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.

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Maude 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 Republican state senators are giving us an idea of what they want in the budget when they vote on their version later this month.

And there's so much happening at the State House.

The budget, a controversial constitutional change, a possible abortion amendment.

Some reporters will join me to talk about all of that.

All this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Joe Ingles, sitting in for Karen Kasler.

The Ohio Senate Finance Committee released a draft document of that chambers Republican proposed budget this week.

It's not a normal.

Budget and by that I mean that there are real innovation changes to the way that we do things change, changes to the way that we fund public expenditures.

The Senate Republicans draft budget includes personal income tax cuts as well as commercial activity tax decreases.

And it builds on the current back to school sales tax holiday by expanding it from one weekend to two weeks.

At the beginning of August.

More goods will be eligible for that break as well.

Senate Republicans want to expand the state school voucher program to allow any K through 12 student to receive a voucher to attend private schools.

Currently, only students in low performing school districts and those whose families are at or below 250% of the federal poverty line are eligible.

However, under the Senate plan, the amount of the voucher would be reduced depending on family income.

So a family earning more than $135,000 a year would be eligible for at least 10% of the voucher amount.

It's not the full universal vouchers some want, but they're cautiously optimistic about it.

The devil's in the details with the means testing.

But what the Senate has done that the House and the governor had not done, that we think is good.

Is it at least lets folks know wherever they live in Ohio, regardless of their income?

Some assistance is available to access the school choice program if they feel like it's time to take their child into that program.

There have been questions about the cost of school vouchers since the Ohio Legislative Service Commission earlier this spring analyzed the cost of a full universal voucher plan and determined expenditures would increase by more than $1,000,000,000 in the first year if it were adopted.

Paying for public schools has been a major concern for Democrats, who are closely scrutinizing the Senate proposal to ensure the funding meets the Fair School funding plan, a provision passed two years ago to fund K through 12 public schools in a way that lowers reliance on property taxes.

Democratic Senator Vernon Sykes says he's cautiously optimistic about that.

Yes, we've looked at that, at least what's been presented to us so far.

We want to look at the details of that to make sure that's extremely important as one of the main functions and responsibilities here to the state of Ohio provide adequate, equitable schools.

The Senate's draft plan does restore funding for literacy improvement that was in the budget Governor Mike DeWine proposed earlier this year.

But the state's two teachers unions, the Ohio Federation of Teachers and the Ohio Education Association, have come out against the Senate's changes.

Our president, Scott Dimauro, says in part, quote, The Senate plan decreases funding for public school districts from the House passed version of the budget by approximately $540 million to prop up shortsighted plans for a voucher explosion that would only continue to benefit a small number of families, unquote.

I should note that the NEA is an underwriter of this program as president.

Melissa Cropper goes further, taking issue with the Senate's addition of a plan that takes away power from the state school board.

And she says the group is disappointed that the Senate plan leaves in place the policy of retaining third graders who don't pass a grade level reading test.

Food bank leaders say the Senate plan cuts school breakfast and lunch programs that were in the House passed plan and puts in jeopardy some other programs to prevent hunger and communities.

And the early childhood education advocacy group Groundwork Ohio calls cuts to child care services devastating and breathtaking, adding it reverses course on years of hard work.

Huffman says changes were made to some social service programs to safeguard the future funding of those that involve federal funds.

The draft budget also provides $15 million for the upcoming August 8th election, where Ohioans will decide on a Republican backed proposal to make it harder to amend the state's constitution before an abortion Access amendment is likely to be on the ballot this November.

The draft budget can change.

Senators are expecting to vote on the measure in the coming days.

To say there's a lot going on in Ohio right now is an understatement.

Lawmakers are also considering a potpourri of bills dealing with education, guns and more.

Joining me to talk about what's happening now at the state House is Anna Staver, statehouse reporter for USA Today Network, Ohio Bureau.

