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A new candidate enters next year's Republican race for governor and votes to the top.

Lawmakers roll forward on the transportation budget and changes on Ohio's weed law.

And advocates for food bank customers and Ohioans with disabilities say the state budget is falling short of some big needs.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Just.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

It's no surprise that Republican former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor.

As he officially kicked off his campaign this week.

But there was a surprise in how quickly President Trump weighed in on that race.

Ramaswamy launched his campaign for the Republican nomination for governor next year with a two day tour that started in Cincinnati and then moved to New Albany.

Romney Swamy had been building to this launch for several weeks.

As Attorney General Dave Yost had done before officially announcing his campaign in January, while many term limited statewide office holders had been lining up behind Ramaswamy as they were announcing their moves for next year.

The question was when or whether President Trump would weigh in.

He endorsed Yost in his reelection campaign in 2022.

Though Yost had initially opposed Trump in 2016, but shortly after Ramaswamy ended his New Albany event, Trump posted on his social media network that he was endorsing Ramaswamy, who on Inauguration Day left the Department of Government Efficiency that Trump had appointed him to head up with Elon Musk.

We'll have more on next year's campaign for governor, with the primary still 14 months away.

On next week's show.

House Republicans and Democrats voted unanimously to give a green light to the two year transportation budget, which primarily funds state highway route and bridge construction projects through the gas tax, but also dictates policy around public transit.

This budget puts $25,000 toward Ohio, rejoining a commission of Midwestern states seeking to expand passenger rail.

15 years after Republican former governor John Kasich rejected $400 million in federal funds to establish passenger rail service, the transportation budget also bans deputy registrars at Bureau of Motor Vehicle Offices from asking non-citizens who aren't eligible to vote if they want to register.

An earlier version would have required all residents to present citizenship proof to register to vote at those offices.

The transportation budget must pass the Senate and be signed by governor Mike DeWine by the end of March.

But it was a party line vote in the Senate to change the state's recreational marijuana law, approved by voters in 2023.

Republicans approve the bill, which bans public pot smoking caps home, grow from a dozen plants to six or fewer and limits the THC concentration for dispensaries to 35% for plant products and 70% for concentrates and extracts.

Plans to change the tax rate and where those taxes will go, or an earlier version of the bill, but are now likely to be included in the state budget.

As winters low temperatures have dragged on, high costs have continued for food, housing and utilities, and that's been keeping the traffic up at Ohio's 12 food banks and 3600 hunger relief agencies.

But funding to fight food insecurity is down, and governor Mike DeWine proposed budget $15 million lower than the current budget, as there has been an average year over year increase and utilization of food banks of about 10% from 2020 to 2023.

I asked the executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks what she's been told about why.

I think we've heard that this is a time when the state is looking at balancing a budget without some of the one time federal funding that they had access to for several years running.

So we recognize that, I what I've been told by governor DeWine and the team at Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is that the increase that we received in the 2425 biennium of $7.5 million per year was considered from their point of view, one time funding.

And I've just talked with them about, you know, the reality is, I would love to tell you that things are normal for people, but it doesn't look anything like normal right now in our food pantry lines.

And, you know, we can't possibly go back to the levels, that, are that reduced right now and keep up an adequate response to need.

So you're asking for the restoration of that funding, but also some additional funding as well to deal with more people actually showing up for food banks.

Yeah, we've been trying to listen with our partners because we do want to be good stewards.

We want to listen to folks on both sides of the aisle in the House and the Senate about what's reasonable, what's achievable right now in the budgetary environment that we're in and the revenue environment that we're in.

So we are asking for an additional $4.93 million for the restoration of the cuts and then an additional $4.93 million per year.

That's just simply based on inflationary projections by the CBO for the next couple of years and then modest increases in need.

We're looking at the past couple of years and going, gosh, we hope that we don't continue to see need accelerate that quickly.

So let's hope that we get to resolve some of that.

We see some leveling out in need.

And so just give us enough to make sure that we can give adequate service to the people who are coming to us.

