(bright music) - A movement to strip lawmakers of the power to draw district maps has been launched.

The coalition seeking to legalize recreational marijuana qualifies for the November ballot, and state troopers target part of Cleveland as the city deals with the spike in crime, "Ideas" is next.

(bright music) Hello and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Glenn Forbes in for Mike McIntyre, thanks for joining us.

Following the recent defeat of state issue one, a new amendment proposal is taking shape.

It's a push to take the power to draw Ohio State House and Congressional District maps out of lawmakers hands, and give that power to citizens.

Ohioans will get to vote on legalizing recreational marijuana in November.

A second push to get enough signatures, prove successful.

A targeted surge of law enforcement, including help from state troopers focused on part of Cleveland this week as the city grapples with a spike in violence, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying again to get rid of eCheck testing requirements.

Joining me from "Idea Stream Public Media" education reporter, Conor Morris, from the Buckeye Flame editor Ken Schneck, and in Columbus State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Another amendment battle is taking shape, a group called Citizens Not Politicians, is pushing for an amendment that would take the power to draw state, legislative, and congressional district maps away from lawmakers and put that power in the hands of citizens.

Karen, we'll start with you.

The amendment, of course, this is at the very early stages of this push.

What has to happen first before this can be put to voters in more than a year?

- Well, it's with the Attorney General's office right now, which looks at the language.

The Attorney General can either deny the opportunity for this to move forward or approve it, if it is approved, it moves onto the state ballot board, and then they could give the go ahead for the signature gathering process to begin.

They need more than 413,000 signatures to be gathered by July 3rd, and so when we look at what happened with the abortion access amendment, they needed about the same and they gathered around 700,000.

So that, I would guess is a pretty good number to go with, and when it comes to the Attorney General, quite often the first time an amendment is submitted, it is denied.

So that wouldn't be unusual if that happened, but there are two former Supreme Court justices involved in this one, so I think there's high hopes that this'll go forward and start the process very quickly.

- Now, in this proposal, there is a 15 member citizen appointed panel to draw the Ohio Maps, equally divided between Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

This proposal specifically says those who are currently involved in politics need not apply.

Is that accurate, Karen?

- Yeah, and what's interesting here is this proposal recognizes that there are partisans at every stage potentially, and that anybody who's really engaged with state government probably has some sort of political affiliation, but the amendment does ban current and former politicians, large political donors, party officials, lobbyists, those people who are professional partisans, so to speak, from serving on the commission, but there are other opportunities throughout this process where people who are affiliated with the Republican, Democratic Party or are independent will be involved.

I mean, there's this group of applicants that'll be chosen by four retired judges, two from the Democratic Party, two from the Republican party and when the final group is put together, the 15 member commission, they're supposed to be five Democrats, five Republicans, and five Independents.

So there is political activity here, There is political attitudes here, but it's intended for those all to work together.

- I wanna bring in Ken Schneck on this, Ken, the group is also trying to prevent people who are using this as a springboard, or a stepping stone that they don't want aspiring politicians, I guess, either.

- Yeah and I'm not exactly sure how that works logistically.

I don't like to toot my own horn, Glenn, but as a former elected official of Brattleboro, Vermont- - [Glenn] Wow.

- I'm just saying who didn't know he was running until kind of the last minute, this would prevent people from running four, six years after this.

And so logistically, I'm not sure how you can actually bar folks from doing that, but this does intend to prevent people from using this, as you said, as a springboard into politics.

- That's very interesting.

And Ken also, this proposal is kind of inspired, or I guess they're drawing ideas from other states that have removed lawmakers from this process.

So this is not unprecedented, I suppose, when you look at other states.

- I appreciated how much O'Conor said that this is a really complicated proposal.

And indeed, I kind of needed some flow charts in order to sift through this.

But she said so too is the current, it's no more complicated than what is currently happening.

And so they have looked to other states, including Michigan, but she stressed that the plan that they came up with for Ohio is specifically designed for Ohio, which she calls quote, "One of the most gerrymandered states in the country."

- Yeah Karen, let's talk a little bit more about the former chief justice, Maureen O'Conor, of course, instrumental in the rulings last year that deemed that all the maps created by the redistricting commission were unconstitutional.

She says that effort was doomed to fail.

