(thrilling music) - After years of disagreement, Cuyahoga County settles on a site for a new jail in Garfield Heights.

After years of disagreement, Republicans and Democrats unanimously approve new State House legislative maps.

And the Senate has moved to block Cleveland's People's Budget Charter Amendment before voters can even decide.

"Ideas" is next.

(thrilling music) Hello and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

We've talked a lot on the round table about the gridlock in siting a Cuyahoga County Jail and in drawing state legislative district maps.

This week, breakthroughs for both.

Cuyahoga County Council greenlighted the nearly $40 million purchase of land in Garfield Heights for a new county jail, after years of debate about sites in Cleveland.

And the Ohio Redistricting Commission, do not touch your dial, this is coming in loud and clear, unanimously pass new maps for Ohio House and Senate districts.

The two Democrats on the commission signed off on the maps along with majority Republicans.

Why?

In other news at the State House, the Senate voted in favor of Senator Jerry Cirino's bill that would short-circuit the People's Budget Charter Amendment in Cleveland.

And Ohio Senate Republicans, upset with the media coverage they get, have decided to start their own online news site.

Joining me this week from Ideastream Public Media, criminal justice reporter, Matt Richmond, and general assignment specialist Abigail Bottar.

In Columbus, Haley Bemiller, government and politics reporter for the USA Today Network's Ohio Bureau.

Let's get ready to round table.

Cuyahoga County Council voted this week to buy land in Garfield Heights for a new county jail.

Price tag for 72 acres?

$38.7 million.

Building the jail will be a much more expensive proposition.

County executive Chris Ronayne favors an extension of the county sales tax that was used to build a medical mart.

Council put off a vote on that, opting for further discussion.

Matt, not everybody was on board with this.

- No, it was an eight to three vote.

There are a few council members who think that the jail really needs to stay within Cleveland because most of the people who are brought there and their families are in Cleveland.

And this new site would be a little bit south of the city and it'd be more centrally located for the county overall.

But really these council members say it should stay in Cleveland.

And then there was some concern, I think, among other council members that this whole process became derailed, that the previous site, which was close to a downtown, which was passed on in part because of some contamination.

And then sort of the last straw was at the county executive.

Chris Ronayne during his campaign said that... Or this was actually after he'd been elected and was the executive elect.

He said, "Please don't approve this site.

I don't support it.

Hold off until I get in."

And so some council members really felt that that was a mistake and was politics.

And that remains for them the best site, but this is the one that was put in front of them.

- And the one that they've voted on now in Garfield Heights is a clean site.

If they're allowed to, they would have enough space to build essentially a campus.

Let's talk about why a new jail is needed.

The current jail, there was an investigation by the US Marshal Service that just said it's deplorable.

- Yeah, and that sort of kicked off the planning process for building a new jail.

And so they did studies about what exactly it would take to really fully renovate the existing one, and it would not have worked, was the finding.

And because it's built sort of as a tower, that makes it very difficult to go in and get at all the plumbing and all the wires and stuff.

Whereas if you have a campus, it's a lot easier 'cause it'd be one or two stories and everything.

And it would be built to be more accessible to get to sort of the bones of the facility.

And they found that, and these are numbers, and numbers could be kind of fudged, let's say, but they found that you would be looking at maybe like a half a billion dollars, just to fully refurbish that facility.

And so it really wasn't worth, it was the decision they came to.

- That facility is connected to the county courthouse, though.

And I didn't see anything in this story about what happens to the courthouse.

I know that the judges there and the prosecutors and the defense lawyers, everybody's talking about the problems with that facility too.

What's the line on that?

- Yeah, there's no clear answer.

The county has started the process of finding a real estate company to help them to kind of envision a new development at the site of the courthouse.

So they're moving in the direction of selling off that land and having somebody come in and redevelop it.

So then the question becomes, where is a feasible place to have the courthouse?

Do you find some new land to build something new downtown?

