- Federal prosecutors began presenting their case this week against former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, as his public corruption trial opened in Cincinnati, but the trial was abruptly suspended because a juror has COVID-19.

The Rancorous Rift among Ohio's GOP representatives has spilled onto the house floor.

Who's in charge, and what impact will it have on the legislative agenda?

And activists expressed disappointment over a pause by Cleveland City Council over the People's Budget.

"Ideas" is next.

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

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for joining us.

The Public Corruption Trial of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder started this week as the prosecution began to build its case, but just as the trial was getting started, a juror tested positive for COVID-19.

The trial is postponed until at least Monday.

The power struggle among Ohio House Republicans spilled over onto the house floor this week.

Routine votes on rules and leadership positions led to more bickering.

Who exactly is in charge of majority caucus in the House, and what does it say about the kind of legislating we're likely to see?

Cleveland City Council has paused a participatory budgeting proposal.

The idea was to give citizens a direct say in spending a chunk of federal dollars.

Some council members, including the council president, weren't keen on the pilot program.

And a proposed drop-in shelter to provide respite for young people experiencing homelessness is getting pushback from some Ohio City neighbors.

We'll talk about those stories, and the rest of the week's news on The Reporter's Roundtable.

Joining me this week, from Idea Stream Public Media Reporter Gabriel Kramer, and Akron Canton Reporter Abigail Bottar.

And in Columbus, Karen Kassler, Ohio Public Radio and television's State House News Bureau Chief.

Let's get ready to round table.

The federal corruption trial of former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder, and former Ohio Republican Chairman, Matt Borges, which finally started this week, has been postponed until at least Monday, a juror tested positive for COVID-19.

Andy is with us now to talk a little bit about this, he's covering the trial, by the way, heading down to Cincinnati when they are in session, and it's on hold now through the weekend, but the delay really could last a lot longer, you just don't know what's going on when someone has COVID-19, when they're gonna test positive or negative, so what's the outlook for that?

What do we know?

- [Andy] Everybody's just sort of on standby at this point.

The trial was postponed on Wednesday, after two and a half years of waiting for the trial to start.

We got two days of trial before it had to be postponed, and then after that they decided that because of the diagnosis they were gonna wait until Monday, but, of course, these are people who are all sitting right next to each other, so the possibility of another person maybe testing positive could be pretty high at this point.

Everybody who sits in the courtroom who is not part of the jury, or part of the legal teams has to be wearing wearing masks, so there is some sort of masking up when it comes to that.

But who knows what happens when it comes to everybody's health.

- We are at this point in the part of the trial where the prosecution makes its case.

We've heard a little from the defense, those are on cross examinations, but the prosecution's come out as we would expect after two and a half years, pretty forcefully, essentially saying householder ripped off the state.

- [Andy] Yeah, they have an uphill battle.

They're working with a jury that is coming into this with fresh eyes, so they really have to explain all the complexities of this issue.

And so those opening statements can be pretty crucial for both sides of the argument.

With the prosecutor's side, they started by saying Larry Householder sold the State House, then continued to make their argument as to why they think that's the case, starting with a spreadsheet that detailed all the money that flowed from first energy, through dark money groups, ultimately ending up in this generation now 501C4 that was allegedly controlled by Householder.

And it was pretty staggering to just see the different transactions over the years, and the dates.

And that's something that we weren't really, we haven't really seen in the past, where the money really becomes timely with important dates in this whole timeline, such as more money rolling in right before the primaries, where Householder needed some of his allies to win, and more money rolling in right when they were pushing for the passage of HB6.

- Why are Borges and Householder being tried together?

Because it sounds like the accusations against them are not equal and not the same.

- When it comes to a racketeering case, according to the US attorneys, when it comes to the racketeering case, and trying to make a charge, a RICO charge work, they need to make the argument that this was a conspiracy with a group of people plotting together one way or another.

So they had five defendants.

They had, you already mentioned, Juan Cespedes, Jeff Longstreth, and the late Neil Clarke, and so having Borges and Householder there, for the prosecution they're trying to round this out as a whole string of conspiracy, where you have certain players on different ends of the spectrum all working towards the same goal, and that's the case that they're trying to make.

