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a chat with a lawmaker who is leaving lame duck and the state House, and an overview of how AI is assisting state government.

That's this weekend, the state of Ohio.

Just.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

The 135th General Assembly has ended after a lame duck session where lawmakers approved more than 20 bills.

That includes the so-called parents Bill of rights, which opponents say is a don't say gay bill.

It requires parental notification on sexuality content in schools and on changes in a child's physical and mental health, including around gender identity issues.

That bill also includes the provision requiring districts to set policies for students to leave school during the day for religious instruction, known as the Life Wise Amendment.

Lawmakers also passed a measure to expand school policies on expelling students, a bill that allows the Attorney General to review the titles of proposed ballot issues, legislation to make sextortion or threats to text sexual images a crime.

But there was also bipartisan approval of a public works program that allows the state of Ohio to issue bonds for local infrastructure projects, such as roads and bridges.

It's a renewal of the public works program that expires in July, with an increase from $2 billion to a $2.5 billion in bonding authority over ten years.

It must be approved by voters as a constitutional amendment and had to pass now because the deadline for the May ballot is in January.

But there was no pay raise for elected officials, including those in the next General Assembly.

One person who won't be in that next session is Michael Schindler, who will be home for the start of the day for the first time in more than two decades.

Scandal has been in the House and Senate and decided last year not to seek reelection to the House.

For nearly all his time here, he's been in the minority and brought a progressive voice to budgets.

Lame duck and other regular events, and has spoken out and proposed bills dealing with the environment, health care, children and families, especially those with lower incomes, and on anti-discrimination and LGBTQ issues.

And he's passionate about those.

He was so infuriated at the addition of a ban on trans athletes and girls sports to a popular name, image and likeness bill in the House in 2021 that he shouted and banged on his desk.

And outrage!

Scandal was open about a major health crisis in late 2023, when he ended up having to have open heart surgery.

I spoke with Representative Michael Scandal before lame duck ended last week.

So you were in the house for four terms and in the Senate for two terms.

And back in the House since 2019.

You announced your retirement from the House last December after the filing deadline.

Around the same time Representative Mary Light Body did.

She resigned in January and was replaced by Representative Burl Brown.

Pedro Antonio, you chose to continue on and end your term.

Why did you choose to do that and why did you not want to run for reelection?

I wasn't sure at that point in time if I could make it through the term.

And, I had some health issues and just, decided to, see if I could manage that health, situation till the end of the term.

And there was no thought about who was going to succeed you or anything.

So when I decided to pull out, somebody had circulated petitions because there was the redistricting issue going on.

They had circulated petitions just as a standby, and they decided to file.

And when they filed, it was a very rapid thought process.

It gave me the opportunity to say, based upon health issues that I had, this is the time to to call it quits, in your long goodbye and in your 22 years here at the state House, you've been vocal on some issues, such as public transit, including passenger rail, environmental concerns, funding for children's services, tax cuts for lower income Ohioans, LGBTQ issues, including the anti-discrimination bill known as the Fairness Act.

Also, the law that banned gender transition treatment for minors.

You are opposed to that.

You've also called for the repeal of House Bill six, the nuclear power plant bailout.

Basically, a lot of core Democratic positions.

How frustrating is that when you are in the super majority, and have you gotten any backlash over those positions?

We were in the super minority.

I'm sorry, the super minority.

Let's try that again.

Yes.

Sorry and frustrating in the super minority or better in the super majority.

So you how frustrating is that in the super minority?

And has that resulted in any backlash?

No backlash, but I spoke for the the citizens and residents of my districts.

In my legislative districts, the boundaries have changed over the years because of redistricting and also being in the Senate.

And some folks, said that, I was more progressive than my district, but actually, when you saw the vote, they actually were probably more progressive than me.

And, but it was important to have that voice down here in Columbus.

And I, as you are well aware of, I spoke up on the floor or in committee, on those various topics and expressed the viewpoints, that, the citizens of my district generally supported not everybody, but the vast majority.

You led the lawsuit against the creation of jobs Ohio by Republican former Governor John Kasich, along with Progress Ohio and former Representative Dennis Murray.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that you did not have standing to sue.

We've now had a decade since that lawsuit was filed in jobs Ohio.

How we've seen it perform.

Are you still opposed to it, or are you still concerned about it?

I am concerned about this and, understand that in the mid 1800s, they had a similar situation with the development of the canals and the money and the, the, the program that was, supporting the development of canals in the state of Ohio.

And after several decades in place, the Supreme Court held that that, whole operation was unconstitutional.

