What’s next in the state’s largest corruption case, following a hung jury in the trial of two former FirstEnergy executives?
Weeks of testimony and more than a week of deliberations yielded no verdict. Former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and former FirstEnergy Senior Vice President Michael Dowling were charged with bribery and corruption.
A hearing Wednesday could determine next steps in the case.
While the case is in flux, so are customers’ electric bills.
From rising costs to accelerating demand, consumers are fighting back, perhaps at the ballot box.
If you’re not registered to vote in the May primary, today is the last day to do so.
We're talking about all of these subjects on this week's Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- Karen Kasler, bureau chief, Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau
- Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter, Cleveland.com
- Susan Tebben, reporter, Ohio Capital Journal
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to the All Sides Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we catch up on the political news of last week and preview the week ahead. I'm your host Amy Juravich.
Joining us on the Roundtable this week, we have Karen Kasler, Bureau Chief for the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Welcome back, Karen. Hey, great to be here.
Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter for Cleveland.com. Welcome back Laura. Hi, good morning.
And Susan Tebben, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Welcome back Susan. Good morning, thanks.
Speaker 3: The state of Ohio can and will retry these defendants. Justice needs to be done.
Juravich: That is Attorney General Dave Yost in a videotaped message following the hung jury last week in the first energy trial of former executives Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling. So hung jury, Karen, did we expect that? What happened? Why no verdict? You know.
Kasler: You know, as I'm listening to, that was a recorded statement that Yoast made and distributed right after it, uh, the, the no-vert, it came out, like that was only last week. Oh my gosh. Oh, wow. It was, yeah, it was.
Juravich: I don't, last Wednesday? I don, not even, yeah. So I just.
Kasler: So I just, it's been a long month since then. But I think the longer the jury was deliberating, the more likely it seemed that there was going to be either a hung jury or no verdict acquittal. And I think a lot of people who are watching this thought that hung jury may be the case, that you've got a jury that is hopelessly divided.
And then, of course, the day before, the jury had sent a note to the judge saying We're at an impasse. And she read what's called an Allen or Howard charge, also called a dynamite charge, to basically send them back in. Who's Allen and Howard, but okay. Previous court cases. And basically to send them back in there and try to get whoever, try to everybody to kind of reconsider their positions and force a deadlock jury to move forward. Well, that did not happen.
Juravich: Laura was the state outman, three lawyers for the state, one prosecuting attorney withdrew because her husband unfortunately passed away. So by contrast, the two defendants, Jones and Dowling, had about 20 attorneys present between them. Why? How'd that happen?
Hancock: First energy was picking up the legal tab even though they both are former executives and these were all white shoe firms. These are all fancy law firms in Washington DC and Cleveland and other places there were lawyers coming in from and they were objecting right and left.
They also were threatening professional sanctions against the lead prosecutor, Matt Meyer. So yeah, the prosecution was outgunned for sure. They, and the other side, you know, they like ordered fancy chairs because they didn't like the chairs at the council table.
Juravich: They brought in their own chairs.
Hancock: Yeah, they rented a chair.
Juravich: That's a pure power move. They're like, we know better chairs.
Kasler: Cleveland. One of the attorneys, Chuck Jones' attorney, Carolyn Dome, was actually a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. So yeah, what Laura's saying is absolutely on here. Did the prosecution.
Juravich: Botch the case? I mean, should I use that word or is that too is that too strong?
Hancock: I mean, I think if you talk to people in the courtroom, there was kind of a consensus that there was too much of an emphasis on boring details and making things overly complicated. At one point, Matt Meyer, the lead prosecutor said, I know this is boring, but hang in there with me.
You know, and he really shouldn't have done that. He should have, you know, untangled it and made it simple and weaved a narrative. When you compare this case to the federal case that happened in Cincinnati in which Larry Householder and Matt Borges were actually convicted, the federal prosecutor, they had the same amounts of evidence, I think around 3,000 pieces of exhibits.
You know, they have a lot, it was very similar even though the kind of the arguments of the case were a little bit different. But, with that case, the federal prosecutor in Cincinnati just kind of... Did a very simple like telling of a story and you got a lot of bogged down on details in Akron.
Juravich: OK, so the difference here was with Householder and Borges, it was a federal case, and this was a state case. So Attorney General Daviost appointed that prosecutor. Is that right? And then Susan, the judge in the case was Susan Baker Ross. And she scheduled a hearing for this week on Wednesday, where the parties are expected to pick a new trial date. Do you know anything about what happens there? Is it the same charges? Is it just like we start over?
Tebben: I mean it depends on the case. I'm not the one covering it so I have to admit that off the start But usually yeah, there's there's a lot of sort of procedural things that go into those kinds of things We have to decide you know we have to see a new jury We have do all of those you know The nuts and bolts of court things to see what we're doing But and then decide on where the charges are and the judge has a lot Of discretion on how those procedural things go so
Hancock: I know that Chuck Jones's attorneys, he's the ex CEO, they were going to just ask for his case to be dropped. So she'll have to decide on that.
