Ohio law already requires voters to show a valid photo ID.
So why do Republican lawmakers think that language needs to be written into the state constitution by a voter-approved amendment this November?
Speaking of voting, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose experienced first-hand what happens when absentee ballots don’t arrive at the board of elections on time.
A new prosecution team is tapped to retry two former First Energy executives after the first trial ended in a mistrial.
Gov. Mike DeWine has more than 200 days left in his term and said at a recent press event that he’s proudest of his efforts to help children.
We're digging into all of these topics on a special Tuesday edition of the Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics 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-overly catch up on the news from last week and preview the week ahead.
I'm your host, Amy Juravich, and we have a special Tuesday edition of the Reporter Roundtable after the holiday with us in the studio, Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics reporter for Cleveland.com.
Welcome back, Jeremy. Good morning. And Susan Tebben, reporter for the Ohio Capitol Journal. Welcome back Susan. Hello.
And we're just coming off the three-day Memorial Day weekend, a holiday people associate with a day off.
Shopping deals, cookouts, get-togethers. Yet the holiday is much more profound meeting, especially for those who have military members who have died in service for our country and the families that they left behind.
Tapping into that emotion last week was Governor Mike DeWine delivering remarks to Gold Star families.
Here's some audio from Ohio Public Radio.
Gov. Mike DeWine: To all the families here today who have lost loved ones in service to our country, know that we will never forget them.
We will never ever forget their sacrifice, and I will think about them.
I will thing about them, the families that I met.
I will think about them and their loved one until the day I die.
Juravich: Jeremy, the governor got pretty choked up during these remarks. You covered this event.
It was outside of the State House. Can you tell us a little bit more about it and about the governor's remarks?
Jeremy Pelzer: Absolutely. The governor holds this wreath-laying ceremony every year outside of the Ohio State House where representatives from all six branches of the armed forces are present.
And a lot of, as you said, Gold Star families are there, families who lost a loved one while serving.
But even though the governor holds us every year, this is something that's obviously very personal for the governor.
While the governor doesn't have any military service himself, he talked about how his uncle, I beg your pardon, First Lady Fran DeWine's uncle served and died in the Korean War and the effect that had upon her family.
And it's something that he clearly feels a lot about as governor.
He's taken very seriously meeting with families of fallen service members.
And especially as he wraps up his, not only his term as governor, but his political career.
It's something that's clearly on his mind.
Juravich: Yeah, and Susan, do you have any reaction to hearing the governor get a little emotional there?
Susan Tebben: I mean, it is, it's kind of striking to hear, you know, the leader of the state to be like that, but it makes sense, you now, kind of with, you, know, he's reflecting on his legacy, he's reflected on the end of his tenure as governor, so you know he would probably get a little emotional, even, you may not even be entirely about that, it may be about all of the things he's done throughout his career and how he's experienced these things with these families.
Juravich: Yeah, his last time being able to, you know, be in charge of that ceremony and that kind of thing.
It's a whole bunch of lasts instead of firsts for him. Yeah. All right.
Well, we're going to pivot to something happening in the news, obviously. That's why we're here.
Ohio law already requires voters to show a valid photo ID.
So why do some Republican lawmakers think that language needs to be written into the state constitution?
Here is House Speaker Matt Huffman answering that question.
House Speaker Matt Huffman: Fundamental rights and requirements should be in the Constitution, and this is very fundamental.
Juravich: All right, so, Susan, can you tell us what's going on here?
Republicans want to put showing an ID in the Constitution.
And I'm not sure if it's all Republicans or just some of the leadership, but can you talk us more about that?
Tebben: Yeah, so anyone that's been paying attention, this has kind of been something that's been talked about nationally, too, is, you know, it sort of goes along with the crackdown on immigration, things like that, wanting to make sure that people that are allowed to vote are the ones that are voting and the people that aren't allowed are not, although voter fraud is very statistically rare in this state.
Secretary of State Frank LaRosa said that many times that we do not see a lot of that.
There's not been a lot of cases that have. Been adjudicated to, to convict people of voter fraud.
Um, but, but what we're seeing here is, um, legislators, especially legislative leaders, as you say, wanting to make sure that this is knocked down concrete in the constitution.
Um. So we'll see how much support it has. It seems to have a lot of Republican support, obviously not a lot of democratic support because, uh, as they, as we've said that there is already laws existing around it so It's going to take three-fifths of each chamber to pass, so that's what we'll be looking for.
Juravich: Jeremy I don't is it just me or did this it felt like this came out of nowhere for like them to be talking about this But I mean Susan saying it didn't come out of no where because we're talking about voter fraud all around the country But the idea of putting it in the Ohio Constitution.
I was like what wait what?
Pelzer: So the context of this is that it, Republicans came out with both this and we might talk about this later, Medicaid fraud is an issue around the same time.
And I don't think that's a coincidence. We're in an election year.
There are issues that Republicans want to focus on, especially given that polling is showing that a couple of the top tier races in Ohio this year are, might be pretty close.
