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The budget is in place, and while a lot of Democrats voted for it, most are unhappy about a lot of it.

The program to stop dangerous algae blooms in Lake Erie is growing as farmers continue to join in.

And the Ohio National Guard ends one mission at home and starts a new one far away.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio, I'm Karen Kasler the seventy four billion dollar state budget is signed, though the non-monetary items don't take effect until September 30th.

The big money items include one point seven billion dollars in tax breaks and changes, such as a three percent income tax cut, a new school funding plan based largely on 60 percent property taxes and 40 percent income, and five hundred and sixty four million dollars in new funding.

Changes to the step up the quality program for child care providers who serve families getting state assistance, direct state funding of vouchers, rather than the money coming from school districts budgets as kids leave for charter schools.

Four hundred and sixty million dollars for grants to help bars, restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues and other businesses hurt by the covid-19 pandemic.

Half a billion dollars into cleaning up brownfields and demolition of blighted buildings.

Two hundred and fifty million dollars into grants for broadband budget also removes the ban on municipalities operating their own broadband programs.

More than a half a billion dollars for children's services, foster care and adoption programs, and sixty one million dollars for food banks.

That three percent across the board tax cut is a concern for the liberal leaning research group Policy Matters Ohio, which says it won't help most Ohioans like other income tax cuts, perhaps even more so in this case.

It goes much more substantially to the most affluent than it does to anyone else.

So people making less than twenty two thousand dollars get nothing because they're not paying income tax, that they get nothing out of it, even though they're paying a lot of taxes and people at the top, people making more than five hundred and fifty thousand dollars are going to get a an annual average tax reduction of more than five thousand dollars for people in the middle, people making between 40 to 65000.

They'll get, on average, forty nine dollars.

This is a gift to the most affluent people in Ohio.

But the tax cut was great news to the conservative Buckeye Institute.

We look at it as a as a good policy.

Ohio has been making the right move to be reducing income tax rates for a number of years now and reducing brackets, and which makes tax code much more simple for folks to file and make things a lot fair for everybody who pays income tax.

I also point out that one of the key things that happened in this budget is they upped the lower limit.

So they've actually dropped additional people off of the income tax roll in its entirety.

Used to be 22000 little over now at 25000.

So if you make twenty five thousand dollars or less, you aren't going to pay any state income tax.

And they and as recently as five years ago, you had income tax liability when you hit over 10000.

And so we've been dropping people off of the income tax rolls here in Ohio for years.

Among the policy items in the budget are a ban on local communities imposing fees for plastic bags, limits on hospitals where certain abortion providers can work, a ban on public private partnerships, on voter registration and education, and a provision that would allow medical professionals to deny treatment to patients if doing so would violate their personal beliefs.

Governor Mike DeWine did veto a clause vacating covid violations committed by bars and refunding them the fines that they paid.

And he struck the proposal to allow the House speaker and Senate president to hire private attorneys and lawsuits over new congressional and state House district maps coming later this year.

And why vetoed the redo of the procurement process for Medicaid managed care organizations, which advocates said would have caused big delays, though the budget was crafted by Republicans.

It did get support from all but one Democrat in the Senate and two thirds of the House Democratic caucus.

But it did not get a yes vote from the party leader in that chamber.

One of the biggest concerns that we had with the budget was the nearly billion dollar tax giveaway to the wealthiest wage earners in the state of Ohio.

And we certainly are always happy when people get a little bit more money in their pockets.

But unfortunately, this one came on the backs of the lowest wage earners in this state.

While the Republicans said this was a three percent across the board tax cut, it was actually closer to 17 percent for the highest wage earners.

And those who were making a little bit less actually only saw that three percent.

And so we have been advocating for tax fairness for a very long time.

And this was just one of those situations where the money that could have been saved could have gone towards fully funding the fair school funding plan beyond the two years or ensuring that our kids had the best opportunities for school this fall or that our Medicaid program was as strongly and and robust as we need it to be for people to get the best advantages for them to live their best lives here in Ohio.

So that was one of the biggest concerns.

And also, you know, we were really concerned with the lack of investment into public health.

We're coming out of a pandemic.

And we saw through the various stages of the budget, public health was not a priority.

And if you think that if we would have learned anything from this last year, is that investing in people's health, being prepared for disasters, but instead this budget did not do that.

And so it leaves us weak and vulnerable for our next issue that we're going to have to deal with.

But obviously, the budget was a mixed bag and there were some things that some people liked and some things that even Democrats like that you voted against the budget along with 11 of your House colleagues.

But twenty three House Democrats, two thirds of your caucus voted for it.

So have you spoken to them about why they would have supported this budget?

