Budgets are taking shape, some not so smoothly in governments across the state as officials decide how to spend your tax money.

After the Senate passed restriction on recreational marijuana, the Ohio House introduced its own version that is much closer to what voters approved in 2023.

And should schools be required to offer more hours of classroom time?

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for joining us.

In Cleveland's budget process, the mayor and city council clashed over how much money to spend in neighborhoods.

The mayor said the city couldn't afford a near doubling of the neighborhood investment Fund Council put it in there anyway.

The House proposed recreational marijuana regulations that align much more closely with what voters approved than the Senate bill that passed last month.

Two Ohio lawmakers have proposed adding 53 hours of in-class instruction time to the school year, and Governor DeWine wants the federal government to step up research to end bird flu.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more from Ideastream, public Media reporter Abigail Botter from Axios, Cleveland reporter Sam Allard, and from the Statehouse news bureau in Columbus.

Karen Kasler Let's get ready to roundtable.

Cleveland City Council and Mayor Justin Bibb tussled over the city's next budget in recent weeks, but council is determined to increase the amount of funding going to neighborhood projects over the mayor's objections.

In Akron, Mayor Seamus Malik proposed a slimmed down budget concerned about state and federal cuts and food banks are fighting to restore funding that the governor has proposed cutting in his state budget.

Cleveland City Council and Mayor Justin Bibb tussled over the city's next budget in recent weeks.

But council is determined to increase the amount of funding going to neighborhood projects over the mayor's objections.

Council voted this week on Second Reading to finalize the new budget, which would include $600,000 for each of the 17 wards.

Council members would determine how that money would be spent.

It's the same, by the way, that was in the last budget.

Bibb argued.

It would throw the budget out of balance, but council said it could safely dip into carryover funds from the last budget to cover it.

Final vote on a budget could come next week.

Question is will the mayor sign it?

Will do they have an agreement at this point?

So, Sam, let's talk about that.

That's an I mean, there's all kinds of tussles in every budget.

How much should go to here or there?

But this one came down to the mayor saying, yes, I want to put money into the neighborhood fund, but not as much as you want.

Council pushed back on that.

They've got the power to write it.

That's right.

Yeah.

So just so listeners are aware council.

Well, Mayor Bibb initially proposed $5.6 million for these neighborhood equity funds, which came to about $330,000 per ward.

Council pushed back in their budget hearing process.

They amended that to add an additional 4.6 million.

Now, I actually think Shaun McDonnell, cleveland.com, did a great job of explaining this in his story this week.

He said the city has a general revenue fund which functions like a checking account.

But the city also maintains three separate funds that are more like savings account.

So there's the rainy day fund, which is for emergencies.

There's one for specifically for payroll personnel.

And then there's this fund called the carryover fund, which you alluded to.

And that's just literally what it sounds like, carryover from last year's budget.

And that's about $61 million right now.

And council says this is much higher than it's been relative to years past.

City.

City is in a very sound financial position.

Why not spend that money on things that residents can experience today, things like streets, parks, playgrounds, etc.?

So they're increased that extra $4.6 million would would would have dipped into that carryover fund.

Now, as you say, there's been some negotiations.

They managed to trim the general fund around the edges to find that money and not have to use the that that carryover fund.

So dipping into that fund, though, as you mentioned, it's carryover and it's one of a few pots.

Right.

What council's point was and Kerry McCormack was the one leading the charge on this was that we're not dipping into our reserves.

This is not the the rainy day fund.

This is basically extra from last year.

So it doesn't throw things out of balance.

The mayor contends that absolutely does, though.

Well, he incidentally, the mayor sent out this press release going after council described as a tussle.

And it really was I mean, all week long there was a, you know, a war of the words in the in the media.

The mayor says, I think, well, he called it reckless.

It was dangerous and irresponsible, I think was his quote.

And he's worried about the headwinds from the Trump administration.

If anyone read The Washington Post last week and discussed how Cleveland was so favorably rewarded under the Biden administration with these federal grants, you know, Trump a lot of those funds for things like infrastructure, equity programs, etc., are now in jeopardy.

So because of those headwinds and because of upcoming union negotiations, Bibb thinks it's much more prudent to have a lot of money in reserve.

That's his argument.

The $600,000 per council member I read in, I think it was in Cleveland.com, there was some contention that that's a slush fund, that council members want to just throw money around.

It's been a tradition last year in the budget as well, where the council members say we know best what's needed in our ward.

