(gentle music) - Questions, anxiety and anger linger two weeks after a toxic freight train derailment in East Palestine.

The speaker of the Ohio House unveils his legislative priorities.

And should parental approval be required by law for children to use social media?

Ideas is next.

(sweeping music) Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Two weeks after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, questions, anxiety, anger, and fear linger for those directly impacted.

People there worry about long-term health impacts and whether the air and water are safe, despite government assurances that they are.

Ohio House republicans unveil their priority legislation for the new term, among those priorities, an effort to ban transgender athletes from girls and women's sports and more tax cuts.

Also making a return, the effort to raise the threshold for citizens to pass a constitutional amendment.

And should students have to get a parent's approval before using certain social media platforms?

Ohio's Lieutenant Governor is a proponent of that idea, which has been tucked into the new state budget proposal.

We'll talk about those stories and the rest of the week's news on the reporter's round table.

Joining me this week from DS3 and Public Media General, general assignment reporter Abigail Bottar, Ken Schneck, the editor of "The Buckeye Flame", and in Columbus State House News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Two weeks ago, a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine.

While a controlled burn is over and an evacuation order lifted, anger and anxiety linger as residents wonder whether the air and water are safe.

When you were there Wednesday, how did people react to the railroad failing to show up for the meeting?

- Yeah, I mean, they were really frustrated and angry.

They were confused by their excuse that there were threats made to employees.

They said, we are not threatening them, we just wanna talk.

We just want assurance that everything's okay.

Yeah, I was there for a good part of Wednesday and the amount of trains that we're going through was like, it was like one every couple seconds.

And so, I mean, it's understandable that they, you know, now that trains are going through again, that they would like some assurance that this can't happen again and they can't go through this nightmare again.

And yeah, they were just, I mean, frustrated by the responses from the EPA and then even angrier that Norfolk Southern didn't even show.

- There is a lot being whipped up on social media, a lot of accusations, government's lying, the media's not covering it.

Not true that the media's not covering it.

You were right there.

So there's a lot going on at the same time, but you can imagine that if you live in a community and you come back and you're told it's safe, but you see fish floating in the creek, they would say, well, that's a level that's more fish are more sensitive to, it's okay for you.

We've tested the water, or if they say it's safe to breathe, but you're getting a sore throat and your eyes are a little watery, you're thinking to yourself, maybe this isn't so safe.

So it's really perception versus what's, you know, what the numbers are, I suppose.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I think, I mean, I'm not sure.

Yeah, I think people are having a hard time trusting the environmental protection agencies that are on the scene.

They're saying it's safe, but then their lived experiences aren't matching up with that.

And then I, there's a little bit of back and forth here, like when the evacuation order was lifted, the Ohio EPA originally said the drinking water was safe.

Then this week they said that some people's drinking water was at risk and they were doing testing of wells and Governor Mike DeWine said, drink bottled water.

And then a couple days later they said, oh, the drinking water's safe again.

So I think people are thinking, oh, if the water can change, like can the air change?

Can they decide that now the air isn't safe to breathe?

And I think they're skeptical of everyone just saying everything's okay right now.

- We've heard that rail is really the safest way to move freight through the country and to move hazardous freight through the country.

However, we had another derailment yesterday outside of Detroit, and this really has heightened the attention on what's on these trains.

- Yeah, so this was just yesterday in Van Buren Township in Michigan, and there's video of it.

If you haven't seen the video, go online and check this out.

It was more than a half dozen cars derailed, and some of them were sideways on the tracks.

It was pretty visually stunning.

Police said that there weren't any injuries and there's zero evidence that hazardous materials were exposed in the derailment, but this also was a Norfolk Southern train.

So some people online are making that connection and really questioning how safe are the rails.

These came pretty close together, as far as rail incidents go.

But as you said that they often are few and far between.

- Karen, you've been covering the governor and what he's been saying about this and he called it absurd that the train that was going through East Palestine wasn't classified as such a train where we'd know what the hazardous materials were on it.

He is calling on Congress to take some action.

- Right and I talked to Senator Sherrod Brown this morning about some of this.

He's gonna, he was in East Palestine yesterday, along with Senator J.D.

Vance, and he said, you know, that the railroad needs to be held responsible and that DeWine is doing the right things by calling on the railroad to pay for everything, pay for the cleanup, pay for all the testing.