Are you going to have to move it out to Garfield Heights just 'cause the logistics of moving folks back and forth between court and the jail just becomes too unwieldy?

And that part of it is not at all kind of on the table yet, or it's not really clear what they want to do.

- $40 Million for land purchase is nothing compared to the amount money it'll cost to build this jail campus.

And if we talk about a courthouse as well, massive amounts more.

So the idea for paying for that was, "Let's extend a sales tax where we're already collecting money."

That was something that the county executive, when he was running, said that's something the public should vote on.

Then he said, "Not so sure about that.

I think we can just go ahead and do it."

Council's gonna talk about that a little more fully, but what are the chances, you think, that the voters will get a chance to say, "Yes, that's a good idea" to extend it or that it'll just be passed by fiat?

- Yeah, that's a tricky one because these two pieces of legislation, the legislation to buy the land in Garfield Heights and the legislation to extend that sales tax were introduced together to council.

And there were several council members, including one or two who voted no, who said, "Why are we buying land if we're not gonna vote on this sales tax to pay to build the jail?

They should stay together, these two proposals."

It seemed, at their last meeting back in August, that the growing consensus was to put the sales tax on the ballot.

Now it seems like the idea that there is so much urgency to move forward with this, which was part of the reason why let's just buy this land, we can't keep kind of putting this off, that that sense of urgency is kind of having a rebirth, having a new day.

So they sent the sales tax back after they approved the purchase of the land, sent it back to Committee of the Whole.

And it'll be interesting to see the tenor of the discussion if it's about moving this forward.

And we can't wait to get this on the ballot next year and do a campaign, and then who knows what'll happen.

'Cause there are no other proposals on the table for paying for the jail.

So it'll be very interesting to see what happens at that next Committee meeting.

(thrilling music) - The Ohio Redistricting Commission, that assembly of state-elected officials who've been unable to agree on legislative district maps, and whose efforts have resulted in unconstitutional gerrymanders, voted unanimously and in a bipartisan way to approve new legislative district maps this week.

Haley, why this coming together?

- I like to refer to this as begrudging bipartisanship.

I think Democrats realize that they were painted into a corner a little bit.

They know that if any legal challenges go to the Ohio Supreme Court, there's a Republican-controlled majority on that court now.

And the Chief Justice has made it clear that she's not gonna consider political preferences when she reviews the constitutionality of these maps.

So Democrats saw this as the best they were gonna get.

There are like a few more competitive seats in this map for Democrats than there were in previous iterations, so Democrats say they see a path toward maybe flipping some of these seats, but it's a little hard to see that.

And ultimately this is a map that heavily favors Republicans still.

- Is this something where it was, "Okay, we're not going to spread this thing out forever and we're gonna go to a Supreme Court."

That's very different 'cause Maureen O'Connor isn't on it," as you've mentioned.

"And so this is probably the best we can do now."

But everything could change in a year.

And by that I mean they're looking at trying to put an amendment on the statewide ballot that would take redistricting out of the hands of politicians.

- Right.

I think between democratic leadership and even some voting rights groups, critics of the redistricting process have said, "Let's just move on.

Let's look ahead toward the next election and getting this independent commission on the ballot and approved by voters."

They feel like this process that was approved back in 2015 and 2018 really just isn't working and maps need to be taken outta the hands of politicians.

And you heard Democrats saying that, to justify this vote, they said, "This is the best we're gonna do with a broken process."

- Meanwhile, Maureen O'Connor, who is leading that push to take the power to draw maps out of the hands of Republicans, said after this vote, she called it a bipartisan gerrymander.

So she wasn't quite in favor of that either.

- Yeah, I think for O'Connor, and certainly a lot of advocates for redistricting reform who are not really happy with the vote this week, by the way, they see this as proof that no politicians, either Republicans or Democrats can be trusted with this process.

And to O'Connor, this is just further proof that Ohio really needs to enact an independent commission and keep elected officials out of the room altogether.

