Governor Mike DeWine has issued a temporary ban on the sale of intoxicating hemp products like THC infused gummies and drink sold outside of dispensaries.

You have a house pass bills aimed at property tax relief, seeking to head off a grassroots property tax repeal.

And pro-Palestinian protesters at Case Western Reserve University agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution to get criminal charges dropped.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Products containing intoxicating hemp.

Basically, any THC infused product sold outside a dispensary will be banned starting next week, as ordered by governor Mike DeWine.

He said the products are dangerous and that the state must better protect its children.

The ban is temporary for up to 90 days, and the legislature will likely take regulatory action in the meantime.

The legislature passed two measures this week it says will provide property tax relief.

Though they delayed a vote on a bill that would slash $1.7 billion in property taxes over three years.

11 protesters arrested after vandalism of the Case Western Reserve University campus last year.

They're accused of splashing red paint on buildings, walkways and a statue are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution to get criminal charges cleared.

They said they believe the university is taking a hard line to silence pro-Palestinian viewpoints.

And Akron voters will choose for school board members from among eight candidates who engaged in debate this week.

Joining me to discuss those stories and more from industry and public media.

Deputy editor of News Andrew Meyer and education reporter Connor Morris.

And then Columbus Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Governor DeWine declared an emergency this week, temporarily banning the sale of intoxicating hemp products sold mainly in gas stations and smoke shops.

let's talk about that.

The executive order is for 90 days.

A lawsuit has now been filed seeking to block the ban.

So what is it that the governor is hoping to accomplish with a 90 day ban?

Well, DeWine has been talking about this for a while.

I mean, basically, since voters approved the legalization of marijuana in 2023, in January of 2024, he started talking about these particular products, saying that the legislature needed to start working on regulations because he said they were available.

They were not regulated at all, and they wouldn't be covered by any sort of marijuana rules.

And it was not long after that that he and his Department of Public Safety did a sting.

Basically send 215 year olds into a gas station to try to buy some of these things.

And he said, this is a dangerous situation for kids, and the legislature needs to do something.

He's been pushing the legislature since then to try to do something.

But there are several bills that have come forward to try to put some more regulations on marijuana or to address this, and none of them move forward.

Most recent ones in the House and Senate.

Really, it was on the House bill that would have done anything about Delta eight.

And talk stalled on that in July.

So DeWine apparently has decided he's going to take matters into his own hands.

The question now is whether he can do this.

Well, this is not marijuana.

It's not THC derived from marijuana.

It's derived from hemp.

And so it's really hemp products, basically anything that's not in a dispensary.

What's interesting is if you get a beverage at a at a gas station or a store, the amount of THC in there is relatively low.

If you buy it at a dispensary, it's a much higher percentage.

Right.

And all of this is because the 2018 farm bill, which is really the last farm bill that was comprehensive.

At least that's what advocates who want to see a new farm bill put into place will say it created this gray area where these products can still be sold without being regulated.

They're they're derivative, but they're not marijuana.

And so that's what caused this whole situation where whatever marijuana legislation and regulations are out there, these products are not covered.

And so they're sold in convenience stores and in other kinds of stores, and they're available.

You know, it really kind of is up to the people who are selling them, whether they card kids or or whatever.

There really aren't regulations here, so they need to get this off the shelves by when I have 2 or 4 teeth, which is Tuesday.

So they have a lot of inventory potentially.

I mean, I just went to a store, a couple of days ago, and there's a whole, cabinet with a glass cabinet full of all these different kinds of products as well as beverages.

And I think there was the expectation that beverages would get a carve out in this, but they didn't.

So there's a lot of inventory that needs to be cleared out before Tuesday.

And I would expect that these retailers then are not very happy about that.

They're told to pause their sales.

They don't know when it can come back.

They've got inventory in hand.

What are they supposed to do with it?

Well, that's a good question.

And I think that that's exactly what's happening now.

You've got this lawsuit now that's been filed to try to stop this.

And, you know, this is this is all, I guess, in a way, what maybe some people might have seen coming since DeWine has been really vocal about how he wanted these products regulated, he really thought they were dangerous and causing problems, especially for kids, which is, you know, a lot of what DeWine talks about youth smoking, things like this are related to kids.

So now we're in this situation where the legislature is saying they think maybe the governor went too far.

