- After some smoky, dangerous days, air quality is improving across the region, but as wildfires keep burning in Canada, we don't have the alls clear.

Larry Householder, once one of the most powerful politicians in Ohio, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum, for his role in the biggest corruption scandal in state history.

And Akron schools look to make schools safer by making student cell phones inaccessible while class is in session.

"Ideas" is next.

(bright music) Hello and welcome to "Ideas," I'm Mike McIntyre.

For a few days this week, taking a deep breath could have been hazardous to your health.

Air quality has been categorized as unhealthy, and in some cases, very unhealthy, due to particles from Canadian wildfires carried here in a smoky haze.

Major outdoor events were canceled, and while things are improving, organizers of upcoming Independence Day themed events are keeping a cautious eye on conditions.

Abortion rights proponents say they've made a final push and are prepared to hand the Secretary of State enough petitions to get an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot.

The deadline to turn in signatures is Wednesday.

Opponents are busy too drumming up no votes should the Abortion Rights Amendment make the November ballot and yes votes for Issue One in August, which would raise the threshold for future constitutional amendments.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, convicted in the largest corruption scandal in Ohio history, was sentenced Thursday to the maximum 20 years in prison.

The judge in the case said the once powerful politician wasn't serving the public, he was serving himself.

And the Akron School Board, looking to improve safety in schools, has moved to expand a program in which student cell phones are locked in a pouch during the school day.

More teachers too will get a wearable device that allows them to send a distress call in times of crisis.

We'll cover those stories and more this week on the Reporter's Roundtable.

Joining me from Ideastream Public Media, Reporters Gabriel Kramer and Conor Morris, in Columbus, Karen Kasler, the State House News Bureau Chief.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

I've been in Cleveland my whole life, and I've seen events canceled because of rain, snow, heat, cold, lightning, drunkenness, I'm looking at you, 10 cent beer night, and, of course, a pandemic, but air quality?

It happened this week as several major outdoor events were scratched due to smoke from Canadian wildfires.

Air quality is improving, but organizers of Independence Day events are keeping a close eye on the conditions.

It was much clearer yesterday, looks clearer today, but the air is still deemed unhealthy.

The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency extended its air quality advisory until midnight tonight for Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake Lorain, Medina, Portage, and Summit Counties.

The advisory warns people to limit activities outdoors, especially, people who are vulnerable, including the elderly and those with breathing problems and other chronic conditions.

Forecast is much better for the weekend, but keep in mind, the fires keep burning and things can change in an instant, and major events planned for this weekend and the July 4th holiday may be affected.

Organizers of parades, festivals, fireworks, and concerts are keeping a close eye on the conditions.

Nothing's been canceled, but they're keepin' a close eye on it.

Gabe, you're a lifelong Northeast Ohioan, events are canceled due to smoke?

- Yeah, it's bizarre.

Nothing like I've ever seen before.

You would walk outside, and it kinda smelled bad, if I'm being honest.

It was just like, it was a weird feeling in the air.

This prime summer, so it's a time where I wanna be outside, but I did my best to stay inside.

Adding to your list of things that got canceled, Lake County Captains' games got canceled, Akron Rubber Ducks got postponed.

The Guardians were on the road, so they lucked out by being able to play and lay the hammer on the Royals.

- Yeah, that's just such a weird thing.

And you're right when you walked out, it was like one of those foggy morning days, but it was all day.

- [Gabriel] All day long.

- And you know just above whatever that was it's a bright sunny, blue sky day, but it's not clouds that were in the way, it was smoke.

- And I live real close to the lake.

I live in Tremont, and then I drove down to Medina on Wednesday, and it was just as bad.

It's not like you got too much further.

I mean, you got a half hour south, and it was still not great.

- Actually, you could go a couple hours south.

Karen, I talked to my son who lives in Columbus.

He said it didn't seem as bad on Wednesday as we were talking about up here, but he said, "Yeah, you could definitely tell."

- Yeah, I was out and about on Wednesday and was looking at the skyline, and definitely, it was a little bit smoky.

A friend of mine tweeted out or shared on Facebook that this is actually hickory smoked Canadian maple air that's coming down, so that's really what this.

- [Gabriel] It sounds delicious when you say it like that.

- Right.

- Conor, did you stay indoors?

- Yes, yes indeed, and I was kind of watching Twitter, and it's interesting that this is kinda becoming almost a wedge issue, culturally and politically, for some people too as well, where they're saying, "Is the social cost worth it "of shutting down all these events "and these kids' summer camps and things of that nature?"