First tell me, I guess why she said that, provide a little context to that quote, and then, I mean, this can't really be that big of a surprise, right?

That this, that's a proposal like this would surface.

- Well, I think it's interesting that she is involved in this, and I think that that gives a little bit of gravitas and weight to this, because she was the critical fourth vote.

She joined the court's three Democrats in voting against every single map that came before the Ohio Supreme Court.

So five legislative maps, and then the approval of two congressional maps from the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

And so, she really split with her own party.

And she, when it comes to the whole doom to fail idea, she looked back, she said at the Constitutional Amendments from 2015 and 2018, which set up the redistricting commission's responsibilities in drawing maps for the legislature and for Congress.

And she said, realizing who populated the commission, meaning that there are politicians on the commission, there were partisan actors on the commission.

She said it was doomed to fail.

So the idea to try to bring this to an independent citizens commission is to get around some of that.

And the amendment also more clearly defines certain things like partisan symmetry.

And that's the kind of thing that has the opponents of it very worried because they say that to get to partisan symmetry and as it defined in the amendment, and the amendment doesn't specify how many times counties and cities can be split, it just says that you need to focus on communities of interest.

These things, the opponents say lead potentially to more gerrymandering, which is part of the discussion, I guess we'll have if this goes forward.

- I wanna talk a little bit about the timing of the announcement too, Karen, is this kind of a momentum play in your mind when we talk about the failure of state issue one, higher turnout, probably higher turnout than Republicans expected for this issue.

Is there anything to that, that there's some momentum going in this direction?

- I talked to former Chief Justice Maureen O'Conor for our TV show, the State of Ohio this week.

And I asked her kind of about the timing of this, and she said that the rejection of issue one did show that citizens in Ohio are involved, they care about government, they care about what's going on in the state.

And so that certainly plays a role in this.

But the two year saga of redistricting, when we started it literally two years ago this month, and the five rulings on the state maps, the two rulings on the federal maps, I mean, all of that really showed her and other people who are concerned about this process that there's something wrong.

This is not the way it was intended to work.

There was supposed to be an incentive for the parties to work together to create a 10 year map that people could agree on.

And that's not how any of this worked.

And so as we get ready to start that process, because the maps we used last year were ruled unconstitutionally, gerrymandered and put in place by a federal court, so the process has to start over again, then this will get more attention.

And so the timing, I think she and the members of this group decided is good for right now.

- And we're someone in a holding pattern with these maps that were ruled unconstitutional.

Obviously they were used in the previous election.

Where does that stand now?

We're just... - [Karen] Yeah.

- We're just kind of holding onto them, correct?

- Well, the US Supreme Court wants the Ohio Supreme Court to re-look at its ruling on the congressional district map, because there was a court case involving gerrymandering in North Carolina.

And that's a whole other show, basically.

So the Ohio Supreme Court needs to look at that map again.

And what will be interesting to see will be how they rule, because now the court is very specifically four Republicans, three Democrats.

It's very unlikely that there would be move in either direction.

But that map, Republicans drew it, and I think the goal was that it would be 13 Republicans, two Democrats, who would be the 15 members of Congress.

It actually turned out to be 10 Republicans, five Democrats.

So whether that map stands or not is something to look at and what Republicans will wanna do after that.

And then of course, the state legislative maps, the redistricting commission has to get together and draw those again.

And we don't know when that's gonna happen.

- You might have touched on this a little bit, but reaction from Republican lawmakers, other prominent, I guess lawmakers or people in the state.

What are you hearing?

- Well, Senate president Matt Hoffman, who was instrumental in the two Constitutional amendments in 2015 and 2018, and also served as a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, but was really out front and explaining why the initial maps were not gerrymandered, why this effort was fine, he says, and this is a quote, "So-called citizen led commissions or anything but that, they are proxy votes and puppets of partisan special interests."

And of course, Maureen O'Conor disagrees with that.

That's been some of the reaction.

I talked to Frank Strigari, who was the former Ohio legal counsel for the Senate and also worked on these maps.

And he says he's concerned again about the possibility that the door could be open to more gerrymandering.

So this is really complicated, it really is.

And I think over the next year, if this goes forward, we're gonna hear a lot about the individual things in this and what it could do, what it could not do.

