An effort to abolish property taxes in Ohio runs out of time — for now.
The group collecting signatures to put an amendment on November's ballot to get rid of property taxes in Ohio says it has fallen short of the number needed to qualify.
How big a problem is fraud in Ohio? It depends on who you ask.
Trump administration officials traveled to Columbus last week to say it's widespread and significant.
For years, Ohio State has fought hard to limit the financial damage of the sex abuse committed by former OSU team doctor Richard Strauss. Last week, came word that the fight is nearing its end.
We're talking about all of these topics on this week's reporter roundtable with guest host Mike Thompson, host of WOSU Public Media's Columbus on the Record tv series and the Snollygoster
podcast.
Guest Host:
- Mike Thompson, host of the "Columbus on the Record"/host of the "Snollygoster" podcast
Guests:
- Jo Ingles, senior reporter, Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau
- Jessie Balmert, state government and politics reporter, The Columbus Dispatch
- Shane Stegmiller, reporter, Hannah News Service
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Mike Thompson: Property taxes, Medicaid fraud, and a settlement in the OSU Strauss case, those are the topics we'll talk about today.
You're listening to All Sides with Amy Juravich Reporter Roundtable, where we catch up on the political news of the past week and preview the week ahead. I'm Mike Thompson sitting in for Amy Juravich today. Joining us on today's roundtable, Jo Ingles, Senior Reporter for Ohio Public Radio's Statehouse News Bureau. Welcome back, Jo.
Jo Ingles: Great to be here.
Mike Thompson: Jesse Balmert, state government and politics reporter for the Columbus Dispatch and the USA Today Ohio Network. Jesse, welcome.
Jessie Balmert: Thanks so much. Happy Monday.
Mike Thompson: And Shane Stegmiller, reporter for Hanna News Service. Welcome, Shane. Good morning. Let's start with a story we've been tracking for months, if not more than a year, and we may have overhyped it a little bit. Anyway, the effort to abolish Ohio property taxes has failed, at least for now. The group collecting signatures to put an amendment on November's ballot says it has fallen short of the number of valid signatures it needed to qualify. The group had to collect at least 415,000 valid signatures by July 1st. Brian Massey of the Committee to Abolish Property Taxes, or AX Ohio Tax, said they would not have enough by that date.
Brian Massey: As responsible citizens, we want to provide our elected officials with enough time to address the needed spending cuts to the bloated taxing authorities throughout Ohio and the spending priorities of the state legislators. We do not have a problem generating revenue in the state. We have a spending and a fraud, waste and abuse problem.
Thompson: So the group will continue to collect signatures as they can. They can continue to connect them in the hopes of getting on next year's ballot, the November 2027 ballot. Jesse Ballmer, do we have any idea? They didn't say how many signatures they were short. Do we have idea how short they were?
Balmert: Well, at least as of April when they had a news conference, they had about 305,000 signatures. And at that point, I think we got a little concerned or skeptical that they were going to hit this for 13,000 that they needed. Because typically you want to collect, you know, several hundred thousand signatures more than that, because there are various issues with signatures, like if someone doesn't register to vote or if they know put down the wrong address or sign the wrong name or so forth there are frequently issues with the signatures and it's even more of a challenge when you're doing it as like a grassroots volunteer effort. I think back to a marijuana initiative from several years ago that their fail rate was like something like 50 percent or like pretty high and so when you don't have paid signature collectors when it is more of like volunteer grassroots effort that's even more of a concern. Shane, given the
Thompson: lot of anger out there about property taxes. I mean, they've increased like 30% in the past few years because of levies that have been passed by voters, but also property values have increased pretty rapidly in the last five, six years or so. So a lot of people are mad about what they're paying in property taxes, you would think that this could get on the ballot. But it didn't.
Shane Stegmiller: There's a lot of reasons for that. There was a strong pushback by a number of elected officials and others who were saying, well, if you get rid of property taxes, what's the alternative? You're either going to have to raise sales taxes, you're going to have to rise income taxes. None of the options were going to be, you know, happy for any of the voters.
And like Jesse said, this was a kind of a volunteer effort and that makes it also a little harder to... You're doing it through word of mouth it's a little harder to try and get people out there standing on the corner going to all the fairs and that that you need to do to get the signatures you need
Thompson: George just shows you, to get on the ballot in Ohio, you need a lot of signatures, $415,000, and as Jesse said, you basically need double that to be safe. You need money. And they raised some money, but they didn't hire professional companies to gather signatures. They didn't partner with a conservative anti-tax group. Might they do that for the next year? Why didn't they do it?
Ingles: Well, I think one of the problems was that they needed, what Brian Massey said he really wanted was about 620,000 signatures by July 1st. I don't think that.
Thompson: I don't think that would have done it.
Ingles: I don't know, but to get those numbers, that's a lot. And to get these, you're gonna have to have paid signature gatherers, you gonna have to have those coalitions, and none of them have coalesced. And to me, just kind of watching from the outside, it looks like a lot of the folks who have been working with this group are not people who have, you know, been very involved in state house kind of things in the past. So there's some things that have been done or said that you're like, oh, well, you know, normally that wouldn't happen. So, you now, it's a big ask, but they can hold these signatures and bring them back next year, and that's what they intend to do.