But, Mike, like you said, the defense for Matt Borges is trying to say that's not the case, and that there's a world of difference, or in his words a universe of difference between Matt Borges, and everybody else who's been charged in this case.

- And the two of them don't seem to be arm in arm in terms of hey, let's defend ourselves against this, it's us against the world.

It seems as though the two of them aren't in sync either.

- [Andy] They've always, even without these charges, they've always had a somewhat icy relationship, and that was brought up by Borges's lawyer, saying that the two don't really even like each other.

It was pretty interesting to see on the first day of the trial, Larry Householder showed up early, he came in, he even talked to reporters, interestingly enough.

Matt Borges showed up much later than Householder, did not do much talking with Householder.

At one point it looked like Larry wanted to talk to Matt, and they were not having a conversation.

So the two of them are playing this from different angles for sure.

- Got a question from Dave in Stark County.

He says "Why isn't this case getting national coverage?"

- [Andy] I don't know.

I mean when Householder was first arrested, when Borges was first arrested, it did get national coverage from NPR, and a lot of our stories have played nationally.

It is interesting to see especially the cable news outlets aren't really paying attention.

But when you do some digging you find out that other states have had similar trials over the years that if you're not living in those states they kind of go unnoticed.

(dramatic music) - The feud within the Ohio House Republican Caucus continues as speaker Jason Stevens and Representative Derek Merrin jockey for control.

Karen, so we know that there's this push and pull against each other, now we see a fight spill over onto the floor, where Merrin is trying to change the rules, essentially to sap power from the position he wished he had.

- Yeah, and the Merrin supporters were pretty clear that they wanted to decentralize the power that the speaker has in terms of setting committee assignments and setting agendas.

I mean really the speaker has a significant voice in the legislation that comes to the floor, and they wanted to have more of an opportunity to weigh in on that.

They also wanted to have 66% of the committee chairs, and the committee memberships, and they got about 55% when Stevens released his list of committee chairs.

And they wanted to make some other changes as well.

And so it was a Republican, one of the, actually the first Black Republican to serve in the Ohio House in 50 years, Josh Williams, who stood up and tried to amend the house rules, and add in some of the things that the Merrin supporters wanted, and Speaker Stevens was not considering that at all.

He gaveled him down, and said we're gonna vote.

And that got the Merrin supporters very angry, because they wanted to have their amendments considered, and they just simply weren't.

- One thing that interested me when I was reading into the coverage is that when the rules were voted on, voting with Stevens were eight people who originally were people that voted for Merrin, eight of the Republicans who were on Marren's side.

So it isn't just this is a faction, and that faction stays a block, there's a little bit of shifting going on.

- Yeah, I think that that's expected, because now Stevens is the speaker, and even the Merrin people will acknowledge that he is the speaker.

And so there may be some people who say all right, well this battle's over, I'm gonna move over to Stevens' side, but then also the morning of this house floor vote there was a session that Merrin had called, he said he invited all house Republicans to join, and he said he was elected the leader, the chair, of the Ohio House Republican Caucus, which is typically a title that's reserved for the speaker if Republicans are in the majority, or the minority leader if they're in the minority.

And he also said that Phil Plummer, who ran against both of these two gentlemen in the straw vote that you mentioned earlier, Phil Plummer is the vice-chair of this caucus, and also controls the campaign committee bank account.

And that's a big deal because if indeed this battle goes on long enough, that campaign account and whoever controls it can decide whether they're gonna spend money to primary certain people, especially people who are on whatever the opposite side is.

So control of that campaign account is pretty crucial.

The Merrin people say they control it, Stevens says he controls it.

- What does this mean for legislation going forward then?

You had did a story, I think today, Karen, talking about emergency legislation, which isn't really a definition for, but the idea that you could get something that would be referendum proof, and maybe that wouldn't happen if there's this kind of divide.

But what does it mean in that regard and in general regarding what we might see for legislation coming out of this assembly?

- Well, Professor Emeritus from Cleveland Marshall College of Law, Steven Steinglass, is the expert on the Ohio Constitution.

He says that if there's a super majority in both houses, both the House and the Senate, they can pass legislation as emergency legislation.

There's no real definition, it's just what they wanna pass right now.

it takes effect immediately, and groups that oppose it can't go out and gather signatures and take it to voters, that's what happened with Senate Bill five, the collective bargaining changes law that was overwhelmingly overturned by voters.