If you look at the governor's race between. Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton on the Democratic side, and then U.S. Senator John Houston against Sherrod Brown.
These are issues that Republicans clearly feel, and we're going beyond their stated reasons, of course, as Susan laid out, that these are issues can win over voters and get them to come out on election day to vote for a constitutional amendment about voter ID, and also to support Vivek Rameswamy, John Houston to a lesser extent based on Medicaid fraud.
Tebben: Yeah, and notably Vivek Ramaswamy's running mate is Senate President Rob McAuley, who is part of the lead on the charge on this.
Yes.
Juravich: Yeah, Senate President Ron McCauley says he expects an Ohio Senate floor vote on the Voter I.D.
Constitutional Amendment either June 10th or June 17th. That's coming up pretty quickly.
On paper, do you think they have the number of votes they need?
Pelzer: Bring this if they didn't feel they had the number of votes.
And also, when you have the House Speaker and Senate President get behind this, that's unusual for them to have a joint press conference like this that indicates that this is going to be fast-tracked before lawmakers leave for the summer.
Juravich: Now, tell me something, so they don't have to gather the $400,000 signatures from half of Ohio's 88 counties.
They're doing this a different way.
Pelzer: So there's two ways to get on the ballot.
One is, as you said, get the 400, whatever, 100,000 signatures, that's what you and I or any other Ohio resident can do.
Or it can go through the legislature, which is what this will be.
And there's a good chance, just seeing what's, what we're looking at the signature collection so far for some of these other ballot issues, this might be the only constitutional amendment on the ballots falls.
So we'll see how that goes.
Juravich: Do they have to have, is it just a majority can put it before voters to be in the constitution or do they have like extra votes?
You mean to pass it out to the legislature? Yeah, to be able to have voters vote on this if they're voting as lawmakers.
Tebben: Yeah, so it has to be three-fifths of each chamber that's approves it.
So the Republican has a super majority So that should be okay for them.
But as far as the numbers go, I believe it's 60 Yeah, 60 votes in the house and 20 in the Senate 60 There's 65 Republicans in the House and 24 Republican senators.
So, okay. Yeah
Juravich: Well, here's Senate Minority Leader Nikki Antonio commenting. This audio is also from Ohio Public Radio.
Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio: You know, we're not anti-photo ID, we are not anti ID.
It's like, okay, so how will we do that? How will we make sure?
Because there is not a level playing field for accessing a photo ID.
Juravich: So what does she mean by not a level playing field and also saying like, so she says she wants a photo ID basically, but maybe not in the constitution?
Like Jeremy, what's your take on that quote?
Pelzer: My takeaway from what Senator Antonio said, and I don't know exactly what she means by a level playing field, I guess I'd have to go back and ask her, is traditionally Democrats feel that attempts to restrict the ability to vote are attempts by Republicans, just cynical attempts to prevent Democratic voters from casting ballots early.
So people who tend not to have IDs tend to be lower income people.
And the thought goes that those people tend to be Democratic voters.
So the more you have stricter voter ID requirements, the theory goes, the more you're restricting Democrats from getting votes for them.
Now that's painting with a very broad brush, but I think there's more than one thing going on here.
It's meant to excite the base for the Republicans. It's, and it's also something they want.
Like this isn't just a completely cynical. Thing, I think Republicans actually do want a constitutional amendment.
They point to what happened in other states where Hawaii and Virginia and North Carolina, they all had photo IDs and then they had to get rid of them.
Now, or not had to, get rid them. They chose to get right of them, but one thing that this is interesting is right now you do not need a photo ID to vote by mail.
And this constitutional amendment would not change that. You could still vote by mail, as currently written, and not have to show an ID in order to vote.
I know some there's some conservatives who are saying, Hey, what are you guys doing?
You guys got to make this. This doesn't really have any teeth.
It just restates what's existing law and just puts it in the Constitution.
But then on the other hand, you could say, well, what unlike some of these like Hawaii, Virginia, North Carolina, there's which are either democratic controlled legislatures or it goes, You know, there's a sometimes in North Carolina, there's a Democratic governor, there is no real threat of the legislature going to a Democratic majority in Ohio.
So what's the timing on this? Why are you guys bringing it up now?
And when I asked Senator McCauley that, his answer was basically, why not now?
Juravich: Why not? Okay. So Susan, I'm trying to picture what the anti-campaign would be like for this because you're basically would be campaigning against photo ID.
Do you see someone rallying around and coming up with a vote note?
Tebben: Campaign? Oh sure I can see that. I mean Jeremy alluded to it.
It's going to impact low-impact people so you can see a lot of advocacy groups that say you know you are disproportionately impacting low-income people who maybe just can't afford to have a license or you know can't get a photo ID that's appropriate, don't have driving privileges, don't have transportation to get the privileges, you know that kind of thing.
And then I can see also, you know, we're talking about maybe some criminal charges that might not allow for you to get a driver's license or you get some sort of photo ID that would be appropriate.
