- A grand jury has declined to indict a Warren woman charged with abuse of a corpse after a miscarriage.

The Ohio House rejected the governor's veto of a bill that would ban gender affirming healthcare for trans youth.

And Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, has asked counsel to approve creation of a special downtown taxing district to fund waterfront development, "Ideas" is next.

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

Thanks for joining us.

A Trumbull County grand jury declined to indict a Warren woman on a felony charge of abuse of a corpse after she had a miscarriage at home at 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The Ohio House voted to overturn Governor Mike DeWine's veto of House Bill 68, which bans gender affirming healthcare for transgender youth and prohibits transgender female athletes from playing on girls and women's scholastic sports teams.

The Senate will now take it up.

Ohio's new law to protect kids on social media platforms by requiring parental consent to create accounts is on hold for now by court order.

And the city of Cleveland has proposed legislation to create a special downtown taxing district to fund development of its riverfront and lakefront.

Joining me this week to discuss the news of the week on the reporter's round table from Idea Stream public media, reporter Gabriel Kramer.

From the Buckeye Flame, editor Ken Schneck, and in Columbus State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

A grand jury in Trumbull County declined to indict a Warren woman who was charged by city prosecutors with a felony after having a miscarriage at home.

Karen, prosecutors say that Watts was charged the city prosecutors say that because she was near the 24 week viability standard in the state, she had a miscarriage.

- [Karen] Yeah, and apparently what happened was she had gone to the hospital to seek treatment and left the hospital, went home, had the miscarriage, went back to the hospital to deliver the placenta, and the hospital then informed the authorities that she was no longer pregnant.

So that's how all of this ended up happening.

And it's really the kind of story that we've heard in other states.

And it was, I think, shocking to a lot of people, especially since it happened before the November vote that would enshrine reproductive rights and abortion access into the Constitution as well as miscarriage care, which is something that people who were opposed to Issue One in November had said, miscarriage care is already happening.

We already have that.

We don't need to put that in the Constitution.

Well, now it is.

The question is, of course, whether a case like this would definitely not happen again.

Or will there have to be laws and legal action to make sure that it doesn't?

- I think there was a lot of judgment being applied here in one situation it was how can someone have a miscarriage, take a shower and go get their hair done, which is what the situation was here as she's at the hairdresser, they noticed that she doesn't look great and called her mother to take her to the hospital.

It turns out, and I'm reading these stories that we have covered in the Washington Post, that she was trying to conceal the pregnancy.

And so this is something that people would then say, well, how can you possibly do this?

That there must be abuse there.

And it's a judgment that's being applied to her.

- Yeah, and it's really unfair because this is a deeply personal experience that women have.

And I don't know how you judge someone for this.

This was a case that this was before viability.

It's very unfair the way that people are are applying their personal judgments on this.

I know that's what the legal system is about, but again, this was a pre viability thing.

And the ban on Abortion Act a before or after six weeks, the so-called Heartbeat Ban that we already know is unconstitutional according to the new Issue One, reproductive rights amendment.

So the question of abortion after viability, and this wasn't even an abortion, this was a miscarriage.

It's just, it's really kind of amazing, - The amendment that we talked about that contains protections for pregnancy loss too, right?

- [Karen] Yeah, it does.

And again, that was something that the backer, the people who were opposed to Issue One had said, we already have, we already have miscarriage care available.

That is not something that needs to be put into the Constitution.

Well, it is there now, but as we're going to find out, I think, because there have been no laws that have been passed that implement Issue One, it's gonna be a lot of legal situations where we find out how Issue One affects existing abortion and reproductive rights related laws.

- Our Taylor Whisner had been covering this issue out in Warren, did a story about how folks were getting ready to rally yesterday at four o'clock.

And then news came down, Ken, as they were planning this support rally that the indictment was not going to be handed down by the grand jury.

It became more of a celebration last night.

And also it wasn't just hooray, it was, this isn't finished, we've got work to do.

- This is a national story.

This was not a local Northeast Ohio story.

This has been covered just really across the world.

I saw some international stories on this as well.

And so, yeah, the quote from the groups that have come together to continue to hold this rally, they said that we believe that this public demonstration is both appropriate and powerful because it provides an opportunity for community participation.

So yes, it's emphasizing the importance of supporting people like this individual who was accused of doing something she didn't do.

