"Take the Dough, We Gotta Know" is the name of a bipartisan bill requiring more oversight into the controversial EdChoice voucher program. But will it go anywhere with mere days until summer recess?
Ohio doesn’t have enough oversight into EdChoice, the state-funded program giving families vouchers for their kids to go to private K-12 schools, according to two state lawmakers who say they want to change that.
Senate Bill 443, introduced last Wednesday by Sen. Bill Blessing (R-Colerain Twp.) and Sen. Kent Smith (D-Euclid), would establish a dozen new accountability measures.
Data centers in Ohio will no longer enjoy a key tax break at least for now.
The pause, announced by Gov. Mike DeWine comes as lawmakers discuss the industry’s future here.
As resident anger over data centers builds and lost revenue from combined incentives tops $1 billion, which is far more than was previously known.
A pastor turned Ohio lawmaker pushes a bill named for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The Ohio Supreme Court weighs in on a massive solar project in Madison County on land partially owned by Bill Gates.
Calling all STEM students: the state has $26 million in college scholarships for you.
We're digging into all of these topics on this week's Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- Sarah Donaldson, reporter, Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau
- Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter, Cleveland.com
- Jake Zuckerman, reporter, Signal Ohio
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 political news of last week and preview the week ahead. I'm your host Amy Juravich. And joining me on the roundtable this week, we have Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at cleveland.com. Welcome back, Laura. Nice to be here. And Sarah Donaldson, reporter for the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Welcome back Sarah. Hello, happy Monday. And you are fresh off of being recently married. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It was a fun month in May and now we're back to the grind in June. Yes, you know, you're starting off June back here, but you had a fun May and also on your honeymoon, you met the Pope.
Sarah Donaldson: Yeah, it was fantastic. My husband and I got the spousal blessing. It's called the Sposi Novelli. So we got there early enough that we were actually able to greet the pope one on one. And he asked, he heard the Midwestern accent and asked where we were from. So we told him Ohio. Wow, wait, how did you say hi in a Midwestern accent, that's funny. You know, it's a lack of an accent, I think. And he was going down the line and my husband was saying, holy father, holy Father. And he just kind of. I think he recognizes when there are Americans in the crowd. Oh, I see. And so he said, where are you from? Ah, that's fun.
Juravich: All right. It was pretty cool. Well, congratulations on the wedding and thanks for being here today. Later in the show, we are going to be joined by Signal Ohio reporter Jake Zuckerman, and he's going to talk about recent news with data centers and a story he broke on how much tax breaks for the industry are actually costing the state. Because it turns out it's much more money than was previously reported. So we'll talk about that later. Right now we are gonna talk about Ed Choice vouchers and other education related news. Sarah and Laurie you both reported on this There's a bipartisan Senate bill related to school vouchers. It's titled, "Take the Dough, We Gotta Know." And here's one of the sponsors, Republican Senator Bill Blessing, and this audio is from Ohio Public Radio.
Sen. Bill Blessing: I wouldn't say that this is something that's going to just greatly curtail the voucher program. I think it's just asking, hey, you know, if public schools have to do X, you should have to X if you're taking state dollars.
Juravich: And either one of you can start with this. So this bill is about standards. Private schools, home schools, they don't have to meet the same standard as public schools. Is that right, Sarah?
Donaldson: At least when it comes to data reporting, they're not under those same expectations, but the lawmakers who are backing this argue that if they are receiving public dollars in the form of vouchers, in the forms of scholarships for students to go to these private schools, if they're state-funded in a way, they should be under some of the same requirements. So this establishes like a dozen new accountability measures according to State Senator Kent Smith. He's a Democrat among them.
Public schools would be subject to annual audits and they would get graded report cards similar to the ones that come out every September about public schools for a while. And Laura, the wonderful education reporter can remind me, are we on letters or numbers now? We're on stars. We're at stars, my apologies. It used to be letter grades, but now, so those would be a factor. Another big factor with this bill is that students would have to take state mandated exams annually because that's also not a requirement right now.
Juravich: Okay, so there are things that private schools don't have to do.
Laura Hancock: I mean, they can take, they take assessments, the voucher students take assessments but they have three dozen alternatives they can choose. So most of them are not taking Ohio State tests. And that gets really hard to try to compare like what school is doing better because They don't they don't
Juravich: the OST. My kids would be so jealous to hear that.
Hancock: Also, the public school report cards come out in mid-September per state law. Private school ones, their report cards don't come out until February. And also, they don't have to dis-aggregate, like we know how many students are disabled at a public school. How many students have low income, don't speak English as a first language, etc.
Private schools, you just get the information, so then maybe the public schools looks artificially like it. Low performing, but maybe they have a lot of at-risk population. So yeah, they want to do that. They want to allow the auditor to every year audit the private schools to look at how they're spending the state tax dollars from vouchers. And anyway, so. House Speaker Matt Huffman has said this bill is not going to go anywhere. He supports vouchers.
