Today is the deadline to replace a candidate on November's ballot. But, Ohio Congressman Max Miller, under intense pressure to resign, remains defiant. He says he's not dropping out despite allegations of abuse from his ex-wife.
Congress launched an ethics investigation in the case, at Miller's request, while Ohio's other Republican senator, Jon Husted joined the chorus for Miller to go. It looks like voters may have the final say.
Residents in one Pickaway County city take their case against data centers to the Ohio Supreme Court and win.
Meanwhile, how are candidates navigating the thorny issue on the campaign trail: green-light all, press pause, or outright bans?
In a new opinion piece, Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy pledges free electricity and lower property taxes as part of his data center policy plan.
We're discussing all of it on this week's Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- Karen Kasler, bureau chief, Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau
- Marty Schladen, reporter, Ohio Capital Journal
- Noah Blundo, executive editor, Hannah News Service
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. And this is the All Sides Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we catch up on the political news of last week and preview the week ahead. I'm your host, Amy Juravich, joining me on the round table this week, we have Karen Kasler, Bureau Chief for the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau. Welcome back, Karen. Hey.
Karen Kasler: Hey, glad to be here, can't even talk, it's Monday.
Juravich: Yes, very it's very Monday, especially with the rain Marty Schladen reporter for the Ohio Capitol Journal. Welcome back Marty.
Marty Schladen: Good morning, Amy.
Juravich: And Noah Blundo, executive editor for Hanna News Service. Welcome back, Noah. Good morning. So today is the deadline to replace a candidate on November's ballot. But Northeast Ohio Congressman Max Miller, under intense pressure to resign, has remained defiant. He says he's not going anywhere, and he said he plans to stay in Congress and run for re-election in November. In an interview recently with CNN's Jake Tapper last week, here is Miller explaining why he is not dropping out.
Max Miller: In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after, and people in the media very much like yourself and others said that he would have no shot at winning, that he should not be the president of the United States. But guess what? He stayed in and he was resilient. And what the American people can see is that they can see that somebody is fighting who is resilient, and that is a quality that the American People cherish. And so for no second... Am I going to sit here and continue to be debased by false and baseless allegations and be pushed out of a seat I have worked so hard to represent and done a terrific job for our community?
Juravich: This is a messy issue to be sure. A contentious divorce, a custody battle, disturbing allegations. In court filings, Emily Moreno, Miller's ex-wife and the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno accuses Miller of physically abusing her and possibly their two-year-old daughter. Max Miller has alleged she has mental health issues and is a liar. So let's focus on what we can discuss because we don't know the ins and outs of this case. Lawyers are all over this divorce case, but the politics, the optics. How could this play out in November? Marty, can we start with you? What do you make of Miller's comments that we just heard from that CNN interview?
Schladen: Well, it sounds to me like he's on an island by himself. And his comments sounded to me like they were tailored to the audience of one, that he wants Donald, he's appealing to Donald Trump to support him in his hour of need. But whether any of this flies, I don't know. And some of the others may know how competitive that district is, but I got to think that this is not how you want to be heading into election season.
Juravich: Yeah, Karen, my understanding is this district has been heavily Republican, but some polling might have shown that Poindexter the opponent was gaining some ground here with everything that's been happening with Max Miller.
Kasler: I think it's been moved from strongly Republican to leaning Republican, so it's still in that red category there. And I think, it's really unclear when the actual deadline for Miller to decide if he's going to withdraw is, because I've heard everything from sometime last week to today at four o'clock and yesterday. So, but it's obvious that he is not considering it, at least when you hear some of his comments, that interview he did on CNN with Jake Tapper, which spanned almost a half an hour I believe, it was pretty clear in that interview that he believes that he is the right person for this race and that he's appealing directly to Donald Trump to back him up.
Juravich: Yeah, I said in the introduction that it looks like voters will decide in this race, Noah, but it seemed like, you know, the board of elections, they had to be notified by Friday if he was leaving the race and a new candidate had to picked by today, but maybe that's not correct. Like, did you read the rules? I know I didn't.
Noah Blundo: My understanding, and I wouldn't defer to any elections attorneys, but my understanding is today was the deadline to replace him, but the local Republicans who would have to select his replacement on the balance would have been required to give 48 hours notice of the meeting at which they would have done that. And so as a practical matter, when the boards of elections closed for the afternoon evening on Friday, that was sort of the end of that discussion. I guess, could've. I don't know how often they can get called in on a Saturday to accept official notice of something, but I think that ship has sailed and he is on the ballot. Okay.
Juravich: And Marty, how big of a gamble is Miller taking here? Is he hoping voters forget about all of this by November?
Schladen: I can't see in his mind through all of this. I know that if I were in his shoes, I'd want to stop having all this play out publicly. But I got to think that his fellow Republicans don't like it because this is dominating news cycles and it's just another tale of a politician allegedly doing pretty horrible things. And I also really do. Feel for the Moreno family about this. I mean, you know, Bernie Moreno, what's, he's almost in an impossible position here.