- And you touched on this a little bit, Karen, but the question then is, with this amendment and with the vote of the people, what now happens?

Is there going to be something that's spelled out specifically?

I know that there was some action that was being pushed by a couple of Democratic lawmakers to enact law.

There are others that are saying, okay, well, we know what it is and we'll challenge it in court whenever those types of things happen.

Where do we stand with legislation?

- [Karen] Well, we've asked House speaker Jason Stevens, what's gonna happen next especially concerning that legislation that you just mentioned, that's sponsored by a democrat who is a doctor, Anita Somani and other democrats.

And there's no appetite in the house to pass anything that specifically addresses Issue One and the Reproductive Rights Amendment.

So it certainly appears that this is going to be an amendment that is gonna be tested in the courts over and over.

There are gonna be cases that are gonna be filed in local courts, go up to the Ohio Supreme Court.

We already have the one that came from Hamilton County that was before the vote.

And in fact, the case even started before the signature gathering for the amendment.

And that's been sent back to Hamilton County that essentially will eliminate this, the six week abortion ban.

But there's a lot of other laws and Attorney General Dave Yost, who was opposed to Issue One, had even put out a legal analysis saying, these are the laws that are potentially gonna be affected by Issue One, including a 24 hour waiting period and telemedicine for abortion and some other things that he wrote down.

And now we're just gonna have to, I guess, wait and see as people come forward and say, this law is no longer constitutional because of this amendment that voters approved.

(upbeat music) - The Ohio House rejected the governor's veto of a bill that would ban gender affirming healthcare for trans youth.

Wednesday Republican members of the House voted 65:28 to override that veto.

The bill includes both the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation Act and the Save Women's Sports Act, and it would've banned, and it still could ban gender affirming healthcare for minors and ban transgender female athletes from playing girls in women's sports at teams, at all levels of education in Ohio.

Ken, first of all, where we're at is the House has overridden the governor's veto.

It isn't a done deal yet.

The Senate still has to act it.

It appears that that's likely the Senate would, but we still are not in a position where we know settled law on this.

- It's really important that, I mean, back to the whole how a bill becomes a law and the whole process, just seeing so many headlines out there, gender affirming care has been banned for minors that has not happened yet.

And so, it's so key that we combat some of this misinformation that's out there that yes, the House has voted to override the veto and now the Senate will come back and it looks like they will be doing that on the 24th of January.

- So let's just go back real quick, primmer real quick.

Okay, so we have these two acts that I mentioned that are put together in this HB68 bill.

- Which pause right there.

- Yes.

- That's a real point of contention for Democrats that these are two completely different bills and should not be heard as one.

And so that bills are supposed to have a single focus.

So Democrats have said, well, this Representative Brown, in particular, this violates the single focus rule of having one bill.

- They pass, that one bill does pass on party lines.

It is then vetoed by the Republican governor who's a member of that party.

His reasoning for that.

- His reasoning for that is that he spoke to so many parents and to youth and that this was not the right path forward.

But national groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, called that a huge win.

If you listen to his press conference, he was very clear in saying he was going to be proposing new rules and to have an executive order that he feels, he was asked by the press, how do you feel about the potential of an override by the legislature?

And he said, I think that if they hear what I'm going to be proposing, it actually goes farther than HB68.

So indeed last week, he proposed a whole new set of rules, which we're gonna talk about.

- One of the sets of rules that he proposed was that there wouldn't be surgery for any transgender youth before the youth, in general, anyone before the age of 18 wouldn't have surgery.

As I understand it, not really an issue in Ohio now anyway.

But he would basically codify that by executive order.

- The Ohio Children's Hospital testified during the hearings that they were asked directly, do you support a ban on surgeries for minors?

And they said during those hearings, yes, absolutely we do support this, but also it's not happening in Ohio.

So when you hear supporters of HB68 talk about HB68, you would almost think that it is solely about surgeries.

There is so much more to it.

But he teased out Governor DeWine that piece to at least settle that part of the conversation.

- Karen, after the house vote, Republicans held a press conference, by the way, not a surprising vote, you would think it was signaled well ahead of time.

They're the ones that passed it.

They had the votes for an override as well because of the super majority.

But after the vote, they held a press conference, I'm told, was memorable, what happened there?

- [Karen] It was a press conference that I think wasn't a big surprise because the sponsor representative Gary Click, who's a pastor out of western Ohio, had told the media he wanted to talk about this afterwards.

