(upbeat music) - [Mike] It's budget time and Governor Mike DeWine's budget wishlist includes nearly a billion dollars for a Corona virus recovery plan to help businesses and communities hammered by the pandemic.

It's due overtime for patients at five Northeast Ohio congregate care facilities who received COVID-19 vaccines that were not properly stored.

And it may soon be campaign time for former Ohio Department of Health Director, Dr. Amy Acton who was mulling a run for U.S. Senate.

"Ideas" is next.

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

I'm Mike McINTYRE, ideastream's Executive Editor.

Thanks for being with us for a conversation about this week's top news.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine's two-year budget proposal would put nearly a billion dollars toward helping businesses and communities hurt by the pandemic with grants for bars, restaurants, hotels, and others.

Included in the plan is $50 million to help tell Ohio's story in an attempt to attract newcomers or boomerangs to the state.

The governor described Ohio as progressive which prompted vigorous reaction on social media and elsewhere.

We'll discuss.

"More COVID-19 vaccine is coming to Ohio", the governor says.

Meanwhile there have been more problems with the rollout.

Some people received doses that weren't properly stored and now will need to get vaccinated again.

Will this continue to be a problem?

And former Ohio Department of Health Director, Dr. Amy Acton moves closer to a possible Senate run as she steps down from her current position with the Columbus Foundation.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more reporter, Kabir Bhatia of public radio station, WKSU.

Ideastream health reporter, Anna Huntsman and Ohio public radio Statehouse News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Karen, the overall spending is a big increase over previous years and it includes that billion dollars and one time spending?

- A lot of this one-time spending this $1 billion for the investing in Ohio initiative is really pandemic specific.

I mean, we're talking about $200 million for bars and restaurants in grants, $150 million in grants for small business relief.

These were small businesses that previously applied for grants and are qualified.

$50 million for lodging, for hotels, and in that business.

$40 million for grants for indoor entertainment venues which is really important for the arts, movie theaters, those kinda places.

And then $20 million in grants for new businesses that did not qualify earlier and so did not receive previous funding.

So a lot of this is pandemic related.

So as every budget gets bigger over the course of time it's kind of expected that this one would be a little bit bigger just because there was more money that needed to be spent on some of these things.

And then of course, there's that $50 million a year we're talking about to tell Ohio's story.

So I think there are some interesting elements here.

Some things that we wouldn't expect to be dealing with in the two year budget next time around but what I thought was really interesting is I think a lot of people thought that the budget was going to be so much worse off than it was.

I mean, you know, there's so many people unemployed, Medicaid caseloads have gone up.

Why wasn't the budget in shambles and it really wasn't.

And state revenues have been coming in actually above estimates over the last couple of months.

So it's not as bleak a picture I think is a lot of people were afraid it was gonna be.

- Let me ask about that $50 million item to sell Ohio.

I know it's not the most significant part of the budget but it's the one that I saw the most chatter on on social media.

And the governor said when was asked by Joe Angles about criticism of spending money to attract Ohioans.

The governor said that Ohio is quote a progressive state.

And Kabir this is really in response to some criticism on Twitter from House Minority Leader, Emilia Sykes who's in Akron.

She said, "Instead of spending $50 million for a PR campaign, Republicans could stop passing extremist legislation that keeps women of color, women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, and working families from realizing their American dream in Ohio would be a lot cheaper and much more kind."

Clearly that has been a lightning rod.

That particular comment - Absolutely.

The governor seemed to react to that fairly strongly.

And it seems to be in response to things, you know, there's several pieces of legislation that have passed while he was governor.

There's the recent stand-your-ground law of course, and Sykes was sort of criticizing him.

And of course, she's a Democrat but from the right he was also getting criticism.

What about this 50 million saying there's better ways to spend this.

You know, that can be put back into businesses, that sort of thing.

So from both sides people seem to feel that this 50 million maybe isn't as necessary.

DeWine has said that this is something to, as you said attract people from maybe the coasts and bring them here or people who wanna come back.

Boomerangs which there's plenty of, myself included who may want to move back to Ohio.

But Sykes, you know, had a point that maybe the legislation and I think people are seeing socially in Ohio, you know, the state in '16 and this year went for President Trump fairly heavily.

That may be a hindrance and so she fails as do people on the right for different reasons that the 50 million may not be the best investment on an ad campaign.