Juravich: That'll be a judge decision. I think so. Yeah, okay So there were seven women and five men of the jury who deliberated for about nine days And it became very clear that they were at an impasse after nine days. That's a long time Here is what juror Mark Balman told reporters and this audio is from ABC five, Cleveland
Speaker 7: there were people who said that they weren't going to change their mind. Most people thought they were guilty.
Juravich: Okay, so the jury forewoman actually told Signal Ohio that most of the jury didn't know that Larry Householder, the former house speaker, was serving prison time. And she estimated that the jury was 10-2 in favor of conviction. So do we know anything else about what was the behind the scenes stuff?
Hancock: Um, so the judge, there were a bunch of things the judge would not allow Susan Ross Baker, I believe her name was. Yeah. There were a lot of things that she would not. Susan Baker. I would not.
Juravich: Susan Baker Ross, sorry. Baker Ross. I'm sorry.
Hancock: There were a lot of things that she would not allow so she wouldn't they can mention Larry Householder and Matt Borgess But they were not allowed to say that they are convicted and so when reporters but
Juravich: Well, some people might know that right if you I don't I'm
Kasler: What you know going in as a juror is what you know, but during the trial I believe they were told not to consume any media outside of courtroom.
Hancock: And yeah, and they weren't allowed to know that. There were a lot of kind of major details the judge did not know. In the beginning, the judge did this thing where she was so worried that the media was going to identify the jurors that she was doing basically prior restraint, which is unconstitutional, which was like she and the prosecutors and the defense would have to like review all the notes, all the audio, all the visual before a reporter could work with that to create a story.
And so she has been sued over that. And that case is working through the Supreme Court. And then The reporters also sent her a letter saying, hey, can you just work with us? And she actually did respond better to the letter.
Kasler: Were cameras allowed in the courtroom or is that what she's saying yes okay there were cameras in the court room and also there was a zoom link that was set up through her office that was really helpful for reporters like us down here in Columbus trying to follow this and I really hope that federal court will pay attention to this because being able to watch the whole trial or as much of it as possible really gives reporters more context we have more to work with when we talk about these stories and in federal court you can't have any cameras, any recording devices whatsoever, and it's very frustrating.
Tebben: And on the topic of the jury, it's pretty typical during the jury selection process that they ask you what you know about, you know, this particular case or about these people. So I can see where they would have tried to figure out during the selection process called War Deer that, you, know, how much you know about this.
Do you know who Larry Householder is? That kind of thing before we've even gotten to the process. And then.
Juravich: So the defense might lean toward jurors who whenever they ask the question, who's Larry Householder and they say, I don't know.
Tebben: Right right and a lot of times in these kinds of cases where there's very public figures They talk about a change of venue because if there's someone in a county say a county sheriff is being charged Too many people know who the sheriff is then they have to change counties and go somewhere else obviously it depends on the federal Court or state court or whatever so so all of that is pretty typical and like how much can we tell them how? Much is gonna sway their thinking about things
Juravich: So the trial was about six weeks. The jury deliberations were about nine days. And here is what Judge Susan Baker Ross told the jurors before dismissing them in the end.
Speaker 8: This is probably disappointing for some of you. However, I appreciate that each of you has, you know, taken the time to deliberate and talk to each other and work through it. And I respect that this is where you are.
Juravich: So yeah, disappointing because that's a lot of time, a lot money put into this, right Laura?
Hancock: Another thing I forgot to mention is that the prosecution's main witness, the cop who went through all the first energy evidence, in the end couldn't testify. So generally you need your expert person to say, and then I looked at this evidence and then this is what was illegal about this and then, I did this and this.
They kind of walk the jury, hold the jury's hand through how each law was violated And this is the evidence well The cop who was supposed to do that, he got under, he was put on administrative leave by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation for non-first energy unrelated case witness or evidence tampering, I believe he was.
Because he was on administrative leaf, he wasn't allowed to testify. So that was also huge because there was the roadmap for the prosecution. So they just had to try to make do. Now, there was somebody else, like a supervisor from... That cop who did testify, but it was like different because that supervisor wasn't directly like handling everything.
Tebben: And that could have helped the defense, because if you have someone who is on leave for something, I mean, the defense could go out. I mean that could help. That could help.
Juravich: If they put him on the stand, he would be an incredible witness suddenly. Go for your integrity. All right. Well, we'll just end this talking about the first energy trial with defense attorney Steve Grimes, who sounded very confident at the end.
Speaker 9: No jury is going to convict our clients because there's not sufficient evidence to do so. And so we'll be ready and we'll do it again if that's what the attorney general chooses to do.
Kasler: And I think that strategy of basically saying that the late Samarandazo, who was a key figure in this case, Jones and Dowling were accused of paying a $4.3 million bribe to him as he was becoming the Public Utilities Commission chair.
