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More at OHEA.org Governor Mike DeWine issues some vetoes on key bills, including one that would have changed rules for Mail-In voting.

And we take a look at the higher ed anti die law one year after it went into effect.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Jo Ingles sitting in for the vacationing Karen Kasler.

Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill that, beginning in 2027, would have required photo ID for Mail-In voters.

Now, photo ID is already required for early in-person voting and on Election Day and has been since 2023.

Voters will be asked to put those requirements in the state constitution this fall, but photo ID isn't required for mail in voting.

Republican state lawmakers quickly pass this bill before they left for summer break.

took back my old manatee.

And it's under my feet, Just hours before DeWine made his decision, known members and associates of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative gathered at the statehouse to urge him to veto the bill.

Members of the group said it was rushed and would create barriers to voting for some.

Many Ohioans are already navigating a maze of barriers while trying to rebuild their lives and continue positively and contribute positively to their communities.

Adding another layer of bureaucracy to voting only makes participation harder for someone without reliable transportation.

Access to a copier, internet access, or current identification.

This bill could effectively eliminate their ability to vote by mail for older individuals, people with disabilities, working families, rural residents, and justice impacted individuals.

These requirements create real obstacles and not hypothetical ones.

Supporters of House Bill 472 claim this legislation is about election security.

They claim it is about protecting the integrity of our elections.

But if that were truly the goal, they would be focused on making our democracy stronger and more accessible to every eligible voter.

Instead, this bill creates yet another barrier between Ohioans and the ballot box.

It would require voters to cast mail in ballots to submit copies of their photo identification, forcing people to send sensitive personal information through the mail just to exercise a constitutional right.

And we have to ask ourselves, who benefits from making voting harder?

The same politicians who warn endlessly about voter fraud are often the very same politicians working to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion in our schools.

They are the same politicians who repeatedly defund public education, and they are the same politicians who cut access to health care and other essential services that working families rely on every day.

So I ask you.

Who.

Are the real frauds?

So there are all sorts of unintended consequences around that.

People are concerned about identity theft.

So if you put that in the mail, what if somebody gets that and they now have personal information?

That's a big deal for us.

And even though they put in that you can go to a public library, the BMV, the secretary of state's office or even your county board of election, they did not put any funds there in order to be able to pay for those things.

So we think that that's a problem.

And even though those are locations you can go to, there are a number of people who don't have the ability to go to those places to get the copies of those things.

Right now, if this doesn't become law, I can make a copy, I can print out that form, I can request it right now, and then I can get my absentee ballot.

This is just creating another barrier in a long line of barriers that we have been putting in front of people.

Hours later, DeWine issued a statement saying it is all burden for so little benefit that he must veto it.

DeWine also vetoed a bill that would have set some rules for renters who pay utility bills to third party companies, a process called sub metering.

Property owners and submitting companies had one of the bill.

But DeWine said the legislation legitimized a flawed system and fails to protect consumers.

It's been a year since an anti die bill was put in place at Ohio's state universities on June 27th, 2025.

Senate Bill one, which ended mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion programs as well as banning faculty strikes, went into effect.

And this week, Senate Bill one sponsor, Republican Jerry Cirino said the law has had a positive effect.

He said predictions that universities would lose faculty prestige and students turned out to be false, and noted enrollment is up at Ohio State, Bowling Green, Ohio University and Shawnee State.

And so we're not seeing students leaving Ohio in droves.

And Senate Bill 83 and Senate Bill one were in play early in 24.

So we've had time to see if those effects were actually going to happen.

Me turn to community colleges because they're an important part of this.

We still have 21.

Excuse me, 22 community colleges in the state of Ohio.

And they're actually doing very well.

We are not seeing massive migration away from student bodies in our community colleges.

We are doing better than the national average in enrollment.

Cincinnati State in 2020 2425 year Cincinnati State had a 10.47% increase.

Columbus State 8.15% increase.

Sinclair 6.7% increase.

But the executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors, Jennifer to sound price said Serino is wrong when it comes to enrollment increases.

Well, and again, I know he shared a lot of he shared some statistics, which I didn't get a copy of.

But again, I do point to the fact that Ohio's increase is only 0.57%.

So again, statistically irrelevant and not able to tie it to Senate Bill one.

But he talked a lot about what he's heard anecdotally.

And what I'll tell you.

