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More movement back toward the way things were before the pandemic as state lawmakers pushed forward on a plan to play a bigger role in a governor's emergency orders.

And the one point nine trillion dollar code relief package signed on Thursday sends out checks to people, but even bigger ones to Ohio and its local governments.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

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

It was one year ago that Ohio became the first state to close schools for what was supposed to be a three week break the day after the ATO announced the world was in a pandemic.

Over the next few hours, nursing home visits and mass gatherings were banned.

In Ohio, the NBA, NHL and MLS shut down their seasons.

The NCAA basketball tournament was canceled and the MLB suspended spring training.

Since then, more than 17000 Ohioans have died of covid-19, and nearly 850000 people have been confirmed to have the disease in Ohio.

A year later, 10 percent of Ohioans over 18 are fully vaccinated.

This week, eligibility was opened up, people 50 and over.

And for those with Type two diabetes and end stage renal disease, nearly all schools are back for in-person or hybrid learning.

Visitation is permitted at nursing homes, where residents and staff were among the first to get vaccines starting in December.

Indoor sports venues can fill 25 percent of their seats, with fans 30 percent outdoors.

And there are no businesses in Ohio that have been ordered to stay closed.

And Gov.

Mike DeWine says once the state gets to 50 cases per 100000 people for two weeks, all existing orders will be lifted.

But GOP state lawmakers have once again passed a bill to limit their fellow Republican governors power with health orders after he vetoed a similar proposal last year.

This time, the bill headed to his desk, puts even more authority with state lawmakers who say it will bring more accountability.

State House correspondent Andy Chow reports.

Just after the one year anniversary of the first confirmed case of covid-19 in Ohio, state lawmakers voted to put restrictions on states of emergency and subsequent health orders issued by the governor.

The legislation is the countermove by critics of Gov.

Mike DeWine health orders such as the orders almost exactly a year ago that shut down schools and businesses.

If you believe in checks and balances and transparency.

This bill is for you.

This bill is about empowering people.

It's about empowering parents, empowering small businesses, empowering Ohioans.

It's about ensuring that they have a voice in their futures.

Here's what Senate Bill 22 does.

It requires a state of emergency to expire after 90 days.

It gives lawmakers the ability to terminate a state of emergency after 30 days.

If a state of emergency expires or is terminated, then a 60 day window opens where only the General Assembly can reissue a similar state of emergency after that 60 days.

The governor could reissue that state of emergency.

It also gives the General Assembly, by concurrent resolution, the ability to rescind any order or rule issued by the executive branch in response to that state of emergency immediately after it's issued in an earlier version of the bill.

Lawmakers would have to wait 11 days.

The Legislative Service Commission, which researches bills for lawmakers, said in its analysis that there are constitutional questions about rescinding a governor's order by concurrent resolution and the bill could violate separation of powers if it's attempting to give the General Assembly a legislative veto authority.

Supporters say it allows lawmakers to give their constituents a voice in response to these orders, like last year's stay at home order or the ongoing Marzook mandate.

But this bill received strong condemnation from opponents who say it weakens the governor's ability to act swiftly during times of crisis.

Experts across the world came together to develop mitigation approaches and prevent spread, while others researched vaccines that ultimately appear on the verge of containing the pandemic.

Much like we've done with measles, smallpox, polio, just to name a few, now is not the time to change course, allowing politics to override experts.

Democratic Representative Beth Listin, who's also a medical physician, says the governor had experts in different fields to provide input before he came to the decisions regarding health orders.

Listin and other Democratic lawmakers argued that Senate Bill 22 would allow for nonexperts opinion and even misinformation to have a role in the process.

They noted that committee testimony on the bill included people who made scientifically false statements and used statistical fallacy to argue against mass social distancing and vaccinations.

But I will have to veto the bill.

There's no governor that I can think of in Ohio who would have not vetoed this bill and I will have to veto it.

Not so much for me, certainly, because we're.

We're coming out of this pandemic.

But.

I'm very concerned about the future.

I'm very concerned about a future governor.

And health departments around the state not having the tools they need to keep the people of the state safe.

Leaders from the House and Senate say they're confident they have the votes to override a governor's veto.

A few Republicans voted against it in the House, including Nina Vitale, one of Darwin's harshest critics, Vitale said in a statement.

While I agree with the premise of the bill, I cannot vote for something that is both unconstitutional and, frankly, does nothing.

Andy Chow Statehouse News Bureau.