And I don't know if anyone else remembers but the last one I remember was when I was little there was the heart of it all commercials.

So I'm not sure if they're gonna bring those back or wear a Plum or something.

One of those back but from both sides that did get as you said a lot of chatter that maybe this isn't the best investment.

- Hey, Ohio is not the Plum.

It was Cleveland the Plum.

- It was Cleveland.

I didn't wanna get too far into the weeds with my memory lane and sink in everything but.

- [Mike] All right, Karen.

- That's actually different though because that is a tourism, Ohio Department of Tourism which is this $50 million.

We different than what is done in the Ohio Department of Tourism budget because now the Ohio Department of Tourism uses the phrase "find it here" and kind of a drawing of Ohio that has been criticized as being not as good as previous things like the heart of it all, or discover Ohio, or some of these others.

So this $50 million is a little bit different and I'm interested to find out what, how it differs from what tourism has been trying to do to ride or draw people here for, you know, temporary visits versus people who are, they're trying to draw here to live.

- And when you say, "Find it here."

The one of the things people say you're not going to find in Ohio is progressive policies.

It was just interesting.

It's not a label many people would apply to Ohio and yet that's the term that the governor used, Karen.

- Yeah, it was kind of one of those moments where I was listening going, "Wait, what?"

(Karen laughing) Because that's a word that certainly Democrats who claim that word would say, "No way."

And that's kind of a, as you were hinting about what a minority leader, Emilia Sykes was saying.

That this is not been a progressive state when it comes to certain issues such as guns and abortion and some of these other things.

So that was a, I think he was trying to imply that Ohio is a state where people, that people can come here, we want you to come here, we want you to live here.

But to call it progressive I think may have gone just a little too far for some people.

- Let's talk about school funding.

The budget does restore some cuts that were made and has some spending for schools but it doesn't, Kabir necessarily touch the notion of unconstitutional funding.

The governor said we're gonna leave that up to the legislature.

And the legislature might be moving a little bit on that given that there was a proposal last year that kind of languished.

Now it looks like it's back.

- Yeah, they've been quote, unquote leaving it for a few decades now.

So I guess a few more months is, it's still going to happen.

The proposal that was in the last session, a lot of treasurers from around the state worked on it.

Rigorously came up with a new formula that took into account income, property tax.

The phrase I kept hearing as I've interviewed different treasurers in the last few weeks is a community's ability to pay.

And I guess that would be the amount that could be generated by the community and then they would backfill that with funding from the state.

So some districts like Akron public seems like they would really benefit from it.

Other districts like maybe Stow or Orange, Rocky river, they get maybe a bump but not as great as some other districts.

And so this new budget, Governor DeWine says, "I'm going to leave that to them."

And they reintroduced it.

It didn't pass last session, both chambers.

So they've reintroduced it in the house.

They've just tweaked it very slightly.

And that was this week.

So it remains to be seen occupant talking to a speaker cup in about two hours about this new proposal and what its chances are, how it might be a tweak.

The money in the budget itself is really just sort of moving things back to precorona levels as far as increases.

They're kind of restoring some funding and they're doing a little bit more for job training and wraparound services for students.

There's also 24 million for charter schools in this proposed budget from Governor DeWine.

So a few changes to school funding in the budget itself but he's leaving the big heavy lifting to actually undo decades of decades potentially of unconstitutional funding.

He's leaving that to the State Legislature.

- Want to address one other issue with the budget and that is proposals for law enforcement including millions for local communities to buy police body cameras.

They're not mandated by the state but DeWine did press their importance.

- Well, I think that the problem has been that there is no legislation.

There's no mandate.

There are also some departments that haven't been able to afford it.

There's no policy set on how to use body cameras and so all of these things I think have come into this and of course we've had some high profile cases where body cameras were turned off.

And so I think DeWine really wants to push this forward and that brings up the point that the budget is not just a spending document.

It's also a policy document and it really talks about priorities that a legislature, that an administration and the legislature have.

And that's just one example.

He's also trying to bring back some elements of the gun control bill that he tried to push forward after the date in mass shootings.

He wants to see some elements of that.

We're still waiting to hear about that.

There's another thing in the budget that would allow the Ohio Department of Health more power to close down nursing homes that are deemed unsafe.

So there are some things in this budget that go beyond just spending money on stuff.

(upbeat music) - Senator Rob Portman recently announced his retirement in 2022 stirring a flurry of interest in filling that seat.

