(intro music) - [Presenter] Republicans who want to make it harder for citizens to pass constitutional amendments are at odds about whether voters should decide on that, in a special August election, the Supreme Court will decide whether the Ohio Ballot Board made the right call in determining that a measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the constitution is a single ballot issue.

And Ohio lawmakers from both parties push for rail safety improvements in the aftermath of the East Palestine derailment.

"Ideas" is next.

(light music) - Hello and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman wants to increase the threshold for passing constitutional amendments.

And he wants Ohio voters to decide on it in an August election, raising the bar for a possible November vote on an amendment guaranteeing abortion rights.

But House speaker Jason Stevens does not support the August election plan.

Volunteers have started collecting the more than 400,000 signatures needed to get the abortion rights amendment on the ballot.

But this week a lawsuit filed by two people in Cincinnati claims it's not a single issue.

As the ballot board determined.

Ohio's congressional delegation is on board with rail safety enhancements.

The House version is bipartisan, but doesn't include a key provision in the Senate version that would increase staffing on trains.

And a plan drop-in center for unhoused youth in Ohio City now faces a legal challenge from neighbors who oppose it.

We'll talk about those stories in the rest of the week's news on the "Reporter's Roundtable."

Joining me this week in studio from Idea Stream Public Media, education reporter Conor Morris and general assignment reporter, Abigail Bottar.

In Columbus, State House News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to "Roundtable."

Republicans in the Ohio Senate wanna raise the threshold for voters to pass constitutional amendments from the current simple majority to 60% of statewide voters.

The Senate wants it on the August ballot because it would make it harder for abortion rights advocates to succeed in enshrining abortion protections in the constitution.

That issue could be on the ballot, in November.

- Lawmakers scrapped August special elections as part of voter reform bill that was passed in December because special elections in August cost a ton of money, and very few people actually vote in them.

Steven said he's not for a special August election on the amendment threshold issue, which could appear dead for now.

We'll see.

Huffman said the estimated 20 million for a special election would be worth it, if it raised the threshold, block the abortion rights amendment and saved the lives of unborn babies.

Karen, the Ohio Senate has put forward its own bill for this, but does Stevens' stance almost guarantee that it stalls?

You know, he also has a lot of opposition in the house itself.

- Well, you know, we thought that this was stalled when earlier this year there was all the reporting about how they were trying to make the May ballot.

They were trying to put the 60% voter approval proposal onto the May ballot.

It had it passed by February 1st.

And so we thought it was over and done with when it didn't pass.

So this was a new idea that came up they were trying to create this August special election.

Keeping in mind that August special elections, like you said, had just been eliminated in a law that takes effect actually on April 7th.

So it's, it's only been a couple of months that August special elections have been eliminated and they wanted to bring it back for the sole purpose of passing a constitutional amendment that came from state lawmakers.

There are a couple other reasons that they would put in that bill for special elections in August, but constitutional amendments from state lawmakers only, not from outside groups or citizens or anything like that.

and that was the one of the two bills that was proposed by the two Republican senators.

All of this machinations is again, to try to make sure that the 60% threshold is in place before voters could potentially get a chance to vote on this reproductive rights amendment.

Because in states that aren't super liberal and certainly Ohio qualifies, the level of passage for reproductive rights amendments that have passed has been less than 60%.

And so that's the thought behind this.

But I don't think, I don't think this is over yet.

I just, I really doubt it is.

- Republicans, some Republicans accused the House speaker of guaranteeing to Democrats that he would stall this bill because the Democrats are who put him in power.

If he didn't get their votes, he would've lost to Derek Merrin, who would've been the speaker.

So what about that?

He denies it.

- Well, sure.

And I asked, he created a committee that would deal only with this 60% voter approval resolution and the chair of that committee, Scott Wiggam, is one of mayor's supporters, and I asked him, is there a timeline?

Are you trying to get this on the August ballot?

And he said, no, no, no, I don't have a timeline.

It's important, but I don't have a specific date I'm aiming at.

But that's, I don't know where the plan is going from here.

And it's really hard to track because again, I think a lot of people saw this August vote come outta nowhere.

I mean, I actually suggested it a couple of months ago thinking it might be a possibility, but it really did come outta nowhere.

And so where are we gonna go from this?

I don't know.

- [Mike] Yeah, I saw Daryl Roland on Twitter giving you credit and I think I called you Nostradamus, because you... (laughter) - I wish.