That went beyond his authority.

And you've got a lawsuit filed by hemp affiliated businesses to try to stop it.

All right.

And now we have another product, Andrew Kratom.

This week we learned it's becoming popular in Cleveland.

The order that the governor issued does not address that particular intoxicating product.

No it doesn't.

In fact, what we are seeing and what we're reporting this week is the fact that the number of stores where you can get synthetic kratom has tripled in a matter of just several years.

And there's a difference between the synthetic and the natural.

The natural is a an herbal supplement.

It's derived from an evergreen type tree.

Advocates say it does have some effect in a range of, ailments and anything from dealing with pain to alleviating the, the side effects and withdrawing from opioids.

But really, the big concern here is with the synthetic kratom that is out there on the market.

And regardless of whether it's natural or synthetic, there are health advocates who say we're not sure that it's really all it's worth when you come to the synthetic, what what health advocates like Doctor Margolis, Doctor David Margolies, Cleveland Public Health are saying is, look, you don't really know what's in this stuff.

And there are significant concerns that it could be more powerful than some of the opioids that are out there right now.

So yeah, I was going to say, Karen, go ahead please.

Yeah.

My colleague Sara Donaldson did some reporting earlier this year about the connection between these unregulated delta t, THC products in these stores that are selling them.

A lot of them are also selling kratom.

And so DeWine has said kratom needs to be banned in Ohio as well.

And he moved forward.

He ordered the Ohio pharmacy Board to to do something about it, and then pulled back after Health Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr asked him to pull back while he works on some sort of a create and ban.

But Andrew's absolutely right.

It's the synthetic kratom that really has the concerns here because that there is natural kratom.

And then there's synthetic kratom, which is apparently pretty different.

And I know we were kind of at odds about this and debating, but I think we've all agreed now it's kratom, not kratom.

We're going to go with kratom.

Going with.

Great.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Pick one and stick with it.

It's great.

Yes.

The Ohio house this week passed with some support from Democrats.

Two bills that proponents say will give property owners some tax relief.

Karen, let's talk first about the bill that would change how a school district effective tax rate is determined.

Eyes are glazing over right now as we're talking about that.

But House Bill 129 is very important and could provide some tax relief according to the proponents, right.

It would allow emergency and substitute levies to be used in calculating the school district's effective tax rate.

And all of this relates back to House Bill 920, which was passed in 1976 and that was intended to prevent unvetted tax levies through the increase in the home's value.

And so what happens here is that there's levies that are calculated to come up with the effective tax increase, and it can't.

The tax rate can't fall below 2% of a home's assessed value.

That's 20 mills commonly referred to as the 20 mills law.

Basically, this adds an emergency and substitute levies that were kept out of that.

And it says the sponsor say it will immediately raise 237 districts off that 20 mill floor, giving some tax relief.

237.

I'm not great at math is not 600 and some, which is the number of school districts in total in Ohio.

So Democrats have pointed out this doesn't help.

It helps like a third of the school districts in Ohio and those taxpayers, those homeowners, not everybody.

And so while they did support this, they say that other work needs to be done, and specifically the state needs to start kicking in money so that the burden doesn't fall only on local school districts and local homeowners.

The other measure, House Bill 309, it gives more power to the county budget conditions, to determine how much districts can collect from the levy.

So how does that work?

What is a budget commission and how do they have this power?

Well, budget conditions exist in 88 counties, and they would be allowed to reduce millage in voted tax levies through this.

This was something that was also in the budget.

Both of these items were provisions similar to these were in the budget.

DeWine had vetoed both of them, saying that school districts could potentially suffer, that this would create potential financial chaos.

So now this is passed in the House, it has to go over to the Senate to pass as well.

But you know, the whole idea, according to Republican Representative David Thomas, who was a sponsor of both these bills and really has been leading a lot of these discussions about school districts and property tax levies.

He says this basically takes the handcuffs off all county budget.

Commissioners counties have been able to do some of these actions to reduce property taxes.

Now county budget commissions anywhere can do this.

And he basically is encouraging a lot of them to go ahead and do that.

When I was coming into work the other day, the CEO of the Cleveland Metroparks, Brian Zimmerman, was just leaving and I caught him in the in the alleyway behind Idea Stream, and we chatted for a minute and he said, you know, the most important thing on his mind is this idea of property tax reform and even repeal and the impact it would have on an organization like his on a park system.