Natalie Fahmy, Ohio statehouse reporter for Nexstar Media.

And Jeremy Pelzer, politics reporter for Cleveland.com.

So let me ask you, let's just start with the budget.

The Senate budget plans came out this week and they're kind of draft or working document gave us some insight as to where they're going.

What are your thoughts about that?

Well, I don't think there was any surprises.

You know, the Senate president's been talking for a while that he wanted to expand vouchers, that he wanted a bigger tax cut.

And we really saw both of those.

We've got a plan for universal vouchers, and we got a total of about $2.5 billion in cuts and rebates.

Mm hmm.

Any surprises?

I wouldn't say there were too many big surprises either on top of the tax cuts in the school choice.

We also saw Senate Bill one folded in.

That's legislation that they've been working on since last General Assembly to restructure the Ohio Board of Education, give more oversight to lawmakers.

We saw that folded in there as well, as well as parts of Senate Bill 83.

That's a higher ed restructuring bill, too.

So I don't think there was anything out-of-left-field.

The Senate's plan for the budget, at least initially, shows what happens when you have a super majority Republican caucus who is giving an awful lot of state revenue to deal with.

And you can see, not surprisingly, that they've set about how they would spend that money, including tax cuts, school vouchers, things like that.

One of the things that I noticed is they put back the third grade guarantee or at least put the teeth back into it.

And the third grade guarantee, of course, says if you're not testing reading on third grade level, that they can hold you back a grade that was put in this budget plan.

And it kind of surprised me.

I didn't expect that.

What about?

Well, so the head of the Senate Education Committee is Andrew Brenner, and he's a big proponent of this.

Now, 40% of Ohio's third graders don't test proficient, but we don't hold 40% of them back.

So it's usually under 5%.

So there's like certain exceptions to that guarantee.

And in speaking with Senator Brenner and some of the other Republicans, they think it's important because there's this idea that in K through three, you learn to read, but everything else in education is read to learn.

And they believe that some children may really benefit from that extra year of instruction.

And as Natalie mentioned, the whole idea of allowing a takeover, the legislative takeover of the state school board that was put in there with it, their great guarantee.

And I'm wondering, are they trying to maybe the senators are trying to pad it with some things that they think might not go through so easily as standalone legislation?

Well, there's not a lot of bills currently moving through the legislature, at least not through the House right now.

And so when there is a bill moving, everyone wants to jump on it and get their proposal through.

And especially when you have more controversial high profile legislation like this, it's a good train to jump on.

Any additional thoughts on that or.

You know, it does raise the question, though.

I think it was Governor Kasich, his first budget that was a partizan budget, But we have largely seen bipartisan budgets like since they tend to be more the commonplace.

And one of the questions that I have given is if the Senate budget holds, are we going to see a totally partizan budget pass this cycle?

Hmm.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Well, speaking of Partizan, there's a proposed constitutional amendment that is scheduled to be on the August 8th ballot.

At this point.

It would make it harder to pass any kind of constitutional amendment in the future by raising the threshold to 60%, making it harder to collect signatures.

We know that the movement now is to have that on August eight.

There was some funding for it in this state budget plan.

What are your thoughts about that?

Is the funding sufficient and do you think that this is going to actually go for further or are we going to maybe see a lawsuit that stops it or something like that?

Well, there's already been at least one lawsuit filed and we'll see what happens with that.

The $15 million that was in the Senate's budget for this is what Frank LaRose, secretary of state, has said is needed to run an August election that will recompense all the local elections officials who have to now change their summer vacation plans to run this August election.

So I think that'll cover what we're looking at.

But of course, the question is now whether the courts will hold this up.

There's not a lot of wiggle room here, obviously.

Early voting begins pretty soon.

Yeah.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose did say a few weeks ago that the August election last year cost around $12 million.

So I think, like Jeremy said, that's a sufficient amount of money to cover this election costs.