And the money that you get when you are providing food for people in food banks, I mean, this is money that you're getting from the state that you use to buy food.

That's right.

This is donated food.

This is people who personally donate.

I mean, it's not just one source, it's multiple sources.

That's right.

We blend as many sources as we can, and we're really about rescuing food in as many places as we can.

Our state funded food programs are rooted in the idea, first of all, that we're an agriculture state.

Agriculture remains our number one industry.

Our food supply chain is a hugely important part of our state's economy.

And how each of us, access food every day when we go to our grocery store.

And we can be part of maintaining that strong agricultural supply chain so we can rescue those maybe slightly bruised apples or those strangely shaped carrots.

Before the horrible days of the current avian influenza, we're able to, bring in small and medium eggs when new layers are coming on.

And we do that at pennies on the pound.

We're making sure that food doesn't go wasted, and that farmers can still put folks out to pick the food, pack it and get it to us.

And we also source food in bulk.

So those state funds go straight to purchasing food that goes out throughout food pantries, in all 88 counties in that in Ohio.

And yes, we're also leveraging 100 million pounds or more of donated food every year, working with our retailers and our manufacturers to, again, make sure we're not seeing that food go to waste.

The people who are at your food banks, the people who are in those lines and who are utilizing food banks, Ohioans with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level are eligible.

We're talking about $31,300 a year for a single person, $42,300 a year for a household, to $53,300 a year for a household of three, 64,300 for a household of four.

These these are people all around the state.

Yeah.

We have about 3.4 million Ohioans that live in households at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.

It's almost a third of the entire population.

lot of the folks that you are come to food banks are also receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Snap benefits as well.

And there's some real uncertainty about what's going to happen with Snap benefits on the federal level.

Yeah, we are mired in uncertainty at the federal level in a lot of ways, including with Snap and, just quickly, about 1.5 million or so Ohioans currently are poor enough to qualify.

And our participating in Snap.

So it's less than half of all of those Ohioans that are income eligible for our services at the food banks.

So not only are we serving another 1.9 million or so Ohioans potentially, that aren't poor enough to qualify for Snap, but we're also trying to help fill gaps in those Snap benefits are inadequate.

So yeah, obviously Snap benefits haven't gone up as quickly as the cost of food has gone up as quickly as rent has gone up.

And so folks, again, don't have as much purchasing power with those dollars.

They're also often being scammed.

Right now they're being victimized by organized crime.

We have known as 30,000 or so individuals in Ohio that were victimized by organized criminals that are skimming their benefits at point of sale devices.

And so that's another problem we're trying to absorb.

But yeah, broadly, at the federal level, we have a lot of concerns about long term funding and integrity for Snap.

In budget reconciliation talks.

You know, there's been direction, given that they're looking to come up with hundreds of billions of dollars in savings in the U.S. Department of Agriculture budget, which ultimately is going to erode access to that first line of defense against hunger.

And we can't possibly make up for that on our own.

One of the things that's been talked about to potentially give people who are using those cards more purchasing power is to limit the things that they can buy limit.

For instance, the Trump administration has proposed banning purchases of junk food.

Is that a proposal that you'd be supportive of?

We never support something that would limit access to Snap and why?

I think about that as a as a mechanism that would ultimately limit access to Snap, is that if I live in a rural community where I already may be struggling to access healthy food, there's food deserts in general.

If my retailer now has this extra level of bureaucracy that they have to implement, where they have to somehow what label all of the food that's inventoried in their system, and then their cashiers have to be trained on what can and can't be purchased with their Snap dollars.

You know, that retailer might just say, hey, I'm not going to accept EBT anymore.

And then we're in a situation where we've actually worsened access to healthy foods.

I really think it's about focusing on benefit adequacy and on improving access to outlets for healthy food themselves.

In the communities, you often hear people who are concerned about the spending in these programs in general, saying, hey, there is a workforce shortage right now.

There are plenty of jobs available.

