- Norfolk Southern Railroad has agreed in principle to a $600 million settlement in the East Palestine train derailment.

Secretary of State, Frank LaRose says President Biden may be left off the November ballot in Ohio due to a technicality.

And the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time will set standards on the amount of forever Chemicals in drinking water ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Norfolk Southern Railroad has agreed in principle to pay $600 million to settle a class action suit filed after last year's toxic train derailment in East Palestine.

But some in that community questioned whether it'll be enough to cover all the damage.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has announced new standards to reduce the amount of forever chemicals in drinking water systems.

Ohio Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, says President Biden is in danger of being left off the November ballot because the Democratic National Convention is less than 90 days before the election.

And state law requires names to be submitted at least 90 days before election day.

Democrats say there's zero chance the president won't be on the ballot.

And Akron Mayor Shama Malik said during his first state of the city speech that Akron Police will no longer engage in Chases for vehicle equipment violations.

Joining me to talk about those stories and more from Idea Stream Public Media, Akron Canton, reporter Anna Huntsman and environmental reporter Zaria Johnson, and in Columbus, Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kassler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a class action sued involving the East Palestine toxic train derailment if approved by the court critics say it's not enough.

Sorry.

How many plaintiffs are we talking about in this class Action and what's been the reaction to the proposal?

- Yeah.

The number of residents in the class action lawsuit is estimated to be in the thousands after the derailment, the chemical spill, and the controlled burn of chemicals last year, residents in East Palestine and the surrounding communities filed separate lawsuits that were eventually consolidated into one.

The plaintiff's attorneys, when it comes to the reaction, they feel this is a fair and reasonable outcome, especially considering the amount of the settlement and the sort of quick turnaround to get to this point compared to like other similar cases in the past.

So their outlook is more positive than maybe some of the residents might be now.

Yeah.

I - Heard some folks, some on, on national NPR residents saying it's, first of all, it's not enough that it ends up when you spread it out to be pennies per, but just a really big sticking point about the company saying Yeah, you know, no liability here.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

They're not taking any liability, wrongdoing or fault on Norfolk Southern with this settlement.

And Abigail Boar actually spoke to Jamie Wallace with the Unity Council for the East Palestine train derailment, who was pretty disappointed with the amount and with the fact that they are kind of skirting around accountability.

It comes to the public health effects and the environmental health effects that are sort of still being seen in the community.

- She also, Jamie Wallace did in a number of interviews compared the 600 million to the amount of bonuses that are paid to the executives of Norfolk Southern and was like, you know, this is pretty much peanuts.

- Right, right.

- If approved by the court, the payments could begin this year though, how will they decide who gets what?

- So they're gonna take into consideration like any sort of cost or damages or property damage, loss of business revenue decline in property value, or even receipts for like host hotel stays during that evacuation period.

And it's gonna involve like court appointed counsel meeting with court appointed counsel to determine how much people are gonna get people or business owners in these Palestinian surrounding communities.

And then taking into consideration any sort of documentation for cost - Separately there, there are injury claims, health claims, and as I understand it's a 10 mile radius for that, but people could literally fill out things saying, here's what my injury is and be compensated for those as well.

Right, - Right.

- Norfolk Southern for its part has said it's already spent $104 million in the community relief to East Palestine, the surrounding areas, 25 million for regional safety training center, 25 million in improvements to the city park, 21 million in direct payments to residents, 9 million to local first responders.

What the company's basically saying is, we, we made a mistake, obviously this accident happened, we've been paying, and now here's even more.

They're, they're saying, look at how much we're giving.

But if you're in that area impacted for a long time, I don't know how much would be enough.

- Yeah.

And it, it does raise the concern of like these, these residents, a lot of them still have like ongoing health concerns, ongoing long-term environmental concerns that are making them feel like less safe in their communities.

So it's kind of hard to put a monetary value on that.

- The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to have its final report in the coming months.

So we haven't seen the total on that yet - Either.

Right, right.

Yeah, that's expected to come in June.

But safety officials previously said that the derailment may have been caused by an overheated wheel bearing on one of the train cars.

So we'll just have to see if that finding is accurate when the report comes out and what else, you know, is in there.

- And one thing we should point out is it is a class action, but people don't all have to agree to be in that class action.

So while there's 600 million for everyone that agrees to be in it, and they'd get that share, you could be somebody who's a plaintiff with a claim that says, I'm not in that class action.

I'm still pursuing my suit against you.

Yeah, - Exactly.

So any plaintiff in the suit who kind of isn't down with the settlement or doesn't, doesn't fully agree with it, they are able to object to the settlement.

But attorneys have said that if enough people object or if too many people object, Norfolk Southern can decide to take the whole settlement off the table.

So it's kind of, you know, weighing the, the pros and cons here, I guess for those plaintiffs.

- The United States Environmental Protection Agency this week announced new standards to limit, so-called Forever Chemicals in public drinking water systems chemicals are collectively known as PFAS or Per and Polyflor Alcohol Substances, zaria, the new standards are legally enforceable.

And what I understand from Michael Reagan who is the, the EPA administrator in the US is that it's life changing.

