Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutuel, 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 Georg Legislative Maps have been ruled unconstitutional for a third time, ending the chance for a full May 3rd primary and a date has been set for the trial of a former House Speaker on corruption charges.

I'll talk to the former U.S. attorney who announced those charges this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

For the third time, the Ohio Supreme Court has struck down maps of House and Senate districts as unconstitutionally gerrymandered based on the constitutional amendment overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2015.

Elections officials say this makes a full primary for statewide legislative and congressional candidates impossible on May 3rd.

State House correspondent Andy Chow has the latest.

The new state House and state Senate district maps approved by Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission last month have been invalidated.

By the court.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled four to three that the latest four year maps do not comply with the state constitutions.

Anti gerrymandering requirements along with the guidance offered by the court in previous orders.

The now invalidated House map creates 54 Republican favored seats and 45 Democrats favored seats.

And the proposed Senate map 18 districts favor Republicans and 15 districts favor Democrats.

Opponents argue those maps still violate the Constitution because the number of competitive districts still disproportionately impact Democratic seats.

Of the 45 Democratic House seats 16 were then a 3% margin of Republican and Democratic voters.

Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor sided with the three Democratic justices in the majority opinion, as she had with the other two previous decisions and the ruling to invalidate the congressional map.

The majority said the Ohio redistricting commission's map is unconstitutional for three main reasons.

One, the commission has been adopting maps but not drafting the maps as an entire body The court said the constitution requires the seven members of the commission to draw a plan.

Chief Justice O'Connor wrote, quote, It is further ordered that to promote transparency and increase public trust.

The drafting shall occur in public, and the commissioners should convene frequent meetings to demonstrate their bipartisan efforts to reach a constitutional plan within the time set by this court.

Now, the dissenting opinion oppose the constitutional interpretation that the Commission must draft the maps together, saying the commission cannot have, quote, seven hands on the computer mouse.

The court also ruled that the maps unconstitutionally favored the Republicans, although the maps proportionately reflected Ohio's voter preference of 54% Republican and 46% Democratic.

All the toss up districts were Democratic leaning.

The court wrote, quote, The remarkably one sided distribution of toss up districts is evidence of an intentionally biased map and it leads to partizan asymmetry.

And the third point of the court was that the commission was too concerned with the impact redistricting would have on incumbents.

Leading the court to say that commissioners, specifically mentioning Republican Senate President Matt Huffman, quote, misunderstands the constitutional requirements.

New maps are due March 28th.

So what does this mean for Ohio's May 3rd primary?

It effectively eliminates any possibility of a full primary with our statewide legislative and congressional offices on the ballot on that date.

Employees at county boards of elections have been working around the clock to prepare ballots for that May 3rd primary, using maps approved on February 24th.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose has said if the court were to rule against any of the latest district proposals that a full May 3rd primary would be impossible.

He said at that point, quote, The ship has sailed with voter rights.

Advocates say the commission must act quickly to pass fair and equal districts, then reschedule the May 3rd primary to a later date.

That makes sense.

Ohio needs to put democracy first.

That means maps that are drawn for voters rather than partizan interests and it means a well-functioning primary that is set far enough out that elections officials, candidates and voters can participate in the way that they need to.

But not everyone sees it that way.

Republican Representative John Cross says the Supreme Court is delaying the election in violation of Ohio law.

So I'm going to continue to vote and advocate and support a May 3rd primary.

We take the last map as is, and we move forward.

And if there's any additional need for future conversations in the future, we can adjust.

We can adjust the change to have those debates and conversations in the next election cycle.

Republican legislative leaders have said if the court rejected another map, they would consider moving the primary as of the recording of this show on Thursday afternoon.

The congressional district map is still under review by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Andy Chao Statehouse News Bureau.

Governor Mike DeWine signed the permit list concealed carry bill this week.

But he's also advocating for bills that he believes will reduce gun violence.

DeWine's call comes just days after signing the bill that removes the requirement for people to get training for carrying a concealed weapon.

DeWine says the permit less carry bill signed into law is about expanding Second Amendment rights for what he calls law abiding citizens while taking questions about his support of the bill.

DeWine pivoted to other bills and actions that he believes will reduce gun violence in Ohio.

We have been able to pass a $250 million to go to local police departments and to help them.

We also have a police reform bill that is pending from the state legislature.

We also have a committee that is working on coming up with a proposal to have a permit, funding for police training, all of these things.

So people across the board and the Republicans conservatives, liberals should be for all of these things, going after violent repeat offenders, making sure police have the adequate training and continue to get good training.

So these are things that are in front of the state legislature.

I'm going to continue to work and fight for them and to get them back.

