(bright music) - Norfolk Southern finally faced the people of East Palestine to answer questions and offer an apology.

They got booed.

Lawmakers pushed to make transporting dangerous freights safer for everyone.

And the corruption trial of Larry Householder is headed toward closing arguments.

"Ideas" is next.

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

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Norfolk's Southern representatives offered an apology at a town hall meeting Thursday night for the toxic trained derailment last month that has upended life in the village.

The response?

Boos.

Lawmakers in Columbus and Washington DC got behind a bipartisan bill to make transporting dangerous freight, safer.

Former Ohio House speaker, Larry Householder, took the stand in his own defense during his corruption trial.

He says the prosecution has everything wrong and that he's guilty of no crime.

Akron's effort to create a citizen police oversight board is stalled after council met this week and could not agree on nominees.

The delay comes as a new poll, shows that prospective voters want reform, including police reform from the next mayor.

And the Ohio Senate voted to overhaul public education, taking control of curriculum away from the state school board, and putting it under the governor.

We'll talk about those stories on the rest of the week's news on the reporter's round table.

Joining me this week in studio, Idea Stream public media director of Engage journalism, Marlene Harris-Taylor, and education reporter Conor Morris.

In Columbus, State House News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

At last night's town hall, East Palestine residents finally had a chance to confront Norfolk Southern about the chemical release and burn off at the derailment site last month.

The impact on their health and homes, and the railroads commitment to safety.

It was a contentious meeting filled with gears and boos.

Marlene, at this point, a residents in East Palestine passed the point that an apology matters?

- I think they are, Mike.

And everyone understands the frustration and the anger that they feel.

They're at the point that they don't know who to trust.

If they can trust anyone.

And they definitely don't trust the railroad officials at this point.

They think that they're all about profit, all about money.

They don't trust the government.

So they don't know who to trust.

- And they're being told by the EPA administrator that we heard there, the regional administrator, "Hey, we're testing, we're not seeing large numbers of compounds.

The air is safe, the soil is safe, the water is safe" And yet, as Abigail Bottar found out yesterday when she talked to people there, they're feeling sick.

They have chest congestion.

One of them had chemical bronchitis.

Their doctors are telling them, don't go back to that town.

Another guy was with his entire family in one room, in a relative's house, not in town, saying, "We can't live here while there's cleanup."

It just doesn't jive.

You're hearing it is safe, and yet you're experiencing symptoms.

Or some of them were just fearful that, "Two years from now, am I going to get cancer?"

- Exactly.

And you know, we should acknowledge that everyone is different.

Some people are just more sensitive to environmental factors than others.

I have allergies, so you know, I swell up and have nasal congestion really fast.

So if I was there, maybe my body would react differently than someone else's and that could be responsible for what we're seeing.

But when people feel, when they see their neighbors with rashes, and they go on social media and see all kinds of conditions that people are reporting, they're saying, "Hey, this just isn't matching the messaging we're getting."

- You bring up a really good point, which is something, an existing condition you might already have that can be exacerbated by that.

So it doesn't match what the EPA is saying.

I have asthma.

And so if my wife is taking off nail polish and has that nasty nail polish remover, I gotta get outta the room.

- Exactly, my husband's the same way.

So imagine if you were there.

- Yeah, in that town.

- In that town.

- And even some of them, just the impression of all that too, we had Taylor Wisner talk to residents this week, really great feature that was on our air.

Just talking to those folks who, they're even going to the health clinics that have been set up by the Ohio Department of Health, and they're getting questions answered there, but still come out unsatisfied because they've got nosebleeds or other types of things.

This is not something where I think you can have a statement by the government and even a visit to a doctor and then say, "Okay, things are safe and clean and clear."

- Right, it's like we have the clinic that was set up by HHS and ODH, which is great that they set up this clinic in a local church, but it's almost like I'm going here reluctantly, I don't really trust these people.

I'm gonna go in here and see what they say about my condition.

But if they say something that, again, doesn't match what I'm feeling, I'm not sure I can trust what they're telling me.

- There's sometimes this reason, Conor, for distrust, and that is a message isn't exactly the same the entire time throughout.

When someone says one thing and then they say something else.

