(upbeat music) - [Mike] COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising just as people prepare to travel and gather for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The Ohio House approves a bill banning many COVID-19 vaccine mandates and proof of vaccination requirements for patrons and customers.

And Republican lawmakers send a congressional district map to the governor without getting any support from Democrats who say it's gerrymander.

Ideas is next.

(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Just in time for the start of the holiday season, the Ohio Department of Health says COVID-19 cases are on the rise driven by the Delta variant which has caught a second wind.

An effort to ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates and so-called vaccine passports made it through the Ohio House in lightening quick fashion.

The house yesterday also passed a new congressional district map.

Critics say it's a gerrymander and it's unconstitutional.

Republicans say it's fair.

What it definitely isn't is bi-partisan.

And drug overdose deaths in the United States reach a grim milestone driven largely by fentanyl.

We'll talk about those stories and much more ahead on the reporters' round table.

Joining me this week Ideastream Public Media, Managing Producer for Health, Marlene Harris-Taylor and Host Producer Glenn Forbes, and Statehouse News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler is in Columbus.

Let's get ready to round table.

Marlene, the numbers have been inching upward last couple of weeks, and experts have said colder weather, holiday gatherings, that really is a bad recipe.

- Yeah.

It's so disappointing, Mike just as we're about to go into Thanksgiving.

It's not a surprise because we heard this from experts earlier in the fall, "Everyone be aware, colder weather, people gathering inside."

And now it's actually happening.

We're seeing it in a number.

- I know that Anna Huntsman who worked with you on the health team has been looking into how people are being affected... How their Thanksgiving plans are being affected.

I remember last year it was locked down.

Me and my wife and our two children and we had... Actually we picked it up from my sister-in-law cooked it and we weren't going over.

So we ended up having the meal ourselves, which was really unusual.

We're usually the big family, three people kind of thing.

Then this year, what are we gonna do?

Can you card people at the door and make sure they're vaccinated?

If that's a concern of yours.

- I mean, you can, but that probably will make you very popular with uncle Joe if you don't let him in the door, right?

- How did you know his name was Joe?

- Just a guess.

(laughs) Everybody has an uncle Joe.

Yeah.

Everybody's in this quandary about what do we do?

But I honestly though, Mike, I think that most people are just going to forge ahead and just have Thanksgiving this year.

We wanted it so bad.

We missed it last holiday season, we missed Thanksgiving, we missed Christmas.

And now that a good number of us are vaccinated, particularly the older parents, 'cause that's parents and grandparents, 'cause that's the highest numbers on the vaccination rates.

So I think we feel okay kinda we're going forward this year.

- Yeah.

That's gonna be interesting.

And by the way, if you wanna text your thoughts on how this is affecting you with the Thanksgiving plans, if I know somebody is anti-vax and hoax theory type of thing, do I wanna pass the potatoes?

I don't know, or get the potatoes passed to me.

- Passing that potatoes, yeah.

- Exactly.

So we'll talk a little bit hear your thoughts on that, but that's obviously another thing as all of this is happening.

And Karen, I mentioned the vaccination rates are lagging behind the national average.

They're lagging behind 34 other states.

The Ohio Department of Health is trying to overcome misinformation to increase the vaccine numbers.

But we've talked before I wonder if that will have any impact of the people who are gonna get vaxxed already have.

- Well, my Statehouse News Bureau colleague, Jo, did a piece for our TV show, the State of Ohio this week, specifically on what are people doing for Thanksgiving since a year ago we didn't have vaccines.

A year ago things were really looking very bleak because we were going into this terrible slide in terms of cases and deaths that started around the Halloween area and went all the way into January, the numbers just got really, really bad.

We were in the midst of that a year ago.

And so Marlene's right, a lot of people really missed getting together.

A lot of people did get together, but a lot of people who were trying to play it safe did not get together.

So now the question is, do you demand to know people's vaccination status?

Are you gonna be masked anyway, while you're sitting around the table?

And Jo kind of explored that with some people that she spoke with.

So what's happening though with the Ohio Department of Health is they did a press conference this week talking about how the Delta variant is basically getting a second wind.

And a part of that is related to the fact that Ohio's vaccination numbers are really low compared to other areas.

And of course, people traveling that's what's happening in other parts of the country to is, people are coming, to say Florida from other parts of the country and bringing whatever they're bringing with them.