Bill Blessing, the Republican sponsor on the bill, who by the way is Catholic school educated and chooses to send his kids to Catholic school, but believes that with the tax dollars there should be more transparency. He says that if the state doesn't start requiring more information from these schools, there's eventually going to be a constitutional amendment on the ballot. Basically getting rid of these vouchers.
Juravich: Yeah, so you mentioned Matt Huffman and other legislative leaders don't seem to be taking the bill seriously. But Senator Blessing seems unfazed by the lack of enthusiasm from his own party. This audio is from your story, Sarah. Let's listen.
Sen. Bill Blessing: Frankly, if it goes nowhere this General Assembly or even next, that isn't the point. We have identified a major problem here. We also have a solution.
Juravich: So this type of issue, will it just languish? Like will the bill just disappear because we're, you know, they're gonna go on summer recess and they have to pass it right before the end of the year.
Donaldson: Yeah, it seems really unlikely to move. Like Laura said, Huffman literally told us reporters, one of the things I would question is whether the senators introducing it are serious about it since they waited until now to introduce it. So we're halfway through the second year of the legislative session. Everything dies in December if it doesn't move and lawmakers are about to go on break, like you said, because they're running for reelection.
So they typically leave in late June and don't come back until after the election. So really. At this point, only bills that are a major priority for the speaker or the Senate president are what's going to move. It should be noted that there is a similar House bill legislating vouchers that was introduced by Republicans as well, but that bill has not even had a hearing, I don't think.
So it just, you know, Huffman has said, he is a big voucher supporter. He said that, you now, maybe there are some transparency measures that could be. Implemented but for the most part he also says that you know bad actors can kind of weed themselves out because he says quote the families are taking their children here they're not being forced to do it so you know if a parent doesn't like the private school they're just going to send their kid to another private school.
Juravich: Public school groups have raised alarm about programs like the voucher program siphoning away money from public schools, but a number of parents like the idea of sending their kids to private school, and especially if it's one that the state will help pay for. Laura, what kind of constituent feedback do lawmakers hear about vouchers? So if the voters hear that this bill exists and goes nowhere, what do the voters think?
Hancock: Um, I think that there, okay, so around 80% of students who attend traditional public schools, it's much higher than 80% if you consider charter schools, which are another form of public education. And so, um, so that's the vast majority. But yet the state is spending over $1 billion a year on vouchers. And I think that there is people who are aware of the issue are not happy.
So I think that there is definitely, I mean, I hear it all the time from our readers that this is unfair. However, I think the private schools and the religious groups are also very engaged, and they have the ear of their state lawmakers, and because they always, also that side always writes me whenever I write about the vouchers, saying that they're doing that the public schools are failing. Which isn't necessarily true in a lot of cases, and then they're accusing me of trying to start a class war because I say millionaires can get a partial voucher. There's no limits on the Ed Choice incomes anymore. And so I think you're seeing a lot from both sides.
And last time there was a bill, last session, there was bill that didn't require all of Please transparent me. But it required some of them. The religious lobby and the private school lobby just lined up and were able to shoot the bill down. They're very good at getting the legislators ears.
Juravich: So All right, well, sounds like the bill won't go anywhere, so I guess we'll leave it at that.
You're listening to All Sides Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News, and this week we are talking with Laura Hancock from cleveland.com and Sarah Donaldson with the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Laura, you wrote about how the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce is seeking federal permission to opt out of certain requirements for K-12 schools. This involves Title I funds that go to schools with high percentages of students from low income families. Um, and there was also like a public meeting about this last week. So can you catch us up on what, um, what's happening with these title one funds?
Hancock: So this is kind of a big deal. The waiver is to the Every Student Succeeds Act, which used to be called No Child Left Behind, and before that was called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was started by Lyndon Johnson as part of his war on poverty. That's all the same, okay. It's all same thing, new names? Yeah, they just re-iterate it, yeah.
So, Every Child Succedes Act passed under Barack Obama in 2015. U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Has reached out to states saying, please create waivers, which is just kind of surprising. This is very much a big deal. So here are some of the things that Ohio is proposing for their waiver. They want to take what are called Title I schools that have high percentages of kids living in poverty, and they get extra teachers, extra paraprofessionals, sometimes after school programs, sometimes extra tutoring.
They get all this extra money from the federal government for special programs because poverty is the number one indicator and just family wealth in general about how well you're going to do in school. They want to take that money and they want to allow more schools with poverty issues, maybe not as high, but more poverty schools to get Title I money. The result of that will be the very students that Title I is intended for are probably going to get shortchanged. But then on the other hand, other poor kids will get help. So that's one thing they want to do.