So, you, know, people that are looking to, you know, advocacy groups that work with recidivism rates and active advocacy groups at work to get previously incarcerated people back in, I can see them saying, you know, this is not, this is not helpful for people who want to actually have their civic duty and be able to.
Make their voice heard in the democracy, you're hindering that.
And then of course you'll have, on the Democratic side probably have some groups there that will push their way through and say the same arguments as the legislative leaders have said that this isn't appropriate and we already have laws about this, it's duplicative, that kind of thing.
So yeah, I can definitely see where there's gonna be some pushback. Okay, so and.
Juravich: So bottom line is, if they vote for it in early June, the language will just be ready for the voters by July.
Pelzer: Yeah, no need for big massive petition collections or anything like that.
If the legislature passes it, the next you'll hear about it will be on the November ballot.
A special Tuesday edition of the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News with us in the studio, Jeremy Pelzer, Chief Politics Reporter at Cleveland.com, and Susan Tebben, reporter at the Ohio Capital Journal.
Speaking of voting, I wanted to touch on real quick.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose had to cast a provisional ballot in the primary election.
He was deployed at the time with the Ohio National Guard, and so he voted absentee, I guess, just in case he wasn't back by election day.
So he did an absenteeing ballot. But then Jeremy or Susan, can you tell me what happened to his ballot?
Pelzer: Great question. It didn't make it to the Franklin County Board of Elections, that's for sure.
And so therefore, Secretary LaRose went and cast a ballot when he got back stateside.
Now Democrats are pointing to this as evidence of LaRosa being hypocritical, you know, because as they're attempting to tighten early voting rules, that Larose somehow, you know.
So the Rose didn't do anything wrong here, I should say that.
Juravich: So he tracked his ballot like anyone can and saw that it was missing, maybe, or we don't know.
Pelzer: Yeah, and they're using it as evidence, because what Republicans did last year is they, there's a four day, there used to be a four-day grace period, so if you cast your mail, you sent a mail-in ballot in, and it was postmarked by the Saturday before the election, and it didn't arrive until, say, Thursday after the Tuesday election, it would still be counted, but now it has to arrive by election night, otherwise it's not gonna get counted.
And Democrats were trying to use that as, Lerose's experience as evidence that that was being hypocritical.
Now, I don't know if I buy that just because there's an exemption in the law for the grace period for military overseas ballots.
Which is exactly.
Juravich: Which is exactly what his is yeah
Pelzer: Which is exactly what his is, so I don't know if I fully understand that argument, but that's what Democrats are trying to argue.
Juravich: I mean, I guess it would be interesting if the if the it showed up on the Wednesday, like the Tuesday election and it showed up like it was just a little bit delayed in the mail or whatever.
Pelzer: Yeah, last I heard it didn't show up at all.
So maybe it's at the bottom of a mailbag somewhere. I don't know.
Tebben: And it's interesting to the arguments of other people that say that there is confusion and there's things out of your control with this kind of stuff.
So having these hard and fast rules might not be so simple and so enforceable as they think.
Juravich: There's just, I feel like there's just constantly efforts to improve the voting system that ends up making, like some people call it improve and some people call it making it harder.
And like, how do you define improve, Susan? Right, depends on...
Tebben: Depends on who you ask. Depends on who ask, yeah, and there's always unintended consequences, as we see with every piece of legislation I feel like ever passed.
There's always something that's like, wait a minute, you didn't think about this.
So yeah, that's, I feel, like in perpetuity, we're gonna be talking about how we make elections better and it depends on what you want out of elections that you're gonna get different legislation.
Define better.
Juravich: Right. All right. Well, coming up, we're going to dig a little deeper into the governor's race and some other races that are on the November ballot.
That is when the reporter roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
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Juravich: You're listening to the Weekly Reporter Roundtable from All Sides, an hour where we talk about all things Ohio politics.
I'm your host, Amy Juravich. And we're having a special Tuesday roundtable, post-memorial day holiday, and with us in the studio still, Susan Tebben, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, and Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics reporter for Cleveland.com.
Before we get into some pending legislation and other things happening at the state house, I wanted to get an update on some key races that are happening this fall.
The election is months away, but it seems like we're not gonna get a reprieve this summer from politics.
It's gonna be a very intense political summer. Jeremy, just based on following you on X, this is your bread and butter.
What has been capturing your attention the most whenever you look at the governor's race between Acton and Ramaswamy?
I mean, what are you following? Everything. He's like everything.
Pelzer: Well, first, I think people at the beginning of last year thought these were going to be foregone conclusions, that as it's been for the last few elections, that Republicans kind of had this in the bag.
I at both for U.S. Senate and for governor, the top tier races that are going to be on the ballot next year.
As for the primaries, these weren't very competitive races. They were kind of speed bumps.
Vivek Ramaswamy had very marginal opposition. Amy Acton didn't have any opposition at all.
Same with Sherry Brown getting a very marginal opposition and Houston not getting any opposition.
So all this were kind speed bumps looking forward to. To November.
But to your question, which is asking about November, these are some polls are showing and there's polls are showing that these are pretty close races and there is getting more.