And then, you know, as far as whether this August election is going to happen, I know county boards of elections are preparing as if it's going to happen.

And people who are in favor of issue one are pretty confident themselves also that it is going to happen.

So, you know, speaking of selling, issue one to the voters, people who are going out to try to convince voters to vote for this are being told in many cases to not talk about the abortion issue.

We know that there's going to be a November ballot issue.

It looks like it's going to be very likely that that is going to be on the ballot because signatures are being collected now.

And but yet the people who are going out to sell this issue in August are being told, by and large, don't talk about that.

That's kind of controversial.

What about that?

I mean, do you think?

Well, I'll say anecdotally, on the flip side, when I was out at the Memorial Day parade that my daughter was walking in over in Powell, they the signature gathers for that abortion amendment as they were signing people up.

They just happened to sign up somebody next to me.

And I'm nosy.

So I was listening and they were explicitly telling people to go vote in August because this was about abortion.

So they know that the opposition is trying to make it that issue to try and take it down.

So I assume that counterpoint is that even if you might support the abortion amendment, that you might believe even a larger good governance issue, that it should be harder to amend the Constitution.

I imagine that's kind of the tack there.

And and I think they're saying it's about more than one issue, too.

So they're like, this isn't only about abortion, it's about minimum wage, it's about marijuana.

It's about all.

So if there's any of that stuff that people don't want in the Constitution, this is why this has to pass in August.

At the same time, you have to look at if this is probably going to pass, you're going to need fairly high voter turnout compared to what you usually get in the August election, which admittedly isn't much.

And so if you're going to get the traditional Republican voter turnout from, say, churches, you are going to have to highlight the abortion measures.

So even if the leaders of this campaign aren't stressing it at the grassroots level, you kind of have to if you're going to get the kind of turnout needed to pass this.

So there are court challenges we were talking about over the amendment, over the way it was brought, the August 8th date.

Do you think that there's you know, what?

What do we know about those?

Are there any real good chances that they're going that the court is going to rule on it?

And if so, when would that happen?

Or anyone have any insight?

I don't know any insight.

But for listeners who don't know or aren't familiar, the court is majority Republican, so we now elect them based on party.

And it is a43 Republican court.

So that might give you some idea as to how they're thinking.

Now, you could argue that justices, particularly justices like Pat Fisher, who tend to be strict constructionists, might bend a little more towards the idea of, you know, it's precedent that you usually create a special election with a separate bill.

That's the heart of one of these questions is they passed a resolution for the amendment, but they didn't pass a bill to have an election.

And we don't have August elections anymore because we got rid of them last year.

So there is this legal question of did they create the election in a legal way?

And I, I am not about to try to figure out what that Supreme Court is going to do with that question.

But it is possible.

But I think if if they do anything, they have to do it soon.

Yeah, like Jeremy said, early voting is about to get underway.

I think the court will get less and less likely to intervene the closer we get to the date.

Okay, Everyone else kind of thinks that's the same.

Is it a foregone conclusion that this will actually, if it passes, what do we know about it, do you think?

You know, is there a lot that's going to to are a lot of people going to show up to vote to pass it?

And do we know?

I know there's like 250 groups that are opposing it, but what do we know about the turnout and how likely they are and what effect that can have on November?

So I'm hearing different things from different county boards of elections.

I mean, some of them are estimating up to 30% voter turnout, which is significantly higher than a typical August election.

I think last August was somewhere around 8%.

So some of them are saying we're going to have around 30%, and that's what they're preparing for.

But like we've been saying, I mean, on either side, they really have to mobilize their base to get them out there because it's all going to be about the turnout.

Whoever has larger turnout is likely going to win this one.

And to your first question about how much how likely this abortion rights amendment will be to pass if the 60% measures in place, if you look at other states, similar to Ohio that have passed abortion measures, say Kansas recently, it's all between 52 and 59%.

So the 60% barrier would be significant.