Juravich: Yeah, so what's also extraordinary is hearing U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno, who is talking to a group of reporters about the U. S. Congressman, who happens to be his former son-in-law. Let's listen to a little bit of that.
Sen. Bernie Moreno: My daughter lives in constant fear of this man, not like something that's existential, but deeply in her heart, she fears what this guy is capable of. You can't fathom what that makes me feel like when the dad's number one job is to protect your kids. And to have this whole thing out in the public like this is not what I wanted to do, it's not what my daughter wanted to.
Juravich: Yeah. So Karen, what he's saying there about the public thing is like a lot of people were saying that Moreno stayed silent on this issue for too long, but I think he was saying that he did that because his daughter wanted it behind the scenes, right?
Kasler: Yeah, this is just, it's so ugly in general. I mean, you're talking about a bitter divorce, a custody battle, these things get ugly quite often anyway. And then when you add in the extra element of these are, there are two members of Congress involved in terms of Max Miller and Bernie Marino, and there's a campaign coming up to for Max Miller to be reelected. I mean it's just all these elements just really have combined to make a really terrible story that of course has gotten. Not only statewide, but national attention. And I think what's really interesting here is the way that it's taken off because these allegations are not new. I mean, some of them are, but there was allegations, there were allegations going back to when Max Miller had a relationship with Stephanie Grisham who was in the first Trump administration. And she wrote in her book that he was abusive to her. So there were these allegations before and allegations before involving him and Emily Marino. But Mother Jones. Which a lot of people have never even heard of when they went out and looked into some of these records and found out about some of the details. That's what really started the story moving into the public eye. And then when Bernie Marino came out, he made a statement and then he came out and did that interview there, that gaggle with a bunch of reporters and made it very clear what was going on. That just really sent this story very, very wide.
Juravich: Yeah, the Mother Jen's reporter, Abby Vasalas, is a former WOSU intern, so, you know, yeah, she's gone on to report some big stories there. Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Well, just something I think that ...
Schladen: Attitude as well is Bernie was keeping quiet about this because it involved his family. But then there was that hearing that Anthony Fauci was at and Bernie started really going after Fauci and dropping F bombs. And then the question came up, oh, this worked up about Anthony Fauce. What about your daughter and her alleged abuser, you know, just right across the Capitol? So that's how this shaped up. I don't think that, you know, that was anything that Bernie intended, but that's just how it is.
Juravich: The headline kind of turned on him quickly. Everyone was talking about him saying the F word at a Senate hearing, which, you know, you know, decades ago would have been very unheard of. And he made a lot of headlines and news for that. And then all of a sudden it turned. And now it's all about his son-in-law, right? Right. Noah, what do you make of last week? Senator John Husted joined the chorus of Republicans and Democrats calling for military resign. Earlier, Husted had declined to comment on all of this. What do you here.
Blundo: Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is just it's reached a fever pitch. It's been so in the news that it's harder to, I mean elected officials will often go to great lengths to avoid talking about something that they don't want to talk about. That's not unique to John Husted or anyone else, but this has become, so it's gotten so much attention and it's bad news for the Republican party and underperformance by Republicans or overperformance by Democrats in. The Northeast Ohio district where Max Miller is on the ballot could have an effect on Houston's re-election. He's in a pretty tight race with Sherrod Brown who's trying to come back and regain the seat that he lost to Bernie Moreno just a couple of years ago.
Juravich: Yeah, before we move on from this, can anyone tell me a little bit more about Miller's opponent in November, Brian Poindexter? And has he spoken a lot about this? Or is he trying to just let it all play out, you know, with him on the sidelines? Do you know Brian Poindexter very well?
Schladen: No, I know he's a union guy and but I haven't been covering the race day today. Yeah
Kasler: It does show how important it is for both parties, even if a district appears to be a long shot, to have a candidate in that district. So, you know, the way that redistricting has created districts that are very strongly Republican, strongly Democrat, it's very easy to, for the party that's likely not gonna win, to not really put anything into that race. But these things can happen, crazy things can happened. I mean, as I recall... Larry Householder didn't have an opponent the year that he was actually expelled from the House because Democrats had just decided that's not a district we're gonna win. So, you know, it's really important. It's really for both parties to consider these districts and who knows what can happen in a campaign, you now?
Juravich: All right, well, we're going to have to just wait and see I guess what until four o'clock today to make just 100% make sure Max Miller stays on the ballot. All right.
You're listening to the All Sides Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. This week we're talking with Karen Kastler from the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, Noah Blundo from Hanna News Service, and Marty Schladen from The Ohio Capital Journal. I wanted to pivot to data centers. Karen, the Ohio Supreme Court on Friday decided a case in favor of some residents of Asheville and Pickaway County. They oppose data centers. Can you tell us who filed in the case and like what the justices decided? Cause there's a lot, it seems like data centers are coming up a lot but this is about one particular town, right? Yeah.