They're getting more national interest, especially in the Senate race, because I feel that Democrats last year thought it was going to be a kind of uphill battle to win back control of the Senate because they would have to win flip a net for Republican held seats.
So that means not only winning for Republican held states, but also pending off.
Republican challenges in states like Michigan, but it's becoming more and more realistic for them to do that as for various reasons.
And now suddenly they're looking at Sherrod Brown as a vital piece of doing that.
As Democrats' chances improve at taking the Senate, then they're taking Sherrod Brown's campaign more seriously.
Juravich: And I wanted to touch on something, Jeremy, that you wrote in your Cleveland.com capital letter.
You said you learned five things from Amy Acton's ethics disclosure form, but one of them being her only reported income last year was 62 cents of interest she earned on a Huntington Bank checking account.
Okay, so what does that tell you? She doesn't have a job.
Pelzer: Have a job. Well, first it tells me that you do not have, as a candidate, you do not have to list your spouse's income.
Okay. So, you know, her spouse who is a teacher, didn't have to list his income.
You know, they live in Bexley. I would not call them super rich, but they're well-to-do and she obviously has had jobs in the past.
So from state health director to, you pretty decent jobs. At the same time.
So what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't necessarily reflect that she is some sort of popper or something.
Juravich: Yeah, yeah.
Pelzer: But then you can, you then look at Vivek Ramaswamy's ethics disclosure form.
And he didn't have to disclose all of his income, just income sources worth more than a thousand dollars.
And that was more than, I think, 1.1 million dollars that he made last year, because he was a billionaire.
Juravich: It's more than 62 cents.
Pelzer: It's more than 62 cents. He lives in Upper Arlington.
So, you know, this isn't sort of the, you the battle of the billionaire versus the pauper.
But at the same time, it shows that there's a major income gap between the two candidates.
Juravich: But they might. Do you think Acton's campaign is going to try to show it like that?
I mean, why why else show the sixty two cents?
Pelzer: Well, they're trying to they're trying to show the one without the other.
And they're not so much talking about Amy Acton and talking about that.
They're blind is that Ramaswamy is some out of touch billionaire who doesn't care about you, the average Ohioan.
That's and then Ramasvamy's response to that is that they are trying to belittle success and that they hate people who succeed.
Juravich: Susan, what are you gonna be following when it comes to this summer, which is going to be full, I'm sure, of ads between Ramaswami and Amy Acton?
It used to be that we could wait until Labor Day before we really got bombarded, but that's not gonna be the case.
Tebben: Yeah, and I hope that was no shade to Huntington for their interest rates on that.
I know, I did note it was Huntington Bank. We love Huntington.
So I'm covering a lot of the down ballot races for the election specifically, but what we're going to see in terms of issues is obviously a lot health care, a lot affordability.
I think it will be interesting to see if candidates come out, which some have already.
About abortion, because we have the discussions nationally about mephepristone, which is a medication abortion pill that you can take, and it has been available through mail orders, through telehealth, and there are regulations that are attempted in the state and nationally to try to get mail order to not be a thing that you could use for medication abortion, and the US Supreme Court is considering one right now, so I feel like that'll be a big discussion.
When we're talking about reproductive health, Ohio obviously has the constitutional amendment that protects abortion and reproductive rights.
So that will definitely be a discussion that comes into play, especially as we're talking about another constitutional amendment coming.
So I expect to see a lot of that and follow a lot that, healthcare, education, of course, and childcare.
Childcare's a big deal. We have a crisis of accessibility and affordability with that, so I expect to hear... Or hear them be asked about it and what their plans are because the legislature's had a lot of trouble trying to get that through.
A special Tuesday edition of All Sides and the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News.
And we're talking with Susan Tebbin with the Ohio Capital Journal and Jeremy Pelzer with cleveland.com.
I wanna take a moment to pivot to some legislative measures because you brought up the abortion pill access, Susan.
And so. The U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that Mephistone, also known as the abortion pill, can remain available via telehealth.
But there's a bill here in Ohio that creates an in-person requirement for so-called high-risk medications.
So can you tell me about this bill and how it defines a high- risk medication?
Tebben: Yeah, so it's important to note this isn't specifically an abortion bill, abortion pill related bill, say that five times fast.
But this bill would, yeah, as you say, look at what is considered high risk or adverse.
So that's medications that have severe adverse effects in 5% of cases or higher.
And so what the bill does, and this is a Republican led bill that is currently in the Senate.
It has already passed the House, 324 is the name of it, House Bill 324. It's looking at using the Ohio Department of Health to look at FDA data, look at insurance filings on these medications, and these are medications anywhere from mephepristone, which is usually used in conjunction with mesoprestol as this medication abortion, even to, you know, cardiac medications and things like that that, you now, already have some, you know.
People already know about the severe effects that some of these medications, cancer medications, things like that can have.
So it's just looking at making these all in person.
So if this has this 5% or more adverse effects, then you have to go in person and you have have a follow up.
So when we're talking about specifically abortion, that's why that has been brought up because the abortion rights advocates have said this is going to conflict.
