What happens to the thousands of Haitian immigrants in Ohio and elsewhere after the Supreme Court gave the green light for immediate deportations?
The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in a case challenging the decision by former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to end temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian nationals.
Gov. Mike DeWine goes against his fellow Republicans by striking down a bill that would’ve forced mail-in voters to show photo ID.
These topics and lots more are being discussed during this week's Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- Kathryn Mobley, education and political reporter, WYSO
- Jo Ingles, senior reporter, Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau
- Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter, The Columbus Dispatch
- Susan Tebben, reporter, Ohio Capital Journal
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is the Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we catch up on the political news of last week and preview the week ahead. In a Supreme Court decision long-awaited and feared by Haitians across the country, the Trump administration got the go-ahead to immediately deport those with temporary protected status. It's an issue that hits home in Ohio, especially in central Ohio, where more than 30,000 Haitians live and work. And roughly half are here through TPS programs. Joining me now via Zoom is WYSO reporter Kathryn Mobley, who has been covering this ongoing story. Welcome back to All Sides, Kathryn.
Kathryn Mobley: Hello, Amy. Thank you very much for having me.
Juravich: So before we start our conversation, I want our listeners to hear from some Haitians in central Ohio with their reaction. Haitian officials last week held a press conference following the court's decision. The first audio I'm gonna play comes from Viles Dorceville from Springfield. He came to the U.S. From Haiti through TPS.
Viles Dorecville: I expected the Supreme Court to do a better ruling, but unfortunately, this is not the case.
Juravich: And Dorceville, he's the director of Springfield's Haitian Support Center. He also attended the Supreme Court's oral arguments whenever those happened. So does this decision, Kathryn, mean that no one with TPS status can basically, like, can they go to work today? Do you know?
Mobley: Yes, so what happened last Thursday was the US Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the authority to end TPS protection designation for the nations of Haiti and Syria. What that means is, bottom line, today, June 29th, those individuals can go to work. If they have a work permit based on their TPS status, they can go work.
How some ever by July 1st those work permits based on their TPS status will be void and also these individuals to most of them have to have a driver's license which again is linked to their work permit by July six, those driver's licenses will be void.
Juravich: Okay, so do you know, like, what will happen? Will something happen on July 2nd or July 7th, you know after those dates pass?
Mobley: The reality is, if your employer allows you to continue working, you keep going to work. If you decide to drive, you are taking a risk. And all across Ohio, and especially in our area, TPS holding immigrants have been warned to be very careful about driving on an invalid driver's license because if they are caught by the police. And arrested, they will immediately be put into a deportation holding area and more than likely be deported.
Juravich: So, yeah, drive at your own risk, that kind of thing. It pretty much is. Yeah. Do you know if anything transpired in Springfield over the weekend in terms of, I don't know, ice showing up or any forcing of deportations, or were things kind of just status quo this weekend?
Mobley: No, this weekend really people were still soaking in this ruling, which is what they absolutely hoped would not happen. But there have not been any reports of ice activity in Springfield. I also spoke with some people in Lima. There's been no activity there. I've spoken with. Some Haitian supporters in Cleveland, no ICE activity there, how some ever. They are all, they're waiting, they are anticipating, and they're afraid something will happen.
Juravich: WOSU's George Shilcock interviewed Mark Figuerre. He's with Columbus' Haitian Community Network and he spoke about the reality of this decision. Let's listen to what he had to say.
Mark Figuerre: The Supreme Court's decision means that many, many people are going to die violent, needless deaths. That's the thing that's kept me up nights for the past eight months.
Juravich: So yeah, so basically he's saying that going back to Haiti is not an option. He's saying going back there is like a suicide mission for people. Are you hearing that? That Haiti is just not stable enough for people to feel safe going back there?
Mobley: Absolutely. And actually, Amy, that was a comment from Jeff Popoli. He was the he is the lead attorney for the Miat Group. That's one of the
Juravich: Oh, you're right. I think we got our cuts mixed up, maybe. Okay, yeah, so I'm sorry. I've just been living through this a lot. Yeah, you recognized his voice. Yes, okay, continue, yes. Okay, continue. Yes.
Mobley: Thank you very much though. And I've interviewed him several times. He's the lead. There are several lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's efforts to end TPS for Haiti. Jeff Rapoli is the lead attorney for one of those lawsuits. And he actually argued before the high justices a couple of weeks ago regarding why the Trump Administration should not end T PS for Haiti and one of the points they made is that the conditions in the nation are still very unstable and very unsafe.