It should be noted it's also an election year.

So if you're if you're trying to make sure that things are better in your ward, an election year is a year that you don't want to have less budget.

Yeah.

And your old friend Chris Quinn went in pretty hard on council on that very topic.

He did call them slush funds and he made that exact comparison and criticized them that they were just essentially buying votes in an election year.

And that's maybe a fair criticism.

I would also just say, though, that, remember, they did have 600,000 last year.

And so their argument was merely to get it to the point that they were at last year, not it was bib who initially cut the funds.

Now, there is some some nuance here.

I mean, I think bib was rational in the respect that he argued, listen, there's still money left over in these pots that have not been spent.

So why would I why would I continue to give you the same level when you still haven't spent them?

I think that's a rational argument.

Council responded.

I think also rationally with two points.

They said, number one, we have to hoard this money essentially over multiple years sometimes because the things we want to fund sometimes cost $1,000,000 or $2 million at the playground.

We want the playground right where last year Pontiac Councilman Plastic in Collinwood bought that.

Dave's supermarket, which on Lakeshore, which had been languishing with in addition to other city funds used for that.

So over $600,000.

The other argument, though, is that they say in many cases these funds actually have been earmarked and the only reason they have been spent is because the administration hasn't gotten them out the door.

In other words, it's bibs fault.

So as I say back and forth all week long, Now on to the Akron budget, where instead of an increase like Cleveland's budget, we saw we see austerity measures due to worries about the state and federal funding, which, by the way, Cleveland's also worried about.

Mayor Thomas Malik in Akron proposed a budget to spend 2% less than the last one.

Abigail, the mayor is worried about that.

Federal and state money drying up.

Yeah, yeah, he's very worried.

So the 2% decrease and then he the mayor said that he's also looking for other ways to save money and generate revenue this year.

We talked about this when the city was passing its capital budget.

So let's it's called the committee because a lot of the city's money for housing, which is like one of the biggest issues in Cleveland, in Akron, most of that money comes from the community Development BLOCK grants from the federal government and affordable housing grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And so that is a huge problem in Akron, same in Cleveland.

And the majority of that funding comes from the federal government.

So the city is going to have to look at how they are going to take on those housing costs that, you know, they normally don't have to worry about.

And there are tons of other programs that are also going to be impacted.

So they're looking at that.

And this is a more restrained budget, but it does make investments in some of Malik's priorities.

Public safety, city services, gun violence prevention, prevention and opportunities for you of sound budgeting for police officers.

Unchain 488 uniformed officer Yeah, same as it adds before, same as before and 402 firefighters and paramedics are also putting money into gun violence.

A person to work be kind of be a liaison when there's gun violence in the city to work at the local hospitals.

And they're also getting some more support for replacing cardiac monitors in emergency medical service vehicles.

All right.

Well, let's move to the state budget visit to Ohio food banks in Ohio, they're up 10% in each of the last three years, which is why anti-hunger advocates are concerned about a possible cut in state funding.

Governor Mike DeWine's budget proposes $15 million cut over two years because money in the last budget was considered one time funding.

Karen I've talked to some folks from food banks and they're saying, well, yeah, one time funding, but we needed all of it to feed hungry people.

You know, what are we expected to do with that?

It's not like it was like one time funding to to buy new chairs for the office that will last forever.

Food has to continue to be bought every year.

Right.

And I think some of that is that during the pandemic and that's where a lot of this one time funding that was in previous budgets that's not going to be in this budget is coming from that pandemic related funding was really to address the concerns at food banks because the pandemic you might remember when the pandemic hit and all sorts of businesses closed, food banks really got a very strong increase in the number of people who were seeking assistance.

And also there were fewer volunteers working.

So it was really crisis point for food banks.

But to find that out this time around I think is really interesting.

And when I talked to Jordan Varney from the Ohio Association of Food Banks for our TV show the State of Ohio, about this, she said, you know, the one time funding aspect may have been the case, but what we're seeing in our food lines is not what's happening.

It's not one time it's been increased 10% year over year for the past couple of years.

And so there's there's no way to get around the fact that there is still a need and there's still a need among children's, still a need among older people.

And so they're really asking for that money to be restored.

There are also concerns about changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.

That's commonly called food stamps, but they aren't stamps.

They're an electronic benefits card.

And the question is about what you can use that card for.

It sounds like, okay, it makes sense.

They're talking about not being able to use it to buy, quote, junk food.