Number one with the amendment and number one with just, you know, general allow, the FDA has had Meffa Pristone approved since 2000. So there doesn't seem to be statistics that show that these adverse effects.
And they're also saying that anti-abortion advocates are saying, using this one study that says that severe adverse effects have happened a lot more in Meffapristone, but.
They're saying that the advocates on the abortion right side are saying this is using just someone who walked into the ER for whatever reason and happened to have taken Mifepristone as a severe adverse effect.
And so they're questioning this study altogether. But there could be something, the other reason.
Juravich: They're in the ER could have been the ICA. So, okay.
I feel like this bill seems complicated though. I mean, what the other there's other medications that can fall under high risk.
There's different ways to define high risk, right? I. So you said it did pass the House to pass the house.
Yes. It's in the Senate right now. Is the Senate planning to take Get up.
Tebben: They have already taken up some hearings on it, and the introduction of it has already happened, so I'm sure some committee hearings will be happening on it.
And that's the thing, is there's also people that spoke in the House against it for completely not related to abortion reasons, like they said, you're talking about diabetes medications, things like that, that people who can't get to a doctor need.
And you're saying they might not be able to do that.
So it's not just talking about abortion, which is important to note, but there has been a lot of opposition on the abortion rights side.
Jeremy, do you want to add?
Pelzer: So, this is not the only abortion restriction bill that lawmakers are considering.
There's also one that would require a 24-hour waiting period before abortions.
There's a number of other social issue bills currently pending.
One is an indecent exposure bill that Democrats say is basically a drag queen show ban.
Excuse me, I anticipate that a lot of these sorts of bills, if they pass, they're just passing one chamber now before summer break, and then they're going to deal with it in lame duck, which is the legislature's post-election free for all, for lack of a better term.
And so I think a lot of these bills are just gonna pass one chamber or the other, so lawmakers can take credit for it on the election trail, and then figure it out after the election whether they wanna send it to the governor or not.
Juravich: What kind of break are we talking about here does the legislature take?
Do they take most of the summer off after this?
Because we just talked about them voting on something in mid-June, so what happens here?
Pelzer: It really seems that the two things that are guaranteed to pass before they leave, and it's either gonna be June 10th or June 17th, depending on how they work it out, as you mentioned earlier with the voter ID measure, and after that, they're gonna be off all summer to campaign, and that's normal.
They normally don't return in any substantive way until after the election.
Juravich: Oh, they're gonna be off like July through November?
Pelzer: July, August, September, and October, they might have some committee hearings and maybe have a session, but they won't do anything major until after the election in November.
Juravich: So this is it for a while. What are we gonna talk about on this show?
Pelzer: Well, if only we had an election to talk about.
Juravich: If only we had elections, like numerous elections, in fact. All right. OK.
Susan, you also reported on a case involving a Trumbull County judge who says that the Reproductive Rights Amendment is hindering his ability to do his job.
So this is the amendment you were just talking about, right, that passed with voter approval.
But this pertains to judicial bypass when a minor goes to court to have an abortion without parents' permission.
Can you tell me more about this?
Tebben: Yeah, so judicial bypass has been around for a long time, but it has come up a lot when it comes to the abortion debate because it is talking about minors who want to, you know, bypass their parents' permission for this.
And it is a thing that has been used in the past.
So yes, this Trumbull County judge, he has said that basically Trumball County had a couple, maybe three cases of this judicial bypass before the amendment passed with 57% of the vote in 2023. Now they have zero.
And he's saying that that is taking away a part of his job.
And he was elected to, you know, this is part of judicial role and his judicial duty.
And because of this amendment, he no longer has that role.
Therefore, the Supreme Court should be taking a look at this.
And essentially he's say we should get rid of it because it's... Doing something, again, as we were talking about unintended consequences, he says this is taking away from his own job.
So what does he want to be able to do?
He wants to be to conduct these judicial bypasses and the argument from the state actually, the Attorney General's office and the ACLU have also both said this.
He can't really connect whether this abortion amendment did in fact cause these judicial bypass, you're used to go away.
Because there was only a couple to begin with, and now there's zero.
But what he's saying is, yes, there is a direct connection between that.
He just, according to the ACLU and according to the Attorney General's office, he hasn't provided any proof to connect those two things, but that's the connection that he is making.
Juravich: Is he saying that the younger people are able to get an abortion because of this amendment and they don't need to even involve asking the court to overrule their parents?
Tebben: Right, exactly. Okay. All right. So is that, where is that case?
Or he's just asking the Supreme Court to do something?
Tebben: Yeah, yeah, we haven't seen any movement yet other than the attorney general and the ACLU just released their own statement The court documents in it to say we don't think he's okay.
We don't that's true
Juravich: All right, well, I'm gonna pivot to something non-abortion related and there's no good pivot because I have a couple of minutes before we have to take the break and I'm just gonna pivot.
Jeremy, it's been a minute since we have talked about the Browns and the stadium deal.
And when I have you here, that's one of the things I like to ask you about.