The defense had made the connection saying he wasn't a public official when this money was paid to him. So they couldn't have bribed him because he wasn't a public officials. And so if there's no bribery, the rest of the case falls apart.
And that was an interesting argument because, like Laura said, there was a lot of technical stuff, a lot exhibits, what, weeks of testimony on the prosecution side and the defense basically said, hey, look, if you can't prove this one thing, then the rest of it falls apart.
Juravich: All right, well, so I guess we'll see what happens whenever they have this special meeting this week to try to decide whether they're going to do a new trial.
You're listening to All Sides Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. We were just talking about the first energy and the recent trial and some consumer related news with Karen Kasler from the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, Susan Tebben from the Ohio Capital Journal and Laura Hancock of Cleveland.com.
Um, in other first energy news, Laura, you had a first energy related story that wasn't about the trial, but was related to a service fee that the company dropped for residential customers. What did the company change and why did they do it?
Hancock: So about a year ago, the companies on bills, people noticed that there was a 50 cent charge unless they enrolled in auto pay. So if you were just transferring from your bank account or if you're paying with your credit card, you got charged this 50 cents.
First Energy at the time was like, hey, our hands are clean of this. This is, we have like a third party vendor and they're charging this. But then they put in a rate plan that they wanted to nix this charge And they they did, and it ended March 1. So people started noticing on their bills.
And it's, you know, 50 cents for a lot of people is not really that big of a deal. But it's again, feeling like you're being nickled and dimed from a utility and throughout Ohio.
Juravich: Literal nickels and dimes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Hancock: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Electricity prices have gone up. Right.
Juravich: Right, right. But if you want, if you don't want to auto pay, right, and you want because you want to like look at your bill and think about your electricity costs each month, because auto pay makes it so that you have no idea like you're just not paying attention, right? So some people like to look at it each month.
Kasler: And some people live paycheck to paycheck and you if an auto pay goes through and the money's not there. Well that sets you up for
Juravich: of financial problems. And also Laura, in January, First Energy and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio had a settlement involving 275 million dollars in restitution. This is directly related to the "House Bill 6" and all of the bribery and the fraud. So are they seeing the customers? Are they seeing the money.
Hancock: So out of that $245 million of it is in direct customer refunds. And they're over a three-month cycle. So the bills going out this month will be the last, because it was February, March, April. They'll be the Last.
But yeah, so they're getting credits against their monthly bill. OK, so if I auto-paid, I wouldn't notice that, see? Right. However, the other side of it is overall. Bills have gone because they did approve a rate increase for the Illuminating Company which is Cleveland and I believe it was Toledo Edison.
Juravich: While we're on the topic of energy costs, that brings to mind data centers and the pushback against them, especially huge AI generated ones. So Susan, Karen, and whoever wants to talk about it, the Ohio ballot board took action last week and moves a potential data center amendment closer to the November ballot. So basically the ballot board said what? They're allowed to get signatures, right?
Kasler: And that starts the process. And it should be noted here, this is a very excited group. They have an issue that they're really passionate about. They also have about three months or less to get 413,487 valid signatures, which means they've got to gather a lot more than that in 44 of 88 Ohio counties. And so that's really tough for an all volunteer group. It's tough for a paid group to do. Yeah.
Juravich: So what they're trying to do is ban new large data centers, is that right?
Kasler: Is that right? Yeah, data centers that use more than 25 megawatts monthly. And it's kind of a simple amendment, but, you know, again, the hill that they have to climb here is pretty significant, and we'll be watching it, I guess.
Juravich: Yeah, are there gonna be are there going to be opponents trying to like stop them or just the data?
Kasler: Data center industry is. Yeah and the data center industry, I think you're already seeing a push nationwide from the data center industry because this is not the only place this is happening.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Kasler: And as far as I know, it's the only constitutional amendment right now. But the idea of communities pushing back against data centers is happening all over the place. And so the data center industry is trying to say, hey, we are not that bad. We provide jobs.
Data centers are needed not only for AI, but also for just general computer work, internet work. And so without them, then the United States will be further behind. And so I think the if this moves forward, and even if it doesn't, I think you're gonna see more data center industry folks talking about how they're a good thing, they're clean development, they provide construction jobs, though not a whole lot of permanent jobs in some of these places.
Tebben: And for the same reason, I think, as much as they can, you're going to see pushback from legislators, from elected officials, leaders, because we had Governor Mike DeWine talking about in the state of the state about how many businesses were attracting to the state. Data centers were one of those things.
We saw the Intel plant. It was a big deal on that. So you're gonna see a lot of people with the same reasons. We want jobs to come to Ohio and we want these big, large job growth to come here. So. I can see where you would have those people as well trying to push back, plus we had, you know, as you say, the time period of getting these signatures, we saw with the marijuana efforts, it's not always enough time for these kinds of things.