Now, the Department of Homeland Security maintains conditions in Haiti have improved enough for Haitian residents to safely return home. However, our own State Department maintains a level four travel advisory warning Americans to absolutely avoid this country due to widespread gang violence, kidnapping, civil unrest, and poor healthcare infrastructure. In fact, there's even a warning and an American does choose to travel to Haiti, they need to make sure they have money for ransom and they need figure out their own exit plan because the United States will not help them escape out of Haiti.
There are also other accounts. I interviewed and I spoke with Carl Ruby. He is head of the Central Christian Church in Springfield and he commented last week, He was talking with a 12 year old boy. Who had recently come to the United States from Haiti, and they were talking about farm animals, and the little boy described seeing these huge pigs, and he was very upset just sharing this description. Carl asked him why he was upset. The little boy replied, the huge pigs were eating bodies, dead bodies of individuals, Haitians, in the streets of Port-au-Prince. That particular incident had happened in Port-Au-Prance.
So Haitian children have observed these very, very ghastly situations, incidents. And there was another incident in Carl's church where one of his Haitian members described the decapitated body of a friend was left on the front porch of his house in Haiti when he was there. And that was one of the reasons why he wanted to escape. So it's very, it's a very. Interesting, the one department under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security maintains Haiti is safe, while the State Department maintains Haiti is not safe. And that was not safe, excuse me. And, that was one of the main points Jeff Rapoli and his team made before the justices to explain why TPS needed to be extended.
And there's actually a process, if I can. There's a process that the Department of Homeland Security has to go through before it is decided a nation can remove, the TPS designation can be removed from a nation. There has to be a review. The Department of Homelands Security has to check for safety conditions in that particular country. They have to physically go there and make sure. There's a stable government, there is a thriving economy, there is strong healthcare system, there's an education system, it's all in place and everything's working well.
There needs to also then be an official notice about at least 60 days before the TPS designation will end, any residents, any immigrants in the United States who are from that nation who have TPS have to be then given this notice That's that. The the tps designation is going to be removed from their home nation and that's how they originally got into the united states thirdly there has to be a wind down period and that again is giving um about 60 about two months roughly for current tps workers to get all their affairs in the united state in order and then figure out if they're going to go back to their home nation if they're going to go to another nation. Give them time to get visas and things like that for themselves, for other family members, for children. And if they have any US property to decide what they're going to do with that. And then finally, the TPS designation actually expires.
Juravich: We are talking about the recent Supreme Court ruling that ended TPS status for people in the U.S. From Haiti and Syria. We're talking with WISO reporter Catherine Mobley, who is from Yellow Springs, which is near Springfield, where a large community of Haitians live. And let's go back and try again with the cut with Marc Figuerre. He's with Columbus's Haitian Community Network. Let's listen.
Marc Figuerre: Going back home to Haiti is not an option, it's really the very last option people are looking at. To some people, it is a sad mission going back there, because a lot of people sold and left everything they had, they have no home to go back to.
Juravich: So yeah, you mentioned that, that they have no home to go back to. They don't have any connection to Haiti anymore, especially if they've been here for a long time. Have you heard from people that they're considering maybe going to Europe or Canada elsewhere than the United States?
Mobley: Right now, a lot of people are trying to figure out what to do. They haven't even gotten that far yet. Let me tell you, Amy, and I want your audience to understand, there is this misnomer in our general society, American society, that immigrants want to come to the United States because they hate their home country. They don't want to go back to their home county. Most of the Haitian immigrants who are here on TPS, who I've spoken to. They want to go back to Haiti. They love Haiti. They adore Haiti. They still have family members there. They have friends there. But the conditions are so dangerous. They're not able to have a job. They're able to maintain employment. It's absolutely not safe.
And here's another thing that I'm sure Mark would have spoken to. For Pretty much every Haitian immigrant I've spoken with who's here on TPS or even who's here on a work visa or a student visa, they've all said, if they leave the United States and go back to Haiti, they become a target. There's one main airport, it's in the city of Port-au-Prince. You come through that airport and there are gang members who are watching and they spot. Who or quickly within a week's time, they identify who returned from the United States or who returned form Europe.
And those individuals become targets for kidnapping because the belief is, if you were able to stay in the United states, then you must be rich. You must have a lot of money. And nine times out of 10 when, and this is not just for Haitian immigrants, it's for any immigrants. When they're in the Unites States, they're working, they're going to school. Thank you so much for joining us. They do send money back home to their families in their home nations because they are able to earn more here in the United States. So those things are monitored, even though they're sending the money through Western Union. Back in their own nation, there are nefarious individuals who are monitoring that.