And so all of this travel, all of this mixing of people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated, who may or may not be masked, who may or may not be socially distant, this can really potentially be a mix that we could see the results coming up in the next couple of weeks and months.

- Karen, don't forget the schools.

Don't forget the kids in school.

- Yeah.

- Because now we've got the kids back and we don't have...

They weren't back last year this time.

Some schools are masking, some are not.

- Yep.

And some schools are actually taking their mask mandates off.

We've seen several districts that have decided to eliminate mass mandates.

Again, as we're going into a time of year where we're gathering indoors, where we're gathering with others, this is potentially worrying to public health officials.

One thing that I keep watching when I look at the numbers, Ohio reports it's daily or it's death totals twice a week on Tuesday and Friday.

So there's another set of numbers coming out.

I mean, we still are on track as of September 1st, 63 people on average per day reported to have died of COVID in Ohio.

That's a lot of people.

These numbers keep there in the triple digits every time those deaths totals are released on Tuesday and Friday.

And they haven't really gone down, even as case numbers started to go down but now are going back up.

(upbeat music) - The Ohio House has approved a bill that would outlaw mandates for COVID-19 vaccines that don't have full government approval.

And it would broaden exemptions when mandates are in place.

Karen, this bill moved so quickly out of committee to a floor vote then off the floor.

Representative Janine Boyd said her Republican colleagues pulled a fast one, did they?

- Yeah.

And Wyane Bryant and other Cleveland area democratic member of the House of Representatives said that it was a bait and switch.

And I think it's interesting to talk about this in light of the whole question about misinformation, because certainly you could argue that passing a bill when the Ohio department of health is encouraging people to get the vaccine passing a bill that says schools and businesses, private entities can not require a COVID vaccine.

That's just really a mixed message here.

And what happened was there were a couple of bills last month that dealt with COVID vaccines and one particular one that would have expanded the exemptions for people who don't wanna get a COVID vaccine as required expanded those exemptions to basically anyone who wanted one could get one.

So if you didn't wanna have to take the shot, you wouldn't have to take the shot.

Those bills got tremendous opposition from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Hospital Association, more than a 100 business and healthcare groups, community groups, they came out and said, these bills were a bad idea for everybody.

And so those bills were shelved.

Speaker Bob Cupp said, "We're not gonna do any more vaccine mandate bills.

We're gonna move on to other items of importance to this legislature.

Well then all of a sudden on Wednesday evening, there was this movement going on behind the scenes, where there was gonna be a bill that was gonna move on a vaccine mandate proposal.

And then on Thursday morning in a committee and I honestly didn't know if you could do this or not.

And I'm not a legislator so I don't know.

- If you do not know it's new.

(Marlene laughs) - Well, it was a bill that had been heard by this committee.

And so what they did was they stripped all of the language out of this bill and put in new language from two other bills, a bill on vaccine exemptions for COVID and then also this bill on vaccine passports.

And so that bill was the one that was passed by committee democrats said this was a fast one because they hadn't had any hearings on that new language.

They'd had hearings on the old bill and the old bill was about keeping bars open during statewide curfews.

It wasn't about COVID vaccine exemptions.

And so this bill went out of committee, party line vote, went to the floor, almost exclusively party line vote.

And it really feels like it was very quickly pushed out there, but it's probably going to hit an obstacle course going forward because it doesn't look like Senate President, Matt Hoffman wants to move this forward because of the concerns about the legislature telling business, what they can and can't do.

And then Governor DeWine said through a spokesman last night that he doesn't like vaccine mandates, but he also doesn't like it when there is a ban on vaccine mandates.

So this was an extraordinary move by the legislature and really seems to speak to this whole minority of people who really wanna see some sort of movement on vaccine mandates because of what they call medical freedom.

But I thought it was really interesting to talk to Steve Stivers, a former Congressman from Ohio who is now the Head of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

And he had heard this rumor that there was this backroom dealing going on, try to get the congressional map for Republicans to support that as well as support this vaccine mandate bill.

He called that an act of legislative terrorism to hold up a vote on the congressional maps to push this vaccine mandate bill, which I thought was really interesting to hear a Republican former Congressman say that.