Another thing they want to do is there's these funds, Title II, Title IV, there's a bunch of them, for teacher training, for tech improvements in school, for school building and safety improvements, for English language learners, for after school programs, for teachers, professional development, all these different funds. And they want lump them into one fund and the Ohio Department of Education workforce wants to spend it on their priorities, which right now is science of reading and math improvement and things like that, but we're going to have a new governor pretty soon. So we'll see. How that changes. So that's another thing. Now, the most shocking one that they want to do.
Juravich: There's a more
Hancock: The most shocking one they want to do is if you are a low-performing school for three years in a row and they have a lot of requirements like, you know, you're either a Title I school or you're a high school with a low graduation rate, there's all these things. Anyway, if you're in this category and you perform low for three year in a row, you have to fulfill one or more of 16 requirements under the Ohio Department of Education workforce.
And those could mean closure. Those could mean... Contracting with an education management organization, which is a fancy way of saying charter school. It could mean transfer to a charter school, it could mean having some of your programs being taken over by an education management organization. So basically this would close or privatize charter schools. Now this language was in a Senate bill, Senate Bill 127, but it was super unpopular. And so it was removed from that Senate bill but it showed up in this waiver. So people are not happy about that.
Juravich: Okay, so this waiver, there's going to be public comments and then federal officials have to respond. Everything you just talked about is related to federal money, right? And so the state gets the federal money and the state decides how to divvy out the federal money. Is that right?
Hancock: Well, there's federal rules.
Juravich: Okay, and they're asking for waivers on the rules so they can give out the money differently. Okay. So what does it mean that there's public comment happening and then federal officials have to respond? Where do we go from here?
Hancock: So the public comments period closed last week, last Thursday. And so they're going through the public comments right now. They might make some tweaks. And then I asked them like, when are you guys going to send this to Washington? And they said they didn't know. They have done some preliminary talks with Linda Mavans team. And she's been very like upfront about like, no, this will not fly. Yes, we're open to this. So they kind of, I think, no. Know, what's going to go through and what wouldn't. And so they'll send it in and then the US Department of Education has 120 days to review the plan and reject it or accept it.
Juravich: Hmm. Okay. And, but we're changing governors. So that's, that's a factor. But then also the federal U S department of education also was downsized a lot. So is that a factor? Is there, are there enough people to monitor all this?
Hancock: Not only that, but the long-term goal for them is to close. And so they've already taken a lot of the functions of the Department of Education and put them in Health and Human Services and other state agencies. So we'll see when and if they close, and that's going to be litigated to death, but when and, if they closed, you know, who's going be over all this? They have this kind of like march marching orders like keep saying at the federal level, we're returning education to the states. And so this is kind of like an example.
Juravich: An example of that, yeah, okay. And Sarah, I mean, Laura, this is her wheelhouse. Did you want to add anything? No, that is all right. All right, I just wanted to make sure. And then Laura, there's one more education topic I wanted to get to before we go to a break because you had a story that came out either over the weekend or today. I'm not sure when it showed up on cleveland.com, but it's the school transportation issue. So there's another issue that came up with public private school discussions where public schools are required to bus private school students. And this issue recently came before the Ohio Supreme Court. It was brought by Attorney General Dave Yost against Columbus City Schools. But there wasn't a ruling on the merits of the case. What the Supreme Court ended up ruling, but it was on the standing of the case. Can you tell me more about that? What happened there?
Hancock: I'm not sure about all the details about that case. I just know that for a while the court said that it wasn't moot because this issue had been I think partly resolved and then I think last week they just dismissed the case outright.
Juravich: Didn't they say Dave Yost didn't have jurisdiction to worry about because he's not a school, right?
Hancock: Yeah, and he's not a private school kid, so.
Juravich: Um, so basically he couldn't bring the suit. He needed like a private school kid to sue, right?
Hancock: Right. So under state law, the public schools get money and they have to transport private schools, charter schools, and public school kids. And so that's the law. Now, say a kid, their private school is 30 minutes and they live in a rural, far-flung area. The public school, there are six categories that a public school district can determine a kid impractical. There's 22,000 kids in Ohio who are impractical to transport and 21,000 of those are going to private schools.
So the private schools feel very much picked on. Public schools say that, you know, like if there's like room on a bus, they'll throw, you now, private school kids and then do like multiple drop-offs to the various private schools, but they don't like kids on a bus for more than an hour. That's just a professional standard. And
Juravich: So there's that problem. Well, and then what you wrote about, though, is something, this is new to me, but there's a state working group recommending Ohio move away from district bussing to a regional transportation network. So this, I mean, that's something I had never heard of before. What would that mean?
