(pensive music) - Cleveland City Council began digging into Mayor Justin Bibbs budget this week, pushing back on some of his proposals.

A state task force recommends new training requirements for police, heavy on communication.

And higher education institutions across the state are making budget cuts.

Ideas is next.

(upbeat theme music) Hello and welcome to Ideas, I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Cleveland City Council questioned Mayor Justin Bibb over his nearly $2 billion budget plan, which council must approve by April 1st, raising questions about unfilled positions, concern about lack of success in replenishing police ranks and alarm over pending afterschool program cuts to close the gap in a separate budget, that of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

A state task force wants training for police officers in Ohio to be revamped to focus more on communicating with the public and decision-making in the field.

Akron's Citizen Police Oversight Board said it has subpoena power in investigations, but agrees that officers who are subpoenaed don't have to comply.

And higher education institutions in Ohio are slashing people and programs to make up for budget shortfalls.

A community college in Youngstown has suspended enrollment.

Joining me for the round table today, Ideastream Public Media Associate Producer for Newscasts, Josh Boose, and local government reporter, Abbey Marshall, both with me at the Idea Center in Cleveland.

And in Columbus, State House News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

The focus in this week's Cleveland budget hearings was on public safety and how to handle vacancies the city currently has open.

Mayor Bibb has proposed cutting some of the budgeted unfilled police positions.

Open positions in other departments he argued, shouldn't apply to just that department, but should be put into a pool, allowing the city to fill the most urgent openings.

So let's dig into a little bit of that, Abbey, you reported that council bristled at the mayor's proposal to create a vacancy pool separate from the safety forces.

We wanna be clear about that.

- [Abbey] Correct.

- But in general, with openings in a bunch of different departments, what you would generally have is, I have 10 openings in the accounting department, they go to accounting, but he might say, "You know what, accounting's fine without 10 more.

Maybe we could slide those into streets or something."

- [Abbey] Sure.

- That's basically the idea?

- Yeah, so each department would say, you know, we have X number of jobs that's put into the budget.

This year, it's done a little bit differently.

So, you know, not everyone likes change to processes that they are used to.

But the idea is, is that this might be in some ways undermining council's authority because the way it works is that the mayor will come to the negotiating table and say, "Here's my budget estimate."

But council ultimately has final say over what goes into that budget.

So the idea that they could be approving this pool of open positions without knowing where exactly they're going to go or what jobs those are, that's kind of unsettling to some council members.

So like you said, this would give the city more flexibility to say, "Hey, we have this pool of vacancies and this department building and housing, or whatever it may be, needs it right now.

Let's just pull it from the vacancy pool."

But some council members are worried about that strategy.

- One of the arguments for that at the moment is housing inspectors that are needed.

And we've talked in the past here on this show about the housing first legislation that council approved and the mayor had put forward.

And one of the things that's gonna include is exterior inspections of houses upon sale.

In order to do that, you need people.

- [Abbey] Right.

- The mayor is saying, "We can hire 20 building and housing inspectors right now."

- [Abbey] Yeah, so they actually, this is a negotiation, like I said.

- [Mike] Right.

- The mayor will present it, council says, "We don't like that," or, "We do like that," and they can come to an agreement.

So part of that was taking these positions out of building and housing or other departments could potentially hurt legislation like this Residence First, which is this huge sweeping housing code overhaul that does require manpower to enforce.

So yesterday, in the budget hearings, the mayor's administration came to the table and said, "Okay, we heard you, here are 20 vacant positions that we are putting back into building and housing."

And a majority of those will be property maintenance inspectors, which will be entry level jobs that can kind of do a lot of this manpower to make sure that these laws that are implemented aren't just laws that are on the books, but are actually going to be put into practice.

- Talking about public safety, we have a situation in Cleveland where there was a budgeted target workforce in the police department of more than 1,600 officers that had been the norm for a long time.

And then Bibb had dropped that number to 1,498 in the last budget.

This year, he's aiming for 1,350.

- [Abbey] Yeah.

- That's just eliminating open positions, that's not eliminating people.

They'd still have to hire hundreds in order to get up to that number.

- Right, and that's kind of the argument here when some members of council say they don't like the idea of cutting police positions.

The city says, you know, nothing in the day-to-day is actually going to change because these aren't jobs that people currently have.

