A Cleveland City Council member is facing a censure vote for threatening to kill a staff member.

The effort to eliminate property taxes in Ohio is gaining some traction.

And Sherrod Brown will challenge John Husted for U.S.

Senate.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Cleveland City Council member Joe Jones is in trouble with his colleagues again.

Stripped of his committee assignments in January for bad behavior, he's about to be censured by council after an investigation found that he threatened the life of a staff member.

The group pushing to ax property taxes in Ohio, says it will keep working toward a ballot measure next year, regardless of what relief the legislature might offer.

Some lawmakers are warming to the idea of eliminating property taxes.

The federal monitor overseeing Cleveland's consent decree with the U.S.

Department of Justice over unconstitutional policing has resigned, and former U.S.

Senator Sherrod Brown has decided his next step.

He's running for U.S.

Senate again, taking on former Lieutenant Governor John Husted, who was appointed to the Senate by Governor Mike DeWine.

Joining me to discuss those stories and more ideas and public media is criminal justice reporter Matt Richman and environment reporter Azaria Johnson and Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Cleveland City Council will vote next month on censuring council member Joe Jones, after an investigation found credible allegations that he threatened the life of a council staffer.

Matt, you worked on the story yesterday.

What did the external investigation find?

According to a letter from council leadership.

Yeah, so?

So they've said that they're not going to release the full report.

But from what we've gotten, it sounds like there was, you know, he was working with a council employee, told that employee that, repeatedly said, I will kill you, according to an email that was sent by that employee that was included in what was released and said, and, you know, specifically referenced this person, apparently, commutes on a motorcycle and said that he'll blow up the motorcycle.

And that employee said in this email that it really frightened them and really affected them.

And they just felt like they had to come forward.

Jones said, you know, I was just joking around, you know, don't don't take it seriously.

But this employee said, you know, three times kind of the charm.

It's not he didn't say it just once.

Yeah.

And then the, you know, the specific detail he tried to say, well, I've seen a blow up the motorcycle.

I didn't say kill him, which want either way to say there's not really a difference.

Yeah, it's a difference without a distinction or a distinction without a different one of those.

Yeah.

So he's made these threats, and then there's also another employee who, based on previous Investig investigation, I'm going to ask you about in a second.

But the one that led to his losing committee assignments, he was told to stay away from.

And we can see on video that he's sitting right next to that person at one of the council meetings, the person said, that made them feel fearful and intimidated.

Yeah.

And, you know, if you've ever been in these, meetings, it's all assigned chairs.

Everybody has a spot to sit in.

And, you know, he said that it was and you didn't really realize he sat there for maybe five minutes for the first half of it, didn't realize that this staff person was sitting next to him.

You know, that's a little hard to believe because their side sees everybody and he has his chair.

And so and this staff person said it just made them give them a panic attack really cause problem.

And then his, his counsel, aide or assistant apparently called this person several times the next day, which, which they characterized as harassing or intimidating behavior.

Yeah.

They said, you know, and this was something that Jones and the staff said they don't remember doing it.

It was five times in 24 hours.

With yet the staff person took that to be harassment.

And as I mentioned, this is not the first time really this year, because in January is when the committee assignments were taken away, that he has been investigated outside of council and found credible allegations against him.

Yeah.

In that case, there were several different sort of, reasons for that.

That punishment that came down earlier in the year.

One, was that an outside, an artist came to City Council for some support for, you know, some work that they wanted to do.

And, and Jones made some comments during meetings that, were taken to be, you know, sexual harassment.

Then kind of part of that investigation, they found that there were several employees who, you know, described his behavior as abusive.

And one of them was the one that, he was supposed to stay away from that and, said that he's not following that, that requirement.

And so, you know, that report kind of started the process, said that, if he does thing if he is this behavior continues, then he should be censured.

But for now, it'll be training and will be removal from the committee assignments.

I was thinking when I was reading about this, that if this person worked here or many other places, they'd have a big issue with H.R.

and probably would be fired by now.

That's what Blaine Griffin said, too.

If not for the fact that you were an elected official, you'd probably be let go.

But because he's an elected official, they really have.

They can censure him.

But you can't just sort of fire somebody that the public has elected.

Yeah, that's a that's a really tough one.