There's a there's a war on work.

People are people just don't want to work.

How do you push back on that?

How do you push back on that narrative?

Well, we did a survey in spring of 2024 of about 2300 unique verified food pantry visitors who responded anonymously to an extensive survey.

We asked them why they were coming to us for help, and we also asked them about some of their demographic information, because we're asked that very often, right.

That's a misconception that a lot of people unfortunately have, many of them are retirees.

They're seniors that now can't get into the workforce.

They're physically unable to.

And, they're they're looking to enjoy their golden years and are struggling.

Too many of them are families with children who certainly, you know, I understand that there's, important conversation happening, an important investment that are being considered around access to childcare, access to quality public education so kids can, you know, both grow and learn safely in their community.

And so their parents and caregivers can also go and earn wages to support their household so that, you know, open a conversation there.

But the vast majority of what the data tells us is that most of our households are either older adults, families with kids, or people who are working.

Right.

We have, the majority of folks, are working now.

They are often in contingent, temporary jobs.

They're going week to week waiting to hear what their schedule is going to be like, how many hours they're going to get this week.

And they maybe don't have benefits.

They don't have paid time off.

So if their kid was hit with the horrible flu season and had to stay home from school, how are they making up those wages?

Right.

I think it's a real conversation about the quality of work, how we maintain, a real sense of pride in the type of work that we're empowering people to be able to maintain and making that work pay making sure that people can afford their basic needs with the wages that they're earning.

And as I said, a third of people in our state live with households and live in households with incomes under 200% of the federal poverty level, they're working.

They're just not earning enough.

these are tough times too.

For those who advocate for people with disabilities who are looking at both uncertainty at the federal level as well as funding in DeWine's budget, especially for mental health services.

I talked to the president and CEO of the state's official protection and advocacy organization for people with disabilities about those issues.

with disability rights Ohio, you speak out for people with disabilities.

That includes people who need mental health services and support.

So in your testimony about the budget, governor Mike DeWine proposed budget, you talk about how the budget's putting money toward mobile crisis services for adults and mobile response stabilization services for people under 21.

And I want to ask you, is that related to concerns about interactions with law enforcement?

Because people with disabilities, according to your website, are only 20% of the population, but make up 30 to 50% of the people who have interactions with law enforcement.

Is that where some of that comes from?

So, yes, definitely, we want to make sure that we're building up a community crisis response system that doesn't rely on law enforcement.

We have that for medical crises, right?

We have trained paramedics, and they know what to do and how to help people and get them to where they need to go.

We need something like comparable like that for behavioral health crises.

The law enforcement, if that's really not their job, their job is for safety.

And if there's a safety issue, they should come out.

But if it's a behavioral health crisis, we want people who are trained for a behavioral health crisis to be the responders.

So the support by the by the governor's budget for expanding some of that statewide mobile crisis services across to every county and and increasing the supports for the mobile responses for youth under 21 is an amazing investment to help improve access to those types of crisis services in our community.

And there's a difference between what you would provide for adults and what you provide for people under 21.

There could be certainly the programs might have a lot of similar services, but certainly with youth, you know, one of the focuses is going to be trying to keep them in their home.

Right?

With wraparound services, you might have to think about education access, which might look a little bit different for an adult, where it may be more about employment, for example.

So yeah, so the services could look differently.

But they're all going to be hopefully individualized to the person and their needs.

So it's important to have a kind of array or continuum of crisis response services available.

You also are watching the budget for what it does for community based comprehensive behavioral health clinic crisis centers.

There was a working group that was established to look into Ohio's six state operated psychiatric hospitals, which are nearly full almost all the time.

Right.

And the concerns about how a person basically needs to interact with the criminal justice system to get these services.

Is this all kind of wrapped into that?

It could be compared to that.

Certainly having more crisis services, whether it's in the community or at a center like these new centers that they're investing in, can certainly divert individuals from a having involvement, criminal justice when they shouldn't, or needing to maybe go into a psychiatric hospital, whether that's a private or a state psychiatric hospital.

