(musical sting) - Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb says a nonprofit will take over management of the West Side Market.

Governor Mike DeWine says the idea of the state banning contraception after enacting abortion restrictions is absurd, and Ohio's second primary election of the year is Tuesday.

Confusion is high, and turnout will be low.

"Ideas" is next.

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

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

After years of resistance to the idea from Mayor Frank Jackson's administration, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has announced plans to turn management of the iconic West Side Market over to a nonprofit the city will create.

Cleveland city council members spend a huge amount of their time acting as Cleveland's customer service reps for everything from missed garbage pickup to burned out street lights.

The city says it's trying to make the customer service experience more direct and easier to manage for residents.

Joining me this week from Ideastream Public Media, senior reporter, Nick Castele, and health reporter, Lisa Ryan, in Columbus, statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb says the city will create a non-profit to run the West Side Market, which Cleveland would still own.

Dedicated management independent of the city is something many frustrated vendors have been calling for.

Nick Castele, you are on this story.

Let's talk a little bit about this.

The city will still own the facility, and when the conversation happened before where people said, "Hey, the city shouldn't be in the market business," the city always took that as we will never relinquish ownership of the market.

No one's asking that they do that.

In this case, the city retains ownership.

- Under this idea, the city would still own the property in perpetuity.

They would still be the landlord and a nonprofit that, a newly created nonprofit, not one that exists right now, would manage the day-to-day operations that, they would have their own board, and would have their own funding, and they would run the market on behalf of the city, while the city retains ownership of the property.

- [Mike] Not a new idea.

There's a number of markets throughout the nation where there's a nonprofit management setup.

- Yeah, and that's the argument the city made too was if you look around the country, there are other similar markets that are also run by nonprofits.

I think if you look around town too, you'll see other big facilities that do have nonprofit oversight, so Gateway Economic Development Corporation oversees Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and Progressive Field.

I had to remember what it was called.

It's not the Q anymore.

- [Mike] Or the Gun.

- Or the Gun, yeah, the Gun Arena at Jacobs Field.

And so, I mean, you do have other examples of these nonprofits that are still appointed by public entities.

They have public meetings, but they are technically nonprofits.

I think those are some of the questions that need to be asked now about what this nonprofit will look like.

Who appoints the board members?

Is it the mayor?

Is it council?

Is it someone else?

Will the meetings be public?

Will there be open records so you can have records request to find out how decisions are being made?

All those questions yet to be answered, but it looks like, well, in fact, it is happening that the mayor wants to forge ahead with this plan now to set up a nonprofit, but it is going to take some time, and there are gonna be questions to answer, and not to mention, I'm sure Cleveland city council will want to take a vote on this at some point.

- One of the council members, Councilperson Carrie McCormack has been an advocate of this nonprofit management.

What was his reaction to the announcement yesterday?

Which by the way, was a little odd.

There wasn't a big press conference.

There wasn't something in front of the market where people, where the mayor and others talked, and vendors and such talked about this.

It was just kind of a quiet press release at 3:00 in the afternoon.

- Yeah, you would've thought that Bibb would've played this up more, especially if this is something that one, the local councilman wants, Carrie McCormack.

He's been advocating for this for a long time, a number of vendors want too.

You'd think that he would've gone down to the market, invited the TV cameras, had vendors, make a big splash.

Instead, this was a press release that went out in the afternoon, and (chuckles) sent me scrambling to play some phone calls to say, "Hey, can you talk to me about this?"

But to your question, McCormack has wanted to do this for a while, so he's very thrilled about the city finally moving ahead, because this is something the Jackson administration just was not going to do.

They had hired a consultant to analyze the market's operations.

The consultant made a number of recommendations, like you need more staff, you need more hands-on management, but stopped short of suggesting a non-profit takeover.

So now Bibb ran on this idea, and now he's following through on it, or at least beginning to.

It's going to be a process.

There's this master plan that's going to be undertaken to really get into the facilities of the West Side Market.

What do customers want?

What are the finances?

What would a business model look like?

And then there's the nitty gritty of establishing this nonprofit to actually run the market.

And then I imagine you gotta hire an executive director, probably hire more staff, so there is still some time before I think this becomes a reality.

- Lisa, you're a regular shopper.

You live on the West Side of the West Side Market.

It is, I have to say, it's awesome, and it's still awesome today, but we've seen it kind of decline a bit.

