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Ohio hits a milestone in covid-19 deaths as more people look for vaccines that are getting hard to find.

And the new two year state budget is out with no new taxes, but lots of new spending all this weekend in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio, I'm Karen Kasler more than ten thousand Ohioans have been confirmed to have died of the disease caused by coronavirus since March 20th, when the first covid-19 death was recorded in Ohio.

Half of those confirmed COVA deaths when the last three months, December was the deadliest month so far, with two thousand one hundred and three confirmed deaths.

Nearly a million Ohioans have gotten at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine so far.

That now includes Governor Mike DeWine was seventy four and first lady friend of mine who's 73.

They got their shots and their home county, Greene County, this week, the first week they were age eligible.

But while older people have been prioritized because the impact of covid on that population, many seniors in Ohio say they are having a hard time scheduling a shot.

State House correspondent Jo Ingles reports.

Ohioans 70 years and older are now getting covid vaccines, some at drivethrough clinics like this one in Columbus.

Some are getting the shots at smaller clinics.

And this week, some K through 12 teachers like these in Reynoldsburg city schools began getting shots.

I think it's just about doing your part, doing your part for your students, for your community, for the betterment of the learning environment and essentially for everyone, whether that's personal or professional.

So it's just it's about doing your part right now.

Starting next week, Ohioans who are 65 and older will be eligible.

Teachers will continue to get vaccines through this month as district's pledge to return to in-person or hybrid learning by March 1st.

Many nursing home residents and about half of the workers in those facilities were vaccinated last month, along with frontline medical workers, EMTs and some firefighters.

There are more than two point two million Ohioans and the one B category, the group that is eligible for vaccinations right now.

But the number of vaccines available is far short of the number of people eligible.

Next week, Ohio will get one hundred seventy eight thousand doses of the vaccines and those will be divided with about 78000 going to school employees and the remaining 100000 going to the rest of the one B group.

There's no central statewide scheduling point.

Some counties have multiple providers, such as health departments and pharmacies, but some only have a few, and they're not located throughout the county.

Those qualified for the vaccine schedule with those providers.

Some are finding no appointments are available or that they have to drive miles and hours away to get their shots.

Many seniors and their advocates have found the process confusing, and they're wondering why the state is doing things this way.

Well, Joe, some some say is start from the beginning.

Some states have decided to do, you know, a few big sites.

We didn't think that was a good idea.

It might have been the most efficient in some respects, but it didn't put a provider in every community, which is what we have done now.

What that means is, of course, that people are scrambling.

There's a scarcity of this.

And so we looked at early on, we looked at is was there anything on the market that we could buy a central kind of scheduling that would go in and understand?

There's no uniformity here, so we've got a pharmacy here at a pharmacy there, we've got hospital there, they all got they all have their own scheduling.

So what we're in the process of having developed and developing, and we're not ready to roll it out yet, but we hope in the next several weeks to be able to do this is to have a central scheduling place where people can go on line and then put in their zip code or put in their county.

It will come up places where you can sign up and then it will take you directly in into those locations.

So that will be a lot easier now.

Joe, it doesn't solve all the problems it solves.

It makes it easier to navigate for those who can use a computer and those who have a computer and those who are tech savvy at least enough to to do that.

So we think it will be an improvement.

But we we know that we also have to reach people who can't navigate that.

Starting next week, DeWine says clinics will be set up and senior housing centers to reach many seniors.

At the same time, DeWine is trying to reach people of color by enlisting federally qualified health clinics located in areas with high racial minority populations.

He's created a minority health advisory group to help with vaccine outreach to underserved communities, including rural Ohio.

And later this month, a task force he's appointed will hold virtual town halls with community partners throughout the state.

Additionally, we have started a media efforts, including television advertisement that are on the air now with more to come.

And radio spots concentrated on minority radio stations further will be sharing vaccine information in both African-American and Spanish language newspapers.

We've also developed an education toolkit for our community partners, such as leaders in the faith based community leaders and the NAACP, the Urban League.

So these trusted leaders can have accurate and up to date information on the safety and the effectiveness of the vaccine.

African-Americans make up about 13 percent of the state's population, but at this point, fewer than five percent of them have received a vaccine.

President Biden has said he wants to buy 200 million more vaccines so more Americans can be vaccinated by the end of the summer.

And DeWine says educating communities and providing more convenient shot clinics will ensure as many Ohioans as possible have access and opportunities to get the vaccine.

