(upbeat music) - Cleveland's Mayor vows to improve the city's snow removal efforts by adding to the plow fleet and letting the public track the progress of plows with an online tool.

A new set of maps, a new legal challenge.

The Ohio Supreme Court will decide whether legislative redistricting maps are fair.

The state's top doctors says there's light at the end of the tunnel as the Omicron surge wanes.

Ideas is next.

(upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Cleveland Mayor, Justin Bibb says the city will add to its snow removal fleet to clear streets faster when storms hit.

This after tons of criticism for Cleveland's poor response to last week's storm.

The city also has put a pilot plow tracker tool online, which will be updated in real-time.

Voting groups have challenged the new legislative maps approved by the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission saying, they are still unconstitutional and drawn to favor Republicans.

The first set of maps were thrown out by the Ohio Supreme Court, which will now rule on this effort.

The state's top doctor says we may be nearing the other side of this current Omicron surge.

Things are looking far better in our region, but they're still dicey downstate.

And a warning to postal customers, don't put mail in outdoor and curbside blue postal boxes after hours.

A rash of thefts has raised concerns about security.

We'll talk about that and the rest of the week's news right now on the Reporters Roundtable.

Joining me from Ideastream Public Media, health reporter, Anna Huntsman.

From the Buckeye Flame, Editor, Ken Schneck.

And in Columbus, Statehouse News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to Roundtable.

Ken, you're a city resident.

When you looked outside your door, what did you see on Martin Luther King morning and what did you see days after that?

- I saw a snow, Mike.

I'm seeing snow right now, Mike.

Yeah, it was a lot and it happened really quickly and this was one of the first tests for Mayor Bibb in his role.

And so, the important thing to highlight is that there actually were five additional trucks that were ordered last fall, but apparently we are still dealing hardcore supply chain delays.

So those haven't come in yet.

But in the announcement that you referenced, he said that he's gonna convert 10 city-owned trucks into snowplows.

So over here on Fir Avenue on the west side of Cleveland, it definitely was quite a while until the street got plowed, but the main roads were prioritized.

So that was a good thing.

- So really mayors live and die by this.

I talked with Amy Eddings about that this morning, but you know, if you can't clear the streets, all these other great ideas kind of, you know, go into the garbage because people can't get out of their driveway and that reflects upon you.

So, it seems like the mayor knows that coming in as a new politician and a new executive, he knows the importance of that.

That's why we saw this press conference yesterday.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And the calls were indeed pouring in and I saw so many tweets and posts from various different city councilmen in particular, Rebecca Maurer, who was really upfront.

New council person, Rebecca Maurer, who was really upfront about how many calls she was receiving and people calling her in tears saying, "I don't know when I'm going to be able to leave my house."

So unsurprisingly, the calls to City Hall flooded in as well.

- And I mentioned that they're going to have a snowplow tracker and what was happening, in fact, Rebecca Maurer, I think was the one who saw this and several others as well.

They use a paper map and a highlighter in order to kind of say, "here's the street that I did that seems really old-fashioned."

It seems like there's a lot of potential here, technology-wise to make things better.

- Yeah, actually one of our colleagues, Kelly Andrus, she works in Marketing for Ideastream.

She tweeted this morning.

Well, something like welcome to the future and shared the snowplow tracker.

And this is exactly right.

Some high-tech stuff happening now.

I don't know if you've had a chance to look at it, but it's a digital map where you can see all of the roads and when they're green, that means they've been plowed.

But a really cool feature is that there's little black dots also in the different areas on the map.

And that's actually where the snowplows are.

So if, you know this happens again, which I don't know, Mike, do you think we'll have any more snow this winter?

But the next time we have snow, right?

Well, I'm not a weather person, but you know, the next time we have a big snow storm and you know, if your street still hasn't been plowed in, and you're like where are they?

What's happening?

You can actually look at the map as long as it continues to function and kind of see where those little dots are.

And so you can kind of see how close they are to your development, your street, things like that.

And what the previous plan was for snowplow removal was to do the main roads first.

And as soon as the main roads were passable, go to the residential areas.

But Mayor Bibb said yesterday that didn't really work this past time because the snow came so fast in a short amount of time.

And so it didn't really take into it, doesn't take into account the intensity of the snow.

And so now the plan has changed to do the residential streets as well as the rest of the main roads.