- Before this vote, there was some public input that was being sought.

And Abigail, you attended one of the sessions.

Tell me about that.

What did you hear?

- Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the vast majority of people that testified at this hearing were very disappointed and angry with both the maps and the way that the commission has been handling themselves.

Many came with specific grievances of the maps, saying that they split their communities or their counties and that they claimed that that goes towards the Republicans, what they call their unfair advantage.

And in the House and the Senate and others were just upset in general with how redistricting is going.

I mean, this has been a years-long process, so I think people are tired of arguing about this and tired that things aren't going better, and there was just generally upset.

The attitude was just very upset in the hearing.

- And this was in Geauga County?

- Yeah, it was at Punderson State Park.

They had one on Monday, which was Yom Kippur, which was an issue too.

People were upset that they held it on a Jewish holiday where Jewish people could not attend.

And to fix that, they held another one on Monday night, which still meant that Jewish people couldn't attend, but it did mean that people who work maybe nine to five could attend.

But yeah, there wasn't any really geographical diversity in where they held these hearings.

I believe the other two were in Columbus, so it was in Geauga County and Columbus.

So there was also people upset that people from like Toledo, Cincinnati, other areas couldn't attend these hearings and talk about their concerns or support for the maps, I guess.

- Well, it sounds like it's moot anyway because the feedback didn't matter.

- No, yeah.

I mean, they did change the maps a little bit.

I looked at them.

I don't know if they took their specific grievances into an account but yeah.

I mean, I think part of democracy was, whether or not they were gonna take it into account, was expressing their displeasure.

- And Haley, what does it mean that it was a bipartisan vote?

That means the map wouldn't be something that we'd readdress quickly.

This is aside from the fact that there might be a constitutional amendment to take it outta the hands of politicians, but this would then be in effect for like eight years?

- Yeah.

At this point, this map is good through 2030.

People could sue over this if they wanted, which would maybe change that timeline.

But again, just because of the makeup of the Supreme Court and this ballot issue that could be before voters next year, I don't think there's gonna be a huge appetite to sue over these maps.

You saw the lawsuit over the congressional maps be withdrawn because, again, groups are just looking forward.

They say they've given up on this process that's currently in place essentially and wanna change the rules altogether.

(thrilling music) - The November ballot in Cleveland offers voters a choice about a People's Budget, where citizens decide how 2% of the city budget is spent.

State Senator Jerry Cirino in suburban Kirtland wants to stop it in its tracks.

Matt, Mayor Bibb is not a supporter of the measure, which is issue 38 on the ballot.

He's also not a fan of Jerry Cirino's bill.

There's folks that are sort of against both.

- Yeah, the argument from Mayor Bibb's administration is that this is just further erosion of a home rule.

And that's a constitutional principle, that cities in Ohio should be able to sort of control their own affairs, pass laws.

- Well, they can't for guns and they can't do a number of other things.

- Yeah, there was the $15 minimum wage that a law was passed in Columbus to sort of preempt that move.

Yeah, and then going back to like a residency requirements for city employees.

So yeah, it's that principle opposition.

And there's one other thing that...

I mean, it was sort of presented by Cirino as about PB CLE, but it doesn't just cover PB CLE, the issue 24, the Community Police Commission in that charter amendment, there is a prescribed amount in the budget every year for the commission.

So if this passes, the budget for the commission would be back in the hands of City Council, that or organizers thought it was very important to take that authority away from City Council because politics and every year there'd be plenty of council members, particularly here in Cleveland, who who would like to see cuts to the commission's budget.

- We had a robust discussion on this program, then there was a debate last week as well between proponents of participatory budgeting in Cleveland and City Council members who oppose it.

And Molly Martin, who's one of the folks who's been supporting this, had tweeted earlier in the week that a council member said, "Don't worry about all this debate..." Essentially, I'm paraphrasing.

"Don't worry about all of this.

The state's gonna stop it.

