarets.

And we all know what that what that does.

So we need to free this generation from this addiction and the way to easiest way to do it.

If we want uniformity and the business community wants uniformity, pass a law to show how we're not going to have flavors anymore.

Look, there's no 40 year old long time smoker who's trying to stop smoking and who wants to move over to vaping that moves over and gets tutti frutti flavor.

And that's not what they do.

What they do is they flip over.

And we should support them if that's what they want to do, that's fine.

That's the idea.

But not a 15 year old.

We don't want them become addicted.

And and they if you stop the flavors, they won't get addicted because they won't start on at least most start.

Keeping in mind children's safety.

Why not allow communities to ban guns?

Because that's a huge threat.

That's a a leading threat to kids.

There's another issue.

And, you know, again, there's more that we can do in this area.

I mean, I think one of the things that we need to do, you know, we see kids who are killed in accidents all the time.

Again, you know, I saw an ad that ran the other day, I think it was from City of Columbus, maybe the health department about, you know, locks and safes and other ways of doing it.

I think we need to encourage more people to do that.

And that's one thing that we'll be talking about.

One of the many bills that remains for lawmakers to look at after the holidays is Senate Bill 83, which seeks to address concerns that conservatives have about what they feel is liberal bias in public.

Higher education.

You had said that you had reservations specifically about shortening the terms of trustees in that from nine years to four years, it's now at six years.

Do you have any other concerns about that, Bill?

Do you want to see that bill before?

You know, I think six years is okay.

I had a concern about cutting it to four because there's a learning curve here.

The other thing the at least the last version of the bill I saw, which say that you could reappoint someone for a second six year term, seems to me that, you know, that's a fair compromise, that that makes sense.

This bill, as you know, continues to evolve.

I so I can't really talk about the bill.

I'm not going to talk about the bill or what's going to be.

But what I can say is, look, a college university should be a place where ideas are valued, or at least the expression of the ideas is by value.

The idea by at least the ability to talk about.

So protecting the First Amendment on college campuses and making people feel safe that they can have these discussions and I think is is vitally important.

And I think sometimes at the college level, it isn't always you know, it's sometimes it's the preferred speech.

What's preferred, that's not the issue.

You know, it should be people should be free to have those conversations and we should encourage those conversations.

Kids will figure it out.

They'll they'll sort they'll short those things out.

The other thing, though, you know, we have to have some balance here because one of the things we've seen is a lot of anti-Semitic events that are occurring.

People do not feel safe on campus.

We're seeing in this state more anti Muslim, anti Jews.

You know, these things.

Again, the college has an obligation while protecting the First Amendment.

Colleges also have an obligation to provide a safe environment and where people do not feel threatened about what they say or they do not feel threatened about who they are.

So that both of those things, I think, are very, very important.

So that's what those are things I'm concerned about.

If you look at some of the issues that are that are covered by this particular bill.

House Bill six, a big energy law for 2019, got a lot of attention this year with convictions of Republican former speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Burgess, and the indictment of Sam Randazzo, who was the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio at the time a nuclear bailout passed, you had nominated him.

Did you know about his ties to First Energy when you nominated him?

we.

Knew he had ties.

Sure.

You know, he Sam Randazzo was a subject matter expert.

We couldn't find anybody, frankly, who knew more about the whole subject.

He was a hired gun.

We knew that he had been on both sides.

He had represented some consumers as far as businesses that were big users.

He'd also represented utilities.

We knew we knew all that.

You know, the other stuff that came out later, we certainly did not own.

We'd known it.

Obviously, I would not have appointed.

Next year as, of course, presidential election year in Ohio and around the country.

Former President Trump has been indicted on 91 felony charges and said recently that, quote, Immigrants are poisoning the blood of this nation.

He's called his opponents vermin, and you'll see and sadly, he'll seek retribution.

And he would not be a dictator, quote, except on day one.

So I want to ask you, will you be endorsing President Trump as the Ohio Republican Party has?

Well, I'm not going to answer that at this point.

We'll we'll see how these things play out.

You know, I'm focused on Ohio, Got a lot on my plate.

And we'll all kind of see how this thing plays out now.

So that's really all I'm going to ask you all I'm going to talk about today, about about that.

You know, I look, we're going to learn a lot more.