- [Mike] You Know what's gonna happen two months ahead of time.

- Oh dude, I wish.

- I mentioned not many people vote in these August elections and we're talking dismal turnout.

- Oh yeah.

I mean, there was an August special election last year because the legislature and the Ohio Redistricting Commission couldn't agree on maps that would pass constitutional muster before the Ohio Supreme Court.

They ended up going to Federal Court and getting permission to use these unconstitutional maps.

But they had to do an August primary.

And oh my goodness.

I think it was, it was in the single digits the turnout was.

So 20 million for a turnout that's really, really low.

I mean, that was the whole reason that they got rid of the August special election.

And so to bring it back, just to pass this amendment, so that potentially the reproductive rights amendment, might have a more difficult time passing is really kind of an extraordinary move.

- [Mike] Let's talk about the more difficult.

So 50% plus one is the current standard.

It would go to 60% for those not familiar, we're not talking about just another couple of steps.

That's a whole other mountain.

- Yeah.

And there are two competing bills here.

There was this resolutions.

This resolution from the House not only would require 60% voter approval, but it would also make it so that if you wanted to put a constitutional amendment before voters, you'd have to get signatures from all of Ohio's counties.

And you couldn't have that 10 day period where if your signatures are ruled invalid, you could go out and get more.

The Senate resolution does not include those two things.

And so I don't know which version they would be looking at potentially here, but yeah, the idea is to try to make it more difficult.

Republicans have argued, hey, this is our most important document.

It should be difficult to amend Ohio's constitution and we need to keep big money interests out of it.

Democrats and those who are opposed to this, and there are hundreds of groups that are opposed to this, say, it's already difficult to amend Ohio's constitution.

And right now the groups that have big money are the ones that have the resources to do this.

So this just makes it harder for individuals and really takes away voters voices and one of the resources they have.

- [Mike] So it would change the threshold of signatures too, or the way signatures are gathered and where mentioned.

- The house version would, the Senate version would not.

- So is that they're already in the process of gathering signatures.

They've already got approval and said you need just over 400,000.

Is that moving the goalpost in the middle of the game?

- You could certainly make that argument and you could make that argument that doing this, even now while there are, while there is an active signature gathering process going on, this does change the goalpost.

That's certainly an argument that the hundreds of groups that are opposed to this have been making.

(light music) - Another challenge to the reproductive health amendment is taking shape at the Ohio Supreme Court.

A lawsuit asks justices to find error with the Ohio Ballot Board, which determined that the abortion rights amendment is a single issue for voters to decide.

- So what's the Supreme Court likely to do here?

Is there a timeframe for its ruling on this?

- Well, it looks like I'm looking at the docket for next week, that there are some paperwork filings that are potentially gonna happen.

So nothing's been set yet.

But this is an interesting argument because these two citizens and we're told they are not aligned with Cincinnati Right to Life or Ohio Right to Life, even though Cincinnati Right to Life was using this to fundraise these two citizens claim that the Ballot Board should have broken this issue up into two separate issues, which of course would've made it harder for the reproductive rights amendment to pass.

And so they're saying this ballot board, which has three Republican members and two Democratic members, messed up.

And so that's gonna be the argument that they're making here.

Whether that goes forward in a timely manner, I don't know because we haven't seen any dates set.

- Finally, the signature collection, as we mentioned, has begun.

What do you know about, how that's going so far?

We've heard a number of people that said, "How can I sign," who are sending notes, but is there, is there an indication that it's going well for them or that it's going well for the opposition?

- My State House News Bureau colleague, Jo Ingles, has been in touch with some of the organizers who did kind of what they called a trial run last weekend where they went to smaller counties where they think they're gonna have maybe potentially a more difficult time getting signatures.

And they said that they had great response.

They put up signs that just said, Roe sign here.

And people just started to drive in.

And so I think you're going to see more of these kinds of things at, you know, we're getting into the warmer times of the year.

You're gonna see these street fairs and festivals and opportunities where people are just kind of hanging around.

This week there was a group of volunteers with "Mom's Demand Action," the Gun Regulations Group who were here at the State House.

There were people getting signatures there from that group.

Some of these will be advertised, some of them won't be advertised because there is a concern that if there is advertising for the sign for the reproductive rights amendment, that the people who are gathering the signatures could potentially be harassed in some way.