And so these individuals leave the United states and they go back home, even if they're just going back home for a visit, they could be naturalized US citizens. They're going back for a home visit and they are at risk, at least in Haiti, they are risk of being kidnapped. And it's believed their families will be able to pay this ransom because they lived in the United States. They have all this.
Juravich: Therefore they have money. Yeah And you laid out that three-step process that it's supposed to be whenever and that The administration is supposed to you know declare that the nation's safe to go back to they're supposed to stop the TPS status Give the 60-day grace period. Is there any indication that the Trump administration will do that? Like maybe they do have 60 days from right now as opposed to it all seeming like it changes on July 2nd.
Mobley: The Trump administration has not made any indication they're going to walk that back. Pretty much that bridge has been crossed because that was a review, that was an investigation that should have been made months ago, even last year, before the Trump administration was pushing so hard to end the TPS designation for Haiti.
Juravich: We also have, we have another piece of sound from you from Jeff Pipoli, one of the attorneys who argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He expressed surprise that the court did not take into account statements made by the Trump administration that were racially discriminatory.
Jeff Pipoli: Like that they're eating people's dogs and cats and that they quote all have AIDS and that they are quote undesirables from the whole country. None of that has anything to do with racial discrimination according to the Supreme Court.
Juravich: So, I mean, when you hear something like that, I mean, do people from Haiti still, you know, remember, I'm sure they still remember all of these things that have been said about them? I, I, just, I guess I'm asking how they're feeling whenever like the Supreme Court didn't take any of that into consideration.
Mobley: Disrespected, and not understanding why they would be so disrespected. You know, it was in January of 2018 when President Donald Trump then actually made these comments when he was campaigning in Pennsylvania, and it wasn't just Haiti, he targeted the nation of Haiti, El Salvador, and several African nations. And it was during a time when lawmakers were trying to work out a bipartisan immigration deal. And during a meeting, President Trump said, why are we having all these people from, I hope I can say this, these whole countries come here.
Juravich: Let's not say that, but okay, continue. Yeah, and he got out.
Mobley: And instead Trump suggested the United States should instead bring in more people from Norway from Denmark, he had recently had a meeting with the head of Denmark and even from Asia. So it, you know, that came out, the White House denied it, saying, defended Trump, saying that Trump was only focused on doing whatever is in the best interest of the United States. But then. He changed his tune in December 2025 during a rally, actually.
So the first account was when he was in office in the White House. But during a Raleigh, when he was campaigning in in Pennsylvania, President Donald Trump admitted he had made those racial slurs and he even bragged about it. And again, there was nothing done, not by Congress, not by the Senate, everyone just sort of shrugged their shoulders and kept on going.
So fortunately, most immigrants, they don't take a lot, they take it to heart, but they don t take it too hard. And they are really focused on their families, on being good workers, the Haitian community, they have an extremely strong work ethic. They very much want solid educations. They care about their children just like any other American citizen. So that's what they focus on. They tend to filter out the negative comments.
Juravich: Well, obviously, this story is not ending here, and we'll have to just wait and see what happens in a couple of weeks. So I hope to have you back with an update on this in a few weeks' time. We'll see what things are happening and what's going on. We've been talking with WISO reporter Catherine Mobley, who's been covering the Haitian community in Springfield. Thank you for your time today.
Mobley: You're welcome, Amy.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to start our regular reporter roundtable with some words from Governor Mike DeWine about what he thinks of the Supreme Court ruling and the actions by the Trump administration related to Haitians in Ohio. That's when 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 joining us now is our Reporter Round Table. Jo Ingles, senior reporter with the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Welcome back, Joe. Great to be here. Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter with "The Columbus Dispatch." Welcome back Laura. Good morning. And Susan Tebben, reporter with Ohio Capital Journal. Welcome back Susan. Thanks. We just heard from WISO reporter Kathryn Mobley about reaction in Springfield to the Supreme Court ruling. And now we're going to hear from Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. He was on CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper over the weekend and said the court's decision to end TPS is a mistake for several reasons.