The state's gonna block this."

So the people are kind of counting on that to even happen, so the whole thing will be moot, which sounds just, I don't know, weird.

- Yeah, and I think it's particularly frustrating for a lot of Clevelanders 'cause this is definitely not the first time where they felt like council wasn't really addressing their concerns and they weren't really hearing what residents wanted from them.

And so kind of instead of acknowledging that, it just seems like there is a move to short-circuit that sort of participation.

- And how about the debate this week?

Pretty spirited.

- Yeah.

Yeah, and it was interesting to me the...

There was like, I guess you'd say a lot of appeal to emotions on both sides.

On the no side it was, "This is going to result in the loss of services."

And I think one of the debaters on the no side said that there will be corruption on a level never seen in Cleveland before.

- That's saying something.

- Yeah, exactly.

- And then on the yes side it was kind of questioning whether a councilman like...

The councilman who was there was Kris Harsh.

And questioning whether he was capable of addressing the needs of families in Cleveland.

And Kris Harsh is a white council member and this was directed at sort of poor Black families.

And so it got very emotional and, I thought, surprisingly personal.

(thrilling music) Akron's fire chief says his department is working overtime to make up for a private ambulance company that ended its contract with the city, and it's going to cost nearly a million bucks.

Abigail, the chief Joseph Natko says the situation is precarious 'cause there just isn't enough help to go around.

- Right, yeah.

Natko flagged the issue for City Council this week saying the department needs that almost a million more dollars to cover overtime costs.

People, EMS workers are working to cover how much work AMR did with non-life threatening ambulance rides.

Oftentimes EMS workers would go and assist Akron residents and then AMR would transport them to the hospital.

So they're picking up a ton of slack to fill this gap left by AMR.

But the department's about to run out of their overtime budget, they need more staff, they need more money, and they need that extra ambulance.

And Natko even said that at some stations there's not even enough people to staff both ambulances and fire trucks, which could obviously be an issue.

- Why did the private ambulance company drop the contract?

- AMR was providing services to Akron at no cost and was making money by billing the transported patients instead.

But earlier this year they told the city they couldn't do that anymore, and was proposing an $11 million five-year contract, which the city declined.

So we knew this was coming, but I think it was kind of an impossible task to staff up with all the staffing shortages we're seeing in first responders right now.

- You would think if they said no to $11 million, they assumed it'll be some sort of million dollars.

So a million bucks right now in overtime seems to be a better deal.

- Yeah, I guess, I mean, they discussed how they could fill this gap.

I mean, the finance director for the city, Steve Fricker, was saying they might be able to find the funds in the city's current budget and the fire department is currently under budget, which probably bodes well, and he said that a last resort option would be dipping into the city's reserves, which they don't really want to do, but could be an option.

So I mean, they're seeming like they're gonna be able to shore up the money hopefully, but there are other ways to be able to absorb the extra cost here.

- It could get a little more busy too if flu season's coming.

- Right, yeah.

And that's the concern that Natko's looking ahead at what his department has, running out of resources and going forward to increase demand during flu season.

We usually see more people needing EMS services during that time and he's saying his department can't fill that need right now.

(thrilling music) - The Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments this week that could lead to the return of the state's so-called Heartbeat Law, currently on hold due to a legal challenge in Hamilton County.

There were no exceptions for rape or incest.

The law briefly went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer and before a court order suspending it.

Haley, the focus of the case now is not on abortion itself, but on whether those who brought the case, clinics and doctors, had the legal right or standing to do so.

- Right.

So that's one of the questions.

And then there's also a question about whether Attorney General Dave Yost could appeal in the manner he did.

So these are two procedural questions that could very much affect whether this lawsuit moves forward at all.

But the court doesn't wanna rule on the constitutionality of abortion access under the current Constitution because the Constitution may change in less than two months.

So we have that ballot issue coming before voters in November, and so there's really no point having that legal debate until the election is settled.