Opponents admonished DeWine for, in their words, ignoring the grieving families who lost loved ones in the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton.

DeWine had proposed a gun violence plan that included a voluntary program for gun sellers to check buyers backgrounds and an expansion of the law allowing for involuntary hospitalization of people with mental illness to include substance abuse issues.

That proposal went nowhere in the legislature, and gun regulations added to last year's budget were stripped out by state lawmakers.

DeWine had said he would be reintroducing some proposals on guns last year, but he didn't.

More than 152,000 retired teachers in Ohio will get a cost of living adjustment for the first time in years.

After a decision by the State Teachers' retirement system on Thursday, the COLA was reduced in 2013 and then suspended in 2017 which stressed that it was needed to protect the fund's liability.

Though other pension systems have continued their colas, the board agreed with 3% COLA for retirees starting in July.

The Ohio Retired Teachers Association had hired former SEC lawyer Ted Seidel to look into the fund.

On this show in October, he talked about his report in which he said stress is not transparent and squandered money and has lost the trust of teachers.

Stress executive director William Neville was also on that show, saying stress is committed to transparency and accuracy has appropriate oversight.

And Seidel is not an attorney or auditor that his report, which it says is not a forensic investigation or forensic audit, quote, contains numerous misstatements and allegations which are unsupported by evidence.

A special audit announced by the state auditor's office is still being completed last Sunday, after 735 days, the Ohio Department of Health stopped reporting daily COVID cases, hospitalizations and vaccinations.

It's now going to weekly reporting on Thursdays.

And the agency says schools will no longer have to report positive cases to the local health departments unless the school did the test and the student was positive.

State health director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff says the changes are an order since the state appears to be going into an endemic meaning the coronavirus is regularly found in the population.

Republican former House Speaker Larry Householder goes on trial in ten months, facing federal corruption charges in the case centered on the sweeping nuclear power plant bailout law known as House Bill six.

A federal judge set jury selection to start January 20th, with the trial expected on January 23rd.

Householder was arrested in July 2020 along with former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Burgess.

They have both maintained their innocence.

Lobbyist one cesspit is and householder Jeff Longstreth both pleaded guilty and lobbyist Neil Clark died by suicide last year.

First energy admitted to bribery and agreed with $230 million fine last summer.

I sat down this week with David de Villiers who secured the indictment against Householder when he was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.

We have a trial date set for Mr. Householder in January of 2023.

A year from now, less than a year from now.

Why is it taken so long to get to this point?

Because he was arrested in July of 20, 20.

And do you think that that length of time is going to have any effect on the case if memories have failed or anything like that?

Well, COVID don't estimate that the courts were shut down as far as jury trials went for a long time.

So that's that's probably a good.

Almost a year of delays.

And maybe that's not the only case in a southern district.

Ohio And the judges have to do other cases as well.

And if someone's not locked up, then they tend not to have the priority as people that are locked up.

So that there's that there are different types of cases.

Right.

So this is this is there's going to be definitely be witnesses to a case like this.

But it's also document driven documents don't necessarily go away And clearly, I'm not saying anything outside the the the indictment or the complaint that there you know, there's there's recordings that they don't go either.

So a lot of it's going to be what the the defendants said.

A lot of it's going to be document driven.

And you always worry about the health of your witnesses, especially in cases that take a long time.

But for the most part, I'm guessing that the length of time a case like this won't be too impactful.

And to your knowledge and again, you're no longer the federal prosecutor here, but could there be other charges added, other people charged in this case?

Is the grand jury still meeting?

Do you have any idea on any of that?

No, I don't.

I mean, the investigation was ongoing since really in earnest since we announced the charges.

Really?

So there's investigation going on that's going on.

How was U.S. attorney?

It's now going on under Ken Parker.

So it's it's going it's ongoing.

And I said that to publicly So, yeah, there's a possibility that there could be a separate indictment.

There could be what's called a superseding indictment where they add defendants or they add charges.

And it could be that nothing comes of it.

But there could be there you could see in the scenarios that that are playing out a completely separate conspiracy indictment because remember, it's a racketeering where they've alleged an enterprise.

Right.

So there's a group of people associated, in fact, in an enterprise.

So unless those people are actually in that enterprise or associated with that enterprise, it would likely be a separate indictment.

I want to ask you about a report in from my friend Laura Bischoff at the USA Today Network, Ohio Bureau just earlier this week about her public records request for texts between Householder and some other state lawmakers he's been communicating with about a data privacy bill.

He's been released till trial.

Part of the conditions of his release were that he does not have contact with potential witnesses.

So in general, is he allowed to lobby his former colleagues in the House and Senate?

Is he allowed to talk to other lawmakers?