What I've heard anecdotally is that students are afraid.

Faculty are afraid to talk on campus.

There's also disagreement on whether the new law has accomplished its goal of eradicating what Sereno and other conservatives view as wokeness on campuses.

we did not have free speech in our classrooms.

So studies have been done right here about Ohio State, about self-censorship by students.

And it was extremely high.

I talked with, met with and corresponded with a number of students and faculty, for that matter, that felt that their that they had to self-censor themselves in order to get a good grade or to keep their job, or to get tenure or to be invited to faculty cocktail parties.

There are students who are afraid of being kicked out of school if they process or speak out.

You look at Ohio State, where they banned almost all public assembly and made it very difficult for students to gather to express their First Amendment rates.

Again, they eliminated chalking.

You can't they have cameras everywhere they have.

You can't put fliers up, you can't communicate with one another.

And the ways that students for decades have communicated communicated with one another.

Sereno also touted the new civic centers at five major Ohio universities that were created in 2023.

Sereno said those conservative leaning centers focused on constitutional research and civil thought have been successful in attracting positive attention and faculty.

He wants to go a step further with a new bill to give those five sinners the rights and privileges of an independent college at those universities.

Directors at those centers would determine rank, salary, and tenure of faculty and would have sole authority over hiring practices.

The bill doesn't provide any new money for the centers.

The tuition and revenue collected for classes at those centers would stay with them and not go back to the universities.

Opponents say that would pull money and control away from universities and would ultimately raise costs for students.

The bill to expand the centers has not had hearings yet, and it likely won't happen until November at the earliest, when lawmakers come back after the election.

So it's that time that I'm joined by my Statehouse news Bureau colleague, Sarah Donaldson.

Karen Kessler is on vacation at the top of the show.

I told you, governor Mike DeWine vetoed legislation that would affect Mail-In voting.

Sarah, you covered this.

Tell us what he said and the response he's getting.

Yeah.

So backing up a little bit, this bill obviously had to do with Mail-In voting, adding new requirements for the ID that Ohioans would have had to present to submit a mail in ballot.

Governor DeWine ultimately vetoed the bill.

He did that late on Wednesday night, hours before his deadline.

Made the announcement around 9 p.m., and he said that he felt that the bill.

I mean, he left.

He sent out a pretty long veto message, but he said that he felt the bill would add burden for voters.

He said it really wouldn't.

On the flip side, bolster election security.

So, you know, Democrats voting rights organizations had been begging him to veto the bill.

And then on the flip side, his Republican colleagues, certainly several of them, came out and said they were disappointed that they felt it was a disappointing veto from the governor.

But it's all it's not all that surprising, I will say, because governor DeWine had said in the past that he, you know, he signed an election law in 2022, and he said he kind of saw the issue as a settled matter and that it would really need to be a very strong case for why he would be changing the law the next time if he signed it.

And I know you caught up with some of the groups that were asking him to veto it, including the League of Women Voters.

Right.

Yeah, I talked to Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters, and she said they actually liked the part of the bill that allowed for an online portal for voter registration.

She thought that was a good idea, but they had concerns about some other parts of it that had been added.

So we were concerned that a lot of individuals don't have access to technology, and maybe they don't know how to operate that technology.

Others may want to send a copy of their ID in the mail, but they don't have a copier.

And finally, we had a lot of privacy concerns that we had not spent enough time making sure that Ohioans privacy would be protected through this process.

So that's what she had to say.

But then, you know, Democrats were hailing the decision.

Republicans didn't like the decision.

So where does it go from here?

Well, I don't think it's a settled issue.

You know, I talked to the Association of Election Officials in Ohio, and Aaron Ackerman, who works with them, said he doesn't see it as a settled issue either.

They sent DeWine a letter thanking him for the veto.

That's a bipartisan group that had some concerns with the bill and how it would have put some extra burdens on their offices.

But, you know, he said he's committed to working with lawmakers.

There are Republican lawmakers who have certainly vowed to, you know, try this again.

And, of course, governor DeWine is a lame duck.

The Ramasamy who is the Republican gubernatorial candidate, he put out a pretty lengthy statement.

And, you know, he said that as governor, he would sign a law adding restrictions to Mail-In voting.

So this legislature has till the end of the year that they could possibly override the veto.

Right?

Yeah.

So any veto override has to be handled by the end of that legislative session.