Kind of echoes back to discussion on the social cost of the pandemic and shutting down schools and things of that nature.

- [Gabriel] Yeah, you sayin' that scared me, man.

- And not only that, but we're back to masks again.

I started seeing people pull out their KN95 masks and all of those things, the ones that really filter out the particles.

We wouldn't maybe have had those as handy before the pandemic, but I think people all have drawers full of them now.

- Oh, yeah, and last night I went for a walk and regretted not having it.

And didn't have good drawerfuls of.

- You weren't supposed to go for a walk.

- [Gabriel] There you go.

- Well, let's talk about the forecast, Gabe, what's it look like?

- Well, we're expecting some patches.

I'm not a meteorologist, let me start with that.

- [Mike] Winds a law.

- But there's gonna be some rain comin' this weekend, and apparently that's going to help lessen this problem.

It's going to tamper down some of the particles that are in the air and the sky, So rain, while maybe a drag for our weekend, it's actually good for this issue.

So we're gonna get a little bit, and apparently enough to help clear this out in a way that we should be good to go later this weekend.

- And the bad stuff is moving, it's movin' south.

It's not good for people in those areas, but it basically gets worse there, a little bit better here as that time goes on.

(mysterious orchestral music) Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, once one of the most powerful politicians in Ohio, was sentenced to 20 years in jail, the maximum, by a federal judge in Franklin County.

He was at the center of the HB6 corruption scandal, the largest in state history.

Karen, he got the max, his lawyers said he deserved a year, year and a half.

- Yeah, I think it was pretty clear early on from Judge Timothy Black that that wasn't gonna happen.

The prosecution made its case very briefly, outlined what he had been convicted of by a jury back in March or April, I can't remember which, and then his lawyer made a quick statement.

And then Householder himself spoke, and he didn't address anything in the evidence against him.

He just talked about his family and his friends, who he, there were apparently a lotta letters that were written in support of Householder, and his, what he called his service to the community.

And then the judge just, I don't think I've ever heard a more scathing, blistering statement from a judge than what Timothy Black laid down on Larry Householder right before he sentenced him to 20 years.

And it's important to note too here, during the judge's comments, at one point very close to the end, two US marshals walked into the room, which we could see, they were kinda behind Larry Householder, so I'm not sure he saw them at first.

And that was the first clue that he was not gonna be going home.

He was going to prison that night.

- Interesting that he did speak, but as you mentioned, he talked about family, he talked about his service.

There was not any point in which he acknowledged any kind of guilt, any kind of remorse, nothing like that.

Judges don't necessarily like that when they're sentencing.

- Yeah, US attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, Ken Parker, had a mini press conference outside the courthouse afterwards, and he said that we didn't see any remorse from Larry Householder, and it was apparent, he said, that the judge didn't either.

And the judge kind of referred to that in his comments.

I mean, he was just absolutely excoriating Householder, not only for the crime, but also for his attitude toward it, and he said that Householder conned Ohioans and tried to con the jury, noting that Householder actually did lie during his testimony on his own behalf in court at one point.

It was just an extraordinary day.

I mean, it was, this whole case has been extraordinary from the moment that Larry Householder was arrested during the pandemic, taken to federal court here, and then now we see the resolution here, 20 years, this is the maximum sentence.

And as his own attorney said, it's essentially a life sentence for Larry Householder because he's 64 years old and has apparently some health issues.

There's an appeal that will be filed, but he was in prison last night.

- David sends us an email, David from Twinsburg saying, "He got less than he deserved.

"He needs to lose everything he owns.

"They need to go after the First Energy executives "and lawyers who paid the bribes, "they're just as guilty."

What about that?

There's obviously a deal and a settlement, and.

- Yeah, and Ken Parker, he was asked about that outside the courthouse.

And, of course, as the US attorney who's in charge of this case, he's not gonna give us any hints about where they're going, but he did say that the investigation continues.

And we've gotten some suggestions that there could be other charges filed, and so certainly you have to look at some of the other people who may have been involved.

The question is, did Larry Householder do this on his own or were there other people involved?

And that's I guess to still be resolved, and certainly there are some people who would like to see other people charged.

We have to wait on that.

- I have a question from Barb in Kent.

She wants to know if he was charged under RICO and will any of his property be taken under RICO?

- Well, the judge may, yes, it was a RICO conviction, and the judge made it clear that he feels that Householder can't pay the fine, which is in the millions.

Whether his property will be seized or anything like that, I don't know at this moment, but he did not get that initial fine, so.

I mean, in Householder's statement, he really brought in his wife and his five sons and the punishment that they essentially will have to take on because of this.

