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I a proposal sponsors say could restart executions in Ohio, get support and generate surprise.

The group tasked with reviewing school bus safety puts out its ideas and a different view of the Republican backed plan to eliminate one of the state's main sources of revenue, the personal income tax.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of ohio.

I'm karen Kasler.

Ohio's last execution was in July 2018, six months before Governor Mike DeWine took office.

Some of his fellow Republican lawmakers say they want to kick start the stalled capital punishment system by adding nitrogen gas as a second option for Ohio to use in carrying out executions.

My statehouse news bureau colleague, Sarah Donaldson, is here with more.

House Bill 392 Introduction on Tuesday came just days after Alabama, for the first time in U.S. history, administered nitrogen via a gas mask to execute 58 year old Kenneth Smith.

I am aware of the moral weight of this debate, but this is the law of the land.

Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican on Tuesday, called the nearly six year standstill in executions an abdication of the state.

House Bill 392 introduced this week by Republican Representatives Brian Stuart and Phil Plummer, would still allow for lethal injections, giving inmates the choice between the two, but saying if drugs aren't available, nitrogen gas will be used.

It would also restore previous confidentiality protections for pharmaceutical companies that provide drugs to be used in executions.

As of now, nitrogen hypoxia is on the books as a proper method for execution.

In only three states Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

It's essentially asphyxiation with the nitrogen gas mask.

Joe says he wants HB 392 to kick off the bigger conversation.

The arguments are going to be made for the justice of this current system.

The arguments are going to be made for the righteousness of this ultimate penalty, for the worst of the worst.

And we're going to have a debate that's long overdue.

And it's already renewed some debate in Columbus over how and if to carry out executions in Ohio.

Lou Tobin, the executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, says Ohio needs to weigh fairness of both those convicted of crimes in their victims.

We're not going to avoid causing someone, somebody who's being executed some level of distress, but the question is whether it amounts to a violation of the eighth Amendment and whether it amounts to torture and cruel and unusual punishment.

And I don't think anything that we saw in Alabama indicated that.

His association has been calling to add nitrogen gas as a secondary method for years.

Last year, the state outlawed putting down pets by suffocating them with gas, barring all non anesthetic inhalants.

All but a handful of lawmakers backed that bill when it was moving through the legislature in 2022.

Some Democrats, like Senate Minority Leader Nikki Antonio, say they think it's a double standard in the current context.

Antonio is a longtime opponent of the death penalty.

She called HB 392 barbaric.

We, as the legislature said that is cruel and inhuman to do to an animal.

And yet we have folks that are going to suggest that we do this to people on death row.

But Plummer voted for the animal cruelty bill last legislative session and says it's not a fair line to draw.

As apples and oranges when you're comparing dogs.

Plummer says he believes the focus is too often on death row inmates, not their victims.

I get tired of these liberals saying, this person suffered with twitched.

Well, I mean, the establishment 39 times and kill them.

Where is the compassion for that person?

But the death penalty has created concern among some who were closely involved in carrying it out.

That includes Republican former Governor Bob Taft, with 24 executions during his eight years, and Democratic former Governor Ted Strickland with 17 executions in his four years.

Gary Moore, the director of the state prisons Department under Republican former Governor John Kasich, oversaw 15 execute tions.

Moore says he's not sure nitrogen gas is a proven method to peacefully end a condemned inmate's life.

Executions have had a big impact on me and continue to.

And I just believe that if the law continues with executions, the method should be peaceful.

But I'm not convinced the way a person ends life with nitrogen meets my belief that people shouldn't struggle and staff that are responsible for executions shouldn't be responsible for watching an administration of someone that is struggling to end life.

So far, 11 other Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors of the nitrogen gas executions bill.

Sara Donaldson, Statehouse News Bureau.

After an 11 year old elementary school student died in a school bus crash near Springfield last August, a statewide task force was put together to look into school bus safety.

That group, assembled in the wake of Aiden Clark's death, has released a list of 17 recommendations.

But mandating seatbelts on school busses is not among them.

Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Andy Wilson says restraints were at the heart of most of the task force's conversations.

He says they have lifesaving value, but says the decision should remain with local schools.

We became convinced that a statewide mandate of seatbelts on busses is not the most effective use of government resources.

A survey of Ohio bus drivers found that 81% were against the idea of adding seatbelts to their vehicles.

Wilson heard that same sentiment from the driver involved in the Clark County crash.

The bus driver reached out to actually one of my family members and asked them to pass me a message asking not to put seatbelts on busses.

Because.

The thought of having a car get out of a bus that was burning was too much for for that driver to bear.

The task force is recommending a state funded needs based grant program for schools to add safety features to their busses.

It also recommends more professional training for school bus drivers and enhanced penalties for violating bus related traffic laws.