Looking at other states now, the Ohio Republican Party itself has said they expect roughly around a somewhere around a 10% turnout, which is actually pretty much in line with what previous to August elections have been, contrary to what many Republican lawmakers have, saying that they expect a higher turnout.

The Republican Party itself is not expecting an unusually high turnout.

There are some education bills that are in the legislature right now, and they're they're kind of not moving real quickly.

What let's talk about those.

What bills do you think?

Education bills.

Do you think there's support on that?

We could see moving in the next couple of months here?

Well, as Natalie said, SB one, which would completely restructure the Ohio Department of Education, even give it a brand new name is in the budget.

So I think obviously that's moving.

There's a lot of conversation around putting SB 83, which would totally restructure higher education into the budget as well.

So I think those are pretty good guesses.

You know, SB 83 controversially would restrict how professors they would ban them from striking.

It would restrict how that they can negotiate contracts, they would be post tenure review processes.

There's a lot of things in there.

You know, I sort of have this idea that if the budget passes, as the Senate president intends, we could be looking at a total educational transformation in Ohio in a single budget bill.

Yeah, I think that that's probably going to be the case that we'll see a lot of this go through in the budget versus, you know, stand alone legislation.

I learned a long time ago not to predict what's going to end up in the final version.

So you got a while to go before we get to Governor DeWine.

Yeah, There's a bill that bans trans athletes from participating in girls sports, and it looks like it might actually pass a couple of weeks ago and now it's kind of on hold.

Any thoughts of of what's happening with that behind the scenes?

A few weeks ago, Speaker of the House Jason Stevens had told me that he.

He's waiting to bring it to the floor because they want to make sure that they get it right in in line with federal laws and all of that good stuff.

So essentially, he said we're going to wait and see.

It will come to the floor eventually, but we're waiting for now.

We didn't have session this week.

We didn't have it last week.

So we'll see when the next House session is and if it does end up on the floor.

And went out and they think that that or.

Just that.

Representative Janet Powell, the sponsor of the women's sports bill, tried to put it in the budget.

She was not allowed to when the House passed it.

So, you know, not to circle back to the budget, but we may actually she might try again.

There's also a bill that bans hormone therapies and gender reassignment surgery.

Where does that standing at this point?

Any thoughts.

On that?

One is still in committee, I believe Moving through that process, though.

Is there doesn't seem to be as much support for that as the other one.

But my reading that it.

Has a decent amount of Republican co-sponsors signed on to it.

I remember when they reintroduced it, this General Assembly, there were maybe like 20 ish Republicans at the press conference just to introduce it again.

You know, Tennessee recently passed a bill on drag queens not being able to perform in public.

We don't have that bill yet.

Right.

And but do you think we're going to see something like that on the horizon?

Because we've had a lot of talk about drag queens or we've had a lot of talk about trans issues.

To me, that doesn't seem like that would be something that would be off the table in Ohio.

Well, anyone can introduce a bill, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone introduced a bill, but then it's a matter of getting that bill to pass.

And I think that that would be another highly controversial bill.

And I don't know I honestly don't know if there would be the same support for it that there would be, say, for transgender women athletes.

Okay.

The backpack bill, that's a bill that basically would allow private vouchers for any student in Ohio who wants a private voucher to pay for private school.

It would be public money and it would be given to anyone, regardless of, you know, what school district they're in or how much they earn.

Right now, the plan that's in the budget has some means testing on it.

So it's a little bit different than a universal voucher plan like the backpack bill.

But what what about the backpack, Bill?

Is that, Deb, now that we're seeing the budget absorb some of this.

Possibly it's again, it's always hard to predict what happens.

The thing to keep in mind about the backpack bill is that it is the most far reaching universal voucher bill.

So we have chartered nonpublic schools, which means they follow state standards.

But we also have this other classification of schools called non charter nonpublic.

They can't get any money.