Among those considering a run, former Ohio Department of Health director, Dr. Amy Acton, who left that post in June and joined the Columbus Foundation.

Thursday, Dr. Acton announced she's stepping down to further consider a possible political future.

Let's talk about that, Anna.

Amy Acton certainly, name recognition is a big thing when you're running for any statewide office and Amy Acton has it for a good reason.

- Absolutely.

I mean, she was front and center for several months during this global pandemic right at the helm of Ohio's response.

And I think what I have thought was interesting during this whole time is that, you know, health officials have kind of always been behind the scenes.

We don't know much about what the health departments are doing.

I mean, I do because I'm reporting on this but it's not like they're out there, you know, broadcasting and being the famous ones.

And often, I mean, and I think we saw this with Dr. Acton as well.

Sometimes take a step back when it comes to when they're asked about politics and their opinions on things.

I think Dr. Acton a lot of the times was like I'm just here to, you know, put the best path forward and offer my insight on what we can do.

But of course we saw that even something like a global health crisis became politicized.

You know, especially here in Ohio we were talking earlier about whether Ohio is really considered a progressive state and we saw a lot of pushback to a lot of Dr. Acton's insight and orders that she, you know, pushed for.

And so I think it's very interesting to see that she may be considering taking more of a leap into politics.

I think it will be also interesting to see, you know, if her, she was a great unifier I think at the beginning of the pandemic.

We saw lots of fan clubs for her.

We saw videos and songs and, you know, Dr. Acton Halloween costumes were proposed.

- [Mike] Right.

- And then things kind of took a turn and people got, you know, tired of, you know, I think wearing the mask and doing the social distancing and cases are going down.

And we started to see some criticism of that.

So I'm very interested to see how this will all play out.

- Kabir Bhatia, what about her chances?

She is a Democrat.

So we're talking about this being on the democratic side.

We've heard a lot about many of the people that might run on the Republican side but you just wonder what her considering this or possibly even jumping in, might do to the many others that might be considering it.

- Well, I think when you look at the field in general of folks on both sides, I mean, it's a very varied field.

Of course, a lot of people want to jump in, could potentially jump in.

She comes from essentially outside politics unlike every other name that I've heard.

Most of the names I've heard on the right are from the State Legislature or you have a Frank LaRose.

From the Democrat side, Tim Ryan is a very strong name.

And honestly, just as a potential, a hypothetical.

If you had a Ryan LaRose matchup on paper they are very similar actually.

So throwing an Amy Acton in there against say a Frank LaRose or a politician would really stir things up.

And as Anna pointed out, she's kind of I don't wanna use the term folk hero but I just used it.

So she's kind of like a John Glenn.

Someone who, yeah, I did.

Someone who's coming from outside politics like John Glenn who has a high profile and, but he's not really been political before and comes into the race.

And I think if you saw that there was the Amy Acton fan club on Facebook, as Anna mentioned there were songs, they did the Laverne & Shirley opening, and Law & Order opening sort of as tributes to Dr. Acton.

She's got a lot of grassroots support and the support that I saw online really seemed bipartisan at least at the beginning.

As cases went down of course there was criticism but I think the criticism might also, honestly, it seems to have stemmed based on the protests at our house, maybe from antisemitism, maybe from the fact that she had a campaign for President Obama.

That, that rubbed some people the wrong way and that might have brought out the protests and the anger not just towards Dr. Acton but towards the orders and everything in general.

So if she comes into the race, I think she's got a lot of good grassroots support but there's also the chance that she can for lack of a better term inflame people on the other side of the aisle who weren't happy with her and that could maybe lead to some real problems.

(upbeat music) - Patients at five congregate living facilities in Northeast Ohio must be revaccinated for COVID-19 after Walgreens informed the state Tuesday that some doses were not stored at the proper temperature.

That doesn't make the vaccine harmful but it can render it ineffective.

The facilities impacted include two in Ashtabula, two in Cleveland, and one in Chardon.

Anna you and Lisa Ryan has been covering this as Lisa reported at least one of the facilities heard about this not from Walgreens or from the Ohio Department of Health but from reporters who called to learn more.

- Right, and, you know, my colleague, Lisa Ryan as you mentioned is the one who was jumping on top of this story.

As soon as we heard about this happening she started calling up the facilities and she spoke with the CEO at Six Chimneys in Cleveland.