The EPA had been saying, "We're not testing for dioxin because it's in the soil anyway.

If you grill a burger, you could have dioxin yourself.

So it's really not worth testing for."

Yesterday, reverse cores, we're testing for dioxin.

- Sure.

And I think there's a lot of mistrust in the government in general across a lot of different populations of folks.

And so that there's kind of a baseline there already of like, well, like you're coming into my community and you're saying this, but already there is a disconnect here.

And already, I mean, if you look at polls of public sentiment of the government, whether it's the EPA or the president or or anybody else, there's a ton of distrust there.

- Karen, Senators, Sherrod Brown and J.D.

Vance, so on the left and the right have come together with a bipartisan bill that looks to improve safety.

Basically not about cleanup, but about...

Okay, we should know what's going through our communities on these trains.

What are some of the key elements that they've agreed on and put forward?

- Well, this bill would create new safety procedures for trains that carry hazardous materials, such as requiring the notification of State Emergency Response officials about what they're carrying.

Increasing rail car inspections, establishing requirements for those wayside defect detectors, which can send warnings about wheel bearing failures.

Also requiring trains carrying hazardous materials to be scanned by these hot box detectors every 10 miles.

The requirement of two person crews, the railroads have said, "Hey, in Ohio we already have at least two people on the train crew, but this would be a requirement in federal law.

Increasing the maximum fine the federal government can in issue for safety violations.

And also some other things about investing money into training and into grants for more rail priorities.

And some of that would come from increased registration fees paid by Class I railroads.

- All of that.

And yet it doesn't go as far as some folks want it.

- Right, I mean, certainly here in the state legislature, the transportation budget that passed this week has some of these elements requiring the two-person cruises, for instance, requiring certain upgrades on these wayside detectors.

There's a real argument here though, whether the state can order things that the federal government has not ordered because you're dealing with interstate commerce when you're talking about trains.

But also there's gonna be a question here, I think about when you start talking about increasing fees for registration.

Is everybody gonna be on board with that?

Are Republicans gonna push back on that and say, "That's not what we wanna see.

We wanna see something else happen here."

But certainly you've got, in the case of Sherrod Brown and J.D.

Vance, like you said, the left and the right, both coming together and saying, "We need to do something about this.

We need to hold Norfolk Southern accountable that they need to pay for all the stuff and testing and all these things that are related to this derailment."

- There is that desire to have Norfolk Southern pay for it.

We heard Abigail Bottar say today that it might even be something where the federal government fronts the money and Norfolk Southern has to pay them back.

But in addition to that, there's a Congressman, Bill Johnson, is introduced a measure that would prevent the financial disaster relief, residents are getting from being taxed.

And yet another level there, Conor, that the idea is, you shouldn't have to pay taxes on that.

- Sure.

And Bill's, my old rep, actually I used to live in Marietta.

He covers 11 counties from southern to eastern Ohio.

So he's got kind of a wide swath, but very rural area for sure.

Yeah, there's bipartisan support for that it seems like.

And looks like probably gonna be some movement on that bill in the next couple weeks from some reporting I've seen.

Bill Johnson is known for going on kind of anti-liberal screeds on his Facebook and he's criticized Biden, then said, "Hey, why don't you come to East Palestine as well."

So interesting character there for sure.

- Yep.

Marlene, all the contaminated soil and water from this has to go somewhere- - And does.

- And we had a big dust up over that earlier this week and at the tail end of last week as well.

What do we know now about how the material is gonna be safely disposed off?

- Well, we know that it's being taken to other facilities in Ohio.

The big dust up was that people found out that some of the contaminated soil was being taken out of the state, I believe was to Michigan.

And so now we know that some of the contaminated soil will be taken and disposed off, in... the name of the town is escaping me right now, just south of East Palestine.

But there's concerns about that as well, because when you then dispose of this material, then the contaminants from that go into the air.

And we don't know what's gonna happen when these particles land on the ground and how long they're going to be there.

And that's why people were pushing for the EPA to do this testing of dioxides, because they want to make sure that the long term effects of these contaminants getting into the soil are being taken into account.

