(dramatic staccato music) - [Mike McIntyre] A late season heat wave forced several Ohio school districts to close schools earlier this week.

Ohio will use Congressional district maps next year that were ruled unconstitutional last year.

And gorillas from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo get their closeup on Netflix.

"Ideas" is next.

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

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

It's after Labor Day, but the weather didn't get the memo.

It's cooled off now, but some of the hottest days of the year arrived earlier this week, forcing some schools without air conditioning to close.

Congressional district maps that were ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered last year will remain in place for 2024.

Legal challenges have been dismissed.

Cleveland City Council rejected an effort to negotiate a lower percentage for a People's Budget charter amendment that would allow citizens to determine spending priorities.

And gorillas from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo have their own Netflix streaming show.

Seems like Amazon Primate would've been better.

Sorry.

Joining me for Roundtable today, from Ideastream Public Media, reporters Anna Huntsman and Matt Richmond; and in Columbus, Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to Roundtable.

The summer break is over, but a late season heat wave persisted past Labor Day, causing a number of local school districts to close schools with no air conditioning.

Schools are dealing with heat like they would snow days as the effect of climate change intensifies.

It's tough to learn, tough to teach when heat is so oppressive.

- I mean, I remember sweating in math class in the winter, I mean, just because of how difficult it was.

- [Mike] True.

But can you imagine, it would've been 94 degrees, I think, was the real-feel on Wednesday.

And so, yeah, not only is it tough, but it's actually unsafe.

One of the things that they think about when they're looking whether to close school is what is the heat index there?

And the National Weather Service considers 98 with 40% humidity dangerous.

And so we were at 94, so that's again, one of the factors they weigh.

- Some of the schools wait till you hit that dangerous.

And it seems to me that if you're the one sitting in class with no cross-breeze, that can be pretty tough.

The question is, we've had these schools for a long time, and some kids, if they're old schools, it means they've been around for a long time.

- [Anna] Centuries old, yeah.

- So for a very long time, people have been sitting in these classes at this time of year, and school has gone on.

It seems like more and more, this is happening post-Labor Day even.

- Right, I mean, that's kind of one of the arguments for if you are on, you know, have a tight budget, you aren't able to equip schools with air conditioning, maybe you can't get the levies passed, which is something that a lot of school districts, including Parma, have dealt with, and that's why they don't yet have the newer buildings.

One of the arguments is that it's just September and maybe May or June where this is gonna be an issue, and for the rest of the year, it's pretty much fine.

But as you mentioned, Mike, it's getting hotter and hotter.

This was a historic high heat wave summer, and a lot of people point to climate change as that, it's just getting warmer and warmer.

And so again, into September, this might continue to be an issue.

- You've given an answer, I think, to a question I had.

There's 11, there's a dozen buildings in Parma, 11 in Cleveland, that lack whole facility A/C.

Why are there so many buildings that lack it?

Part of it is the funding for this kind of stuff comes from voters.

And Parma, as we know, has tried repeatedly for levy and hasn't gotten it.

There've been a lot of calls, the Ohio Education Association being one of them, that says the state's obligation is to provide money for a school that's suitable to learn in, which would include one with air conditioning.

- And the president of this association says the state is equipped to do so and it is something that they should be doing.

But he mentioned that it is often hard for them to come up with local funds, where these school districts just sometimes can't.

And I wanted to mention too, it wasn't just Cuyahoga County; there were a couple schools in Stark County that closed as well.

And these were some smaller schools that also don't really have the budget, and they also have really old buildings.

So it's, some of these buildings are so old they don't even have enough electrical outlets to install just A/C, that just might seem like a quick fix.

- Might not be an issue yet for Matt, whose child is younger than school age, or maybe for you even, Karen, as your son is a senior in high school.

But imagine Karen, for all of those parents who are dropping their kids off at school or make arrangements and they go to their jobs, to have a school say, "We're closing early today."

- Yeah, I mean, these sudden changes, we see it in the wintertime with weather delays and everything, they really do wreak havoc on working parents.

My son's school has been under construction for the last three years.

So it doesn't necessarily guarantee, when you're getting things repaired and fixed and expanded, that you're gonna see exactly what you want.

But certainly in this weather, not having the opportunity to have air conditioning really adds to the stress of kids who already sometimes have issues when they come to school, from home and other situations.

