(upbeat music) - [Mike] More people in Ohio can attend indoor and outdoor sporting and entertainment events, because COVID-19 hospitalizations are dipping, but masking and social distancing remain a priority.

Most schools are back to in-person learning and large urban districts, which are taking a bit more time, say they're moving toward that goal.

And the Cleveland city Councilman is accused of lining his own pockets.

Ideas, is next.

(downbeats) - [Male Voiceover] Brought to you by Westfield, offering insurance to protect what's yours, grow your business and achieve your dreams.

(downbeat music) (up-beats) - Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre, Ideastream's Executive Editor and your host.

Governor Mike DeWine says he's optimistic about the pandemic battle in Ohio.

And is hopeful we can navigate our way back to some sense of normalcy.

He's expanded capacity for sporting and entertainment events and says more good news may be coming.

While most of Ohio school districts are back to in-person learning, meeting the governor's March 1st deadline, some big urban districts like Cleveland and Akron need a bit more time.

And despite the travails of education this year, kids still must take standardized tests.

And the Cleveland city Councilman has been indicted by a federal grand jury, accused of pocketing a whole lot of the public's money.

Joining me this week to talk about these stories and more, Ideastream's local politics reporter Nick Castele and health reporter Lisa Ryan, and from Ohio Public Radio, Statehouse News Bureau, reporter Andy chow.

Let's get ready to round table.

Governor DeWine struck an optimistic tone in his daily COVID-19 briefing yesterday with the snow melting, the sun shining and spring and more vaccine doses coming, DeWine says he's hopeful about our return to more normalcy this year.

He said the bridge to returning Ohioans to normal life hinges on the continued rollout to the vaccine and people wearing masks.

- And the bridge is really built on two things.

One is vaccinations and the other is to continue, during this bridge, to continue to wear mask.

- Andy, what has... That's one thing we need to do, we need to keep wearing our masks, the vaccines more are coming.

So let's start with that.

What's the word on vaccines and the fact that we're going to be seeing more of them?

- So Michael, a couple of different things are happening here in Ohio, as far as the vaccine rollout.

One is that we're hearing that the state's about to get more supply.

So Moderna and Pfizer are ready to increase their shipment of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to Ohio.

The state and along with the rest of the country is also waiting on a ruling from Johnson & Johnson to determine when the new shot from Johnson & Johnson can roll out and how much of that might be coming to the state.

And then the other thing that's happening going into the month of March, is that teachers and school staff are no longer part of that eligibility window to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

So that opens up even more of the supply to people who are already eligible that's mainly age groups, 65 and older, and those with certain medical conditions.

And so with the increase of supply and with the eligibility window, eligibility kind of closing the school staff and making it more available to people, 65 and older, the state and Governor Mike DeWine seem pretty optimistic that they're gonna be able to really ramp up vaccination among people who are most vulnerable to the virus.

- He calls this a bridge to get where we want it to be.

And where we want to be as oppose pandemic era, we're not anywhere near there yet.

But it seems like along this bridge, you're gonna be little (indistinct).

It's not just a steady walk across.

One of them is, we're going to see some progress in terms of how many people can go to indoor and outdoor venues.

And we can start planning for proms and graduations and weddings.

What did the governor say specifically about those things?

- It seems like this is, if everybody remembers back in March, what happened with the shutdown, this is really the inverse of that.

So now the state's doing more and more to come out of those shutdowns, come out of those restrictions.

So instead of when it was slowly closing the door to these industries, now the door's slowly opening up.

So sporting venues, entertainment venues, banquet halls, these are places that are now allowed to have more people.

And I was talking to people within the DeWine administration who say that, because of this reopening, a lot of companies and organizations are going to look at this and say, "Hey, now that I can allow up to 25% maximum capacity indoors, "30% maximum capacity outdoors, "I can finally reopen my business.

"I can finally operate on margins that I feel comfortable with.

So the thought being there is that hopefully these organizations and companies can begin to do more things.

So for example, weddings, not only is the capacity opening up for more weddings and for more people to be at these wedding venues, but the rules and restrictions are becoming a little lighter.

And so things like the so-called dance floor regulation that doesn't allow, that wouldn't allow people on the dance floor, that's being lifted certain regulations as far as buffets go.

So people can have different dining standards at these wedding venues.

Those are also being lifted as well.

So just different things here and there that the state hopes we'll be able to open up more businesses or for businesses to be able to generate more revenue and get back to more of a normal margin.

- I think the last wedding I was at was yours Lisa Ryan, and the dance floor was insane, so good, people are getting back to it right?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And I would love to add that, he released all this new guidance, but he had a few caveats.

The caveats were that if anything changes with COVID-19 spread, we've been seeing the numbers go down, but if anything changes, along those lines, they might issue new guidance and change that.