Thompson: The problem is if some of the people who signed these petitions move.
Ingles: If they die.
Thompson: Or if they die, or they would be invalid. So you have to collect even more.
Stegmiller: Well, the other thing to point out on that, too, is the requirements are going to change because this is a gubernatorial election and the number of signatures you needed is based on the total amount of votes cast in the gubernatorial election, 10%. So that may go up or down depending on how popular this election is this year.
Thompson: And this was based on the last one where Mike DeWine sailed to victory and it really wasn't that competitive. This we'll talk about in a moment, but this governor's race is gonna be very competitive. Turnout has to be higher, you'd think. You would think.
Balmert: That would be my expectation. Yeah, I mean, I know no one's looking for like moral victories from this group that isn't gonna be on the ballot this year, but they did put a decent amount of pressure on the Ohio legislature to make some changes and to like clean up some of the language, make it more clear what people are voting on. And certainly that's not a limiting property taxes entirely, but the threat of this ballot initiative. Really had an impact in the state house this year.
Thompson: Say what you will about this group. They were grassroots, not as professional as the slick campaigns you see. Let's just say they collected 100,000 between April and June. They collected almost a half million signatures. That's not nothing. So that issue is out there. And Brian Massey said, now it's time for lawmakers to do something. Now that the pressure is off, do they do something to fix property taxes or limit the increases?
Stegmiller: But they're still looking at different, they still have a number of bills that they're considering. I don't know if they're going to go as hard as they did at the beginning of this General Assembly because they heard a lot of it from voters when they came into this General Assembly. So they were like, we need to do something right now. There's a lot other things on their plate right now
Thompson: Any other working groups still out there? Committees? Study committees, no?
Ingles: I think the one thing that we've got to remember about this is that property taxes are kind of taking a back burner right now because there are so many issues at the state house that are becoming at the center of the governor's campaign and other campaigns. And so, you know, they can possibly focus the attention somewhere else and skate a little bit on this.
Thompson: Jesse, does this let... I'm looking at candidates for governor, Vivek Ramaswamy. Does this let him off the hook? Because he came out early in his campaign saying he wanted to eliminate property taxes, just like this group wants to do. Then he backed it off of that and said, no, we're gonna roll them back to like pre-pandemic levels. That's his current position. But now he doesn't have to take a stand on this while he runs for governor. He doesn't to take stand on the issue.
Balmert: I mean, I think voters are still going to be interested in what the governor candidates want to do on this issue, but he won't have to say, yes, I'm voting for or against this particular measure. And Vivek Ramaswamy has been really focused on cutting income taxes almost more so than property taxes. And we can have an argument about which one is better and which one voters want more. But Ramasawamy has said that he wants to cut property taxes to like the pre pandemic or like the end of the pandemic levels. So. That's one policy that he's put forward but like you said the focus has been much more on the income tax and less on eliminating all sort of property taxes because that has not been his position recently.
Thompson: Do we see a push for consolidating government on our TV show, "Columbus on the Record," on Friday? We had Brian Rothenberger's on, who's a member of the Norwich Township Board of Trustees, and he was basically very much opposed to consolidating Norwich township and to say Hilliard. He says, someone has to pay for the fire department, it's either us or the city.
Ingles: We are hearing that that pressure is off now. No. No, I don't think that's off at all
Thompson: Without the question on the ballot?
Ingles: Well, here's the thing. I mean, we've got Vivek Ramaswamy out there talking about consolidating government, especially when it comes to the state's universities. He's talked about it quite a bit. But a lot of Republicans right now are talking about consolidation and trying to make things so that there's not as much tax money required. So I think that's going to come up in its own way in this campaign.
Stegmiller: That question of consolidating school districts has come back up too.
Thompson: I mean, it's the how many we have 602.
Ingles: 88.
Thompson: 88 counties, 602 school districts, right? It's over 600. No, it's over a 600 school district. I'm not a 600.
Ingles: I thought it was 600, yeah I thought it was 688, I might be wrong, but it's well over 600. Well over 600!
Balmert: Right, this is a conversation that comes up quite a bit in the legislature, it comes up quite a lot in the governor's race, which is just, you know, do we have too many units of government, whether that be school districts, townships, you, know, villages, municipalities, and so forth. And of course, all of those individual units appreciate their autonomy, appreciate their ability to like run their own operation. And so that is a conflict that is not new in Ohio government, but it's certainly part of the conversation when people are looking at their property tax bills and saying, where can we save some money? Yeah. Yeah. Would end.
Thompson: Do we, at some point, as the state history has proven, issues that are meaningful to voters often get on the ballot, there's several tries, either it gets on the balance and it fails and they try again. You mentioned the marijuana thing, the casino issue kept up several times. I can see another property tax limiting issue getting on the ballots if the lawmakers don't make headway on this in some way.