Juravich: Okay, so they have about three they have to get the signatures by July if they want to be on the November 1st July 1st. Yeah, it's
Kasler: really short. And they're also along the same, they have the same deadline as the folks who are trying to abolish the property tax. They have been at this for a while. But once again, the organization, the resources it takes to get a constitutional amendment for voters, that's significant. And even if you've got issues that are popular, that are an easy it still is difficult. Those signatures in that time frame.
Juravich: The reporter roundtable on 897 NPR News and coming up, we're going to talk about proposed childcare legislation that's drawing some opposition from the Franklin County prosecutor among others. That is when All Sides continues on 89 7 NPR news.
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Juravich: You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we talk about all things Ohio politics. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. And still with us, we have Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at Cleveland.com, Susan Tebben, reporter at the Ohio Capital Journal, and Karen Kasler, bureau chief at the public radio state house news bureau.
Susan, you have been reporting on bills that focus on how alleged child care fraud is investigated in Ohio. This stems from some of the daycare fraud allegations in Minnesota. Some of it true, some of it going viral with videos produced by social media influencers. So catch us up about here in Ohio. What do Ohio lawmakers want to do when it comes to childcare fraud?
Tebben: Yeah, so as you alluded to earlier this year, we had some allegations from a right wing YouTuber that made its way all the way up to the Trump administration of child care fraud in Minnesota, particularly for Somali run child care. Again, as you say, whether those allegations are true, hard to tell, but there was basically a decision by leaders, Governor Mike DeWine made a statement.
And then legislators also decided they needed to respond in Ohio and say, basically our system is good. We've done all these good things. However, we could make it better always. So that's where "House Bill 647" and "House Bill 649" come in where basically they're saying who is authorized to be able to investigate these if we don't think that the Department of Children and Youth has enough investigation going on things.
In both of the bills are talking about the attorney general or the inspector general doing these sorts of investigations or rising to the level of, and amidst all of that, there was allegations from the sponsors that maybe Franklin County's rates of child care fraud are higher than others, and also, maybe they're not doing enough to investigate.
So that's where we come into the Franklin County, prosecutor came in, and a commissioner from Franklin County also came in to say, no, that's not true. Number one, there was an allegation that the Franklin County commissioners were sort of slow walking or withholding information about child care fraud.
So Erica Crawley came in and said, we don't have anything to do with investigations of child care, fraud. That's not our jurisdiction. We would give it to the prosecuting attorney. So that's just plain not true. And they also don't think that these bills really do what they're supposed to do.
Basically solving for lack of a problem. If the childcare fraud in Ohio is, and as the Department of Children and Youth have said, there's about 100, a little over 100 cases of childcare fraud, just allegations. And two dozen maybe came through last year actually having some action, whether or not it was childcare fraud or if they just had overpayments paid. That's what these bills are going for is trying to make sort of increase the enforcement. Of these bills.
Juravich: Related to a bill in search of a problem. Franklin County Prosecutor Shayla Faver, you said, testified. And she said that there had been no fraud cases for her department in 2025, like a whole year, right?
Tebben: Right, so they have not had any referred. So as she said, we can't prosecute what's not there. So if they don't have anything referred to them, then they can't proscute. So it looks like, oh, you're not prosecuting anything. And she said.
Juravich: Okay, but we don't have any. Yeah. And then is there another bill? Because I have here that is it Karen Lamp or Lampy? Lampi. Lampie. Karen Lamps with the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers. She is opposed to facial recognition or having photos of children because that's a way to reduce fraud is like what scanning kids faces when they There go there?
Tebben: Right, so we're seeing them, legislators are kind of backing off this, but yes that was one of the bills 649, was to basically the verification process when you go to a child care center with your kid or your guardian takes the kid, is to check in and then have a parent or guardian's picture taken to prove that they were the one that brought the kid in.
So Josh Williams... And, you know, make sure that they are who they say they are and attached to the kid. So yeah, Josh Williams was the legislator that was saying we should use the surveillance that's already there or the stuff that is provided by the Department of Children and Youth to take pictures of the children.
That way we can make sure the children are there and the children of the ones are being checked in. Therefore, we are not having fraud where a child is being checked in, in air quotes, and there's actually no child there.
Yeah, basically bipartisan effort saying I don't think it's very good to take pictures of kids and capture those and save those in storage at some state facility or wherever. It's not good. So Gary Click was saying when in the committee that they don't they maybe have the support that they need for that kind of thing. But yeah, that was in one of the bills that brought up a lot of discussion about whether or not that was a good idea.
Juravich: All right, so these bills are obviously being debated, but no vote yet.
Tebben: No vote yet. They're out until after the primary, so we probably won't see any discussion until at least after that.
Juravich: Until after May 5th. All right. Pivoting to a very different topic, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost wants Ohio to resume its executions. His position is at odds with outgoing Governor Mike DeWine, who has delayed every scheduled execution since 2019. And currently there are 107 men and one woman on death row in Ohio.