And unless you have, you know, applicable insurance, you're not going to get in a private psychiatric hospital.

Right.

And we know a lot of people don't have that, which does then leave state service systems or county Board of Mental Health funded service systems.

And you're really interested in the whole idea of community based behavioral centers that that keeps people in their community close to their family and friends and other support systems.

Absolutely.

Having services in the community is the best way to receive any kind of supportive services, even medical services.

You know, when we can we try to keep people in their homes, right?

We don't hospitalized them unnecessarily, so we want to provide those services.

It's less disruptive so they can maintain employment, maintain relationships with friends and family, stay in their homes and maintain housing, which can also be an issue, right, of insecurity of housing.

So having those supports in the community, whether it's while they're in their apartment or in a sort of short term community center that's nearby, and it's going to get them back to their regular life as quickly as possible.

You also know that the budget would move recreational marijuana revenue to funding the 988 Suicide Intervention Prevention hotline, along with funding county jails and police training.

Is that the funding source that you would like to see for the 988 hotline?

You know, we are not, don't have an opinion about what the funding source of.

We were just glad that there's going to be additional funding for nine and eight.

I think it's a good use of that additional state revenue.

I'm glad to see it being invested back into a community need that we know is is out there on these issues in general.

Is there is the funding adequate?

Do you feel like or is that kind of is it ever going to be enough?

It's not adequate.

You know, we back in the 1980s just short history lesson when there was the Mental Health Act, and we made the intentional decision as a nation to move away from long term institutionalization of people that had psychiatric diagnoses or behavioral health needs.

There was a promise that was never kept of providing those services in the community and funding the community.

That didn't happen.

And so we've ended up with this very inadequate.

It fragmented.

I'm not even sure it's called a system that ends up relying on law enforcement, jails, prisons, nursing homes.

People don't realize, but a lot of people with behavioral health needs end up in nursing homes, which makes absolutely no sense for most of them.

And in our system, the actual behavioral health system, particularly the parts that are in the community, were never fully invested.

So while we are pleased that there are going to be further investments in this budget in crisis response, and that's absolutely necessary, more investments will be needed in order to fully build up that system to where it needs to be.

And you have investments at the state level, but also at the federal level.

That's caused some uncertainty in the last couple of weeks.

President Trump had an executive order to pause federal grant and loan funding.

And you write on your website that that was confusing and chaotic for a period there.

What's happened since then?

And are you concerned that there are more changes in this area coming?

So I think the thing is, since then, of course, there's been court challenges that have stopped those initial funding freezes.

But I think what what we're really concerned about is what's going to happen at the federal appropriations level.

Right?

They just voted a day or two ago, right on the top line numbers.

And they want to save, like, I think, over 800 billion in the House bill to do that.

Well, they're saying it's not necessarily about Medicaid.

It has to be about Medicaid.

That's like the one of the biggest discretionary items in the federal budget.

And we're concerned that changes to Medicaid are going to, you know, impact people obviously, accessing mental health services, for example, I think it's about 47% of Ohioans get mental health services through some form of Medicaid.

And many of them are likely through things like the Group eight expansion, which if they reduced federal match for that, the state budget then has a trigger to just get rid of it.

And that could impact 700,000 Ohioans for coverage in general.

But Medicaid is also the only way, really, for people with disabilities to get long term services and supports, whether in the community or in a nursing facility type setting, for example.

You can't get that through private health insurance, not even through Medicare.

Beyond a short term stay or short term in-home services, you have to, unfortunately, access Medicaid to get things like personal care, homemaker care, those activities with daily living that people with disabilities need help with transportation, employment supports nursing care in the home, all of those types of services, and any sort of changes to Medicaid, whether it's per capita cuts or block grants, they're going to have a disproportionate impact on the people with the highest needs.

People with significant needs because of their disability.

Medicaid is about 18%.

Is, is that population the aging, blind and disabled population of eligibility?