I mean, we're coming now right up these presidential campaigns, as you know, have become more and more front loaded where, you know, whether or not there's even a contest by the time we get to march one or we get to Ohio, I don't know.

We're assuming there will be, but the much more front loaded.

So this thing is going to evolve pretty quickly.

Think one of the other things that may be on the ballot next year is the group led by former Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor that seeks to change the way that legislative and congressional maps are drawn, replacing the Ohio Redistricting Commission with a 15 member panel of non-politicians Republicans, Democrats and independents equally divided there.

You're one of the seven elected officials on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

It won't meet again because the maps that you adopted are in place for ten years.

So do you think the governor or any elected officials should be on the panel that draws?

Well, I don't think the governor should be.

I don't want me back on again, I'll tell you that.

I don't want to ever have to do that again.

But look, I've stated that I don't think the legislature members, the legislature should be on there.

I don't think the governor should be on there.

I don't think any of their statewide elected officials should be on there.

Now, having said that, then you get to the question, okay, well, who's going to do it because somebody has to do it.

And so having people who are impartial, I think is vitally, vitally important.

So I'm going a we'll take a look at this.

But I'm not about to make any kind of an endorsement at this point.

But I'm very happy not to have members of the legislature on that and the governor on that.

I think that's a wise the wise move.

You know, this just didn't work very well.

That's kind of an understatement.

And we need to move on.

A couple of quick, quick things I want to ask you about here.

Amtrak is announced for Ohio Corridor is a priorities for rail expansion.

The idea of expanding passenger rail service in Ohio was rejected by your predecessor, Governor John Kasich, as too costly to taxpayers, too impractical with not enough routes and connections into downtowns.

Too slow.

Maximum speed, maybe 50 miles an hour.

Are you on board with expanding these passenger rail routes like that?

On board?

You got the idea.

Well, you may notice over here under the Christmas tree, we have a friend gave us his 1934 train.

So it's a lot of it's a lot of fun.

Look, Fran, I have taken a number of vacations with kids, long distance Amtrak trains out west.

You know, we like trains, but so, you know, we also ask the federal government to do the study there.

They're paying for this study.

Let's do a study.

Let's see where we are.

But, you know, it has to work.

I mean, it doesn't work for people.

If you go if you're going from Columbus to Cleveland, which I do a lot, or from Cincinnati to Cleveland, for example, it doesn't work if it's going to take a lot longer for you than if you were in a car.

I mean, if you can't even you got to be somewhat competitive of the time that it will take, because that's what we all measure now.

And if it if it averages 34 miles an hour, that's just not going to do.

So, again, we will have to see, you know, how it will work.

Does it make economic sense?

It would be nice to have it in the state of Ohio.

I'm waiting to see kind of what the projection would be about the time.

But if it just takes a long time, people won't use it.

They just won't use it.

Sports betting in Ohio started almost a year ago.

Nearly $6 billion has been wagered in Ohio since then, exceeding expectations.

How do you think sports betting is going?

Is it going the way that you wanted it to go, even though you didn't really want it to go?

Well, Ohio has been you know, I just talked to a little bit former governor of Massachusetts, who's now the head of the actually and she did a and, you know, he said Ohio is one of the most restrictive states in regard to sports betting.

But, you know, I continue to look at this and one of the concerns that I have is, you know, what impact it has on athletes.

And if you talk to some of the athletic directors and coaches, what they'll tell you is, you know, gamblers who lose, you know, are now trying to reach out through social media or other ways to some of the players.

And it's not the fans who are reaching out.

It's the gamblers because, hey, somebody missed a shot.

You know, somebody dropped a pass, Something happened and they didn't beat the spread.

That's that's a danger as far as I'm concerned.

And so we're looking very closely at the whole issue of what else do we need to do in Ohio to protect our athletes?

And where, you know, people who've really looked at this have a concern is the end game betting where people are betting on is it going to make the free throw, you know, on the next play?

Will it be this or that or, you know, all of these things that people have the ability to bet?

And so then it becomes one person doing one thing who then could get blame because they missed it.

So I worry about that.

So we are in the process of of closely, frankly, closely looking looking at this.

And we have the we have some ability to go in and without additional legislation and to do some things.

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 visit our Web site at State News dot org or find us online by searching State of Ohio show.

Merry Christmas 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 AECOM the law offices of Porter, Right.

Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Right.

Is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at Porter recom.

Porter Right.

Inspired every day.

The 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.