Connor, you cover the schools.

I'm hearing that often, and I'm sure you are as well.

From school leaders are saying, wait a minute, we don't have property taxes and nothing else is in place.

How are we going to fund education for these students?

And Karen made a great point in terms of where this burden is being felt the most, in suburban school districts, in places where property values are higher, their proportion of like the funding they get from the state is a lot lower.

The burden is a lot higher on those local property owners, residential property owners, specifically in, you know, what we could call wealthier areas.

And so you're really they're getting this pressure from these kind of parts of the state.

And the school district is saying, we don't want to keep levying further taxes on these taxpayers.

They're they're already, you know, crying for relief.

But we get less money from the state because the property values are higher.

So what are we supposed to do?

So if that ends up happening and you're starting to ask people who are already paying a lot for more, Karen, that's what the lawmakers are worried about, which is that that could give fuel to this grassroots effort to say, let's repeal property taxes and then figure something else out, which, as I said, Brian Zimmerman and school leaders and local governments and fire and police departments all say would be a disaster.

Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely correct that there is this volunteer effort that is trying to put this amendment to abolish property taxes on next year's ballot.

They have until next July to come up with the signatures.

And they need it's a huge signature threshold.

I mean, like I've said before, I don't think I've ever seen an all volunteer effort get that kind of that number of valid signatures and make it to the ballot.

Now, if it makes it to the ballot, you're going to see a huge campaign against it.

But already right now they've got a pretty big hill to climb just to get those signatures.

But there was a report out that we covered, and I know we've talked about it here before that Ohio.

This is from Howard Fleener, the school funding expert in Ohio, as well as Greg Browning, the former budget director under Republican Governor George Voinovich.

Ohioans are paying the eighth highest property taxes in the nation, $16.7 billion in property taxes last year alone.

It goes to schools, libraries, parks, zoos, all of this.

And if that's all gone through an amendment that creates a system where there's there's potentially financial chaos for a lot of different entities.

And there'd be financial chaos, too.

And the effort to defeat such a measure, those things cost, you know, money.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And and again, this all volunteer group right now is gathering signatures.

They would potentially have to bring a campaign to get voters to approve it.

While the idea of, oh, hey, I'd love to not pay property taxes is an easy sell.

They're going to be battling with like, you know, the parks official, you're talking to, and other groups that will be saying, including state lawmakers, the governor, all of these folks who are going to be saying this is not the way to solve this problem, is solving overhauling property taxes is complicated.

And it's it's going to take a while.

And a lot of homeowners are very frustrated, and they don't want to waste that time, at least that's how they view it.

I don't know, it seems like an easy campaign.

Would you like to not pay taxes anymore?

Yes.

Everyone raises their hand.

Right?

But then, of course, would you like to not pay property taxes?

But also, would you not like to have like details?

Details?

Yes.

I wanted to give a shameless plug for a story that Connor did earlier this week.

Nobody likes seeing the property taxes going up.

However, you know you're right when you say the word mill or millage, people's eyes and ears glaze over.

Connor did a great job looking at the 60 Northeast Ohio school districts that all have levies on the ballot in November, but also a really thoughtful explanation of what each type of levy is, which is often excluded when we come to the reporting.

So it gives voters a better understanding of really what's at stake in each of their districts.

11 protesters have paid nearly $400,000 in restitution in a pretrial diversion program that, if all the stipulations are met, will no charges they incurred while protesting the war in Gaza.

At Case Western Reserve University last year.

and counter.

What they're basically saying is $400,000 would buy a lot of pressure washers.

They didn't think that the damage equaled that.

However, that's what they've got to pony up in order to get themselves cleared.

That's what they had to agree to in order to avoid this going to trial, essentially.

So again, these red handprints across the university, there were fliers they put up as well, generally calling for the university to divest from, Israel Bonds.

This is part of a broader protest movement.

They at the university earlier last year in the spring, there was this encampment style protest.

We were seeing a lot of this throughout the country.

And so this is kind of that next kind of step.

This happened after the university said, actually, at the time, the president had suggested that some of this was anti-Semitic, that some of the the language that the protesters were using.

And so this is where this ended up.

