- A high ranking Cleveland Safety official has stepped down after months of pressure from members of City Council pro-Palestinian protestors at Case Western Reserve University have packed up their tents and left, and one lawmaker wants police to pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Philip McCue, a senior public safety advisor in Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibbs.

Administration has resigned after months of criticism over how he got the job.

He's a college friend of the mayors and an accusation of civil rights abuse.

While he was a Washington DC police detective, the pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the campus of Case Western Reserve University is gone.

Protestors packed their tents and cleared out overnight.

This comes days after university President Eric Kaler apologized because a contractor spray painted over protestors standing in front of a pro-Palestinian message painted on a wall reserved for student expression.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District and its teacher's Union have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, and a bill in Columbus proposes to make failure to wear a seatbelt, a primary offense.

As it stands now you have to do something else wrong, like speeding to get a seatbelt citation.

Joining me for the round table from my Idea Stream, public media associate producer of Newscasts, Josh Bus and Akron Canton, reporter Anna Huntsman in Columbus State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kassler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Philip McHugh, senior Public Safety Advisor in the administration of Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, has resigned.

McHugh is a former college roommate of the mayors and accepted the $120,000 a year role in March.

He faced immediate criticism for his past handling of a civil rights complaint when he was a detective in Washington DC Bib two faced criticism for the hire, and we learned this week.

McHugh got an early look at his job description weeks before it was posted and was able to suggest edits to it.

Josh, the city, made the announcement in a press release.

The mayor says he heard the complaints from people who were upset about I I believe his the point he was looking at was that this case that Philip McHugh had been involved in Right.

But didn't really address the idea that, you know, this was kind of an an inside job.

- Yeah, yeah.

That was the part that he did not talk about.

I mean, he goes on to say in the press release, mayor Bib, that is, that UE was the kind of person that he wanted for this role.

Data driven, innovative.

But in the end, and, and from the beginning, people were very concerned.

I thought it was interesting when the mayor even said in the, in the news release, he had concerns from his own staff about this.

So I think what happened was to the, the simple headline, you know, bib hires roommate, even if you don't get into the details there of just why that was getting legs on social media.

A lot of people were talking about it.

And, and it was starting to, to snowball a little bit and, and, and that that maybe precipitated what we, what we saw.

- And it had legs in City Council early on, as you recall, a council member, Richard Starr, showed up at a council meeting with a shirt on that said, who's getting fired?

So they had been calling for his, you know, separation from the city for some time.

- Yeah.

And after the councilman got up and spoke, people that were sitting in the chamber stood up and applauded, you know, th they wanted something done about this.

It, it goes back to that investigation in Washington for McHugh, the Civil Rights investigation.

DC Police settled a civil rights lawsuit in 2016 with a couple, reportedly six figures after an incident there, McHugh accused of violating the black couple's civil rights and falsified police reports.

So that did not go anywhere.

That was from the very beginning, something that's what is going on here.

People were saying, - We should note that McHugh himself, the the resignation letter we printed yesterday, we put on our website and Abby Marshall had reported on it.

Yeah.

That he says, first of all, I've been very transparent about this investigation from 10 years ago.

If you look at it, it was an aggressive investigation.

It wasn't a violation of, of civil rights.

Did not admit, by the way, any wrongdoing in that settlement.

The city did not.

And then he also blames basically politically motivated character assassination campaign by certain members of council and by certain members of the media.

- Yeah.

So he's taking no responsibility for this, number one.

And he has said, according to cleveland.com, different things at different times too, when you're talking about just what happened with that case.

Initially, he told the Cleveland Editorial board that, Hey, wait a second.

I did not want the prosecutors pushed me to, to, to, to go on with this case.

And then later on under a deposition, he went on to say, ue that is, that this is, he was all for this case.

He thought the merits were there.

So from the, from the start, there was, there were some problems.

I thought Abby Marshall did a fantastic job.

She made a public records request.

She reviewed emails between McHugh and Bibs, bibs staff, really discussing the job.

And that's the thing from the very beginning, he was the one McHugh that was talking about what would, what the qualities for this job would be.

I mean, the city spokesperson said the job, I mean the job posting was in late October, but emails between McHugh and the mayor's staff was at the beginning of - October.

Yeah.

In which he was saying, Hey, this looks really good.

It looks like the kind of position you need in the city.

And I'd make these edits.

I would, I would get rid of this part and that part.