But we're hearing from the food bank folks that that kind of change might have a ripple effect in terms of the availability of healthy food.

Yeah.

And he said whenever you start restricting what eBay cards can purchase, then you start putting pressure on retailers because they have to redo their inventory, they have to retrain their cashiers.

They make it more difficult for retailers to accept DB cards.

And so some retailers may just say, you know, this is too much trouble.

I'm not going to deal with it.

And that's a real problem in food deserts where you only have potentially a couple or maybe one retailer in a county that's accepting cards.

And so she said the restrictions that are put in place are a problem.

And if you're concerned about a lack of healthy food, why don't you look at the other side of that and try to get more access to healthy food rather than restricting what people can buy with those cards?

There's also the question about those cards in general.

Apparently they're swipe cards.

They're not chip cards, and that makes them more open to fraud.

And so that's another thing that you've got even Republicans in the legislature who are saying we've got to do something about that and urging Congress to change the laws around those cards to make them chip enabled rather than just swipe cards, because that could potentially help with the waste, fraud and abuse, which we hear a lot about lately.

Another issue that deals with hunger is funding free school meals for everyone.

That's not in DeWine's budget.

Advocates are again pushing for that, including a coalition that includes CVS Pharmacy, Kroger and the Ohio Education Association.

Yeah, this is an idea that's been around for a while and some states have done this.

The idea of universal free school meals, which means that if your kid comes to school, there's a meal there for them.

They don't have to bring their meal if they want to.

They can, but it's provided and it does in some cases, in many cases, eliminate the stigma that surrounds the acceptance of free school lunch or free school meals, and allows for the potential elimination of kids being hungry at school, which makes it harder for kids to learn.

There is a hurdle here, of course, for this group to try to get over in convincing some Republicans in the legislature that this is something that needs to be done.

You have schools that are already doing this, though.

They're taking money out of their own budgets and deciding that this is more important than anything else.

They're going to go ahead and put it toward that.

But that means less money in their budgets for things like transportation and other things like that.

And so this is a problem not only in urban school districts but also in rural school districts.

So this is a serious issue.

And we're finding, too, that this is happening at a time when schools are saying that they're getting less money because of vouchers, bringing public funds to private institutions, and also, yeah, the school funding formula, it's really complicated, as I said many times.

But the state share of funding is going down for a lot of school districts and that's a real problem.

And you've got a lot of school districts that were counting on a certain amount of money that are getting less this time around.

And that and even some school districts that had increased enrollment that are getting less.

the Ohio House of Representatives, introduced recreational marijuana regulations this week, and they're much closer to what voters approved than the rules passed by the Ohio Senate last month.

Karen, the House version differs from the Senate version in a lot of ways, one of which is the ability to grow 12 plants per household at home, which was in the statute.

The Republican legislation from the Senate cut that in half.

House says restore that back to the full 12.

Yeah, there are a couple of important differences, and that's a big one.

Certainly for voters who approved this in 2023.

And remember, this was a law that voters approved, not a constitutional amendment.

So lawmakers can come and make these changes.

This was something that I imagine that there were folks who voted for this legislation saying that they wanted the opportunity to be able to go to grow 12 up to 12 plants per household.

So the House version leaves this alone.

The Senate version makes its cuts and a half down to six plants maximum, like what you just said.

It also, both bills do limit the how concentrated dispensaries THC products can be.

And that was an important thing that both houses obviously wanted.

But the one key thing I think with the House proposal was this idea of Delta eight, which goes by different nicknames, intoxicated weed, diet weed went intoxicating, hemp, whatever.

It's unregulated right now.

It's available in convenience stores and gas stations and things like that.

And Governor Mike DeWine has been among those saying we need to regulate this.

This needs to have some guardrails put on it.

And so the House bill would do that.

The Senate bill would not.

So there's room to negotiate on both of these.

Indeed.

And they're going to have to get together on a right and reconcile one of the one of the changes, not just a 12 per household, but I thought this was and we talked about this last time and I didn't know how you could ever police this, but you couldn't smoke outdoors.

That would be even on your own property.

The house version says, Yep, if it's your own property, you can you can smoke and you couldn't share it According to the to the Senate, if you grew it, someone came over to your house.

You know, this is mine, not yours.

But now apparently you can pass it around.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the enforcement questions are real.

And that's been something that, for instance, the so-called bathroom bill that went into effect recently and that would require fire that schools make sure that individual students and this is schools as well as colleges, that students use the restroom only of the gender that was assigned to them at birth.