Stegmiller: And this group is not happy with what the lawmakers have done so far. They said it's not enough. It doesn't go too far. I mean, one of their big arguments is, well, the discussion we just had, there's just too much different taxing entities and too much government in that. So they're going to keep pushing whether or not anybody joins them, whether or not they'll be able to do it for next year. I, they're not stopping.
Thompson: What an odd year election, a 2027 election, which is largely a local election, municipal election. Would they have a better chance or worse chance? I mean, you'd have the governor's race would have a big turnout. So you have more voters, presumably more voters mad about property taxes. A municipal election, lower turnout, unions, local police and fire. Supporters tend to come out, school supporters tend to come outta beat. Is it harder or easier to get this passed in 27, do you think?
Stegmiller: An odd year election is a weird animal, and that's more of a turnout. Some of these past odd year elections that you saw, most recently the abortion one, you have an issue that is going to drive people to the polls. So this is one of those issues where people aren't just gonna be showing up to vote on their local thing and go, oh, there's a property tax, maybe I'll vote yes or no on it. This is gonna be one of these things where one side or the other is gonna very motivated.
Ingles: And the economy is going to have something to play into that because, you know, if the economy continues to, you now, we continue to have high gas prices, continue to have high groceries, you, know, people are having trouble staying in their homes. If you have that environment, I would think that property taxes would be a bigger deal to the electorate.
Thompson: Yeah, it all goes to the whole affordability thing.
Balmert: Yeah, it's hard for me to completely predict, but I will say you'll have a lot of like mayoral races on the ballot next year and so that would certainly become a talking point of those kind of things if this property tax measure were on the valid as well.
Thompson: Just imagine having it because Columbus will vote for a new mayor next year. That and this question on the ballot would be give us plenty to talk about anyway. Well, we're done talking about it for now because it's not going to be on the ballot. So just briefly on the upcoming election, Fox News had a poll out last week that showed a gap in the U.S. Senate race. Sherrod Brown, the challenger on the Democratic side to incumbent John Houston has an eight point lead. I think it was forty five forty three to thirty five. Percent lead over John Husted and the governor's race basically tied. The Senate race, this is kind of an outlier. Most of the other races have shown John Housted with a slight lead basically within the margin of error, but this shows Sherrod Brown with a lead outside the margin of error. Do we read anything into that? Does it show strength on his campaign?
Stegmiller: It shows strength. I mean, both are on the air right now with ads. I'm not sure how much any of that's kind of percolating in the voters' minds at this moment in time. It's an interesting thing because, like you said, we haven't seen one where Shared's got this much of a lead, but it's early. And in this case, it's a poll of registered voters. So maybe not all of these voters are gonna show up. Yeah.
Thompson: Likely voters tend to be more reliable. Just to clarify, the lead that Sherrod Brown had over John Huston was 53 to 45. So he is over that 50%, Mark, Jo, in this poll.
Ingles: Yeah, and I'd like to remind people, though, that having a lead in June is not much of a deal. Because, here's the reason, you remember back to the Strickland case at Grace, Governor Stricklund had pretty significant leads going into August, and yet he lost. So I mean, I think we kind of get, you know, we see these polls and we think, oh, you, know, but really the voters have not keyed in yet. They're not. Thinking politics yet, and so it's early.
Stegmiller: I think Sherrod had a lot of leads and most of his last election. Yeah, he made one up into November Not a Titan like closer to the election is when you saw it tight
Ingles: Yeah, that's when it tightens.
Thompson: Going back to the when Mike DeWine was first elected governor, when he beat Richard Cordray in 2018, Cordray had a lead of three or four points this time in the spring. I joke at lawns always look good in May and June. Democrats always look good in Ohio in May, and June, so we'll see how they look in November.
Balmert: Yeah, it'll be interesting. I think affordability, I think the popularity or the how long the Iran war goes on. I Think a lot of things about the president will be tied to John Husted. And so what, how popular Donald Trump is in the state of Ohio, how people feel about the economy in the state of all higher organ to be like really key factors, particularly in the Senate race, certainly in the governor's race, but any sort of national race is going to be a factor in I'm going to go ahead and turn it back on. I think opinions of Sherrod Brown are pretty baked in, like he was just on the ballot. People know who he is, they either love him or hate him or what have you. But John Huston, despite being in politics for quite some time in Ohio, is a lesser known ballot name commodity. And so you're gonna see that is gonna be affected by the presidential opinion quite a bit.
Thompson: And you will see his introductory ads tonight when you watch the NBA finals or when you're watching Jeopardy and Wheel and 7 o'clock. Those are the places. If you want to see the political ads, watch sports and watch Jeopardry. When we come back, we'll talk about how apparently Ohio is a hotbed of government fraud, at least according to the nation's top law enforcement officials. That's when the Reporters Roundtable continues here on 8-9-7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides with Amy Juravich. I'm Mike Thompson sitting in for Amy Today. That's our weekly reporters roundtable where we talk all things Ohio politics and what's happened and what ahead. Joining us today, Joe Ingles, senior reporter for Ohio Public Radio, Jesse Balmert, state government and politics reporter for the Columbus Dispatch and the USA Today Ohio Network and Shane Stegmiller, reporter with Hanna News Service.