And this person had not even heard it yet.

She had just heard it when other reporters were calling in DeWine's announcement which I think is really interesting that, you know, you would think that whenever this happens we wanna get right away kicking into gear.

What are, what's the next plan?

When are these people going to get revaccinated?

You know, is it safe to revaccinate them right away?

Can we reschedule it?

All of those plans.

And I'm sure she was scrambling at the time but she didn't even know about it until two o'clock when the rest of us found out which I think is really interesting.

But yeah, obviously we've been watching this as the vaccine rollout has progressed because those vaccines have to be kept at certain cold temperatures.

Pfizer colder than Moderna.

And as you mentioned it's not harmful to get a vaccine that has not been stored at the proper temperature but it is ineffective at that point.

And so we, again, we've been watching this because we know that there's always room for human error.

We don't want this to happen but unfortunately it did happen.

And it seems like many, many residents were affected by this.

- Not just the residents.

So that's what we heard at the press conference on Tuesday but then Lisa did a little bit more digging, was calling around and found out when we gotta actually a phone call from an Akron couple called Ideastreams said that they weren't in one of the facilities but they were informed.

They got the faulty vaccine.

How did that happen?

- Right, so when any vaccine provider is distributing vaccines whether that's at a nursing home or a school or wherever they've partnered, when you open a vial of vaccine you have a certain amount of time before the doses expire.

And so if you open a vial and all of the appointments are done for the day or there are no shows, the direction and guidance is to use those doses on whoever you can because obviously this is a precious resource and we don't want it to go to waste.

So what happened is that the pharmacy had extra doses and so they administered it.

They called up people who were waiting.

These were people in the, you know, 70 and over group.

So they called up these people and said, "Hey can you get here today and get these extra doses?"

And so they did.

And right, as you said this Akron couple actually reached out to us with a question that was saying, "Are other people affected by this?"

Turns out they had actually received a call from the pharmacy that said you received a faulty vaccine.

Now these people had traveled all the way from Akron to Ashtabula.

I think that's what 75 miles.

I mean, that's a big day trip but essentially... - [Mike] It's a haul, yeah.

- It's a haul.

And so they had to go all the way back and get revaccinated.

I believe yesterday they were scheduled to get their vaccines.

So right, this affected more than just the residents and as far as we have heard from the state, they're still investigating.

So we still don't know exactly how many people this affected but we do know it was the residents in the congregate settings.

And then whoever else got those extra doses that weren't used up during the distribution at the congregate settings.

- You imagined there are going to be hiccups like this and we've seen a lot of hiccups in the rollout and a lot of problems with the rollout.

People not able to sign up and those types of things.

Hopefully that will smooth itself out.

One way that it might the governor said yesterday that Ohio can expect more deliveries of COVID-19 vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna.

- Pfizer told us doubling by March into March at some point in March will be double what we are today.

That's a big boost.

Moderna has already increased.

They're gonna increase in the future.

Johnson & Johnson, we hope will be in in March, maybe even before.

- So if we get more vaccine we'll vaccinate more people but we're still talking about a huge task ahead.

This is months and months of vaccinations, Anna.

- Right, and not to sound like a Debbie Downer but if you have more vaccines, is that more room for human error?

You know what I mean?

Especially with Pfizer being especially hard to, you know, keep control of and monitor but however it is good news.

Of course, we don't wanna hear that we're getting fewer vaccines.

So of course, we wanna hear that we're getting more but I didn't even realize this but Ohio is getting around 70,000 doses each week.

Now that's gonna be increased to a 100,000 which is a really nice increase.

And of course, the biggest issue has been not having enough supply.

And so hopefully, you know, the next group is 65 and over.

That's a really big population here in Ohio.

So the more the merrier vaccine doses.

Plus you gotta think about all the people in the previous weeks who did not, they were not able to get an appointment.

Hopefully they can get appointments now.

And I think a lot of people are wondering who's gonna be next, who's after a phase one B because we don't know yet.

Those plans haven't been released yet and I think that's probably because there's such a big population that still needs to get it.

And here in Cuyahoga County the health department is still vaccinating people in phase one A.

So I think the doses are great because hopefully more people can but we also have to think about the people who haven't yet and are still eligible right now.

- Another population that's now eligible are people who are under 65 as long as they are teachers.

Here's what the governor said.

- Some will get their second dose in the month of February.

Those who do not get their second dose in the month of February will get it in the early part of March.