There used to, it used to be full and vibrant.

Now we're talking about 30% vacancy.

What are your thoughts about the idea that there might be dedicated management to the market, and how that might change things?

- Yeah, as a customer of the market, I think it's a great idea.

I think that plans for the market have been stagnant over the last few years, and in fact, have declined.

We've seen vendors complaining about the conditions that are there, but I think from a customer standpoint, it's great to bring tourists there.

They love to see the architecture and how beautiful it is, but one of the things that I notice when I'm there is that there's nowhere to really sit if you were to buy something, to eat, which I've seen other markets do, where you have seating areas, maybe a coffee shop, things like that that you could have.

I've also heard the idea tossed around that we might see alcohol sales there too, just a place to hang out.

So I could see a lot of changes happening there that would be even better for the market.

- [Mike] Where does that stand, Nick?

- So council did pass legislation in late February, allowing alcohol sales at the market.

I'm not sure if any vendors are actually doing it yet.

You have to go through a process of applying for a liquor license.

Who would hold the liquor license?

There's legal questions like that, but council has opened the door to that at the mayor's request.

There's also the financial issue.

COVID, I think has turned some of the finances upside down, but at least in the past year or so, the city has had to subsidize the market out of the general fund, and Mayor Bibb's budget also contemplates another subsidy this year to support the market, so that'll be one question to ask too.

If you create a separate nonprofit to run this entity, where's their money gonna come from?

Will they be able to make it all in operations?

Will they be soliciting philanthropic dollars?

Do they need a subsidy from the city?

Could they go for tax credits, which was one suggestion made to me by the city?

So I think those questions also are in play, and are gonna have to be answered.

- I've done a lot of reporting on grocery stores, especially food deserts, and the closure of grocery stores.

And while Ohio city wouldn't necessarily be a food desert if the market were to close, Dave's is nearby, there's some other grocery stores as well in the area, but it would be hard for that community, people who walk up to that area to get fresh, produce fresh food.

You have homemade pasta from Ohio City Pasta and that sort of thing.

But what I've learned from reporting on grocery stores is how hard that business is.

There's very few profits available.

A lot of grocery stores are operating on a very fine line between being in the red and being in the black, so I think that's really interesting as well.

I talked with a co-op that had planned for their first five years to not make any money, to not even break even, and that's the kind of thing that needs to happen, because the grocery store business is so hard to maintain a grocery store.

- Right, and this is so much more than a grocery store.

This, Nick, is an iconic piece of Cleveland.

Every time you see any kind of marketing to others, the West Side Market is part of it, the architecture, the view of that, the tower.

Now there's the INTRO, the building that just went up across the street where people are buying very expensive apartments, actually renting very expensive apartments, partly because it's the Market District.

So it's more than just a supermarket.

- Yeah, and that's what the point the city has made too is they want this to be a real destination where someone could come with their family and spend hours, get drinks, hear live music.

It's more than just a place you shop.

It's a place where you really spend some time.

And I think on the flip side, for people who are skeptical of this idea of a non-profit taking over management, I think that's kind of the way they may see things too.

This is a Cleveland institution, it's a gem, and it's also a city service, and so why should it not be run by the city instead of, in their view, outsourced to a different entity to run the operation.

- In regards to alcohol sales, I think there is, there still are a lot of hoops to jump through.

I know I talked to Sam McNulty at Market Garden.

He said he put in a call immediately when they passed that, and said, "I'm up for it.

I've got all the beer over here," and he's still not regulated to do that yet.

So I know that there is interest from a number of folks.

And when you were talking, Lisa, about the idea of having a place to sit and have a sandwich, I'm thinking about the Redding Market in Philadelphia, where I had the greatest roast pork sandwich with Broccoli Rob that you could ever have at DiNic's restaurant there.

But there was all those places.

It was like the market, but then also you could sit down at a counter and have something to eat, or go to a place.

At the West Side Market- (inaudible) (musical sting) In the month since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe, handing regulation of abortion back to the states, the question has been how far red states like Ohio would go in restricting abortion.

Governor Mike DeWine said this week, the conversation has gone off the rails.

One lawmaker, Cincinnati Republican Jean Schmidt has said she would consider banning contraception.

Concern has also been raised about same sex marriage in the aftermath of overturning Roe.