(light music) - Ohio's congressional delegation is working to improve rail safety in the aftermath of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine last month.

It's a bipartisan effort in the Senate and House, but the remedies aren't exactly the same.

- This week also brought more testimony before the Senate Commerce Science and Transportation Committee, the February 3rd derailment followed the site with toxic chemicals, some of which were purposely burned to avert a possible explosion.

Abigail, why the difference in objectives between the House and Senate versions of the rail safety bill?

- You know, it's honestly unclear.

I spoke with Senator Brown this week about his bill, the railway safety bill, it's in the Senate and the difference between that and the rail bill, which is the Rail Act, which is in the house.

And he was unsure why House Republicans did not want this two person crew.

He speculated that the rail industry had gotten in their ear and advocated against that.

Certainly that's something that Norfolk Southern CEO, Alan Shaw has spoken out against, saying there's no need for that.

But the democratic sponsors of the House Bill, such as Amelia Strong Sykes said that even though it's not in this specific bill, that it's something that they wanna look forward to in future legislation.

- The National Transportation Safety Board does investigations after the fact in these kinds of accidents.

One of the things that would aid them would be cameras on board that has recordings that they can look at.

I understand the East Palestine train recording was recorded over.

- Yeah, which is so crazy.

So I mean, I guess immediately after the locomotive involved in the derailment was put back into service and so then the data from the recording from the derailment was then like taped over and overwritten by putting it right back in.

And so the NTSB has said Amtrak and commuter rails are required to maintain both inward and outward cameras.

So one of their recommendations is expanding that requirement to freight rail as well.

- Boy, that just seems to make sense.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean a lot of freight rail is unregulated as we're finding out right now.

And I keep asking why and it's really unclear why the federal government never thought to step in to regulate some of these things.

- Let's talk about cleanup and how long it's taking.

The EPA is still unhappy with the speed of the cleanup.

What's Norfolk Southern doing now to remove contaminated soil and water where they're putting it?

I remember there was a story about a giant mound of dirt that hadn't yet been moved.

- Yeah.

Yeah so we did see some movement on that and this week the EPA reiterated in a letter to Norfolk Southern that they are in charge of finding appropriate waste disposal facilities for this toxic waste to go.

And like you said, that was a hot topic last week when Governor DeWine and Senator Vance had slammed the EPA for moving too slowly on removing that giant, the thousands of tons of toxic soil.

There is some movement on that it is picking up.

And there were states like Michigan and Oklahoma that were refusing to take the contaminated material.

The EPA also said this week that states cannot unilaterally stop shipments and this waste is, it's really important to note that this waste isn't any different than waste that these facilities take every day.

It's no different.

That's their job.

So they're fully prepared to be taking this waste from East Palestine.

It's kind of got political there.

- And let me throw one more at you on this topic.

You attended this week some training to help better prepare first responders.

It wasn't in East Palestine, but it was training by Norfolk Southern that said if something like this happens, here's how you should do it.

What was that experience like?

- Yeah, they had this train in one of their yards in Bellevue.

I traveled up there.

It's this safety train that they actually travel with around their routes to give training to first responders.

So they get to interact.

It's like it's a fully functional train.

So they interact with it, get to see the different parts, look at kind of learn how to identify what potentially could be on the train, how to use, there's an app that can show what kind of materials are moving through communities.

So kind of get that experience of the first responders I spoke to said it was great to, some of them had this training before it was great to brush up on it.

And Norfolk Southern is expecting 350 more first responders from Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia to come in the next two weeks to Bellevue to get this training.

And they've also committed to creating a permanent training facility in Ohio.

(light music) - A special prosecutor from Attorney General, Dave Yost's office, will present findings to a grand jury April 10th from the state's investigation into the police shooting death of Jayland Walker, Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, BCI, has been reviewing the incident.

Walker died after being shot by eight police officers last June.

- The Abigail, the grand jury's expected to consider not just what BCI found in its investigation, but some of the evidence as well, including body cameras, the autopsy, they're basically going over all of the evidence.

- Right?

Yeah.

And that starts on April 10th.

That's when the grand jury's convening.

BCI will show their investigation for the past nine months, then jurors will be able to review that.

The body camera footage, walker's autopsy, there likely will be testimony from the corner.

And then lots of testimony from BCI investigators as well.

- We've seen a lot of these types of announcements of either indictments or non indictments of police officers and the reaction in various communities.