- And that's obviously something the state is pushing, for schools to open.

There's been some criticism though about whether teachers need to be vaccinated if they're 26 years old and healthy and we still have many people over 70 who've not yet been vaccinated.

And this is being used really as sort of the carrot and the stick in terms of getting schools reopened.

- Right, and I've been looking into the ethics of the vaccine distribution and how Ohio decided who was gonna be in which phase.

And we, you know, we've reported that Ohio is kind of unique in prioritizing teachers but obviously that's a big goal is to get everybody back in the classroom in person.

And so, so far we know that the the vaccination seemed to be going pretty smoothly.

I haven't heard anything of, you know, major shortages or anything for teachers.

We did hear about some website issues when the school staff were logging on, they couldn't find their appointments right away.

Of course, another big issue with this whole rollout is a lot of it is online and system errors and things like that.

Criticism in addition to the one about, you know, Oh these are younger people getting vaccines is the way that the schools were chosen and the order that they were in because many school districts are actually already fully in person, some are hybrid.

And there's been criticism that some of the schools who were in the first group were not fully in person.

And so teachers who are in the classroom are saying, "Hey, since I'm already here exposing myself everyday why couldn't my school district be one of the first ones to get this dose."

And so I'm not exactly sure how that was all decided.

I know I saw an interview with people in Medina County.

They were some of the schools that got it this week.

They said, "Well, we've been planning and our coordination has been really great."

So I think that's why we were in the top of the line.

I don't know if it came down to individual plans, I don't know if it was population, but I do know this week in our area, Summit County, and Medina County, and Mahoning County teachers started getting vaccinated.

Next week is the big one with Cuyahoga County.

- David brings up a point.

I saw this last night too.

You saw a piece on NBC news about vaccine hunters.

Folks who are tracking spots with unused shots using websites and apps then they swoop in to get the unused ones.

They basically just saying, "Okay, where is it available?"

For one thing, it shows a little bit of the digital divide in this.

Sometimes, you know, people who have better, computer savvy or more digitally connected are able to get in on these shots where those who don't have that access might not.

But he also asks if a person gets one of these does it guarantee then that they get a second dose?

And I would think based on the fact that even at a doctor's Office you're not getting a guarantee then no, I wouldn't guarantee it.

- Right, that is something we are seeing even here in Ohio.

I just referenced it earlier with the Akron couple that drove all the way to Ashtabula because that place had vaccines.

And when you think about again, the ethics of we wanna get as many shots in arms as possible.

Is it ethical that people can just kinda go wherever.

They don't have to stay in their county or their area.

They got contacted.

They were able to go and get it there in the eligible group.

And so I guess getting back to the question about second doses again, I believe it is up to the provider to reach back out and schedule the doses.

But obviously, we'll continue to look into this and I'm sure as this big population starts to come up for their second dose we'll kinda learn more information about that.

- Kabir?

- Well, actually when it comes to vaccine hunting as they say even the Summit County Health Department when I talked to them, they've been having to do some of that to put together their clinics.

Oh, there's a hundred left here that you didn't use.

There's 300 there we'll take those, put them together, and make a clinic.

So it's not just, you know, regular folks out there with, you know, the old, a new-fangled version of a metal detector looking for gold and now looking for vaccines online.

This is something that's even happening at the health department levels.

And as far as access earlier this week the Legislative Black Caucus actually called Governor DeWine to increase technology access essentially for, especially black residents in Ohio to be able to get online and schedule themselves for this vaccine.

Governor DeWine has started to make some steps toward that and said he's going to expand the access.

I spoke with a doctor from Cleveland, Claire from university hospitals and she was calling for the same thing.

She said that not only is this something that we need in black neighborhoods for black Ohioans to get more access to technology, to actually schedule.

But elderly folks because a lot of them they don't have maybe a smartphone or they only were able to go to use the internet at a library.

And technology access has really as Anna mentioned created a digital divide for people who wanna schedule this vaccine.

That's going to wrap up our show.

Coming up Monday on the "Sound of Ideas", guest host, Jenny Hamill and her guest will preview former President Trump's upcoming impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.

And we'll examine Cleveland's commitment to urban farming.

I'm Mike McINTYRE,.

Thanks for watching and stay safe.

(soft music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Brought to you by Westfield.

Offering insurance to protect what's yours.

Grow your business and achieve your dreams.