But there are about 47% of the cost because of the increased needs.

And they're going to get hit the hardest because a lot of those long term services, the supports in the community are optional services.

And guess where the state's going to have to make cuts that they have to make hard choices.

I also want to ask you about a constant target by Republicans at the federal level for elimination of this Department of Education.

There would be a serious impact on people and kids with disabilities in Ohio if the Department of Education were eliminated.

Is that right?

Absolutely.

So there's a couple concerns there.

One is what's going to happen to the actual funding that we get through, like idea which idea which is not necessarily directly tied to whether the Department of Education exists, but is of concern if they're talking about trying to reduce support for education at the federal level or divert those supports into things like vouchers, which in Ohio at least require students and parents to waive their rights under the Ada to a fair and appropriate public education in order to access access that type of funding.

There's also the concern that not only would would funding directly for student services potentially be impacted, but funding for teacher training, which currently goes through the Department of Education, the expertise and standards that are set by the Department of Education that help states make sure that they are providing appropriate services, standards that make sure that there's a certain level of services provided to students with disabilities.

Before the Ida, many students didn't get educated in public schools at all, and even today, we still have a pretty big achievement gap for students with disabilities on things like math and reading and graduation.

And that doesn't need to be the case unless, you know, there's only a couple percent of students with disabilities that might not be able to learn the curriculum that all students learn, but we still have this achievement gap.

Any cuts to funding, any cuts to that oversight sort of standards and support is going to impact and worsen that.

And ultimately that has an impact on all of us, right?

People are going to be less prepared to work.

We're going to be less competitive in the labor force in Ohio, nationwide and internationally.

So the idea that special needs students and students with disabilities can be educated differently, they don't need to be in the mainstream population.

How does that help them?

It many of these students can actually learn alongside other differently abled students.

Absolutely.

And one of the standards that the Department of Education currently tracks data on.

And make sure that, you know, certain standards are met, is that concept of least restrictive environment and making sure they're getting access to that general education curriculum that all other students are getting access to.

I want to ask you about, drew and your advocacy in general.

You are.

Ohio's protection and advocacy organization is required by federal law.

States all have these.

Your organization has gotten some criticism from family members of severely disabled people for legal actions that you've taken.

There was also an effort a couple years ago to reassign drew as the state's and a system that did not happen.

There's been this long standing debate over what is the best housing option.

Is it, independent living or is it in the intermediate care facilities?

And there was a joint committee that was formed in 2021 to review all this and everything it was supposed to meet every two years.

It has what's going on with all of this?

So as you said, the joint committee hasn't met since its initial hearing in 2022.

We were very disappointed that even though there were many individuals with disabilities and family members that came in and spoke about the importance of having access and further investments in home and community based services, and why they thought that advocacy by Dr. Ro to try to expand access was important.

That wasn't even considered.

It wasn't included in any of the committee reports or recommendations.

So that was very disappointing to us.

But, you know, today we're you know, we're as you said, we're still the protection and advocacy system.

We're still here.

We've always been led by people with disabilities at our board level, at the individual client level and at our systemic level, whether that's, you know, advocacy at a legal, you know, class action kind of level or in the policy world.

And we're going to continue to do that.

We don't tell people what the best option is.

We give them information about those options.

And we provide advocacy based on what people with disabilities say is most important.

And what they have consistently told us is we need more access to home and community based services.

That's where we see the most significant barriers and limitations to access, and we're trying to fix that.

State lawmakers had called for a joint committee to review concerns raised by some family members about disability rights.

Ohio's advocacy in 2022.

After two meetings, a series of recommendations were issued that drew says were disappointing because they didn't take into account the support the organization has gotten from other family members.

The joint committee was supposed to meet every two years, but is not convened since those recommendations were issued.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State news.org or find us online by searching State of Ohio Show.

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Look for it every Monday morning wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for watching and please join us again next time for the State of Ohio.

Just.

Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at porterwright.com.

Porter Wright inspired Every day in Ohio Education Association, representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org.