Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

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Moore and Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.

New State House and Senate maps are approved and once again challenged in the Ohio Supreme Court.

Ohio could be home to Earth's largest computer chip manufacturing plant.

There's still lots of unknowns to be learned and plans to be made for that massive project and billions of dollars in unemployment.

Overpayments may need to be paid back, and people are waiting on appeals of denials of jobless claims.

The director of that agency talks about that and more.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio, I'm Karen Kasler.

The Ohio Supreme Court is once again looking at over new State House and Senate district maps.

Opponents of the map say Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission continue to violate the Constitution when drawing and approving the new maps.

Last weekend, State House correspondent Andy Chow reports.

All this is happening as the clock ticks toward the primary filing deadline just a few days away.

With the deadline to finish, the maps are looming.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission met for hours last Saturday.

The members paused briefly to watch the Cincinnati Bengals win their divisional playoff game and move on to the AFC Championship, but then approved on a party line vote a Republican plan for the 99 seats in the House and 33 seats in the Senate.

Democratic co-chair Senator Vernon Sykes says the commission was ordered by the Ohio Supreme Court to redraw the maps to reflect voter Partizan preference over the last ten years.

Statewide election averages break down to about 54% Republican and 46% Democratic.

So our objective has always been to simply demonstrate that you could we can, in fact come to the proportionality requirements and meet all of the other guidelines.

And so all over our map, all over the state of Ohio, we've demonstrated in the example of our map of how that can be done.

The Republican drawn and approved Ohio House map creates 57 Republican districts and 42 Democratic districts there.

Ohio's Senate map made 20 Republican districts and 13 Democratic districts.

That is above the proportionality threshold, giving the GOP an advantage.

Democrats also slammed the maps for making twelve of those 42 Democratic House seats and four of those 13 Democratic Senate seats essentially tossups.

Republican commissioners such as Senate President Matt Huffman argued that while the Democratic maps met proportionality, they violated other constitutional requirements, suc as splitting municipalities.

In this Supreme Court decision said these requirements also must be met that not more than one municipal corporation or township may be split per representative district.

So that's not an aspirational goal.

It's not.

If we want to do it, we have to do that.

And there's clear violations in here that are not easily fixed.

Chris Glass burn the map draw for the Democratic side, acknowledged Hoffman's concerns and urged that the two parties could continue working together to create a map that fixed those potential violations.

If we go back and forth pointing at each other and numbering errors or a census block being wrong, we're not going to get to a product together.

So we need to keep working innovatively to ensure that we get to a constitutional product not just based on Section five, but on all the sections of the article.

Republican Matt Dreier, Ray de Rossi says it's a time consuming challenge to draw the map within all the guardrails required by the Constitution, such as making sure the Democratic voter index reached a percentage higher than And so when we add whether we ended it 49.2 or 49.8 or 49.9, or 48.2 when you finally get over the hurdle to go under 50 and everything else balances and everything else matches, I would move on to another district.

Republican commissioners eventually approved their own party's maps by a five to two vote without bipartisan support.

Those maps would only be in place for four years.

But three days later, the plaintiffs in the original Supreme Court case filed objections, including the League of Women Voters.

We have to continue to fight and we will continue to fight until the people of Ohio one way or the other finally see maps that are not gerrymandered for political parties.

Republican House Speaker Bob Cupp, co-chair on the redistricting commission, said they expected to go back to court with the new maps.

Redistricting and lawsuits go together.

It's sort of like the the night follows the day.

Well, one can never predict what a court would do.

We did the best job that we can under the circumstances.

As the Ohio Supreme Court works on a decision.

The deadline to file for a primary race is approaching, causing confusion for potential candidates not kno what their districts will look The Legislature passed a bipartisan bill to offset some of those issues and give potential candidates flexibility while collecting signatures for their petitions to get on the ballot .

Andy Chow, Statehouse News Bureau.

And the congressional map has also thrown out by the Ohio Supreme Court, so it must be redrawn as well.

No action will happen on that for at least a week.

Republicans will be at a fundraiser in Florida, where a lot of wealthy Ohioans have what are homes next week.

But Senate President Matt Huffman doesn't think that will conflict with redrawing the map, and he says he will cancel the trip if he needs to.

As we learned late last week, Intel was making a 20 billion dollar investment in what the company says would be the largest semiconduct chip manufacturing campus on th It will open in Licking County Land annexed to New Albany in 2025.

But there isn't much intel about the incentive package that was offered to lure Intel to Ohio.