- Karen, I wanted to ask you, when we talk about Speaker Cupp reluctance to bring this to the floor saying that it was shelved, they weren't gonna bring it to the... Was he trying to kind of avoid this schism if you will, within his own party, or was he trying to protect these traditional Republican strongholds of the chamber of commerce and the business community or Governor DeWine?

What do you think his motivation was in saying, this bill is not coming to the floor?

- Well, and we've asked him about those things and he's really kind of pushed away that question.

I think there is definitely a coalition of Republicans.

I don't know how big it is that wants to see a bill on vaccine mandates.

There's a bill that would ban all mandatory vaccines from childhood shots, all the way up to the COVID vaccine.

That bill, Speaker Cupp said is not gonna move.

And so there's what's called a discharge petition out there, 14 members of the house, all Republicans have signed this.

If they get to 50, then that would force a floor vote on this.

So there is a group of Republicans who want to see a vote on a bill that would essentially ban all mandatory vaccines.

Again, we're talking about measles shots, polio and all that stuff, the stuff that we've lived with for years.

And so I think that there's maybe some frustration among Republicans because there is this minority that wants to see this pushed forward and being tied to this whole idea of medical freedom and that people can make their own choices.

Well, the business community wants to make its choices too.

So it really kind of puts those things at odds.

- Let me just back up for one quick second though, you mentioned that former representative Steve Stivers with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce called it an act of legislative terrorism, because he saw a link between votes on the congressional district map being traded off for, okay, we'll get this legislation through.

Is there any evidence that that's the case or is it just his opinion?

- I've talked to a couple of lawmakers who said that they had heard that this was going on.

Now of course, Republicans in leadership and the Republican who sponsored the bill that moved forward said there was no connection.

These are apples and oranges, no connection at all.

But certainly the map boat had to go forward.

There were gonna be no Democrats who are gonna support that Republican drawn map.

And so all Republicans really were encouraged to vote for the maps, which really do benefit Republicans.

But I think that there was maybe from what I've been hearing, the opportunity for people who wanted to see something done on vaccine mandates to push that forward.

And we're not just talking to about the most extreme members of the Ohio legislature.

We're also talking about some other people who are a little bit more moderate, but apparently wanted to give people the opportunity to be exempt from a COVID vaccine mandate, especially if one came from their employer or if one came from the federal government, which if you had that, I don't know how a state law, Trump say an order from OSHA, I'm just not sure.

- Yeah, that's one thing I was gonna ask about Karen is, if you have a state law versus a federal law, then wouldn't the federal law trumpet.

And the other thing I'm wondering... You would think so, right?

And the other thing I'm wondering is maybe the motivation of the leadership in Columbus and in holding this up is that they are thinking that these moves, these laws are not broadly popular with the public.

Maybe they're popular with a certain segment of the Republican party, but once that actually gets out to the public, they might lose support from a large segment of people who'd like to see this Coronavirus pandemic get under control.

- Go ahead.

- I was just gonna say, I mean, remember that the legislature in particular, the House of Representatives in particular has a lot of members who are from rural areas and the vaccination rates are lower in rural areas.

The questioning about the vaccines, which are safe and effective is a lot stronger in rural areas.

And so I think they may be listening to constituents and certainly there's this group of anti-vax folks who have gotten the ears of some members of the House of Representatives and certainly push their ideas forward.

(upbeat music) - The Ohio House of Representatives approved a new congressional district map that heavily favors Republicans.

It now goes to Governor Mike DeWine for his signature.

All house Democrats and four Republicans voted against the new map, which critics say is nowhere close to balanced.

Karen, all the house Democrats voted against the map as did four Republicans.

Clearly we didn't achieve anything close to bipartisanship.

- Yeah.

And the Republicans who were opposed, I mean, we've heard from one Representative Kyle Kaler who tweeted that he was concerned about how the maps split Clark County in Central Western Ohio, where he is in the Springfield area.

And so, yeah, this was not unanimously supported by Republicans.

And that goes back to the argument that we were just discussing earlier about whether there was a connection between trying to get support for the maps along with support for a vaccine mandate bill.

There were apparently some questions in the Republican caucus about what the map looks like.

The map was will almost certainly be signed by Governor Mike DeWine because the process needs to continue.

I mean, the deadline is November 30th.

And then after that, if he signs it, it will immediately be challenged in court, just like the maps for the Ohio House and Senate that were voted on by the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

I think that was last month.