He also says he thinks that Congress needs to enhance safety rules and investment and require more inspections.

His target was really Norfolk Southern.

He pointed out that there was a Norfolk Southern derailment in Sandusky not that long ago, and yeah, derailments do happen, but it feels like these derailments, in specifically involving Norfolk Southern, have been happening pretty close together, like Ken just said.

- The governor is saying the state will file suit if the railroad doesn't follow up on its promise to pay for basically everything.

Do we have any indication that the railroad is pushing back?

It sounds as though money is flowing.

In fact, there was some question about whether people would have to sign indemnity documents that would say, I'm not going to sue you later, but if I get some money now and there's the railroad saying we're not doing that.

- Yeah, DeWine was asked about those checks that have been going out to some residents and saying, he said then at the press conference on Tuesday, that he didn't wanna play lawyer then, even though he is a lawyer, but he hadn't seen what the involvement in this was.

But he said he intends to hold Norfolk Southern responsible.

He said, I asked him the question about that and he said, "Norfolk Southern is responsible for this problem.

"We expect them to live up to what the CEO had told him "earlier in the week.

"They did it."

And he reiterated that on Fox News this morning, saying that the state intends to hold Norfolk Southern responsible.

There are some residents who are reporting difficulty in getting some of these reimbursements and what does reimbursement really look like too?

Not only paying for testing and paying for cleanup, but what about long-term effects?

What about if this turns out to be a more serious issue?

What about homeowners home values, things like that?

So they're obviously gonna be lawsuits, already there have been and they will probably continue.

- Yeah, and when I was on the ground speaking to people, Norfolk Southern's like paying for things like the hotel rooms that people had to take when the evacuation happened and clothes that they had to purchase.

But I was speaking to one woman who lives really close to the train tracks.

They haven't gone back home yet 'cause they say their house smells so awful and they've actually needed to purchase all new furniture.

And is the railroad gonna reimburse them for the brand new furniture that they had to buy because their furniture was ruined by the derailment?

I think, you know, there's questions about if what they're doing is enough.

- What are the resources available now?

We heard that people are getting some payments.

I've heard your reporting where someone was offered first and last month's rent and relocation expenses.

Again, this is not then, precluding folks from other compensation or lawsuits or those types of things.

But what is the railroad doing now?

What kind of money is it making available?

- Right and I just wanna say Norfolk Southern, I think there was a lawyer or some people that were spreading this claim that if you took the money now you could not sue them.

That is not true.

Norfolk Southern said, this is not precluding them from suing in the future, but yeah, they are offering these reimbursement checks to people that were impacted by the evacuation and they widened the pool of people who that can apply to this week as well.

And they're also, they're also paying businesses back for business loss due the evacuation.

And Norfolk Southern says that they've given out more than a million dollars to residents in that and they're also paying for at home air tests and water tests.

But there are complaints from residents that those aren't happening fast enough.

And then, yeah, I did speak to this woman who the railroad deemed her house unable to live in and they're offering to pay for her to move to pay for her first and last month's rent.

But she's saying the only reason that happened is because she made a big deal about it and she's wondering why not everyone is being offered the same thing she's being offered by the railroad.

There are other neighbors, right, that ostensibly probably isn't safe to live there too if her toxicology report came back so bad.

- So besides paying people for stuff they lost and being able to move and that type of thing, what else is the railroad doing?

I understand they submitted a remediation plan this week.

What does it plan to do to clean up?

- Yeah, they submitted the plan to the Ohio EPA.

It includes things like installing wells to monitor the groundwater in East Palestine and sampling and testing soil near the site of where they did that controlled release of the vinyl chloride.

But officials say that this total remediation will take years to complete, actually.

- Karen?

- Yeah, I wanted to add one thing that DeWine said this morning on Fox News, that he had reached out to HHS and the feds and that they are gonna bring in experts in toxicity and exposure to chemicals, and there's gonna be a clinic set up in the middle of the East Palestine community.

So people without health insurance, who don't have healthcare providers, can go there with their complaints about headaches and rashes and try to assure people what's happening is, I guess okay, and certainly allowing those doctors at that clinic to have access to those experts to try to make sure everything's okay.

So I think that's another thing.

Certainly Norfolk Southern is gonna, according to the state, have to pay for that.