Yeah, a lot of people supported the budget for the fair school funding program.

And that was the one thing that was there.

We were able to negotiate a lot of the terrible things that we saw from the Senate, including the money back into the broadband.

We were unfortunately unable to get the redistricting restrictions out, but the governor did veto that.

But quite frankly, the fair school funding plan was the tipping point for so many members of our caucus, which is completely understandable, considering for the past twenty five years we've been trying to find our way there.

But nonetheless, many of us still said we had to take a stand against the medical conscious cost that will impact people of color, LGBTQ members of our community, as well as the increased money to the so-called crisis pregnancy centers that give life to those assisting assistance during their pregnancies.

And we just had to make sure that folks knew that this was not our budget, that this was not something that we could completely and fully wrap our arms around.

And that's why you saw some votes and some yes votes from our caucus on that school funding plan.

Was there concern among members of your caucus that, yes, it does make some big changes, but it's not fully funded?

That cost of phased in over six years was taken out?

Yes.

And we understand that we cannot bind the hands of legislatures, legislators in the future.

But even the the language of intent that was pulled out gave us great corcos pause excuse me.

And the increase in the vouchers and money towards private schools was very problematic as well.

And so, again, budgets are a mixed bag.

That's nearly ten thousand pages of policy and financial changes to the state.

And you don't like everything and you don't dislike everything.

That's that's how we legislate, unfortunately.

But we were very concerned that it was not fully funded.

And again, as we talked about that tax giveaway, that could have been a way to help fully fund it or at least lay the groundwork for fully funding it and allowing legislators in the future to have the opportunity and have a source of funds for them to fully fund public education in this state.

And these concerns were big enough that you were willing to risk looking overly partizan in casting no votes?

Well, I think it's no surprise that I am a partizan and I am often called overly partizan.

And those are the ways that I approach voting all the time that I probably wouldn't be able to vote no on anything.

But there are plenty of things in this budget that, again, was worth the no vote, including the medical conscious cause.

People deserve the ability to walk into any health care provider and get the care that they need when they need it and not be subjected to going to someplace else if there is even some someplace else to even go on further to talk about the prohibition on working with outside entities and encouraging voter participation and voter registration.

We know that our democracy is very fragile.

And if we don't fight for it and sometimes that means fighting for it with people like churches, like civic groups, like business groups, and prohibiting that type of activity, a very widespread prohibition is very problematic for many other people.

And then let's not forget that before the governor vetoed the budget, there was that provision that would have made redistricting even more partizan by allowing just the speaker in the Senate president to attack or an attack to come against and file a lawsuit against redistricting.

So if anything is partizan, that would have been one of the highly partizan parts of the budget.

But sometimes you do just need to be a vocal and I can say we'll accept some of it, but just not enough.

And specifically on election issues, I mean, you even got into it with Republican leader Bill Seitz a couple of weeks ago about his election bill.

So this is obviously an issue that you're very, very passionate about.

But I want to and I got into it when I would say that it represents a fight, screamed at me out of decorum and out of order.

And so I want to be very clear about that.

It was not a back and forth argument.

It was a point of order that I raised under the rules of the House rules that I did not vote for.

But he did.

And he didn't like that.

I followed the rules and then decided to act very unbecoming of a legislator and scream and yell, so much so that his colleagues at some point had to take him out of committee.

So I would I would not characterize that as a back and forth in which he.

I got into it and, yeah, it was he shouted at you right there in committee, but I want to ask you about that medical conscience clause you brought up a couple of times.

I've heard a lot about how this might affect LGBTQ Ohioans, abortion access and potentially even care for minorities, DeWine says.

Governor Mike DeWine says discrimination is not happening in the state, but this arguably puts that into law, that protection.

So.

So what can be done?

Yeah, well, we're going to work our best to undo that.

Obviously, it has the support of the legislature and the governor is going to be very hard.

But it's very easy for a person who is not a part of a protected class to say discrimination does not exist.

And quite frankly, it is a blind spot for many of our lawmakers when it doesn't happen to them or if it is not a part of their lived experience, it gets ignored.

And that's not OK. We are in a global pandemic.

This is not the time to limit access to health care or make it more challenging for someone to get health care.

And quite frankly, the range in the vastness in which someone could decide not to care for a patient is alarming and should alarm, quite frankly, anyone, because it's not just minorities.

It could be women.

It could be men.

It could be people in rural communities.

Because whatever someone's religiously held or strongly held beliefs may be, it might be you.

And no one wants to be in that type of situation, especially when they're vulnerable and they don't feel well and they're just coming to get help.