Karen, your colleague Sarah Donaldson quoted Yost as Calling the fact that not a single sentence has been carried out. He called it, quote, a mockery of the justice system and the dead in their families. So what's prompting Yost to make all of these death penalty comments right now? Well, that was part of-
Kasler: of his annual report. And he's kind of said something similar before. I think just not that long ago, he's talked about how the death penalty is not being used in Ohio.
In the report, he said other states are able to get these execution drugs that Governor Mike DeWine has said Ohio can't get. And so, you know, DeWyne has kind of turned a lot of this over to the legislature and said, hey, you, know, we've been trying these drugs are not available, you guys have to figure out what to do next.
The discussion has long been, if the death penalty is on the books and it can be used, but it's not being used, is it really an actual deterrent? And prosecutors have said it is a deterrent and they use it as a technique when they are trying to come up with plea deals and prosecute some of these folks who have committed some really heinous, horrible crimes. But if it doesn't... Move forward, then is there a real concern about a person actually going to their execution?
Juravich: Yeah. And Laura, Governor DeWine hinted that he planned to talk about the death penalty sometime in the new year. I mean, he mentioned this in some interviews, but he never made any grand announcement, did he?
Hancock: No, and then he'll kind of, when people bring it up, he'll be like, well, soon. So still soon. I say Sarah's been asking you for a while about this. And that's exactly. Yeah.
So, yeah, so, um, he obviously, he, I think when he was a state Senator drafted the current law for the death penalty. Um, but I think he has changed his mind. Um, and we'll have to see if there's any nuances with his position, if he ever does announce it.
There is kind of a divide in the Republican Party where there are some who really want that justice aspect. So they want the death penalty on the table. And there's some Republicans who say, you know, locking them up and throwing away the key, you know, keeping them life without parole is actually cheaper than doing all the legal appeals that a death row inmate is guaranteed in the Constitution. It's actually cheaper just to lock them up for life. So you are seeing this debate.
Juravich: You know across the country is there anything to one can do by executive order before he's done being governor or like Can he do anything with the death penalty?
Kasler: I don't think so. I mean, he has done most of what he can do, I think, in terms of delaying executions. He could, I suppose, commute all the sentences, but I don t know that he'd do that.
What's interesting about that 1981 law that created the death penalty in Ohio, a couple of months back I talked to a woman who had talked to the living lawmakers who are still around, who crafted that law and now half of them say they support repeal of that law. And you've seen wardens of prisons, they support repeal. A former attorney general, Jim Petro, supports repeal, I mean, the tide has really changed for some people against the death penalty.
And I think, you know, there's always a bill to ban the death of penalty in Ohio every legislative session, usually by Nikki Antonio, the Senate Democratic minority leader. But there was also one this time. It was bipartisan with Gene Schmidt, who is a very conservative Republican and had been a supporter of the death penalty for a while, attached to that. And so I think that kind of gives you a sense of where the discussion is among some Republicans on whether the death penalties should continue.
Tebben: Yeah, I think some of that came from for Jean Schmidt at least the abortion debate of if you're going to say we can't have abortions But you support the death penalty. How does that square and I think Jean Schmidt I believe I remember that happening in one of years ago One of the discussions she was having about an anti-abortion and and now she switched to saying, you know No, the abort the death benefit shouldn't be a thing
Juravich: You're listening to the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking with Susan Tevin from the Ohio Capital Journal, Laura Hancock from Cleveland.com, and Karen Kastler from the Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau.
Susan, you wrote about a new report that Ohio leads the national rate when it comes to child firearm deaths. That surprised me. I don't think Ohio wants to be leading in that. Can you tell us what you learned from your reporting? What are the reasons for that? And how do they come up with that number?
Tebben: Yeah, so this report is from the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio, a general child welfare kind of advocacy group. They look at this pretty yearly on a regular basis of what the leading causes of death are for children. A lot of times in years past, it's been motor vehicle accidents.
So it was surprising to see firearms go up. And basically, this report was, yes, it was about numbers, but it was also about what are the recommendations we can make for legislators to be able to stop this. And a lot of times that's background checks for things and, you know, mandates for anyone that has, any adult that has a gun to have specific ways of securing those firearms so that children can't get to them.
So that's a lot it. But yeah, it found that firearm deaths are a leading cause of death in children. Black youth and young people living in high poverty areas are disproportionately affected by this. And it's actually up from from previous years and above the national average. It's gone up by 68% according to a different health policy organization, KFF, nationally.
And they've got up here as well. And even they've done up for children, we're considering children 17 and younger, above motor vehicle desks. They've gone off since 2020 above motor vehicles desks, so we've seen a rise pretty steadily.
Juravich: You mentioned that the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio is calling on state lawmakers to do something, and they want to create an Office of Violence Prevention. But another thing I thought was interesting is there's a House bill that would require multilingual firearm safety material. We don't have that? I can't believe that.
Tebben: Yeah, apparently not. We don't have that just generally around public schools and schools in general. So yeah, they're asking for that, which makes sense if you're seeing the data that's saying that these different disproportionate groups and demographics are seeing this.