But that's another thing that potentially can help people maybe get some reassurances that this community can come back, that there are things that are being done to help them.

(dramatic music) - Ohio House republicans revealed their priority bills this week.

Among them, a ban on transgender girls playing girls sports, making it harder for citizens to pass a constitutional amendment, and an overhaul of the income and property tax system.

Karen, we're more than halfway through February, does this indicate the divide within the Ohio House republicans is being healed?

- I'm trying not to laugh.

I mean, it's just when you said at the beginning of this that House republicans revealed their priority list, some House republicans revealed their priority list, yes.

These are the Stevens Republicans.

There are also more than 40 House republicans of the 67 in the House who are aligned with representative Derek Barron, who lost the vote for speaker to Stevens because Stevens built a coalition of republicans and democrats.

And so the Maron group has still not released their broad agenda.

They did do a press conference right after the Stevens' press conference though, to kind of criticize what Stevens had just said.

So no, it's really not.

The unity is not there.

I talked to Speaker Stevens for our TV show, "The State of Ohio" yesterday and he, I asked him about how is this unity?

How are you gonna unify all of these different groups?

And he says he has a history of working with both sides.

He says through respect, understanding, and listening, that's how they're gonna bring unity.

I don't think there's a whole lot of listening going on here.

- Let's run through three or four of the things that are, are being looked at and first I wanna mention HB six, which is what it'll be in this session, known as the Save Women's Sports Act.

It would prevent transgender athletes from playing on girls and women's sports teams in high school and colleges.

Ken, critics say women's sports doesn't need saving.

- [Ken] Nope.

- And this is a bill in search of a problem.

- Correct.

Last year there was one, one that would be the number one, only one trans athlete registered with the Ohio High School Athletic Association, which has rules and guidelines already in place to vet trans athletes.

And so again, you want to combine the two things that we're talking about, that this is not only a bill in search of a problem, but that it's number six, that this is in the top 12 priorities under the header of protecting families here in Ohio.

Now, it's a little bit different than last year's bill.

The last year's Save Women's Sports Act still sponsored by representative Jenna Powell, but this one actually doesn't define how sex is determined in the bill and that's significantly different.

Folks will remember that last year there was a lot of national controversy because sex was defined, if there was a challenge to an athlete's sex, the challenge would be satisfied by genital inspections and that caused national outcry.

The Senate, the Ohio Senate then changed that to birth record.

This bill doesn't define that and so that's a big question of, well, how is sex going to be defined?

The other big change is that, and I say this also with my college professor hat, last year, colleges and universities were taken out of the bill.

This year, not only are colleges and universities in the bill, but the bill's language reads that it applies to private colleges, which is significant.

'Cause often you see these bills only applying to public universities and the bill was assigned to the Higher Education Committee, which indicates their priority on colleges and universities.

And they shout out the NCAA, which last year's bill didn't do.

So there's a sense here, that they know this is gonna have national attention.

- Let me ask you just about one more, the HB eight, which is similar to one last session, called the Parents Bill of Rights, requires notification on issues related to students' health and wellbeing.

As you've discussed on this show before, and in your publication, that it could be used to potentially target LGBTQ+ students.

- 100%, that every analysis of this bill by LGBTQ advocates, especially because health and wellbeing is not being defined and especially given the climate, you have a lawsuit going on right now in Hilliard, Ohio, where parents are suing for the schools not outing LGBTQ students.

That is the context here, that this bill would force teachers and school staff to out LGBTQ students to parents.

And you have groups, like the Ohio Chapter of the Social Worker, school social workers saying that absolutely violates all of our codes of ethics to have to out students to their parents.

- Karen, the lawmakers who are presenting this, say measures like this will bring people to Ohio.

- Yeah, that's what Speaker Stevens says that everybody cares about Ohio, and these are the kind of things that will bring people to Ohio and keep people in Ohio.

There are certainly people who will say these are the kind of things that are driving people away from Ohio.

One thing I will add, there were about 50 bills that were looked at and assigned bill numbers, assigned to committees.

When I went down through the list, the bill that Ken was just talking about is not on it, but a lot of the bills that have been assigned numbers and committees are bills that are from democrats or from people who support Speaker Stevens.

So we have yet to see some of the bills from the Maron Coalition, even though they've been talking about the ones that they have filed.