But Intel has said its project could be limited if the U.S. House doesn't pass $52 billion in federal funding for semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. in what's known as the Chips for America Act and State House correspondent Joe Ingles reports.

There are other issues that Ohio advocates are noting should be done to prepare for what state leaders are calling the silicon heartland.

Intel leaders say they considered 40 states for the multibillion dollar pro They chose a 1000 acre plot of land in New Albany, where Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says the company could expand to eventually be a 100 billion dollar semiconductor chips center.

And today, the silicon heartland begins.

Governor Mike DeWine says he and other state and local leaders made sure Ohio came out on top.

We worked, we fought, and we want to bring these jobs to Ohio.

Here's what we know.

An incentive package has been offered to intel, but the details are unknown.

Jobs Ohio and the state's development leaders were involved in the deal.

Negotiations on the deal had been going on since DeWine's office first heard about the plans for the project on May third.

The state budget, passed last summer included a provision to double the length of state tax credits from 15 to 30 years for so-called megaprojects, with more than $1,000,000,000 in investments and state Route 161 and a New Albany will be widened as part of the project.

Lieutenant Governor John Ustad hinted at the scope of it.

For every sixth sense of capital investment the state of Ohio will make.

Intel will make a dollar.

In return, Ohio will get the largest, most advanced semiconductor facility in the world.

With jobs that pay on average, $135,000 a year, which is approximately two and a half times the median income of a family of four in Ohio, it's an investment that will literally pay dividends for generations.

But many say Ohio needs to start preparing for intel right now.

Realtors say the housing inventory is already tight in Columbus, especially for affordable homes.

Even though it's not going to open until 20.

There's going to be people that are going to be starting to make that happen right now, and where are they going to liv And then we have suppliers that will be coming in.

Where are they going to live, you know, and it's going to be all levels from, you know, the people starting right now to the higher up executives and eventually becoming so and we're behind the eight ball in central Ohio on housing right now, so it can't start soon enough.

Housing values are expected to rise as a result.

Advocates say that's a problem for Low-Income Ohioans, who already cannot find affordable places to live.

And then there's the need for public transportation.

So I don't know what exactly that looks like if that's something like a dedicated bus line or even rail systems.

We want to make sure that people have access to those jobs.

The rising value of land is a problem for farmers, too, if they want to continue farming.

Chris Gibbs is the former Shelby County Republican Party chair and a farmer in northwest Ohio.

He heads up the group called Rule Voices USA, which says it's focused on bridging the rural urban divide.

It's good news if you're on the selling end of that, but it's not so good news for a farmer in the either close proximity or even out a little further as land values rise.

Then it makes it harder for farmers to to access land and to purchase the land.

Farmers say they need to be at the table now with local leaders to ensure they can continue with rising property values and have input on how they can have proper drainage and infrastructure, including input on new roads.

The latest and greatest trend in roadway design and development has been to utilize roundabouts, and I think there are great traffic control tool.

But if they're not properly designed or they're not designed with considerations for the large farm machinery that may be moving in that area, it's not really workable for those area farmers.

Allison Gobel with Greater Ohio, a group concerned about sprawl and sustainable growth, says planning and executing good development is crucial.

This is an opportunity to start planning today so that we're not doing catch up.

Those conversations on plans need to start happening yesterday, and I think they are.

All of the advocates say the key is to make sure all stakeholders are included in the infrastructure, planning and execution.

And they say it's important for local and state leaders to invest in things now that will make intel and the areas around it successful in the future.

Joe Ingles Statehouse News Bureau.

There was some good news in Ohio COVID numbers this week.

Case counts have been dropping, though once again, the Ohio Department of Health reported having data trouble, this time an undercount, with a backlog of cases pouring in, artificially boosting case numbers the week before.

OTOH hasn't fully explained its data reporting issues, but has only said that throughout the pandemic, Ohio and other states quote have hit numbers of cases that have absolutely exceeded anything that anyone had really encountered before or possibly even imagined.

But hospitalizations dropped below 5000 for the first time since Christmas Day, and COVID patients in intensive care units were below 1000 for the first time since December second.

But reported COVID death totals for the last six months are horrible.

More than 12,000 deaths from COVID have been reported in Ohio since late June.

The state agency that deals with unemployment had its own pandemic numbers troubles, but they ended up costing Ohio just under $5 billion in non fraudulent overpayments alone and another nearly half a billion dollars in money lost to fraud.

I talked to the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services about all that and also about the people who got those overpayments and may have to pay that money back.