So yeah. And then you have different bills on the Republican side and the Democratic side to try to do this. We have Republicans saying that they want... Excuse me, Democrats saying that they want the background checks that are being recommended in this. They've already put up bills for that.
But on the Republican side, you're seeing more of the tax credits for ammo and firearms and sort of not really looking at the policies to keep things secure other than maybe some bills from the Republican Side that talk about securing your firearms and making incentives for you to secure your firearms. But there's definitely a- a difference between the bills related to firearms when you're looking at the Republican side versus the Democratic side.
Juravich: Well, one more pivot before we take a break. I wanted to talk a little bit about Softbank versus Intel. Karen, your colleague Sarah Donaldson talked with Senator Bernie Moreno about this, who wanted to make it clear that there is a distinction between this new Softbank project and Intel.
The Pike Dim project in Southern Ohio calls for a data center so large that it also needs a $33 billion natural gas power plant to power it. So they have to build the gas plant before they build the data center.
Intel project broke ground in Licking County in 2022, and has stalled. And here, Bernie Moreno is saying that the two projects are very different. Let's listen.
Speaker 11: Well, you know my feelings on Intel. That was a government-subsidized chips program deal that was a mess from the beginning. This is very different. This is all private capital. It's fully funded. Softbank has committed the money.
Juravich: All right, so Karen, Senator Moreno is basically saying that, you know, Intel was a bad deal, but this one that he helped with is a good deal, right?
Kasler: Well, and you know, some of that comes from President Trump's comments about the Intel deal. And of course, there was there were there were financial issues at Intel and I believe the United States ended up owning 10% of Intel. So you know that that's kind of continuing criticism over Intel that started with Trump.
But he said this is different because, you know this is a this is on government land. This is the former Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant. And so this is land that already is owned by the federal government, whereas Intel, it's a little bit different.
And of course, a data center is different than a chip manufacturer. So these are really different projects. And I think, you know, I mean, certainly the Intel project has gotten a lot of criticism for the number of times that the deadline's been moved back in terms of when chips were going to start being manufactured and rolled out.
I guess we just have to wait to see what happens with this Piketon facility, but they really are kind of different projects in a way, in a lot of ways.
Juravich: In a lot of ways. What he said about the Piketon facility, though, saying it's all private capital, so besides the land, the land's federal, right, but all the money they're saying they're going to use to build everything on the land is going to be private?
Kasler: That's my understanding from Senator Marino. I mean, this is a Japanese company, SoftBank, that's involved in this, and so they've apparently pushed this forward.
But Intel was a public-private partnership. It was the largest, at the time, the largest state participated in public- private partnership. And as you might remember, the rollout for that was a big deal, it was huge in terms of the state's. Involvement in it.
But since then, we've seen the state getting involved in other things like Anderl down south of Columbus. This is different in that respect, too. So I think one thing that's interesting to note here is because this is federal land, my understanding is there aren't any property taxes, which once again feeds the data center folks who are frustrated about data centers in general.
But quite often, when there is federal and there is no property taxes to be paid to schools. There are deals that are struck that give schools and local governments some money here, but that's just, the data center folks are coming at their issue at an interesting time here when you start thinking about this.
Juravich: All right, coming up on the All Sides Reporter roundtable, we're going to talk about the May 5th primary, and we'll talk about taxes. That's when we continue on 89 7 NPR news.
You're listening to All Sides in our weekly reporter roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. And still with us, we have Karen Kasler, Bureau Chief of the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at cleveland.com, and Susan Tebben, reporter at the Ohio Capital Journal.
Are you registered to vote? Well, today, April 6th, is the deadline to register. You can still go online and register at the Secretary of State's office website, which is ohiosos.gov.
And it is a good idea to check your registration, make sure just in, you know, in case you've moved or you've accidentally been removed from the voter rolls. So that's always a good the idea. What are our thoughts on the primary this time?
I mean, I did an election preview show and there are some competitive races, but there's nothing really huge that is getting a lot of media attention. Do we feel like this is gonna be a slow primary?
Kasler: Well, one thing I want to stress here is that mail-in voting is still legal. It's still OK. But the deadline has changed. You have to have those ballots in the day before the... Yes.
Hancock: 730 on Election Day.
Kasler: Yes. So if you're going to mail them, you have to mail them earlier or you can drop them off. So but mail and voting is still allowed. Ohio still has its early voting laws. Those have not changed except for that deadline. Yes. So no more four day grace.
Juravich: Period, or the election office used to accept it if you got it in the mail late. So it basically is an anti-procrastinator.
Kasler: I mean, obviously there are carve outs for military and overseas voters, but yes, for people in Ohio, that is the deadline.
Juravich: Election related. Karen, you had some stories this morning about the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Vivek Ramaswami's tax proposals. Can you give us a summary? I mean, what is Ramaswami want to do with taxes.