Kasler: Yeah, and I think if this gets to the ballot, this will be a very interesting vote to watch here. So what happened was the village of Asheville made a deal with this company called Edge Connects to build two data centers and an actual gas plant next to them to power the data centers. And this deal, once it was publicly found out about, there was a group that formed to put it onto the ballot and they gathered the signatures.
Juravich: Meaning to vote yes or no of whether the project was allowed.
Kasler: Yes. Okay. So they gathered the signatures, they brought them forward, and the village said, no, this was emergency legislation, which is not subject to a referendum. So that's how the case ended up in the Ohio Supreme Court. You've got groups like Data Center Resistance, which was headed up by former Democratic candidate for Governor at Fitzgerald.
Blundo: Former Democratic candidate for the 7th Congressional District that we were just talking about as well. I mean, you didn't win the primary, but sorry.
Kasler: Yeah, Max Miller's district, former candidate, and also is being represented, the group is, by former attorney general, Democratic former attorney General Mark Dan. So this is a group that's kind of looking at all these data center things around the state and they got involved, they filed a front of the court brief and this and everything. But in the end, the Supreme Court decided unanimously that what needs to happen is that those signatures that the village said they weren't gonna submit to the Pickaway County Board of Elections need to be submitted to the pick away County Board Of Elections. Then the elections officials there could decide is this an administrative action that the Village took and therefore it's not subject to a referendum or should this go forward? And so I think that's where we are right now. But again, I think this data center conversation has gotten a lot of people very upset. And it's really dividing people pretty strongly, not on party lines necessarily. And I've heard anecdotally, and even seen a little bit myself, when the group that's trying to ban data centers statewide to the constitutional amendment, when they're out gathering signatures, people come right away. They want to sign those petitions.
Juravich: Here, before one second, we're going to hear from former Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann. This is from your story, Karen, just to get his thoughts on this.
Former Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann: Think it's really terrific that the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously stood up and enforced the constitutional right that citizens have to a referendum, particularly when there's no emergency associated with the legislation.
Juravich: Yeah. Okay. Marty, what do you want to weigh in on here? Like, how is a data center an emergency, first of all? But go ahead.
Schladen: Well, there's also this issue of local control. I've talked last week, I haven't written a story yet, with a guy named Danny Kane. He's here in Columbus, but he's written a number of books, and now he just produced a podcast series called The Data Centers Are Coming for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. They're an anti-monopoly group. And in his travels, he's been all over the country, this local control issue is a huge deal. Like in data center alley in Virginia, these things were under construction before they knew a thing about them and so that's what really sounds significant about this supreme court ruling is they're basically saying you've got to at least you know do one thing to uh you know let them feel like they're having some sort of say
Juravich: Uh, Noah, will this be on the ballot? I mean, so what, like, and, and are we, we're approaching a deadline here, I'm assuming to get it on the November ballot.
Blundo: Yeah, I think it's probably pretty tight and there was a an element of the decision that touched on that But I think they the ruling came down to saying that the fiscal officer of Asheville I think her name is April Was not the right person to sort of make the legal determination as to whether This was an administrative action that that's sort of like a legal question and that's not her scope And so that's more for the Board of Elections to determine And It was a unanimous opinion, but Jennifer Brunner, the only Democrat remaining on the Ohio Supreme Court up for reelection this fall, filed a partial concurrence saying, we should figure out this administrative action issue now. We should set a briefing schedule on it, because this is an imminent question. It could go to the ballot or not very soon. But that didn't carry the day. So I guess the next development will be at the Pickaway County Board of Elections. And I think it's.
Kasler: And I think it's interesting to hear that this is not just about two data centers. It's about a natural gas plant as well. And I thin, you know, when you start to hear candidates talk about and elected officials talking about data centers need to provide their own power, you're going to be talking about a lot of natural gas plants. And that has its own set of concerns when it comes to air pollution. And do you, you don't want to live next to a data center, do you want to live next a natural plant? So, that's another part of this.
Juravich: I also find it interesting, you know, the Supreme Court said that they have the right to gather these signatures and for the Pickaway County Board of Elections to consider whether this should go on the ballot or not. But is that what should be happening? Back to your local control point, Marty, like everywhere we're building a data center in all of central Ohio, does like a group of people from the town have to decide whether they like it or not and do a signature thing? Because what, they don't have a voice in their city council meetings, or...
Schladen: Well, a big part of the problem, according to Danny, is people don't even know they're coming until it's a done deal.
Juravich: So it gets voted on and they didn't even come to the meeting.