And so that's why Mayor Bibb was calling for, as Ken mentioned, more equipment and more trucks.

(upbeat music) - Voting rights groups as expected raised objections in the Ohio Supreme Court to the newly drawn state legislative district maps.

The first set of maps were thrown out by the court because they too heavily favored Republicans.

The objectors say the new maps are guilty of the same thing.

Karen, who specifically has filed this challenge, which groups?

- Well, these are the groups that sued over the State House and Senate maps.

Initially that started this whole process.

This is the League of Women Voters of Ohio, the group that's the National Redistricting Group that's tied to former Obama Attorney General, Eric Holder, and also a group of advocates for a more progressive causes, the Ohio Organizing Coalition.

And so all three of these groups were kind of put together into the one lawsuit and the case that was argued before the Ohio Supreme Court last month.

And then of course, the Ohio Supreme Court overturned those maps.

And now you've got these challenges from these groups who say that, yeah, the Ohio Redistricting Commission did draw new maps over the weekend, taking a quick break to watch the end of the Bengals game, but they did approve these maps.

And these maps are still not meeting the constitutional requirements.

That's what the groups are saying now and are hoping the Supreme Court agree again.

- And what a finish to that Bengals game?

By the way they play again Sunday, so.

- That's right.

- So the issue though, Republicans had put up these easels and showed basically what the Democrats had put forth saying, these were more fair maps.

And if you looked at those, there were some funky-looking districts, you know, sort of almost like the snake on the lake, type of congressional district that we have.

So the Republicans are saying, listen, in order to follow the rules of being compact and these other types of things, this is basically the best we can do.

Democrats say, you can do better?

- Yeah, in fact, Democrats, some Democrats, including and some groups, including the Legal Women Voters of Ohio will say that there's already a map, that it was cited in the original case that was before the Ohio Supreme Court.

One of the experts talked about a map that specifically would meet all those constitutional requirements.

And they say that map exists.

Democrats have been saying all along that among all the maps that were submitted in the first round of this process, which goes back to last summer and last fall that there are maps that exist.

Republicans have said, no, there are no maps that meet all constitutional criteria.

They might meet for instance, that percentage split, the 54/46 percentage split, but they don't meet other things.

And so the Republicans are saying, "this is the best map we can come up with."

That's the question now before the Ohio Supreme Court, does this map meet all the requirements in the constitution that voters approved in 2015?

So will this be the map?

And the real key here is, of course, we're getting close to a deadline for people who wanna run for Ohio House and Senate, they have to live in the district they want to represent.

And the filing deadline is February 3rd.

They're trying to change that now in the legislature, but this is really starting, they're starting to run out of time for candidates who want to mount series campaigns and raise money, which it does take money, of course, to run.

(upbeat music) - The Director of the Ohio Department of Health says the retreat of the Omicron variant continues, but not as fast in some areas of the state as others.

Anna, you reported on this topic.

And even in Northeast Ohio where the numbers are down sharply, health leaders are not ready to call it over yet.

The game's not over in terms of this surge.

- Correct Mike, because what we are seeing now, at least in the Summit County area, according to the Health Commissioner there, Donna Skoda, who I interviewed earlier this week, they're seeing about 400 new cases reported per day.

And that's compared to 1,400 per day reported just a couple of weeks ago.

So of course, that's a great decline.

We love to see that, but as Donna Skoda mentioned, 400 cases per day is still quite a bit.

And you'll remember thinking back now we don't have our crystal ball, but thinking back now to the, you know, last summer, early spring, March, April, June, I don't know if you remember Mike, but I felt pretty good about going out and kind of living some semblance of normalcy because cases were way down.

And as Donna Skoda mentioned, there was maybe 10 to 12 new cases reported per day.

So it was way down.

And then in July, the Delta variant, that highly contagious variant that came before Omicron, that's when that started circulating around this area and across the U.S. And so that was kind of the last time health officials had a moment to breathe and really be able to kind of, like I said, take a breath and it's been kind of craziness ever since.

And so that's kind of when at least Donna Skoda says, she feels like, we'll know we're out of this.

Other health officials, I talked to an infectious disease expert at the Cleveland clinic.

He says, we're really seeing a sharp decline, so it was kind of like it came with as a fury and then it's starting to decrease.