So you wrote recently about Governor DeWine, House Speaker Matt Huffman, Senate President Ron McCauley having a meeting with the Cuyahoga County officials and Cleveland's pro sports teams.
And can you tell me about that meeting and what they were discussing, and if the Browns are going to get state money for a stadium?
Pelzer: Cuyahoga County has something called a syntax and it's on alcohol and cigarettes and that money goes to Stadium projects not just the Brown Stadium, but progressive field rocket arena to for just maintenance projects and upgrades
Juravich: And this has been around long before the Haslams decided to do their other stadium. Correct, yeah.
Pelzer: Correct. Yeah. And this is different than the county's 70 cent per cigarette pack tax that goes to fund the arts.
So there's worry that as people stop smoking and because of inflation and the rising cost of materials that the money raised through this tax is not adequate to fund these stadium renovations.
So. It sounds something about the clout these teams have.
And I think it sounds like it was more the teams than the Cuyahoga County officials who were able to get the top three most important people in Ohio in a room together to say, hey, here's out about why we should get permission.
Because under state law, the county can't just raise the tax as much as they want.
There's caps in state law about how far they can raise it. So they wanted permission through a bill.
And to enact permission for the county to be able to either triple or quadruple this tax.
And that would mean something like, I think like a buck 80 per bottle of vodka, or I think, like 25, a quarter roughly for a six pack of beer or something like that.
The problem is, when they got there, the Republicans seemed to say, no, we're not interested in that.
Juravich: Wait, did they drive all the way up there and say no thanks? Then say no thanks.
Pelzer: They drove down to Columbus. Oh, OK. I see.
Juravich: Okay, I see that the Cuyahoga County and Cleveland people came here
Pelzer: Yes, they came down to Columbus, they
Juravich: It means something more if they went to the okay.
Pelzer: Especially, you know, to see Cavs executives come down during playoff season, that says something about the importance they have on it.
But apparently, according to Matt Huffman and Rob McCauley, they said, no, we're not really going to do that, at least not right now.
Now one part of it is it's an election year and to move a measure to raise taxes isn't the most politically popular thing to do.
And I think part of it, too. Is sort of a bad aftertaste with this whole Brown Stadium fight, where Chris Ronne and the Cuyahoga County executive really blasted Senate Republicans in particular, not only for their use of unclaimed funds to help fund the Brown Stadium, but also their maneuvering to let the Browns keep their third of the syntax revenue, even if they leave Cleveland.
So, there's some- ruffled feathers there too, but the upshot is it looks like at least for now they are not going to give permission for this sin tax hike to go through.
Juravich: Now, Governor DeWine was at this meeting and I'm going to be flippant, but Governor De Wine loves a good syntax, right?
Loves a good Syntax, you know.
Pelzer: Love the good syntax, you know? DeWine has never been scared to...
Juravich: Proposes them all the time.
Pelzer: Tax things that are maybe a little bit more unsavory in order to raise money for things that he thinks are savory, but at least from the lawmaker's point of view, it was a no-go.
Juravich: So even if Dewine was sitting in that room and said, sure, this sounds great, it doesn't matter if Huffman and McCauley said no.
Pelzer: Well, he can't sign any bill that doesn't pass the legislature, so first things first.
Juravich: Okay. All right. Well, um, we're gonna we're going to leave it there, but I always like to get my my Brown's update from you.
Coming up, we are going to talk about some child care legislation and new prosecutors being picked for the first energy trial.
And we'll also discuss what is going on with Medicaid fraud.
That is when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
A special Tuesday edition of All Sides and our Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich.
Still with us, Susan Tebben, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, and Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics reporter for Cleveland.com.
Governor DeWine spoke at the Columbus Metropolitan Club last week.
It was a question and answer session with Joe Ingalls from the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau.
He talked about what he's most proud of on, and it's his working on behalf of children.
He talked about the science of reading mandate in schools and his push for mobile clinics to do eye exams for kids and provide eyeglasses.
Moderator Joe Ingalls asked him about his support for Vivek Ramaswamy.
In light of Ramasawamy's recent comments, talking about eliminating the income tax and shuttering some colleges and universities.
But Dewine doubled down in his support for Vive- Jeremy, let's talk about that for a minute because basically DeWine said, I don't have the cut right now, but he said something along the lines of he supports the Republican candidate for governor and but he also said people need to separate campaigning for the job from running the state.
So do you think that means that he thinks that maybe, you know, Vivek is saying he'll shut her colleges, but he won't actually do it once he has the job.
Pelzer: I don't know if he's saying that, but he's the governor's right.
Overall, you have people campaign on a whole bunch of different things. Things they will.
I'm not talking about Brahmaswamy in particular, but just in general.
Candidates say a lot of things on the campaign trail.
But then when they get into office, they their priorities might be very different.
Just running for office and governing are two completely different skill sets.
And I think that it's kind of refreshing to hear. The governor say that.
So I don't want to read too much into his comments about Ramaswami specifically and what Ramasawami would do or not do in office.
