Sen. Shannon Jones said she is “impressed” with recent development in the city during a meet and greet Monday at Cincinnati State Middletown.

The Clearcreek Twp. Republican, who represents Ohio’s 7th Senate District, will now represent constituents in the city’s 4th Ward and parts of the 2nd Ward because of redistricting.

“Middletown really has a lot going on,” she said, citing the East End development and “the rejuvenation of this downtown area.”

Jones is entering her seventh year working in Columbus, first taking office in the Ohio House in January 2007.

She was appointed to her Senate seat in August 2009 following the death of the late Sen. Bob Schuler, and subsequently elected in November 2010. The district had included Warren County’s portion of Middletown. She talked exclusively with The Middletown Journal during her visit Monday.

Q: Middletown’s 4th and 2nd wards are rather different from the suburban communities you’ve represented in the past. How can you help these two areas of the city?

A: “I think the biggest thing I can do it to just be present and to listen to people, rather than me dictate to them what their needs are. I’m here today to listen to what’s on people’s minds.”

Q: What do you hope to learn about the community?

A: “I hope to learn what the core institutions are in the community because that gives me a sense of what the community values are, as well as the key people who are active in the community. Once you sort of know what the landscape looks like, I just plan to be around and listen and learn.”

Q: It appears Middletown and the region are becoming an educational hub in addition to being a health care hub. Is this good for the region?

A: “I have kind of been involved tangentially with the development of the Greentree (Health Sciences) Academy in Warren County and certainly there were some higher ed partners. I think this feeds in nicely to a regional approach we need to be taking. We need to have people prepared for the jobs in the health care industry so it’s not surprising that we would have at Greentree Academy, for example, an emphasis on medical training for future medical professions. One leads right into the other. We need both things.”

Q: You had been in a few leadership positions, most recently as the Senate Majority Whip in the 129th General Assembly. Why didn’t you run for any leadership positions for this General Assembly?

A: “I was hoping to be a committee chair and I am a committee chair (of the Medicaid, Health and Human Services committee). Some of my real legislative passions are things like health care and in particular children’s health and safety issues. Being a chair allows us more time to being able to delve into the legislative side of things, so I’m looking forward to that.”

Q: What is on your legislative plate for this General Assembly?

A: “At this point in time our focus, just given the time period, in the General Assembly is on the governor’s budget. We should be learning more about it by the end of this week, the beginning of next week. By Monday, Feb. 4 we should know the details of his budget. That sort of gives us the map of what’s to come in the state, and so that’s what our focus has been on. So that will include everything from K-12 education, higher education and health care certainly.

Q: And what do you think you’ll be working on?

A: “I’m working on a couple of things right now that have to do with school safety, so we’re looking in on school safety issues in the chamber, so I look to play a role in that.”

Q: Does that role involve the recent public discussion about placing guns in schools?

A: “I don’t think that’s where the conversation is going to lead. I think where my particular focus is on mental health issues and trying to understand how do we identify children that might be violent — and then once you identify those children what do we do about it. I hope we can spend some time understanding what those needs are and work to kind of fill those needs.”

Ohio Rep. Pete Beck, and his business associates, are being investigated by now two state agencies concerning alleged fraud. What are your thoughts on Beck’s recent legal troubles?

“I honestly don’t know anything about it other than what I read in the paper. I think as the case with these things, there’s an investigation ongoing and we’ll now more when it’s complete.”

Q: You became well-known when you introduced Senate Bill 5. What do you want to tell your new constituents about the bill that proposed to reform public unions?

A: “We were facing an $8 billion deficit in the state, and local school districts and cities and townships continued to face financial concerns and I wanted to provide local communities with the flexibility to balance their budgets in a time of constrained revenues. We put forward a package of reforms and the voters decided they didn’t want to give local communities that flexibility, and that’s their choice.”

Q: Will you re-introduce some form of that bill?

A: “I think the people have spoken. I think the communities come forward on the reforms they want us to look at, then I’d certainly be willing to look at them.”