He thinks maybe in the next couple of weeks, we'll start to see a pretty good downward trend, but it's certainly not over yet, and it's tough to predict exactly when it will be over, especially because it sounds like there is a new variant on the horizon as well.

- You know, I was just gonna say that I know I sound like a Debbie Downer when he says there's light at the end of the tunnel.

And I say, it might be another variant barreling down the tracks, but it really might be.

- Yeah, at this point, I mean, we've seen it happen time and again.

I remember as Delta was kind of finally starting to fade, we felt like, okay, things are good.

I remember it was around Thanksgiving and I was starting to feel good.

And then we come home back from our Thanksgiving Recess and boom, we're hearing about Omicron.

And I remember just feeling like, again, I mean, it just feels like we're living this Groundhog Day deja vu, and I don't want to be too much of a Debbie Downer either.

This new variant is kind of more of a subvariant.

So it's actually another version of Omicron.

So it's kind of like, you could think of them as siblings.

So there's BA.1 and this is BA.2 and it has some similar mutations to Omicron and then some differences.

And these mutations allow the virus to be able to evade antibodies either from a previous infection or the vaccines.

Now the vaccines still work very well at preventing, you know, severe illness and things like that.

But this new variant is pretty contagious it seems, but health officials are hopeful that it will cause milder illness than say the Delta variant, which did cause more severe disease.

We saw that with Omicron so far, you know, looking at all the data, it does appear that people are having milder illness with Omicron.

And so health officials are hopeful about that.

And another key thing to think about when just thinking about future variants down the line, health officials, think at this point that as the virus mutates, it becomes more contagious, but less severe.

So that's kind of what is giving some people hope is as we continue to just kind of live with COVID, the new variants are hopefully not going to be as causing really severe cases, hospitalizations, deaths.

It might just be super contagious, but you have, you know, a cold symptom or something like that.

So that's kind of what we know as far as where we are now and looking ahead to the future.

- There is that bright spot, which is people don't appear to be getting as sick and people don't appear, vaccinated people don't appear to be dying in as big of numbers because of the Omicron variant.

I think all of us knows somebody who's gotten COVID-19, many people actually, whereas earlier it was, you know, most of the inner circle might not have.

Now we're hearing so many people that had it.

And they said, yeah, it was kind of a nasty cold.

I had it for a week, I'm better now.

So that's the good news.

The question is then because it's so, it can spread so much, this particular variant, what does that do for the policy in school?

So how department of health has changed its recommendation there?

- Yeah, so previously it was all about contact tracing and case investigation and notification.

And the key word, right, this is the key word of this release in the new recommendations is that contact tracing case investigation and exposure notification are now impractical.

That they are impractical given the quick spread of Omicron.

And I'm open about the fact that I indeed got Omicron a few weeks ago and it wasn't great for a week and now I'm back up and running, right?

So the new recommendation for schools is to move to more of a cluster and outbreak model, which is a model that's really focused on high risk environments, which under these guidelines doesn't really include schools.

So schools wouldn't be doing this universal contact tracing case investigation and exposure notification.

- Yeah, impractical, because you'd be, you know contact tracing everybody, it seems like.

- Exactly.

- Interesting point.

You mentioned, Ken I'm glad you're well and that you were fell victim of that.

A number of people I know have, including the Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, he tested positive for COVID-19, Karen, came after he attended weekend meetings for the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

- Yeah, and what was interesting about those meetings, of course, is that a lot of people in the meetings, Republicans in the meetings were not wearing masks.

He was not wearing a mask.

He was seated next to a minority leader, Allison Russo, who was a member of the commission.

She was masked.

And she's obviously not been pleased about this whole development.

But you know, this is the kind of thing that we've all been warned about, that we've all told that masking does help.

And that Omicron was seriously contagious.

And that while somebody like Frank LaRose who said he felt fine, but had the symptoms so he got tested.

That's been the case for most people who were vaccinated or boosted, there's still the concern about it spreading and how fast it's spreading, especially in schools.

(upbeat music) - The U.S Postal Service is advising Northeast Ohioans to only use outdoor blue mailboxes during regular business hours after a string of thefts across the region over the last couple of months Ken, something I learned, I didn't know this, but your postman, postwoman, postal carrier has a key that can open every single one of those blue boxes.

If that gets in the wrong hands, it's easy access.

- Yeah, who knew?

that is not something that I knew.