Well, the question is, who's going to be a witness, right?

So a potential witnesses, how far do you go with that?

If it seemed as though he or anybody else was trying to influence or tamper with witnesses, that's a whole different story.

That's a separate charge, let alone you know, a violation of of your release bond.

So I'm certain, quite certain that the AOC is in charge.

This case would have filed a motion if they thought that it was something that would affect the integrity of the investigation or the pending trial.

There were some texts that were requested that did not materialize.

For instance, Republican Representative Edwards had said he deletes all his text, so there were no text available.

In general, I just want to ask you, can public officials do that?

Can they just delete texts?

Aren't those in some way records?

And what how do prosecutors handle it when you thought there was a text or you believe that there was some communication and it's it's eliminated?

Well, that's a that's it could be an hour long conversation.

So there's different rules, you know, within for text.

Even in DOJ, even as U.S. attorney, it was emails, you know, that stay forever.

Your texts just don't because quite frankly, a cloud server side.

So if you're texting on a on a government phone and it's something important you're supposed to for those to your email clearly you don't know want to you know we want to do that right.

So there's that there's also ways of a public records request on a tax is different than you know a forensic analysis of a phone.

And you know there's clearly subpoena power grand jury subpoena power and search warrant issues that would have to be done that would be more in the criminal realm than in the NEWSROOM.

I wanted to ask you, too, about the length of the trial when we finally get going here.

I remember former Congressman Jim Traficant's trial in Cleveland lasted two months.

I've heard this one.

The estimate is about six weeks.

Do you think six weeks, two months.

Is that realistic for the amount of evidence we're talking about and all the things that need to be considered here?

I do.

I do.

You know, Carl Schneider and we Glad Felt there and Matt Singer, they've tried a lot of cases they don't know, you know, what they need, how long it'll take if they estimate six weeks.

I'm pretty confident we'll be within that six weeks.

Last summer, first energy entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay $230 million in fines and admitted to bribing householder and former co-chair Sam Randazzo and to disclose any dark money donations, but not prior to 2021.

Sam Randazzo has not been charged.

And Larry Householder, of course, has said that he is innocent.

This, though, obviously means the utility is been has been cooperating with investigators does that.

Should we expect anything specifically on that.

Does that move the case in any way Well yeah anytime you have the the first energy cooperative you get 100%.

It does.

But that's part of the deferred prosecution agreement.

You know, if they did cooperate or they cease to cooperate or if they didn't cooperate, to the extent that the U.S. Attorney's Office or DOJ thought they should.

That they could lose their DPA.

So you expect that this is going to be a key part of this whole trial?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

This office, you mentioned it kind of earlier that it's not just covered, but also this office has been really busy with a lot of activity that's been going on with regard to public corruption.

It's an unusual level of activity that's come out of this, the southern district of Ohio, isn't it?

It is.

Yeah, I'd say that's true.

Does that make it more difficult for the attorneys to move forward on all these cases?

I mean, there's a lot of information on on especially this one.

It does.

I mean, you know, it's a workload.

So you have to kind of balance that out.

And and Ken's got to set priorities, you know, so, you know, everything begins and end with rule of law.

So corruption's a big part of what what the U.S. attorney's office does.

They're equipped for it, and they have the expertize for it and the resources for it.

So I think in the end, they can handle it.

You call this the most significant corruption case in Ohio history.

So I would think that would be a priority.

I would hope so.

I also want to ask you, we've just passed in the last two months the one year anniversary of January six and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

There were several Ohioans who were charged in that.

I'm just wondering, are you what do you think of the way that that case, those cases are progressing?

I mean, there's obviously a lot of information that's gone out on social media and in the news media, videos, all sorts of things.

How do you how do you look at all of this as it's proceeding in the public eye anyway?

Spent a year.

Right.

So a lot of these cases are easy, right?

Someone's there that's trespassing.

So there are different charges.

There's trespassing on the Capitol.

There's assaulting particular law enforcement, federal law force officers.

There's destruction of property and then there's insurrection.

Right.

So that's the big one.

You know, we've only prosecuted a handful of people in our history for insurrection.

I think the last time was that successfully, I think 40 years ago.

So to prove that, you have to prove that they went there with the intent to not actually overthrow the government.

But stop the the the legal process from going forward.

And that's not easy to do.

You know that someone and some people in the investigations going on.

But it's not just for a case like that.

It's probably conspiracy based.

Right.

So which means that more than there was a plan.

Right.

So it doesn't actually mean you were there for it.

So some of the people that could be charged, I think actually some that are currently charged or die with for insurrection weren't even there because they were planning it.

And so that takes a while.

That takes and sometimes it's not just emails sometimes.