Traditionally, they can't get voucher money because they don't follow state standards.

Often for religious reasons.

They would now qualify under the backpack bill, as would homeschool parents.

And so that is, you know, that's including everybody, right, in this total universal eligibility.

And we've never attempted that before.

So it is for some folks, even some Republicans, that feels almost too far.

Not only because of the price tag, but non charter nonpublic.

And homeschool children traditionally don't get a lot of oversight.

The kind of idea you don't take state dollars, we don't look at as much.

And there's a large pushback to the idea of adding more oversight.

So there's this like push and pull on if we're going to give you scholarship, should we also be getting a little more, say.

Two of the long term goals that legislative Republicans came into the session were, one, the backpack bill, universal school vouchers, and second, getting rid of the state income tax.

And on both of those issues, you're seeing now a willingness or a desire to phase those in over a number of years.

And I think both the Senate's budget has that phase in for both of those issues, a gradual getting rid of the lowering the income tax and also moving towards universal vouchers, but not doing it all at once, mainly because of the cost.

It's going to be it's going to cost billions of dollars to have universal school vouchers and, you know, you don't want to just run into that right away.

Right.

So there's a discharge petition right now to get rid of some of the provisions that were in House Bill six that passed.

What I know, Natalie, you've been working on that.

Where does that stand and what's going on with that?

So last I checked, the discharge petition only has a handful of signatures right now, but the bill sponsors House Bill 120.

That would reverse some of the Ovac provisions from House Bill six.

The bill's sponsors say they're confident they'll have enough signatures for that discharge petition.

I spoke to Majority Floor Leader Bill Seitz a few months ago.

One House Bill 120 was first introduced, and he said he doesn't foresee it going anywhere.

So even if they do have enough votes to get that discharge petition, I don't know that they will have enough votes on the House floor to pass House Bill 120.

The only thing that.

I don't remember the last time a discharge petition succeeded.

You need 50 signatures.

It's not very often at all that a discharge petition succeeds.

If it does succeed, there is potential, at least some rumblings about the Republicans who did not vote for Jason Stevens, who are allied with State Representative Derek Marin, supporting this partly ideological, don't want the state involved in business subsidies and also because kind of thumbing their nose to Jason Stevens.

But we'll see if that actually comes up.

And then, of course, that has to pass the Senate.

You know, we're only in the House right now.

This week.

Businesses were with the governor and they were saying that more skilled workers are needed in Ohio, that young people are leaving, they're not coming back.

And their solution was put more money into education, into scholarship, lower taxes, that sort of thing.

Let me ask you, what what is the magic here to get these?

You know, is there a sweet spot in this to get these young people to stay here?

I think the first thing lawmakers are saying is, well, you need to have the jobs available for people to come here at all.

And that's really what they've been focusing on from Intel to a number, a range of other bringing people in here that have not just jobs, but kind of high paying white collar jobs.

And that's what they're they're looking at now as far as attracting people in terms of what the political environment as well.

You know, there's people all over the political spectrum.

You're not going to bring, you know, Democratic leaning people who are upset about the state's abortion laws to Ohio, that might well be a dealbreaker for them.

But for people who are more apolitical or conservative or moderate leaning, it might be a real attraction.

In or I found really interesting was the Buckeye Institute, which is a conservative think tank here, came out with a report this week recommending changes to the federal visas to bring in more skilled workers from other countries to the state of Ohio.

They cited Intel and some other developments.

And I thought that was really interesting to see the Buckeye Institute get on board with like an immigration reform plan, a plan to bring in more college educated foreigners to fill some of these positions and perhaps to become Ohioans grow families, if that may be a path towards, you know, increasing our population.

And that's it for us this week.

For my colleagues at the Ohio Public Radio and TV Statehouse News Bureau.

Thanks for watching.

Please check us out at State News, dawg.

You can follow this show, Karen Kasler and me on Facebook and Twitter.

And be sure to 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