Hancock: Okay, so the legislature created this work group last summer, it's been meeting throughout this school year, and they're talking about regional transportation hubs. So the parents would probably be responsible to get their kids to the hubs, which that's going to be a problem, I think, for a lot of parents. But then at the hubs there would be busses like going to St. Anne's, going to ABC High School, going this Czech school, whatever, they'll have hubs. Now. This is gonna require like a ton of changes in state law. So who knows if this is gonna happen or not.
Juravich: The state wants to be a school transportation, like this just seems way out of hand.
Hancock: You're going to have to change liability because you're going to have a gazillion kids, because it will be multiple districts and multiple school systems. And so you might have fighting. You might have issues. So you have to figure out liability. You have to find out how you're going to do this, basically. And then there are some people who would like the, because you will either have a lead district in charge of the regional transportation hub, or you're gonna do it with an educational service center. And if you do that Some people would like them to pick them up from home, take them to the hub, then have them transfer to their individual bus for school. The problem with that is that doesn't remove some of the problems you have currently if you do it that way.
Juravich: But I can see both sides of this issue, so having a regional transportation network would take some of the onus off of school districts from having to deal with running basically a bus system, right? Because every single school district, however many school districts there are in the state, all have a bus systems, right. So maybe it does streamline it.
Hancock: I don't know. I mean, I think some of the public school districts, I think would prefer just for the state to give like money to private schools and have them run like 12 run their own busses or 12 seat passenger vans. Basically would be I think the private schools aren't really interested in that because they don't feel like they have the economies of scale. And what are they going to do? Run a garage with mechanics. I mean it's hard for them, you know. So so there's that.
Juravich: Well, so what will happen here? Is this is this just a proposal? Yeah.
Hancock: A lot of work groups is just a way to shelve something, but I do believe that there will be legislation introduced as a result of this work group. I don't know if it will go anywhere, but there are three legislators that I know who are on the work group, and I believe that they will introduce bills and they will get by the end of this two-year session, which ends.
Juravich: December. Wow, OK, well, so we'll have to keep tabs on that. Coming up, we're going to continue talking about education, specifically an Ohio lawmaker's effort to pass the "Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act." And also, Olentangy Schools lost a property tax case before the Ohio Supreme Court. That's when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we talk all things Ohio politics. I'm your host, Amy Juravich, and still with us we have Sarah Donaldson, reporter for the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, and Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at cleveland.com. Sarah, you had a story about a bill that Ohio lawmakers are considering named for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It's called the "Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act." And you reported on this and your reporting was featured on NPR's "Morning Edition" last week. Your story quoted the bill's sponsor who is Representative Gary Klick. He's a former pastor. And here he is talking about why Kirk was such a polarizing figure.
Speaker 6: One of the reasons that people hated Charlie, I think, is because he was advancing Christian principles, the Christian history of our nation, and I think that's what took his life. And so I think people need a better education.
Juravich: So tell us about this bill, you know, what does it aim to do if it was passed?
Donaldson: Yeah, so this series that aired on NPR called "Church and State" explored the shifting boundaries with the separation of church and state. So I looked at this "Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act," talked extensively to Gary Klick and other stakeholders, but loosely the bill says it would permit the teaching of the positive impact of Judeo-Christian values in U.S. History. So that's pretty broad.
It lists examples of what teachers might be able to teach about. Like appeals to divine power in the Declaration of Independence, talking about the religious backgrounds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and educating on the impact of evangelicals like Billy Graham. So Klick tells me that this bill comes from his opinion that teachers have told him that they feel that they can't teach about religion positively because it violates the separation of church and state.
On the other side, you have folks like educators who say, well, this is unnecessary. We can teach about religion, the good and the bad. And this also prescribes a very specific view of Christianity. So definitely an interesting debate. The legislature has of course been looking at other bills that kind of push the boundaries of church and state, so.
Juravich: And so there is pushback. Here is, from your story, here is Democratic Representative Sean Brennan, a former public school teacher. Let's listen to him.
Rep. Sean Brennan: Just look at the history of our nation. You didn't hear George Washington invoking Jesus. We don't need to sow more seeds of division in our country and go back to those days. We've evolved, we're more inclusive, and I think that makes our state and our nation stronger.
Juravich: So what is the likelihood this bill will move forward? I mean, we just, we spent the earlier part of the hour talking about how bills could all go away since there's an extended summer recess due to the election.
Donaldson: Yeah, this bill moved really fast in the House, so I would say that it's on a potential path to pass, but of course, it could get kicked to next year when it was introduced. It was introduced shortly after Charlie Kirk's killing, and it passed the House before the end of the year last year. So it's in the Senate. I know it's had at least one hearing in the Senate, so, you know, it obviously to pass the Senate and get to Governor DeWine to pass.
I know that Klick's intention is to get it through before the end of the year. And, you know, it was introduced in Ohio but I think it's important to note and that's how a lot of state legislation works. Klick's idea has kind of spread to other states. You've seen a couple of states pick this bill up. None of them are called the "Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act" because they should note.