The argument from council side is once you take that away, how will you put that back?

But like you said, there's still 200 some positions that need to be filled.

As you mentioned, that number has dropped pretty significantly in the last few years, but the department only have employed about 1,200 officers last year, there were about 160 departures from retirement going to the suburbs, whatever it may be.

And the cadet class really only filled in about 30 or so positions.

So we are hemorrhaging officers at a rate that we can't keep up with.

So the idea is why don't we cut the number of budgeted officer positions to pay the way for some of these raises and benefits that the mayor has agreed to signing bonuses, that sort of thing.

And even if all these are filled, it's going to be about a $15 million increase in wages and bonuses compared to previous pay rates.

And by law, this needs to be a balanced budget.

So it's gotta give somewhere.

And the city is even kind of skeptical of if they can fill those positions at all.

- [Mike] David in Cleveland Heights sends an email, he says, "For Cleveland's budgeting, my main hope is that the reduction of police officers," and he means positions, "that are unfilled, is being done with good reason and with funds shifted more to better policing efforts such as community policing, prevention programs, and stress management training.

My main fear is that this process will become too politicized, rather than reasoned."

- [Abbey] Sure.

And I think that I have talked about this many times on the show that police does not necessarily equate to peace.

So while some might feel safer with a bigger police presence, and that is something that we're hearing from a lot of members of council and a lot of people in their wards, they want a bigger police presence, police are typically reactionary, they respond while a crime is happening or after a crime is happening.

So other things that the city is doing to try to address this increase in violence, particularly the root causes of violence, it's a very multidisciplinary approach.

So I did stories in the past about these violence prevention funds that the city has invested in that can go toward education, housing, mentorship, that sort of thing.

So all of these things do need to come together, but we are hearing from council members that what they want in their wards are more police.

- [Mike] Let's talk about the schools.

It wasn't necessarily a hearing on the school's budget, but the council members were alarmed about what we talked about last week, which is the fact that the Cleveland schools will have to make significant cuts, after school programs, some of them with the Boys and Girls clubs and others will be cut because money that paid for that came from pandemic funds, which are now going away.

And council members were pretty severe about that.

Like, who's getting fired over this?

- [Abbey] Right, yeah.

So the first day of these budget hearings is really the only day typically that Mayor Bibb comes to.

The rest of it is handled by usually department heads, but this year it is the Chief Financial Officer, Ahmed Abonamah.

And on the first day when the mayor was in attendance, Richard Starr was pretty pointed in some of his questions.

He said, "Who's getting fired for this $168 million deficit and what it is doing to our city's kids?"

Bibb had said prior to the new superintendent taking the helm of CMSD that there was a deficit, he just didn't realize how great it was.

And last week, which you had mentioned, the new superintendent kind of laid out plans for how they can try to balance the books over the next two years.

But that includes some pretty controversial things such as cutting afterschool programs run by external partners.

And the idea is, well, who's accountable for this?

You know, we have a new superintendent and so some council members were very unhappy over that.

- [Mike] You mentioned that Mr. Abonamah is gonna be the one that's doing the testifying.

In the past, it was always the department heads.

I kind of like that.

- [Abbey] Right.

- And I wonder about the idea of the public.

You get a chance to see who is that person in charge of this department and we're not gonna get the opportunity to do that this year.

- [Abbey] Yeah.

- Nor is counsel.

- They had some operational hearings previously where a lot of department heads speak up, and department heads typically do come to legislation that affects their department.

But yes, Abonamah is kind of leading the charge.

He is the face of the city's finances so he is the one doing it.

I kind of did like seeing it, it's a good learning experience.

You know, I've only been on this beat specifically in Cleveland for about a year.

So the budget hearing is the time usually where you can see everyone come to the table.

And I think that that is, you know, good for me as a city hall reporter, but also for the public to see, you know, their tax dollars at work and who's running those.

- [Mike] They'll have more hearings next week, you'll be there.

And then the budget has to be finalized and approved by April one.

- [Abbey] Correct, so they will continue these hearings next week, typically, or the big thing I'm gonna be looking out for next week is they will be discussing these non-departmental expenses, which will include this vacancy pool so I'm sure we will hear more on that.

They'll likely wrap up next week, and I expect that they will have it all amended, approved, and stuff well before that April 1st deadline.