- And do we expect the Supreme Court then to rule quickly on this particular thing about the standing?

- I would be surprised if we see a decision before the election, but also the Supreme Court surprises me on a regular basis.

So I guess we'll see.

But again, I think this close to the election, if you throw out the case, then maybe the six-week ban goes back into effect for like a few weeks and then if it passes in November, it could just get really confusing.

So I think the court will more than likely wait until the matter is settled before voters in November.

(thrilling music) - Ohio Republicans in the state Senate say they're not being heard by what they term the left-wing biased media, so they're starting their own online newsroom.

It'll include podcasts, written posts from Republican senators and state employees.

That sounds basically like what senators already do, what political parties already do, which is they put out their own information and then legitimate media ought to take that into account, take facts into account, get the opposite side, and write stories or broadcast stories.

But they want to go a step beyond that, Matt Huffman does, Haley, and create, I guess, essentially, what they're calling a news site?

- Yeah, they are pretty heavily targeting the editorial boards of newspapers, like the Columbus Dispatch and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

There have been a couple mentions of straight news stories that have frustrated them, but the editorial boards are really what's bothering them.

They feel like they can't get in certain columns or opinion pieces from their lawmakers into these opinion sections, which is sometimes true.

I mean, opinion editors don't just automatically publish anything that comes their way.

So they're gonna be doing this extra project, I guess.

It will be on the record for reporters, so we'll still certainly be able to use any comments that, for example, the Senate president makes to report on that and give that the full context as needed.

But I asked Huffman about it earlier this week and he said we just have seen the benefits increasingly of being able to communicate directly on social media and get the message across that you wanna get across.

So I guess that's what they're going to be attempting to do.

- Yeah, the editors have said, "We'll run things and look, here are how many things we've run from Senate Republicans" and they can list dozens of them.

"But we're not gonna run things that are factually incorrect.

Or when you make some sort of statements that just aren't true, you don't get to do that and then just call it opinion."

And so they'll reject those particular things unless there's an edit to them.

The senators say, "Take it as it is."

- Right, and so with this new website, I will not call it a news website 'cause I do not think that's what it is, but they'll be able to publish those things unfiltered, which I think unfiltered may even be in the title of whatever they're calling it.

I asked Huffman and his communications director if this would be costing any extra taxpayer dollars, and they said it won't cost anything more.

They're using existing resources such as the website and existing staff to put out this content.

(thrilling music) - Cleveland Heights native Travis Kelce broke the internet last weekend when Taylor Swift took him up on his offer to watch the Kansas City Chiefs game at Arrowhead Stadium with Travis's mom.

She was in the suite with her.

Sales of Kelce's jerseys went up 400% this week, thanks no doubt to Swift's enormous and loyal fan base.

The Browns made some headlines of their own this week regarding another celebrity power couple.

It turns out that superstar singer Adele counts herself as a member of the dog pound.

Her partner, sports agent Rich Paul, is a native of Cleveland, also represents the likes of his buddy and friend, LeBron James.

Now Adele also admits she really has no understanding of football.

This I loved.

I love the Browns.

I don't have any idea what football is.

But Adele's a Browns fan.

Is that a good thing?

- I mean, as someone who also has no understanding of football and is an Adele fan, I love this for her.

So this is excellent for Cleveland, I think.

- Well, it seems to work perfectly 'cause she can turn heartbreak into gorgeous songs and she's in good company with Brown fans who know the heartbreak part.

I don't think we have a whole lot of gorgeous songs.

- Well, do you think she's gonna write like a Brown's heartbreak song on her next album?

- I hope so.

How would it go?

- [Abigail] Oh, I don't know.

- [Mike] You're not gonna give it a try?

- No.

- All right.

(thrilling music) Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on 897 WKSU, we'll discuss new advances in the field of organ transplants with the goal of saving more lives.

And download "The Sound of Ideas Podcast" wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for listening.

And stay safe.

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