Of course, the judge wasn't hearing all that, said he really couldn't consider that collateral damage, so to speak, those collateral sanctions there.

He had to consider the crime that Larry Householder was convicted of and the lack of remorse essentially, and the potential for deterrence, to make sure he would never do something like that again.

- Okay, and listeners, you can put down your bingo card.

You didn't get one here.

I am not gonna let a acronym go by like that.

Rico is Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

- [Karen] Of course, yes.

- So we've got that.

All right, last question, and that is about the other defendant who was convicted in this scandal, Matt Borges, the former Ohio Republican Party Chairman.

He's supposed to be sentenced today.

- Yeah, he gets sentenced at 11:00 this morning, and I would have to think that after seeing what happened with Larry Householder yesterday, he would be more than a little nervous.

I mean, the prosecution has recommended three to five years for him.

His role was considered less than Larry Householder's role.

Larry Householder was considered the mastermind.

In fact, Judge Black called him the puppet master for the whole scheme, and remember, this is the whole scheme that got Larry Householder elected as speaker, so he could pass House Bill Six, which bailed out two nuclear power plants for First Energy, and he used dark money to do it.

Matt Borges is kind of on the dark money side and try to preserve the law, when there was an attempt to try to bring it to the ballot and have voters overturn it.

But the judge was clear that he really was unhappy with this whole scheme and what happened, and so I think there's a very good possibility that Matt Borges gets that three to five years that prosecutors have asked for and could even go to prison today.

(mysterious orchestral music resumes) - "One of the sources of disruption "and violence in Akron schools," educators say, "is cell phones."

A pilot project, in which students at three schools were required to lock their cell phones in a pouch where they were inaccessible during class, is now being expanded to 13 schools, and more teachers will get wearable devices that allow them to make distress calls with the push of a button.

The Board of Education decided Monday to expand its cell phone locking policy in an effort to quell misbehavior.

Students at 13 middle and high schools will need to secure their phones in Yondr pouches, which are sealed so phones can't be accessed until they're unlocked after class.

You might have encountered them, if you've gone to certain shows where performers want your cell phone to be locked away.

You keep it with you, but then you gotta have somebody unlock it to use it.

"In cases of school violence," educators say, "it's exacerbated "by students communicating on their phones," and a pilot project in three schools last year showed some promise.

The Board also approved major spending on other security measures, including crisis alert badges for staff and upgrades to its camera security system.

Conor, these Yondr bags were piloted in the three schools, what was the result of that?

- Yeah, it's like when you go to Akron Public Schools, you goin' to a Dave Chappelle show.

So, the teachers really loved it.

They said overwhelming numbers of teachers reported improvements in focus, as well as improvements in some behavior.

Like during lunch, they said there was a lot more positive behavior, with actually sitting and talking, fewer fights, from what I understand too.

So, the teachers love it.

Parents, a little more 50-50 on it.

They did agree, majority of them agreed, that cell phones could lead to serious problems with mental health, and again, encouraging fights and recording fights and things of that nature.

So the teachers and administrators are fans, students, not so much.

From what I understand, they did some meetings with students, and they were worried about not being able to contact their parents quickly.

And actually, we had one of our interns talking about this too, which I think he made a great point.

If there's some misconduct going on, then you don't have the phone access to be able to record if a teacher or an administrator is beating up on a student, for example, or something of that nature.

So there were some real concerns there.

Some students are starting to turn around too.

They did say that it did help them improve their focus.

- When you've got your phone on you, you just can't use it for just anything.

But I would imagine, if there's an emergency, you gotta call your parents, you can get some staff member to unlock your phone.

- Sure, so they are, there's these magnetic seal, they're magnetically sealed.

And so there are these tools that the teachers, I think, and administrators have, I don't know exactly who has them, that's something I can follow up on, but they can unlock them.

So I'm assuming in a time of emergency that would happen, but that would also add time to, if you're in an emergency, do you really have time to do that?

- [Mike] Right.

- And so that's also why the teachers have these new crisis response things they wear on their lanyards, which they just press a button and that immediately sends location to police and to administrators as well and what teacher it is as well too.

- And the teachers say that they need that.

There were some incidents in school last year, students stabbing, students bringing guns to school, things that they might think I'm in a crisis right now.

I don't have time for all this other, if I press a button, then I'm gonna get help.

- Yeah, and then obviously, they can follow up too and make calls too as well, but yeah, teachers, this was a key issue, like a wedge issue that almost led to the teachers striking, was safety.