Now, the problem is, is nobody withstanding has come forward.

And that's what, Justice Phifer and I think, justice O'Neill said, if Shindo in progress, Ohio and and Representative Murray didn't have standing.

Who does?

There are folks that would have standing.

It would be like a municipality that was denied a project, for example, that had gone through jobs Ohio would have standing.

But so far, nobody has come forward to challenge it.

There may be a day.

There may be a time that'll be challenged.

And, some of the justices raised real constitutional issues with the establishment of jobs.

Ohio.

What jobs Ohio has done since then.

Are you concerned about anything that's happened in that decade since this lawsuit was filed?

There's no real transparency with jobs, Ohio, and that's the problem.

They're not subject to the records laws.

They're not subject to open meetings, laws.

They've had lavish, offices, spent on revenue generated, that was once state revenue.

I have a lot of concerns now.

Some of the, investments.

Yes, I would support, but I think that should have gone through Department of Development, so on and so forth.

But Jobs Ohio was created to avoid that transparency because, the proponents of jobs Ohio argued that it was that transparency that placed Ohio at a disadvantage.

And, if we had, secrecy in, getting, tracking and making proposals to potential develop development, we would be able to have, a better position in, in getting, those developments here in Ohio.

You've taken some positions that are controversial.

You voted against a temporary budget in 2009 under Democratic Governor Ted Strickland.

You advocated against the film tax credit.

In 2012.

You opposed 2022 amendment on the ballot that said that only citizens can vote.

Basically strengthening the language.

It's already in the Constitution about non-citizens voting.

Anything you regret or wish you could take back or wish you hadn't taken that stand on.

There's always, some votes that you look back.

I can't think of anything specific, but, the noncitizen voting, my opposition to that was primarily because of the the phraseology that would, right now, somebody that 17 but would turn 18 by the general election could vote in a primary that's at risk under that new constitutional language.

And I have deep concerns about that.

And it's still at risk someday somebody may say, oh, that, individual doesn't have a right to vote in that primary.

That may come up sometime.

The, and the vote you mentioned, I'm pretty, still solid, behind like the film tax credit.

The film tax credit.

Do the the the production of films in Ohio, spur the economy?

Yes, it does, but, there have been, legitimate studies out there that shows something like for every tax dollar, we provide for the film tax credit, we are only getting $0.75 back.

What investment is that?

Here in Ohio, when you don't get the revenue back, for the dollar you spent on the other side of that, what vote or bill have you been proudest of?

There's, a number of, amendments that I brought forward or, helped with negotiations.

The Great Lakes Compact, there was a, and this was under Speaker John Houston at the time and actually, speaker former Speaker Houston and I just spoke a little bit about this, but, there was a, roadblock within the Republican caucus, because, Representative Tim Grindle wanted another provision dealing with protection of property rights along Lake Erie shoreline.

And, I was help I helped to negotiate the compromise and that that allowed the Great Lakes Compact and that deals with the withdrawals of water from Lake Erie so that only, the withdrawals within the great in the basin can occur and not, having that water shipped to Arizona.

So we were able to strike that compromise to get that, and that was a proud, vote and work that I did.

The other one is expanding, working with a group of legislators during one of the budgets to expand the children's health insurance program in the state of Ohio.

These are kids that really need the health insurance because of medical conditions.

And, we actually expanded that to include about another 200,000 children.

Are there any issues that remain unresolved now as you're leaving that you hope are dealt with and resolved at some point?

There are a number of issues.

For example, one of them is, the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard or efforts to, encourage the development of renewable energy in Ohio.

I actually brought forward the first, standalone legislation in the state of Ohio that called for renewable energy portfolio standard after a couple sessions that was actually adopted, in 2007, that has been repealed.

Would like to see that or something else put in place to, develop, encourage the development of renewable energy in the state of Ohio, like other states are doing.

We are falling behind many states in that area.

The other, major piece of legislation is the Ohio Fairness Act, the Ohio Fairness Act.

This session, amounted to the 11th consecutive session in which the Fairness Act had been introduced.

Representative Dan Stewart and I brought it forward 22 years ago, for the first time in the state of Ohio.

And I brought it forward ever, session since.

And we got it voted out of the House of Representatives.

One time it stalled in the Senate, but we've not been able to pass it in the state of Ohio, despite the fact that, more than 21 states across the nation have adopted a version of the Ohio Fairness Act, and you've gotten Republicans support for that.

The Chamber of Commerce even supported that.

At one point.

Are you worried that with the current political environment that it's going to once again stall, if it comes forward again?