So that would, that would shut down the referendum process.

So by not coming together as a super majority, that's a power that the Republicans don't have at this moment.

But I think the real question is, of course, how this is gonna affect the budget, because next week on Tuesday Governor Mike DeWine does his state of the state speech, he's gonna talk about the budget.

Obviously it's a big deal, the budget has to pass by June 30th, July 1st.

And so if there's still this back and forth, then that is a concern.

He says he's confident that Republicans will work things out, but you have to wonder.

(dramatic music) - Cleveland City Council has paused participatory budgeting, a pilot project where residents get the say on how to spend a small slice of federal relief dollars.

The council members, though, they didn't go for it, Gabe.

- No, absolutely not.

I mean, City Council President Blaine Griffin was mostly adamant, most vocal out of anyone at the finance and diversity equity inclusion meeting on Monday.

The vote at the end of the meeting was to pause and hold this so that the forces, PB CLE, Participatory Budget in Cleveland, the organization behind this plan could regroup and rethink how they might want to do this.

But, you know, Griffin was citing things like how this neglects representative government.

He honestly came off offended at the fact that they would have a process that people could make decisions on how the government spends money without dealing with the government in a sense.

- So he said the public voted for us, and we're the representatives, we get to decide how the money's spent.

What was the response from P BCLE?

As I understand it, they're not saying, we wanna supplant you as representatives, but listen to us.

- Right.

And they were saying they would work collaboratively in this process, and this would work in addition to the processes that already exists in the local government.

And they also mentioned how voter turnout in Cleveland is so low, voter engagement is abysmal, and that this would really get people engaged and excited, and feel like they really have action, have the ability to take voice.

And the response from Griffin was I understand that voter turnout is low, but the people who did turnout did vote for us, and want us to make those decisions.

But I do understand how people around this city could feel defeated when you go to your city councilman, or city councilwoman, and you could sell them on anything, you could talk to them for days about what you want, but if they disagree they don't have to move forward with what you want.

And even if it's an overwhelming majority of people in the ward who say we want this, at the end of the day, city council members don't have to do anything.

Certainly they would all sell themselves as being willing to do such a thing, and that's how Griffin explained himself in the meeting on Monday.

- Part of the other justification for pausing this, and maybe eventually scrapping it, is that it's not sustainable, that we're talking about ARPA funds right here, but ARPA funds don't come forever, so how do you set aside money in the future, what amount?

How would that work?

It's a pilot program.

- Right.

And actually Griffin brought forward a private attorney, Kevin Cronin, on the meeting on Monday.

And he works, I guess he was working as an advisor to Griffin on participatory budgeting, and showed Griffin different things that other parts of the country are doing in this process.

And he suggested that it's unsustainable because ARPA funding is not reoccurring, but also it's unsustainable because perhaps you pilot a program for one year, they're gonna come back and ask for funding a second year, and that's not how this plan is put in place, they wanna have new projects coming in year after year.

And he also decided to chime in on the meeting, and kind of reiterate the idea of this disrespecting local government, and the processes that are in place.

- So where do we go from here?

I know you got reaction from the PB CLE folks, they've worked very hard on this, and they're very earnest people on this issue.

When they say pause, does that mean there can be some backroom negotiating?

Because you've got a number of council members, Jenny Spencer being one of them, Rebecca Moore, others who are in favor of this.

- Four co-sponsors on Cleveland City Council supporting this plan.

They could regroup, and they have a meeting this coming Monday on how to regroup, and I spoke to Molly Martin, one of the representatives from PB CLE, about what they're going to be discussing.

They were, they kept things close to their chest as far as what would be talked about, but they have an ability to regroup, and it seems like a big complaint that PB CLE really has is they're asking for a little bit of money compared to what is being spent in the entire city.

They're asking for about $5 million to be voted on by locals to decide what to do with, and projects in their wards.

- It's a fingernail clipping.

- It's a finger, relatively.

And Molly Martin quoted things, like how much money he spent on stadium renovations over the years, and this being to them a drop in the bucket.

(dramatic music) - Cleveland City Council will consider legislation that would commit nearly $2 million in ARPA funds to erase the medical debt of about 49,000 city residents.