But I think overall it's a pretty good insightful rule.
Juravich: So, Susan, basically, campaign promises are not always followed. Well, yeah. A promise is a promise.
Susan Tebben: That's the struggle that a lot of voters have, isn't it, that we don't really know what people are going to do until they're in office, we just sort of have to take a chance on it.
So I mean for DeWine to say we should not mistake governing for the campaign, he's saying what people already think, I think.
Juravich: And Dwine said he believes Ramaswamy will continue the work of his administration.
Specifically, he talked about Ramasvamy will bring big companies to the state.
I don't know if either of you listened to the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
Did anything else stick out to you from that time?
Tebben: With them? I did not listen but my colleague Megan Henry wrote a story on it that just ran today in the Capital Journal and he did talk apparently about legalizing sports betting and how that was quote his biggest mistake so I thought that was it's striking as we're talking about DeWine and you know having his lasts and cementing his legacy and all that stuff for him to be talking about regrets is interesting so yeah that stood out to me for
Juravich: DeWine earlier this year teased that he would have an announcement at some point on the death penalty, but nothing so far.
We're kind of counting down the weeks that he's still in office.
There have been zero executions during his eight years in charge.
And Jeremy, I think you wrote about this, of what might happen under the new administration.
Do we know anything about the death penalty regarding the Ramaswami campaign or the campaign.
Pelzer: We know very broad strokes about what might happen, but specifically, we don't.
I guess one thing is it's contingent on what DeWine does because he has- He still has-
Juravich: He still has time to act.
Pelzer: He has the time. And well, it seems likely that if the governor, the current governor comes out against the death penalty, he'll just express his personal opposition to it.
But then the question is, OK, then what? You know, like besides his opinion, will DeWine say, commute all death sentences to life in prison without parole?
Now, don't I don't know if that's going to happen, but that would be an example of what he could do, or as opposed to just calling on lawmakers to address the issue.
Which DeWine has done with many issues and it hasn't happened.
As for Ramaswami and Acton, Ramasawmi has indicated he supports the death penalty in the most egregious of cases.
And, you know, well, so what that means in practice, as Susan was just saying, we'll see what happens when he's elected, if he's selected.
As for Ramaswami and Acton, Ramasawmi has indicated he supports the death penalty in the most egregious of cases.
And, you know, well, so what that means in practice, as Susan was just saying, we'll see what happens when he's elected, if he's selected.
Meanwhile, Amy Acton hasn't said what her position is on the death of penalty at all.
She has said, though, that she would continue DeWine's moratorium.
Until she can find some bipartisan solution to resolve the issue.
But that's far from guaranteed, especially because the legislature has basically been deadlocked on this issue for years under DeWine.
The reason DeWin has had to basically postpone every execution that's coming up is because the Legislature has not moved to either ban the death penalty or change the death-penalty method.
Or find some way to clear the way for lethal injection drugs to be acquired once again, which is the whole reason that there hasn't been, at least according to DeWine, hasn't been executions since 2018.
Juravich: This is a special Tuesday edition of the All Sides Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News.
We're talking with Jeremy Pelzer, Chief Politics Reporter at Cleveland.com and Susan Tebben, reporter at the Ohio Capital Journal.
I wanted to pivot to Medicaid fraud. At that same Columbus Metropolitan Club forum, Joe Ingalls asked the governor about Medicaid fraud, which has made some news recently, and the governor continued to defend his actions on the subject.
Here's what he said.
Gov. Mike DeWine: Just because someone goes to a place and knocks on doors and doesn't see people, it could be a number of different things.
It could be that there's fraud. It also could be that that company used to bill for Medicaid.
Maybe they don't today. There's all kinds of answers. While others can, you know, make allegations, our job, and I put on my old prosecutor hat, our job is to go find out what the facts are.
Juravich: Yeah, Susan, I mean, has there been much identified Medicaid fraud in Ohio?
And are we, if there is, are we not addressing it correctly?
Tebben: Jeremy, do you have stats on that?
Pelzer: So there has been some. So state auditor Keith Faber's office found in 2021 that there was $118 million in improper Medicaid managed care payments.
And so there is Medicaid fraud in Ohio. The question is, is it systemic?
And is it widespread enough to require a major overhaul of how we do it?
And what the governor was alluding to there was there was this series of articles in the conservative news from the conservative new site, The Daily Wire, that found that zooming in, particularly on managed care, home care organizations that go to people's houses and help them with like cleaning and cooking food, things like that.
And found that a lot of these companies that they were registered in places in the Columbus area, when they went to these buildings, there was, there was no one there.
And so they said, well, that's. That shows that this is all fraud. Well, does it?
You know, it they go there and they found there's nothing there, nobody there.
And so therefore their conclusion was, well, there's fraud. It warrants further investigation to be sure.
But is that by itself conclusive that there's fraud going on?
Because, I mean, by definition, these are home care organizations, they would not be at an office building.
Now, that doesn't mean there's not fraud. But Some Republicans have used that as evidence to show, well, A plus B equals D, and you still need a C in there about doing the investigation to show it.