So lawmakers have until December.

And I will say, you know, I did talk to one Republican lawmaker right after the veto came down.

It's tough to say whether there's the appetite.

The Senate president, when he put out a statement, didn't say, we're calling lawmakers back to Columbus before the election.

So, you know, lawmakers are back for lame duck that's in November.

They can handle it then.

And, of course, it should be noted that this bill wasn't going to go into effect until 2027 if DeWine had signed it.

So there's no real time pressure there either.

Right.

Well, he also vetoed a sub metering bill.

I'm not sure I know what that is.

What's that all about?

Yeah, this one's not quite as cut and dry as Mail-In voting.

So some metering is essentially there are middlemen who kind of come in.

Maybe it's an apartment complex and they're the ones handling the utility.

They by an electric utility.

And then they kind of serve as a middleman.

So I'm not going to try and explain it more, because it's still a topic that I'm learning a lot about.

But basically there are not a ton of regulations of sub metering in Ohio.

They're not regulated like normal public utilities.

And some folks had issues with that.

So the Supreme Court of Ohio recently weighed in on the issue and said, you know, if it looks and talks like a utility, it's a utility, which is the argument that some people were making, namely the Ohio Consumers Council, some lawmakers.

So that decision kind of kicked it to the PUC, which is the commission that handles regulating utilities, and said they had to come up with a regulatory structure.

In the meantime, lawmakers wanted to pass a legislative regulation of submarine companies.

But I will say, and I don't want to get into the weeds too much here.

There was some debate about how to do that.

There was a bipartisan bill that was sponsored by Representatives John Brennan.

He's a Democrat, and Tex Fisher, he's a Republican.

And then there was this other bill that was a Republican sponsored bill.

David Thomas carried that one.

So David Thomas's bill is the one that ended up going to the governor.

And there were some Republicans who voted against that bill.

They said that they worried it just did not protect consumers as much as it said it did.

And it actually rolled back some of the decision making that the Supreme Court put out there.

It put in place some more protections for those submitters.

So that was essentially what governor DeWine said in his veto message.

He said, you know, the Ohio Supreme Court weighed in, and this would roll back some of that.

So definitely an interesting debate there.

We'll see if lawmakers try to pass another submitting bill.

I don't know that this one has the same rallying cry that maybe the mail in voting one did for a veto override.

So what else did he signed into law.

So he signed most everything that went to his desk with the exception of these two big bills.

And then he did issue a line item veto of a very specific rollback of funding for a trail down in southern Ohio.

There was some money in a bill that the legislature was going to get rid of that funding, and he vetoed that.

Not going to go into the details, but I know it had to do with the Bailey's trail system down in southeast Ohio.

But he signed other laws, many of them non-controversial, some of them a little more controversial.

But of course, you know, the Medicaid regulations, a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about on the show for the last couple of weeks, because, of course, lawmakers sent him that flurry of bells.

there was big news from the US Supreme Court about those Haitian immigrants in Springfield.

The court said President Trump could go ahead and deport them if he wants, take away their to temporary protected status, their TPS.

You've been to Springfield, you've reported on this situation.

Tell us what's at stake here now.

Yeah.

So this has been pretty much a long time coming.

This has been a very drawn out court battle over whether TPS could be ended.

For the folks who are living in Springfield and all over the country.

So temporary protected status is something that's existed for a long time in the US, and it's granted to countries that are in disarray.

You know, folks can come from those countries, they can apply for TPS, and they can stay for a temporary period of time.

Republicans have argued that at least Republicans who have been supportive of ending TPS because it's not all Republicans.

Governor Mike DeWine has been against ending TPS for Haitians, that folks have stayed too long, and that this was always meant to be temporary.

But basically, the Supreme Court decision said that the courts really shouldn't be the ones making these decisions.

And they basically cleared the way for Trump and his administration to end TPS for Haitians as well as, I believe, Syrians who are residing in the United States.

We've obviously been following the situation with Haitians much closer because there are large Haitian immigrant populations in both Columbus and in Springfield.

And of course, the situation in Springfield caught a lot of attention during the 2024 election cycle.

So it's tough to say what exactly happens next.

Of course, when that status expires, which I don't I don't know what date that status would be set to expire because it was supposed to expire several months ago.

And then, of course, with the court case, it was put on pause.

You know, it's hard to say whether Ice will go in and deport folks.