Because once these hazardous chemicals, these dioxides get into the soil, they stay there for years, they're like a long time before they dissipate and they can cause cancer and many other harmful long-term health effects.

So even though there's been a careful moving of the soil there's been gallons and gallons of water moved from that area, there's still concern about, "Okay, now you're taking this to another community.

And now that community may have to deal with the effects of that.

And I wanted to speak to the issue of distrust also in terms of the news media, Mike, because you mentioned Abigail Bottar's reporting.

When Abigail went to the church where the health facility was located earlier this week, she was greeted by some people there, who didn't want her on the spot.

I mean, in fact she was asked to leave by a person who worked there at the church.

It was not somebody from ODH, but she was really asked to leave.

Police were called, she was not arrested, but police circled the area.

So not only do people there distrust the government, they really, really distrust the media.

And last night, for example, I understand that the press was shepherded up to the balcony and kept a park from everyone at the meeting.

And this is what Abigail shared with us.

And when it was over and Abigail tried to talk to inside the building, she was asked to leave.

So we have folks from the news media there who are trying to help share the story and share the concerns of the community and many folks are even rejecting the press being there.

So the distrust, it just goes all around, not just government officials, also to the press.

And also distrust, to your original question, Mike, of how this material is being moved and disposed off.

A lot of people are keeping a watchful eye on it.

Thank goodness.

- Karen, there's a professor, a journalism professor that Taylor talked to, Tim Roberts of Kent State, pointed out some of the miscommunication in the early hours of the disaster, seems to have set the tone for that distrust that Marlene is talking about.

- Yeah, and I think I talked to Sherrod Brown about this yesterday and he says he's really concerned about the partisanship and the politicization that's developed over this.

And it's coming from both sides really.

I mean the initial reports that were coming out from Governor Mike DeWine and state officials were that the testing was showing that the water was safe as long as you were on the municipal water system.

But that if you had private wells, they needed to be tested and the air quality had tested okay.

But of course there's a lot of people who have questions about that, and that's being fueled by some of these conversations that are happening that we reporters are covering.

I mean, when talking to Sherrod Brown, when talking to J.D.

Vance, you hear some of this, it doesn't help.

For instance though, that J.D.

Vance is out at the CPAC conference, the The Conservative Political Action Committee Conference sharing a stage with Ted Cruz who's blasting the response to East Palestine and what's happening and blasting transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sherrod Brown talked about how the house is now considering impeaching Buttigieg over this, saying that that's not helpful.

That doesn't help with the cleanup, that doesn't help with getting the help to people who are in that area, who really need it and really need some reassurance.

- You were mentioning earlier, Marlene, not knowing exactly where the soil and water contamination's gonna go.

That's 'cause there's so many different places.

Vicary Ohio is one.

There's a place outside of Houston, East Liverpool, Ohio.

- That's the one I was trying to think of.

East Liverpool Ohio, thank you.

- Yeah, Grafton, which is in our neighborhood, another community in Indiana.

So there are a number of of places where that soil and water is going.

- And Mike, picking up on what Karen was just saying in terms of the political ranker, and each side pointing at each other and saying, "You're to blame, No, you're to blame."

One of the things that's really interesting when we have these type of disasters is often the press, we're guilty of this, and the community, they don't look back at the causes of these things.

And a lot of fingers can be pointed at the people who lessen these regulations over the years.

So it's not that the rail company should not be held to account, of course they should, but what about the politicians who also help them out and help lessen those regulations to make conditions available, so a disaster like this could happen in our state?

(bright music) - Closing arguments are next up in the corruption trial of former Ohio House speaker, Larry Householder.

He testified in his own defense and faced tough cross-examination from the prosecution.

Karen, Householder on the stand denied all the allegations made against him.

And it seemed in his testimony that there wasn't a whole lot of evidence.

I suppose it was simply him saying, "Yeah, that's what you heard.

I kind of did that, but I didn't do it for the reason you thought I did."

- Well I went down to Cincinnati for his testimony, 'cause I wanted to see him and hear him for myself as he gave his testimony and answered questions from the prosecution.

And yet his whole defense has really centered around that.

He pushed for House Bill 6, the nuclear power plant bailout law, because he thought it was good policy that it was not first energy's influence and bribes that pushed it forward.