Gov. Mike DeWine: You cannot fly into Port-au-Prince today. U.S. Carriers are prohibited from going in there. They've extended that ban. Federal officials in the United States have extended that band into September now, and it's been there for a long time. The reason they can't go in there is because these gang leaders who control a good part of Haiti today shoot at the planes when they come in. So that's certainly one thing you've pointed out, you know, advisories, heavy advisories. U.S. Citizens do not go into Haiti. It's a very, very dangerous place. Just this last week, several more school children were killed just because gangs were shooting back and forth.
Juravich: So, um, for our report around table, just to start off, do we, do we know if there's anything from a legal standpoint that Governor DeWine can do to keep the Haitians living and working in Ohio? Does he have any control over this? I don't think so. You know, he said he.
Bischoff: Disagrees with the policy, the public policy, but he respects the legal decision. You know, Governor DeWine has visited Haiti more than 20 times. He has an orphanage named after his late daughter, Becky DeWine. I would say he's probably more knowledgeable about Haiti and its challenges than almost any elected leader in America today.
Juravich: What about members of Congress? Can Ohio's congressional delegation push back on this at all, Jo? Do you know, or Susan?
Jo Ingles: I guess they can. I don't know if they will. I mean, I really, I haven't been covering where the congressional people stand on this at this point. If they push back on this, they'd be pushing against Trump and we have seen that they haven't been very likely to push against Trump on a lot of stuff, so.
Susan Tebben: And I know that Governor DeWine in that interview said that the Republican certainly, he was specifying the Republican congressional, they did what they could, which was to vote not in favor of undoing the TPS. And so they were sort of speaking in that way, but I'm not sure what else they could do other than, you know, speak their voice in Congress.
Juravich: Yeah, Kathryn Mobley was saying that they're supposed to be like a 60 day waiting period where they the they're warned their TPS status is ending. So they have time to like organize things. So, I guess she was saying that maybe they could actually do the 60 days, but I guess we're just in a waiting period We don't know right Susan.
Tebben: I mean, we'll see if if that's you know I we don't at this point what the federal government is planning to do if they're planning to you know Try to figure out how to shove them all off or deport them somewhere else or or what they're gonna do So it's you. Know we have all these rules laid out in the method in place, but we'll if that actually is adhered to
Juravich: Yeah, and I mean, I don't know, you know, Laura, do we expect ICE to suddenly show up in Springfield at some point in the near future? No idea.
Bischoff: Everyone is kind of on pins and needles about that. It could happen. Maybe they'll delay it until after the election because they don't want the optics of it. But it could materialize overnight, really.
Juravich: Really? Yeah. All right. We're going to have to leave it there because we don't know what's going to happen, but we will continue to cover this. You're listening to the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. And joining us this week, we have Laura Bischoff from "The Columbus Dispatch," Susan Tebin from the Ohio Capitol Journal, and Joe Ingalls of the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Joe, Governor DeWine made some voting rights folks very happy because he vetoed a bill that would have required mail-in voters to provide photo ID. Um, what reason to governor wine give for vetoing? I mean, he basically went against his own party on this.
Ingles: Yeah, basically he said, it's fine the way it is. He said that we have a good system, that it doesn't have fraud in it. You know, there's this narrative out there that there's so much fraud in mail-in ballots, and he said that's not the case. He said a lot of the things that were in place could actually work to disenfranchise voters. Which is a claim that also the opponents of that law were making, or Bill were making. And so he said basically the burden is not worth the sacrifices, it's just not worth it. What was the terminology used? Something about the burden is not it worth it or something.
Juravich: Well, what has Laura, what is reaction been like doing? Is there any real consequences for Dwyane at this stage of the game and his political game? Does it matter that he vetoed a bill that all the Republicans voted for?
Bischoff: I mean the Republicans can come back at any time during the two-year legislative session to override a veto. So they could, I don't see them coming back for a special reason for that, but they could do it in lame duck and override it then. And you know at that point Mike DeWine only has a matter of weeks left as governor. So yeah at this point he's, I think he's selectively vetoing the things that he minds. The most. You know, he disagrees with on the most. But, you know the longer, the closer he comes to the end of his term, the less his power is.
Ingles: And just to jump in here, what he said was, quote, all burden for so little benefit. That's what Governor DeWine said.
Tebben: Go ahead. I was just going to say the fact that we have a Senate president who is the running mate of Vivek Ramaswamy for governor means there could be some incentive, again, I'm just speculating, for him to bring it up because that is a high talking point for all of the elections this November. So, you know, as Laura said, we could see it come up at any time.