The latest covid relief package, called the American Rescue Plan, has gotten a lot of attention for its fourteen hundred dollar individual stimulus checks and three hundred dollar weekly benefits for unemployed people through September 6th.

But eleven point two billion dollars is on its way to Ohio.

Half of that going to the state with two point two billion dollars each going to major cities and to all 88 counties.

The top five county allocations go to the most populous counties, of course, Franklin, Cuyahoga Hamilton Summit and Montgomery County, all getting over one hundred million dollars each.

Nine hundred and thirty Ohio cities and villages will get money in this package from a thousand dollars to the smallest communities to more than half a billion dollars to Cleveland.

That averages out to around fourteen hundred dollars per Cleveland resident.

Five other cities will each get more than one hundred million dollars.

Columbus averaging around two hundred eleven dollars per resident.

Cincinnati around nine hundred and sixty seven dollars per person.

This week I talked with two people who will be dealing with what appears to be a flood of money, but they don't view it that way.

I met with Licking County Commissioner Tim Bob, the president of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, for socially distanced interview here in our studio for Licking County.

Being specific, a medium sized county here in central Ohio.

The mass vaccination program is supporting the health department.

Health care is a big part of it because we really want to get to that herd immunity so that people have to quit looking over their shoulders and being fearful.

So, I mean, we're going to support that to the greatest extent possible this year.

But also then we see segments of our economy that are dragging the entertainment, hospitality.

Small businesses give an example, last year, Kiran, with the Kahrizak money and using Licking County as a medium sized county example.

And I think we're kind of representative along with paying for some of the pandemic related expenses.

We really concentrated on three areas of support, small business that feared going under things like child care centers and places like that that just had no business nonprofits in our community, about 60 of them got grants.

And then we did rental assistance to keep people in their homes because it made no sense for them to be out living in cars and trucks.

So that's how we spent that money, along with reimbursing the county for some of the luck at the jail and places where we had unknown expenses related to pandemic relief.

That's how we spent Keres money.

I think we'll probably want to start there as we think about the American rescue plan, but we're going to have to think bigger picture because there's more money there, but also there are more possibilities.

And you testified last week on a panel relating to children's services.

And that's an area that our one of our guests last week, Angela SACEUR from the Public Children's Services Association of Ohio, was talking about a real potential need here as the pandemic ends and potentially more kids who've been neglected, who have had issues over the year come into the system.

Well, I certainly can't say it as well as Angela could, but let's be honest about it.

We had a child care and a children's assistance problem long before the pandemic related to the opiate epidemic and addiction to families.

We have you have literally parents that are either incarcerated or dead and someone is taking care of their children.

And these are children that need to thrive.

If Ohio's going to thrive in the future.

We can't have we can't lose a whole generation of kids because of addiction problems.

And families such as Angela told you, there are really two areas where we see the state stepping in to infuse money in this budget to help us.

One is the sort of the wraparound thing, trying to keep children in family environments instead of foster homes or out of state placements.

And the other thing is supporting kinship, kinship as family members, taking other family members children in.

And we need to financially support them as much as we would foster families, because ultimately children thrive in a family environment.

So that's that's what that's Angela's message.

And I certainly support that in the counties of Ohio.

Do and you're a Republican.

No.

Members of Congress from your party voted for this bill, which the Tax Foundation claims is one hundred and sixteen times more financial aid than the losses that states revenue suffered.

So I want to ask you, you talked a little bit about the spending.

The state's Office of Management and Budget says last month revenues came in fairly well.

We might not have to use the rainy day fund after all.

You talked about the spending and maybe some.

Concerns here.

Are you concerned about this bill, even though obviously you're going to be using the money from it?

Honest answer.

Yes, absolutely.

This is this this is not cash on hand at the federal government.

This is federal debt.

This is federal debt that my children and grandchildren will pay for and years will as well.

So in that respect, it's a lot of money.

That's why I did try to offer that perspective, that I think that this is more than just pandemic health related relief.

I think this is also to strengthen America, rebuild the economy and help with the infrastructure.

So I think it's an investment in America.

If you think about it that way, then maybe a long term federal debt increase makes sense because you're investing in bridges, highways, infrastructure, things that need rebuild and create jobs and build the economy.

So if you think about it, bigger picture like that, and that's the way I want to think about it as a public official in terms of capital improvement and making our county better for the next decade or the next half century, then it starts to make sense.

But if I were absolutely this is to quote, Governor, to why this is a lot of money.