And some people who are waiting on the results of appeals of denials of their claims, which a judge ruled are supposed to happen within 21 days.

So far, the initial claims when they were filed.

Now we are within those DOL tolerances, which is about 80% within 21 days, and so we're doing great on our current caseload activity.

As you mentioned, there was litigation last last year that is on on appeal about appeals and and the District Court or the Common Pleas Court held that we had to abide by the 21 day statutory requirement for processing appeals.

We are current with with those appeals and within those 21 days, both for PUA and for traditional unemployment.

There are appeals then that after an appeal opportunity, after we make an administrative decision that goes to the Unemployment Claims Commission Unemployment Claims Review Commission.

They don't have that same kind of time constraint.

And so there are, as I said, I think my very first press conference last year as we work through the backlog.

Then there will be an appeals bubble and then there'll be a CRC bubble.

So as those things sort of move through the proverbial hose or snake or whatever metaphor, you might want to use those things and land at UCSC for those final appeals.

We are approaching tax time and there are people who are going to be getting form saying they were paid unemployment compensation when they weren't or they were overpaid unemployment compensation that they didn't ask for.

The state paid out $3.8 billion in non fraudulent overpayments in fraudulent payments, which Auditor Keith Faber says amounts to $673 per working Ohioan.

Those victims of fraud and those people who are overpaid without requesting that money can apply for a waiver so they don't have to pay that money back to the state.

What's the status of that?

That's correct.

So we established last summer a process, as you note, for individuals who were overpaid by no fault of their own and unemployment compensation for them to apply to us to have that overpayment waived as opposed to having to repay it.

Repayment ordinarily has takes place of either, you know, them having to make a payment back to the state or curtailing future unemployment benefits.

And so.

At some point tax returns.

And sometimes tax returns.

Yeah.

And so that's correct.

And so we are we created that process.

We are working through those waivers that are that are filed.

Certainly, we understand for the individuals who have applied for a waiver that it's it's important to them and important to us.

But our first priority is making sure that new claims that are filed are being paid timely and so as we move our workforce around to be as agile as we can.

You know, waivers are being prioritized and worked, but you know, we're behind on the waivers compared to where we would want to be.

But again, we're we're prioritizing the claims that need to be paid first.

As you were rolling that system out, you were having trouble getting the word out.

I think to people who didn't know that this existed because it had been talked about for a while, but you had developed it and it was a fairly low percentage of people who qualified for waivers had actually applied.

Do you know how many have qualified at this point or at least asked for a week?

Yeah.

So at this point, we've approved approximately 26,000 waiver requests for a total of $162 million or so.

We've denied another 20,000 requests for about $230 million.

So there's a lot of activity happening in that space.

But, you know, as we continue to prioritize paying, you know, claims in order to, as you mentioned earlier, those timeframes that we're under , you know, waivers is a priority.

And we just keep working through that.

And as I understand, a huge percentage of those applications, like you're saying.

Not yet been processed.

Last month, it was reported only 16% had been processed.

And like you said, that leaves those people potentially on the hook for their income tax refunds to be taken for if they're getting current unemployment benefits for that money to go back .

This is really hard for a lot of those people who are in situations where they need that money.

Yet no, absolutely.

And that's why, you know, Ohio was one of the first states to create the waiver process following Department of Labor guidelines.

Other states are still working through this process.

We were able to launch the application process at the beginning of last summer and start the adjudication process in the fall.

You know, the timeframes required for us to upgrade our systems, you know, caused that delay.

And so we started out behind the eight ball and we understand certainly.

And for individuals, you know where where there has been withholding of benefits, that those are important moneys that need to be paid.

And so, you know, we won't.

Similar to the approach that we took on the claims backlog a year ago, you know, we are taking with waivers and that is we're not going to quit until it's finished.

And so, you know, we continue to work overtime.

We continue to hire in order to make sure that our workforce is able to address all of these different buckets of work.

Are you collecting on that money, though?

Are you going to be taking income tax refunds?

Are you going to actually take some people to collections if they're not, if you need to get the money back?

Yeah.

So on the on the other side in particular, where a lot of fraudulent activity took place and where a lot of waivers are because the federal government changed the rules multiple times during the process, we've worked very closely with the Ohio Attorney General's Office to make sure that their collections efforts are focused on, you know, the most legitimate situations where they're very, truly was, you know, a fraudulen overpayment or a novel or a a payment that was made, you know, with the as knowledge as opposed to something that was, you know, administrative in nature because of the rule changes by the federal government.