So, and the protesters, who did speak out over the weekend, last weekend did say, we really feel like we're being targeted for this language, that we're using this pro-Palestinian protests and rhetoric that we're using.

A couple of the students, so about half of these 11 protesters were students.

Three of them are seniors, and they're saying that they're they're struggling to, to to get the university degree, agree to, you know, get them their diplomas.

So they've got, they've got criminal charges they're dealing with with this money.

But in addition, the ones who are students, some of them are facing, like an expulsion, I suppose, would be the word for but not able to to continue their education.

And other protesters even before this have had similar issues with the university.

You know, whether it's the discipline process universities have, you know, misconduct processes that they go through and many students have gone through them.

And these students were required to be off campus during this time period.

It's like a no contact order, basically.

And so there were a lot of things that they said, hey, we're following this.

We're work.

We're speaking with the university.

However, one of the students did say part of the stipulation for me to get my diploma was to tell them who else was involved in this, in this protest action, you know, this, this alleged vandalism.

And he said he refused.

And so that shut down the conversation basically.

So there there are some sticking points that there were they're just not seen eye to eye.

Also, it's interesting this was this was over vandalism involving paint.

And we've had a pretty major story in the earlier protests where students were standing in front of a mural wall and they were painted over by, crews that were trying to cover up the graffiti with white paint.

It's a very good point.

And there was a lawsuit, actually, that those students had filed against the university, which will be we've been tracking and, the allegation was that know they were sprayed with toxic paint, as these folks were trying to just cover up the messages that they had put on the wall, which was again protesting the Warren cos, pro-Palestinian, messages.

I know in your reporting, you obviously we always reach out to all parties.

You contacted the university.

Did they have anything to say?

They declined to comment.

And we did reach out to some folks with the the jail and also, the prosecutor's office, and they give us a little bit of information, but we're still kind of waiting for a little bit more info.

Some of the students had said they were held in jail for up to five days and were denied medications.

And so we're still kind of waiting to hear back on that.

But generally the idea was, well, this is a nonviolent crime.

Why were we even needed?

It needed to be jailed in this case.

But, you know, the university argues this is a really serious breach of conduct.

And the university says it's a legal case.

So we're not gonna we're not exactly okay.

Early voting is underway for the November election, and in addition to levies and mayor and council races, there's a robustly contested battle for four seats on the Akron Board of Education.

Eight candidates met this week for a debate sponsored by the Akron Press Club in partnership with Idea Stream Public Media, the Akron Beacon Journal and Signal.

Akron.

Our Anna Huntsman was one of the journalists posing questions to the candidates.

Our Connor Morris was one of the journalists in the audience covering it, and our Andrew Meyer was there as a member of the Press Club board.

Connor.

The field includes three incumbents, including the current board president.

So those three are vying for four open seats along with five other people.

Yes.

So the fourth person, the vice president has stepped down.

And so there's this open seat there.

And this is really kind of an interesting contest.

A lot of this is about what's happened in the past rather than the future.

There's a lot of there's a lot of discussion about the most recent superintendent who's accused of of bullying.

Staff misconduct investigation showed that, found those this allegation to be credible.

Let me just say, when you say most recent, you don't mean current.

Yeah.

The most recently departed recently.

Yes.

Exactly.

So, the and also there was also debate, though about the current superintendent as well, during this one meeting, earlier this year, the former superintendent, Michael Robinson, they agreed to part ways with him.

They signed an agreement that same meeting, a marathon meeting, six hour, almost six hours long or so.

It was close to midnight.

They also decided, split vote, to hire Mary out.

A long time, well-respected educator at the district, to become their their permanent superintendent.

And the candidates at this this debate, set were were really split.

It was about half and half in terms of should they have hired her without really going through a longer search process?

Should they have taken their time with it?

And the current board president, Diana Autry, or excuse me, Carla Jackson and then the former board president, Dan Archie, who were up for reelection, essentially, they said, you know, we did the right thing.

We there's some community service that showed people love, the current superintendent.

We want her to be in place here.

It should be noted none of them were saying anything against the current superintendent.

They like her, but they were just saying, listen, the community should have input.

We should have done a search.

What I thought was interesting, I was at the debate as well.

Is it?

Autry said.

It's one of those cities of leadership that wasn't meant to be popular.

I had to look at the whole picture.