(dramatic staccato music) - This week, the US attorney for the Northern District of Ohio announced the arrests of nearly 60 people in connection with firearms trafficking and other firearms offenses, part of a push by state and federal agencies to combat a wave of violence in Cleveland.

City has recorded 117 homicides so far this year and illegal guns, both the buying and selling of weapons, is seen as a contributing factor.

This week, the US attorney for the Northern District of Ohio announced the arrests of nearly 60 people in connection with firearms trafficking and other firearms offenses.

Matt, I heard you on "Morning Edition" today talking about that.

Many of those arrests were picked up in coordinated sweeps over the last two weeks.

- Well, looking at the firearms, I kind of focused on those arrests, which made up close to half, were either people who were illegally selling guns or possessing guns that they weren't allowed to have, particularly these handguns that were converted using a small device, that were converted into fully automatic, or machine guns.

And it was really interesting because it seemed, you know, it was very targeted towards the people who were selling these guns.

And they, almost all of them were people arrested trying to sell to undercover police.

- So is the thought here that they kind of knew who the bad actors were and that they're responsible for a lot of the badness happening?

So if you target them, we're gonna see big dividends?

- Yeah, I think, I mean that's what you hear from police leadership in Cleveland a lot is that, you know, there's a handful of people who are really driving the violence in Cleveland, and if you target them, it can really make a big dent.

And then naturally, you see a lot of studies that kind of support that idea.

And, you know, the people who they arrest, I did kind of quick looks at what sort of cases they had in local court and what sort of trouble they've gotten in otherwise.

And many of them had very recent felony cases or pending felony cases, so it was pretty clear that they were known to local law enforcement also.

- Let's talk about what you just mentioned, the device that was used to convert a regular semi-automatic pistol into an automatic pistol, which they then consider to be a machine gun.

So when we hear machine gun, you're thinking Tommy gun or something.

- [Matt] Right.

- And instead, it's these handguns that it would take one trigger pull to empty the magazine, whereas in usual use, every time you pull the trigger, you shoot a bullet.

So it just shocked me listening to that, that you know, I've fired a gun before, as you pull the bullet, or pull the trigger and a bullet comes out, and you do it again, you can do it really quick.

I mean, you can empty a magazine very quickly, and yet that's not fast enough.

- Mm-hmm, and you know, the other frightening thing is that when you have like, it's much, you know, it's much easier when it's fully automatic like that for you to lose control, for the bullets to kind of fly all over the place.

One of the indictments has a quote from one of the defendants where he says that his gun has "the spray", which just basically means that they're firing bullets all over the place.

And the other frightening thing about it is, you know, there's been a crackdown by the federal government on these devices, but they are, or have been very inexpensive, very easy to manufacture.

They were, you know, a couple years ago there was a lot of reporting on it as these things started to show up more and more, that you can get 'em on the dark web for like 20 bucks.

And in the indictments, there were a couple of them that were sold, the individuals, they're called switches, were sold for between $500 and $700.

- [Mike] Hmm.

- So that kind of profit makes it, you know, very tempting for somebody in this business.

- This press conference involved all the local law enforcement folks, but also Steve Dettelbach, the former US attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, who is now the head of ATF for the US, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

But he was here saying, "We're getting serious, and it's not just this one little push.

We're gonna help in Cleveland."

- Yeah, and he, you know, since he's (throat clears) excuse me, since he's been in office, or been in that role at the ATF, he's made it a point to go after the sources of the guns and to crack down on, you know, there's these devices, there's other devices that are used to make rifles fully automatic.

There's a proposed rule from the federal government to crack down on what's known as the gun show loophole, where if you kind of are, just sort of consider yourself a private seller, you can go and sell handguns at gun shows without the permit from the federal government and without that regulation where the federal government comes and checks to make sure that you're doing background checks.

So they've made it a point to try to go after the guns at more at the source, I think, than in the past.

(dramatic staccato music) - Ohio will use the same unconstitutionally gerrymandered congressional district maps in 2024 that it used last year.

Groups that filed legal challenges to the maps this week asked the Ohio Supreme Court to dismiss the cases, which it did.

Why?

They feared the maps could have actually gotten worse.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said they didn't want voters to face uncertainty heading into 2024.

But there's also the reality that the new maps could have been worse than the unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps that are in place now.

- Right, there's a lot that needs to happen with redistricting in the next couple of weeks.