That it's named after the slain conservative activist, but it does not make mention of Charlie Kirk. Otherwise it has little to do with Charlie Kirk other than Klick says that Charlie Kirk was someone who really embodied Christianity in Klick's eyes. But the bill itself, the language has been picked up in several other states and Klick has actually shared it with the National Association of Christian Lawmakers as model legislation.
Juravich: Okay, so pardon me for asking this again, it passed the house, the full house?
Donaldson: Yes, they passed the Ohio House last year.
Juravich: And the Senate has it. Yes.
Donaldson: Yes, the Senate has the bill.
Juravich: And have school groups spoken out related to it.
Donaldson: Yeah, there are several groups opposed to it. You know, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio is opposed to. The Ohio Council for the Social Studies is opposed to it, that's a group of educators, people who teach people how to be history teachers and also history teachers and social studies teachers. And, you know, their president, Sarah Cocker, told me, quote, "I have never heard of a single teacher in Ohio that says they're afraid to teach of any of the content that's in this."
Juravich: Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. So I guess we just wait and see if the Senate takes it up. Absolutely. All right, and then one last education issue. School districts, it's related to Olentangy schools. School Districts cannot challenge the property values for properties they don't own. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that last week. So the case was brought by Olentangy local schools. They were challenging a property value. Laura, do you know about this? Yeah, this.
Hancock: Yeah, this goes back to a bill that was passed, I believe, in 2021, and school districts would challenge property if they felt like the value was too low because it was losing tax money.
Juravich: For them. They could get more...
Hancock: They require over half their money they get comes from taxes. This is collectively across the state for local schools. So if they think that there is artificially low value, they used to be able to challenge that. And then if they would challenge the board of revision, they would appeal that to the state tax commission. And the legislature in 2021 and then removed that. Provision and said they can only challenge like properties that they own.
They're not allowed to challenge valuations of business properties, individual people's houses, that kind of thing. And so they do that. And, um, so Olentangy was trying to do a workaround where they said, okay, if we can't go to the state tax commission, we should be able to go to district court. That would be another place where you can challenge things. And they... Court of Common Pleas, I guess. But anyway, so they were arguing that they should be able to do that. And the Ohio Supreme Court ultimately ruled nice try, but no.
Juravich: All right. Well, so won't be doing that anymore. All right, you're listening to the All Sides Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. And we're talking with Sarah Donaldson from the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau and Laura Hancock from cleveland.com. Sarah, a judge ordered just at the end of last week that President Trump's name be removed from the Kennedy Center saying only Congress can change the name. We bring this up here on the roundtable because U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper. Made the ruling based on a case that was brought by Columbus area congresswoman Joyce Beatty. She's an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board. So do you know anything about Beatty's lawsuit and you know any reaction to the ruling?
Donaldson: I haven't followed the lawsuit super closely, but I do think it's in the earlier stages. And I imagine, you know, really with any legal challenge, there's going to be appeal after appeal. Yeah, this was just round one. Yes. But Beatty, like you said, obviously was involved with the Kennedy Center. And I know when the name change first happened, she was very outspoken about it. So I hate to say we'll have to just see where it goes. But you know, it doesn't make lawsuits go back and forth.
Juravich: It doesn't mean the name's gonna change just because of this one ruling.
Donaldson: No. And of course, the Trump administration has fought these types of rulings and taken them to as far as they can. And that's how the justice system works.
Juravich: All right. Well, we'll stand by for the appeal. And then Laura, you wrote about how more than half of Ohio's children under six years old live in child care deserts. So this is a number that's higher than the national average. And this is at a bipartisan issue, both the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Congress, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, that's the name, and the Left Leaning Center for American Progress both have studied this issue, so. Tell me more about childcare access. Why is it not only limited, but it's also unaffordable, right?
Hancock: So what this study found, and this has been found by other groups as well, was that in rural areas there's just not available slots, period. You might have 20 kids for one available slot, just really nothing. And then in urban areas there is access, but it's, for a lot of families, not affordable.
So, this report found in Ohio, if you look at it, you know, we had that urban-rural divide. We were higher by almost 10% the national average. However, when I compared it to all of our surrounding states, we were quite a bit better. So I do think that probably in a lot of our surrounding states that there were issues. Like I looked at West Virginia as an example, and I noticed like in Morgantown and Huntington and Charleston, they all had access to childcare, but like in a lotta the other, the rest of the state, there wasn't anything.
Juravich: So Ohio's doing better, but it's still a problem. Right. Yeah, it's a problem everywhere.
Hancock: And it costs the state around $5 billion a year is the estimate in lost wages and lost economic activity for not having people working for you because they're at home because of the childcare issue, lost taxes. And so this is why this is a workforce issue and this is you're seeing more Republicans sponsor these bills.