But I think voters seem to have been very frustrated by the process.

And the question is, are they frustrated enough to completely change the process and hand it over to an independent citizens commission?

An idea they rejected soundly in 2005, but maybe Maureen O'Conor says that time may have come now.

- The coalition to regulate marijuana like alcohol received word this week, that it got the required signatures needed to put an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana on the November ballot.

Karen, the specifics about this statute, what will it do if passed?

- Well, it will, the goal is to legalize recreational marijuana and regulate it like alcohol for Ohioans over 21.

It would, and again, this is a complicated amendment.

There are a lot of specific, or I'm sorry, law, there are a lot of specifics in the proposal about what it would do specifically with all the different forms of marijuana and all the different ways that it can be grown and acquired and everything like that.

But it also would tax marijuana 10%, and that money would go to administrative costs.

It would go to a social justice and jobs program that the law would also set up and it would go to addiction programs.

And I think you're gonna be, I think you're gonna see a pretty spirited campaign against this particular law that it's, the group is already formed.

It's Protect Ohio Families and Workers.

That's one group which is gonna, right now it's brought in Children's Hospital Association and law enforcement and some families who lost children and other people to addiction.

But I would expect that also the current people who are selling marijuana in Ohio, the dispensaries who are selling under the medical marijuana statute, they could be funding some opposition as well, I would think.

- Yeah and I believe that's the George family owns some of those dispensaries here in Cleveland.

Ken, any thoughts on the organized opposition to this issue?

- They are organized and they are organized already.

And there's some notable voices too that are part of that coalition that protect Ohio Workers and Families Coalition.

You have a former Ohio Republican party chair, Jane Timkin, state Senator Mark Roman Chuck, am I saying that right, Karen?

Is it Roman?

- Yes, you are.

- Oh, that made me feel good.

And an interesting one too is Nick Lashutka, who's the president and CEO of the Ohio Children's Hospital Association and LGBTQ+ listeners will recognize his name.

He's one of the leading voices against HB68, which would ban gender affirming care in Ohio.

So in this case, he's saying that an influx of marijuana into Ohio would certainly not help Ohio's youth.

- So Karen, you did mention that this issue is not an amendment, it's a statute.

It could be altered or even repealed by lawmakers.

Are proponents of legalizing recreational marijuana concerned about that issue?

- Well, they say they're not, which is what you would expect they would say, but sure, that is a concern.

I mean, this particular proposal has been out there since 2021.

It was initially brought up and proposed, and to get to the ballot, it had to go first to state lawmakers to approve it or reject it.

So it was presented to state lawmakers in January.

They had four months to decide whether they wanted to pass it.

Of course, they didn't pass it.

And so that's when the signature gathering process started and resulted in it getting onto this fall's ballot.

There's been negotiations over the years with state lawmakers over this, and you've got some state lawmakers and some high profile ones like Senate President Matt Huffman, and of course, Governor Mike DeWine, who do not wanna see recreational marijuana legalized in Ohio.

So, you know, I don't know that there would be an immediate repeal.

And it really would depend, I think, a lot on how big the margin would be if it does pass.

But there are some pretty strong voices that don't wanna see this happen, even though it's happening in many, many other states, including states surrounding Ohio.

- Yeah, I was gonna bring that up too.

You know, there's always the argument like we heard with the casinos, Karen, and legalize gambling that people are gonna cross state lines, go to Michigan or whatever.

Why not keep this, keep the money in Ohio?

I'm sure that's a big part of the argument.

- And I've heard that there is a pretty good pipeline that goes to Michigan fairly regularly anyway, so, and of course the argument too is that there, not only do we have a medical marijuana program that's active, but also marijuana is being sold and used every day in Ohio.

This is not a secret.

And so this would just bring some opportunity for regulation and for tax revenue to come in.

(upbeat music) - Ohio State Highway patrol troopers tasked with helping Cleveland combat a summer spike in violent crime, targeted parts of the city's east side this week, the surge netted 20 felony arrest, 57 traffic stops, and the seizure of drugs and firearms.

Murders and armed robberies up this summer.

Car thefts have doubled in the past year, a lot, of course, a lot of attention on the Kia and Hyundai thefts, and that's, as Karen said earlier, that could be a whole separate show, I suppose.

- [Ken] Yeah.