I mean, we've got the Ohio House and Ohio Senate maps, which the Ohio Redistricting Commission is going to get together and talk about next week.

But then this congressional map, which the Ohio Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutionally gerrymandered, the US Supreme Court vacated that decision and sent it back to the Ohio Supreme Court after a case out of North Carolina and said, "Look at this map again."

Well, then the groups that were opposed to that map, they asked for their challenges to be dismissed because they say they want voters to have some stability going into next year's election.

The filing deadline for candidates is coming up because we have a March primary next year.

So the filing deadline's like December 20th.

And so to try to do a congressional map and have people moving and people wondering what district they're in, they said they wanted that stability so people know what the map looks like.

But, the reality of it is also that the map that was drawn by Republicans for the congressional districts was thought to lead to 13 Republicans and 2 Democrats being elected.

That's not what happened.

There were 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats that were elected.

And so the map certainly wasn't as bad as many Democrats thought it was going to be.

And the fear was that a map would be potentially worse if it were drawn in the next couple of weeks.

- Even with them being still in place for 2024 for the congressional districts, they're gonna have to be redrawn after that because they passed with only Republican support, right?

- Right, that was one of the incentives that was put into the amendment that was intended to take some of the politics and the divisiveness out of the map-drawing process.

The idea was if you didn't have bipartisan support for a map, it would only last for four years.

If you got bipartisan support for a map, it would last for 10 years.

Well, that incentive really didn't seem to have much of an effect here.

So we do have a map that will definitely be redrawn after the 2024 elections.

- Got a thought here from Jackie who's listening, says, "Why are there no penalties or repercussions for not drawing constitutional district maps?

What is the incentive for them to ever change the ones they've been using?

Clearly they just keep running out the clock and carrying on with the unconstitutional ones."

- Well, Republicans are now pointing out that the US Supreme Court's decision in Moore v. Harper and sending it back to the Ohio Supreme Court actually vacated that decision on unconstitutionality.

And so they say that the map is constitutional, and this kind of supports that.

That's what Republicans are saying.

So that's one perspective on the congressional map.

And of course, we've got the Ohio House and Senate maps.

Again, the Ohio Redistricting Commission is working on those.

And whether they will be constitutional or not, that remains to be seen.

They're gonna go before an Ohio Supreme Court that has a different makeup than it did last year, because Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, who ruled along with the Democrats that those maps last year were unconstitutional, she's gone now, and there are four Republicans who the expectation is will all stick together in terms of their ruling on the congressional maps, or on the legislative maps.

And we'll just have to wait and see.

- The state district maps is a separate matter.

They've got a short timeline.

The commission is going to meet and talk about that.

Got a thought from Susan, who says, "Republicans got their way with the Congressional maps and with the Republicans dragging their feet again on the state maps, they'll probably get their way again with a nasty map drawn and a Supreme Court that's friendly toward them.

Hopefully the proposed amendment will see the light of day next year."

And that's the amendment to take the power out of the hands of politicians.

- Yeah, and that's interesting because if indeed, I mean, Republicans won seats in the House and Senate under those maps that they drew last year that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled were unconstitutionally gerrymandered, but were put in place for the election by a federal court.

So Republicans won seats.

So to try to protect the incumbents that they already have and the ones that they got last year, that's a challenge.

So it remains to be seen what they're going to do with those maps.

If they're gonna just submit the maps that were drawn last year that got them more seats, are they gonna try to tweak those maps at all?

Governor Mike DeWine was at an event yesterday and we asked him what's gonna happen, is there gonna be a map?

And he said the process is gonna go forward and he expects that they're gonna meet Secretary of State Frank LaRose's deadlines.

Now, his deadline was September 22nd.

He wants those maps in place and approved, and public meetings, all these things that need to happen by September 22nd.

But the drop-dead date apparently is October 23rd.

That's the date that he says, "Hey, we've got to be done with this, litigation, all of it, it's got to be over so that we can move forward to get to that March primary."

- So on the idea of an amendment next year to take the power out of the hands of politicians, citizens, not politicians, resubmitted its petition summary language to Attorney General Dave Yost this week.

Yost had rejected the earlier language.

That continues.

Got a thought from Bob.

He says, "What steps can Secretary of State LaRose and Auditor Yost take to cripple Maureen O'Connor's 15-member redistricting commission proposal before it gets on the ballot in 2024?"