And if you're the one applying for that job, and it's not posted yet, yeah.

Something's - Fishy.

Something's fishy.

So again, it goes back to the records who exactly applied 15 other people.

Abby Marshall has requested those applications.

She requested Chu's personnel file and his application as well.

So we're gonna wait and see how that stacks up against the other people that that applied for.

This - Got an email from Nancy.

She says, during the budget talks council was in an uproar about having the right to approve every hire in the city.

Did they approve this hire?

And if not, why not?

They wanna weigh in on the employment of secretaries and sanitation workers.

But a senior advisor to the mayor does not get that kind of scrutiny.

In fact, that's something council has talked about.

They wanna have more oversight over these senior appointments.

- Yeah.

Councilman Richard Star again said, look, we want to have at least some say on some of these appointments, kind of like how Cuyahoga County does it with their system, with the county executive.

So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see going down the road, just how much of a say they're gonna have.

And in what positions.

- The Encamped pro-Palestinian protestors at Case Western Reserve University, have packed up their tents and left the Kelvin Smith Library oval.

They began their protest April 29th, demanding the university divest from Israel.

And this is just days after the school's president apologized after a contractor spray painted over pro-Palestinian protestors who were standing in front of the campus spirit wall.

It was being whitewashed because the pro-Palestinian message on the wall was deemed by the administration to be antisemitic and threatening protestors said it was not.

They also would not move.

So they too got painted over.

And I've just got, Connor Morris had just sent me a release a minute or so ago from the student group that had been protesting.

They said that they decided to end their Gaza solidarity encampment encampment citing increasing risks of arbitrary retaliation from the president of the university following his recent threats towards students, faculty, and staff involved in the protest.

So that's the one of the reasons that they have given why they decided to dismantle.

They also note that while the encampment is coming to an end, the commitment to the cause remains unwavering.

Josh, we don't know yet a whole lot of details on the end of that.

It doesn't appear, again, this, from this statement, it was a decision that they made.

It wasn't as though police went in and, and cleared out the camp.

- Yeah, definitely not.

And, and just yesterday I was in doing Morning edition and they were doing a 24 hour wrapping up, a 24 hour sit-in just outside the president's office there on campus.

So I'm, I was a little surprised to hear that this morning.

But at the same time, this is the end of the school year.

Everybody's packing up, going home, or just moving on.

So it's, it's gonna be interesting to see around the country what happens as well on campuses.

- Let's talk about this spray painting, because I, I watched the video of this and it was pretty remarkable.

Yeah.

So there's a thing called a spirit wall.

And on that spirit wall you can paint stuff.

Yeah.

It's not like you're, you know, graffitiing the side of the library or something.

It's place where students can do that.

There were pro-Palestinian messages.

The student, the, the university deemed to be inappropriate.

And they said, all right, we're gonna spray paint over these things, and it's the big power sprayer.

I'm not talking about a can of spray paint.

And students stood in front of the wall and said, you're not gonna paint this.

And so they painted over the students.

- Yeah.

So around the students, and on some cases, right, on the students, there were the video shows.

There are about three students initially in the video standing in front of this wall.

They are spray painting it white, these contractors, the interesting part of this though, they continued on is in the video, you can hear people yelling, this is dangerous.

But, but they continued on.

Actually later on in the video, more people step in and, and, and stand in front of the wall.

So, yeah, it's the interesting part though.

Police were standing campus, police were standing right there.

- Not just standing right there.

But at one point, I think the contractor turned to him and was like, you know, what do you want us to do?

Yeah.

And, and the police officer said, well, we told him they're gonna, they're gonna get paint on him.

Yeah.

So basically carry on.

- Yeah.

So, and the president now says that they're going to fully investigate what happened, specifically though, why campus police were standing by and did not intervene.

That's gonna be the interesting question here, but I, I do wanna point out, the president here said, the president of the university very clear that this is not accepted.

Nobody, no students, nobody should be treated this way.

This one of the students, 18 years old, Palestinian American, just finished his freshman year at the University of Cincinnati.

He's been protesting for the last several weeks at Case Western.

His name is Amir Ali.

He told cleveland.com, he could not breathe.

It took him a long time, hours to get this paint off of his skin.

And he plans to take legal action against the school.

- Again, the university says this absolutely shouldn't have happened.

And they're gonna investigate it.