Ohio law banned same sex marriage, but the Supreme Court legalized it in 2015 with its decision in Obergefell versus Hodges.

The case is one that Thomas has suggested the court should reconsider.

The governor, though, said yesterday, contraception, same sex marriage aren't on the agenda.

The question is, is he the decider?

Karen, let's talk a little bit about the governor's comments.

- We were talking about the whole idea of clarifying Ohio law, because the law is unclear.

I mean, after the story about the 10 year old girl who went to Indiana to get an abortion came out, and Attorney General Dave Yost put out some guidance saying, "No, she could have gotten an abortion here," but then it seemed that others believed that that was not the case, that it's, and no doctor apparently was willing to take this on, so the question becomes then what needs to happen at the legislative level to establish what are the medical exceptions?

What are the emergency exceptions?

If there are any in the ban, the six week ban, which supporters call the heartbeat ban, so the question was answered in by DeWine in saying that anything regarding banning contraception, "Well, that's absurd," he said, and also the idea of going into same sex marriage, he said was not something he was supporting.

Ohio law right now does ban same sex marriage.

It was the US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell that basically nullified that.

So if that Obergefell decision falls, then same sex marriage is illegal in Ohio.

There is at least one state lawmaker, Jean Schmidt from Cincinnati who has talked about banning contraception, at least she saying she'd consider it.

So, yeah, I mean, while DeWine says he's not for that, there apparently are some Republicans who are.

- Right, and as I was mentioning, when I said he's not exactly a spokesman for the Ohio Republican party, he's been at odds with the legislature on a number of issues, and that is no secret.

- Right, now, I don't know if the legislature, if the Republicans in the legislature feel strongly enough about, say, banning contraception to go ahead and pass something.

I mean, there are 64 Republicans in the 99 member House, 25 Republicans in the 33 member Senate, so those are big, those are super majorities, but whether there would be enough Republicans to do something that a lot of people would see as extreme is the real question, and it sounds like when you hear DeWine talk, that he would veto anything if it would come through, whether they would have enough vote to override it.

I mean, there are still some moderate Republicans in the Ohio legislature, and this strikes me as an issue that moderates would be really very cautious and even opposed to.

(compelling music) - Ohio is in the middle of a primary vote that will conclude when polls close on August 2nd.

That's Tuesday, election day.

Many people may not even know another primary is upon us.

Turnout is predicted to be incredibly low.

Let's start with a comment from our listener, Edward, who says, "Half of my ballot," so he must have gotten the early voting or the vote by mail, so there's one that knows there's a primary coming.

I talk to so many people have no idea, but Ed says, "Half my ballot is for member of State Central Committee.

I haven't found any info or endorsements online about these races.

Does the panel have any suggestions?

I fear questions like these may turn off voters.

It makes me feel dumb and frustrated," almost like voting for judge in Tioga County, where you know the names, but you're not really sure who the people are sometimes, and they tried to fix that with judge for yourself.

But what about that, Nick?

There's all of these, I mean, there were tons of members.

You'd look at some of them, and you might recognize a name, some you've never heard of, and what am I voting for anyway?

- So these are, so these state central committee posts, they're, I believe there's two, basically two seats.

For every state senate district, you elect a man and a woman to the Democratic or Republican State Central Committee.

These are positions within the structure of state party politics.

And it's true, there really aren't a lot of places you can go if there are any at all to find, say, a voter guide or endorsements, or what have you.

- Because they're not really elected public positions.

I mean, they're internal party positions.

- Right, they're internal party positions, and I've heard from a number of people who have said the same thing.

I've also heard it said that these races are sometimes viewed as basically free or cheap polls for elected officials or party insiders who want to test their name recognition, because this is a situation where people may not know very much about what this race is, but maybe they'll vote for the name they recognize.

And so in some races, you will see either current or former elected officials, people whose names you might know that are running for these party posts.

It's maybe one way for them to keep their names on the ballot, keep their their name fresh in voters' minds, and see how they'll do against some of their colleagues.

- So when you say it's a poll, so it isn't really for any stakes, but if you see that you were elected to the state committee because you had the name recognition, then you might run for state office.

- You might think, "Hey, I have a chance here if I've already been approved by the voters for this party position."

But I agree with a lot of commenters that there really is not a lot of information out there about these candidates.

You basically have to do your own Googling.