- [Mike] And we are talking about the Cleveland budget, but no matter what community you live in, this is a process that plays out everywhere where the mayor puts forward a budget in most cases, sometimes the city manager, and then you've got council sort of taking a look at it and saying, "What should it be?"

And there should be consensus at the end of that.

So wherever you live, they're talking about budgets.

- [Abbey] Correct.

- Let's move on though to police.

We did talk a little bit about police staffing.

Across the state though, let's talk about police training.

Attorney General Dave Yost this week announced recommendations from a task force he put together for future police training.

It leans hard on communication and decision-making.

Officers currently must complete a minimum of 740 hours of instruction.

And the task force recommended substituting at least 72 hours within that framework to deal with contemporary policing issues.

Karen, one of the key recommendations is to provide training and communication to teach police officers how to better deal with people, especially those in crisis.

That's a main tenet of the job.

- Well, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you've got a lot of calls that involve people who are in mental health situations.

And so trying to deescalate those is now being proposed as something that should be added into the basic training that police officers get.

Things like, you know, how to talk to people and try to bring them down, reading body language to try to anticipate what's gonna happen here, and, again, trying to deescalate situations.

So there's seven total recommendations, but that's a big one.

And also there's some other ones that deal with like expanding firearms qualifications, including passing a legal and policy exam and also pulling back on the physical fitness requirements.

So candidates only need to graduate, they only need two of the three elements of that exam.

And one of the other things I think is really interesting is adding in new technologies while incorporating reality-based scenarios.

So there was a lot of talk about the need to do things in the real world and have that real world training and this would be an attempt to try to do that.

- So you only have to do two of the three physical things.

So you're saying there's a chance for me.

- Well... - [Mike] Okay, maybe not.

- I think it's a run.

It's a run, push-up, sit-up, so, yeah, I guess so.

- [Mike] I'm working on the sit ups, okay?

Give me a break.

Josh, there are a whole lot of other things.

One of them is no more boring lectures.

They want to have this training be not the kind of thing where you sit there and have someone drone on at you.

- [Josh] Yeah, hands-on training.

That's what they're really talking about here.

And something that I thought was very interesting that, I don't know how many police departments do this or how many law enforcement military do, managing cognitive demand is one of the training sessions.

It sounds simple, I know, but, you know, something that is rarely touched on, I would think in the past in many law enforcement professions, essentially taking care of yourself.

So that's part of it there for sure.

The written test, there's a written test now as well, or the proposed written test.

And it won't necessarily talk about how to use your weapon, though, that will be discussed, excuse me.

But when to use your weapon, the processes behind that, essentially, intellectually as you're trying to navigate when to use it in a situation.

- [Mike] Right, and that string of things that are being trained on, you mentioned managing cognitive demand, it's also critical decision-making, tactical breathing.

- [Josh] Yeah.

- Crisis mitigation and deescalation, all important skills.

And as we've heard from the attorney general, Karen, these are recommendations that reflect the changing expectations that the police have from the public and others.

- Yeah, Yost said during the press conference that he feels that the police training has been at a standstill in some ways over the last decade.

And so he wants to kind of bring it forward a little bit, including bringing in those communication skills 'cause that's becoming so important.

And I mean, we've heard about this for years in terms of trying to deescalate and diffuse situations involving people who are clearly in mental health crisis.

And that that was something that was even talked about after the George Floyd murder is how to start funding some parts of police departments that deal with mental health situations, so that's a totally different situation in many cases.

But he also says that there needs to be more funding, funding beyond the two years that are in the current state budget, so that this kind of training can continue long-term.

(thought-provoking music) - Akron's Citizen Police Oversight Board says it has the power to issue subpoenas, but when it developed its rules this week in that counsel will approve them, the board noted that if a union officer doesn't wanna be subpoenaed, he or she doesn't have to comply.

So is it really subpoena power, Josh?

- [Josh] Yeah.

Well, no, I think is the answer to that.

The board says they're not taking away subpoena power, but in all but language, essentially they are.

No police officer will be forced to abide by the subpoena.

It's voluntary.

But if there's a choice, you know, why would the police union even permit that?

So subpoena power light, maybe.

I mean, I don't know how they would enforce this if they're going to, well, not enforce it.

- [Mike] Right.