Juravich: Joe, your colleague, Sarah Donaldson, interviewed Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elected Officials, and Ackermann sent a letter to DeWine thanking him for the veto and citing his concerns with the bill. This is what he had to say about the veto.
Viles Doreceville: I expected the Supreme Court to do a better... No, that's not the right child. This is not the case.
Juravich: That is not Aaron. That's related to Haiti. Do we have Aaron Ockerman's cut? Okay well we'll just move on. Basically he says, I can quote him, certainly it gives us and it gives his organization, Aaron's organization, time to go through things with a fine-tooth comb and come back to the legislature with some recommendations. So do you know what Ockermann would like to see?
Ingles: Well, we should say that this bill was put together pretty hastily. There was a bill that had pretty widespread support in the legislature that would provide free IDs to people who are unhoused or people who, you know, needed an ID for voting purposes. And that bill in the last couple of weeks of the legislature before they went off summer break. That bill was added to with all of these mail-in provisions. Okay, and so there was the criticism that they hadn't really had the time to talk about all the details of this.
Aaron Ockerman said, you know, there are a lot of fine-tooth kind of things that voting officials have to deal with, and this makes big changes before an election. And there wasn't the money necessarily there to deal with these changes either. And it was just kind of hastily put together. So he's saying, you know, let's come back. If you wanted to make changes to mail-in voting, let's look at it through the lens of what do we need to do? How much is it gonna cost? How does it get implemented without, you know disenfranchising voters? Anyone wanna add anything else about voting, mail-on voting?
Bischoff: Mail-in voting. You know what I just think is interesting is that a lot of these changes that the legislature has been making on voting rules like limiting drop boxes or eliminating the grace period for late arriving mail- in ballots and shortening the number of early voting days, all of this affects both Republican and Democratic voters. So I don't know what I don't know what the goal is, I mean the stated goal is that it's supposed to curb voter fraud but voter fraud is so statistically insignificant. Now it is it is significant when it's you know one or two votes that decide a race but in general it's they've just haven't been able to prove that there is any kind of widespread fraud whatsoever.
Ingles: And I wanna mention that the president has been hammering this mail-in voting opposition pretty hard. So I think for a lot of these Republicans that they're hearing that from him and they're saying, okay, we need to do something about it. In the absence of that, would this be a big talking point? Who knows?
Tebben: And it's going to be interesting because literally, as we were walking in here, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case about mail-in ballots in the grace period that you're allowed to have. Yeah. So it's gonna be interesting to see as we're talking about all this election law. Now we have this decision. Is this gonna change anything? Because oh hi.
Juravich: Got rid of its grace period, but what the Supreme Court was saying that the grace period's okay.
Tebben: The Mississippi case, they're saying that there was a push by the Trump administration to invalidate the state law that gave a grace period, and they're saying they have to. Yeah, the headline.
Juravich: Yeah, the headline from AP basically says the Supreme Court rules states can count late arriving mail ballots rejecting a challenge led by the Trump administration. So we'll see, I guess, if Ohio's law is allowed to be around. I don't know. Okay. Well, never a dull moment here on the Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. Another bill that the governor vetoed last week was related to sub metering. And I don'- who wants to raise their hand and explain sub metered because I need someone to explain it. Um, yeah, I can give you.
Tebben: I can give you a basic, just because my colleague- Thank you, Susan. Thank my colleague, Nick Evans, because he's the one that covers this. But I know that it has to do with the rates that electric companies give to people that meter for like, say, apartment buildings and stuff. So like, it's the middleman between the power company and the landlords that- Yeah, where your electricity is. So when there's a lot of meters, that's why it's called sub-meter. So it's contracts for that in-between process. And that's as far as I'm willing to go with it.
Juravich: Yeah, so who wants to explain the governor's veto though? He vetoed a bill related to submetering. No? I can't.
Bischoff: That was been covered by Jesse Balmert, my colleague, and I would recommend if you're super interested in some reading, go look up Nick Evans' stories or Jesse Balmart's.
Ingles: Well, Sarah Donaldson covered it for us, so. Okay, so no one in this room.
Juravich: Covered it. Is it unusual that the governor would veto a bill? It would establish rules on how and when to police agencies, right?
Bischoff: Well, the Ohio Supreme Court had a ruling, I think in April, maybe, on submetering, and they said that the submeting companies can be regulated like a utility by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. That was not a very popular decision among the submeter groups. So they're fighting back on that, and I think this bill is a result of it. It had been pending for a while, and it moved pretty quickly. In June when they had. The last couple of sessions before they went on summer break, and I think that the governor just views it as a bad deal for consumers.