According to the White House, fraud is a quote, scandalous problem in Ohio. Nation's top law enforcement officers traveled to suburban Columbus last week to say Ohio is a leading location for government fraud. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch, FBI Director Kash Patel, Medicaid Director Dr. Mehmet Oz, and others joined some state officials in announcing 14 indictments charging them with defrauding the government out of 50 million dollars. The cases involve Medicaid fraud, COVID relief fraud. And a romance fraud scheme. Here is the interim attorney general, Todd Blanche.
Todd Blanche: These numbers are staggering, but just the tip of the iceberg, both here in Ohio and nationwide. Sadly, Ohio is facing some of the most significant fraud schemes in the country.
Thompson: Officials say the indictment resulted from a federal and state partnership to investigate it and they vowed to continue to root out fraud here in Ohio and across the country. Duangos? Pretty bad. Who knew? Isn't that bad? Do we know?
Ingles: I don't I we don't have any evidence that it's that bad. Let's put it that way. We saw These 14 indictments only one of them actually dealt with Medicaid fraud The rest of them as you said were different things, but you know, we've been hearing a lot about this We've heard that there was a right-wing conservative outlet that reported like a billion dollars worth of Medicaid fraud, but we're still in the phase of having that investigated. So we don't know whether that's the case. And a lot of things, honestly, that look like fraud, when you look down into them closer, they're not fraud at all. So how much of that has been counted in the fraud bucket, but then it's going to end up being something else. I think we're just gonna have to wait and see.
Thompson: Jesse, the root of these cases, according to the federal authorities, I'm sure it happens. This is the Medicaid fraud where friends, relatives, caregivers of folks are able to get reimbursed from Medicaid for care they give loved ones or others. The intention is to keep these folks, vulnerable people, out of expensive nursing homes. So, the incentive is you pay a family member or a co-worker or a caregiver. To take care of them. It could be housekeeping needs, it could be making sure the medication is administered properly, but you could see how that could open the door for false claims.
Balmert: Yeah, it's, it, you explained it very well, but it's called home health care. And it's basically an alternative to nursing homes or one alternative to nursing homes. And the benefits are it is less expensive for Medicaid to pay for, and typically has better outcomes for the patients. If you like already know your relative, you know, you might trust them to take care of these things versus like a stranger or so forth. But just by nature of this arrangement, it is slightly more challenging to track than someone in a hospital or a nursing home or so forth setting. And so that is where some of the concern has come from. There's actually a bill that's getting a lot of changes in the state house. I'm not sure if this is how it's going to end up. But one proposal from Ohio lawmakers would prevent relatives from being home health care providers. And so their solution in that bill is to just cut off this option entirely.
Thompson: And there was a hearing last week, Shane, that seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because if it's done properly, and I mean, we've all known caregivers who have spent a lot of time caring for their parents or their grandparents or a loved one. And this allows them to do that and get reimbursed.
Stegmiller: If it's legitimate. And that's the concern that's been raised by a number of these caregivers and the people who are getting cared for who have been showing up to these hearings and saying, hey, don't hurt us because of this. We are legitimate. We have a reason that we're doing this.
Ingles: Yeah, yeah, you know, I I know personally from dealing with you know I I had a family member that I was taking care of for a long time with other people in my family and That person wasn't eligible for Medicaid. So, you don't like any situation with us getting money But there's a lot that people cannot do when they're in a situation. They're in wheelchair or they're limited They can't get up and go get their own meal. They can get up in clean They can you know a lot of times they can't dress themselves. They. Can't get themselves ready You know and a lot times We you know in our situation we had a home health aids coming in to monitor the health of the person right?
But the thing is there's a lot things that go on that if you sit down and just even talk to the person you're going to discover there are needs there that didn't get met by the healthcare person. Now they have. It's complicated.
Thompson: The governor has, what, suspended new home health care reimbursement programs?
Stegmiller: Yes, they got, they asked for a Medicaid waiver from the federal government and were granted on that. And so I believe it's a six months suspension that they will not enroll new ones. And then also, they announced last week while all this was going on, one of the interesting things on this one was in that press conference, the governor was not involved. Yes, he wasn't there. Although a spokesman for him said, although we weren't asked to be a part of it, we do support, you know, what they're announcing. So he.
Thompson: So he wasn't invited. He doesn't he just didn't have a conflict.
Stegmiller: But around the same time, they announced that they were suspending payments to about 49 healthcare providers, home healthcare providers that are kind of questionable, that kind of got flagged in their system that they're going to take a closer look at.
Thompson: Do we have any idea how much of an impact that will have on the care that they were providing? These are new companies coming on board, right? Or no?
Stegmiller: Well, the ones that they suspended I think are already ones that were providing care, but they have a system I think that they're using to kind of try and flag some of these ones that are a little more suspicious.