- Ken, I wanna start with you.

The governor says more targeted surges like the one this week will occur in the city.

But some interesting things, I suppose about the timeline.

There's no deadline really.

This is gonna go kind of go on indefinitely and they don't want to tip their hand as far as the investigation or when these surges will happen.

They don't wanna let the people thereafter, the suspects know when they're coming.

- No, yeah, putting those surges on a public calendar would probably not help them.

So to define them more specifically on these surge days, the Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers have an increased presence in law enforcement, in known criminal hotspots.

And not just on the ground, but also in the air.

And Governor DeWine took a bit of a flight as part of his visit.

And so these surge initiatives have happened in Dayton, in Youngstown, in Toledo and Columbus and now here in Cleveland.

But the whole idea behind it is that yes, they will not be announcing the surge dates or the areas where the increased presence will be, but that there will indeed be more.

- And interestingly enough, they talked a lot about how that aerial presence of these, of the state troopers and their aerial unit or whatever, prevented some what dangerous car chases.

We've seen how car chases can be fatal for innocent bystanders and the ability to kind of track these chases through the air prevents, or you avoid these car chases by doing that.

Conor, we've heard some battles between Councilman Mike Polensek's been vocal for a long time.

He's been a long time councilman.

- [Conor] Sure.

- He's been vocal for a long time about this.

There was a little quick little spat, I suppose, between him and Mayor Justin Bibb over what the Bibb administration felt was maybe some grandstanding with a speech he was gonna make during City Council.

The, so does the state stepping in kind of help?

Not to say that they're peacemakers here.

- [Conor] Yeah.

- But it's kind of getting everybody involved.

- Well, it's interesting because Bibb and council too has called out Columbus for a long time for not addressing access to guns for in fact expanding access.

So, on one hand you've kind of gotta speak outta both sides of your mouth here.

You know, you've gotta advocate for, they say they've gotta advocate for that, but also, they do need those additional resources because the number of police officers is significantly down this year.

Challenges across the country with recruiting police officers, lower numbers here, you really gotta dig into the studies.

I recommend people do their own research of course, on this.

But you really gotta dig into the studies and really see if more cops actually impacts violent crime or not.

Actually, some studies suggest that it does not.

Some studies do though as well.

It's kind of, the jury's still out on that.

But there's been, as you mentioned, I alluded to, there's been acrimony between some on council and the mayor.

Some on council say you're not doing enough to recruit more officers, to do kind of a more, kind of all in approach.

Bibb has said we we're doing a holistic approach.

We're involving technology, cameras trying to encourage citizens to share their camera feeds with us so that they can kind of track crime a little better.

They tout Shot Spotter, which the record on Shot Spotter is a little bit spotty in terms of how much it truly helps.

But Bibb is saying we've caught some people with it already.

We've arrested some people, we've saved some people's lives with it.

And Shot Spotter is the technology that when a shot goes off in a neighborhood, it alerts police.

So you know, them working with the state, that might ease some of the tension between Bibb and the council members.

They might see it as kind of an olive ranch in some regard to the state and to the council members.

I do wanna put just a, okay, so look, my wife has a Kia, somebody broke into it recently.

It's not, it doesn't feel good to be a victim of property crime.

- [Glenn] Sure.

- Property crime is not violent crime, but there is a connection here.

There are young kids, not kids, but they're youth that are using these stolen vehicles to commit more crimes.

Some of them are calling them the Kia Boys.

And so there is a bit of a connection there.

So I get it, I do wanna put a gentle note of caution.

I really wanna see a long-term trend of crime in Cleveland, violent crime in Cleveland to see where we're at.

It looks like violent crime did peak in 2020.

Actually we do know that homicides are up this summer compared to last summer.

But, you know, sometimes the reactions could, a reaction could be considered an overreaction.

They are targeting the kinsman neighborhood.

It's a majority black neighborhood with this surge too.

So a little bit of caution might be urged there.

Just in terms of, let's look at the data holistically too.

(upbeat music) - August means a return to school for students.

Many districts in Ohio are facing staffing shortages.

Conor, you reported that unlike previous years, the teacher shortage not as pronounced unless the school is looking for a specialist.

Is that correct?

- Taking on a different dimension.