Juravich: All right, well, so that was another veto. There are some bills that he signed though. Governor DeWine's website noted that there was one about academic intervention services, changes to oil and gas wells, a process to regulate carbon capture storage. I don't follow every single bill moving through the legislature and neither do you. And so it's, I don t know which of these signed bills you want to talk about, but is there any one in particular that he signed within the past week or so that you feel is significant that maybe we should mention here.
Bischoff: I was on vacation during the signing frenzy, so I'm a little in the dark.
Tebben: Well, honestly, the voting, the one that we were talking about that he did veto was kind of a surprise that he vetoed because there was discussion back and forth a while back where he was saying he was done with discussing that issue and then we saw it come up again and so he had to talk about it again. So that was kind of the surprise that I saw was just him having to talk about this issue again and veto it.
Ingles: There was a bill that was passed and signed, I think it was signed. Did he sign it yet or not? Anyway, I think there's a bill that has to deal with drones, and I know it passed out of the legislature, I believe it was sign, but it has to do with how drones can be used by government agencies. And it has transparency in it, so that you can get public records on where the drone's been used and all that.
And ironically, this is why it kind of sticks in the back of my head, when I think of groups fighting for transparency, probably the ACLU is probably at the top of that list, because they're always fighting for transparency on something. But on this one, they're saying that could actually work against ordinary citizens, because people could get that information and kind of use it against their private, you know, a person's privacy. And so there were some, you know, kind of First Amendment privacy concerns that went with that one, but it it did pass the legislature and I don't know, did the governor...
Bischoff: I think it's still pending, yeah, and I understand that a number of bills have yet to actually be delivered to the governor.
Ingles: Yeah, there there's a whole slew of things that went over there, and I'm not sure when they all
Juravich: There's like a, there's a dance to play of when you, because when it's delivered officially, then he has a certain number of days to sign it. But if it, if it's just in a holding pattern and not delivered, there is a longer period of time. Right.
Bischoff: Right, it's a 10-day clock to either sign it, veto it, or do what's called a pocket veto where he lets it go into law without a signature.
Juravich: Okay, so that's kind of like he doesn't have a strong opinion either way, so he lets it go.
Bischoff: Yeah, pocket vetoes are very, very rare.
Ingles: It's usually when they, you know, when they don't wanna have their prints on it, you now, but they feel like, okay, everyone else spoke on it. I'm the lone soldier here, so I'm going to stand off of it. Usually that's when a governor uses a pocket, you don't, but.
Juravich: Well, yeah, so, and Laura, you were saying you were on vacation when the signing frenzy happened. I was on vacation whenever all of these bills were passed. There was like this late night session where it was just like, bill, bill bill bill, and I am still catching up as well, so.
Bischoff: We are too Amy. Maybe we should just talk about our vacations.
Juravich: I would love that. I don't know what the listeners want to hear, but you can send me an email, let me know. So coming up, we're going to talk about election news as it relates to jobs Ohio and the Reporter Roundtable continues in just a moment from all sides on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to all sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Jurevich. And still with us today, Susan Tebin, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter for "The Columbus Dispatch," and Joe Engel, senior reporter at the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Laura, you recently wrote about Jobs Ohio and a conflict of interest allegation made against its board chairman, Josh Rubin. This was, this conflict of interests allegation was made by a candidate who's running for attorney general and it involves. A $100 million fund set up to help Ohio utilities build nuclear power plants. Can you catch us up here? The candidate is John Kulowitz. What is he alleging? Well, he thinks...
Bischoff: There's a conflict of interest matter involving Josh Rubin, the chairman of the Jobs Ohio board who runs CJR Group. It's a lobbying company that represents AEP. And, you know, Rubin participated in the discussions of setting up this big fund and as well as the unanimous vote on the board To establish it the hundred million dollars was set up I think in August of last year and it's designed to provide grants and low income, low interest loans for utilities and other companies that want to do job training in the nuclear industry and then also work on setting up what they're called SMRs, small modular reactors.
These are like mini nuclear plants that can help power data centers or other big, huge users. They haven't been built outside of China and Russia, I think. There might be one under construction in Canada, but the industry believes that there's a future in this, and they're quite expensive. So anyway, they set up this $100 million fund to try to help companies that might want to do this SMR development, as well as some natural infrastructure work. None of the money has been dispersed yet by Jobs Ohio. And AEP in Jobs, Ohio says this isn't specifically set up for AEP. So there is no conflict. They wholeheartedly disagree with John Kulowitz's allegations.