And he was joined by an awful lot of other Republican lawmakers who were supportive of this.

And also a trans activist who he brought up on the podium with him and introduced her as saying, Carina was her name.

"Carina, as you can tell, is trans."

And then stepped back and said, "I shouldn't have put it that way."

But it was just a not a completely surprising moment to see those Republicans who supported this bill coming together.

In fact, the vote for the override had more Republicans voting for it than either of the two votes for the bill, the vote initially on the bill, and then the vote to concur with the senate's changes on the bill.

And it's because one of the Republicans, Brett Hillyer from the Tuscarawas County area, he had voted against it in the first round.

He voted for it this time, and Representative Jamie Callender from Northeast Ohio, he did not vote.

Those were the two Republican votes against the bill in previous votes.

- Hmm, Ken, what about that?

- Yeah, look, as a journalist who covers this every single day and speaks to these parents to, it's very difficult to reconcile when we say fist pumping, we don't mean just verbal fist pumping.

The image that has gone viral is right after the vote of representative, pastor representative Click, re-pumping both of his fists in the era as if his favorite team won the Super Bowl.

And so to find that middle ground between the celebration of those who have passed this and the anguish, and I really mean anguish that we hear from families who say, we have to leave Ohio now.

There's no way that we can stay in Ohio and protect the healthcare of our children.

It's hard to find that middle ground to write these articles when you're seeing those two polar opposites.

And you saw that in the press conference.

- [Karen] And one other thing I wanna add here.

There was an executive order that was signed yesterday, I believe, that goes along with the executive order that was signed last week.

And this order prohibits these, so-called what Governor DeWine says are pop-up clinics from operating.

So basically any procedure or surgery that is banned by law cannot be performed in an office setting, a hospital, or ambulatory surgical facility.

That's what the new executive order is.

So this is another one of his proposed rules that I think he's just putting forward as he's concerned about this.

I have no idea how prevalent this is.

And he's talked about concern rather than actual data showing it, but that's the latest executive order that he signed.

- Sure, we couldn't find any evidence.

A Buckeye flame could not find any evidence of these pop-up clinics.

(upbeat music) - Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, has asked council to approve creation of a special downtown taxing district to fund waterfront development.

The goal is to use money from the tiff dubbed shore to core to fund development along Cleveland's River and Lakefronts, including a pedestrian land bridge spanning the shore way.

The tiff would take future property tax increases over the next 30 years, put that money toward the Waterfront development project.

Ken, the tiff would exclude property tax money that would go to the schools, but other county agencies would be impacted.

And by the way, no surprise here, you remember Roldo Bartimole the great defender of taxes that should go to the places they should.

He's always been against financing like this and tax abatements, et cetera.

He put out a story in scene that laid out sort of all the reasons why this might not be a good thing thing.

But you hear public officials saying, this is a way to get money for major development that's transformative for the city.

And it doesn't take anything away because it's money that wouldn't have been paid anyway, because the property taxes are based on improvements.

- Exactly and so we have agencies, county agencies, including Health and Human Services, Cleveland Metro Parks, just other county health services that would be impacted.

But from the Bibb administration, I mean, they're estimating that it could generate between 3.3 billion to $7.5 billion over 42 years.

And so Cleveland Development chief Jeff Epstein said that it's as exactly as you said, Mike, that this is going to attract more residents, more visitors, more businesses, more economic opportunities, so that ultimately this would bring more money back to all of those agencies.

- If this works, the mayor sees potential for growth and development.

That would make up for a lot of organizations that may lose the idea is, yeah, you might lose some money, but in the end, we're gonna grow so much.

And really to have this kind of transformation, it seems like something major like this has to happen.

We saw this in a number of other cities, Cincinnati being an example of it.

You don't have this kind of development unless you have that kind of public input.

- Yeah, and the Bibb administration is ready to go.

They're ready to launch into this as early as this spring, but council members are just being much more cautious.

And so they're saying, yes, we hear what you're saying, and this could have all these benefits, but they are saying it's gonna take us months to even vet the proposal before we even start in on this.

Gabe, the council members though, are worried about their wards.

And so the city says the money would fund projects in neighborhoods.

I think there's some skepticism about that.

- I think it's fair to have skepticism about it.