How do you enforce something like this?

How do you enforce that?

You can't smoke on your property.

You can't bring the pot that you've grown to a friend.

You know, these are the enforcement issues I think are real serious questions here.

But the House, the Senate does have there's some room to move here.

But I've always also wondered the law took effect in 2023.

We're sitting here in March of 2025.

And so changes in this law, you've got to get that message out that things are changing if the law does indeed change.

And that could be difficult to do with people who think the law is what it's been since 2023.

Governor DeWine wants to impose work requirements on the 700 plus thousand people who benefit from Medicaid expansion in Ohio.

he wants a work requirement again.

So get a job if you're going to collect this.

Tell me about who who this applies to and who would be exempt from that.

Well, if this sounds familiar, it's because it is.

I mean, in 2019, Ohio did the same thing.

You have to apply to the federal government for a waiver to require people in this Medicaid expansion population, which you might recall, Medicaid expansion was done in 2013 under former Governor John Kasich.

There are about 770,000 people in this group.

And in 2019, Ohio asked the federal government for permission to require work from people in this group.

Unless they are over 55, they are in a job training or school program or a recovery program, or they have a serious physical or mental illness.

So there are these exceptions exemptions there.

And so that's what they're trying to do again, because while the Trump administration approved it in 2019, after the pandemic, the Biden administration reversed that.

So we're trying this again.

And about 60,000 people of that 770,000 member group could potentially lose Medicaid coverage if indeed work requirements go forward.

It's 80 hours a month.

They would have to prove that they are working.

And what about the rest of the Medicaid recipients, not the expansion folks?

Well, there are some questions about what's going to happen at the federal level with Medicaid in general.

And Medicaid is a huge part of the budget.

And Medicaid covers more than 3 million Ohioans.

Many of those folks are children.

Many of those folks are women with children.

And so trying to reach that population is I mean, you're talking about an awful lot of people who could potentially be affected.

And so the question is, how do you if you want to make cuts, how do you make cuts that don't adversely affect that population and also drive that you don't want to drive up the rate of uninsured people in Ohio, which there are critics of this work requirements proposal who say that that's exactly what it would do, that work requirements are essentially benefit cuts and that they are very hard for people to prove.

They really impact low income workers.

Very there's a real challenge for them and there's a pushback going on here on that.

Governor Mike DeWine wants the federal government to ramp up its research into bird flu.

Ohio has lost nearly a third of its egg laying chickens.

Karen, this was yesterday.

The governor went to Dark County, said he plans to meet with the U.S. secretary of agriculture to convey the need for urgency.

Yeah, and I think he actually toured a poultry farm in that area saying that he wanted to know what was going on here there.

DeWine has said that he really wants that speeded up, federally funded research into what's happening with bird flu.

And that's a question, I think, whether with all the cuts that are surrounding Dodge and what's been going on in terms of trimming the federal government, if federally funded research on bird flu is is going forward, at least at the rate that it was?

I mean, you have heard the U.S. agriculture secretary talking about a plan to try to deal with bird flu.

But in terms of what DeWine has been talking about, I'm not sure we know all the details of that.

Yeah, it's interesting, too, as you mentioned, Doege and the whole federal thing.

Well, we've got, you know, the president talking about transgender mice and it was transgenic mice.

It's completely different thing.

Now.

We start talking about research into bird flu.

There could be some ways to look at that, to say, boy, this doesn't seem to make sense.

But in the end, the need is for a disease to be conquered.

Yeah, And I mean, Ohio is a big agricultural state, a big egg producing state.

So this is not only a concern for public health, but also a concern for business and agriculture in the state.

So it's true prong concerns here.

All right.

On to the flu.

Flu, not the bird flu.

You know, the one everyone seems to be getting these days.

It's been a bad season and a deadly one with twice as many flu related deaths in Cuyahoga County this year compared to last year.

According to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, 22 people have died from the flu this year, compared to a dozen last season.

Abbigail Two of those who died were children.

What do we know about the demographics here of who's dying from the flu?

Yeah, the the adult deaths.

The 20 adult deaths range from people who are 27 to 92 and the pediatric deaths were of kids ages eight and 12.

And the Cuyahoga County Board of Health says that those pediatric deaths were affected by other illnesses or conditions.

But it has been such I know so many people got the flu this year and it took it took them out.

So it's been a rough year.

And what we keep hearing is vaccination.

You should be vaccinated against the flu.

And I think to myself, yeah, but it's it's March.