Juravich: Yeah. And Sarah, this is an issue. I mean, there's a million issues that are coming up in the race for governor between Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswamy, but this is one of them. Where do you see the two candidates for governor going on the child care issue here, because it's something that's impacting a lot of people that both sides are talking about.
Donaldson: Yeah, it's really tough to say, because the legislature hasn't really found a solution. A solution, either. Or any money. I don't know that there's a silver bullet to fix child care, of course. Something that you've heard the Republican legislature kind of point to as being successful is there was this pilot program for this tri-share where businesses and the state and the employees were kind of cost sharing for child care. So I see that as maybe.
One thing, I mean, I think that you've heard Republicans like Matt Huffman talk about, you know, employers needing to step up in some ways to help fund child care. So I could see, you know, Ramaswamy maybe going that way, but neither candidate has put like a bulleted list about this is how we're going to fix child care and I went to a summit last month at the Chamber of Commerce, you heard from a lot of providers who were saying, you know, we've been talking about these issues for years and years and years.
Juravich: But related, I mean, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce has been on this show before saying that they need help from the state, but then they're the Chamber of Commerce. So like, are the businesses who are members of them willing to help pay too? Right? It's, it's, I think.
Donaldson: I think it's a question. Like I said, you know, that tri-share program was being piloted in the budget. I think got renewed this year, but I don't have, you know, initially the program was going to be a lot more expansive. And then it was just like a small pilot program in the budget. So, you, know, I think there are different ways.
I think a lot of what you also hear about is obviously the like Okay. Need to increase, from some people, the need to increase the who qualifies for publicly funded child care. So there's a lot of different issues there and I think it's a pressing issue but you know you haven't heard either candidate focus in on child care like they have on maybe other issues.
Juravich: Oh, there's so many issues. Yes, we're coming up one of those issues. We're going to talk about data centers and Governor DeWine's decision to pause a key tax break. That's when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us, we have Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at cleveland.com and Sarah Donaldson, reporter for the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau. And joining us now on the phone, we have Jake Zuckerman, reporter at Signal Ohio. Welcome back, Jake.
Jake Zuckerman: Thank you for having me on. Sorry, I'm phoning it in today.
Juravich: That's okay. You're not phoning it in, but literally, I guess you are. So I wanted to hold off onto the data center discussion from earlier in the show until you could join us because you broke the story the other week that showed how much tax breaks for data centers are costing the state. And it's more than we previously thought. So what did you find from the Ohio Department of Taxation?
Zuckerman: Yeah. Yeah. There are two elements there that you just hit on. I mean, for one, last year in 2025, the sales tax exemption for data centers cost Ohio 1.6 billion, just under $1.6 billion in lost revenue in 2025. That number was about 550, in 2024. That number is about 555 million. So I mean those numbers, even in the context of, of budget math are pretty, pretty eye popping numbers,
But what really caught my attention was that the the best guess that reporters or policymakers or really anyone relying on public information had was from something called the tax expenditure report. Which in 2025 had, it was 11 times off. You had to take the number, which was about 135 million that they projected this credit would cost and multiply it by 11. So the fact was that the policy makers, that journalists, that the public, who ultimately fund the state budget, were all in the dark about just how big of a tax break the state was giving to some of these data center developers.
Juravich: Yeah, so what kind of reaction, whenever you talked with lawmakers and learning that the figure is more like 1.6 billion and 11 times higher than projected, what's the reaction been like?
Zuckerman: Yeah, I mean, it is very, the closer you get to the data center committee. Well, I'd say the judgment is out there to an extent because a key state official claimed a scheduling conflict and did not actually testify. But a lot of makers outside that committee have been very vocally. I would describe it as cheesed. They've been very cheesed. They, you know, they have built a whole, about a hundred billion dollars state budget off of. Really off a bunk set of numbers.
And this is a very politically touchy number of communities I think are really unified in certain ways on the data center issue. There's a big NIMBY fervor about them. Lawmakers tried to get rid of the sales tax exemption in the budget. Governor Mike DeWine vetoed that provision within the budget And now it's almost like the rug has been pulled out. Once you know this exact number, you know, if you felt a certain way about this tax credit, tax credit, when you thought it cost 130 million dollars, imagine how you feel now that you know it cost one point six billion.
Juravich: Yeah. And then the governor has paused the sales tax credit, saying that he's going to look into things. The timing of the governor's pause, did he make it seem like he had planned this pause or is it related to your reporting?
Zuckerman: Well, my colleague, Andrew Tobias, did get to ask the governor about the number and the governor said, look, there's no there's no transparency problem. He was directly asked, has there been a transparency problem? He said, no, there's not. And he talked about the return on investment that Ohio gets from this tax credit. And then less than a week later, he issued a very similar statement, but then ultimately paused the credit. Although I'd like to add two caveats to the pause. For one, the pause only lasts as long as this legislative study commission continues its work.