Can people start calling your office again?

I mean, I know if that was a complaint during the pandemic that people were trying to call and weren't able to get through.

Can people actually get through and explain their situation?

Can they talk to somebody?

Yes, we've done a tremendous job with improvements thanks to the support of the public private partnership and some number of consultants associated with that to improve our contact center activities.

You know, things that have really improved the customer experience has been the ability to now, you know, when you call in, if there's if there's a hold time , a caller can actually then schedule a call back.

And so that has been a huge boon for their customer experience.

We're doing much better on wait times.

I will say, you know, as we're in this period of the end of the year, start of the year as 1019 lines are starting to go out and those kinds of things, you know, tax tax receipts went out to businesses for for their payments.

So there's a lot of additional volume beyond just the normal claims activity.

So whole times are a little bit higher right now than than we would want, but not nearly what we were experiencing during the course of the pandemic.

But some of that has cost a lot of money.

I mean, you had to hire outside contractors to try to help with that.

You had to pay them a pretty big amount of money.

Why did you have to do that?

And how much do they actually cost the state to get to a point even where people were saying they still couldn't get through?

Yeah.

So at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, Ohio was not different than any other state in terms of facing not only new federal programs, but also just, you know, unprecedented volumes of claims activity.

And so, you know, no agency could staff up immediately overnight with through the normal, you know, hiring process.

And so Ohio, like all states, reached out to, you know, contract vendors who provide contact center support and and, you know, engage those those kinds of firms to provide assistance from.

From our agency standpoint, we have been very focused on increasing our our full time state employee workforce so that we don't have to rely on outside vendors and to move as quickly as we can and scaling back the outside third party vendor support so that it can be, you know, ultimately just reliant on our full time staff.

How much do you think you spent on outside contractors?

I don't have the numbers here with me, but it was certainly in the tens of millions of dollars.

But I think we also have to as a part of the conversation, you know, the outside vendors are one category of what we are relied on.

We also spent tens of millions of dollars in overtime for full time staff, additional hiring of part time and intermittent staff.

That spending continues to this day.

A review from auto rookie favor that was released in October found that over the previous fiscal year, a quarter of all unemployment payments for that year were either overpayments or fraudulent, compared to three and a half the previous fiscal year.

The audit also showed.

41,000 names of dead people, nearly 86, 86,000 people who are in prison.

Nearly 30,000 times with a paid amount was more than the eligible amount over 80 700 payments of more than $35,000 and 356 instances with obviously fake names such as Guess Demon or Dummy Stephen.

That one happened four times.

So what's the progress on getting some of those things that allowed this stuff to happen fixed up and going after scammers who actually took the state for billions of dollars?

So we are very grateful for the work that the auditors office did in helping us not only on the on the special audit that you identified, but also also the audit, the performance audit that he conducted.

Both of those are going to lead to long term systemic change in the agency and transformation work that is already underway .

You know, on some of on some of those issues, it was just the nature of standing up new federal programs and getting systems and places, getting systems in place and building across matches.

All of the things that the auditor identified in terms of, you know, death matches across matches with incarceration, incarceration data that's all in place now and and is working prospectively in terms of claims that have been paid out.

As as your viewers may know, Ohio is working very aggressively with our federal agency partners that have the lead on law enforcement components related to unemployment insurance fraud because it is essentially a federal program that's administered by the states.

And so whether it's DOL FBI Treasury, they take the lead.

Ohio is really a leader.

We have engaged the services of the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District, David Developers, to be an intermediary between the state and those federal partners.

And so they are able to, you know, look directly at the fraud dashboards that we've put together.

We're being very proactive and working with them to put together investigatory packets.

This week, Odie Jeffers said even though there's no evidence their system was breached, it would be notifying around 410,000 people who reported being victims of unemployment related identity theft that they can get a year of free credit monitoring.

Those who think their identities were stolen and used for false unemployment claims but haven't reported that can still do so and get credit monitoring for a year.

And there's still no date set for the Ohio Supreme Court to hear arguments over whether Governor Mike DeWine had the authority to bring to an end the program that paid $300 weekly checks to unemployed Ohioans in June, when the federal program was scheduled to end on Labor Day.

The state's unemployment rate for last month was four and a half percent, the lowest since the pandemic, and it's soaring in March 2020.

But employers still say they're having trouble finding workers.

Workers have cited wages, trouble accessing child care and difficult and even dangerous work environments as reasons why.

And that's 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 website at State News dot org and you can follow us.

And 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 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.