I mean, it's pretty late in the season.

Should I still do it?

Experts say you still should.

Yeah, if you haven't yet.

It's peaking really late this year, so it's not too late.

And yeah, doctors are saying I normally get mine in the fall, but they're saying you should really wait until January because it typically, even when it doesn't peak so late, that will give you longer protection until when the flu season actually is so.

So get vaccinated is their recommendation.

In addition, besides vaccination, what is the health board recommend that people do now?

You know the usual wash your hands, cover coughs and sneezes.

Stay home if you're sick.

And for kids who are experiencing serious symptoms, doctors say to look out for seizures, muscle weakness, vision problems.

And if that occurs, you should contact your doctor and call 911.

So take that seriously.

You remember back in the day, Karen, when you were tough, if you came in to work completely sick.

You know, pre-pandemic, when we all came to the office every day and you saw someone coming in and hacking away and you were like that That person has committed.

And now you say, Yeah, yeah, but don't.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

Please stay home.

And I actually had the flu this time.

And wow.

I mean, it is it is serious.

Nothing to mess with.

So.

Yeah, This one wouldn't win a student body vote.

Two lawmakers want the legislature to require two extra weeks of in-class instruction in Ohio's K-through-12 schools.

But they want more school time.

I would guess that students might not agree with that.

But what's the argument for 53 more hours of instructional time?

Well, students might not and teachers also might not because they're the ones they're going to have to deal with.

This we're talking about basically two extra weeks because we're talking about 53 hours of instructional time.

There's a real question about the amount of time that kids are spending in school.

The two Republican lawmakers who are sponsoring this are saying things like, you know, you've got all sorts of things that are happening during the school day that are that are taking kids away from those instructional hours.

And they feel that's showing up in test scores and in grades and that sort of thing.

One of the things that this comes on the heels of is a law that was passed that requires school districts to come up with a policy that allows for release of kids during the school day for religious instruction, such as for the Christian based group life wise, which takes kids off campus to a Bible related study.

And it's free to the kids and the parents.

But it's part of this whole discussion, I think.

And so this is an interesting time for this right now.

No one would throw eggs nowadays, by the way.

They're $1,000,000 and there is that.

But also the question that I've had to hear is that there is a cost to this.

I mean, you know, keeping a school open for an extra two weeks and requiring teachers to teach for that extra two weeks, that there's a cost to that.

And the Republican sponsor said the cost would be minimal.

It would be, they think, primarily in transportation costs.

But again, I think the teachers union would have something to say about this, because if you are requiring teachers to teach for an extra two weeks, then that's an increase to their workload.

A new Frank Lloyd Wright House River Rock has been completed in Willoughby Hills, nearly 70 years after it was designed.

You kind of went a little crazy on this in the Axios newsletter because you were really into it.

But a new Frank Lloyd Wright Ray house in in 2025.

It's not Frank Lloyd Wright, only the most popular and influential American architect of all time, our guy.

And it's built as in the spot where it was designed.

That's right as he designed literally the last the last residential commission of Frank Lloyd Wright, who as many people know, designed thousands of structures in his career.

He died in 1959, famous for the Prairie School, with those long horizontal lines, flat roofs all across the Midwest.

His big thing was organic architecture, you know, structures that kind of harmonize with the natural surroundings.

Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, perhaps his most famous this one was actually built on the Chagrin River, The Rocks from the river were harvested to build the exterior of the building.

But the inside is classic mid-century modern, if you like mid-century modern.

You like Frank Lloyd Wright.

It's beautiful.

It's renting for $800 a night or more so you can stay there.

Oh, yeah.

In fact, I'm trying get my Axios colleagues to all, you know, team up and we can all go review it one night.

What's interesting is this was around I mean, there's a there's already a one the property house in the property, Louis Penfield House.

That's right.

It was taken over in 2018.

And the owner who got it also got the plans for the other house and said, all right, let's build that.

Correct.

And I suspect there may be Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiasts that the initial structure was built for this painter Louis Penfield and his family.

That that the crazy story, though, is that when Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959, the drawings for this house were literally on his drawing easel, like on his work table, and they were sent back to the farm but never built.

And so this woman and her mother, Sarah Dixon, and her mother built it and started building it in 2023, honoring the original vision.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven KSU five years after the emergency declaration and made by Governor DeWine at the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, what has been its impact on public health and vaccine skepticism?

We'll talk with public health experts about how the pandemic changed the work that they do.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.