Abigail, it's not a brand new idea, it's new for Cleveland, but there are a couple places that have made this decision.

- Yeah, yeah.

Columbus has a similar measure that was passed recently, and more than 100,000 Columbus residents have received letters saying their debt has been relieved.

Toledo also recently proposed a similar measure, and it's in the negotiation stages right now.

So, new to Cleveland, but not new to Ohio.

- And the idea is the money is provided to a nonprofit that then buys up the medical debt.

- Yeah, so the thing is is that it has to go through all of city council, but then also the area hospitals have to be on board with Cleveland purchasing the medical debt of its residents, and then paying it off.

- So, yeah, the hospitals have to be on board with them.

One of the supporters of the legislation, ward 17 council member Charles Slife says the proposal fits to council's larger objectives, what is he talking about there?

- Yeah, so council's been working on addressing racial health inequities in the city, and Slife is saying that people of color carry the majority of medical debt in Cleveland, so he's saying that this would be just a really good opportunity for council to work towards those equity goals.

- When you think about debt, Gabe, there's all different kinds of debt.

Medical debt is one of those types of debt that can be accumulated not because you're out spending like a drunken sailor, there's a need for medical care, that's the kind of debt that can be a yolk around someone, and yet an unavoidable one.

- It's a scary thing to think about.

Accidents that just could happen to you.

You walk down the street and something happens, you're driving your car and something happens.

This isn't your credit, like you said, this isn't your credit card bill 'cause you spent too many nights at the bar, this happens to anyone, and unfortunately not everyone has the expenses for this, particularly communities of color across the country, and particularly here in Cleveland.

- And I think it might also, the fear of medical debt might cause people not to seek important treatment, whether it's to treat something that's wrong or to prevent something.

You're not gonna go see the doctor if you know that's gonna be a bill that you're not gonna be able to pay that's gonna be put onto your credit, and then (indistinct) your debt.

- So thing things linger, things get overlooked, things don't get treated.

And you also see health disparities, and quality of life and life expectancy changes a lot in communities of color as well, so these are tied together.

- And I'll say people are saying this maybe is just kind of a bandaid over a big issue across the nation.

I mean, if they absolve this debt people are just gonna recur more because medicine's expensive.

- I think similar to the previous story, when it comes to ARPA funding, it's not reoccurring.

- [Abigail] Right.

- So what the city would do to address it a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, certainly is a question mark.

(dramatic music) - The prospect of a drop-in center for young people experiencing homelessness is dividing the Ohio City neighborhood in Cleveland.

Our Connor Morris reported on this, Gabe, and it's a fraught issue.

What are some of the objections neighbors have, and how do supporters counter those claims?

- Well, the people who, first of all, credit to Connor for doing such great job reporting the story, and talking to such a wide range of voices on this.

The people who are opposed to this worry that putting this in the neighborhood in Ohio City, just west of downtown Cleveland, will attract crime, and might make the neighborhood less safe.

And it goes against the residential nature of the neighborhood, although Ohio City for the last 10 years has been a neighborhood that hangs its hat on being mixed use.

So it is kind of interesting when we talk about bringing homeless people to a neighborhood, or people experiencing homelessness to a neighborhood, that all of a sudden the folks there want to think of it as being more residential than mixed use.

And it's hard not to see it as dog whistle language.

- Some of the questions and concerns that were brought up, one of them by Ron O'Leary, who used to be a housing court judge, and was on the record and saying here's how I feel about this is that, a couple of things, the safety issues might be in domestic violence situations where you might have somebody there trying to find someone who's in the facility, but also the fact that it's not a 24-hour facility, and that you'll have people that are there who would be back out at whatever hour of the evening or afternoon, and that best practices shows that a 24-hour facility is a safer and better one.

- Yeah, and certainly that's a subjective way of looking at things.

And the organization called A Place for Me, which is the homelessness advocacy group that is helping the church, and the ministries put this together.

They suggest that a daytime facility is actually what people, what you think Cleveland really need.

It provides them a place to go during the day.

It provides them a place to get a hot meal.

It provides them a place to escape because a lot of people experience homelessness, apparently, according to A Place for Me, have places to go at night, and they need resources during the day.

And, in terms of safety, A Place for Me is responding by saying there are a lot of measures that they are taking to make it a safe environment.