A year and a half after the computer chip maker Intel, broke ground in Lincoln County on what it said could eventually be its largest manufacturing operation in the world.

The company is now saying it won't meet what it called an aggressive completion date of being online by 2025.

The state of Ohio has already dispersed hundreds of millions of dollars in on shoring grants to the tech giant for its central Ohio project.

A spokesperson for Governor Mike DeWine says delays in projects the size and scale are not abnormal.

The state would only claw back incentives, he says, if Intel pulled the plug altogether.

The tech giant has also been counting on another stream of funding Chips and Science Act money from the federal government.

In November, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and other members of Congress from Ohio sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce asking that it review Intel's application without undue delay.

A spokesperson for Intel says it's, quote, fully committed to the project and are continuing to make progress.

And a long time state lawmaker and a giant in Ohio politics has died.

Republican Stanley ARONOFF was known for his dedication to Cincinnati and the eight year $113 million renovation of the statehouse in the late nineties.

ARONOFF served in both the Ohio House and Senate, finishing his 36 year legislative career in 1996 as Senate president that year.

ARONOFF also pleaded no contest a misdemeanor, charges of filing inaccurate disclosures of speaking fees in a pancaking scandal that also ensnared Democratic former House Speaker Vern Rife and nine others.

While in the legislature, ARONOFF sponsored the bill to move the primary to the third Tuesday in March and presidential election years and the bill that created the Ohio Arts Council.

ARONOFF practiced law for 57 years and lives on in three buildings named for him, the Stanley J. ARONOFF, Center for the Arts in downtown Cincinnati, which he enlisted Democratic Governor Richard Celeste to help him plan and fund and buildings on the campus of the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State.

Stan ARONOFF was 91 years old.

After more than a decade of cutting the personal income tax.

Some Republican state lawmakers are proposing a bill that would phase it out completely, as well as what had been the state's chief business tax, the commercial activity tax.

Based on current budget numbers.

This would be a cut of around $13 billion.

Last week, I spoke with one of the joint sponsors of the House version of that bill.

Freshman Republican Representative Adam MATTHEWS.

This week, another view of that idea from tax policy researcher Bailey Williams at the nonprofit left leaning think tank Policy Matters Ohio.

What should be the concerns about phasing out Ohio's state income tax?

Well, there are a couple of major concerns that we have policy matters or are at the forefront of our concern lists as one.

What this is going to mean for the budget, the commercial activity tax and the state income tax, they collectively make up about $13 billion of tax revenue.

That's about 40 to 45% of all the revenue that the state gets in taxes.

Where where is it going to make that up?

We already have a property tax committee that is looking at potentially getting tax relief towards two more Ohioans.

So between the income tax and the sales tax, that those are not going to be ways that we look at increasing tax revenue.

We're looking at the sales tax.

One of our most regressive taxes that we have on the books.

Shifting the tax burden if we're doing away with the income tax and shifting it towards a sales tax, we're really placing more of the tax burden on a lower, lower earning Ohioans where the sales tax is going to eat up more of their annual income.

Whereas with the income tax, we're putting that tax burden more on wealthier families.

We're shifting again if we're doing away with it and putting in sales tax shifting, that lowers the tax burden towards lowest earning Ohioans.

The next biggest concern is, well, again, I'm sorry, it's the is the tax burden shift and what it means for the budget.

One of the claims is that that this is centered on is that each time the state has reduced the state income tax, the personal income tax from the peak in 1984 and the which was nine income tax brackets, I guess nine and a half percent.

There's been an increase of revenue each time because they said when you have more economic activity coming into the state or staying in the state, that raises the revenue.

Is that true?

Somewhat somewhat true.

But again, we have to look at where we're placing that tax burden.

Having most of our tax revenue coming in through that sales tax, which is the case now, most of our revenue does come in through the sales tax.

We're placing a big burden on our lowest earning Ohioans, allowing that the current sales tax of the state about five and 7.5.

5%.

We're eating into lower incomes, Ohioans salaries and incomes a lot quicker than we would if we had an income tax placed on wealthier Ohioans where lower earning Ohioans pay less.

So placing that burden, we're still getting revenue by placing that tax burden on lower earning Ohioans.

Is is kind of a there's better ways to get the tax revenue that we need to operate as a state.

In fact, you've described the states and the states tax system as upside down with low and middle income families paying a far larger share of their income toward taxes than wealthy Ohioans do.

Well, sponsors say that they don't want to hurt low income Ohioans.

People making just over $26,000 a year don't pay income tax right now.

And there's no tax on food.

There's no tax on baby items.

They don't want to cut Medicaid.

So could this work in a way that doesn't hurt low income Ohioans?

I haven't seen a way that this this legislation playing out would wouldn't hurt low income Ohioans for two ways.