Jo Ingles Statehouse News Bureau.

This week, the state revealed it paid over three hundred and thirty two million dollars in fraudulent, federally funded unemployment benefits in just the last three months of twenty 20, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services reports.

Fifty eight thousand overpayments were identified in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, which is for people who don't qualify for traditional unemployment.

Another one hundred thousand claims in that program were deemed fraudulent and weren't paid.

That leaves one hundred and nineteen thousand claims among more than a quarter million that were flagged last summer as possibly fraudulent and still under review.

Seventy thousand people have reported to JFS that they are victims of identity fraud.

Speaking of money, the state's budget is out detailing how Governor Mike DeWine proposes to spend more than one hundred and seventy one billion dollars over the next two years, starting in July.

The pandemic is a key player in that, having an effect on revenue that was worse than even the lowest point of the Great Recession, which caused former Governor Ted Strickland to drain the rainy day fund and had former Governor John Kasich claiming the state was in a multi-billion dollar budget hole when he took office beyond spending priorities.

The budget also includes policies such as giving the Ohio Department of Health more power to shut down nursing homes deemed unsafe at an includes elements of Darwin's gun regulations package proposed after the Dayton mass shootings, which got nowhere in the last session of the legislature.

It also includes a billion dollars in one time spending on what DeWine is calling the Investing in Ohio initiative.

Most of that grants for pandemic hit businesses, but also 50 million dollars to, in his words, tell Ohio's story to keep people in Ohio and lure back those who've left.

My statehouse news bureau, call it Jo Ingles, asked him about that.

I wanted to ask you, you say you want to spend 50 million dollars on telling Ohio's story to attract people back, attract new businesses.

But do you know why many Ohioans left in the first place?

Some younger people are saying they've left Ohio due to leaders passing legislation that hurts working families, women, the LGBTQ community and people of color.

And they say they know it would be cheaper to live in Ohio, but they can't see themselves realizing their American dream here.

How do you deal with that?

Ohio is a welcoming place.

I don't care who you are, we want you to come to Ohio.

You know, it's a progressive state.

It's a state that has its fiscal house in order.

So you don't have to worry, you know, about taxes, taxes being raised.

But it's also a question of the quality of life.

I sat down with the wins Office of Budget and Management Director Kim Marnix for an interview.

This is the largest budget ever when it comes to total spending, is that right, Karen?

Given all of the additional federal resources that the state has received during the pandemic, that will continue into this budget as probably true.

Over two point two million Ohioans filed jobless claims during a pandemic, more than the total claims of the last five years.

Many small businesses closed.

There were three quarters of a billion dollars in budget cuts last year, education and Medicaid.

And yet this budget comes out with no tax increases and no major cuts.

How did this happen?

Why was the budget situation not so much worse?

Shorthair and we are pleased that the budget situation was not so much worse.

We are on the road to recovery.

We are seeing revenues returning.

And a big boost has been all of the federal stimulus, not just additional federal funding that has been provided to the states, but additional federal stimulus payments that have gone to individuals, including the stimulus checks and additional unemployment, the paycheck protection program for businesses.

All of that injected more money into the economy.

And we have really seen that in our state sales tax.

And at the same time, we've also noticed that people are switching their patterns of.

Consumer behavior to purchasing more goods, I mean, I think if we think about our own purchases over the last year, we probably purchased fewer haircuts which aren't taxed in Ohio and more home.

More equipment for our home offices and home recreational.

We did a lot of more a lot of new renovations in our homes to make them more work from home friendly.

And those things are subject to the state sales tax.

So we really have seen kind of this pandemic effect on our sales tax revenues.

That was unexpected.

You talk about federal money coming in, one of the biggest areas was two point four billion dollars that came for Medicaid, a continuation of a temporary increase in the federal Medicaid Assistance Program, or f map.

Without that money, I mean, that would have taken almost all the rainy day fund.

Just backfill that, right?

Absolutely.

Karen, had that not had those costs not been assisted with those additional federal funds?

Yes, we would have absolutely needed to access the rainy day fund to support the Medicaid program.

You said in your testimony to the House Finance Committee this week that your models show quite conservative revenue forecasts.

Once again, the Legislative Service Commission, which analyzes the budget for state lawmakers, is more optimistic than you are.

And I'm wondering, elizee is projecting almost a billion dollars more in tax revenue over the next biennium, along with ninety million dollars less in Medicaid expenditures.