We have seen that.

And to explain the Ohio Fairness Act is to provide the nondiscrimination protections, for the LGBTQ plus community.

And, what I've seen is waves.

Sometimes you'd get a group of Republicans supporting it, and then that, support dissipates a little bit, but then it comes back and hopefully there's, there's some time that we had the momentum, to get it over the threshold.

As you mentioned, you've been here for 22 years.

This legislature, this particular session has been called the most unproductive in a half a century.

Is that fair?

Do you agree with that?

I think it has been unproductive.

I was just engaged in a conversation with a, Republican colleague, just earlier today, talking about how, years ago, we used to have a session in September, a, session in October of the election year.

And this year we did not have, those sessions.

And that went, to be unproductive.

When you have a week of session, you usually have a week of committees, and that did not occur.

So we were basically off from when we took a break in June all the way through, after the election.

And I know there were some people who would say, that's a good thing, that that certain pieces of legislation didn't get through.

Do you think that's a good thing?

It's not a good thing because you do not spend the time, to, research and understand the legislation.

And because of that, you have these situations that we're experiencing now with lame duck where bills are rolled into other bills.

You don't get to read them.

There's all this new language, and you don't know what you're voting on.

And it results in that sausage making that everybody talks about and really poor, legislating.

We in the media talk a lot about controversial bills and areas where Republicans and Democrats disagree.

But many of the House bills that passed and a lot of the Senate bills that passed did pass with unanimous support.

There were some close votes in some areas.

But, as we're doing this interview during lame duck, you did have a lot of agreement on some of the bills that passed in the two year session.

Is bipartisanship dead or is there area are there areas where Democrats and Republicans can agree?

Yes.

You had my colleague, Senator, Bill cites on and Bill and I although we're from different parties, we're both attorneys and we have sparred on many issues.

There are a lot of times that we have agreed on legislation or concepts or ideas, and that occurs actually most legislation in in a General Assembly, something like 80, 85% of legislation passes, nearly with near unanimous support, bipartisan support.

You only have that ten, 15, possibly 20% that has, the real dispute and the the arguments and, the divisive social issues.

What do you think is the way to go beyond that?

I don't think you're going to get that because, there's always going to be legislators that want to bring forward those divisive political issues, and you're going to have, those those fights.

In the 22 years I have seen that, I think I've seen a growth in that, over the years.

And I'm certain you have over the years that you've been doing what you've been doing and, but it also existed 100 years ago.

And you're not going to get away from that.

And finally, what will you do now that you are leaving the state House?

You were a finalist for a seat on the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio last year.

There's an opening right now.

Are you going to seek that or is there something else you're going to do?

I saw that there is an opening right now on, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

I, I also, would like to maybe do some advocacy around, the protection of the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Erie.

I have worked on many issues to protect, Lake Erie from the plastic pollution to the invasive species.

To the, the, nutrients being released into the lake.

And maybe we can do some work around that, but maybe some advocacy around the environment.

Are you going to try to seek that public Utilities Commission chair?

Commissioner position.

I'm giving it some thought.

I also spoke with longtime Republican lawmaker Bill Seitz is also leaving the legislature this year.

You can see my conversation with representative sites in our archives at State News.

Morgue bots have become a tool for state government, an effort to streamline government and take out unnecessary words and regulations.

Got an assist from artificial intelligence under the supervision of Lieutenant Governor John Houston.

My Statehouse News Bureau colleague, Sarah Donaldson sat down with you state a few weeks ago to talk to him about AI in state government, starting with a project that began under Governor John Kasich that Houston took over when he became lieutenant governor.

What's called the common Sense Initiative.

Yeah, well, the Common Sense Initiative is established in law, and it's designed to review all the rules that are made, by the, administration in response to new laws that are passed.

And we're supposed to make sure that they're business friendly.

And so that's the process we go through.

But I said I wanted to take it a step further and play offense, go through the code and find things that really are outdated, don't need to be there, need to be modernized.

And so we started using this AI tool called Ray explorer.

Or we go through the entire administrative code to identify areas that need to be just they're outdated.

They have outdated modes of communication.

You have to do in-person things all of that.

And we just said, let's, let's, let's fix it.

And so we've so far, using this AA tool eliminated 2.2 million words out of the administrative code 900 different, regulations.

We'll remove some of them applying to agencies that don't even exist in law anymore.

Some of them, like the building code, which are much more expansive, and others just helping to make sure that we do things in person or we don't have to do things in person.

We don't have to do things with paper.

We can do them digitally.

All of those things have added up to just some, real progress in the state of Ohio.