He also mentioned the variants in particular, the COVID-19 variants.

And by that he means, we're seeing as it spreads, it's changing and having new strains.

So we don't exactly know how the vaccines are going to work with those.

Early testing shows that the variants are at least somewhat, or the vaccines are somewhat effective against those variants.

But he's essentially saying that we're not sure yet.

And so those guidance, that guidance might change.

- So Andy, what is driving all this?

The numbers are going in the right direction, or they're staying steady?

Where are we at and what is the projection?

- It's a collection of a couple of different metrics, different indicators.

One is that hospitalizations have been trending downward.

The number of cases among nursing home residents, which was one of the biggest issues, one of the biggest concerns at the beginning of the pandemic, the cases among nursing home residents and those who are at assisted living facilities, those are going down.

Hospitalizations among those people are also going down too, and the vaccination is going up.

And so the hope here is that because those things are trending downward, because according to the governor, mass compliance seems to be on par at this point.

And because of the current studies that the state and the country have when it comes to wearing masks.

For example, when you look at the rate of transmission or exposure at schools that are following the certain standards, like wearing a mask, keeping distance, cleaning surfaces, all of those point to the state and different entities being able to operate in a safe way.

And so with all those things sort of working together, I think that's why the state is going with the current game plan.

- More vaccine is coming.

The governor yesterday talked about there being more places to get that vaccine as well.

Here's what he said.

- So we'll be adding more sites, adding Meijer's, Walmart.

Those are, you have to check, not everyone will have it, but a number of the Meijer's, a number of the Walmart will have it.

We're going to add a number, a number of independent pharmacies.

- So we've got that.

We've got more places.

And then you mentioned the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

Let's hear what the governor had to say about that.

- We don't know when that green light goes on.

We're assuming it's going to go on in the next few days, but we don't know that, but when that light goes on, we believe, based on what information we have in the federal government, that the first week, this would be an additional 90,000 doses.

- So Lisa, all those doses though, are still going to be for Ohioans 65 and older.

The state is standing pat on the eligibility list and not making it down to 60 and then 55 as they had been marching forward on that.

"Let's get everybody 65 and over taken care of, the governor essentially is saying.

- Yeah.

And there's also some medical conditions that might make you eligible as well for the vaccine right now.

But I think that, what's important here from my perspective at least is we're adding Meijer, we're adding Walmart, we're adding some independent pharmacies, which should hopefully make it easier in a lot of ways.

But, I find it interesting that everybody that I've talked to, who's trying to get the vaccine and even some local organizations, some government organizations are saying that this is really complicated for a lot of people, they try to get the vaccine, they're logging in to all of these different websites, because really each pharmacy has their own different site, each County, each city, sometimes has their own sites.

So you're having a login to all of these different places.

Now more vaccine is obviously definitely better.

Hopefully that helps people get to the front of the line faster.

But I find it interesting that, I think this will just make it more complicated for some people as they try to navigate online.

Especially as you mentioned, these are mostly people who are over 65 and when you think about people not having internet, or not having as much internet knowledge, a lot of those people are in that older Ohio and group.

- In addition, people of color are getting the vaccine at a very low rate compared to white counterparts.

- Yeah.

We're seeing this, not just in Cuyahoga County, not just in the state, but nationwide, we're seeing fewer, African-Americans opting into the vaccine, or being offered the vaccine.

There's a lot of different reasons people are looking at for why this might be.

And, obviously access is one of the reasons, but a lot of people point to of course, distrust of the medical community because of, historic racism in the medical community, it's not unfounded, but as of right now, people are trying to get the message out there that this vaccine is safe.

when the testing happened, the clinical trials had a mostly proportionate amount of African-Americans in those clinical trials.

So they're really trying to get these messages out there that it's been tested, it's been tested on people of color, and it is safe for everyone to get in the hopes that when people are offered the vaccine, they are opting in.

(Downbeats) - Most of the school districts in the state are back to some form of in-person learning, but some big urban districts like Cleveland and Akron say they need more time as they work through logistics and talk with teachers unions.

There's a lot of difficulties, Nick, with these urban districts, Cleveland included trying to get together.

We heard a story, just our conversation just earlier with Glenn Forbes and Jenny Hamill, our education reporter, about the teacher's unions and working with the administration.

This isn't just wave a wand and everyone can come back to school.

- Right?

And, CMSD CEO, Eric Gordon, he said in a message to families explaining this one week delay that it will give them some more time to get some of these logistical questions answered.

It'll give them time to make classroom adjustments, deal with staff assignments, meal, planning, transportation, and also it will just give, the mail a little bit more time to get to families.

There's back to school mailers that are going out to CMSD families explaining this whole process.