So there's these two differences between the numbers and now lawmakers are going to have to try to decide which numbers they believe.

Well, first off, they're not all that different, Kiran, when you take a step back and look at the whole budget.

It's about one point seven percent difference over the biennium between the OBM projections and the LSC projections.

It is pretty normal for a four OBM to have a more conservative forecast because, as you know, we have to implement the budget and live within the budget for two years.

So it does not serve us well to be overly optimistic and to project revenues that won't absolutely be there.

So we will continue to update our projections as part of the process.

Is both OBM and LSC come back to the General Assembly during the June conference committee and update our projections and an important detail.

If you really dig into the numbers and the differences, most of the difference emanates from our projections of the rest of fiscal year.

Twenty one, which is the year we're currently in.

So the period through June 30th.

Our projection was made in December when, frankly, things were still quite bleak in Ohio, cases of covid were still increasing.

We were seeing hospitalizations dramatically on the rise.

And so just due to the timing of when we had to finalize our projections, I think that led to more conservatism as well.

But we're seeing things turn around.

We're having vaccine rollout across the state.

We're seeing some really positive things happening.

So I am hopeful that by the time we get to June that we will be able to come together, have more projections closer to what else these projections look like, or will at least come together and be more uniform.

So, you know, this is part of the process.

It's not an unexpected part of the process.

I think this is exactly where we should be.

And Obama is always conservative in our forecasting.

There's a billion dollars in one time spending for the Investing in Ohio initiative, and I'll just go through real quickly what that money is.

Two hundred million dollars in grants for bars and restaurants.

One hundred and fifty million dollars in grants for small business relief.

Applicants they had previously applied are qualified.

Fifty million dollars in grants for the lodging industry, 40 million dollars in grants for indoor entertainment venues, 20 million dollars in grants for new businesses, many of whom were not qualified for previous funding.

And then 50 million dollars to tell Ohio's story and to try to get people to stay here, bring people back and moved away.

That's not a huge amount and such a big budget.

But why do that now?

Well, Kiran, this is an interesting moment in history, we are seeing people telework more so you can live anywhere and work anywhere.

And we know that Ohio is a great place to live and work and raise a family.

And we have a lot of great story to tell.

And so as people are making decisions, looking for places that may be high quality of life, but lower cost, we we want them to know that Ohio is here and we want them to know what Ohio has to offer.

So we think this is a unique moment in history that we should take advantage of and that will really boost our economy, that we we need more people in Ohio.

We need to expand our workforce.

So so we want to take advantage of this this opportunity.

And I don't know if you can speak to this, but how do you come up with that story when there really seems to be a divide in the state over how people might see what Ohio's story is?

For instance, the governor called the state a progressive state in the press conference where he talked about this.

But a lot of people don't see Ohio that way.

How do you come up with what is the Ohio story?

And I'm not an advertising expert, I just I put the budget together, I you know, but I love Ohio.

I've lived in Ohio all my life.

I grew up in southeast Ohio.

It's a gorgeous part of the state.

And I. I love Ohio State University and I love all of our are great opportunities for outdoor recreation.

And it's a great place.

We have great schools, great place to raise children.

I have three.

And, you know, I think that we have a great story to tell.

We're in Ohio because we love it.

So we should share that with other people.

And this is different than tourism dollars because that will still continue the message of find it here and all that.

And that's different than what this this would be.

That's right.

Tourism is obviously still important.

It's it's a it's an important part of our our economy that will continue.

But we want people to not just come to Hocking Hills for a week and enjoy the beautiful scenery and outdoor recreation.

We want them to make Ohio home permanently.

Two years ago, there was a debate over raising the gas tax, which did happen.

The state raise the gas tax 10 and a half cents.

That wasn't as much as Governor DeWine had said that he wanted or was really needed.

He felt now people are driving even less because of the pandemic and revenues for gas tax aren't expected to recover right away.

So is Ohio in trouble in terms of the gas tax being needed to fund needed road construction projects?

So, Karen, this is another instance where federal funding will help us fill that gap.

You're absolutely correct that people are driving less because of the pandemic.

We're starting to see that turn around.

Our gas tax revenues were dramatically impacted at the very onset of the pandemic.

We're seeing them begin to recover.

We do not expect them to return to the pre pandemic levels until, you know, into the future, not in this upcoming biennium.

But the December relief package from Congress did include additional dollars for highway construction.