You know, in a workplace, if there is an employee who's who continues to, exhibit this behavior and they're not fired, the workplaces open the lawsuit.

But if it's an elected official, the, you know, and this is what Blaine Griffin said, the only real way for him to be removed is by voters.

So they're going to do, though, some training for him, some training about his conduct.

Yeah.

Now it's going to be more one on one training.

The the vote and continue to be not able to go to committee meetings.

Griffin said that he's, he's not well, you know, well, he's been asked to stay away from the office to work out in the community and not come into City Hall.

Governor Mike DeWine, Property tax Relief working group will deliver recommendations next month.

But regardless of what is recommended or implemented, the grassroots group seeking to abolish property taxes so it will keep pushing to put an amendment axing the tax before voters next year.

The Committee to Abolish Property Taxes says the state waited too long to address their concerns, and so they're pushing forward regardless.

Yeah, now this is a group.

It's a grassroots group that is trying to gather signatures right now to put a constitutional amendment to abolish property taxes on the ballot next fall.

So not this fall.

Next fall, they've got to get about 414,000 valid signatures, which means they've got to get a lot more than that because signatures are always thrown out.

So they've got a lot of work ahead of them.

And they have to do that by next July.

But when I talk to one of the founders of the group, Brian Massie, who's from extreme northeast Ohio, like the Ashtabula area, for our TV show, The State of Ohio, I asked him, have you talked to lawmakers?

Have you been negotiating?

And he said pretty much that he and this group are very frustrated with what lawmakers have been doing.

They're frustrated that this income tax cut that came through in the budget wasn't more focused toward property tax relief.

They're concerned about people losing their houses because they can't afford to pay their property taxes.

So they're going to go ahead and go forward with this and put it before voters.

What are the chances, though, that a grassroots group that isn't paying people to get the circulated signatures and all of that, that they'll be successful in such a thing?

That's a really excellent question.

And we've we have not seen that for a while.

I mean, typically groups do have to hire professional signature gatherers.

And he said he got a quote of about $1 million for that, which is, I think, on the low end, because I think a lot of these groups, really these professional organizations that pay people to go out and gather signatures, charge, they charge a lot because it does take a lot of work.

And so it will be a difficult climb.

It could happen.

And there are a lot of conservative groups that are now joining in on this effort.

After a little bit of a skirmish over ideology, because there were some who felt that some of the folks who were involved in this group weren't conservative enough and had put some anti-Trump and pro-Democratic things on social media.

Here's a good question.

So you say people are being oppressed by property taxes, so the solution is to eliminate them.

But that means there's billions and billions of dollars that need to be made up for local schools and police departments and communities.

How do they propose that money would be made up?

Well, the chair of governor Mike DeWine is working Group on Property taxes estimates that about $28 billion would be taken out of the state economy if indeed property taxes were abolished.

So that's a lot of money to make up.

And when I asked Brian Massey, okay, why didn't you come up with a proposal to replace that?

He said, that's the legislature's job and it's their job to figure that out.

Now, when I spoke with besides also for a TV show, The State of Ohio, this last week, I asked him about that.

He said that the sales tax that would have to go into effect because there would have to be something to replace that money.

It would be a sales tax, potentially.

It would have to be about 20%, which is actually more what it would take to replace property taxes if they are abolished and if the income tax is abolished, a 20% sales tax is just unimaginable.

So there would have to be something certainly that would replace those property taxes, because property taxes on schools, they fund law enforcement, libraries, zoos, mental health services, they find a lot of different things.

And certainly people are frustrated.

But there are local services that do depend on this.

This is a state that has repeatedly cut income taxes.

That gives you a two week holiday on sales taxes.

Clearly it's not, legislature that would be interested in raising taxes of any sort, it seems.

Right.

And Massie had specifically said that income taxes was something that maybe the legislature could look at.

But Seitz points out that this legislature in large has been cutting income taxes for a quarter of a century now.

So it seems very unlikely that they would be interested in pursuing an increase in the income tax to replace property taxes.

All of this presumes that not only is the group going to get the signatures that they need, but that there is going to be a successful campaign on the ballot.

And I think the pushback that this group would get from every single government entity, from unions, from local governments, from from police and fire and teachers and all of this against abolishing property taxes would be enormous.

Still, some lawmakers are signing on to the idea of eliminating property taxes.