It's hard to remember at this point.

We are expecting at this point, a series of court challenges, those previous maps, the Ohio House and Senate maps, those are gonna be argued before the Ohio Supreme Court next month, early December.

And then we've got this map, which the governor is looking at right now, not talking about whether he's gonna sign it or not, but it certainly seems that that's the way it's leaning.

We don't know until he actually puts pen to paper or does it.

- Glenn, we've talked about what the voters wanted.

They voted in 2015 for reform of the way we do the state legislative maps in 2018 for reform, or the way we do the congressional maps and it seems like none of that had any effect.

- No, seemingly not.

And you would hope for a ten-year solution certainly rather than a four year solution.

I think if you could just, not necessarily from the outside looking in, but if you just kind of look at things plainly maybe you could argue for three democratic strongholds, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, maybe four, if you think Toledo or Dayton would be big enough, right?

- I think Karen's not agreeing with you.

- Looking at this map, I don't see a Democrat winning Cincinnati.

I think all the map was divided.

- Yeah.

And that would be the argument.

I think it's more than reasonable to say, like I said, you should have at least three democratic strongholds, maybe four.

I mean, Ohio is a red, it's not deep red, but Ohio is pretty red.

And I think that's the Republicans argument here.

And if you get outside of those urban areas, it's certainly more likely you're going to elect a Republican.

The suburbs can be certainly be split at times, but I mean, how many democratic stronghold district should Ohio really have?

- Yeah, wouldn't it be great if they were all competitive?

I mean, part of what the voters asked for is if you look at the numbers of people who are registered in the state, there's a split, is a pretty even split compared to what we see in terms of the numbers of representatives who are Republican and or Democrat.

So the idea was there'd be more competition and the ability where it isn't just a lock from the other side.

You mentioned a couple of the urban districts too, Glenn and Marlene, I want to ask you about this.

Seth Richardson did some good reporting in the Plain Dealer that says the maps could limit minority voters power by either packing them into heavily democratic districts or cracking them apart into separate GOP leaning districts in this map.

And that's something that was testified on before the committee State Representative Stephanie Howse, who's a Cleveland Democrat said that the folks that are saying, that's not the case, they're just not telling the truth.

- In fact, my understanding is there's no longer a black majority district in this current map, there's a minority majority district, but no black majority district.

And I think that when this does go to court, as Karen has said, it will most likely do, I think that'll be one of the arguments against this map is the disenfranchisement of minority and particularly black voters in this map because that's problematic.

- Karen, final word on this topic as we move on.

- Yeah.

I mean, I think anybody who expected that those constitutional amendments in 2015 and 2018 would result in completely competitive districts was really not thinking it clearly, because honestly, as long as people who are elected officials are drawing these maps there's going to be some partisan influence here.

I mean, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, there was going to be some partisan influence and we've seen it in other states where Democrats have been drawing the maps and drawing them to favor Democrats.

This is not a surprise.

So, the legislature has always said that they have the ability to draw the map and they were gonna draw the map.

That's what they argued for.

And now potentially this really does test those ballot issues that voters voted overwhelmingly for in 2015 and 2018.

(upbeat music) - The epidemic within the pandemic persists.

Opioid overdose deaths continue.

According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a hundred thousand people died of drug overdoses in the United States between April 2020 and April, 2021.

It's the first time the nation has topped a hundred thousand deaths in a 12 month period.

And I see the regular updates from the Cleveland Division of Police in my email, overdoses continue on a baited here as well.

Marlene, the isolation caused by that pandemic is partly to blame, some people say for helping to drive the search and deaths, but it seems as though the real deal is the presence of fentanyl and the drugs that people are using.

- The fentanyl.

In fact, early on in the pandemic, I did a story about this and I spoke to the folks over at the Adams Board and they were saying that fentanyl isn't every street drug now.

It doesn't matter what the drug they're being cut with fentanyl.

And it's so powerful, the fentanyl.

And it continues to get stronger and stronger and they can make new analogs, so they can make new combinations of fentanyl as they go along.

So it's hard for the people who are trying to combat this to stay on top of this.

The other big piece of this though, Mike is the lack of access to treatment.

'Cause if you think about when things were shut down, people who wanted to seek some help, they couldn't really go anywhere 'cause everybody was afraid of the pandemic.

So, they started doing more telehealth.