Ingles: And they did suspend new ones coming on until they can get this under control. But there's another factor here that needs to be taken into consideration as well. It is hard to find home healthcare providers like actual, not family members, but actual companies that come in and do this work. If you talk to the people who are in need of those services, they will tell you that in some communities, they don't exist. These are. Jobs that tend to be low-paid, they're always recruiting people to come help and do those kind of duties, and there just aren't enough people in some areas. So that another problem to consider.
Thompson: You can see in a rural area, it'd be really hard. Travel miles between clients to take care of them. It'd be hard to, I don't know how they work out mileage reimbursements and things like that. But you can see, it's just, I mean, nursing homes and assisted care living places have a hard time staffing because the pay levels are low and it's hard work, let's face it. People who were at the news conference, Dave Yost, the now former attorney general, who's in charge of prosecuting fraud in Ohio, and before that was the state auditor for eight years. The current auditor, Keith Faber, who has been in office for seven and a half years, had to be awkward if we're such a hotbed for fraud to law enforcement folks, financial control folks, how do they respond to this accusation that we have a scandalous amount of fraud in Ohio when they've been in charge?
Stegmiller: Well, Keith Faber, a lot of some of these national reports that have been highlighting the fraud have actually been taking data that was brought to the forefront by Keith Fabre back in March, even before some of the committees at the General Assembly, and was highlighting like, here's some things that we think are kind of need to be taken a closer look at. So he's been involved in a lot this. And during the press conference, too, the I mean, they were kind of praising Ohio too for some of the steps Ohio's been taking. So it wasn't just Ohio's this wild west of fraud and, you know, something needs to be done. They did give some props to some of the stuff that Ohio's done, including the DeWine administration, who's kind of gotten thrown under the bus by the General Assembly.
Thompson: Well, they did the similar in Minnesota, right, Jesse, when they gave props to Tim Walls because all the fraud up there, right? When they targeted Democrats in that blue state? Yeah. I'm being facetious, of course. Obviously.
Balmert: Obviously. Yes, no. I mean, the point that you're making is one that certainly Ohio Democrats are making, which is, we don't know if there's this massive amount of fraud in Ohio, but if there is, it's definitely Republicans' fault because they've been in charge of the governorship, the statewide offices, by and large, and the Ohio General Assembly, but the Senate and the House for this entire multi-year length of time.
And I will say they had a committee hearing few months ago where the attorney general and the auditor came in and talked about various concerns and like what they do and do not do. But like this was a like more than two hour committee hearing that had fewer than 90 people looking at it on the Ohio channel. So this was not people like you know pounding the table that Medicaid fraud, waste, and abuse is rampant in Ohio until there was like this publication that came in, and talked, about it. And it's become certainly a big issue in an election year.
Thompson: So is that what's driving this? Is it the, first, the social media, quote, influencers who first targeted daycare centers? Again, following up with what happened in Minnesota, which was, there's a lot of indication that there was pretty rampant fraud in Minnesota. And they came to, in Minnesota the group has been accused of that of the Somali population. Columbus has a large Somali Population. Influencers went to Somali neighborhoods, accused daycares of fraud without evidence. And then that spilled over to Medicaid. Is that what's driving this? Is it the social media influence, the conservative sort of web, social media networks that are driving this. It's part of it for sure. Cause how do they pick Ohio? Why not Tennessee? Why not, you know, North Dakota? Why not another blue state?
Ingles: Well, Ohio has a very big Senate race, number one, that somehow they think maybe that, I don't know. That's a good question.
Stegmiller: Well, and a lot of it is Ohio has a big Somali population and the Somali population was kind of the target of the concerns in Minnesota, so it kind of fits in along with that.
Thompson: Now Mike DeWine, he points out, and he pointed out in a statement because he wasn't at the news conference, he said, he said Ohio is a leader in indicting and convicting Medicaid fraudsters pointing to more than 2,000 indictments, assuming in Medicaid fraud since he took office. So they've been investigating it.
Balmert: Right. It has been an interesting, like, if this is a problem, who is to blame game? And certainly the Democrats are pointing to the Republicans. The Republican state legislative leaders have been pointing to the former Medicaid director largely. DeWine has been saying, look, we've been prosecuting this. He's a former attorney general and the attorney general's office is over the Medicaid fraud investigations. And so he can point to how they've been doing it. Under his prior job and how Attorney General Dave Yost and now the new replacement will do under the new job and so that is kind of the challenge like how big of a problem is this and if it's to what extent it's a problem who was kind of not paying attention enough.
Thompson: Does it fizzle? Does it become an issue in the governor's race? Is it a way to distract from high gas prices in the economy? If you're Vivek Ramaswamy saying, I'm gonna end fraud, waste and abuse in Ohio and pay no attention to the $5 a gallon gas or 4.30 it is this week.
Stegmiller: It will continue to play in terms of the fakes, made it a big part of his campaign. He's already rolling out a lot of proposals and plans and he had members of the General Assembly and leaders of the general assembly there with him. So he's making it a part of the campaign. There's a lot time between now and November. Something else might pop up.
Thompson: How does Amy act in being a former health director, physician, sympathetic to the health care needs of you'd think just by her career calling? She's in kind of a tough spot. She wants to be empathetic and take care of folks on Medicaid, wants to support the full Medicaid problem, but obviously doesn't want to be seen as endorsing fraud or lack of oversight.