You'll see plenty of districts still struggling to get up to that full staffing level.

But many of them are saying we're good to go for the new school year.

The problem is really trying to find those specific teachers, though.

They're looking at folks who are teaching high level math and science or special subjects like gym and art intervention specialists too.

Those are folks who work with students with disabilities.

They're in high demand as well.

So it's taken on a little bit of a different dimension.

- I think it's interesting too, 'cause when we talk about shortages, like say for police officers or nurses, we've heard about that this week as well.

There's a pipeline problem here.

There's an issue with recruiting.

There's an issue with getting people into the proper schooling, the proper training for these jobs.

- Yeah, so there are fewer folks entering into the profession because they can earn more pay with the same amount of college education, typically.

And so, starting teachers in rural and some other districts that can't pay them very well, right out the gate are, they're leaving for jobs at grocery stores and Amazon even it's been reported.

Ohio's, they've increased the minimum starting wage for all teachers in this most recent budget.

So that's folks are saying that's a good step forward.

But still, the starting salary I think now is about 35,000, 34,000, a little bit more than that.

And then also many are leaving the profession.

Folks are telling me student misbehavior has been off the charts since the pandemic.

Teachers are fed up with that and they say administrators just don't have their back.

They also say they're kind of tired of a lack of respect, actually attacks from often Republican lawmakers and pundits who say they are lying about what they're actually teaching in the classroom.

You know, they're saying that the critical race theory is being pushed in these classrooms when in reality it's not.

So they're getting kind of tired of that.

- Karen, he mentioned the state budget.

I want to ask you just real quick, is there enough, I suppose, of that extra money or that enough funding in the state budget to make up some of these shortfalls for teachers' salaries?

- I think the real question is that pipeline issue and also trying to stem the tide of teachers leaving.

I think there are some teachers who are frustrated with the requirements that are being put on them by state legislators and by the laws.

And so I think the whole idea of trying to find a way to recruit more teachers as well as bus drivers, Conor and I both reported on that this week, bus drivers are going to delivery services.

- [Conor] Yeah.

- Rather than driving buses.

So this pipeline of recruitment and making sure that the pay is good, that's really a big part of this.

- Last night I watched the school board meeting for a big walnut school district.

- [Conor] Oh yeah.

- For a totally unrelated story.

And the first 10 minutes of the hour long meeting was the superintendent solely speaking about the dire need for bus drivers.

(upbeat music) - A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to end the eCheck requirements for drivers in seven northeast Ohio counties claiming it's based on outdated pollution standards.

The Environmental Protection Agency says not so fast.

Karen, if eCheck cannot be ended for northeast Ohio counties, then lawmakers say it should be also required of drivers in Columbus area counties instead.

- Well, when they talk to representative Sean Brennan from Parma, he said he wouldn't wish eCheck on his worst enemy.

But he said that, you know, this is a federal decision in a sense, on whether, based on pollution and that sort of thing, whether eCheck has to go away.

But that there's the argument that Columbus is certainly in the mix and central Ohio is certainly in the mix when it comes to auto emissions and all that stuff.

But the whole goal, I think, is to try to get rid of the eCheck program.

The argument's been made that it actually is worse to try to go through eCheck to drive over there and go through the process and everything when most cars are more environmentally sound than they were when eCheck started.

So this is, I think, a discussion that's gonna really bring in a lot of lawmakers when you start talking about bringing things from the federal level down.

- Ken, there's a suggestion from the EPA that maybe more requirements could be coming, not less.

- Is this just something that everybody already knew that eCheck was only for those specific counties?

I did not know that until- - Oh yeah?

- I read about this story, so.

- [Conor] Yep.

- I have to laugh at the, "I wouldn't wish eCheck on my worst enemy."

I might also not want to wish emissions on my worst enemy.

But yeah, they have said the EPA that Cleveland continues to violate the 2015 ozone air quality standard to the extent where it's going to be, our classification is going to go to the classification of serious.

So there might be additional restrictions with the eCheck program beginning as soon as 2024, which is pretty soon.

(upbeat music) - Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on WKSU, we'll dig deeper into the targeted crime enforcements in Cleveland and reaction to the increase in violent crime.

In for Mike McIntyre, I'm Glenn Forbes.

Thanks for watching and stay safe.

(upbeat music)