And so this really did come to light with a woman in Lakewood who had come forward and she had gone to the police.

She had mailed in a few payments for different bills, closing, totalling close to $8,000.

And so she said that the cheques were stolen and actual white out was used, which apropos nothing.

Mike, when was the last time we heard a story about white out?

That's just exciting.

(audience laughing) So the white out was used, the names were whited out, new names were written in and they were redeposited.

And so she said she reported it to Lakewood Police and Lakewood Police told her that this was the 10th such incident.

And so she was understandably pretty upset that people weren't notified that, wait a second, there's something bigger going on here.

And then it came to light.

Oh, okay, there's master keys that can do a lot more than we thought they could do.

- Right, actually, Councilman Mike Palencia in Cleveland told residents that the blue mailboxes are compromised.

Don't use, and that kind of is how we heard about this and how it began.

The Postal Service know isn't giving a whole lot of details.

Part of their concern is if people know about it and I don't know, somehow there'll be more keys stolen or more theft, but it seems as though maybe that's an issue in terms of getting a handle on that.

- Yeah, it's not great, Mike again.

(laughing) - That's going to be your line of the day.

- That's gonna be my new tagline, "Yeah, it's not great Mike."

And that's a new podcast that we're debuting here on Ideastream but yeah, as you said earlier several arrests have been made.

There's a federal investigation ongoing, there was a postal worker who was robbed recently.

And so there's a lot going on, but this is, it comes at a time when faith in the U.S Postal Service is, you know, again, not great Mike.

So a story like this, it just doesn't help.

(upbeat music) - Ohio's largest ever public corruption trial likely won't begin until the fall.

Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys are conferring to determine a date for the trial, which is expected to last six weeks and might happen at the height of election season.

Karen, a fall trial date would put it right in the middle of the election cycle and that could have impact, especially for Governor DeWine.

- Yeah, sure could, you would think something as high profile as a federal trial, you might remember a couple of years ago, like you are going back to the early 2000s at this point, Jim Traficant's trial in Cleveland and how that was something that was, even though the cameras aren't allowed in the courtroom, that's something that a lot of people were paying attention to Jimmy DeMaurice trial, another example, this is the kind of situation that we're going to have with Larry Householder and Matt Borgias in their trials, no cameras, but certainly this will attract a lot of attention.

Republicans have been saying that they don't think that the House Bill 6 Nuclear Bailout corruption scandal will have any effect on the 2022 elections.

But if this thing is going on in the middle of campaign season, it certainly feeds into the democratic narrative that there is corruption.

That's the thing that they're gonna be really pounding throughout this campaign.

So this could be really, this is potentially a six-week trial and attorneys now have 30 days to figure out exactly when they want to have it, but it looks like the fall is when it's likely to be.

- I think a couple of people pled out in this case and we mentioned Householder and Matt Borgias, both are maintaining their innocence.

For Borgias, he had a setback this week.

He was denied a request to get information from prosecutors.

I thought open discovery allowed all that information out, but apparently there are some things he can't get.

- Well, yeah, and this it's pretty complicated.

I think that the important point here is that he and Larry Householder have both maintained their innocence throughout this process, and you're right.

There were some plea deals from some lobbyists, obviously FirstEnergy making a big deferred prosecution agreement, a plea deal, essentially paying $230 million for their role in this case.

And then of course, you had Neil Clark, the lobbyist who died by suicide last year.

So there's a lot going on here in this case.

And even so Householder and Borgia's continue to maintain that they are innocent of the charges against them.

And that's what we're waiting to find out what the court thinks.

(upbeat music) - Ohio did not fare well in the latest State Equality Index.

That's a report that looks at advocacy efforts, laws, and policies that impact the LGBTQ+ community.

Ken, when you look at this index, there was good news, and that a record number of states were in the highest category, but Ohio certainly not nearly among them.

- Not nearly among them.

There were three different categories.

Ohio was in the lowest.

This report surprised no one who follows LGBTQ issues in Ohio.

There were a couple teeny, tiny, bright spots, but this is a state that, again, let's repeat again.

This is a state that does not offer protections in the area of housing, public accommodations and employment for the LGBTQ community and indeed sports what is widely called the most homophobic law in the country.

That being the Medical Conscience Act that was signed by Governor DeWine on the last day of Pride Month, happy Pride Month everybody, in 2021 that gives doctors their right of refusal of care based on moral, ethical and religious beliefs.