Balmert: Yeah, she's been interesting on this, like she has said that there needs to be an investigation or look into it, like get more information. But even earlier, she was supportive of work requirements for Medicaid, which is not a position that every Democrat takes, because largely people on Medicaid are already working. And this can add some like hurdles and boxes you need to check to make sure that that happens. But she has been taking on several issues, like a more moderate, like we're going to work with Republicans. I have these positions that like the average Ohioan might agree with, even if you're independent or conservative. And so that's been her approach, which is not to say like, you know, she isn't like pulling out the whole stops of like, here's how we're gonna fight Medicaid fraud that is massive in like, in Ohio, but she's not saying this isn't an issue, ignore it.
Thompson: Playing that centrist role, which is probably smart for a Democrat in Ohio, can't go too, too far left and hope to get elected anyway. We'll take a break when we come back. We'll talk about the settlement, the huge settlement OSU has agreed in principle with remaining victims in the Strauss sexual abuse case. That's when All Sides with Amy Juravich with me, Mike Thompson continues here 89.7 in PR News.
Welcome back to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. All Sighs with Amy Juravich. I'm Mike Thompson sitting in for Amy this week. It is our Weekly Reporters Roundtable. Joining us, Shane Stegmiller, reporter with Hanna News Service, Jesse Balmert, state government and politics reporter for the USA Today Ohio Network, and Joe Ingalls, senior reporter with Ohio Public Radio and its Statehouse News Bureau.
For years, Ohio State has fought hard to limit the financial damage. Of the sex abuse committed by former OSU team doctor, Richard Strauss, who was now dead. Last week came word the fight nears an end, at least we think. In a surprise last minute announcement, the OSU Board of Trustees agreed in principle to settle all but one of the remaining claims of hundreds of men accused by Strauss for a total of $100 million. Here is Ohio State University President, Ravi Bellamkonda, speaking at the trustees meeting.
Ravi Bellamkonda: The survivors of the Strauss abuse are all Buckeyes. I will always be a part of our family and our community. And I firmly believe that. We continue to be very grateful to them for their courage in coming forward and reaching a final resolution is very important to us and as an important step forward.
Thompson: The $100 million is on top of the $61 million OSU already agreed to pay to more than 300 Strauss survivors back in 2020. That's a considerable payout, but it's not as high as others. To compare, Michigan State and Michigan both faced sex abuse scandals by athletic doctors. They each paid about $500 million. So if you do the math, $500 million each Michigan State and Michigan. OSU give or take will pay about 100 and you have to guess about 170 million dollars when all is said and done. Jesse Ballmer, this has been in the it's been eight years since these allegations first came to light. It's been seven years since the investigation showed it. And now we settle. It's taken a long time but it looks like this case is nearing an end.
Balmert: Yeah, it's been interesting. And obviously, like the advocacy of people from the beginning, that such a long period of time. And the attention has ramped up as more people have been added. But the people who brought it to light back in 2018, you know, deserve a lot of respect for that, because it's hard to be the first person.
But yeah, so I mean, I think we've even seen like former Ohio State football players and retired judge and you've really seen this kind of momentum building in recent days. So I'm not entirely surprised that we've come to the point of a settlement. $100 million is substantive, but like you said, in the context, it'll be interesting to see what happens there. Obviously, the settlement avoids a trial, more depositions, more information getting out there, and it could have been in the fall season when you're playing football games as well. And so... It's how much attention do you wanna bring to this issue at like a very interesting time for Ohio State.
Thompson: Yeah, I don't think anyone ever thought this would get to trial, Joe, but a trial would have just been, I mean, the people who would have had to testify at trial, the people who have been deposed. Jim Jordan was deposed, Archie Griffin was depose, former athletic director Andy Geiger was depost. Les Wexner was ordered to be deposed OSU lost a court ruling on that. We don't know if he's been depose yet, but he was in line to be if he hadn't been. So a trial, these people on the stand would have been that would not have been a good look.
Ingles: That would not have been a good look, but you know, the university waited a long time to settle this. It could have been settled a long ago. And one of the things that, I just have a lot of questions about this settlement because one of things that the survivors were asking about were they wanted guardrails to make sure that this didn't happen again. I'm not seeing, in what we've heard so far, I'm seeing what those guardrailes might be if they exist at all.
Also, is there, as part of this deal, are the survivors allowed to talk about how they feel about it going forward? Are they allowed to ask the questions? There are a lot of things that we don't know at this point about this deal. But I would tend to think that the lower amount could be because some of the survivors, or a lot the survivors said, hey, we're getting a lot of the things we want. It's just we're not hearing that, right?