But at the same time, I mean, as there has been Medicaid fraud, and this has been an issue that Republicans have for years tried to get DeWine and the Department of Medicaid to act on, and DeWinde and the department of Medicaid have resisted those efforts.
And
Juravich: Recently, you tweeted about the lack of Medicaid fraud press coverage.
But you also you said it in a way where you're saying there's just so few investigative reporters that there's not the time or the people, the bodies to dig up a topic like Medicaid fraud.
Can you tell me more about that? Because I guess if the state is not finding the fraud, reporters are the next ones to do such a thing.
Pelzer: Sure When this Medicaid fraud rollout happened from Republicans, there were some Republicans and certainly the Daily Wire correspondents who flew in from the East Coast to say, well, local media is not covering this and they haven't covered it.
The suggestion was that we are all too liberal to cover it. Well, it's more complicated than that.
For one, this is an issue that requires both a deep knowledge of public policy, which which is what political reporters like Susan and I... Have, but also where we tend to be focused on the halls of power as opposed to going out into the field to cover it.
So you need to have the ability to, and not to mention to be given the rope by your employers to spend a lot of time delving into a single issue, which especially as over all journalism across the profession, the industry, among the first people to be laid off are investigative reporters who can spend.
Days and weeks delving into one issue to find some, you know, actual evidence of something happening.
Whereas we, many reporters have story quotas or they have a lot of other things that they're going on that they are looking into on their plate that have nothing to do with Medicaid fraud.
Not to mention, there are many political reporters and I'm not pointing fingers and I'll point fingers at myself that who see health care in general as a blind spot.
So there's a number of issues here. And to just say, oh, well, it's the liberal media not wanting to cover Republicans, I think that is at best simplistic and not correct.
Juravich: All right, well, we will leave that there for now, because we're running short on time.
And Susan, I wanted to have time to talk about some childcare legislation.
We've brought up childcare a couple of times. And you wrote recently about a committee hearing that would make some changes to an already introduced bill related to childcare.
You mentioned wanting to talk about childcare related to the upcoming governor race. So talk to me about childcare, go.
Tebben: Go. Well that's the reason I asked Jeremy about general Medicaid because I've been focused a lot on child care fraud which is also rare.
We had like about a hundred allegations of it in 2025 and about two dozen that warranted some investigation.
A hundred of those where there was no intent to commit fraud according to the Ohio Department of Children and Youth.
Um, so. That's being talked about, that's a big deal.
Again, we're having influencers and people going to childcare facilities and looking indoors and saying there's fraud happening here and having legislative leaders and Governor DeWine also saying stop doing that.
Because we have a system in place that is good for overseeing that stuff, but we're also having bills that are being put in place to sort of shore up all of that and say, we do have a good system, but, we're also going to increase enforcement and maybe give some authority to the inspector general, the attorney general, to be able to look at these things along with the prosecuting attorney.
So most recently there was discussion... About one of those bills, which also included some appropriations that were connected to a child care cred program, which is a cost-sharing measure that was passed, which the state would include a percentage plus employers and employees of particular businesses, if they chose to do this, it's a voluntary program, to share the cost of child care and be able to do that that way.
So that's one way that they're trying to do this. There's $10 million that was passed in the budget.
Be able to do this. So the change that was made in the bill takes the money that was in that bill related to child care credit and just puts it back into the budget of the children and youth.
So they can still use it for that program. It's just not in that Bill anymore.
So that bill is still more focused on the child care fraud enforcement stuff and trying to make sure that the system which is already seems to be finding that fraud is rare is still doing its job and the investigations.
That need to be happening are happening. So that's what they're looking at. And there's a couple of those bills.
They're still sitting in committee, but they're very interested in looking.
Juravich: Is this another instance where something will probably not pass because child care is such a hot button election issue?
Tebben: Yeah, I mean, it was there behind when we stopped for primary coverage.
So then they've had some more hearings since then, but we're not sure if it'll make it until the summer, but we'll see.
Juravich: Jeremy, we have only a minute left, which, and I teased earlier that we were going to talk about the first energy trial.
Can you do it in a minute? Probably not.
Pelzer: Do what I can. Yeah. So the latest is that outgoing attorney general Dave Yost has switched prosecutors.
Up until now it was Matt Meyer and Carol O'Brien who handled the first trial of former first energy executives Chuck Jones and Mike Dowling on allegedly giving a 4.3 million dollar bribe to the just Samorin Dazzo who later became the state's top utilities regulator.
And now he's switched, Dave Yoss has switched that and swapped in two new people.
His argument for that wasn't that allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, which is what the defense said, but rather because that Matt Meyer is now dealing with all of the legal ramifications of that.
And then also that the other attorney, Carol O'Brien, had a death in the family.
Juravich: Well, the trial is supposed to go forward in September.
It'll be under interim attorney general Andy Wilson if it happens.
I want to say thank you to Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics reporter at Cleveland.com. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
And Susan Tebben, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Thank you, this has been the Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News.