He's suspicious it won't make it.

So we now have the new language.

What do we see?

- Well, I will say that there are two former Supreme Court justices involved in this effort, so certainly some people who really know the law.

It's not unusual for a petition summary to be rejected by the attorney general's office the first time around, and a lot of groups come back multiple times.

I mean, the qualified immunity folks have come back six times and still haven't gotten theirs through, but other groups have, including ballot issues that you've seen before.

So I don't know that the expectation is that it's going to be quashed, at least at the attorney general level.

Then it goes to the ballot board and they have to look at it and decide, the ballot board gets to decide if it's one constitutional amendment or multiple ones.

And so that's another step in the process.

So this is a lengthy process to get to the ballot next year.

And that's why these groups say they dropped their challenge over the congressional maps, so they can work on all the steps it will take to get a redistricting amendment to put it in the hands of this 15-member citizens commission before voters next year.

- Got one more thought on that, that's from Mitzi.

She says, "Unconstitutional is meaningless in Ohio.

Long ago, 20 years, say, the school funding system in Ohio was declared unconstitutional.

We still have the same system, and now we face unconstitutional again with state maps.

I've lost faith in the word unconstitutional."

And that's Mitzi's point of view.

- And I think that that is really critical here.

If indeed the redistricting proposal for the Citizens Commission does get onto the ballot, what happens in this whole process again could play a role in whether that passes or not.

If people are frustrated and they don't trust the system and they're angry, are they more likely to appoint a citizen's commission to do that constitutional amendment and move that way, and move it away from the seven-member, politician-dominated Ohio Redistricting Commission?

I think that that is potentially something that could play a role here.

- Let's talk about some other stuff going on down at the State House.

A new bill would change how voters register in Ohio.

It would require voters to register with a party 30 days before an election, and end the current system that allows voters to choose their ballots on primary day.

So the idea is that people could go in and just say, "I'm a Republican today," because they want to vote in that particular primary.

But I thought that you still had to sort of promise, or swear some sort of fealty to that party when you come in and do it.

This would change that process and make it clear that you're a Republican or a Democrat.

- Yeah, I think you'd have to register 30 days before the election.

The whole idea is there's a concern about people coming in and saying, "I'm a" whatever, and voting for the candidate they think their preferred candidate of the other party could beat.

And there's been talk over the years, I mean, talk radio talked about it a lot with, you know, "Go in and vote for this Democratic candidate, because we think our Republican candidate can beat this Democratic candidate."

And so this tries to get to that.

And the question is though, will it actually work, I think, to bring more voters into the system?

Because primary voters, it's a pretty low percentage.

And so whether this actually does bring more people in and get them to pick the strongest candidate they think would be appropriate, that's a good question.

- One of the things that's been criticized with this though is that people who consider themselves independent, so don't want to go and actually register, even though you technically register by voting in a primary, who want to switch primaries or who want to go in and vote for an issue that might be on a primary ballot, they would be disenfranchised.

- Yeah, I mean, like for me, I don't vote in primaries, but I will vote when there is an issue on the ballot.

I ask for an issues-only ballot.

And so yeah, if you can't do that and you don't want to be affiliated with either the Republican party or the Democratic party, you lose that opportunity.

And it also just, I think potentially is problematic for people who just don't want to be affiliated.

They want to vote Republican this time and Democratic next time, and they don't want to get all of the bombardment that comes from being affiliated with the either party, because that's when you start getting the calls and the mailers, and the people visiting your door and everything.

So there are some, I think there are some questions here.

- All right, one other bit of legislation or proposed legislation I'd like to talk about.

And that is a new effort to ban the death penalty that's taking shape now.

It's a bipartisan bill that would replace the death penalty with life without parole.

It's not the first time this has been suggested.

What's interesting is that one of the staunchest advocates for the death penalty, State Representative Jean Schmidt, is now on board as an anti-death penalty advocate.

- Yeah, she is a conservative.

I mean, she is a fervent opponent of abortion rights.

She even talked about whether birth control could be banned and suggested that might be something that should be considered.

I mean, she's a very strong conservative.

For her to be attached to this, I think really gives a little bit more gravitas to the Republican side of this, because for a long time the effort to abolish the death penalty was a Democratic-only event.

I mean, Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio has sponsored this bill I think 12 times since she's been in the legislature.