And two, the pause takes effect after a meeting today in which the Ohio Tax Credit Authority has a data center tax break approval on its agenda. So I don't know right now what they're going to do. Andrew Tobias is on the scene. But so I call it a very, very limited pause. But that said, he is, at least in a figurative level, really punted this to the legislature and said. This is on you. You can choose what happens with this tax credit, at least in some way.
Juravich: And Sarah, this meeting that Jake just alluded to, you're going to go to this right after we're done here, right? So what's happening at this meeting? Well, I think it's going to be a little bit of a surprise.
Donaldson: Well, there's actually two data center meetings, I should say. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority's meeting, that's not a data center specific meeting, but like Jake mentioned, there is an application for this tax exemption on the agenda. And DeWine said that the Tax Credit Authority would freeze the tax exemption after they consider this one, because this one was already in consideration before DeWine announced the freeze. But there's also a meeting, the second meeting of the data center study commission.
So that's lawmakers from both the Senate and the House. It's their second meeting. They met for the first time last week. They heard testimony from the data center coalition, which is an industry group pro data center, talking about, you know, their position with data centers. So there's gonna be more testimony today. I've seen folks on social media who are anti data center circulating posters saying, you know show up to this meeting, come make your voices heard.
Because like Jake said, there's been a lot of bubbling frustration with. Data centers among communities. I mean, it didn't happen in a vacuum. It didn't happened overnight. These data centers have been coming to Ohio and central Ohio for years. But when you look at between the cost, the potential loss tax revenue, the environmental impacts from water to electric, the demands that it puts on the grid. There's certainly growing frustration across party lines. I don't think that this issue is neatly bundled up in a partisan way.
And you look over at the Democrats as well and like legislative Democrats, some of them are super against the tax exemption. They've called for overriding the tax exception. They'll likely join some Republicans in voting for that. But then you also hear from other Democrats like House Minority Leader, Donnie Isakson. Who say that these data centers, when they're being constructed, they create jobs, you know, very defensive of the trade unions, which have been defensive of these data centers. So I don't know if I can say this on All Sides, but it makes odd bedfellows. That's all I'll say. This issue is certainly not one that is neatly wound up in a bow right or left.
Juravich: And Jake, the idea that they're having this legislative study committee study this whole issue, I mean, I think, Laura, did you say earlier that working groups and study committees is where things go to die or something? Is that the phrase? Okay, so usually, we've all been around long enough to know that you create a working group or a blue-rimmed commission to study an issue and then it disappears. But is this one, Jake, is this issue not gonna disappear? This committee has to do something.
Zuckerman: Yeah. Well, you know, obviously I can't predict the future here, but I would call this an unusual, I think Sarah laid out. There's a very unusual politics, I'd say on an observational level. I think people are very incensed about this issue. And I think that we've built a politics in Ohio out of how we've handled solar, handled solar siting issues where we've sort of built this political active. Activation tool almost in terms of we are a community, we are rural community. We do not want to see X here.
We've sort of awoke awakened that politics in a way, but to pour some cold water on all this at the committee's first meeting last week, I would say that several of the key members on the committee made very receptive. Comments about the industry. Senator Bill Reineke at one point said what we have is not a legislative problem it's a constituent problem and that constituents are misunderstanding the positives the data centers bring.
Senator Brian Chavez said that well yes these things are using up a lot of electricity our grid problems are because coal and gas plants are closing down not because data centers are using all the electricity so it's hard to say what this where this committee will go, but some of it's. Key members are making these very, very industry friendly comments, which at least raises some some healthy skepticism of is this going to be a big legislative crackdown coming?
Juravich: Yeah, and I'm going to play some audio from a story Sarah did. This is Dan Diorio, and he's with the Data Center Coalition. That's an industry advocacy group, and he is specifically commenting in support of Ohio giving them a tax break.
Speaker 10: That sales tax exemption helps to facilitate broader economic activity and investment in the state of Ohio. And while I understand that there's concern about the overall amount that has come out, it's important to remember that those transactions would not have been there otherwise.
Juravich: All right, so Sarah, he's saying that if Ohio wants to be a part of this big economic boom that's sweeping the nation, everyone, you get a data center, you get a day to center, everybody needs one, if Ohio want to be part of that, you have to give them tax breaks or they won't come here.
Donaldson: Yeah, I think that pretty much sums up the position. And I should add, my colleague, Karen Kassler, was actually the one covering the committee meeting last week, but I will be covering the meeting happening here in about an hour or so. But the industry has been rabidly defensive of this tax exemption, as has the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the trade unions, the stakeholders in bringing data centers here because. Like other tech projects, there's kind of been this state by state competition.