Representative Jennifer Gross, a Republican from Butler County, and others have said, people are frustrated.

I hear them and are signing on to that idea.

Do they have any idea about what they do to make up the money?

Well, a lot of folks like, Representative Gross, who I've spoken to about she voted against the budget, for example, and she voted against putting before voters an infrastructure bond package earlier this year.

She's concerned about government spending.

And yes, there are certainly those ideas to cut government spending.

But again, $28 billion in property taxes, replacing that money and finding a way to somehow balance that out, I don't know, I'm not a financial expert.

I don't know of $28 billion is possible to cut out just by consolidating.

School districts are cutting so-called waste, fraud and abuse.

But that's a huge, huge amount of money.

Karl Racine, the monitor overseeing Cleveland's implementation of a federal consent decree over unconstitutional policing, has resigned.

Cleveland entered into the consent decree with the Justice Department in 2015.

So why is he stepping down?

Matt?

That's a that's a good question.

He hasn't spoken publicly.

He didn't respond to a to a request for for an explanation.

There wasn't much in the in the order from the court.

You know, if you kind of look at what his tenure has been like, it might be out of frustration.

There's some attention, you know, a lot of tension.

Basically, since he started in 2023, it's been one sort of obstacle.

And another initially it was the city stopped access to police records, making it kind of impossible for them for the monitor to do its work.

And so that was a, they quarreled over that for a while, and then the judge sided with the monitor and they started sharing records again.

There was, you know, an incident or, apparent incident at the, at the casino downtown where police were called when he went there, apparently late at night to get some food and had some sort of, I don't know, discussion with, off duty officer working security there.

There is an ongoing years long dispute over their bills and the city kind of questioning, line by line.

A lot of the things that they're being billed for, I mean, things like, you know, questioning whether the monitoring team should be staying in 200, some odd dollars a night hotel rooms, as opposed to $150 night hotel rooms, really nitpicking them.

And then also, you know, they were he works for Hogan Lovells, which is a very large Washington, DC law firm.

I mean, is it are his employers interested in kind of keeping this and is going, with all the problems and, and not being that profitable?

And I think about this, not just the problems, but the what's happening nationally as it relates to consent decree is the Trump administration wants a review of those.

Maybe there's a thought that these consent decrees are going to be not pursued as vigorously by the Justice Department.

It's definitely not a growth industry at the moment.

And yeah, the, the you know, they're not starting new ones.

And now they've started to move.

You know, they just recently the Department of Justice issued a report for one that's in in Norfolk, Virginia, saying that it's been completed and that one was started in 2014.

So they're starting to try to teams wind down these long running ones.

And Cleveland claims it has reached a completion.

They obviously that's part of the loggerheads that they've had to the judge.

Solomon Oliver was very complimentary of of the monitor of Carl Racine.

The question then becomes, though, as he's leaving, what's next?

So there's an interim step.

Somebody who's been on the team for a long time is the is the interim lead.

And then what happens from here.

Right.

Yeah.

They've they've named Christine Cole to, run it for now.

And also, former Supreme Court justice, Melody Stewart's been assigned as the deputy monitor.

Which is, you know, there was not there had been previously a local person in that W monitor role.

So it's, you know, I think a good thing that they're bringing somebody back to that position.

And then, yeah, you know, the, the Racine was, was chosen kind of by agreement, well chosen by the judge but recommend by agreement between the Department of Justice in the city.

So whether they're going to restart a selection process right now, whether either side has any interest in getting involved in that, it's not clear they've city said they were surprised and they're discussing what they're going to do next.

Lakewood residents, frustrated with repeated and prolonged power outages, gave an earful to First Energy officials in a town hall organized by the utility this week.

First Energy said it will invest $12.5 million to upgrade the system.

What did they say they're going to do?

Yeah, so they have to make some upgrades to the system.

Because like residents said, it's happening pretty often.

I live in Lakewood myself.

So anytime there is a storm, sometimes nothing will even be happening.

And it will disrupt the work day.

If I'm working from home.

Some residents reported, losing groceries in their refrigerator because of these outages.

And so, I heard one mom, that's a, her breast milk was spoiled because of that.

And and there was a fellow that was in a wheelchair who said he was stuck in, a little elevator that was in his house for a long time.

So these are serious impacts.

Yeah.