Kasler: Well, we haven't heard a whole lot of specifics from him on how this would happen, but two things that he's talked about extensively are eliminating the income tax, which that's we've heard that song for years at the state house because lawmakers have talked about that and they've gotten to the point now where two tax brackets.
Hancock: Yeah, we are almost at a flat tax.
Kasler: Yes. Yeah. So that's something that's not unusual. I mean, that's something, again, we've heard of for a while, but also the idea of property taxes.
When Ramoswami launched his campaign last year, he said he wanted to eliminate property taxes. Well, that he's changed his tune on that a little bit and said that what he actually wants to do now at this point is to roll back property taxes to where they were before the pandemic.
And he kind of pins all this on... His idea of Ohio needs to grow its population to 15 million people. Now, if that happened, that would be significant population growth, a higher percentage of growth than any other state.
And he says that getting rid of those taxes or rolling back those taxes would make Ohio a more competitive state overall. And that would how the state could manage living without the $10 billion that connects right now from the income tax. And then, of course, local governments and schools and other entities would have to make up whatever is the difference with property tax rollbacks.
Juravich: So more people would move here, and they would have fewer state taxes, is his proposal. But then their local taxes will end up going up, if they own a piece of property.
Kasler: Well, and I should note too that, you know, one of the first people I think a lot of us heard talking about this idea of eliminating property taxes, or at least going way, way low, was Republican former Governor John Kasich.
And there are people who worked for Kasich who are now working with Ramaswamy. So some of the ideas that we've heard, I mean, he was, Ramasvamy had put out a video recently about consolidating universities. And that's another idea that Kasich had talked a little bit about when he was in office. So. I think, you know, bringing back some of these ideas is something that we're now seeing.
Juravich: Ramaswami has been talking about tax proposals here and there. As of this morning, Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton released some tax proposals that she has. Now, this came out just right before we went on air, so I don't think anybody's had time to read it. Do we know what was the headline? Ha ha!
Kasler: My colleague, Jo Ingalls, is at the event. She's been doing a lot of these roundtables where she has Ohioans who are affected by these issues talking, and then she'll talk about what she wants to do about this. She's calling this the Act On Costs Agenda.
Juravich: Acton. Yes, act on. Yes. I had to point out that plan. There you go.
Kasler: This is the first time I think we've heard some specifics from her because she's talked a little bit about what she wants to do but hasn't really said here are some ideas.
Now she's talking about a refundable earned income tax credit, child tax credit for families, medical debt forgiveness, some of these kind of things that she says will really go after things that are making life unaffordable. Yeah. Capital A.
Tebben: It's that capital A affordability that we all talk about that's going to be a hot topic for this election is just how do we afford anything?
Juravich: Yeah, so, and you, Susan, you mentioned one of her proposals, the child tax credit. I mean, that seems right up her alley. Yeah.
Tebben: Yeah and that's a very democratic thing. We do have a couple of pieces of legislation that are related to that in the legislature right now. One's a fully democratic and one's a bipartisan actually.
Basically what it is is getting a tax credit for depending on the age of the child, the number of children that you have, a certain amount. So that does seem popular within child advocacy groups.
It seems like something that people are like if you want us to have these children and you know, raise a family in Ohio, we need some sort of help with this because, you know child care is very inaccessible and very expensive and child, you now, just generally raising a child is very expensive.
So we haven't seen any of those move in the legislature but it's not surprising to see the Democratic, you know representatives trying to look at this, Democratic candidate I should say.
Juravich: Well, pivoting to more taxes, Laura, you have written about why more schools may be turning to income taxes as a source of revenue, as opposed to maybe property taxes.
In Cuyahoga County, five school districts on the May 5th primary are going to be asking for new revenue through property taxes, income taxes, or both. So tell me about this pivot. Why are we trending toward income taxes? Currently, about 200 schools have been closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hancock: Third in the state assess income taxes. They tend to be in rural areas where there will be farmers who have tons and tons of acreage, but have more moderate incomes. So it isn't reasonable to assess a ton of property taxes because it wouldn't be affordable for them.
But you're starting to see this come up in the suburbs. And this is a way for school districts to diversify sources of revenue, especially as people like Vivek of a swummy and then this there's also a group you know trying to get signatures to get on the ballot to abolish the property tax.
And so this is them kind of trying to get ahead of that, trying to find ways to diversify their sources of revenue. And so yeah, in Cuyahoga County, you have two districts, Parma and Independence. Independence is doing kind of like, they're trying to build some new buildings and so they're doing kind a dual where there'll be a little bit of a property tax and a little of an income tax.
Juravich: But Parma notoriously has failed with what is it like 10 property tax. Yeah So now they're finally trying something different. Yes. Yes, we'll see. Yeah
Hancock: Yeah, it doesn't seem like the voters have the appetite to want to give them more money. But yeah, so you're seeing more income taxes in the suburbs.