Thompson: Yeah I mean but the OSU trustees and frankly the the survivors have not been talking since this was announced. They say it's because the federal court judge who is overseeing this has basically put a gag on around him until this is a done deal no one's to talk about it so they have that right now but still I mean it was hand-carried into the Board of Trustees meeting no advance notice this was coming and again it's just the transparency has just not been there even if you can't talk about it publicly. You know it's not been completely, you know, on the agenda ahead of time. So the survivors weren't there. The media didn't get a head of heads up. Media was there because they cover it normally anyway. So it was kind of a surprise. Right. How much just just looking at this from a just why now type of thing, Shane, but new president, you had to figure a new president maybe wanted to get this off his plate. Ravi Belum Konda. There's a new chair of the board of trustees who has started. You wonder if new voices in the room said, you know what. Let's get this settled.
Stegmiller: Yeah and it's been just a drip drip drip and there's still, I mean there's still new victims coming forward sharing their stories so it just continues. If you're hoping to sweep it under the rug and it'll just go away, it's not going to go away so there probably was like an attitude of Okay, we just need to do something about this now.
Balmert: Yeah, and Ohio State has just had a lot of, you know, self-imposed, bad press recently between this topic, which has obviously been going on for years, but the Wexner ties and then the former president resigning in the way that he did. It's just, you now, to the extent that you can make one of these be resolved in a way that at least the survivors feel reasonably good about, then that's one less thing that you're talking about as Ohio State.
Thompson: We don't know exactly how Ohio State will pay this $100 million. They do say it will not involve taxpayer money, it will not involve tuition money, and it will not involve donor-directed contributions to the university. Of course, that leaves people who give to the university in general, and foundation support or whatever. So we don't exactly how it's going to be paid, but.
Ingles: Yeah, that's a large, that a large amount though, the in general group is large. Yeah.
Thompson: So, if you do the math, we did the math. It's like just under 300 folks in this settlement. You do the map, it comes out to about a quarter of a million dollars each after you take off the attorney's fees. Figuring attorneys get 40%, they get about, on average, on average $220,000, $230,000 each. I don't know, is that enough? Hard to say.
Balmert: I don't think there's like a price tag that you can put on this issue, but getting Ohio State to admit that this was an issue and potentially, I mean, I don't know all of the details fixing this going forward or putting new guardrails in place going forward. So something that's tragic when it happened again. I know just like the acknowledgement and pushing for change has been a part of the conversation from the beginning.
Thompson: To OSU's credit, they've always sort of admitted this happened and they've quibbled over the financial amount and they say that they've taken steps to make sure this doesn't happen again. But you have to, this happened, what, you know, 30 years ago. None of the folks who are here now in office in Ohio State had anything to do with it. You just think, I would get wanted to get off my plate just to be done with it, you know? I didn't, you now? This wasn't my watch. This didn't happen on my watch, let's get it done.
And this one, to Jesse's point, they had control over. The Jeffrey Epstein, Les Wexner ties. Yeah, they could take Wexler's name off buildings, but there's been no, there's no been no allegation, no convictions of any wrongdoing on the part of Les Weksner, just he's guilty by association. The Ted Carter thing, it'll probably fade at some point, but this one here, they had, they could have control of, so they have. We shall see what the details are. We'll eagerly await the details of the settlement and see if, now there's one victim survivor that is not. We don't know who it is yet, but there's one who has not agreed. So we'll see what that person has to say.
Anyway, data centers continue to be public enemy number one in many parts of Ohio. Ohio is a leading location for data center construction, but they have drawn complaints for their use of electricity, what they might do to utility rates in the future. They have drawn complaints. For the use of water supplies and what it might mean for a water supplies in, in areas of the state. And they just... They don't look nice, and they take up a lot of farmland. So a lot rural Ohioans don't want to have a data center next door. Joe Ingalls, there's a committee now that's studying this. They had a hearing last week. Did they reach any conclusions as to what to do with data centers?
Ingles: No, and I think they're still working on that. As we speak here, they're they're still trying to come to some sort of solution. But the problem is that, you know, it's one of these issues that it's not as black and white as it seems, right? So even, you know, like the Democrats are not poised to make, you know, a lot of ground on this talking about it, because they're a lot of their constituency, the unions. For example, they're putting people to work in these data centers, building them. The Chamber of Commerce, they like the data centers because they say they're good for the economy. There's a whole lot going on, and yet, I know that we've seen these rural areas that have said, hey, you're taking farmland. You're taking our resources. And it's really hurting farming in general. So I think there's, you know, there's a whole lot there. They're trying to come to some agreement, but they're not close yet.
Thompson: Shane, the data center and tech companies are fighting back. Signal Ohio was first to report that they're spending 10 grand on digital ads. They've hired a whole bevy of, I guess, 50 or so lobbyists to work the statehouse to show the arguments for data centers. Will it have an effect?
Stegmiller: It already has had an effect. Going back to the property tax issue, this is another one of those issues that a lot of people are angry about. There was an issue that is still collecting signatures, but we'll see if they're able to make it to the ballot. That would have banned data centers, but you're not seeing any of the state leaders taking a strong line in the sand like, okay, yeah, we want to get rid of all data centers.
They're still trying to find that. That medium ground and, you know, there's push on all sides. That data center committee today is holding another hearing where they're going to continue discussing the matter. They're about ready to go on their summer break. I expect they'll keep meeting over that time. I'm not sure we're going to see anything in the near future on this issue other than let's just keep studying the issue and see if we can come up with something.