Again, possibly shifting that lost revenue back, making up through the sales tax and then potentially looking at service cuts that come with lost revenue.

Again, we're cutting potentially 40 to 45% of our revenue, whereas Ohio has to have a balanced budget whenever each time we do want to every two years.

So where is the spending going to be cut from?

Assuming we don't make up 100% of the revenue that we're losing, we're cutting Medicaid.

They say they don't want to cut Medicaid.

We're looking at environmental protections.

Are we looking at K through 12 education?

We have a blooming or a ballooning.

Line item expenditure through our voucher voucher program that is taking up a vast, vastly greater amount of resources than expected.

So it expects spending.

Spending cuts if we're losing this income tax revenue.

Especially since the expectation when I ask Representative MATTHEWS on the show last week about an increase in another another tax, an increase in the sales tax, a new tax somewhere, that's not part of the plan.

So it would it would stand to reason that there you have to make it up somewhere.

Exactly right.

Our balanced budget that is required in our Constitution.

We we can't rely on deficit spending that the federal government does at times.

So we're really looking at budget cuts as a way to balance the budget for cutting, again, 40 to 45% of our state tax revenue.

So when critics look at this and they point to Kansas, for instance, as a state that dramatically cut its income taxes in 2012 and blew such a hole in the state budget that Republican lawmakers came back and raised taxes and even overrode a veto from Governor Sam Brownback.

So the sponsors say don't look at that necessarily.

They think North Carolina is a better model for what Ohio could do.

Is there a comparison here?

Is is the Kansas model a predictor of what could happen in Ohio or is North Carolina is it working there?

Well, I more familiar with the Kansas case model as opposed to North Carolina, where I do know that North Carolina has been cutting their income tax as well.

However, cutting our income tax and shifting the tax burden again to lower income Ohioans through the sales tax, which is most likely what is going to have to happen is not a tax system that we should have to have to operate and fund the services that we need on the state level.

Kansas cut their income tax dramatically.

They cut business income dramatically.

Sponsors of this legislation say that they get it.

We're going to get it right because it's more protracted.

It's done over a longer period of time.

But the state has been cutting income tax, the income tax for the better part of two decades.

And we haven't seen a great major economic boom that is said to be coming with these tax cuts.

So I be concerned.

Even though the cuts are more protracted, they play out over a long period of time.

We're still not seeing economic activity that is said to be coming from these tax cuts.

And that's a Republican talking point going back a ways that if you cut taxes, there will be more economic activity and kind of trickle down economics.

Has has that worked out?

Not from the way that we've seen it in the last two decades.

As I said, when Ohio's really started to cut our income tax in 2005 are a lot of economic factors show we're still trailing behind the United States averages in quite a number of factors.

So job creation for one is looming, growing by about 4%.

Since 2005, the United States has seen job growth in that same time period, four times the rate at 16%.

Household income has only grown about 6% in these in the state since 2005, whereas the United States has doubled about 12%.

We're not really seeing what is supposed to happen from these tax cuts.

So let's instead reverse that trend.

We'll start investing back in our communities, investing the spending that the state is taking in education and health care environment to make the state a place where people want to live and can invest themselves in their and their families.

Quite often, the supporters of this idea will point to Florida and Texas as states where they don't have income tax and things are going pretty well.

Florida and Texas have tourism and energy as big resources.

And the suggestion from Representative MATTHEWS last week was that Ohio could do better on tourism.

And we have this huge opportunity with energy in the state.

Is there enough potentially to plug that hole?

Was there enough energy options here that you see that that could bring that back?

I don't see energy on the same level as Texas with their oil boom and their solar production.

We have natural gas as a solid resource here, but our separate taxes rates are very low.

Last time we tried to raise them in the mid 20 tens, which was a Governor Kasich idea again to offset cuts in the income tax, the natural gas lobby pushed back on that idea.

Very influential here.

Love to see it increase in the severance tax, but production or tourism.

I would love to get in to compare and compete against Florida but nice weather many beaches Disney World that's pretty hard to compete against.

And let's not forget that in those states and Texas and Florida in particular, without the income tax, very high reliance on the sales tax, it's very regressive.

And in those states, you're having the lowest income, lowest earning residents of those states paying an effective tax rate, tax rate that's in the double digits, whereas the wealthiest earners are paying around 2% or less.

So it really does hit low income earners a lot more seriously.

I mean, certainly the point could be made that wealthier people pay more in taxes.

But I think the point that has been made here is that lower income people pay more as a percentage of their overall income.

Right.

The wealthy can pay an absolute number that is greater than than lower in lower earning individuals.

But again, looking at a share of income, looking especially when you're considering the sales tax about where low income earners are paying a great amount of their income towards oftentimes in the double digits, 10% or higher of their income is going towards the sales tax.

So this idea that low income earners don't pay taxes is is a myth.