And I think as we're all familiar with, at this point the mail has been pretty slow.

And so that will give them a little bit more time.

But the idea is, March 8th is the beginning of this transition to a hybrid model of learning.

So there'll be different phases throughout, basically the course of a month as they're bringing in different student populations.

And it will be a hybrid model.

So there'll be in a couple of days a week, and then also doing virtual learning.

- We've seen an Akron that they're working through plans as well heard today, that the question is how close can students be when they're eating their meals?

There'll be six feet apart, but in class it may be three feet.

So a lot of this stuff is still being worked out.

But the majority of districts, Andy, the governor has said, are there, 70% are going five days a week with their students in school.

- Yeah.

And that's been the case for a while now.

And so what we're seeing is that there are only 10 districts in the state of Ohio that are still doing fully remote learning, fully virtual learning.

And Nick just mentioned a few of the districts there.

And so what we're seeing is that the districts that are have still yet to move over to hybrid or move over to any sort of in-person instruction are the larger districts, the districts that have way more logistical issues that they need to face for things like transportation.

How do you do spacing on a bus?

Can you make sure that everybody has a mask for people who might not be able to do what they need to do to get a mask or to be able to keep their distance?

And so what we're hearing now is a little bit of a different message than the briefing, Mike, that you referenced that happened a week, week and a half ago, when the governor went on TV and said, it kind of really made threats to say, if you're a district who got this vaccination, and then you're not going to go in person, then you're breaking your promise.

The attitude, the tone is a little different.

Now there's more of a good faith effort apparently between the state and these districts to make things work.

And so that's what we're seeing going forward.

A lot of, more of a lighter tone compared to what we heard from the governor a few weeks ago.

(up-beats) - Students this year won't get to skip standardized tests despite all the disruption, the federal government says tests are still required.

Some state lawmakers Andy, had been hoping to pass a measure to scrap the test for the year given all the disruption, but needed a federal waiver to accomplish that.

Didn't get it.

- And this was a federal waiver that the state did get last year when in March, schools started shutting down and the students had to go over to virtual learning.

This is a waiver that they are not getting this year.

It's kind of a surprise.

A lot of lawmakers do not want to force schools and to force students to take these standardized tests.

It's a pretty bipartisan effort to waive these tests for this year.

So what we're seeing coming down from the federal government is that yes, the schools do need to continue these standardized tests on math, language arts, science from grades three to eight, and then the high school tests as well.

But they are relaxing on the requirements on how many students need to take the test, when the tests need to be taken and all that.

So what we're seeing now is really, yes, the state has to conduct these tests that are federally mandated, but when they need to conduct the tests, how they conduct the tests, I think there's still a little wiggle room there.

And what we're also hearing from the state superintendent Paolo DeMaria, is that the state wants to see some sort of assessment continue, some sort of testing continue, but not necessarily use those tests to really, to penalize schools in any way, but really to use it as a benchmark to see where are our students right now, compared to where maybe they would have been a year ago, two years ago during normal circumstances.

- You've got students that haven't been in class for almost a year.

And in some cases, and I'm hearing this in some of the bigger districts students who the school district hasn't even been in touch with, who basically dropped off the grid and we're talking about then trying to bring them back and test them.

That sounds like it's going to be a pretty tall order.

- Yeah, there's a lot of time lost for a lot of kids out there for all sorts of reasons.

Maybe they're going through issues at home, maybe they have a hard time learning through the virtual portals.

And so there are all sorts of individualized issues happening around the state for these students, K through 12 that the state asking the different districts to deal with.

And that's what we saw a few weeks ago for the call coming from the state to districts to create individualized plans to help these students sort of overcome the hurdles that they've seen over the past year.

- Longtime Cleveland city Councilman, Ken Johnson, and the leader of a Community Development Agency and his ward were indicted this week by a federal grand jury on theft charges.

Johnson is accused of lining his pockets with public money and the Buckeye-Shaker Square Development Corporation John Hopkins is accused of helping him.

Nick, what do we know about this?

- So this indictment was unsealed at the beginning of the week and there are two main thrusts to it.

The first is prosecutors accuse Ken Johnson of submitting false city council expense reports, claiming that he had paid a city recreation employee for doing work in his ward.

Things like cutting grass, providing other services.

According to the indictment, while that employee did do some work in 2010, he promptly stopped doing that work.

And yet these expense reports were filed month after month until 2018.

So the allegation here is that Johnson claimed this money from the city saying it was to reimburse them for expenses that he took out of pocket, when in reality, he was just taking more money for himself from the city, allegedly up to $127,000 over that period of time.

The other part of this investigation is looking at a community development block grant dollars which is federal money that comes from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Prosecutors alleged that Johnson had been directing this money to a Buckeye-Shaker Square Development Corporation, that in and of itself is fine, every council member gets a share of federal money that they can direct to projects or programs in their ward.