And so I would hope that the governor, as well as the members of the legislature, reconsider and have some empathy and compassion for folks who are not like them.

And consider how this can impact folks, especially people in rural communities where there are not a lot of health care providers to pick and choose from.

And finally, I ask you this not only as a legislator, but also somebody who has a masters in public health.

It was a study that was out showing the Maximilien incentive program while it awarded people five million dollars in prizes and five full ride college scholarships, it did not really dramatically increase vaccination rates.

So let me ask you, what would you like to see done to increase your rates of vaccination among Ohioans?

Sure, that's a great question.

And the Maximilien program, I give the governor and his team credit for being creative.

It is a pandemic and we've got to try new things.

But it was pretty apparent that this was not going to be as successful as he thought, quite frankly, because it didn't get to some of the root causes of what people have concerns about.

We shared with the governor many months ago that there are going to be communities who are going to be hesitant and who will struggle with access to this vaccine and getting to them first and helping to educate them, as well as ensuring that access is available is going to be it should be a top priority.

Unfortunately, they did not heed those calls and the politicization of vaccinations took over and it became very, very challenging for us to get folks vaccinated.

So while we're behind the eight ball at this point, what I would suggest the governor do is look for some very specific tailored to those communities who need it most, whether that is canvasing and door knocking with public health nurses and other providers and saying, hey, we are here, we have a vaccine and we can get it to you right now.

We need to make sure that everyone knows that the vaccinations are free and they do not have to come out of their own pockets to pay for this.

We should incentivize and encourage employers to give workers time off in case they have side effects that don't allow them to come back in.

We know some folks when that second shot felt not that great.

And so some folks have experienced inability to take off of work and they just decide not to.

And so those are just a couple of the things that we could do to make that up.

And I assure you, they probably less than five million dollars and we get our numbers up a little bit higher.

Also in the new two year state budget.

One hundred and seventy million dollars for the H to Ohio Lake Erie cleanup program.

It helps to pay farmers to do things on their land to prevent harmful runoff, reaching Lake Erie and feeding toxic algal blooms.

DeWine had wanted more, but the seventy thousand member Ohio Farm Bureau is pleased with the final product.

The budget puts one hundred and seventy million dollars in base funding and to Ohio and up to one hundred thirty two million dollars in surplus funds into the program.

So what's that money going to do?

So we're really excited about this program at Ohio Farm Bureau.

This is based on a water bond measure that we have been working on for years and years.

So we're really grateful that Governor DeWine took it on and created the two Ohio initiative.

In the first year of that program, we saw a million acres getting rolled into the program.

And that translates to best management practices for farmers.

So the program is set up to assess what farmers are already doing for conservation practices and what else they could be doing to even further enhance nutrient runoff retention.

Now, that is short of the two hundred and forty two million dollars that Governor Mike DeWine had wanted.

Is that going to be a problem?

I mean, is there so much need that the money that has been allocated isn't going to be enough?

I don't know if it's going to be not enough, but you.

We are just so grateful in the agricultural community, because this is the first program we've seen that's actually given resources to farmers as opposed to just straight up regulation.

So farmers are already incredibly regulated and there's they don't have a lot of margins to do extra.

So having the to a higher program has been a big deal for for our members who have already been doing.

We know that many farmers, most of them do at least one conservation practice.

So being able to increase that with this funding is going to be crucial.

We've had 14 counties already enrolled in the program and we've seen reduction.

Sorry, let me back up.

Yeah, we've seen a reduction in dissolve reactive phosphorous for about the last six years now, which is really encouraging out of the Momi River watershed, which has been one of the problem areas.

And now with the expansion of 10 more counties in the western Lake Erie Basin, we'll see that continue, hopefully.

I was just going to ask you about that.

There's a little over forty nine million dollars in both fiscal years that's going to these incentive to support farmers who have adopted these programs, the expansion of 10 more counties.

What does that mean in terms of how this program will go forward?

I mean, that just means 10 more acres where we are targeting and giving resources for for this nutrient runoff and being able to to capture it in field edge of field before it gets to the waterways in those 10 counties and all those those tributaries and whatnot feed into to Lake Erie.

So it all goes to to helping the issues that we're seeing in Lake Erie.

And we can see that it's working.

I mean, we've seen they've predicted a Level three intensity algal bloom this year, which is very low.

It's encouraging to see over the last several years of really strong effort from the agricultural community to do this.

And it's not just, you know, the agricultural folks.

We have the Ohio Agriculture Conservation Initiative, which has partnered with Ohio to do the assessment of what farmers are doing and can be doing better for best management practices.

But it's a collaboration of agriculture, conservation, environmental and research groups.