What are the folks in Akron doing to prepare?

Are they worried about their being unrest as a result of whatever announcement or decision may be made?

- Yeah, I'd say there certainly was.

I mean, Walker's death led to dozens of protests that some got pretty rowdy last summer.

So there's definitely concern for that.

The city has been preparing for this decision and has been meeting with community groups to kind of decide what kind of like support they can give, what kind of space they can give for protests, and also how they can ensure they can remain safe and peaceful.

So he's also been meeting with downtown businesses to prepare for potential protests and road closures.

As we saw last summer.

- Part of the preparations include educating the public on how a grand jury works.

Also, perhaps noting that the Summit County requested a state special prosecutor present this.

So it's not something that's local, but how much of it is sort of just explaining the process.

- Yeah, I would say that's most of it.

I mean, this is kind of a difficult process to understand.

There's so many people involved and emotions are so high.

So the city is holding these community meetings that include city officials in the law department and the police department to explain how the grand jury process works and also to kind of have these community discussions with, you know, residents about what the aftermath might look like.

And yeah, it is will be presented by a special prosecutor from the attorney general's office, not the Summit County prosecutor.

So that's important to note.

(light music) - How old should you be to wear a badge two GOP lawmakers seeking to beef up short-staffed police ranks, say lowering the age from 21 to 18 to become a cop.

Makes sense.

Not everyone agrees.

18 year olds are ready to serve.

- Karen.

The sponsors say lowering the age won't solve the hiring problem, but believe it can help and it has support from municipal organizations.

- Yeah, there are two bills actually, one in the house and one in the Senate that would do exactly this, that would give cities the option of hiring 18 year olds.

And the sponsors have said, hey, wait a minute, you know, this is something that could be considered because we're letting 18 year olds into the military.

This can help with the hiring problems that communities are having in terms of getting law enforcement.

But yeah, there's also a little bit of pushback here.

As you can imagine, the the question of whether 18 year olds are mature enough to be put into the situations where they're making life and death decisions and what kind of training would be required to get them to that maturity level and all those sorts of things.

So this is a, discussion that's happening both in the House side and the Senate side.

And it's bipartisan, interestingly enough, it's not just Republicans on one side, Democrats on the other.

There are Republicans and Democrats who have concern about this.

- Abigail?

- Yeah, I just wanted to say, I did a story about this a couple months ago talking to local police departments about their efforts to get staff.

And it's just really interesting because this doesn't seem to get at the root of the problem, which is like police burnout, bigger cities and departments stealing police officers from small towns, more rural places, not being able to pay officers adequately.

You know, just the police not being a like, an interesting job for young people.

You have to spend a lot of time from home.

So it, I mean to me it just doesn't really even seem like it really solves a lot of the issues that if even if we got younger people into the police force, they still would burn out or go to bigger cities and there still would be, you know, a shortage, - [Mike] Karen.

- Yeah, and I think that this kind of goes along with some discussions that have been had at the State House about lowering or allowing kids who are under 16 or under 18 to work longer hours.

It's billed as the kind of thing that can help with staffing problems and how businesses bring up their staffing levels.

But it doesn't really get to the problem of why are people not taking these jobs?

Is there not enough pay?

Are they not getting job satisfaction?

Are they being treated terribly?

I mean these both, I think they're kind of parallel issues here in that they are trying to plug a hole in this leak here, but not trying to investigate what's actually causing it.

- I guess the question too though is, and it's a basic one, but is someone 18 years old just out of high school or even still at high school age, should they be, you know, the protect and serve type or are they ready?

And I guess the argument is well they can serve in the military.

- Right.

And there's the argument of age and maturity are not necessarily the same thing.

Some people are 18 and are very mature, some people are over 21 and are not very mature.

But I think it's telling that there are two Republican House members, Kevin Miller, who is a former state trooper and Phil Plummer, the former Montgomery County Sheriff who both say they have concerns about this, that they think 18 year olds simply are not ready to do the work that being a police officer being in law enforcement really requires.

So I think there's a lot of discussion here.

There's another element too that I think is important that doesn't have anything to do with like the, allowing kids to work longer hours issue that I just talked about.

This potentially would put people who are 18 years old into the retirement system that the state funds.

And so what do you do when people have longer careers and they're in this pension system and you have to take care of that.

So I think that that's another potential impact that these bills are gonna be looking at.