There were rumors of that the first time that the status was set to end.

But there are a lot of community organizations who are obviously doing organizing on the ground, and it's always important to note that these folks, up until that TPS status ends, are here legally, if they've applied for TPS and they have that status, they are residing here legally.

This weekend is the last for Pride Month.

Throughout the month of June, there's been a global observance dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ plus culture, history, and community.

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio has looked at statewide data and found more than 10% of Ohioans are part of the LGBTQ plus community.

I recently sat down with Josh meek, the statewide advocacy manager of Equality Ohio, which advocates for LGBTQ plus rights, to talk about what Pride Month looks like in the Buckeye State this year.

Absolutely.

I think to me Pride Month is about spreading joy.

It's about community and building community.

And it's about, I think on top of that, all visibility.

I think visibility is one of the key parts of the LGBTQ community.

And just to let people know that we're your neighbors, where your loved ones, where your coworkers, you know, I think that's a big thing is just having that symbol in the community.

Yeah.

So Pride Month is going on in Ohio in June this year.

How's that going?

It's going fantastic.

As you see, it's already underway.

There's a few events and celebrations already taking place.

I think we have over 150 celebrations planned for in the state this year.

And one of the things I think is most amazing about it is just seeing pride taking place in areas of Ohio that traditionally didn't happen.

You know, they people had to travel further to go to a celebration before, and now they could do so.

Greater ease getting access to resources, other community members that look like them or feel like them.

So it's nice to be able to see that in parts of Ohio.

You know, pride is accessible to everybody.

Are you talking about more rural parts of Ohio?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, everywhere from, you know, Appalachia to, you know, western Ohio everywhere.

We're seeing more and more people just saying, like, we want to assemble in our community, and they're actively just getting involved.

Grassroots.

Some of these are not supported by any organizations.

It's just people wanting to show support for their LGBTQ plus neighbors.

We've seen a lot of political changes.

I don't have to explain that to you during the past couple of years, especially, and many in the LGBTQ community have said they see a lack of support for pride events.

What has been the impact of the current political climate on Pride Month in Ohio?

I think Sloga said Pride Month is about visibility, and I think it's unfortunate that during a time that it's about community and about joy, that we're also simultaneously fighting all these anti quality measures and pieces of legislation that are trying to divide us actively.

You know, for instance, stuff like the HB 249 with the drag ban.

We warn in committee that it could have a chilling effect on free speech and force folks to self suppress.

And we've already seen pride organizers and people in the community reach out to us because they're worried that the bill already passed or drag has already been banned.

And we've even seen online posts of people just only traveling through the state who think we have a drag banned in effect.

So just which the bill hasn't passed, but just existing is already giving people concern on do I need legal representation in my pride?

Do we need people to step in if police are called or something like that, you know, because of these mismatched ideas on what is legal now?

So it's unfortunate that during such a moment when we need unity right now, we need community, just some political extremists trying to divide us further.

Are you seeing any communities kind of canceling, or at least downscaling their events because of the lack of support for pride in this environment?

And what about corporate support?

Is it there like it once was 3 or 4 years ago?

I think definitely compared to 3 or 4 years ago.

I think we've definitely seen corporate sponsorships shrink a little bit, which has been very telling on who our actual allies were not and who was just doing it for, you know, just some cheap points in the media, you know, and even in up in, I think it's Upper Sandusky.

They've had to cancel their second annual pride that they would have had.

So we've even seen some of those local ones canceled.

So it's really about joining together with as many partners as we can right now, whether it's nonprofits, universities, businesses, to show that despite all the logistical and political challenges, we could still come together.

And, you know, we don't need any big corporate sponsors to do this.

We could do with our own manpower.

But in those areas that have canceled or downscaled, I mean, it's a big deal, right?

Tell me about those.

Yeah.

So I mean, and like I said earlier, we're we're expanding pride parts of Ohio that didn't have it before.

That's great.

But then it's also important to see in other, more traditional spots that have had Pride's suddenly canceled because they have a lack of support.

It almost feels like we're sliding back in some areas where I also progressing further forward and others, and I think part of our job at Equality Ohio is figuring out how do we fill in that patchwork and create an opportunity for everyone to have some kind of pride in their life this year?

Well, that's it for this week for my colleagues at the state House News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

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Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at Porter Wright.com.

Porter Wright.

inspired every day.

And from the 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