And so, there were incidents, where students brought guns into school and they were arrested for it.

Just in general, teachers were saying that student misbehavior was at its worst that they've ever seen.

And this is after school closures due to the pandemic, so a lotta students just didn't really know how to act really.

Some of them, they started school online, so it's been a challenging environment.

But they say that these measures and security measures have improved things, so things lookin' up.

- Susan in Willowick says, "When I hear parents complain "about students not having cell phones, "I reply that we didn't have any cell phones in the 1960s."

- [Conor] Sure.

- We didn't in the '70s either or really the early 80s, anyhow.

- But in terms of safety, the concern about.

The concern about safety in schools is much different now these days, and parents today are concerned about what might happen with someone approaching a school, dangerously.

- School shooting for sure, yes.

- And that's also something we didn't think about or know about in the '60s.

- Yes, and Akron, - I didn't think about it in the early '00s.

- Right.

- Yeah, and Akron has moved to, they've got metal detectors now.

They're gonna be having bag scanners soon, even protective, ballistic film coating on the first floor windows.

They played something during a School Board meeting recently, where it was showing somebody trying to break into a school with a gun, and it took a lot longer.

They had to shoot like six times, kick in the window, and so.

(mysterious orchestral music resumes) - The US Supreme Court released several major rulings this week, including a strike down of affirmative action in college admissions and against a fringe theory known as the independent state legislature, which would've given state legislatures largely unchecked power for setting election rules and drawing congressional maps.

And as of this taping, we're still waiting on major decisions regarding student loan forgiveness and LGBTQ protections, the final cases before the court takes its summer recess.

And we're gonna be talkin' about these, as I said Monday, with constitutional experts here on "The Sound of Ideas."

Let's talk briefly about a few of them now and their impacts on Ohio.

Karen, it seems there already is unchecked power in Ohio to draw maps and make election rules.

- Well certainly, people who are opposed to the maps for the state legislature and Congress will say that that's the case, and it should be noted that the maps that we used last year to elect state lawmakers and members of Congress were ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court many times.

I mean, this continued on for the entire year.

And there was an argument that was made by Senate President Matt Huffman that the General Assembly has the authority under that elections clause in the US Constitution to establish the time, place, and manner of elections, and the Ohio Supreme Court did not have the jurisdiction to determine whether those maps were valid.

Of course, this decision, the lawyers that I've talked to say, "It really doesn't make a difference, "when it comes to Ohio's redistricting process," which has to start up again, because again, those maps are unconstitutional.

But the Ohio Supreme Court is a different court than it was last year, and Maureen O'Connor, the Republican Chief Justice is gone.

The court has a solid Republican majority now, and so, it's likely that they're gonna go along, they're gonna be more friendly toward maps done by the Republican-dominated Ohio Redistricting Commission.

- And when I said unchecked, I meant that yes, we did have a Supreme Court, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, and it was essentially ignored and put into place regardless.

But the fact is, the Supreme Court does still have a role in these, the state courts have a role in these decisions, if there's some question about the constitutionality state by state, which will be interesting to check on.

Let's talk about one other case, Gabriel.

President Biden said yesterday, the Supreme Court is "not a normal court," after the affirmative action decision came out, and that "discrimination still exists in America."

It's a historic decision.

- Right, and I mean, similar to Roe v Wade a year ago, this is a court that has gone back on decades of precedent.

And I'd like to add similarly to the concept of, one of the arguments, and I'll be brief, leading into this ruling, was that there were people who felt like affirmative action was discriminatory specifically against Asian Americans.

And a lot of Asian American and Pacific Islander groups are speaking out and saying, "There's not enough "Asian American/Pacific Islanders' voices "heard in this case, "and a lot of people are being tokenized, "a very few portion of that population are being tokenized."

And you can look at a 2022 survey by APIA Vote, Asian Pacific Islander Americans Vote, that 69% of Asian Americans support affirmative action.

So what you're seeing in this, you'll find more analysis on Monday, but this is certainly historic in the sense of precedents being changed.

- An interesting thing about this ruling is that essentially it said, "You can't just take someone's race as a deciding factor, "but you can decide about their life experience "and whether race might have been something "that helped or that made their life more difficult "and things that they overcome, "and so then you can make decisions in that way."

So it seems like colleges, being creative, can continue to have diverse student bodies, and I heard an interview today with someone from the New York College System, City University of New York.

Conor, what have you heard locally?

- Yeah, so I think that we should take a step back and look at the reality.

So our public universities in Ohio, which are the majority of them, the admission rate is 80%, 90%, so a lotta folks are getting accepted no matter what.