Maybe they've got Facebook pages, but unfortunately, you are kinda on your own.

- Karen, Edward is an outlier, it seems.

Is turnout expected to be as low as we think it will be?

- Well, let's just put it this way.

So in May, the primary, there were a certain number of early votes that were requested by mail.

The number of ballots that have been requested by mail this time is a quarter of that number.

The whole turnout in May was 20.8%, so that's really low, not a record low, but that's really low.

So if you're talking about potentially a quarter of that, you're talking about really, really low numbers.

And it's most likely going to be, as we were talking about this, party insiders, people who are really, really plugged in, people who know who's running, and therefore they're gonna vote.

I mean, you've got 99 House seats and 17 Senate seats that are on the ballot this year, and of those, then when you get to the fall, there are about 19 House seats and seven Senate districts that are considered tossups under these new maps that were ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court, but were put in place by a federal court.

All of this complication, and all of this confusion, and the second primary in the middle of summer when people are on vacation, and the kids are outta school and everything really has the potential to do an absolute number on voter turnout, and make this just an absolute record low.

- Lisa, there's some thinking that the Roe decision might drive people to the polls who are abortion rights advocates, and say, "Okay, well now I've gotta get the polls," but maybe not in a primary.

Maybe that's something that plays out more likely in the fall?

- Well, especially, as you mentioned, if people don't even know that there is a primary, it's not going to drive anyone to the polls, but yeah, I can see people using this in the future for sure to drive up voters, both on the anti-abortion and the pro-choice side.

- And can I add one thing real quick here too?

On our TV show, "The State of Ohio" last week, I talked to a couple of people about that issue, and whether we will be able to look at the results in August, and try to get a sense of where voters are as we go into November, and the general consensus is the voter turnout in August will be so low that it really will be impossible to kind of use that to get a gauge of where voters are going to be in November.

And that's just kind of frustrating, because you wanna try to get a sense of whether Roe has been, and the Dobbs decision has been a part of voter attitudes, or whether inflation, gas prices, whatever, what is actually driving voters?

And we just, unfortunately, I think there'll be too few voters next week for us to really get a sense of that.

(compelling music) - To use a phrase from the original "Ghostbusters" film, who you gonna call, in this case, when you need an issue dealt with in Cleveland?

It turns out the answer for most Cleveland residents is their local councilperson, though there is a 311 line set up through the mayor's office that could and should handle most of those constituent issues.

Ward 12 Councilperson Rebecca Maurer looked into how city residents go about seeking help for quality of life issues.

She's been in office for about six months now and did a study, and her study showed that residents usually look to their council members as their defacto customer service reps, even when the councilperson has no direct role in solving the issue.

Maurer said she wants to hear from her residents, of course, but she wants to develop a better way for residents to quickly get the help they need for issues such as missing trash cans or street lamp repairs.

Council members spend so much time on these issues, they can't accomplish bigger goals to benefit their neighborhoods.

Nick, you did the reporting on this story for Ideastream.

First of all, pretty incredible that there's a council member who's been an office six months and says, "Hey, I'm gonna give you some data, and also a solution."

- Yeah, Maurer, she won one of the hotly contested council races last year, unseated and incumbent in Ward 12, and she's been putting a focus on the way that the city operates.

And this is, it's one of those things where it's like, it's a report that puts some numbers behind something that people in Cleveland already know to be true.

This is an unwritten rule.

If there's a problem, any problem at all, you call your councilperson, and you expect them to fix it, whether it's really their job or not.

You expect them- - [Mike] Come over with a roll of duct tape.

- That's right, come on over, I got a problem, and it's the councilperson's job then to go bother city hall, bother the mayor's departments, and try to get somebody to go fix the problem.

And Maurer's point is basically that this is not efficient, because council people are badgering city departments to add things to their workload out of the schedule of what they were normally doing, and it's just not the best way to get things done.

So her numbers showed that in her first, basically her first 110 days in office, she got 1,000 calls, more than 1,000 calls, emails, et cetera, asking for service, and that added up to an average of nine requests for service each day.

The city's 311 phone line had an average of five and a half requests for service each day.

- So this was one council member.

- [Nick] Well, in her ward, in Ward 12.

- Oh, I see, okay.

- So she's saying basically she's getting almost twice as many calls a day as the city line that is set up for these exact kinds of problems.