Thompson: But we need the data centers. The Wall Street Journal last week just said that tech companies are worried we don't have enough. We're not going to have enough, even all the ones that are being built, that you see built all around here and other parts of the country. Even then they say we still don't have enough of these basically large warehouses filled with computers to run all the processes that we use every day on our phones and in particular the AI processes that are coming.
Balmert: Yeah. Far be it for me to know how many is enough or too many or so forth. So I'm not going to venture a guess on that one, but there are a couple of committee hearings this week to potentially pass something on data centers. But what that looks like, unfortunately, this is like the end, pretty much the end of lawmaking for several months now. And there's a lot changing and being amended last minute. So I guess stay tuned. We'll see how late we're at the State House on Wednesday.
Ingles: This is an issue too that we've got to remember a lot of Ohioans are divided on it because some rural areas of Ohio still don't have the cell phone service that you're talking about to access the internet on their phones like a lot people and there's you know a lot of people still using dial up in some areas because they don't have the fiber optics so you know this affects people in a city like Columbus a little differently than it would in a rural area that's kind of far out where they don't really have a lot of the things to begin with.
Thompson: This is an opportunity for an Amy Acton or even a Sherrod Brown to make inroads in rural areas Shane, because the rural areas are very much opposed to these data centers, largely for the farmland preservation aspects, but also electric bills and water use. They could become, I don't know if they could oppose the data centers but they could become out strongly, at least for tightening up on their processes.
Stegmiller: It is an issue to capitalize on, but like Joe said, it's one of those weird issues where a kind of opposition and support kind of crosses all sorts of political boundaries, political lines, party affiliation. So if you come out strong and say, I'm going to get rid of data centers, or even I'm going to suspend construction on it, then you're making all the unions that support you mad. So how, and Shera Brown is. I mean, that's his bread and butter is the union support.
Thompson: What he has said, Jesse, is that he wants data centers to pay their fair share of electric bills. So if they need to improve the grid, put up more high-tension wires to service these data centers, not the homeowner should have to pay for that in their electric bill, but the data centers. Is that enough to satisfy the anger towards?
Balmert: I mean, certainly not for some people who would like them to be banned entirely, is certainly people don't wanna pay for these things and they don't want them in their backyard. So that solves perhaps one of the issues, but it's not entirely too different from what you're hearing from Republican Vivek Ramaswamy who's saying, yes, we want data centers in Ohio, but we want some limitations. We don't them to take advantage of Ohioans. So where is the differentiation between Democrats and Republicans on this issue?
Thompson: How powerful is this tech lobby at the State House? We know the utilities have a lot of strength at the state house, nursing home, industry has a lot strength at the states house. Do these folks have the same amount of clout to sway legislation after the election is over?
Ingles: They're newer, but I think they still have deep pockets. I mean, you look at these tech companies, the Googles, the Amazons, they have a lot of money and they can organize quickly because they have the ability to get to lawmakers' ears fast.
Stegmiller: Well, and they've already been some of the bigger ones. Google, Facebook has a big one out in New Albany. I mean, they're already here. So they've made those connections across multiple generations, multiple administrations. Generations of leaders. Generations and leaders. So they have those connections. So they already do have the voice of governors. They're the ear of governors Go ahead, Jesse.
Balmert: Yeah, I mean, if you think of powerful groups in Columbus already, like Senate for Christian Virtue probably has, I don't know, five or so lobbyists. The Ohio chamber certainly doesn't have 50. So this is a massive investment.
Thompson: And I mean, to defend the data centers, yes, they get built and you need hundreds of workers to build them and you only need maybe a couple dozen people to operate them. But the argument is they lead to other jobs. Maybe a company will locate its AI processing company next to the data center because I don't know if it's easier to be nearby. So, you could, Ohio could cut off its nose despite its face if they say no to data centers altogether. Okay, we'll go to Indiana.
Stegmiller: And that's the concern is, you just noted, there is a need for data centers. If you completely draw a line in the sand, say no, we're not gonna have any data centers in Ohio, they're gonna go somewhere else, they're going to take their money somewhere else.
Thompson: The whole Silicon Heartland, you know, are we, are we the Silicon Heart Land yet? Or we have to wait for the Intel project. We haven't talked about that in a while.
Stegmiller: One of the interesting things, too, is, you know, you're seeing the state leaders trying to take the middle line and that it's the local areas that are going, we're going to have a moratorium on them for like a year or so long. You're seeing, the local ones taking more of that, that strong stance on it.
Ingles: They definitely don't want tax breaks on these data centers. That's one thing we see from you know pretty much across the board when you talk to people. They don't want tax break. The governor has kind of pulled back on some of that a little bit but there are still some out there who you know have tax breaks and you know that's a big deal.
Thompson: Our thanks to Jesse Balmert from the USA Today Ohio Network, Joe Ingalls from Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, and Shane Stegmiller from Hanna News. Thanks very much for joining us here on the Reporter Roundtable on all sides. Thank you. Thank you.