And it's hard to know to like how long they're going to last.

Sometimes it can be a couple hours sometimes, I think one resident said they lasted as long as five days.

So, thinking about the economic loss of losing groceries or even just the the hassle of not being able to get around your home in those instances.

It is, very frustrating.

I've got a daughter that's a renter in Lakewood.

Thank goodness all they have are like pizza rolls.

Yeah, but they were all ruined.

Yeah, that's the thing of when it happened to me.

I think it was a couple weeks ago on a Sunday.

I had nothing.

It's just me.

I have nothing in my refrigerator, but like, milk, bread, maybe a couple of eggs left over.

But I could only imagine for somebody trying to feed a family of four coming back from groceries, shopping that morning to a power outage that afternoon, it can be hard to manage.

And residents said at this meeting, hey, how about paying us for all those groceries we lost?

And First Energy said, by regulation we can't do that.

Yeah.

And they're saying that like if you're if you want to be reimbursed, come to them anyway and they'll handle it on a case by case basis.

But just to put out there, there's no guarantee it sounds like that they can reimburse you for whatever you lose.

One of the things I think people were frustrated with at the end of the meeting is there's a lot of promises and a lot of we're going to address it.

One is, why did it take so long?

Because we've been suffering this way for years.

And secondly, that work wouldn't be done until 2027.

So they were saying we got winter coming like and no power.

If that happens again, what are you going to do in the meantime?

Yeah.

And that's a, very valid concern.

Not only a couple a winter coming, but also maybe a couple summers if it's not expected to be done by 2020, if it's expected to be done by 2027.

Excuse me.

So it's like you're without heat in the winter, without AC in the summer.

So where's the relief come from?

And it's not a situation where you can plug in a space heater because the power's out.

So the frustrations there, and the solutions don't seem to be there for the residents in the meantime.

So.

Yeah.

And please don't bring a fire pit into your house.

Yeah.

Not a good idea.

Not a good idea.

The highest profile Democrat in Ohio, former U.S.

Senator Sherrod Brown, will run for the Senate again against appointed Republican U.S.

Senator John Husted, the former lieutenant governor.

An official announcement sources say will come next week.

Karen, it's unusual because it's a short term, right?

The winner in 2026 has got to run again.

Pretty quick.

Yeah, 2028.

Because that's when the actual term of the seat that whoever wins this would occupy expires.

So this is somebody who would potentially have to be willing to take on doing all the things that would be done to win in 2026 and then do it all again in 2028.

So it's a lot now of course, whoever runs for the seat and wins could decide after 2026 they're not going to run again.

But that would open the seat back up again.

And it's just a lot.

It's going to be very expensive.

Senator Husted was at the Akron Roundtable yesterday.

He was asked about Brown, of course.

What did he say?

Well, he said it wasn't a surprise to him.

And I think that's what he's told my colleague Sarah Donaldson as well.

He he noted that Brown lost by less than 200,000 votes.

So I don't think he was.

I think a lot of people have expected Brown to do something to either run for governor or to run for Senate.

And I think he had looked like and he had told people that he was leaning toward Governor.

And then just in the last couple of weeks, we've been hearing all this, that he was moving now towards Senate.

And it's important to note that he has not confirmed anything.

But when you see the signs, I mean, labor leaders say that he has told them that he's going to run for the Senate.

His wife, Connie Schultz, the former, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, has put up, some are some interesting.

Like she put up a picture of Sherrod Brown with a caption still for now or something like that.

So, you know, there's there's definitely something in the works and it looks like Senate is the avenue he's going to go down.

Yeah.

My my sources tell me directly we'll hear something early next week.

The last Senate race was an expensive bruiser.

This one's going to cost plenty, too.

They all are.

I mean, I think that's just going to be the way it is going forward.

I mean, being one of 101 of two in each state is a big deal.

And, obviously you've got in Ohio, two Republican U.S.

senators, Bernie Marino, who defeated Sherrod Brown, and then, of course, John Houston.

And so, you know, the Republican Party is going to be interested in hanging on to those the Democratic Party potentially could be interested in pouring some money into this race.

And I think that may be one of the factors here.

You've seen some pictures on social media of Sherrod Brown meeting with Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader in Columbus in June and July.