The union obviously had pushed back and said, "That's against the union contract."

- [Josh] Yeah.

- You can't subpoena.

So this is basically a response to that in a way that they're hoping to get city council to approve it 'cause at first they said, "Wait a minute, you gotta deal with the union on this."

So now, they've got at least a document, maybe not that kind of ironclad subpoena power, but other powers that the Police Oversight Board might have.

It's able to look into cases concurrently with investigations that are going on by the department itself.

- [Josh] So they're, yeah, they do have that power.

They do have, you know, they're not taking away anything, but that subpoena power per se.

The union's attorney, you know, tells the city right now, "Look, we're in favor of this."

And why wouldn't they be?

It's really in their favor if you look at the big picture.

- And Abbey, the board now is asking citizens to support the rules, make sure that that support is known to council 'cause they need council to pass it.

- [Abbey] Right, yeah, the board member wants people to write into their council members because they could vote on these rules as early as Monday.

And ultimately, council members respond to the public, or at least should, they're the closest government officials to the people that they serve.

- [Mike] Right, they're constituents for sure.

(thought-provoking music) When the pandemic caused employees to work from home, the legislature allowed cities to continue collecting income taxes from employers, even if the worker did their job from home in another town.

A worker filed suit, and this week, the Ohio Supreme Court sided with cities denying workers refunds.

Karen, it was a five to two ruling by partisan, so not at all along party lines, but also not unanimous.

- Right, what happened here was a remote worker in Cincinnati had said that during the lockdown, which we were all part of that, the government had told us all to stay home, right, he was working from home in Mount Ash, which is the suburb of Cincinnati, and his office was in Cincinnati.

And he said because of that, that his company, or the city of Cincinnati rather, did not have the right and the authority to collect income tax because he wasn't working in the city, he was working at his home.

And so the interesting thing to see the result here was that the court did rule that yes they did.

And the argument had been from cities that this is a home rule power, that the state lawmakers, there was a state law that was passed that allowed state cities to collect income tax from remote workers, that state lawmakers had granted cities that power and so they were able to do this.

And of course cities have said this would've been a huge problem if they would've lost out on that revenue from 2020, they would've had huge holes in their budgets, which would've meant they would've had to gone back to taxpayers to get money to try to repair that.

- [Mike] The Chief Justice and one other Republican dissented on this, they basically said what?

- Well, the chief justice says that basically state lawmakers don't have this power and that this is not an appropriate use of a state law to do this when you've got a non-resident working outside the city limits, who is challenging whether the city can collect this income tax.

And I just think it's interesting to hear the argument that this is somehow a taxpayer benefit because taxpayers could have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds.

But like I said, the cities had argued that, well, if they had had to go back to taxpayers to fix the budget holes that would've resulted here, taxpayers would've paid at that point or they would've lost services that they find valuable.

You know, I mean when you start talking about city cuts, you're talking about the most basic of things like police and trash pickup and patching potholes and all that kind of stuff.

- Karen, in your reporting, you talked to the Ohio Municipal League, they said it was a win for taxpayers, but then I think it was The Buckeye Institute that said, "This just doesn't make sense.

You should only have to pay taxes when you work in a community if it's supposed to be about, you know, about where you work."

- Yeah, and The Buckeye Institute, if you follow state government at all, you've heard of that group, it's a conservative think tank that doesn't officially take positions on legislation, but certainly has advocated for streamlining government, as they say, and cutting taxes and all of that.

And so they did make the argument in court.

They filed the lawsuit on behalf of this gentleman, Josh Shad, and they argued saying that local municipalities should be able to tax only within those jurisdictions where people are actually living and working.

And so that they really felt like this was a overstepping of the bounds that the court could do here when it came to the state law.

(thought-provoking music) - Colleges and universities across the state are making cuts to bring budgets into balance.

Baldwin Wallace University previously announced staff and program cuts last week, Kent State University's president said that KSU would need to reduce spending by tens of millions of dollars in the coming years, and that could mean cuts there as well.

I want to note that the president, Todd Daikin is a board member of Ideastream Public Media.

Yesterday, Eastern Gateway Community College in Youngstown took the nuclear option when its board voted to halt enrollment.

At the end of the current semester, students will be transferred either to another community college or to Youngstown State University.

Abbey, each of the university and college circumstances differ, but what we're seeing really is what's called the demographic cliff.