Schladen: Is there a vote even, you know, like he told one story, so there are a lot of these neighborhood local networks are forming, but he tells stories about how people are being their own investigative reporters. They're like looking at government postings in the local newspaper and piecing together, oh, this is a data center, you now, and it doesn't have meta, the name meta on
Juravich: So they're like, oh, this piece of land, what's the name of this company? Edge Connects with an X at the end. So they were like, Oh, there's this piece of land and it says Edge Connect and what is that? And they have to figure that, yeah.
Schladen: They're having to piece it all together and in a lot of instances with existing data centers, they haven't been able to do that. So like I think it's in Loudoun County, Virginia, there's a neighborhood where people are right across the street from a data center and it's so noisy that they're installing like special plexiglass, you know, to dampen that sound. And a real loss that Danny described is that then you lose your neighborhood, your community because people aren't outside, you know?
Juravich: Are they building a bubble?
Schladen: That they're building their own little bubbles because this data center, from their perspective, was just imposed on them in the dark of night. Huh, and you, oh, go ahead.
Blundo: I was just gonna say the element of people not knowing until it's too late. I mean, just imagine all the stories that you read in the newspaper that reported on the radio and TV about people getting up in arms because there's gonna be a sheets built or there's going to be a new apartment block built. Like people get pretty up in arm about development in their neighborhood. They have strong opinions and when they feel like they don't have the opportunity to voice those opinions, it creates some anger pretty quick.
Kasler: The idea of local control, though, and home rule, I believe, in Ohio, there's the opportunity, like if there's a wind turbine project or a solar project that's coming to your county, you can actually vote on that. So there is, I think, the idea that local people should be able to decide for themselves whether they want a big wind farm or solar farm or, in this case, a data center, I guess.
Juravich: So lawmakers have weighed in on the solar farm and the wind part, but not other thingies.
Blundo: Power siting is kind of a mixed bag in Ohio where the state overrides the locals on power siting decisions as in where to put power plants, where to major transmission, except that they've allowed local commissioners, I believe, to sort of say, well, we don't want to have specifically renewable projects in our areas.
Juravich: But what about the natural gas plant with this one?
Blundo: Well, and then that gets mixed into House Bill 15, which was the most recent energy bill that came out of the legislature, dealt a lot with, quote unquote, behind the meter power generation, which is building your own natural gas plant for your data center, for your manufacturing plant. It's not, in front of the meter means, you know, it's on the grid and it's going to whoever wants to buy it. Behind the meter is, you're building this for your own building. It's like, if you put a solar ray on your own house, that's kind of behind the meters generation.
Juravich: Okay, so you want did you want to add some?
Schladen: Well, you maybe remember that Elon Musk built gas plants behind the meter without permits in Memphis. Oh, that's fun. Well, and there's this, you know, the justification is it's on a former brownfield and everybody in that neighborhood should be happy about that. Well, they're not, you now, I mean, because it's like, you've called this, You're permanently condemning this brownfield to be this really kind of intrusive industrial site, you know, in our neighborhood. And we've already always had that kind of stuff in our neighborhoods.
Juravich: All right, there's more to say about data centers, which we're going to do. So coming up, we're gonna talk about how the candidates for governor are crafting and revising their positions when it comes to data centers and why. And that is when the report around table from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
Juravich: 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. With us in the studio, we have Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, Noah Blundo, executive editor for Hanna News Service, and Karen Kasler, bureau chief at the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. I wanted to continue our data center discussion because there's always more to discuss. Looking at what the three candidates for governor are saying and I say three candidates There's two candidates who we've talked about a lot GOP hopeful of a krama swami Democratic hopeful dr. Amy actin and we have libertarian libertarian candidate Don kissick who has been weighing in on data centers as well In a new opinion piece that ran in the Columbus dispatch Republican candidate for governor Vivek Rama swami pledges now free electricity and lower property taxes as a part of his data center policy pledge. So free electricity was a headline grabber for me. I was like, oh, how do you do that? And who gets the free electricity? Have we looked at, what did he mean by that, Noah?
Blundo: He wants to establish a benefit zone around. So we were talking about behind the meter power generation in the previous segment. A lot of these data centers will come along with a natural gas plant or something. And he's basically saying, they're going to generate a little more power than they need. And the excess is going to go to defray the energy costs of the people in the benefit zone, which I'm not sure is super clearly defined at this point. He's going to draw a circle around the power plant. In your community, and I don't know what that means. Obviously, you know. Depending on the size of the community, that would differ, but...
Juravich: Okay, so this is, he's making a pledge, he's saying free electricity, but the whole plan is not really spelled out. Is that what you're saying?
Blundo: He's laid out several broad principles, but how that would intersect with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and power siting and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Regional Transmission Organization, which is PJM. There's a big alphabet soup of agencies that would have to kind of put it into action.