Also noted that, that it saved money.

It was listen, we know this person is the one that should get the job.

Let's just not deal with the last time we went through a whole search and we got somebody who ended up being not good for the position.

This was just the right decision.

When you know it's right, just do it.

Exactly.

She was saying that, these searches that that universities and schools often do when they're looking for, like their top leaders that cost a lot of money, $100,000 plus usually $200,000.

So why go through that if we know we've got the best person?

And the board president, Carla Jackson, said, we want to grow our own.

So we want to support the person who's been here for a long time and has been doing this work.

I thought it was interesting with the hiring, earlier hiring of Michael Robinson, and then eventually his dismissal was the notion that there were some on this debate panel that said he never should have been hired in the first place, that it was it was not a good process from the very beginning that his background apparently wasn't checked properly, that there was even debate about the last superintendent hiring years ago.

Yes.

And even before, Robinson, there was, the the former superintendent, Christine Fowler.

Mack.

She was brought up as well.

And some of the, current board members said, you know, actually she was done wrong, that she essentially there's this culture of anonymous complaints that happens in Akron and that we need to be really careful about, like, yes, we wanted to investigate our current superintendent for these allegations of misconduct, but also this happens a lot.

So we didn't just rush to fire this person and they didn't end up firing him anyway.

There was just an agreement for him to leave.

Right.

But a lot of folks are saying he should have been, you know, put on leave initially through this investigation.

They didn't do that.

Current board members are saying, well, he needed due process.

So interesting.

And with Fowler, Mack, who formerly was an administrator in the Cleveland district, there was an it was noted that the state report card, score went up to three and a half stars out of a five star rating, the graduation rate increase.

So there was still even talk, as you mentioned, about two superintendents ago.

Exactly.

And one of the, candidates actually, did say, this is Cynthia Blake.

She did say, actually, we should be giving kudos to these former superintendents who we got rid of that, that our scores are this high.

They're the highest of any urban school district in Ohio, so maybe we should have given them credit.

Maybe we should have given them another chance.

She was saying Andrew will be covering that race thoroughly.

Certainly one of the big issues in Akron.

Well, the big thing here is we were involved with a school board debate two years ago in Akron, where there were also eight candidates.

And one of the stark differences, Mike, that you and I talked about after this debate is two years ago, it was really a presentation of how each of the candidates, what they would bring to the table.

And we really what was on display with this debate this week was the differences, the schisms between the two, the basically the two opposing parties who are vying to get onto the board this time and not an opposing political party, of course, is a Partizan race, but still different trains of thought of how we should be appr Corporate naming rights work for sports venues, but city parks and rec centers Cleveland is about to find out.

This week, Council approved a request to hire a consultant to determine whether corporate sponsorships of parks and other public facilities is viable.

What about the Andrew Meyer rec center?

I'm all for it.

Yeah, yeah, look at my investment accounts, and I, I think I can that wait.

You in a basement in council?

Connor, how would any money from such sponsorships be used if Cleveland ends up going this route?

Yeah, Cleveland created this new city Department of Parks and Recreation, last year.

And it's about after a decade without one.

And they're saying that we've got this plan that we've created as recommendations really improve, park facilities across the board and city.

So we want to use this money to improve that, because it's not a lot of money coming from other things.

So we really need to try to find ways to generate revenue to improve the parks.

It wouldn't be, though.

You're going to, KeyBank rec center.

It would more more like you're going to Glenville Rec Center, presented by, sponsored by or presented by.

Exactly.

So they're saying that it's not the outright name of the center's generally, but but there's still, there's a consulting firm they hired to really determine this process.

And we did hear from some folks, they're like, why do you even need to hire a consultant to do this?

I mean, you can just make the change and then see who who wants to sponsor these, right?

I think I know a few hundred grand for a consult.

Maybe you just sell a few hundred grand worth of sponsorships and see where it lands you.

Of course.

So?

So folks are kind of arguing about the way they approached it.

I would think it'll be a little bit less expensive than naming an arena or a football stadium, don't you think?

Well, who knows, we will find out.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 southern KSU.

As the federal government shutdown continues.

Clinics providing nutrition support for women, infants and children could run out of money by Wednesday.

Stephanie Haney we'll talk with local experts about what that means for Northeast Ohio.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for watching and stay safe.