Some of the places where people would go to detox beds, they were cutting back on the number of people that they were allowing to come in.

So there was this combination of this powerful fentanyl, you've got lack of access to treatment.

And then you've got some people who were shut in and they didn't use for a while.

Then they came back out and started using again at the same rate that they were before.

And it was a much more powerful dose.

So it's a lot of combination of factors.

What I'm hearing experts say is that we really need to start focusing on harm reduction strategies.

They're not always that popular to give people test strips, free test strips so they can test their drugs and see if there's a presence of fentanyl in there.

Give people clean needles.

These are harm reduction strategies that have been proven to work and experts say, we need to ramp up on those.

- You'll run into people that say, "Just don't use drugs and we're not gonna help you use drugs.

And why should I let you have a test strip so you can make sure the drugs are good.

You shouldn't be doing them."

So that's one line of thinking against harm reduction, which is, do we want fewer people to die?

- Right.

If we really wanna cut into these overdose numbers, what the experts saying is we've got to concentrate on these harm reduction strategies and also allow people to have access to medicated assisted treatment, which is Methadone, which is Suboxone, which actually help fight those cravings while you're trying to get clean.

But there's a stigma around those as well.

- One quick point is that in 2018, before the pandemic, overdose deaths had actually gone down, Glenn.

And so maybe there was this thought that we had a trend that might argue that the pandemic itself obviously had a big influence on this.

- Absolutely.

You mentioned the isolation and things of that nature.

It is very chilling to read those emails from Cleveland Police that you're referring to.

They're kind of littered with those overdoses.

Cuyahoga county medical examiner came out a couple of weeks ago said, we got a problem here, the bad batch, as Marlene said, fentanyl and everything.

- [Mike] Like a grain of salt size fentanyl can be deadly.

- Absolutely.

And I think it's interesting because there's no like right answer.

You can try to attack the supply side.

You can try to attack the demand side.

And then there's the rehab side like Marlene was talking about as well.

Interesting to note that we're coming up toward the end of a federal trial here in Cleveland with Lake and Trumbull counties suing the big pharmacy, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart too, I believe.

And there's other settlement money that's come in and it's like these cities, these counties, how are they going to deploy these dollars to try to fix it?

It's a very complex problem.

Like I said, if you look at the demand side, is it more jobs?

Is it more treatment?

Is it more on the supply side?

It's coming in from, Governor DeWine always talks about they're coming in from Mexico, it's coming in from China, it's coming in from all these places.

So, you would hope to see an all the above approach but right now it's a very complex issue, a lot of different sides to it.

And people are really suffering out there.

(upbeat music) - Cleveland's major league baseball team is now officially the Guardians.

The team started selling Guardian's gear this morning online and at the Progressive Field team shop.

So Karen, I saw the line, I saw it with my own eyes.

Did you expect that that people would be lining up for Guardians gear?

Given that it doesn't look that good.

I'm sorry, it's not.

(laughs) - Oh, wow.

But I think, yeah, I mean, these are fans, the fans, if this is where the team is going, I think the fans are gonna go with them.

Not all, certainly I've been having an engagement online with somebody who's becoming a Yankees fan, which I can't even imagine.

I know, I know, I know.

Right, don't do that of all things.

Don't go the worst way.

But I think as the team becomes this, people are going to either accept it or not.

And if you accepted, why not buy stuff I guess, it's the holiday season coming up, Christmas gifts I suppose if you're on board.

- And for those Marlene who have been avoiding wearing gear that said Indians on it for, they just thought it wasn't right, now you get the chance to go and wear the teams nickname.

- You can wear the team's nickname.

And like Karen said, great Christmas gifts.

I think over, this is gonna be one of those things over time people will start to accept.

Even the ones who didn't want it.

- I think I'd prefer the Roller Derby's logo, by the way, the Roller team.

- The Roller Derby's logo is nice.

- And they got a deal.

So they both can be the Guardians and we won't be confused, whereas Frankie Linda?

He's gone, right?

- I don't think it will be too confusing.

- When it comes to a Roller Derby match, "Where is he?

No, he's on the baseball team."

Okay, we got it.

- [Glenn] Exactly.

- Coming up Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 90.3 WCPN, we'll meet some of this year's 40 under 40 class selected by Crain's Cleveland Business.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for watching, and stay safe.

(upbeat music)