Karen, what the protestors are asking for, and in this message that I've, that I was reading earlier from the students explaining that they've decamped is that they want a disinvestment in Israel from the university, a private university, you could make that claim.

So that claim is a valid one or, or that that demand, however, we see protestors at public universities asking for divestment from Israeli companies.

And state law really makes that difficult to do.

- Yeah.

Impossible for public colleges and universities to do.

In fact, if you accept taxpayer dollars, then you have to file a state law, which says as of 2022, that there will be no divestment from Israel by those public colleges and universities.

That extends a state law from 2016 that said there would be no divestment from Israel for state agencies.

And you know, this is a part of a whole series of laws that were passed in the mid 2010s, anti BDS law, anti boycott, divestment and sanctions, specifically because of Israel.

And it kinda shows how long lasting this debate over Israel versus Palestine has gone when you go back.

And these laws have been around for a little while.

- Sure.

And meanwhile, attorney General Dave Yost said this week, an existing law could lead to escalated charges for some protesters if they're arrested, which would've far reaching effects, it dates back decades to K, k, K. - Yeah.

This is an anti disguise law.

And Yost wrote a letter to say that basically if you violate this anti disguise law, you wear a mask in public for protesting, you could face a fourth degree felony, six to 18 months imprisonment, $5,000 in fines.

You have that felony on your record.

And he said in the letter that he wrote to university presidents, I write, to inform your student bodies of this law in the context of some behavior during the recent pro-Palestinian protest.

And it could have the effect of being a problem, a significant career problem.

So it's interesting, you've got 15 states that have laws like this, and Ohio's one of them, - The Cleveland Metropolitan School District, has reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with its teacher's union.

Current contract was due to expire at the end of June.

Josh, it seems like every time a contract comes up, we hear all of the, the rumbling ahead of it.

And, and eventually it gets resolved.

But it, it's a close one in this.

People are like, wait, there was a contract.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Kind of a surprise here.

We don't have any specifics right now on the terms of this contract.

There was a news release put out by the union and the district saying it was very vague.

You know, it gave words like it was a harmonious collaboration.

The teachers are getting the respect they deserve.

Now the teacher's union and the school board are going to get details on that next week.

Once they do, then we'll get it.

But yeah, it was a surprise.

There was very little fanfare.

- Yeah.

So done deal.

Now they've got this contract, Connor, and, and you are, we're looking into it.

Everybody was happy with the outcome, but we're gonna get those details as they come out.

We don't have any yet.

But getting this done, given the district's financial difficulties.

Yeah.

This is why I thought, you know, because they had cut these programs that the Mackenzie Scott money was gonna fund, and because of other ranker within the, the, the teachers and the administration, et cetera, we were gonna see some sort of battle and what a thing with the money woes they're facing to be able to reach a contract that teachers are happy - With.

Yeah.

And I think it's crucial for the union.

I would, I would, I would expect to get this done as soon as possible because this public schools in Cleveland right now is in a precarious situation.

Or they continue to be, I should say no budgets are being increased.

They're looking at $143 million budget for next year.

And as of February, that's the latest numbers we got from Connor Morris's reporting that that was available.

Those numbers 175 open teacher positions in the district.

So yeah, I'm sure the union wanted to get this done before possibly more bad news.

More more cuts.

Right.

- A Republican state representative has introduced a bill that would allow police to pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt.

It would become a primary rather than secondary offense.

Now, police can only cite you for not wearing a seatbelt if they ticket you for another offense like running a stop sign.

Karen Bill is from state Representative John Cross governor's on board with it.

Where does Ohio stand compared to other states with seat belts?

- Well, first of all, I'd say, and Mike, I know you will forgive this pun.

This bill has a rough road ahead.

So Ohio is one of 15 states that has a secondary seatbelt law, meaning you have to do something else wrong to get pulled over.

And then you can be cited for not wearing a seatbelt if you're not.

And the fees right now are $30 for a driver, $20 for passengers.

But Representative John Cross, who is on his way out of office, followed up with a suggestion from Governor Mike DeWine in his state of the state speech that that become a primary enforcement law in Ohio.

So you could be pulled over just for not wearing a seatbelt.

You wouldn't have to do something else wrong.

And it's interesting when you look at the map of other states that have primary seatbelt laws, some of the most conservative states in the country.

I mean, you've got Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, you know, as well as some very cons liberal states like California.

So Ohio is kind of unusual in this group.