So now Ohio is saying, well, if we get rid of this tax exemption, our neighbors have a tax exemption and the data centers are gonna go there. But again, you do hear from lawmakers like, I mean, House Speaker, Matt Huffman, he's a Republican. He has said that he thinks that DeWine's veto on the tax exemption should be overwritten, which I hate that double negative that we get into when we're talking about veto overrides. But um because he says, you know, and again, I'll reiterate data centers aren't new.
I think the public outcry against them, it has been bubbling and it's now at a, I don't know if it's at a boiling point. I wouldn't characterize it at that, but it's really bubbling up. But this tax exemption has been on the books since the early 2010s. Like it's not like the legislature came up with it last year. So you've heard Huffman say, well, Maybe when they were a new industry, it made sense. But it's like any other manufacturer now that we're not giving a 100% sales tax exemption on construction materials.
So there's certainly that argument to be made. But I've also heard speculation that some of these data centers are also locating not just because of. I mean, it's one part of the puzzle. And Google has said so much that they're not just coming to Ohio because Ohio offers a tax exemption, they're also coming to Ohio because Ohio has a lot of farmland and it's easier to build a data center on clean farmland than on a brownfield. So they're going where there's also land and there's electric and there is water because that's what these data centers need.
So it's not just predated on the tax exemption. But of course, a lot groups are making the case for why this tax exemption has been so beneficial and you're going to see groups. I mean, because there's all this public opposition, you're also gonna see groups like, the ones that are putting their names behind it, like the data center coalition, like the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, but also groups like you know, I saw a C4 dark money group that's popped up, that's like an Ohio pro data center group, and you know C4s it's, you don't know who's behind them necessarily, that's kind of the whole point of the C4 is, but you know there's certainly that public. Opposition to the opposition popping up, I guess I should say.
Juravich: This is the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. We're talking with Sarah Donaldson from the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, Laura Hancock from cleveland.com and Jake Zuckerman from Signal Ohio. Jake, while I have you before we run out of time, you're my resident solar panel expert. The Ohio Supreme Court has overturned a permit that state officials earlier had said yes to and it's for a massive 6,000 acre solar farm and battery operation in Madison County. Can you tell us about this ruling? What's been overturned? Is the project happening or not happening?
Zuckerman: Yeah, so as of now, it's not happening. The Supreme Court sent us back to the power siting board for review. The, the majority, the court was all over the place. There were a bunch of dissenting and concurring and part opinions, but the prevailing opinion said that the solar farm did not include renderings of certain substations from certain public points of view that are required with the application.
So it was a very, very technical and somewhat narrow. Finding and it sends it back to the power siting board to get those renderings and to quote more thoroughly review the view shed. I think the ruling significant because for one, the chief justice was in the minority, which is actually an unusual outcome in itself. And she was saying, we should have rejected this opinion on more grounds really.
And the company, the developer behind the project, it's Savion. They issued a statement saying essentially we're pleased with this ruling because the court approved most of what we put in our permit application besides this one bugaboo. So it remains to be seen what the power siting board will do. I'd say the big significant thing here is in the past, it has been the power siting board that has jammed up permits for solar developers. And this is the first time that the Ohio Supreme Court has stepped in and actually reversed a permit that was granted. So I don't know, was this a quirk in development or is this more of a sign of things to come?
Juravich: And we have about a minute left, but it's been a rough road for solar projects in the state. Your story about this noted that commissioners in 27 counties around the state have banned wind and solar projects. So what's the future of solar here in Ohio looking like?
Zuckerman: It's, it's extraordinarily difficult to develop solar here in Ohio. There's, there are several cases at the Supreme Court. There are efforts to overturn permits that were granted. There were, there were efforts to uphold denials of permits. Seven permits have been rejected since 2020, all on the grounds of local opposition from township and county officials to quote a developer from Open Road Renewables. Ohio is a horrible, I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but he said, Ohio is a terrible place and we're just, we're not going to build projects in Ohio. So long as the legal deck is stacked against us like this.
Juravich: All right, we're gonna leave it there. I wanna thank you. Thank you, Jake Zuckerman, reporter for Signal Ohio. Thanks for being with us today.
Zuckerman: Thank you for having me on.
Juravich: And we've also been talking with Sarah Donaldson, reporter for the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau. Thanks, Sarah. Hey, thanks. And we been talking with Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at cleveland.com. Thanks, Laura.
Hancock: Thank you.
Juravich: And if you missed any part of today's show, listen back at wosu.org/allsides or subscribe to our podcast. I wanna say thank you to our producers, Marcus Charleston and Erin Esmont Rabinowitz. Our student producers is Ahuk, Colin Simpson and Brianna Fortunet. Our student producer from Denison University is Ellen Hansen. Video production by the Ohio Channel. And board operation by Chris Johnston. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.