And typically, only Democrats would be on board with it.

But over the years, we've started to see more and more Republicans, especially Republicans who say that they are pro-life and they feel that the death penalty kind of violates that pro-life principle.

And so, it's very interesting to watch this develop and it's happening in other states as well.

I asked Governor Mike DeWine about this the other day and whether he had any comment on it.

He didn't, but he's also said there aren't gonna be any executions.

So I think that this is a move that we're starting to see made by conservatives because they're concerned about the life implications there like I just mentioned, but also the cost and how much it takes to prosecute a death penalty case, from the local level all the way up to the Supreme Court level.

- There's also the question of whether you can execute someone humanely.

The lethal injection method in Ohio was deemed cruel and unusual punishment.

That's why we haven't seen any executions here.

And the fact the governor has said, "We're gonna leave it to the lawmakers to figure out what method would pass muster."

- Right, and he's talked about too, the difficulty in obtaining drugs to actually carry out those executions.

But you know, prosecutors say this is still an important tool.

To have this death penalty statute on the books gives them something that they can use when it comes to negotiations with some of the worst-of-the-worst cases.

And so they don't want to see this happen.

But if you cannot actually carry out executions, then the argument can be made that really the death penalty statute is toothless and has no reason to continue to be.

(dramatic staccato music) - The Charter Amendment to earmark 2% of the budget each year for citizens to decide, the so-called People's Budget, will be decided by Cleveland voters in November as originally proposed.

An effort to create an alternate amendment with a lower percentage was rejected by Cleveland City Council.

Some city council members were supporters of a People's Budget pilot program, but that has shifted for council as a whole to say, "Hey, we're gonna take 2% and make this not under our purview."

- Yeah, and the sort of (throat clears) the last one, kind of last chip to fall was Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer from Slavic Village.

And you know, she sent out a statement saying that she had tried to broker talks between the organizers of the participatory budgeting amendment and the rest of city council, and no deal could be reached.

And she said that, you know, the amendment now with that high of an amount from the budget every year is not something that she can support.

- Hmm, and you're hearing a lot of unions that have come out against it, most of the council members.

It's one of those things where it seems like it has an uphill battle.

One of the motivations for PB CLE might've been, "Okay, if we reduce it, will council get on board, and we can put something new on the ballot that would be a little more palatable to council?"

- Yeah, and I don't know how realistic that coming to an agreement like that ever was.

I know that, you know, the original proposal from Mayor Bibb that had some more support from council members was for a pilot program with some money from coronavirus relief funding, and that died in council.

And I think, you know, particularly City Council President Blaine Griffin was pretty staunchly opposed to this as sort of an idea that he doesn't think that this is the way to handle the budget, that it should be elected representatives.

So, you know, it was less, I think with him at least, it was less about the amount and more about the whole idea.

(dramatic staccato music) - The gorillas of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo better get an agent.

Netflix will stream the gorillas for two hours every Thursday in September.

It's 10 a.m. to noon, so not prime time, but definitely primate time.

Amy Eddings had a birdfeeder on the TV in front of her in the office for months and I couldn't stop watching it.

I imagine I'm gonna be a big watcher of the gorillas.

How about you, Anna?

- Well, that's during the workday, Mike.

What are you talking about?

I guess we could blow it up on the newsroom TVs.

- And it's Netflix, you can put it on later.

- That is... oh yeah, is that how it works?

I guess so.

- I think it is.

- Oh, interesting.

Well, anyways, I love, the gorilla exhibit is one of my favorites of the Cleveland Zoo, and I feel like I could always spend hours in there anyway, so absolutely, I think it's gonna be a great thing to watch.

- And there's fun and prizes involved in this too.

Viewers get the chance to help name the newborn gorilla.

- [Anna] Aw.

- That's part of that, via the zoo's Instagram account.

It's @clemetzoo, C-L-E-M-E-T-Z-O-O.

Voting begins during the episode last night it actually began, or... Yeah, and it concludes on September 12th.

The name with the highest votes will be revealed during the second episode on September 14th.

It's the cliffhanger, Matt.

(dramatic staccato music) Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on 89.7 WKSU, we'll mark Global Cleveland's "Welcome Week" by talking to several new arrivals who've started their own businesses.

Drew Maziasz will be in the host chair.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching, and stay safe.

(relaxing music) (energetic percussive music)