One of the things that they, there is one bill that they are supportive of, they've been very clear on that should be a priority is this bill, this resolution, that would require 60% voter approval to amend the Ohio Constitution.

And that was supposed to, that was one thing that Maron wanted to see on the May ballot.

Now it looks like it might be on the November ballot and it could potentially be on the November ballot at the same time as a constitutional amendment that would protect reproductive rights and abortion access, which my State House news bureau colleague Joe Engles reported on yesterday, that the groups that are working on that seem to be headed toward this November's ballot.

- I think we're gonna have a busy ballot because it's not just that, but I think the marijuana, recreational marijuana legalization, I think everybody who wants to get an amendment wouldn't they then speed up and try to get it done by November?

Because otherwise, the threshold is gonna be much more onerous.

- Yeah, the threshold not only to get voter approval, but also the threshold to get those voter signatures.

You need, you know, 413,000 signatures right now from 44 counties that would up it to 88 counties.

It would also eliminate the 10 day grace period when some signatures are thrown out and groups get a chance to go out and get more.

That would be gone under this 60% voter approval proposal.

- I have a piece coming out on Monday called, "The Toll of Testifying".

I interviewed three moms who spent a good chunk of last year traveling back and forth from northeast Ohio to Columbus to testify to defend, all three of them, their trans children and many things unify these three unbelievable moms.

But one of them was, all three of them had concrete, spelled out, articulated plans to leave the state if this legislation passes, and they speak to families all across the state who say exactly the same thing, that if there's a ban on gender affirming care, if there's a rule that you have to out LGBTQ students to their parents if they, if trans youth are banned from sports, these families have plans to leave the state.

So this umbrella that Speaker Stevens said at the start of that this would make Ohio, and this was his quote, "All of these bills would make Ohio more competitive."

That is not the case.

These families have plans to leave.

- Let's talk about another bit of legislation.

Number one, house bill number one, seeks to overhaul the state's income tax and property tax system, proposes a flat income tax rate of 2.75% for incomes above $26,050 a year.

The measure would reduce the percentage of value that homeowners are assessed for property taxes and to help pay for those changes, the legislation proposed ending 1.2 billion in payments to schools and local governments.

Karen, let's talk a little bit about this.

The legislature has time after time, after time cut taxes, state taxes, state income taxes particularly.

The governor in his budget did not include a cut.

And what we're seeing here is really a sort of redo of how taxes are even calculated and collected.

- Right, the idea is, according to Stevens, to separate the income tax from property taxes.

He's a former county auditor and said that he wants to eliminate that connection and really make property taxes less complicated.

The bottom line of this is this is gonna be a huge and devastating impact potentially, for schools and local governments.

And we talk about local governments, you're talking about parks and senior centers, police and fire.

I mean, all of these groups and communities that get money from this are going to have to somehow come up with a way to replace that money.

And I asked Stevens about this because again, this is $1.2 billion a year that they could potentially lose, and of course with schools, this comes along with potentially the Backpack Bill, the universal voucher program that could potentially cost schools another billion dollars.

And Stevens said the whole idea of this was to, in some way, maybe through the budget, make those local governments and schools whole, and so to kind of ease this transition away from the tax structure now, to what they're trying to do.

That has been talked about before in previous budgets, when the tax code was moved around and shifted and a lot of those entities say they were never made whole, that they were promised to be made whole.

And then another governor, another legislature, decided they don't wanna pay for that anymore.

And so there's a real concern on the part of local governments and schools.

How are we gonna make up that money that's lost without just going back to voters with levies?

Because voters are, have a limit on how many levies they'll approve.

- Yeah, and I'll say on the thing, the officials are saying that this is gonna bring more people to Ohio.

They had like this billboard campaign maybe last year, two years ago that in other states, they said taxes are so low, come to Ohio.

And the people were saying, taxes being low does not make me wanna come to Ohio 'cause it means that things like schools and local governments are gonna be underfunded and there's not gonna be support for me if I move to Ohio.

So there seems to be like this disconnect, where people who might maybe want to move to Ohio are saying, well, if there's no tax money, then how am I going to get the support I need in the state?

- And Karen, the democrats who supported Stevens aren't for bills like this one and a number of others, the Backpack Bill, which would really change the way schools get their funding and allow a lot of money to move to private schools.

They're not for that.