And so that suggests that there were maybe some talks about what the national Democratic, entities would be doing would be willing to do to help Sherrod Brown win the seat, because, again, it's going to be very expensive and there's a lot of work ahead.

All right.

Two more questions on this.

First, does this clear the field for Amy Acton to run for governor?

Or is Tim Ryan the one the man who lost to Vance for the Senate before Vance was tapped for VP?

Is he going to jump in?

Well, I reached out to Tim Ryan and I asked him if he wanted to talk to me, and, he sent me a laughing emoji back.

At least he didn't hang up a phone or something like that.

Yeah, but his spokesperson says that Sherrod Brown making this decision has really sparked renewed interest in Tim Ryan's desire to potentially run for governor.

And so I've been hearing that he may announce that, but he has said that before.

He has expressed interest in statewide office before.

Right now, he's doing some lobbying work for causes that some progressives might have some concerns about, like crypto and natural gas.

But he still has a fair amount of popularity among some who think that he is a moderate, a populist kind of in the in the mold of Sherrod Brown.

So I don't think that the right way is completely clear for Amy Acton.

But I wouldn't say that Tim Ryan has made a decision.

He said he was going to make a decision sometime in the next couple of weeks.

So that remains to be seen.

I'm not sure how worried he is about this, but Sherrod Brown apparently will face a primary challenger, a guy named Fred Odey, from Columbia Station here, in Lorain County.

He hasn't run for public office before, but he's got money.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's probably the last thing any Democrat needs on the 2026 ballot is a primary, because money is going to be so valuable here as they're going up against all the Republicans who are already in office or have name recognition and all of that.

So I think that a primary while Democrats have always said, hey, we want primaries, we want people to, that's the best way to vet candidates, so to speak.

I think that would be something that would be, you know, maybe something Democrats and Republicans, for the most part, kind of want to avoid just because of the money involved.

You have a Department of Transportation crossed the finish line this week on the $161 million Akron Beltway project.

The massive four year project was the largest in the history of district four, which includes, Akron and Summit County.

This area project, started in 2021, includes a massive rebuilds of bridges and traffic flow.

I would imagine it was a sea of, of brake lights for a long time.

Oh, yeah.

Every time I drive to Akron, I feel like I'm dodging and driving through some sort of construction.

So I'm happy about this project.

But, yes, they started in 2021 and they did a few different bridge projects.

They replaced three bridges, added three new bridges, and then widened two other bridges.

They also replaced pavement and added new lanes on I-77 between US route 224 and State Route eight as part of this work.

And the whole goal is to make it safer to drive and also, reduce congestion on the highway as people are moving through.

So again, I'm excited to see how it goes.

And they say it's going to make it safer.

This new configuration will make it safer for drivers.

What makes it safer?

And by the way, I'm thinking of new configurations in Cleveland, like Deadman's Curve.

But, but in this case, what do they do that would make things safer?

Yeah, that's actually a good example.

So, reading on some of the reporting it, they, they made some of the interchanges less like sharp of a turn, like when we think about Deadman's Curve.

So, there was an example, interchange on I-70 six and route eight.

Northbound ramps were originally designed for 25mph speeds, which again caused congestion, drivers to slow down to avoid accidents.

And this new bridge bumped that speed limit up to 45mph and makes that turn a bit more gradual.

So congestion is reduced.

But also it's safer for for drivers to, get around.

Chubby checker, the master of the twist, waited 39 years to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and now that he finally made it in, he won't be at the ceremony in LA in November.

Get this.

The 83 year old has a gig.

Yeah, he's booked and busy.

He has a gig the same day, and he said that he'd rather perform in front of a live audience of his fans and on TV at the Rock Hall induction ceremony.

So you won't see him there.

And I should also say he's not on tour, but you can book him for private events if you want to.

If you want to see him at a birthday party or maybe a wedding, it's possible.

Maybe we could still get him to Cleveland that weekend.

Yeah.

So, by the way, he wasn't going to come to Cleveland anyway.

This this, induction.

It was, I believe it's in LA, so it's not.

We're like, we're missing Chubby Checker, but he's not going to be there.

I just thought it was amazing that the guy's like, sorry, I'm gigging that.

Yeah.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven Wksu, Jeff Saint Clair takes a turn on the host chair as we talk about student mental health.

With school getting back into session, we'll learn about new efforts from some districts to provide mental health support.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.