It's the first time we've seen this kind of action.

- Yeah.

It's the first time we've seen the national drinking water limits for PFAS specifically.

And it's been a long time coming.

So, you know, this, this has kind of been in the works for a while and a lot of environmental organizations have been pushing for something like this for a long time.

But yes, so it's restricting the amount of PFAS, which is a class of harmful chemicals that is allowed to be in our drinking water.

And it defines these maximum contaminant levels or just maximum amounts that are allowed to be in the water for several different types of PFAS.

And then separate limits will be set on mixtures of PFAS and drinking water as well.

And the EPA, they say they expect between six and 10% of public water systems to be in violation and need to do some sort of work to get into compliance with the new standards.

But they're also saying that they're expecting, I think, between as much as a hundred million people to be, to benefit from this - Rule.

So a hundred million people that we've be perfect protected from the PFAS exposure.

Right.

The question though is, this is not going after, for example, the companies that make pfas.

This is not going after somebody who's spilling, you know, give it, it's a broad thing, but I'm spilling PFAS into the, into the system.

Right.

And so I get dinged for that.

What this is is it's going to public water systems and saying, it's your job to, to catch this at the gate.

- Exactly.

- The public water systems are saying that's gonna cost us a ton of money.

- Yeah.

And you know, it, I, I've started having some conversations with local public water systems, but it does seem like when it comes to some of the treatment options for the PFAS treatment processes, the cost is pretty expensive when compared to like the current treatment processes they're doing.

And it's relative to the size of the public water system.

But it does seem like if they have to implement these treatment options, that it'll be more expensive for them.

But that could lead to some trickle down to more expensive rates for customers as well.

- Part of this is many millions of dollars are gonna be opened up and provided for the public water systems through the bipartisan infrastructure law too.

So there is some money for, in order for them to do that, they need to start testing within the next three years.

There'll be money to be put into there, but Right.

They're saying some of the retrofits and you know, if you're gonna catch this particular kind of contaminant, it's gonna cost a whole lot of money to make sure that your plant can do that.

- Yeah.

And then when it comes to that funding that's available to them to do the testing and the treatment process upgrades, like there, that's gonna be through grant funding.

So these public water systems will also have to apply for those grants.

And then that raises the question for some of these public water systems, if they're large enough, or have the capacity or the staff to get all that grant application materials together to send it off and then hopefully get some money to make those changes.

What - About people that have private wells?

Are they impacted by these standards?

Well, - They're not under the same obligation as the public water systems to be at those, those maximum contaminant levels.

But they are eligible to apply for that same $1 billion of federal grant funding, so that if they wanna test their private wells to see if they have PFAS or if they know that their private well has PFAS, then they'll be able to apply and then make any changes if they get the funding.

- Secretary of State, Frank LaRose says, president Joe Biden could be kept off the Ohio ballot this November because the Democratic party won't officially nominate him until after a state imposed deadline to make the ballot Democrats say the president will be on the ballot.

Ohio's law requires presidential candidates to be certified for the ballot 90 days before the election.

And this year, that would be August 6th, but the Democrats won't formally nominate Biden until the party convention, which begins August 19th.

So there's a disparity there, Karen.

It's not the first time the party convention dates have been an issue for the existing law.

- The law that this all comes from was passed in 2010, and it was widely agreed upon.

But this part, this 90 day deadline, the deadline had been either 70 or 75 days.

It was moved to 90 days, and it kind of got very little notice when it happened.

And so it's happened twice now where both parties, their conventions have been after the 90 day deadline.

And, and 90 days is a really long time.

I mean, like you said, it's, it's gonna be an early August.

A lot of time the conventions are held late July, early August, sometimes even late August into September.

So now the question is, what's gonna be done about this?

'cause certainly the idea of Ohio not having President Biden as the Democratic candidate for president on the Ohio fall ballot seems really a big deal.

And Ohio's not the only state that's facing this, apparently it's happening in Alabama as well.

The question is gonna be what's gonna happen, what is gonna change?

And, and whether lawmakers Republicans who lead the legislature are going to go ahead and push forward on this and, and make some change.

- And what they'd push forward with would be saying, it's 60 days for this year.

Yes.

Or something that like that.

But let's note that this is an issue for the Democratic nominee, not the Republican nominee, because the Republican convention is earlier and it's, it's within that parameter then.

- Right.

And this is the first time only one convention has been affected.

And you know, certainly you could ask the question about the 90 day deadline and whether that's too far.

I mean, this came in a law that really dealt with how Ohio would pay benefits to veterans of the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan wars voters had approved those bonuses.

But this was a bill that would create how Ohio would pay those bonuses.

And so this was buried in the, in the midst of that bill.

And the 90 day deadline is, like I said, it's a long time Democrats say the legislative fix is not the only option that they're looking into.

There are other things that are possibly out there, but certainly the time is of the essence Larose's letter to Democrats said, if there is a legislative fix, it has to happen before May 9th.

And we are now what, April 12th?

- Well, - About that.

So not a lot of time - About about that.

So when you talked about in 2019, there was plenty of advance notice because it was both of the conventions.