I mean, time after time, we're hearing about funding, going to the Q deal, to Progressive Field, to Cleveland Brown Stadium.

And time and time again, we're not hearing about money going to the neighborhoods.

So to have the city's development chief, Jeff Epstein say, hey, some of this money could go to the neighborhoods.

He even mentioned Central as one of them.

And that's one neighborhoods that on the southeast side of Cleveland often gets neglected.

So, it may be a point to just say, hey, we're not forgetting about everybody.

But you know, I think history shows us that that might happen.

- And this happens just as we're talking about the Brown Stadium.

We're talking about perhaps more than a billion dollars for it.

And Mayor Bibb has said that general revenue funds are off the table for paying for it.

So clearly, there's going to be a stadium issue here.

This might be stadium and other things is what people are looking at this as.

- Right, so you're gonna see potential development around the lake.

I mean, we heard the, when it comes to this tiff situation, we've heard the land bridge, which we've been hearing time and time again.

So they wanna redevelop what's going around, what going on around the lake.

And that could include a new football stadium, for the mayor to say, hey, this is not gonna come out of our general fund.

- It's gotta come somewhere.

- It's gotta come from somewhere.

So is that a potential tax coming down the road?

It really is people wondering where that money's gonna come from.

- And what about Chris Rene, what has he said about this?

He was on our show actually.

- He was on this show, "The Sound of Ideas," just a couple days ago.

And, you know, he said, look, the Browns are focused on football right now, the playoffs are happening.

And that's fair.

But also he's been spending time with the Haslams, the owners of the team, with the team.

He spent some time with Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, I think maybe to show a good face and just kind of be around and build relationships so that when the time comes, they can have a good conversation about what's going to happen with this team.

Because look, what Mayor Bibb and Chris Rene may not want to admit, is that the city might be handcuffed in a lot of ways.

If we turn back time and we look at 1996 or 1995 and the Browns left, people are gonna be upset.

And if this team has a threat to leave or move, and that really handcuffs the city to have to do something and have to cough up this dollars to ensure that what happened in the '90s doesn't happen in the 2030s.

(upbeat music) - The Cleveland Orchestra announced Thursday that music director, Franz Welser-Möst, will conclude his tenure in 2027 when his current contract ends.

Welser-Möst first conducted the orchestra in 1993, nearly a decade later, began his tenure as music director.

Ken, there's still three years left in the contract.

I was joking around earlier.

I just wanna let everybody know that I'm probably gonna be stepping down sometime after 2030, just so you know, ahead of time.

- Yeah, yeah, I'm putting together the party right now.

- I'm not sure people need to know that far in advance when I'm leaving, but I hope, but in Welser-Möst's case, you announced this several years in advance it's such a huge deal.

- It's a huge deal for two reasons.

First, because the way that their schedule works, that it takes so many years to plan these cycles of their repertoire, what they're going to be doing for a given season.

So they don't decide the week before, let's do Bach next week.

It was literally the only composer I could think of in that second.

But then also it's about succession plan that he is a historic figure when it comes to Cleveland Orchestra, and it will be extraordinarily difficult to follow up.

Most of the players today were appointed, most of the musicians were appointed under his leadership.

And he has conducted the ensemble in over a thousand works.

So it's going to be a lot to succeed him.

- Brahms, Beethoven, why are they all Bs?

Oh, wait, Mozart, okay, sorry, those are the ones I know.

- [Ken] That's where we're at right now.

- Moving along, Gabe, those are most accomplished so much in his career, making classical music accessible to young people, he says is one of his greatest achievements.

And it is, if you've got young people jazzed about classical music.

- Oh, absolutely.

One of the quotes that he had was talking about how proud he was to be able to have conducted a show from a local high school, which he said hadn't been done since 1912, I think was the year that he said.

But making the orchestra more accessible, which means making it more affordable or even free to people under the age of 18 at times.

And having programs where you would have in local libraries or local schools to teach students and young people about these instruments and getting involved in orchestra and being inspired to want to be involved with this music.

I went in 2016 at the Huff branch of the library.

- And you were like nine?

- Well, this was me as a reporter, as an idea.

- 9-year-old reporter, yes.

- [Ken] But she started early.

- But very cool to see young kids get excited about people from Yorkshire coming and showing them these instruments.

So, if he can walk away proud of that, that's really nice.

- And for accountability, it is the one major institution I have not visited yet in my 10 years.