Juravich: So if he, I mean, he's not attorney general yet, he's running for attorney general. So if, you know, makes this claim, where does it go?
Bischoff: It goes to the Ohio Inspector General, Randy Meyer, who he has like some very limited investigative authority over Jobs Ohio employees. So then the question as well is Josh Rubin a Jobs Ohio employee? He's, you know, he's the chairman of the board, it's he's not the, that seems a little loose. Yeah. Yeah. So you know we'll see where it goes. Coolwitz also filed a complaint with Randy Meyer, the inspector general, about JobsOhio's use of public money for the podcast that led to the...
Juravich: The resignation of Ted Carter. All right, well, Joe, I mean, Jobs Ohio has been in and out of the news lately over its use of public money. It's a, it's basically a private organization, so it doesn't have to disclose everything, but Jobs Ohio says it offers a lot of disclosures on its website, so it depends on who you ask, I guess.
Ingles: You know, it was set up as a private, non-for-profit job creation company. I wrote that about a million times in stories so I can remember that. But, you know, even when it was setup, one of the big concerns was that there wasn't enough transparency in it. And there is, you now, there is some transparency in it, but you really have to be, you have to kind of know sometimes what you're looking for to find it, you, know? And a lot of times, we could look at something and not see it, you know?
So anyway, I think there's definitely a move among some of the lawmakers. They wanna put more transparency into Jobs Ohio. But of course, the other side would say, well, if you put transparency in it, you're kinda giving away our trade secrets. I don't know if they use that word, but kinda giving it away so that we can't be competitive with other states. And we used to have the Department of Development doing all the job creation before Jobs Ohio. So, and a lot of that was more transparent and that's the reason they went to Jobs Ohio, but it does seem like there's some issues now that are making people think, hmm, maybe we do need more transparency. So we'll see where that goes.
Bischoff: I mean, Jobs Ohio has been around for 15 years and they're up to, they have 214 employees and $1.44 billion in assets. That's according to its latest IRS 990 form, which that's one of the only public documents that they're required to file and that lags in reporting time. So it's like, it looks back maybe 18 months prior.
And I will say that in addition to this $100 million fund being set up, currently utilities aren't allowed to own generation transmission and distribution. Ohio deregulated its electricity market back in like 1998 or 1999. And so they had to spin off the generation into separate companies. So there is a bill pending in the in the Ohio house that would allow utilities to own these SMR generations and it would be a a big shift after 30 years of deregulation and separating out generation as its own segment, it would flip it back so that...
Juravich: That the utilities could do so. All right, well, I guess we'll just have to keep updated. Did, Susan, did lawmakers try to, like, I feel like there was some legislation related to Jobs Ohio, but it just probably went nowhere, I think, do you? I'm not sure. Or it was at least, I feel I remember that. It was like at least discussed, having, you know, it's like someone probably proposed a bill at some point, but it did, maybe it didn't even get a committee hearing to make Jobs Ohio more transparent.
Tebben: I think I remember that but you have John Houston was a big proponent of Jobs Ohio so you have you know a lot of support there and things like that before he was the senator so I mean it may have been discussed but I don't know it didn't go anywhere yeah
Juravich: All right, I wanted to pivot to the death penalty. I wanted talk about the death sentence that Governor DeWine quietly commuted a few weeks ago and then didn't mention when he was asked about what would happen to the more than 100 people on death row. So this was first reported by Doug Livingston of the Marshall Project in Cleveland. He wrote about Gregory Lott, who is a man with intellectual disabilities receiving a commutation after decades. Have we found out any more about this case? Spoke about he he has not really spoken anymore about commuting sentences but he also didn't mention this one that he had commuted at the time joe you're shaking your head do we know any more about this i don't know greg love
Bischoff: is 64 years old and he's he's been he was convicted of the death of an 82 year old East Cleveland man back in 1986 and you know in the time that he's been on death row there's been a lot of changes in terms of how the death penalty can be applied to people with intellectual disabilities and also to degree mental illness at the time of the crime. Um, and so. I think Lot ended up falling kind of like on the edge of what was considered intellectually disabled. And so this was a decision by the governor's office, the governor, not his office, but actually the governor to commute his sentence to life without parole.