- Interesting point because I think it's 30 years and you get a full pension in some of these cases, so you could be getting full pension at 48.

- Yeah, I mean it's really, it does have longer term impact down the road, which is the whole pension system is about looking down the road and trying to figure out what things are gonna be like many years now, many years hence, so that you can make sure that the people who are invested have the money to keep going.

- Yeah, I was gonna just make a note that, you know, the minimum training is I think 737 hours.

At least that's what Google's telling me right now.

And that's, you know, I think what 18 weeks or so to become you to get the training needed to become an officer.

So that's not really going too much beyond your 18th birthday there.

Really.

And I mean, just me personally as an 18 year old, I know that I would never have been ready for to... - Wait you're 18 years old?

- Yeah.

- As a current 18 year old.

Yeah.

(laughter) Wunderkind.

- One other thing that is noted here is that this is an option for hiring 18 year olds.

It doesn't mean that cities and communities who are looking for law enforcement have to, and there are communities that they are the Ohio Municipal League and the Ohio Township Association lobbying organizations for local governments that say they support this.

And there's also the note that 18 year olds can be firefighters.

And those folks are put in life and death situations all the time, differently, but still in very serious situations where people's lives are at stake.

So I think there's a lot of discussion that's gonna be happening around this.

And like I said, what I think is interesting is that this is bipartisan.

That you do have people who are on both sides who are raising really good questions about whether this is something that the state should be allowing.

- And the fraternal order of police is not for it.

- Yeah, I think there's the still question of the maturity level and of course the retirement system lab questions and everything.

I think there's the concerns that this needs to be studied a little bit more.

(light music) - Neighbors who oppose a proposed drop-in center for unhoused youth and young adults in Ohio City have filed suit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court seeking to have a decision by the Cleveland Board of Zoning Appeals overturned.

The neighbors want two zoning variances, nullified - Conor, the ministry filed his own appeal against the zoning appeals board, contending it doesn't even need the variance in order to do what it wants to do.

And it was kind of preemptive because they knew that this challenge was gonna be filed.

- [Conor] Yeah, it was the day before the neighbors filed their suit actually.

So interesting timing there.

Yeah.

The statement they said they're trying to cement their argument, which the BZA did not agree to.

They did not win that argument that they didn't even need the zoning variance in the first place.

They're saying that it's a charitable use.

They've had a variance to be charitable use in the neighborhood, which is a residential neighborhood for a long time.

And they're saying this is just continuing that, you know, tradition.

This is kind of a potential way for them to get around if there is a ruling against them.

Granted that nullifies the zoning, the variances they got that, you know, if the variances are thrown out, then hopefully if this goes well for them, they say, you know, well we didn't need them in the first place.

- Right.

So one of the neighbors saying about why they should be nullified?

- Sure.

And we should be clear too, you know, this is a small group of neighbors and there's kind of a broader group of neighbors in the neighborhood that do support this.

And you know, there was a letter signed by like 160 of them I think in the kind of general area in the neighborhood that do support it.

But this is where the accusations of nimbyism against these opponents kind of come in, which aren't for those who don't know, not in my backyard, is kind of the, what the acronym stands for.

The neighbors say they've offered multiple times throughout the planning process to help them find another locational Ohio City that's not in their backyard.

But Luther Metropolitan Ministry wasn't biting on that.

They already owned this building, as I mentioned before.

That's been there for a while.

And the advocates that the Luther Metropolitan Ministry worked with, these are folks who actually have experienced homelessness, who they are young people, you know, and they said that they felt it was the right spot.

They said that it's accessible, that there's a grocery store nearby, that it's public transit nearby.

You know, they like the neighborhood, they feel like it is welcoming.

So.

- So we'll see what happens then with this.

What we do know likely is that if there's a lawsuit filed, there'll be delays in what it is Luther Metropolitan Ministry wants to do.

- [Conor] Sure.

So usually in these processes, there's an injunction that's granted.

That means that the work, if they were, because they do need to do some renovation work on the building, that would mean that the work could not continue.

LMM says they want to begin construction soon.

You know, they say they, they don't think the delay will be that long, but it's kind of not up to them.

It's up to the court now at this point and the arguments that that will proceed.

(light music) - Monday on the "Sound of Ideas," on WKSU, we'll hear about the Public University's research Alliance, a new collaboration among the regions, colleges and universities to coordinate resources for job training, talent retention, and research.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

(outro music)