Gov. Mike DeWine will deliver his final State of the State Speech tomorrow in Columbus. His two terms as governor end at the close of this year.
This was not the original date for the speech. It had been scheduled for Wednesday but was rescheduled when President Trump announced he would come to a pharmaceutical company in Cincinnati Wednesday.
DeWine was joking and being a bit coy last week when asked by reporters to preview his speech.
“Well, I’m going to talk about our future, the education of young people," DeWine said. "More to come. If I told you everything, you guys wouldn't even show up for the speech."
DeWine has used his State of the State speech to unveil policies such as the creation of the Department of Children and Youth, the State of Ohio Action for Resiliency Network or SOAR to work on causes of mental illness and addiction, the pilot OhioSEE program to bring treatment to kids who fail school vision screenings, and Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel’s fitness program.
Education is a serious issue for DeWine. He pushed for the Science of Reading curriculum, which includes more instruction in phonics. He's created a program awarding $5,000 scholarships to students in the top 5% of their high school class attending Ohio colleges or universities. And he helped launch and expand Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to include every child in Ohio under five years old.
DeWine has also expanded services for Ohioans with disabilities, by promoting ways to help them obtain work and provide more health care to low-income children by expanding the use of school nurses
“We’re going to be talking about how we continue to do everything that we can to remove barriers for people,” DeWine said.
DeWine is also expected to talk about the need to secure permanent funding for his clean water initiative, H2Ohio. DeWine said last week he'd like to see a bond issue on the November ballot. But House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) has not embraced that idea.
That’s not the only issue where DeWine and his fellow Republican lawmakers don’t see eye to eye. They've overridden a few of his vetoes, and are considering rejecting his veto of the elimination of a sales tax break for construction materials for data centers. His call for a primary seat belt law in the 2024 address wasn't well received. And DeWine has suggested for months that he'd have something to say about the death penalty in Ohio, though Republican leaders have said they don't support abolishing it.
There are questions about how much of DeWine's agenda will be embraced by whoever is elected governor later this year. Vivek Ramaswamy, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, has focused on eliminating the state income tax and slashing property taxes, and has touted strong support from President Trump. Democrats will be running hard against Republicans in this election. But Dr. Amy Acton, who was DeWine's first director of the Ohio Department of Health, has said she's proud of the work she and DeWine did during the pandemic before she left that position, and DeWine has said he was ultimately responsible for decisions made during that time.
While it's DeWine's final State of the State speech of eight years in office, it's only his sixth one. He didn't deliver the annual speech in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. This year's State of the State will air at noon on Tuesday, March 10 on the Ohio Channel.