Kasler: So, but when this whole idea of free electricity, I think that's, again, like you said, a headline grabber, but it wouldn't be free electricity for everyone. And I think there might be folks who look at that and think, oh, I don't want to pay my power bill. Same kind of thing where the people who are trying to abolish property taxes, oh I don't want to to pay property taxes. Well, you know, there's a lot more nuance to that than just free electricity for everyone, Marty.
Schladen: Well, yeah, as soon as I read that, my first question was, is this even legal? Is there a legal framework to do this? But secondly, there's more than one element of your electricity bill. There's the generating cost, but then there's the lines and poles, the transmission and distribution, which is separate. And these data centers aren't going to own any of that. That's the first energies, the AEPs, and they're going to get their cut. I don't see where Rameswamy is saying we're going to make the data centers pay for that. And then lastly, you know, something I think people tend to forget in this whole debate is the whole AI movement is highly speculative at this point. We don't know whether all this compute capacity that's getting built is going to be needed. So we may end up in a world after all these data centers are built where they're, A lot of them are just sitting empty, kind of like that Intel site.
Juravich: I had a guy come on Tech Tuesday and told me that they can be probably half the size if we give it a few years, because they're going to figure out how to make all of this smaller. That's what they're working on.
Schladen: Apparently that's happening in China.
Blundo: They are, people are rewiring and re-outfitting the existing data centers for, you know, all the time. So yeah, they're being upgraded constantly, the existing footprint.
Juravich: In the past, Ramaswamy said that banning data centers altogether would be, quote, a terrible idea. But he writes in this new opinion piece that he says, despite my opponent's claims, I am not pro data center. He calls himself pro Ohio. So tell me about fine tuning that message. I mean, he's playing to both sides there, right, Karen? That's what a politician does anyway.
Kasler: Well, yeah, I mean, when Democrat Amy Acton came out with her conditional moratorium for data centers, which once again, there are a lot of questions about what she can do legally as governor and what she would need the legislature for or whatever. He had said, Ramaswami had said hey, I've been talking about this for a while. It's nice to see that Amy Actons finally joined me in this conversation and that she's just parroting what I've said, which as we've seen with this more detailed plan, she wasn't parroting, what he had said. He had said... In several different events that data centers were a good thing that, I mean kind of talking about some of the things we've heard from Republican leadership in the legislature about data centers bring jobs, they're important to national security, you know, these sorts of things. But this plan that he's put out there would try to put some guardrails on those. And so rather than take Ohio completely out of the data center equation, this would put some guardrails on. And I think that what Marty said is really important about the whole idea of free electricity quote. There's so much of your bill that has nothing to do with the generation of electricity. And so that's gonna be something that people need to definitely consider if this is something that they're excited about.
Juravich: And we've talked on the show in the past after Democrat candidate Amy Acton came out with her conditional moratorium on data centers. I have, I don't know if anyone's looked into that more about more of what it means. Can anyone tell me more about the conditions?
Kasler: Well, like I said, the legality question here, I believe one of her, well, one of her proposals is 100% union labor to use in construction. I don't think that that's allowed. I don't think that she could write an executive order that would require that. So, I think that there are some questions about what she would be able to do. But I mean, the whole idea of community benefit agreements and less use of. Nondisclosure agreements and more transparency in general. I think that's one thing that people, no matter what part of the data center debate you're on, would really like to see a little bit more.
Blundo: There's also, I think, water and air standard adherence in both candidates' platforms. There was this permitting discussion recently about how much, in what quality they were going to be able to emit the water that they had used. So that is also an element here.
Schladen: Well, with Acton's statement, too, there's an interesting political dynamic there, too. Data centers, by and large, are unpopular among bipartisan groups of just everyday people, but predictably, a lot of unions love them because they're construction jobs. So if you're running as a Democrat, saying, I'm going to use all union labor, probably sounds good to a group that you really want to keep in your corner or draw back to your corner.
Juravich: I wanted to pivot to Libertarian candidate Don Kisick. According to a piece in cleveland.com from last week, he called for an immediate moratorium on every Ohio data center project that has not already broken ground until state lawmakers establish permanent statewide standards for the facilities. So how are groups, you know, like what, that's, you know that's a flat out, he wants a moratorium. You know, that is, it has, I don't even know if he's always said that, but basically he's just saying, He wants state lawmakers to take action too.
Kasler: Well, again, I don't know what he would if he would have the legal authority to do that. But let's also consider he's the libertarian candidate for governor. And in the last election for governor in 2022, the three independent candidates that were all the three independents slates that were all running against Mike DeWine and Ann Whaley got a total of 8,900 votes. So this is not, sadly, a campaign that is potentially positioned to get a lot of votes.
Blundo: Yeah, sorry. But to his point, he wants the legislature to sort of set the framework. And they were trying to come up, to come to an agreement before they broke for the summer on a variety of things. A lot of it focused on the sales tax exemption that data centers now enjoy. They couldn't end that. But the legislature likely will do something in the next several months or in the opening months of next year.