This is a lot of money, little over three or four million dollars for Lincoln County alone from the last breakdown that I goodness before a pandemic.

Any county commissioner, if given that opportunity and thinking that that big bag of money was coming, it was like, whoa, never thought of it.

But now we've got to think about it.

But we've got to do the right thing for the people that live there.

And long term, we're got to think long term and not short term.

This is more than just spending in twenty, twenty one or twenty two.

This is a three year spend on this and it gives us the opportunity to be smart about it.

And I hope that there's enough accountability from Treasury to make sure that people spend it smart.

You know, we both understand some of the reluctant Republicans in the Senate to vote for it because they saw some states that have and some cities that have ill spent their money.

They're so far in debt with their pension plans and things that they felt this was just a giveaway.

And I understood that.

But overall, the country needs an infrastructure program and it needs relief from the pandemic.

And we need to rebuild.

And I think we I think we owe it to the people who are going to pay this debt to spend it smart and try to get some things done.

I also sit down with Labor Mayor David Berger, who a part of the bipartisan Ohio Mayors Alliance.

We do expect that Treasury is going to have to issue guidance, much like they did last year.

It took six months from the point at which the money became available to and actually cash was in our account and we couldn't spend it because Treasury a year ago wasn't clear on how it could be spent.

So the availability of cash versus the opportunity to spend are really two different things.

And so we are really excited.

I mean, there's just no other way to say that the disruption in our communities, the real costs being experienced by city governments, townships, villages, counties, I mean, across the board, we've all had enormous disruption, pain, dislocation, and the now reality that at real funds will be available I think gives us a real sense of hope.

So how much is this needed and where are your greatest needs?

Well, I think certainly the the the the overall circumstance has caused a series of dominoes in our our organizations and in the community.

So last year we put, for example, we put a hiring freeze in place.

We shrank the organization by thirty, thirty five positions.

I've now got to restaff.

I've got to figure out I got to recruit new police, new firemen, others that retired out of the organization.

So that's one set of categories.

We also had capital expenditures that we could not follow through on and in that ranges everything from street repairs to work in our water and wastewater systems.

So there's a huge amount of of that sort of need.

There's also the needs that individuals and businesses have and non-profits and and those are categories of of eligible expenses as well.

So it's the scale of what's being offered, I think is enormous.

But I think the scale of the need is similarly enormous.

It's it's going to take a while over time to actually repair what has the damages that have occurred and and get back to.

A point where people really feel like things are normal again, you talk about the financial resources, you say they're enormous here.

Now you're a Democrat, your county is Republican.

There are no Republican members of Congress who have voted for this so far are expected to.

And you've got Republicans who are saying this is too much spending.

They might look at things like the Tax Foundation claiming that this is one hundred and sixteen times more financial aid than the losses that states actually suffered.

And this is not the first covid relief package that's even happened.

So what do you say to people who are critical of this, saying this is too much spending?

How much is it really needed?

The fact is, is that we didn't get a nickel until last October.

Just five months ago, so the idea that we don't need this is not true.

Secondly, the scale of what's been done in terms of the damage is significant.

In some instances, it's permanent losses.

And so I think the the opportunity to actually have resources on a scale that meets the damages that have occurred over a period of time, that doesn't just have to be spent in the next six months, but gives us about two years, two and a half years to actually spend this this funding is important.

I think it's really unfortunate that the Republican partners in the Congress chose not to support this.

I don't have the luxury of simply deciding things on whose team I'm on.

I'm on the team of my community and I have Democrats.

I have Republicans.

I have independents in my community.

And when somebody walks in the door, I don't ask to see who they're affiliated with there.

They're there.

Citizen in my community expecting a set of services I have to deliver.

And I think that's the spirit in which we need to be addressing this in our local communities.

It's about the quality of life.

It's about healing the damages that have occurred.

And and I applaud the action that's now been taken.

According to the last analysis I've seen, you get twenty six point six, seven million dollars from this bill, which is a huge chunk of your annual budget.

I mean, that's a lot of money.

It is.

And it should be seen as a multiyear commitment.

It should be seen as a resource that will pay for damages that have occurred, but also jumpstart the healing process in our community.

And I think that along with other resources that are going to come to schools, resources that are going to go to individuals, resources that are going to go to businesses, you know, I think that this is a a true solution for communities that have been suffering.

And finally, I want to ask you, you're here today to testify on a bill that would make some changes in income tax based on what's been happening in the pandemic through people working remotely rather than at their home offices.

This is a bill that really impacts cities where people have been working.