Juravich: Yeah, so, well, and kind of related here in central Ohio, Westerville did an earned income tax levy and it passed. And I talked to several different superintendents on the show who kind of said all eyes were on Westervilles, right?
Hancock: Oh yeah, definitely people in Northeast Ohio, which are more urban areas, we're looking at Westerville, which is not an agricultural area anymore. And when Westervilles passed, I think that gave some school districts some confidence to try to do this themselves.
Juravich: And I guess if that amendment to eliminate all property taxes altogether goes through, having an income tax one would help out too, right? Yes. All right.
So I wanted to pivot to one thing that Karen just mentioned a few minutes ago, which is that Governor DeWine recently commented on Governor Hopeful, Vivek Ramaswami's idea to consolidate Ohio's colleges and universities. So saying that there are some good ideas in there, but DeWine also said this.
Speaker 12: I'm not in favor of consolidating our college years or doing away with any of our 14 public universities. You know, it's important to have them all over the state so frankly, people who can't afford to live at the college and room and board, they can commute. We still have commuters.
Juravich: So Karen, you know, what did the governor say? He seems to want to keep all our colleges and universities. So maybe he doesn't agree with Romaswami here.
Kasler: I think there's a reason that the idea didn't really move that much when former Governor Kasich talked about it. There was actually a whole report that was put together trying to look at consolidating colleges and universities.
DeWine said that he'd like to see a closer relationship between community colleges and public universities so that people could start at community college and then go to the four-year university and make it a simpler transition.
So he was saying that. Potentially could be a way to at least cut down on college costs for the students who are paying.
Hancock: You are starting to see that though. I mean, a perfect example is the Columbus Promise, I believe, where you start at Columbus State Community College. And then if your grades are good, you go to OSU. And it's supposed to be seamless. And so your elected or your generals.
Juravich: The Columbus Promise gets you from high school to Columbus State. The Buckeye Bridge gets you from Columbus State too.
Hancock: Ohio State. Okay, yes, yes. So you're seeing more and more of this where they're just trying to make it seamless, less bureaucratic for students. And so we love cute names, so right.
Juravich: You're very good. But the idea of consolidating, I think what Ramaswami was saying more so was like consolidating human resources and overhead and maybe don't offer the same majors at all of them or something like that. I
Kasler: And I mean, again, that was something that was discussed several years ago, the idea of like, why should there be more than one aviation school in public universities in Ohio? Because that's a very expensive program to operate.
But you know, students who are in those areas, they may not be able to travel to the one college or university that is where that college is, you know? So, I mean...
Hancock: I think a lot of it's gonna require an act of the legislature to, you know, say like eliminate or have financial aid I'll go through one university
Juravich: That's what I was gonna say is there a way to make like the administration level well like
Hancock: The legislature is probably all for this except not at their local school and then this is what's going to happen. You know what I mean? So it's probably, it might not go anywhere.
Tebben: I'm sure they'll have a cute name though. It'd be hard, it's a hard sell to say commute when the gas prices are what they are, so hopefully they'll go down before we figure this out.
Juravich: Just real quick, we have less than three minutes left. Deloria, you wrote about retired educators receiving a 1.6% cost of living increase on the anniversary date of their retirement. Is this a big deal?
Hancock: It just shows that basically the board of STIRS, State Teachers Retirement System, the pension is, I mean, 1.6% is not gonna keep up with inflation, right? But it just shows that they're listening after, there's just been a lot of chaos on that board.
Two people were forcibly removed. A court recently upheld that. There's been a revolt among some members, some of the retired teachers. And so you're just seeing basically that the board is trying to be open and listen to maybe a little bit better than in the past, listen to the retirees and what they want.
They also have delayed, they were going to make you have an extra year of work experience before you could retire. They put that off until 2035 in terms of that going into effect, which was another that the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Teachers' Union, said that they appreciated.
Juravich: Well, we have about a minute left. Is anyone covering anything this week that they want to tease? Anything big happening or nothing's happening because the legislatures are on break?
Tebben: We're moving to the May primary. That's what we're really thinking about. Like I've been doing the different races, secretary of states, treasurer. Those have actually big primaries in them.
The treasurers race has two Republicans that are a current legislator and a former legislator and then secretary of state's a big one too. So kind of looking towards that.
Kasler: And Ohio Supreme Court, there's a, what, a cage match between four Republican candidates, to, to
Juravich: Oh, it used to be five, so now four, okay.
Kasler: For, okay. Yeah, there are, I think, you know, some of the primaries aren't super competitive, but there are some interesting ones to watch, definitely.
Juravich: Alright, well you can look for those stories so you can learn more about the candidates who will be on your ballot. And I want to say thank you to Karen Kastler, Bureau Chief of the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau. Thanks. You're welcome. Great to be here.
Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at Cleveland.com. Thanks, Laura. Thank you. And Susan Tebben, reporter at the Ohio Capital Journal. Thanks, Susan. Happy to help.
And this has been the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.