But, what the indictment alleges is that, the Community Development Corporation then, paid a number of people to do services in the ward like cutting grass and that effectively that money found its way back to Ken Johnson and ended up in a bank account that prosecutors alleged was controlled by Johnson.

And of course, a council member can not personally benefit from this federal money that they're spending in their ward.

So those are the two main thrusts of this investigation.

Johnson has pleaded not guilty in federal court.

He's been released on bond and now he'll have pre-trial hearings as we move forward with the case.

- His status on Cleveland city council, though, isn't changed in terms of being a council member, he's charged and not convicted, but his status as a head of a committee has been changed.

- Right.

So Johnson was the head of the Municipal Services and Properties Committee, as I believe the name.

Essentially, it was the committee that oversaw parks and recreation.

Johnson has been very involved in parks.

I believe there's a youth football team named after him in the city.

There's also a rec center in the city, in his ward named after him, the Kenneth Johnson rec center.

And so, he's very involved in parks and rec.

And so, council president, Kevin Kelly has removed Johnson from his chairmanship of that committee and appointed a ward to Councilman Kevin Bishop to the position.

But Mike, to that essential question of can Johnson continue to serve on council?

What I have heard from city council is they don't believe that they have a mechanism for expelling a member just because they have been charged with a crime.

And in fact, if you look at recent precedent, there are other council members who have been indicted over the years and, they were not booted off council, until their conviction or guilty plea, in which case they were removed from the body at that point.

- A house committee has moved to restore transit funding the governor DeWine proposed cutting drastically.

He wanted to slash public transit funding from $63 million a year to a little more than 7 million.

The house committee has made it 93 million.

Andy, That's a huge difference.

- It's a very big difference.

And I smile because when it comes to public transit, this seems to be sort of the blueprint that's commonly used when it comes to the debate for the transportation budget, that the governor will put in a number for public transit that is very low.

Historically, we've seen a governor's proposal going back to former governor John Casick that puts the public transit fund around 6 million to $7 million a year.

When the house got governor DeWine's budget, transportation budget proposal in 2019, they also saw about a $7 million allotment per year.

And they said, no, we don't want that.

We're going to boost it up to 70 million.

And then it sort of went back and forth a little bit.

So this seems to be one of the footballs in the debate that goes back and forth.

Putting the number at 90 million is something that a lot of lawmakers say is very much needed.

I think you'll hear a lot of lawmakers say it's still not enough to really boost the state's public transit fund, but I believe putting it at that number gives the lawmakers and the governor's office, some wiggle room for further debate.

- Voters in tiny Woodmere village remove the council president and two other council members, three of the seven representatives on council in a recall election Tuesday.

According to unofficial tallies posted by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

This isn't a Steve Kornacki, John King big board situation.

We're talking about a handful of votes in a village with, I think just one voting precinct.

- That's right, Yeah.

This is a very small board.

Woodmere has, depending on which census you look at, Woodmere has somewhere between maybe 700 to 900 people, currently has a little bit less than 500 registered voters.

But the village has seven members of village council and, four of those members were locked in this dispute with the mayor over a variety of issues, including maintenance of the village website, as well as a backyard chickens were involved and some state and County grants for a sidewalk project.

In any event, there was a resident organization that formed called the Woodmere Project and they, got the signatures they needed, which is not that many in the village of Woodmere, to put a recall issue on the ballot for these four council members.

Like you said, the council president lost her seat by the largest margin, 13 votes, two others lost by smaller margins and the third Councilman or the fourth Councilman rather in this scenario appears to have survived and held onto his seat by two votes.

However, there are eight, I'm told eight, vote by mail ballots that have not yet come in and been, viewed and counted.

There are also two provisional ballots that won't be counted until later.

So there are enough outstanding votes to potentially change the results.

- I'm making light of it, saying, Whoa, when you say 13 votes, but the fact of the matter is really does show on a very micro level, the importance of votes.

Yeah.

- I mean, absolutely.

When, I think Woodmere had something around, turnout in the 30% range, which, seems low, although I think for a special election in an off year it's not too bad compared to maybe some other municipalities.

But, yeah, when you're dealing with very small numbers like that, it shows how much these votes count.

- That's all for this week's round table.

There'll be plenty more news to talk about in the coming week.

Coming up Monday on the sound of ideas, a conversation with Dave Harden, about his new book, the Chronicles, his time as a red cross volunteer, delivering water to residents in Flint, Michigan during the lead crisis there.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

- Thanks for watching and stay safe.

- [Male Voiceover] Brought to you by Westfield.

Offering insurance to protect what's yours.

Grow your business and achieve your dreams.