Juravich: Yeah, that's my last question before I promise we'll move on from data centers is they're in a recess They're not expected to return until after the November election. Will that will data centers be front and center? Do that? Do you know do we have any idea?
Blundo: I think that conversation is definitely likely to come up. What's front and center could depend on the outcome of the election.
Kasler: I think it's gonna be a key issue. I mean, I think affordability in general is a major issue and that tax policies in that and prices of gas, gas prices, grocery prices, all that's in that. But data centers I think are becoming, they're certainly the hottest issue that people are talking about I think right now just because they're popping up all over Ohio. I just got back from Virginia where, you know, Marty was talking about data center alley. I mean that that's data centers are. Virginia is dealing with the same kinds of issues that we're dealing with when it comes to data centers.
Schladen: And I think that there's a very strong nexus between affordability and these other issues. I think people see this as just these giant unaccountable corporations who are doing things and they're just completely powerless to have any say.
Juravich: You're listening to the All Sides Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News, and we are talking with Marty Schladen with the Ohio Capital Journal, Karen Kastler from the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, and Noah Blundow with Hanna News Service. Pivoting to that affordability that you were just mentioning, Marty, you reported recently on safety net benefits, and you reported that more than a million Ohioans are not getting essential safety net benefit that they are eligible for. Why not? What's happening here?
Schladen: Well, the reasons vary from program to program. In some instances, like with housing benefits, people are technically eligible. The program's just vastly underfunded. So out in Ohio and the neighboring states, I think they're all a little less than 40% or right around 40%. And I think that consistency shows that everybody, there's way more need than there is money. And so that's what full use looks like. But then there's some other programs where it's the administration, you know, that there's been some social science around. If you operate the program where you actively outreach to people and say, hey, you're eligible for this benefit, we're gonna help you get on it, because a lot of people who are struggling financially are struggling in a lot other ways, you now, their housing isn't certain, they're just juggling a lot balls. So that can make a big difference. And then, You know, a lot of this comes down to the county level, too. You know what's going on in that particular office that's, you know, in charge of seeing that people get connected to these benefits.
Juravich: But you're so you're saying basically like the participation level is down because either a the program doesn't have enough money to give everyone the money or b people don't know the program exists so they're not applying for it.
Schladen: Or C, and I'm running into this more and more, is if you've never been on any of these programs, it sounds real simple, but there are huge paperwork hurdles connected with some of them. And once again, if you're really struggling, I do a bad job with that stuff. If you're really struggling, that can be hard to keep up with.
Juravich: Noah, you wanna add?
Blundo: I was just gonna say, there's a term often used in human services called churn, and it's people who come off the program because of the paperwork, because they didn't, you know. For example, Medicaid, if you're in the Medicaid expansion population, which was the people, you now, single adults up to 133% of poverty that was added in the Affordable Care Act, now under federal changes made last year, you're gonna have to. Have your eligibility for that redetermined twice a year instead of once. And when you look at the Medicaid caseload, when you at why people drop off month after month, there's a chunk of people who are excluded for paperwork reasons. And then inevitably, some of them come back on because they go to the hospital, they need care, they realize that their coverage has lapsed and then they go back through the re-intake process. They still qualify, they're still eligible, but they didn't clear the paperwork hurdles. And so... Then there can be interruptions in care and things like that.
Schladen: As a matter of fact, just parenthetically, I was in Dayton a few weeks ago speaking to a woman who needs around-the-clock home care, and she didn't get her mail for two months, and she lost her Medicaid. It was interrupted, like you just described.
Juravich: Because she didn't have the letters in the mail telling her to refill her paper.
Kasler: And I know that there's frustration for people who are permanently disabled or who are caregiving for people who are permanent disabled because it's like the status is not gonna change in six months. This person is going to remain permanently disabled. And so to have to do that every six months is just another thing that makes life harder for people are permanently or caring for people who are.
Schladen: Way back, while I was covering this stuff more intensively, a long time ago, at least then people in those circles called this the hassle factor and said that every once in a while these ideas come along and the idea really is to just hassle people off of the system.
Juravich: Hassle factor versus churn. Interesting, okay. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. And coming up, we're going to talk about President Trump visiting Ohio this week, and also jobs, Ohio, Intel, and the ethics of lobbying arrangements are coming under scrutiny. That's when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sites continues on 89 7 NPR news.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. With us in the studio, we have Karen Kasler, Bureau Chief of the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, and Noah Blundo, executive editor for Hanna News Service. First of all, I wanted to note news that I just saw for the first time this morning right before we went on air. President Trump will be in Northeast Ohio tomorrow. He's going to be promoting the Patriot Games. So it's not billed as a campaign stop. It's billed as a. At an event, the Patriot Games, does anyone know about the Patriots Games? I mean, I have a little summary here I can read unless someone else wants to say, no, okay. The Patriot games are a part of the America 250 celebration. They promote physical fitness and they are tied into the reconfigured presidential physical fitness test or whatever they call it. They don't call it a test anymore. The physical fitness challenge for high school students. So the Patriote Games are high school students competing in. Physical fitness activities starting now in Northeast Ohio. But what do you make of it saying, you know, that the president will be here and it's not a campaign stop, it's an event. Isn't everything the president does a campaign? Stop.