And, and so the effort to try to change this and make it a primary seatbelt law has started, but it, it feels like it, it doesn't have a whole a, a good shot of passing.

- Wendy sends a really interesting point, Karen.

We, first of all, we hear from cross that this will improve safety.

I wanna ask you before that, does data back that up?

- Yes, actually it does.

You've got safety officials who have been talking about this for years, that if you increase seatbelt usage, you do save lives.

And obviously a primary seatbelt law would be an incentive for people to use seat belts.

And you do have kind of this generational thing, I think with seatbelt usage, where older people may be less likely to wear seat belts because they didn't have them, they didn't have those laws.

Whereas younger people are more likely to wear seat belts 'cause they've grown up with seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all that kind of stuff.

- Right.

Now, Wendy brings up this point.

She says, this idea is one more way to criminalize driving while black.

Some jurisdictions have finally decided to remove broken taillights and missing mirrors from things that police can use to stop a car.

And I know Akron recently decided it's not gonna initiate chases anymore for those kinds of infractions.

That's a move in the right direction.

The seatbelt plan is the opposite.

- And, and that's interesting because Republican senate president Matt Hoffman specifically said that that was one of his concerns about this proposal was that people are more likely to get pulled over for this when they are the least likely to pay, or at least like to be able to pay or are, are being targeted in some way.

And John Cross says he would like to do some negotiating here to get rid of some of those things in state law, like being pulled over for taillight violations and not having a light on your license plate and some of these things.

He thinks that maybe through those negotiations he could get that primary seatbelt law.

He said he is a, doesn't wanna increase the fines, he just wants more people to buckle up.

But I don't know whether this really has a path to, I don't know whether the road ahead is good.

- Cleveland City Council this week approved an ordinance that directs Mayor Bibb to enforce the mod law as part of a strategy to keep the Browns from leaving the city for Brook Park.

The mod law is a one sentence, granted, it's a very long sentence, state law that requires a pro team to give notice before a move and offer a chance for someone else to buy the team Instead, the Browns currently considering two options for the stadium renovating the existing lakefront location, building a new dome facility, seeking big time public dollars for either one of those.

Josh, the Browns say they're considering both options, but the domed option appearance to have picked up some steam.

- Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think many people thought initially this was just a negotiating tactic with the city, for the city for they're negotiating the team with the city.

But even Brown's backers right now, like the official groups around the country are saying, yeah, this is something that, that we want to see, especially when more ideas are being thrown around like parking that's close and, and, and, and in different, obviously in the suburban setting, retail in a centralized area that they talk about the possibility of putting with the stadium in Brook Park and, and, and different things over there.

So the, the more that comes out, the more people say, Hmm, maybe that is a good idea.

- There was a time when the state had plenty of money to throw around.

It doesn't so much anymore.

Yeah.

And this is the time when the Haslams are going to state officials and saying, you know, we, we really want you to pony up, Karen.

They're getting some, some pretty lukewarm reaction from folks like speaker Jason Stevens.

- Yeah, I think that the question about $600 million for a stadium is, is a, a tall order.

Especially when Ohio does have other professional sports teams.

You've got the Bengals and the Guardians and the Reds and the Blue jackets and the crew and, and all of these who would naturally want to fall in line.

And my statehouse news bureau colleague, Joe Engles, talked to the governor this week for a forum before the Columbus Metropolitan Club and ask him, you know, should Ohio be putting money towards stadiums?

And he said, you know, Ohio has done that in the past, but if you do it, then other teams wanna do it too.

So there's, there's a limited pie of money here.

And, and everybody wants to slice - One, one other point about that, and that is that the Haslum say they're taking some lessons that they learned from the stocker soccer stadium that they built in Columbus.

One of the key lessons seems to be when it comes to construction, don't underestimates fan support don't go small.

They think they're a stadium that they built just recently.

And by the way, they have a championship team.

There is too small.

Well, so you're not gonna see them, you know, kind of cheap.

Make this thing cheap in any way.

Yeah.

- D Haslum told the Akron Beacon Journal, we did not build it big enough.

That was the quote and the Columbus Crew stadium in Columbus, the capacity is 20,000 139 seats.

Again, this is for soccer.

So it is, it is, you know, not really apples and oranges here, but a thousand more fans showed up for the regular season game last year than the capacity could handle, but really apples to oranges.

I mean, brown Stadium right now has 68,000 seats.

The current stadium, the largest NFL stadium.