It was something that he thought would be good for Ohioans.

And he kind of pushed back on previous testimony from his political strategist, Jeff Longstreth, saying he did not meet with FirstEnergy executives when he went to former President Trump's inauguration, that he intended to pay Longstreth back for the money Longstreth did use of his own funds to pay for Householder's home repairs and legal bills.

And so this is kind of how things went from the Householder point of view.

But then when the prosecution took over, prosecutor, Emily Gladfelter really started poking holes in some of the things that Householder was saying, this idea that he was not heavily involved in this dark money group generation now.

She showed texts and played phone calls that suggested that wasn't the case.

This idea that he wanted to come back to the house because he was concerned about divisiveness among state lawmakers.

She played part of a call where he talked about we like war when discussing retaliating against lawmakers and saying that he was going to eff with the people who effed with him.

And one thing that I thought was really interesting, she showed a photo that had metadata, that shows exactly when the photo was taken from Jeff Longstreth's phone showing Householder at various events on the weekend of the inauguration.

And he looked at the photo and said, "Well that can't be from that night because two people who were in that photo weren't there that night."

Which is just an interesting moment, because we're seeing the picture, we're seeing the metadata, and he says, no, that can't be.

- Hmm.

And what did you mean by effed?

No, I'm just kidding.

(Karen laughs) Was that actually played in court?

- It certainly was.

And it was interesting to hear as Householder is played on tape, he does swear, but in court he would not swear.

- That's one acronym that you're gonna let go by.

Right, Mike?

- Yeah, I'm gonna let that one go by.

(all laughing) The one letter will suffice.

So what we have then are closing arguments that will be very closely watched on Tuesday and then a verdict in this case.

But again, it seems as though the defense has been, we were doing politics raising money.

It was through a dark money group.

Using that money to install people that we thought would do the right thing by our philosophy, and then passing legislation and defending legislation that we thought was good for the state.

Basically that's the defense.

- Yeah, and when you mention watch these arguments we watch, I wish we could watch them.

I mean it's very frustrating that the federal court system is the way that it is, that there is no recording, there's no cameras, there's no audio, so you have to be there, which is, I'm fascinated.

I could be there all day, but it would be really great for other people to be able to witness what was going on here.

But yeah, I think the argument has been from Householder and especially from Borges, that they didn't prove their case.

They didn't prove racketeering.

In fact, that's why when I spoke to Borges, he told me that the racketeering charge was simply not proven.

And so he did not mount a defense.

And so that's what we're gonna wait to see later on.

Closing statements are set for Tuesday and then the jury could have it as soon as that afternoon or maybe Wednesday.

(bright music) - Akron City Council failed to agree on nominees for the voter endorsed, nine-member civilian police oversight board.

There was a rancorous battle over one of the nominees, Monday, in a five hour public session.

Conor, the questions about what comes next are perplexing as the board could not find the votes in the first place.

Let's start there.

What's the delay?

What's the confusion or the discord?

- Sure.

So council voted eight to four on the slate of six nominees, like multiple times throughout the evening.

Just couldn't come to, so they needed nine votes total instead of the eight.

So the four council members were essentially mostly opposed to one of the candidates really.

And they actually tried to pull him out.

So this is a young black lawyer who had made some comments that were critical of police and so they just weren't able to really get to that nine votes that they needed essentially, despite taking multiple votes, which has led to some of course discord between the council members.

- And it was focused, Marlene, on one particular nominee, as Conor had noted, Imokhai Okolo, a 27 year old black lawyer.

The questions about his candidacy came from members who said, "We didn't like what he said about police on social media."

- Yeah, there was a block of four members who were opposed to him being on the board, although I should say that the majority of the people who were there on council appeared to be ready to seat him on the board.

And there was one council member missing who said he was not feeling well that night, who may end up being the vote that decides all this.

He has indicated in the press that he might be willing to move and to become that final vote that is needed to get Mr. Okolo onto the board because there were people in the community who had packed into that meeting who were in support of him.

There's been charges made out there of collusion between the Police Union and some of the members who were opposed to him.