And she said by her estimate, about 90% of the calls she got were things that council really does not have a role in solving.

These are things that the city has to solve, and it becomes her job to go beg, and plead, and cajole the city to go out and do this, something like getting a new garbage bin, which is very difficult to do in Cleveland right now.

- Yeah, I saw the picture on your story where one was literally held together with duct tape.

- Oh yeah, it's really hard, and there's a backlog.

Supply chain issues are being blamed at this point, but I think there was a backlog before then, too.

- So I think she's sensitive to the risk that it sounds like I don't want people to call me with their problems.

You're the council member.

You vote, you went for this job.

They voted for you.

You gotta take the phone calls.

She was sensitive to that, 'cause she kind of offered to you, "Listen, I want to hear from people.

It's just, I want to make it easier for them to get stuff done."

- Yeah, that was the point she made, and I've heard people say that too, which is, "Hey, constituent service is a part of the job."

Whether you're a city council member, whether you're a member of Congress, whether you're a Senator, your office is going to be expected to help constituents navigate the city or the federal bureaucracy.

It's a part of the job.

I think Maurer's point, and the point of this report is, but council has become the number one go-to place for that, even though the city has its own line for those complaints.

And she's saying that she spends so much time responding to these problems in these calls that she doesn't have time to do other things like meeting with businesses, or writing new policy legislation, other things that a council member might be able to do.

Blaine Griffin, the council president was quoted in the cleveland.com story on this saying, "Well, but some council members might like doing that constituent service," and I think there's certainly kind of older school council members who see this as the bread and butter of what they do.

It gets you out meeting your neighbors.

It gets them knowing your name, and if they have a problem and you solve it, well, they might vote for you in November too, so I mean, there is certainly an incentive as a council member to making yourself the fix it person.

- [Mike] You're out there changing tires.

- You're out there shoveling sidewalks, shoveling driveways, which is something Maurer said she and her office did in the winter.

So it is kind of part of the job, but she wants it to be a little more reasonable.

- So how will this be fixed?

There is a 311 line.

Is it better marketing of that line?

Or as the mayor said, they're going to do something to change how they're presenting it?

- Yeah, Bibb wants to really revamp the way 311 works.

The city is going to put out a request for proposals later this year to create basically a public-facing portal where you can get updates on your complaint, where there's some communication between the city and you telling you what's happened to your complaint, and that's something that Bibb ran on.

He had this idea that that proved to be pretty popular that people should be able to track their complaint like an Amazon package, which I think is something that really connected with people, and seems like a reasonable idea, but now he's gotta put it into practice, 'cause it's not really something you can do right now.

(compelling music) - Do you have your Mega Millions ticket?

Well, maybe we should rename it the Mega Billions.

- I have to say my brain cannot comprehend a billion dollars.

I don't even know what I would do with that amount, because I can't comprehend having that much money.

I would settle for 1/64th of that amount.

It would be great, but yeah, I don't know.

- [Mike] (chuckles) How'd you come up with that number?

- Just like a fraction of the amount.

(chuckles) But yeah, I don't know.

Would you quit your job is, I think, the first question.

- [Mike] No, I love this job.

- How about you Nick?

- Yeah, no, I wouldn't wanna be bored all day long.

I'd probably do something reasonable, like put away some college fund for the children in the future, and then just give it away.

I don't know, what do you do with a billion dollars?

Who needs that much money?

- A good question.

Karen, I know you can figure it out.

Season tickets to everything?

- Well, lots of charitable donations, and then season tickets to the Guardians, but also a plane to fly me up there every day.

(all laughing) - [Mike] But what about the environment?

- So I could still work here.

- [Mike] What about carbon offsets?

- Well, you had to throw that in there, didn't you?

- You'll do something, right.

Yeah, awesome, well, it's good to dream anyway.

Everyone, enjoy your dreams, and how you might spend that money.

One way, by the way, is to support your public media station, hey.

- [Lisa] That's a great answer.

- Yes, ideastream.org/donate, and we can give you a billion dollar tote bag.

Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on 89.7 WKSU, higher temperatures, heavier rainfall, these are among the predictions for the Midwest as a result of climate change.

We'll discuss a report that looks at the price tag such changes we'll have on Ohio's towns and cities.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching, and stay safe.

(upbeat music) (musical sting)