Kasler: Well, during during an election year, yeah, you can make that that claim. He's not on the ballot, but certainly he's had something to say about a lot of people on the ballad. This is not Max Miller's district, by the way. So OK.
Juravich: Okay, I was wondering, it said Northeast Ohio is big.
Kasler: Yeah, so that's, you know, the idea that maybe Max Miller might show up or something. I think that that's a little bit doubtful there. But Trump talked about the Patriot games a while back and there were lots of jokes about Hunger Games vibes on social media. And this is just part of the whole freedom 250, which is different than the original thing that was set up to celebrate America 250 through Congress. This is the one that's. The Trump administration had set up for activities like what we saw in DC on July 4th with the big fireworks show and the national state fair on the mall and things like that.
Juravich: Okay. And I'm assuming that it's high school students from all around the country coming, not just Ohio high school students. Would you? Do you? Does anyone know?
Blundo: I believe it's at the Spire Institute, which is a big athletic training facility in Ashtabula County, I think, and Olympians train there and things like that. So there's a scholarship pool they'll be competing for.
Kasler: All right. Well, apparently there the finale is tomorrow at 7. I guess it's live. Maybe there's coverage of it I don't know. I okay
Juravich: Okay. And that's what he's coming for basically. Okay. All right. Well, we'll see if it turns into a campaign stop. I guess it depends on if he takes any questions. Pivoting back to what we were talking about in the last segment, Noah, I wanted to talk to you about SNAP benefits. The state has new reporting requirements to determine county by county error rates and one month worth of information is in. What does it show? How are we doing with our snap benefit error rate.
Blundo: Yeah, so the big, beautiful bill from Congress passed last year said states need to get serious about their payment error rates in SNAP or they're going to have to start paying a share of the benefits between 5 and 15 percent depending on how bad the error rate is. The error rate not strictly like a measure of waste, fraud, and abuse so much. Well, maybe waste. But if you are paid under or overpaid by $57. That counts in the payment error rate. And Ohio is roughly about six and three quarters percent payment error right now. We need to get below six to avoid those penalties. So state legislators said to the Department of Job and Family Services, try and help us find out county by county where this is happening and what the causes are. Is it a mistake at the county level? Is it is a mistake by the SNAP client? In their reporting, is it a mistake on behalf of the IT system that underlies all this, which is Ohio benefits. Most of it's happening at the county level, and there are vast differences county by county as to where the errors are. Some have none, some have like 40 percent, but this is a very small cross-segment of cases, so JFS warned that this isn't really statistically significant, but it is data for them to use to figure out, okay. Where should we be focusing our efforts to get the payment error rate down? Because if we don't, we're on the hook for probably $160 million next year.
Juravich: And is that the state is on the hook or the county is on
Blundo: The state is on the hook. Things roll downhill, so the county might experience some consequences from the state being on the hooks for 160 million, but the feds said you, the state, will be on the hooked for 5-15% of your SNAP benefit costs if the error rate is too bad. The state and the fed have long split the administrative cost of SNAP, but the feds had paid full freight on the actual benefits up till starting next year.
Juravich: So if a one particular county has a high error rate of 40%, is the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services going to that county and being like, what's going on?
Blundo: Presumably. And there was another AI summit across the street here at OSU. Lots of topics about AI in government. And the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Matt Damstrother, said, they're trying to try to use AI in some of this. They're having, I don't know if any of you had a doctor's appointment recently where the doctor says, oh, well, the AI is going to take a recording of our conversation and make the clinical notes, and then I'll check it before it gets submitted into the medical record. They're going to do the same thing in the snap interviews that you have with a caseworker. Because the feds look at those interview case notes when they're determining if there's been an error made. And so they're trying to improve the accuracy of those case notes to avoid errors, I guess.
Juravich: This seems like such, I want to call it a paperwork nightmare. I mean, it's a case by case basis, right? Yeah.
Blundo: It is, so some, we were talking about Medicaid earlier, Medicaid, you know, expansion particularly, it's like your income is over or under this line, you're eligible or not eligible. SNAP is much different. They look at your individual household budgets and they're set aside to saying, okay, well, we agree that you should spend this much on housing and this much on electricity and your household can be not just members of your family. It's like, who do you eat meals with regularly? So there could be like a cousin or an uncle or grandma involved or something. So determining what a person's benefit level is much more complicated for Snap than it is for some of these other programs. So it's already.