And you have to get those e-mails to figure out where they're from.

You have to get letters.

You have to get text messages.

You have to get social media post.

And then you have to get humans to come in to say that the only way humans are going to come in to say it is if they get some sort of leniency and cooperation agreement, which is not unusual.

So that takes a while for those people that were there to get attorneys to see all the evidence against them to be proffered, which is having off the record conversation with the prosecutors and then for those prosecutors and agents to take that information and build a case on it.

And that's only been a year.

I suspect we'll see more charges of indictments to come.

Does that though, say or does that, though, like we were saying earlier, potentially endanger the case?

Because people do their memories fail, people die off these sorts of things.

Yeah.

But in the area of criminal law year, isn't that law?

So I feels like a long time for the rest of us.

Yeah.

Yes.

Speaking of a year, it was just over a year.

Ago that 20 year old Bowling Green University student, Stone Foltz died.

You had been helping the state investigate alleged hazing at the fraternity house and involving his death.

Collins Law has been enacted since then.

It elevates hazing involving drugs or alcohol to a felony level, requires colleges and universities to report hazing.

Do you think with what you know about this, that colleges and universities are doing enough to stop hazing?

I think it depends on the college and university, but I think in Ohio, I think there's been because of what's happened the past really two years I think there's been a renewed effort to do so.

You know, I've worked with the general counsel at Bowling Green and they're board as far as that.

My record my report's been made public now, and I think that they've spent a lot of resources.

And I can tell you that, you know, we've we've kind of assisted with training of investigation and so I think they're there investigative body on internally with Bowling Green, particularly on hazing has become become robust.

And I think you're seeing that throughout the the Ohio universities.

But the hazing problem has not gone away.

We still have it's still with us.

Yeah.

And of course, this disdain of alcohol and it would be a felony.

But, you know, we've got a number of students charged right now for manslaughter.

You know, and I think, you know, the idea of people have to understand it, manslaughter simply a misdemeanor resulting in death.

It is a misdemeanor to provide alcohol to a minor.

And if the proximate result of providing alcohol to a minor is death proximate cause or reasonably foreseeable, that that's manslaughter, that's a very serious charge.

One of the other projects that you have been involved in since you left the U.S. attorney's office, since you left the head of the U.S. says you've left being U.S. attorney is helping the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services as they deal with hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment payment dollars lost to fraudulent claims and scammers What's the hope the state's going to get back?

This is almost a half a billion dollars that the state lost to these scammers.

What's the hope that the state will get any of that back?

Well, I'll defer to to Director Dan Schroeder for a lot of those.

But generally, as we said before, there's going to be money coming back.

Right.

So and there's kind of three ways that you get it.

One is through direct communications with the banks where they're comfortable enough saying, yeah, this is fraud during a back.

And that's that's already been in process.

The other one it's going to take longer is civil forfeiture, which means that it's the Department of Justice getting together and finding these days with the help of of charge of family services in Ohio, the fraudulent claims, getting them frozen and then having a legal process to get those back.

That's taking a while.

But but as the director said, and as we've said earlier, that is definitely going on, but it's going to take a while.

The third is even longer, and that's criminal forfeiture where people get indicted in this case, conspirators get indicted.

And we're talking about national and international.

So a lot of this is big time organized crime, both in the United States and nationally international And that's going to take and you have 94 districts federally and they have to get together, deconflict.

And that's the way the process of helping.

And as you know, the president just announced, I think of the State of Union that that the attorney general is appointing a kind of a czar for that probably for at PGP pure fraud.

What frauds what we're really talking demic unemployment assistance.

Yeah.

And that's going to be that person's job is probably going to be more on the deconfliction level, like who is going to prosecute these cases so people will potentially go to jail over this.

Oh, yeah.

People people already have been indicted in and federally in Ohio for fraud, both in the northern district and southern district.

And we close the show with a remembrance of Veteran League of Women Voters activist Peggy Rosenfield.

Her obituary said she died, quote, after a long battle with the legislature.

PAC had fought for redistricting and against gerrymandering, but also for campaign finance reform and for same day voter registration, which was allowed in Ohio from 2005 to 2014 when the so-called golden week was eliminated by Republicans.

Peg's husband, Al, by all accounts, a brilliant metallurgist at Mattel, died of a heart attack in February, and Peg died 12 days later after electing to stop her dialysis treatment.

Among those paying tribute to her this week was Republican Secretary of State Frank La Rose, who said in a statement, quote, While we did not agree on everything we could have, civil, sensible discussions about whatever issue was at hand shall be dearly missed.

Peggy Rosenfield was 90.

And that's it for this week.

My colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at State News dot org.

And you can follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio.

Comes from medical mutuel 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.