And from some reporting at the "Dispatch," "Columbus Dispatch," there's a survey of these public universities, and only three of the 14 publics said that they even considered race in their admissions anyway.

And the folks that said they do consider it, say, "Look, it's just part of the process," and this is not gonna change the fact that it's part of the process.

They're gonna be considering the hardship that folks went through.

They're gonna be looking at their college admissions letters or essays rather, and they're gonna be seeing what kind of these students went through before coming to college regardless, so.

- Yeah, I heard one idea about the way you can diversify your student body, and that is to not have legacy admissions, people who are admitted because they have family members that were admitted, mostly are white people.

If you didn't have that as a legacy admissions policy, you would probably have a bigger pool and more opportunity for other people.

We'll see how that pans out because those very same folks are important to the university's bottom line.

(mysterious orchestral music resumes) A Supreme Court ruling Monday impacts victims of sexual abuse at Ohio State University.

The court dismissed OSU'S petition to throw out more than 100 lawsuits filed by sexual abuse victims of former Athletics Doctor Richard Strauss.

Victims were mostly male students, experienced the abuse largely between 1979 and 1996, and a self commissioned report released in 2018 by OSU showed that administrators knew about the incidents and failed to respond.

The dismissal of their plea to the US Supreme Court means the lawsuits will move forward.

Karen, OSU was trying to argue the statute of limitations had expired.

- Right, and they were arguing that the statute of limitations was a two year window that had expired by the time that the lawsuit was filed in 2018, 2019, 2018.

And what the claim was there was that these crimes had happened a long time ago, and so that window had closed.

But the argument from the folks who, the men who filed the lawsuit is, "Hey, we just found out "that Ohio State was investigating this stuff.

"We just found out about this, "and that's part of this lawsuit."

That's the big, the reason why they're suing Ohio State, saying Ohio State knew and didn't do anything, and so this really clears the way for this lawsuit to go forward.

There's 100 or so men who say that they want to see something from Ohio State.

They refuse to settle, and the settlements that Ohio State has come up with are much less than settlements that other universities that have seen similar circumstances, though not as extreme, have come up with.

So I think this really kinda clears the deck for a trial, maybe in the next year.

- And the lawyers for OSU are concerned it'll set a new precedent for the statute of limitations in these kinds of things under Title IX.

- And this is just like a really specific area of the statute of limitations, but certainly, I think the potential of a huge amount of damages, that's a really big deal here.

And Ohio State says, "Hey, we've settled, "we've offered to pay counseling "for not only the survivors but their family members.

"We're a different university than we were "when we employed Richard Strauss, "who died by suicide several years ago."

But of course, the survivors of this are saying, "It's not enough."

(mysterious orchestral music resumes) - Rapper Kid Cudi, a Shaker Heights native, took to Twitter this week to say he was scrapping his planned August 19th music festival, which was scheduled for Quicken Loans Arena.

He said he wanted to do it outside like he did last year, but the city wouldn't approve it, and interest in the indoor event wasn't strong.

Mayor Justin Bibb tweeted back saying, "The city never nixed an outdoor event "and never even got a permit application."

The two talked, and there's hope the festival will be saved.

Gabe, give us a play by play of this.

- Kid Cudi tweets something out three days ago, complaining that they can't get things worked out with the city to have an outdoor festival.

He says, "Hey, I'm gonna move it "to Rocket Mortgage Field House," and he thought, well, that's not as cool as an outdoor big festival.

And that's what the tweet says.

The mayor says, "Hold up, let's talk.

"We didn't get any application."

- [Mike] Right, right.

- And then, they had a meeting two days ago, and apparently that went well.

Kid Cudi said, "Hey, this thing is a good thing."

And they're gonna try to work something out.

Kid Cudi said, "Hey, maybe, if I have to do a festival, "I'm gonna have to be an hour from Cleveland, "which we don't wanna have happen."

But his goal, as a Shaker Heights native, is to bring something cool to Cleveland.

"Cleveland is the reason I'm leanin'," he says.

It's cooler when he says it.

- [Conor] Much cooler.

- But like, that's the thing.

He wants to do something cool for the people and having a festival here is that thing.

(mysterious orchestral music resumes) - That's all the time we have for the Roundtable today.

We'll talk to local constitutional experts about the major Supreme Court decisions that came down this week on Monday, and we'll talk to Kent State grad and true crime author James Renner about his latest book, "Little Crazy Children."

You can catch that on 89.7 at 9:00 am.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks so much for watching and stay safe.

(bright music)