I'm a sports guy, Mike, you know, and I, and I know all my stadiums.

Yes, you sure do.

Your stadia Stadia, 83,000 is the, the largest stadium capacity MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

So yeah, how big is too big?

It'll be interesting.

How, how, how big do you want it De Haslum, you know?

Yeah, I think that's the question.

- And I'd just like to add that the reason that the crew won was not because of the stadium.

Let's just put that out there.

That's - A great point.

Yeah.

- Alright.

Well the Browns are seeking support for, from the public, a lot of public money for either stadium renovation or a new build.

Cleveland City Council this week took a jab at the team over their financial support for youth summer football programs.

And the city council clearly thinks the team is, you know, it's got gator arms, they need to, they need to dig a little - Deeper.

Yeah.

The Browns are giving $30,000, $30,000.

So I would, I wish I could, I wanna go back and watch this exchange because Councilman Mike Ensi said, you've gotta be embarrassed.

We're giving them millions and millions of dollars.

They ought to be embarrassed.

And so I really wanna go back and watch that jab because they're basically saying, you have, so you have so much, why not support these youth programs that are so important for the, the youth of Cleveland, but also just to, to continue to drum up interest just for football in general.

- Yeah, nice.

That they're giving the 30,000 Oh absolute.

They're saying absolutely.

They listen, you, you, you're billionaire owners, you're asking for $600 million.

How about something a little more than what they would characterize as jump change.

- Yeah.

E exactly.

And I, I, I think that there's maybe some bad blood anyway right now with the stadium talks and whatnot.

So I'm sure that was part of it as well.

- A group of Republicans in the Ohio House are backing a bill to further tighten voter identification requirements, including for absentee voters.

So, Karen, you got any info?

- Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, there is a bill that would make some big changes in election laws.

Well, a a lot of smaller changes that turn out to be big changes over the course of this whole thing.

And this law would, for instance, require almost everybody to have either a driver's license or a state ID to register to vote and vote by mail.

Because right now you can do that with the last four digits of a social security number.

It would also require poll workers to look at the photo ID that voters are required to show and compare it to the voter standing in front of them to see if you look like your picture.

If you don't, you might have to cast a provisional ballot.

It also would allow for hand counting of ballots in counties if the Board of elections, the county commissioners or voters decide that that's what they want.

And it would also ban the processing and scanning of early ballots until the close of the polls on election day, which would delay results.

So there's a lot going on in this bill.

And again, my statehouse News bureau colleague, Joe Engles, asked Governor Mike DeWine about this, and he has said that the last time he signed a law, which was in January of 2023, that one required voter photo ID and required only one ballot Dropbox per county.

He said that that was the last one he wanted to sign.

He, he felt that we were done with changing the election laws.

So he said that these Republicans who are pushing this need to basically prove that this is necessary, that these changes need to be made when Ohio's voting system is laed as very secure.

That voter fraud is very, very rare.

You know, why are these changes needed?

He says, - Giant Eagle says it'll start offering customers free reusable fabric bags next week.

Not everyone brings their own, and paper bags weren't cutting it.

Josh Giant Eagle says, apparently customers weren't doing it, so they'd give em paper bags.

And then those things, you know, everything falls out of it by the time you get out to the car.

- Yeah.

I remember back in the day though, that's, that's all we had.

That was the only option.

Right?

Back in my day, back in my day when we didn't have shoes, that was the only option.

But no, seriously, you know, customers said they wanted another option.

If you remember initially, giant Eagle charged customers for bags after that plastic bag ban went into effect in Cuyahoga County.

And I remember going into the grocery store after that.

You did not want to talk to anyone about it because there was so much uproar.

So I think there Giant Eagle that is trying to find new footing with this, it's already available in Pennsylvania.

It's going to be in Cuyahoga County beginning Monday, I believe, and then Central Ohio in the, in the next couple of weeks here, - Anna, the bags are free, but Giant Eagle is hoping people will use 'em.

I mean, they're cloth bags.

You don't, you don't take it and then get another one the next time.

It'd be better if you leave 'em in your car as you're supposed to and bring 'em in.

- Right.

And they're washable.

So yeah, it, it's, I think this is a good testament of, you know, sometimes you roll out a project and then you get feedback and then things can change.

So here we go.

All - Right.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 7 WKSU, we'll discuss a new Idea stream documentary that looks at the inequities of school discipline.

It follows two schools in Akron.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.