Is there, have you heard anything from the minority leader, Allison Russo, about any regrets in regards to their support of this speaker?

- Well, it's interesting because all 32 House democrats did vote for Stevens over Maron, and in a statement after Stevens put out his priority list, Alison Russo said there's a lot that they agree on with Stevens, but there's a lot that they're miles apart on.

And she called some of the legislation extremist legislation.

Of course, now you're talking about different factions here.

If Stevens loses democratic votes on some of these bills, like the ban on trans athletes and girls sports, he potentially gains those votes from the Maron Coalition.

So democrats, somebody put it to me interestingly, that democrats, when they voted for Stevens over Maron, they basically got to choose their own jailer.

That they really, that both of these individuals were going to be very conservative, and so they went with one guy over another guy, thinking he was the lesser of two evils.

But democrats are not gonna be happy about this slate of priorities.

- Okay, I've got a few more items we're gonna have to get to, so let's be quick about this everyone.

One item in the budget not related to funding is dealing with protecting children on social media.

Lieutenant Governor John Houston is a champion of the Social Media Parental Notification Act, requires a parent to give consent for children younger than 16 to access social media and gaming platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Ohio is not the first state to consider this.

Karen, this is like, it was a rule in my house, like it was, it was not something the state needed to tell me to do.

But now the governor, the lieutenant governor is saying, and by the way, slipping into the budget too, but saying this is really something that we need to hold the social media companies accountable for and we need a law.

- Yeah, and the budget often includes policy matters.

I mean, you've seen abortion restrictions and things like that in previous budgets, but this one specifically targets this idea of social media has been contributing to kids being bullied, having mental health issues, having problems that we hadn't seen before kids this young were getting on social media.

And so Houston says it's up to these social media companies, you know, Google and Meta, to come up with some way to verify that parents have approved and given permission to their kids under 16 to get on these platforms and access some of this material, which can be very challenging, difficult, violent, abusive, all that stuff.

- I should also add that in testimony on the State House floor, some of the republican representatives have said that social media is also making kids trans.

And so there's a social element here of they're trying to control the information that kids are exposed to.

- They said that, they also said it's making kids depressed, that there're suicides related to it.

A whole lot of things that social media, the bad parts of social media.

But the question, Karen, is does the state have any right to enforce whatever regulation it may make just for Ohio when these are global corporations?

- Well, I asked Houston about that and he said, hey, this is not unusual when you know a product is harmful.

For example, cigarettes that they're, the government has stepped in to limit or mitigate the harmful nature of that product.

He said this is no different, that parents need to have this kind of control.

I need to know what's going on and it's no different than any sort of other potentially harmful thing that their kids are exposed to.

(dramatic music) - We are heading into the last half of February, usually a nasty winter month.

Not so much this year.

Karen, you were a Clevelander.

I know in Columbus it's basically like Florida weather.

(all laughing) But being in northeast Ohio, when we get this right, it kind of goes, I'm expecting snow in May.

- I have opening day tickets, so sure.

That's gonna be snow, right?

- That's in April.

- Twice, twice in one show.

- I know, I can't help.

- She's right back to it.

- Yeah, I'm hyper aware of this time of year because my birthday is on Monday, and so I always know just kind of what the weather is this time of year.

It's not usually like this folks.

- Wait, are we pulling that?

All right, my birthday was Sunday.

- [Ken] Yeah, that's past, I'm looking ahead.

- And her birthday was in January.

- [Abigail] Me and Karen have the same birthday.

- I don't have birthdays anymore.

- This is, yours is old news.

Mine is upcoming news.

- So there we go.

- And Lee Barr, who produces this show, her birthday is Groundhog Day.

- [Ken] Look at that!

- And so she gets to have her birthday over and over, over again.

Little Sunny and Cher soundtrack.

- Our birthdays were all canceled as children 'cause of the snowstorms.

- Yes!

- And now we get-- - Mine was always canceled for President's Day.

- I always got a, I always got a shovel for my birthday.

Here you go, Little Mickey, here's a shovel.

Go on out there and clear a path out to the car.

(dramatic music) Monday on the Sound of Ideas, on WKSU, the team is off for the President's Day holiday.

In our time slot, we bring you a special that looks at the climate crisis, how we survive the rising sea.

It looks at how the insurance industry is determining where people live, and the process of relocating entire communities from unlivable places.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

(gentle music)