And we've included those in this budget.

There are no taxes in terms of increases in this budget, some fee hikes, including vehicle and title fee hikes.

Are there any tax breaks, though, that are being pulled back?

I'm thinking specifically of like the two hundred fifty thousand dollars small income, the small business income tax deduction, which actually cost the state about a billion dollars a year.

The House to tried to reduce that in the last budget.

It was restored.

But I'm just wondering, is there any plan to try to look at some of these tax breaks and try to plug those holes?

Can we we don't think that this would be a time or nor would there be a good time to increase taxes on small businesses.

So, no, that is that is not part of our budget proposal and will not be state lawmakers to try to change the school funding formula last year, since arguably it doesn't work for 80 percent of the school districts in the state it passed.

The House didn't move in the Senate.

It would take about two billion dollars more than the state already spends on public education to fully implemented.

Do you expect an attempt to try to do some changing in the school funding formula?

I mean, Speaker Bob Kopp has said that he's interested in this.

And if the governor is increasing spending for wraparound services for at risk students by about a billion dollars, you expect that that money could potentially be moved around to try to make some changes on the school funding formula?

Can the governor is absolutely committed to ensuring that students are ready to learn and have the support that they need to learn?

We know that our kids have been dramatically impacted by the pandemic.

And so those dollars for student wellness and support are critical to ensure that they remain in the budget.

I do expect the school funding formula to be a conversation during the legislative process and we absolutely look forward to working with the House and the Senate on that.

Budget also includes sometimes policy issues as well.

And we've got some things in this budget.

For instance, the governor had put some he wanted to bring back some of the measures that he had talked about with the strong Ohio gun regulation program.

Do you have any details on what he intends to bring back into this budget?

Karen, we're still working to finalize the language of the budget and we expect to introduce a budget within the next week to 10 days.

And all of those policy proposals will be detailed there.

And also, there's fifty million dollars to buy, around eleven thousand unused nursing home beds to cut down on shared rooms.

And a plan to get the Ohio Department of Health more authority to shut down nursing homes that are deemed unsafe already has that power through the courts.

Do you have any more details on what the changes here and why that would be something you want to make?

Karen, we've absolutely seen that our elderly have been most at risk during the pandemic.

That has put a lot of clarity around where we need.

To go in this policy arena, we want our senior citizens to be safe, we want our nursing home models to be efficient, and our proposals are to ensure that that happens.

And and we we want to make sure that the state is not paying for unused beds.

I think that that is a crucial part of this process is ensuring that the state resources and federal resources that go to nursing homes are as efficient and effective as possible and lead to the safest environments and that our seniors have the choices to to, you know, reside in the environments that that they choose.

And so this proposal is outlined to ensure all of those things.

The governor proposed to Ohio is Lake Erie cleanup fund in the last budget, and it wasn't funded to the point where he wanted it to be funded.

So how is it going to be funded this time around?

It's funded to ensure that we can continue that critical program.

Two hundred and forty million dollars spread across the the responding agencies and our Department of Agriculture and the EPA.

And we are keeping our commitments to the agriculture community, ensuring that they have the support and resources to implement nutrient management programs where investing in wetlands.

We're investing through the EPA and assisting communities with their water quality programs and infrastructure.

This has been just a real success.

And we know that our water quality and our great resources are absolutely critical, not just for our quality of life, but for our economic development.

So this is an important investment and we continue it in this budget.

Finally, do you anticipate the rainy day fund will have to be used, I mean, the governor has held that out as a possibility throughout this pandemic.

And if it is used for what I mean, you still have this idea of it's one time money, what would it be used for?

Potentially it is one time money.

It's just it's like a savings account in that sense.

And we we would only tap into those resources if absolutely necessary.

As we've talked already, the federal resources that have been provided throughout the pandemic have really given us the ability to use those resources as our rainy day fund, as our extra savings accounts.

So we haven't had to tap into our states one time resources, which is great that we're able to keep that as an additional possibility at this point in time.

Given the current economic indicators, given what we're seeing with the pandemic, as long as that all keeps moving in a positive direction, I'm hopeful that we can get through this crisis without tapping into the states one time resources.

And that is it for this week.

Please check out the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau website at statenews.org.

And you can follow us on the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than one point four million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Medd Mutual.

Dotcom's slash Ohio by the law offices of PorterWright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now, with eight locations across the country, PorterWright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at PorterWright Dotcom and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at O H E A dot org.