But during the pandemic, they've been working in their homes.

Right.

And that kind of disruption would also be a very serious challenge to us.

As I mentioned, you know, for the city of Lima, 60 percent of those who pay city income tax work or live outside the city.

I don't know how many of them are working remotely.

So it's a big question mark as to exactly what this might represent if folks who are working remotely suddenly weren't liable for the the income tax.

I can also tell you that our safety division's police and fire forces, our ambulance paramedics, the entirety of those two budgets consumes the combination of those two budgets, consumes the entirety of the city income tax.

Another component of the latest covid relief package is a plan experts say could lift millions of children out of poverty.

An expansion of the child tax credit.

People with kids under six would get thirty six hundred per child a year.

Those with kids, six to 17 would get three thousand dollars per child annually.

I asked a leading expert in poverty in Ohio, John Call-out of the Center for Community Solutions, what this means to those kids and their families.

What's important about this is, you know, in the past, that credit mostly went to upper income individuals and they've sort of reorganized the credit to make it refundable for lower income individuals.

And starting this summer, lower income individuals will start to receive a monthly payment because they're also going to advance it.

I think what they didn't want this because they want it to be stimulus.

They wanted to get out into the economy and be spent.

They wanted to get these payments out to people earlier.

So those who get a refundable tax credit through the child tax credit should start to get payments maybe as soon as July.

And then the rest of it will sort of be handled when they file their taxes in twenty, twenty one.

So that's a big shift.

You know, I think overall, Kiran, the bill I think it is a total change in philosophy.

I think in the past it was sort of a trickle down philosophy.

We gave tax cuts and benefits to those at the top with the thought that they would invest and create jobs.

This sort of turns that on its head and says we are going to give these tax credits and tax benefits to lower and moderate income individuals with the thought that they will spend that money and that will create more jobs and boost the economy.

So is a big difference in how to approach this problem.

And when you say refundable, that means it actually goes back to to the people who are claiming it previously.

There are some non there are some non refundable tax credits that don't go back.

The excess doesn't go back.

Yeah, I think what we want refundable tax credits try to acknowledge is that these low income families and individuals pay a lot of taxes, other taxes that they can't get a credit for.

The other pay, payroll taxes, Social Security taxes, city income taxes, other taxes like that that they never get a credit for.

And it's just the way our tax structure is structured.

And so this tries to take that into account and provide more targeted.

Really, I think the thing that's important about this, Kiran, too, you know, that there was some compromise in this legislation and that they brought the income levels down for some of the stimulus so that it is more targeted at lower and moderate income individuals, which I think is appropriate because there's a lot of evidence to suggest that higher income individuals who got this tax credit just put it into their savings account, which doesn't really meet our our goal of trying to stimulate this economy and get this recovery moving.

This has been lauded as a huge win for low income families, like you're saying, that it could potentially lift millions of kids out of poverty.

And that's pretty big for a city like Cleveland, for instance, one of the poorest cities in the country.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, the effect on child poverty is probably the most profound since President Lyndon Johnson with the war on poverty.

It will it will move more children out of poverty than any other single thing that we've done.

And in a very long time, it's projected to cut child poverty in half in Ohio.

So that could be anywhere between one hundred and thirty two thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand children will see their their position in life improved and their families improved.

And it also does things like it has lots of other things in it that'll be helpful to people like utility assistance, child care assistance, all kinds of things that we know have created a lot of pressure for victims over the last year.

But it does expire at some point, I mean, this doesn't go into eternity, very, very that's a very good point here.

And obviously the stimulus payments are a one time only offer at this point.

I guess you might call it the tax cut, as know they are for one year.

But I think there's you know, I think there is a growing consensus that that supporting families with children is a good idea.

You know, it's been probably, I think, what, 30 years since welfare reform passed.

And, you know, I learned a lot, you know, particularly around young children and their brain development and the impact of poverty on that.

It can really disadvantaged children for the rest of their lives.

And so I think what we found is even small, modest amounts of money make a big difference in removing insecurity and improving mental health and improving the well-being of children and their families.

So I think on an effort to extend this and probably, you know, make it as permanent as anything is in Washington these days, which might be something for five or 10 years or something like that.

Corlett says he's disappointed that the package did not include a raise in the minimum wage, since he says poverty needs both at taxes and wages approach.

But he's hoping for movement on that soon.

And that's it for this week.

Please check out the Ohio Public Radio and Television State House News Bureaus Web site 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 med mutual dot com 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 dot com 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.