Juravich: So this is what happens in those individual interviews. People explain who they eat meals.
Blundo: They eat meals with. And what is your work status? And you're supposed to report if your income goes up to the county, because then that might affect your benefit level. And if you don't report, that's a problem.
Juravich: When does Ohio have until to get their rate under 6%?
Blundo: So this summer we got the report for the federal fiscal year that ended last fall. And so sometime next year we will get the error rate report for the Federal Fiscal Year that ends this fall. So we only have a few more months to get the air rate down, but we won't necessarily find out until we're in the middle of or the end of the budget process. So it's gonna be complicated.
Juravich: It sounds it. All right. We're going to leave it there because I don't even know what else to ask because it's complicated. All right, you're listening to the Reporter Roundtable on eighty nine seven NPR News. We're talking with Noah Blundo from Hanna News Service. Karen Kasler from the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau and Marty Schladen with the Ohio Capital Journal. Marty, you had a story about Jobs, Ohio, the quasi private economic development agency that hands out public money. Its chair, Josh Rubin, is a lobbyist who has come under fire for having dual roles. He's a paid lobbyist for Intel, while also serving on the Jobs Ohio board, which did hand out sizable grants to Intel. If I have that all right, Marty, is Josh Rubin still being paid by Intel, even though that project's kind of on hold?
Schladen: Presumably he is because he has to file two kinds of reports. One is a registration where he says I am lobbying this agency on behalf of this client. Jobs Ohio was created in 2011-2013 and it was exempted from a lot of stuff because it's supposedly a private corporation, even though the governor appoints the board, it was created by the legislature and they spend money that used to be public. Um, but, they... Have to, when you lobby Jobs Ohio, you have to register with the Joint Ethics, like JLEC, the Joint Legislative Ethics Commission. So anyway, that's too much description. Josh has filed to register to lobby Jobs, Ohio on behalf of Intel until the beginning of this year. He is still registered to lobby the governor and the lieutenant governor on behalf of Intel. And he also has filed activity and expense reports, which means he's actively lobbying. So one can just assume that Intel is paying him. Intel won't tell me and Josh won't return and he calls her emails.
Juravich: Um, okay. So walk us through the timing of this because it, I mean, is this all coming to light right now? I I've heard candidates for Ohio attorney general speaking about this. There's a lot, you know, jobs. Ohio made a lot of news for its role with money with the former Ohio state president, Ted Carter. So it has jobs. Ohio always faced questions or is it just more right now.
Schladen: Oh, they've always faced questions, but I guess what I got there was I was able to compile a lot of reports and there's just more detail to it that, you know, he's actively lobbying the government on behalf of Intel. He's chair of a quasi governmental entity. There's this bigger question, too. He's a lobbyist. And what Jobs Ohio is, what it does is it hands out money to businesses. It's done. Over $2 billion so far, and what used to be our money, and he's head of this agency. Meanwhile, he's a lobbyist. You know, what do lobbyists do? They go to the government and get deals for clients, you know. So, Mike DeWine doesn't see that as a conflict, but I think there are number of other people who do.
Juravich: Okay, before we run out of time, I wanted to touch on one more story. So just pivoting in, we only have a little over two minutes left, Noah, but you wrote about all 88 counties being designated as attaining air quality standards by the US EPA. And I just, I want to ask you about that because, you know, we had a little blip with Canadian wildfire smoke. So, but is our air quality a okay?
Blundo: Yeah, this is the first time in a long time that the state has met these Clean Air Act standards. I'm not an expert in what all they're measuring, when and where. I think the big question, the immediate question for a lot of people would be like, are we still going to have ECHEC in Northeast Ohio? And the answer is yes, because you actually, once you get attainment, you have to ... Stay there for 10 years before they start to roll back anything. According to Ohio EPA, you have to continue to meet the standard for at least 10 years before you would be able to rollback something like ECHEC. So, but I don't think the...
Juravich: But this seems like a significant milestone. All 88 counties designated as attaining the air quality standard of the US EPA, right?
Blundo: Yeah, and the first time in two decades, so that's, it is significant.
Juravich: But this was probably measured prior to Canadian wildfire smoke, right?
Blundo: Yeah, like we were talking about snap error rates now. We found out in July that last September or October our error rate was this. So there's a big lag in the data collection and compilation and reporting.
Juravich: So the air we breathe, we were breathing, you know, like nine months ago was great. Apparently. Duly noted. I want to say thank you to Noah Blundo, executive editor for Hanna News Service. Thanks for joining us today.
Blundo: Thank you.
Juravich: And Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Thanks, Marty.
Schladen: Sure, Amy.
Juravich: And Karen Kasler, bureau chief for the Iowa Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Thanks, Karen.
Kasler: It's been great to be here.
Juravich: And this has been the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.