That's one of the big problems they're all facing, the pool of students.

- [Abbey] Right.

So the birth rate has dropped across the country, meaning there are less high school students, so less people that are potentially pursuing higher education is what it comes down to.

And then when we get to some more economic factors, which I'm sure we'll discuss, that also plays into it as well.

- [Mike] The cost of higher education, the debt incurred by students, that's also been something that is being really looked at now.

Is it worth it, some are asking.

- [Abbey] Yeah, I mean, I'm Gen Z, I was in school four or so years ago, I graduated.

So I have always grown up in a time where I had to accept the fact that either I need to work really hard and get a ton of scholarships or incur tens of thousands or up to a hundred thousand dollars, depending on where you went, in debt that I'd be paying off for decades.

And anymore, it's not even totally guaranteed that you're going to get a job in your field.

We're living in this weird post-pandemic world.

So I do have friends with degrees that are not working within their field or working jobs that even require a degree.

So if people my age are unable to afford the cost of living, rent, food, things like that, like forget buying a house, having kids, that sort of thing.

So you really have to juggle like, am I going to pursue something that could derail potentially my other life goals?

Or should I pursue, you know, trade or just going directly into the workforce in the first place?

- [Mike] I wonder if that's behind some of what the cuts are going to be.

The colleges have said that there are gonna be things on the chopping block and people are very concerned 'cause some of them are gonna be humanities classes and those types of things.

But the ones that would be played up might be the ones that are more directly geared toward workforce.

Basically make the college degree pay off.

- [Abbey] Right.

So if you have a real quote unquote, "skill," you're more likely to have a job, which it kind of blows to be honest, because the point of college obviously is to go get a degree, learn a skill, pursue that job.

But one of the biggest values that I got out of going to college is being exposed to new ideas, learning critical thinking skills, taking some gender and sexuality courses, race, all of these things that a lot of people might not be exposed to, but are going to be exposed to in the quote unquote, again, "real world."

So while these workforce skills might make you a more hireable candidate, it stinks that a lot of these kids are going to miss out on some of these humanity courses and things that can make them a more well-rounded person.

- [Mike] Josh.

- [Josh] I think in a lot of different, especially rural places, there's been a push, particularly on the conservative political side to focus more on trades.

We did a story in our newscast just, I believe yesterday or the day before, about Stark State focusing on trades.

They're opening a new welding facility.

And we're seeing more and more of that, not only at the collegiate level, but at the high school level too.

Even back when I went, you know, during the covered wagon days, they had vocational schools where you could go and learn these trades.

And I think that because of what's going on with the costs, because of what's going on politically where people say, may argue that it's too, there's too much politics in colleges and universities as far as being taught to students, that this may be the way to go for some people 'cause college isn't for everybody.

- [Mike] If you were on the covered wagon days, I don't think they had the wheel then when I was going to school.

We hadn't yet.

- [Josh] You and Lincoln graduated that year.

- [Mike] Exactly.

Let me ask about the big story in Youngstown, and that's something that our Connor Morris was covering, but we've got a situation there where a community college is basically outta business.

We're looking at, you know, we've been looking at local colleges, Notre Dame College, which is in some serious trouble, and had been talking with other universities who might come in and take care of some of these issues.

Here we see that actually playing out with Youngstown State saying, "We'll take the students."

- [Abbey] Right, and even when you look at Youngstown State, they are also cutting six programs.

So obviously, these smaller college, you have impacts on the bigger universities.

You mentioned Kent State.

Miami is consolidating 18, I think, of its majors and programs.

Those are hurting, but when you look at some of these smaller programs, they're not immune and maybe they're more susceptible and they are feeling it in more ways.

So I'm really interested to see over the next decade or how long this is gonna play out, how many schools we end up having still in Ohio.

- [Mike] We did mention the demographic cliff.

I want to note that Dr. Todd Daikin also said at Kent State, some of the other factors that are driving this are relatively flat state aid, a cap on how much the university can increase tuition each year, and then challenges with enrollment as well.

(thought-provoking music) Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on 89.7 WKSU, Jenny Hamill introduces you to finalists in this year's Accelerate Citizens Make Change civic pitch contest, which wrapped up last night.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thank you so much for watching, and stay safe.

(soft music) (bright music)