There's feelings being expressed in the community that the Police Union is directing what's happening on this civilian review board, which is the opposite of the reason why this board was created in the first place.

It was supposed to be a citizen voice, not a Police Union voice.

(bright music) - Public safety ranked as the top priority for Akron residents, in a poll release this week, conducted by the Center for Opinion Marketing and Research and the University of Akron's Bliss Institute for Applied Politics.

- Overall, I think in the country, violent crime is actually on the downward trends.

Obviously that doesn't necessarily jive with what we kind of see every day in news reports and just kind of visibly in Cleveland and Akron.

Folks are saying they're scared.

There's a lot of folks at the district who are saying, that the issues they're seeing with misbehavior and violence in the schools are spilling over from society in general.

From the city in general.

And that's a fair point, I think.

I think with the schools, there is a bit of an individual specific context there in that some teachers and parents are saying, "Well, we're not really providing, really adequate consequences when kids are misbehaving.

So there is a bit of a individual kind of like, there are some Akron school specific issues that are there, of course, but yes, there's a broader societal issue and experts will tell you, schools alone can't solve the problem.

- Yeah.

And that's a great point you made.

That crime is actually down, but people don't feel that.

- Yeah, sure in fact, in that survey, many of the people who said they didn't feel safe were also people who felt that their neighborhoods were safe.

So it wasn't about where they were and many of them were the older, perhaps more affluent white folks who are seeing the coverage in this news and saying, "Okay, things are not safe, but not necessarily where I live."

- And we should spell it out that they're watching news outlets that emphasize crime and that crime is increasing and it is basically scaring a lot of older people, but even in local news.

So much of what's covered is crime.

- I will say too though, there are some really like specific examples though that people in the school districts, like for example, the young man who was shot and killed right outside of John Adams High School in Cleveland.

These things are happening so close to schools now that is different and that is new I think (indistinct).

- Well there are certainly a number of people in that survey who obviously were experiencing crime in their neighborhoods too In Akron.

(bright music) Senate Bill 1 passed this week and headed to the Ohio House removes most of the power from the state school board and creates a department of education and workforce under the governor.

Karen, it's a holdover from last session, but essentially we've talked about all these school board issues at the local level and even at the state level.

And now we're talking about basically taking away what it is they do.

- Right, and Republicans have talked about this for a while.

In fact, governors have talked about this for a while.

I mean, Republican and Democratic governors have said they wanted more control over the state school board and the Department of Education because quite often they feel like they're being judged on how schools do in Ohio and what the educational climate is like in Ohio.

So this is almost certainly gonna pass now, it came up in lame duck and it didn't go forward, but it's now passed the Republican dominated house.

It now goes over to the Republican dominated.

I'm sorry, the other way around, the Republican dominated Senate.

It pass, it goes over to the Republican dominated house now and it's a priority bill for speaker Jason Stevens.

It's almost certainly gonna go forward.

One thing I think is notable though, Democrats are gonna have a really hard time potentially getting their concerns about this forward.

They've pointed out that this comes as more Democrats were voted onto the state school board.

So they feel like the timing is suspect and Democrats just are kind of spread pretty thin here.

So getting their points of view on this across is gonna be difficult.

(bright music) - It's Lent.

St. Patrick's Day and the Guardian's home opener both fall on a Friday.

That brings a dilemma for observant Catholics who abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent.

The bishop has offered dispensation, that means corn beef will be on the menu, but ballpark hotdogs won't.

But this week, Bishop Edward Malesic of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, said there's dispensation for St. Patrick's Day.

So go ahead and eat your corn beef sandwich.

Ballgame's a different story, Karen.

Observant Catholics cannot have a hotdog at the ballgame.

You gotta do Cracker Jacks and peanuts.

- There's other things.

There's tons of food at the ballpark.

- [Mike] Not supposed to snack either.

- I'll be there.

I'll be there on opening day, so I can't wait.

- All right, well you can feast on a victory then.

(bright music) Monday on the Sound of Ideas on WKSU, our tech guru, Jared Bendis of Case Western Reserve University joins us.

He just returned from Saudi Arabia where he attended an event build as the world's biggest tech conference.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

(bright music)