- You're kidding me.

- I have not yet been in Severance Hall.

- It's time to even.

- I know, I know.

- What about Blossom in the summertime?

- Oh, absolutely.

- There you go.

- What's amazing is the tenures that the conductors have had at the orchestra.

They become, rooted in the city more so than than anyone else.

I think of George Szell and Christoph von Dohnányi and then we come to Franz Welser-Möst.

So you think to yourself, they've got a huge task ahead of them to get the next conductor.

This is not a kind of thing where it's like a, perhaps a football coach that comes in for two years and leaves, - No, this will not be a LinkedIn ad.

This will be much more extensive than that.

And I suspect there will be community participation.

And you just think about how many different people work for the Cleveland Orchestra.

There's gonna be a lot of input here.

(upbeat music) - Ohio's new parental consent law concerning social media accounts for children younger than 16 was to go into effect next week.

Now it's on hold by court order.

Karen, what does the parental consent law do and what does this judge's ruling, how does that affect it?

- [Karen] Well, just for you all know I'll note that on the state of Ohio, I knew to talk to love this lieutenant governor John Houston a couple weeks ago, who's a big champion of this.

And this is a provision from the state budget that a lot of groups have advocated for.

And it's been a conservative talking point, but there have been others that have also joined that because of the concern about the effect that social media has on the mental health of kids.

And so, this would essentially require parental permission for anybody under the age of 16.

They wanna use social media and gaming platforms, which is important because when your kids play online games, they are interacting with people.

It's a social media platform.

And so, this was supposed to take effect on Monday, but there was a group that's a trade organization that represents Meta and some of these other social media platforms that filed a lawsuit saying this violates First Amendment provisions and protections.

And that group's called Net Choice.

And these laws are being passed all around the country.

But there are certainly questions about how parents will prove that they do give parental permission, how kids can prove that it's their parent that actually gave the parental permission, not them just lying and saying, oh yeah, I give my kid permission.

You know, sign like a forging a note at school or something.

And then of course, what those companies would do with that data.

If you're a parent, prove that you're the parent, well now the company has data on you, your birthdate and your child's birthdate and things like that.

So this can be potentially messy, though the goal is, again, to try to make sure that kids are not being harmed by what they see on social media and the algorithms that are pushing certain things toward them.

(upbeat music) - Let's talk about the Super Bowl of Science that's coming up in April.

We're less than three months away from the April 8th total solar eclipse.

Cleveland and Akron are among the cities that are in what's known as the path of totality, which is also a great name for a band.

It's a rare event.

And the eclipse will bring in visitors to the region due to traffic congestion concerns and the eclipse that happens in late afternoon around school dismissal in rush hour.

Some schools are canceling classes on that day.

Akron schools won't be in session on April 8th.

You should make a point of checking your district calendar prior to the eclipse.

And you're going, what really?

An eclipse, and it's gonna be that big a deal.

Check it out, look what happened in Nashville and a bunch of other places.

- A buddy from Los Angeles, Mike Yap, called me last night, said, "Hey, I might come to Cleveland for this.

You gonna be around?"

So he's not sure if he wants to be in the metro parks or at a bar when it happens.

- So get here early.

- Yeah, get here early, yeah.

- Did you say at a bar?

- Well, he said, "I'll stay, a patio is what he needs."

- With a skylight, how is this working?

- You see a light up there and someone passes a piece of paper.

- Oh, I missed it.

- [Karen] I would advise people to make their plans early, because that's also the guardian's opening home opener.

- Was gonna mention that.

And we were talking yesterday, we're planning coverage of this.

By the way, you're gonna hear a ton about this in the next couple of months, including Wednesday, when "The Sound of Ideas" digs into the topic, a little bit of the science, a little bit of what safety forces are planning.

This is a big, huge deal.

And you should make your plans early.

When we were talking, we were like, hey, did you know that someone looked up hotel rates for around the time?

- Yeah.

- Like 800 bucks for a hotel that would be a couple hundred.

- Wow.

- So if you have plans around April 8th, or you plan to come to Cleveland and just hang out at the Comfort Inn because you're coming to a Guardians game, you might wanna check the rates beforehand.

(upbeat music) Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on 897 WKSU, the team is off for the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday and our morning time slot will bring you a special program, Martin Luther King's path to non-violence.

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

(upbeat music)