And they really do pay a great share of their income in.

Taxes and policy matters.

Ohio's research over the decade or so since these income tax cuts have been coming down, is that the wealthy have benefited.

Yes.

And that's the main take away from these tax cuts over these last, again, two decades in the state.

The wealthiest earning Ohioans, those who make about the top 1% who make about 1 million, one and a half million dollars have seen a tax cut of about $50,000 in total since 2005.

They are the ones who are benefiting from this, not the lowest earning Ohioans here.

One of the questions that I think a lot of people are wondering about is if indeed these cuts come, will local communities have to bear the brunt of it?

Will they get the big cuts?

Is this potentially a way to, as you mentioned at the top of the interview, shifting the taxes down to local communities so state lawmakers can take credit for cutting taxes while local communities have to raise them.

That's something we'll will have to look at.

The local government revenue fund.

A local government fund would take a great hit and the state's ability to provide additional resources would take a hit from that lost revenue.

So again, states would have to or localities would have to make up a larger share of the services without a larger increase in tax revenue or share of that tax revenue coming back towards them to make their jobs a bit easier.

So the folks who are talking about this are talking about how Ohio has lost members of Congress.

People have Ohio gain population, but not nearly enough to keep up with other states that gained population in larger numbers.

So what can be done to help Ohio get back on an upward track?

They say this is what can be done.

What are the options?

Well, we've been losing, like, as you said, losing population for quite a while.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that that's been done over this period where we've been cutting taxes in that time period.

We're cutting services.

We have one of the lowest or worst rates of maternal mortality in the states.

So really, we should look at ways to make public services more attractive and available for people to entice them to, one, want to live here and raise a family here and bring other people in here from across the country.

So looking at ways to improve those maternal mortality rates, better funding for education, to improve our schools as an option, as a competitive option, to have people come in and want to raise a family here.

And again, lowering that tax burden for middle and working income, working class families.

So it's possible for them to have a solid life, a good foundation here to raise their families.

It's a hard sell for against the argument of we're going to put more taxes, more money back in your pockets so you can spend the tax money better than the government can.

Well, really, I mean, it's it's putting a slight bit of of money back into middle class Ohioans.

But again, they're probably paying that right back if if there's a sales tax increase.

So putting money back into their pockets is kind of a misnomer when they have to offset that with additional tax revenue.

Tax spending in other areas or losses in services.

So I guess you're going to be watching this for what could potentially happen.

Where do you think this is going?

We'll see if there is any life of this in this current legislature legislative session.

Personally, my biggest concern is this legislation being a starting point for the budget discussions next year.

It's it's probably in a lot of lawmakers minds to further cut the income tax that we've done almost since every budget cycle since five.

So really making sure that this proposal doesn't go through this legislative cycle and ensuring that it doesn't make its way into the budget next year.

And of course, you mentioned that there could be property tax reforms coming along here.

That just complicates the situation even potentially more.

It really does.

While the state isn't the main collector of that property tax revenue, it's mostly counties and other localities that many across the state are looking for.

Looking towards the legislature for a potential fix towards an increase in property evaluations that have increased assessments and property tax bills for certain individuals.

So there's probably going to be some form of property tax relief coming out of the legislature this year, which, as you said, it complicates the the calculus sort of when we're trying to rely on property tax, sales tax and income tax, making sure we try to strike a healthy balance between all three.

And of course, schools are a big part of the property tax issue.

And in trying to figure out how to make sure that schools are appropriately funded.

Right.

And make sure they're held harmless to whatever tax revenue losses that they face from any type of property tax relief.

As such, it's imperative that the schools don't lose any type of funding for it to ensure that the students are getting the quality education that they deserve.

Is there a concern about the cut in the commercial activity tax, where the last budget took it basically to 90% of Ohio businesses don't pay VAT, which used to be the state's main business tax.

Right, exactly.

So my main concern with this cut, as they've been cutting off again for the last two decades is how is this cut supposed to stimulate small business growth?

They're already excluding, I think, believe, up to $3 million in business income through the cat tax.

How is that excluding that amount of income, stimulating small business growth, which is one of the main drivers of economic activity, one of the main job creators?

I don't think this tax eliminating it or eroding it any further is doing much for the small businesses.

It's just a handout for wealthier companies.

There is already a tax loophole, so to speak, which is what I think you folks have referred to it.

The first $250,000 of income is tax free for those small businesses.

Exactly.

Yes.

So the LLC loophole that starts at 150,000 from this recent budget bill starting this year, that number jumps to 3 million.

And next it jumps up all the way up to 6 million.

I don't know very many small, small businesses that have $6 million in business income a year.

You can watch my interview with Representative Adam MATTHEWS in our archives.

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 check out our Web site at State News dot org or find us online by searching the state of Ohio show.

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 dot com.

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 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.