And it's the first time we've ever seen something like that.

So it's been really great to be part of that.

And these these these programs, these things that farmers are doing, I mean, it's everything from planting trees on their property to stop runoff.

I mean, there's a lot of different things that they can do that they can get then paid back from the state for the investment that they make to do these things.

Yes.

Like you said, there are lots of different practices.

A good example would be planting cover crops.

We can retain organic matter and capture some of those extra nutrients that might be in fields that way.

And for a while when the whole thing was being discussed, there was the idea of that.

It's not just farmers that create this, that it's municipalities, wastewater treatment and all that.

Is there enough of an investment there?

I mean, you say the farmers side is working.

Is the other side working, too?

Is it is it really all coming together to reduce the potential of algal blooms on Lake Erie?

Yeah, Ohio Farm Bureau certainly is paying a little bit more attention to to what the Department of Agriculture funds and programs are doing.

But, yes, we see that the Department of Natural Resources has funding through it that goes toward wetland restoration and creation.

EPA has part of the funding for reducing lead contamination.

So it all together.

I know that those three agencies are pleased with progress and how things are going.

And we're just so grateful that there is an acknowledgment that it's beyond agriculture's contributions that have gotten us to this point.

And when the program was initially started, I mean, you talked about farmers having a lot of regulations already, but a lot of them wanted to be a part of this.

About two thousand farmers representing over a million acres of cropland enrolled in the first fourteen counties, which I guess is more than you expect.

Absolutely.

We are.

We have the we're in the pressure seat a lot with, you know, the Toledo water crisis and other issues that are coming up with water quality and seeing that voluntary participation as an organization.

You know, you you hope for that and and we believe in our members.

But then to see them show up like that in a voluntary capacity, almost two thousand farmers right out the gate was really encouraging to see.

And I think it sent a message to to the administration that farmers want to help.

This isn't something that they have to be forced to do.

Let me ask you about another thing in the budget on rural broadband and the expansion.

Two hundred fifty million dollars in broadband grants to expand broadband into rural areas and underserved urban areas.

What does that mean to farmers?

This has been an issue that has been a priority for Farm Bureau for several years now.

I know that many of us who have lived in rural Ohio have known that this has been a challenge.

But, you know, with the the discrepancies in mapping and just over the years, getting legislators and elected officials to understand how big of a problem this was was quite a challenge until covid, when everything shut down and everything went online.

And especially education, I think, was an area where we saw how difficult it is for these communities to.

Just the disparity, so for our farmers, things that people don't think of or how compliance has all gone online, all federal regulations and agencies have made these forms electronic to to cut down on time, resources, energy.

But we have a lot of members who can't access those documents because they are online.

Let me back up to say nothing of the precision agriculture technologies that also can help with water quality or robotic livestock operations that increase the health and life of herds.

These are not not a possibility for areas that don't have broadband connectivity, but just the stories that came out of the pandemic with parents driving to the next highest hill to be able to submit their kids homework assignment through their cell phone or going to McDonald's because libraries are closed.

All these stories have been on our minds for years and we're just so excited to see the greatest public investment in broadband infrastructure in the state's history.

Speaking of big money, after nearly a year of dealing with massive fraud, Ohio is launching a multiagency operation to hunt down the people who built the state out of hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment claims.

And the probe will likely find scammers within Ohio and around the world.

Former US attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers, is heading up the operation by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the FBI and other federal agencies to investigate the many fraudulent unemployment claims filed during the pandemic.

DeVillers says this can streamline investigations and speed up the process toward recovering the four hundred and sixty five million dollars doled out to scammers.

But I promise you that there are a lot of good, hardworking people that want to get this done and we will work and do everything we can with law enforcement to make sure that's done.

The state is also working on a process to recover the two point one billion dollars in non fraudulent overpayments, fraudulent claims delayed checks with thousands of jobless Ohioans throughout the pandemic.

And finally, another sign that the pandemic is winding down.

The Ohio National Guard has ended its mission at the state's food banks.

Last week, food banks held decommissioning programs and clapped out the soldiers who got food moving since they were deployed in March 20 20 as emergency food was exploding and volunteers were unable to come in because of the stay at home order.

Statewide, Guard personnel distributed one hundred and fifty million pounds of food, equivalent to three thousand five hundred and seventy one semi truck loads to over two point nine million Ohioans, many of whom had never visited a food bank before the pandemic.

Dwight is also approve the deployment of one hundred and eighty five members of the Ohio Army National Guard to the US Mexico border later this year for non law enforcement support, as requested by US Customs and Border Protection.

A total of three thousand personnel have been requested from several states.

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 statenews.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 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.