Tebben: And it's like, throughout this man's conviction, it's been like 40 years. So there's been so much discussion back and forth and back and forth about the death penalty. And obviously we've seen a lot of sentences or death penalty, the actions of death penalties being moved back and the governor delaying things because of, you know, the chemical makeups have been under controversy and all that stuff. So it's a been a lot of a roller coaster while he's been doing this to come to this sort of end.
Juravich: And as far as I know, Governor DeWine still has not spoken any more about whether he'll commute any sentences before he leaves office, right? We haven't heard anything else about that.
Bischoff: You know, that's something that I think Dick Celeste did when he was on his way out the door, if I'm not mistaken, was to commute a bunch of sentences to Life Without Parole. And it was very controversial, and I think that that led to a change in state law that requires the parole board to make a recommendation to the governor before the governor can commute sentences. So, unless it's gone through the parole board, that can't happen.
Juravich: Well, our listeners can note where you're devoting an hour to the topic of the death penalty and the move to abolish it in Ohio on Wednesday at 10 o'clock. So you can listen to that on all sides here on 89.7 NPR News. You are listening right now to the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. We are talking with Joe Ingalls of the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, Laura Bischoff from "The Columbus Dispatch" and Susan Tebbin from the Ohio Capital Journal Joe, I wanted to talk about Senate Bill 1, the controversial law that reshaped higher education and the sponsor, Jerry Serino, held a press event and he made comments. He was celebrating the one-year anniversary of Senate Bill one taking effect. What did he have to say? And I know that there were other people, I got a bunch of press releases in my inbox telling me that they were disputing what Jerry Serinos said. Ha ha ha!
Ingles: This is a beauty is in the eye of the beholder kind of story. Jerry Serino, the senator, he was behind Senate Bill 1. And so he came back at June 27th is the one year anniversary of the implementation. So he came back last week and he went through a lot of testimony that was given during the hearings on Senate Bill One. And people were saying that Ohio's colleges are going to lose enrollment, they're going to loose prestige, they're gonna loose faculty, they're goin' to, you know, there's gonna be all these problems. And he started reading off individual things that were said by individuals, and it took a while, right? A real long laundry list.
But the bottom line was, he said, the enrollment at the state's universities is up a little bit. He says we haven't seen a lot of, you know these. University professors leaving. There have been some, there has been some realignment a little bit with the programs that are offered, some of the majors, but he's saying that those have been kind of offset too with these centers that have been created. There's like centers at a few major universities. That have been created for civil discourse or whatever, and it's more of a conservative kind of thing. And he says that those have been largely offset. And so he said, Senate Bill 1 is working and it was a good thing.
Then of course, Jennifer Tisone Price, who is with the American Association of University Professionals here in Ohio. She said, oh no, that's a bunch of bunk. She said that basically the enrollment is up slightly, but statistically it's insignificant. She said and it is up, it tends to be up nationwide and there's a lot of reasons for that. Some of them has to do with the economy. It also has to with population change. There's a whole bunch of stuff. She said well, you can't really say that that's the truth. She's saying that there are students who are dissuaded. By not being able to go into the major that they wanted to go in to, or take the classes they wanted to take at the universities, and that they are going elsewhere.
She said she went to a conference recently where a lot of professors were from Michigan were talking, and not university of, a different university in Michigan. She was very clear about that. But she said that, she said the professors up there were talking about people from Ohio, professors from Ohio going up there. And kind of, you know, trying to get away from some of the things that are happening here. So bottom line is it's really too early to tell. I mean, you're gonna have to look at this over time. But I think Serino also wanted to make the case for doing some expansion of those centers. He really wants to make those into individual independent schools that would retain the money that comes in. And it would go to the school. So Ohio State here, they have the The Chase Center.
Juravich: So it wouldn't be under Ohio State jurisdiction. It would be under its own, right?
Ingles: Right, and then the school would be able to, the dean of the school, would be able to hire the professors and determine the course of the curriculum and determine all the different things, and then, the students who go to that school, all the money would go back to them. So it's, there's a whole lot in this bill that he's proposing, so he kinda used it for that.
Juravich: Well, we'll have to see if that goes anywhere, but right now we are out of time. I want to say thank you to Joe Ingalls, senior reporter for the Ohio Public Radio-State House News Bureau. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for having me. Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter at "The Columbus Dispatch." Thanks, Laura. You're welcome. And Susan Tebben, reporter at The Ohio Capitol Journal. Thanks, Susan. Happy to be here. And this has been the Reporter Roundtable from all sides on 89.7 NPR News.