So there's no surprise here that Ohio was in the lowest possible category here.

- You stack that up against what you said were the couple of good things.

One is protections in foster care and cyber bullying, the ability to change your name or gender markers on driver's licenses and birth certificates.

And then basically it ends there.

- And it ends there.

And by the way, yes, the foster care piece is great, but Ohio is also a state that has written into its ordinances that adoption is between a man and a woman, even though that is actually not the law.

And we saw that in 2021 when Republican specifically said, I think it was speaker Capo said, who was directly asked.

Why do you still have this on the books?

And the response was because we want it.

That's where we are right now.

And there are ordinances.

There are laws that are on the books.

Well, not on the books that are being debated in this upcoming session, that would severely, severely just restrict the lived experience in particular of our trans Ohio siblings.

- There are laws, right in 2021, including in Ohio that have been, in what were called anti-trans gender bill.

So the T in the LGBTQ+ community.

- Yeah, the one that I can't stop talking about is, it would in addition to denying trans youth the ability to access affirming care, it will also force all school staff K through 12, so that would be teachers and nurses and any school personnel to automatically out to the parents of any youth who have gone to the school personnel and questioned their gender.

And so that will require that all school personnel say, oh, okay, thank you for telling me, I now must tell your parents.

(upbeat music) - Dayton Ohio native Amy Schneider will go into the record books just behind Ken Jennings for her terrific run on Jeopardy Schneider's last Wednesday night ended her streak at 40 wins.

Really not just a record breaker on Jeopardy, but something the LGBTQ community perhaps paid more attention to.

- Hashtag representation matters.

And not just that the LGBTQ+ community paid attention to but the Jeopardy ratings, I think the people forget, Jeopardy's ratings are still off the charts.

What is it, it's something like nine, 10 million people tuning in every evening.

And those ratings definitely went up in the past couple weeks as our hero, Ohio native Amy Schneider just had such an incredible run and did so with such poise.

And there were really visible moments on the Thanksgiving episode, Amy Schneider wore a trans flag pin and then did interviews afterwards and explained, you know, this is why I wore the pin and Thanksgiving as a holiday when so many LGBTQ individuals are ostracized from their families, and so raised the level of awareness astronomically to the point where, I mean, yes, in the LGBTQ community, amazing, this was amazing, but I would even argue more amazing were our allies, people in the straight community who saw this incredible run of Amy Schneider and for so many of them in particular, in older generation.

Oh, okay, this is a trans individual.

This was a big, big deal.

- Alright, I've got this for you guys then.

Unfortunately, Amy lost on the final Jeopardy question.

So I need to ask it of you.

So everybody we're playing Jeopardy, are you ready?

Now if you saw it, if you've already seen it and you know it, then do not answer.

Please be honest, and you can't google this, all right.

I'll give you this question.

The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in an H, it's also one of the 10 most populous.

(upbeat music) - I'm not good at, I'm not good at under pressure.

(upbeat music) Okay, we'll give it to Karen.

I'll just not say anything.

(upbeat music) - Okay, that's the end of the music, which means it's time for our answers.

We'll start with Karen Kasler.

- Karen.

- Bangladesh.

- Yes, you would have won Jeopardy had you been on it.

And that's the thing that really bummed me out.

Amy is so smart, it has to be exhausting, but to miss, - I don't know how.

There's a test to get on that thing.

- To miss out on a thing that like you know, that some of us can guess I didn't get it either, but you got it, Gabe got it, when we were talking in our meeting today, Bangladesh is what she lost on.

Ken, bummer.

- It's (indistinct) but she was recapping 'cause right.

This was all taped.

I think it was taped, you know right, like a month and a half ago, two months ago.

So she's been doing these daily recaps and she's been through a lot and it has been a ton of exposure.

So I think the weariness might have set in a little bit there, but we'll still see her in the tournament of champions.

- Right.

- Can I say one thing about Amy?

- Please, yes.

- She's great Mike.

(laughing) - Not great, Mike, I got it.

- I can't waiting for someone, I've been waiting for someone to say it.

So I had to say it.

- Awesome.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 90.3 WCPN, host Rick Jackson will lead a discussion about the call for police departments to improve the way they handle individuals in crisis, whether addiction, mental health or other issues.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.

(upbeat music)