They have trauma trained officers on staff, not police officers, but people on staff who are trained in trauma.

People in the neighborhood have actually volunteered to work as escorts, helping people get to and from a bus stop or a car safely, and increase lighting and security cameras.

So it's not like the ministries is taking no measures that reconsider safety, but certainly, at the end of the day, here's a group that is neglected, youth experiencing homelessness.

According to NEAC, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, it is an overwhelming majority of Black people who are homeless.

And to think about a neighborhood that I've covered elections for several years here now, a neighborhood that finds itself being, considers itself progressive year after year, all of a sudden finds a way to be elitist in terms of this.

And I think certainly all of a sudden it's a not in my neighborhood situation.

- It's interesting 'cause you mentioned race, and that's been brought up, and there's been some speculation, some quotes that Connor got that that's an underlying issue here, and yet one of the people that he talked to as well who's opposed to this being in her neighborhood is a Black woman.

- [Gabe] Yeah.

- So it's not, as in everything that we talk about, it isn't this group on this side, this group on the other, this is a complex issue.

- It's a complex issue, but when you hear people talk it's hard to ignore the fact that at the end of the day there are people who need help, there are people who need a hand, and they're not getting it.

And they're fighting, and threatening litigation in defense of it.

- Yeah, that's the last thing I was gonna say.

If it does pass, it's gotta go through permitting and that type of thing, if it does become a reality, some of those residents have said we're just gonna sue.

- And it's a building that the ministry already owns.

And so it's...

I don't know all the details of exactly how that would go back and forth, but hard to tell a place what they can do and not do with their building.

(dramatic music) - Former Congressman Tim Ryan is taking a job with Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a nonprofit promoting the natural gas industry.

When I saw this I said "Hmm, why is this happening?"

And then I looked at the roster of people that have worked for this organization, or do still, and it seems like there's a whole lot of former democratic senators.

- Yeah, and I should credit, when I talked about Mark Romanchuk just a minute ago, the Energy News Network, and the Ohio Capital Journal are the ones that have been reporting that.

But Tim Ryan joined some other people like former Senator Mary Landro from Louisiana.

He would replace former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp from North Dakota, so, yeah, there's a lot of Democrats involved in this.

What I think is interesting is to see that this group, Natural Allies, is being described as a clean energy group.

It's actually a pro natural gas group that says that natural gas is a way to transition toward clean energy and renewable energy sources.

But this is really, I guess it's not really a surprise when you look at the roster of Democrats who are allied with this group, Natural Allies, and also when you consider that Tim Ryan comes from an area of Ohio that had a lot of drilling going on, the shale, the shale deposits in Ohio were big in that area, so it kind of fits with that whole area.

But I think for some people it is a little bit of a surprise to see Democrats advocating for natural gas when a lot of progressive, environmentally conscious people will say natural gas is not green energy, and it's definitely not a renewable resource.

(dramatic music) - Guardians manager, Terry Francona, who lives near Progressive Field, and usually rides his scooter to work, has been reunited with his stolen wheels.

All right, let's wrap this just a half a minute or so to go, but Guardian's Manager Terry Francona has his scooter back.

He lives at the nine, You know he rides it to work and back all the time.

He wakes up one morning, and it's gone, makes a report, and they find the thing like the next day and deliver it to his work.

I don't know if that always happens with stolen vehicles.

- No, I don't think that it... Yeah, when Tito's got something missing people are gonna be on alert.

- Yeah.

- Interesting.

Karen, you're happy then.

As long as he's got his scooter, then perhaps the skipper can be ready for pitchers and catchers to report, which is pretty darn soon.

- 69 days till opening day, by the way.

- [Mike] Wow.

- And I just don't know what this person who stole the scooter was doing, I mean he still had the key.

So what do you do with that thing?

Obviously returning it or leaving it somewhere is probably the best choice of... - That's exactly what he did.

He left it in the city, a little bit outside of downtown.

It was picked up- - They thought it was a lime scooter.

(Mike laughing) - Oh.

- Got it.

(dramatic music) Monday on the Sound of Ideas on WKSU, we'll talk to Idea Streams Criminal Justice Reporter Matt Richmond who'll dig into his reporting on what prosecutors disclosed to defense lawyers about police officers whose misconduct may cast doubts on their testimony.

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

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