When did I become part of the conversation with CSI?

I mean, how did you guys come to the conclusion that, hey, maybe I could do this job?

So I'm a tech guy.

So at Innovate Ohio, we focus on how we can use technology to improve customer service.

That's what what we did at the BMV basically said, hey, you don't have to come to a BMV anymore.

You can do most of that online.

Or if you do come to the BMV, you can check in early.

Using these digital tools will even before ChatGPT came out and we all got obsessed with this.

These AI tools, we were talking about how we could use some of those technologies to streamline regulations because think about it.

The the regulatory code, I think is something like 15 million words.

No one person can read through that.

Nobody can possibly digest all of this, but an AI tool can do it in minutes.

And then we take those, the take the findings that we get from the explorer, and then we send them back to the agencies and we say, does this make sense that we eliminate these things?

If they give us the thumbs up, then we go through that process.

We're on the path to eliminating 5 million words.

We we need the legislators approval with some of this stuff.

But think about that.

We could eliminate one third of the entire regulatory code using this AI tool.

What sort of timeline is that on that you could get to that number that you want to be at.

We want to be there by the time we do the next budget.

Could you see it being a repetitive process moving forward?

Like every so often you go back?

I think it's a continuous process.

I think we we will always be using tools like this, you know, all while I have the opportunity to do this as lieutenant governor and being in charge of the CSC project, we hope by the time we're done with it that we're caught up, that we've have this 200 years of rules and regulations that we've eliminated and eliminated as many as we can.

And then, we'll hand it over to whoever.

Whoever's going to be doing this in the future is look, because we'll get better, because AI technologies will get better.

They we will learn how to use them better as, public officials.

So it's it's exciting about how we can do this across the whole landscape of government to try to eliminate things that just are not necessary to make it easier for people to understand you.

Shouldn't governments become so big?

Regulations have become so expansive.

Laws approach so many things and they're so complicated.

Let's simplify it so that you don't need to hire an attorney to do the simplest things in life, that it's that it's clear and understandable so that the average person could either understand it, or they can use their AI tool to better understand how to comply with the laws.

It's entirely too large and to complicated.

We're trying to take a crack at making it more manageable.

You know, you kind of characterized yourself as a tech guy.

And, Ohio has really been prioritizing technology in a lot of different ways, whether it's tech infrastructure, emerging tech, like using AI.

I think Intel is central to that.

So shifting gears a little bit, I mean, what does it mean for Ohio to finally see this chips funding being disbursed to Intel?

Yeah.

So we've been waiting for over two years to get the Chips act funding to Intel so that they can pick up the pace of their project.

They have been cash starved, essentially, which means that they couldn't build as fast as they had intended to.

And now with the $7.9 billion, 1.5 billion of it targeted for Ohio and will help them pick up the pace for building the first fab that they have under construction out in the New Albany area.

And, this is great for Ohio as we continue to push the strategy of making Ohio a high tech manufacturing state, to building chips in America rather than in Asia, and to make Ohio the Silicon heartland big step for us.

You said Intel's kind of been cash starved, but of course, the state has disbursed grants as well.

I mean, how does the state hold Intel accountable over these next couple of years?

Yeah, they they have they have deliverables.

They, they can they, they must create the jobs and, and do the, the, build the fabs, create the jobs that are promised or, or we can get the money back Looking at the next 5 to 10 years, I mean, what sorts of tech projects like Intel would you like to see attracted to Ohio?

You've also seen, of course, a lot of data centers in Ohio.

But what would the landscape, what would the ideal you think about this with I, I requires data centers.

Ohio is the third largest data center state in the country.

We're we're probably going to see over the course of a decade, $100 billion of capital investment in Ohio on data centers, which is going to require, tens of billions of dollars in investment in energy transmission and generation, which is also, capital expenditure that will help lift up the Ohio economy.

And create jobs.

So that is a huge part of that tech future for us.

Chips are a big part of it.

And then it's the things that you can leverage with that.

I think that that you're going to see defense tech, be something that you're, you know, with drones, as we're seeing some of that happen and happening in the Dayton area, I think that you're going to see, some major wins in manufacturing in that sector coming soon.

Houston has long expressed a desire to run for governor in 2026, but he's also near the top of many political observers short list of likely candidates who governor Mike DeWine will choose among to replace U.S.

Senator JD Vance when Vance resigns to become vice president under Donald Trump on January 20th.

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.org or find us online by searching State of Ohio Show.

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

Look for it every Monday morning.

Wherever you get your podcasts.

Happy New Year 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.