And so there was some legislation passed and, and it was fixed.

But in this case, the Republican is fine.

The Democrat is the one that might be put off.

And Secretary of State, Frank LaRose doesn't mention it until now, his office says, we are busy with the primary, but there are a lot of eye rolls going on in the State House about how a Republican Secretary of State has now sort of done this very, what they consider very last minute.

- Well, and, and certainly the idea that he just ran in a very partisan and, and expensive and bitter US Senate primary certainly comes up the Democratic National Convention, which is in Chicago in late August.

It's, the date's been set for about a year.

And so, yeah, you could certainly say, Hey, the Secretary of State should have let the Democrats know.

But also you could say, Hey, why didn't Democrats check with the 50 states that they represent and, and that they intend to be on the ballot in and make sure that they're following all the laws.

Larose's office says they have lawyers who are doing, they're paid well to do these sorts of things.

It's, it's, it's a tough situation.

And the timeframe is really close.

I mean, at this point it's, it's do something or potentially risk not having Biden on the ballot, which just seems unthinkable.

- And you mentioned the US Senate race, Frank LaRose was involved in the primary, but we're talking about the race now with the incumbent Democrat, Sherrod Brown, and he's going up against Bernie Marino, the Clevelander and Northeast Ohioan as well, a businessman.

But if President Biden is not at the top of the Democratic ticket, the thinking is that suppresses the Democratic vote in general.

And so that could affect very greatly the Senate race.

- Oh, absolutely.

I mean, not having whoever your presidential candidate is in a presidential year on the ballot would certainly have a tremendous impact on all of the down ticket races.

And so obviously it's one of the reasons why Democrats want to make sure that biden's on the ballot, the chances of Biden winning Ohio just from trends and, and that sort of thing really are low.

But his presence on the ballot does potentially bring in more people to vote and it potentially helps democratic candidates.

So at least that's the view that the Democrats have, and they're trying to make sure that he is on the ballot.

- Akron Mayor Shama Molik announced during his first state of the city speech that police there will no longer chase drivers for vehicle equipment infractions.

He also said the city next year will begin a participatory budgeting process where citizens help decide where some public money is spent on a limited number of projects.

And also we talk about the search for a police chief.

And that's now down apparently to two deputy chiefs in the Akron Police Department.

The public will soon get a say on them, but there's been a lot of criticism to the mayor, and he's been responding to it that he should open up the search.

- So this has been an ongoing talking point for the past few weeks.

Now, this police chief search, because essentially the mayor says he ran into a roadblock where he can only hire internally for the police chief.

And he's pointing to a, a state law that basically says it must come through promotions.

Other cities have not followed that, they have used other rules and whatnot.

But he says there isn't a city law in the books that could supersede that.

So because of that, the highest ranking officers are the only ones that can be considered at this point because they both applied.

And so it's two deputy chiefs, Jesse Leeser and Brian Harding, who is currently the acting chief.

And while the mayor says he respects them and, and you know, they've had long careers in the department, and he's happy with that.

They're both white men.

And essentially there's been this call for a very long time for police reform in Akron reforming the department and the black elected officials of Summit County are saying, we need to have a more diverse pool of candidates for - This.

And not just a more diverse pool of candidates, but a more diverse police force.

- Absolutely.

Right.

So they're calling for that.

They're saying that you really can't make change if you don't see people that look like you in, in the department that's, that's policing the city.

And now the mayor did say that this is the most, the police department is the most diverse it's ever been.

I mean, it's obviously still, I think only, oh gosh, I can't remember the percentage, but it's less than 20% people in the department are, are black.

And so, so yeah, absolutely.

That's what's been going on.

- Mayor spent a lot of time on public safety, the police department as well.

The thing that jumped out to me, the key change was that there would no longer be pursuits of vehicles for vehicle, for vehicle equipment infractions.

And in fact, that was the genesis of the Jalen Walker Chase that ended up in his death, - In my opinion, this was maybe the biggest news to come out of his state of the city speech.

This is, this is a change that has been called for, for some time.

And the former police chief had said they were working on it potentially thinking of changing the policy.

And now it's here.

They will no longer chase for minor things like a broken taillight, a broken mirror.

And as you mentioned, that's what started the, the whole situation with Jalen Walker is he had a broken taillight and then he didn't stop.

And then there was a police chase.

And, you know, it ended in unfortunately him being fatally shot by police.

And so, and that, and that has sparked so much of this call for police reform in the city, you know, over the past few years.

So that was a big change.

And he said that there are some other things coming down the line, such as what, how police can do crowd control at, at protests and, and large demonstrations using pepper spray and that kind of stuff, using chemical irritants, which has been deployed in the past, including on our own reporters here.

So, so that's, that's coming down the pike - Right now.

The, in fact, today, I think there's gonna be a press conference about this or some, I heard something on, on the air with Amy Ings this morning.

The Akron Police Department has a shooting situation.

Yeah.

15-year-old teen who survived the shooting was shot in the hand, but this is not an equipment violation.

It was a call that someone was pointing a gun at houses.

It turns out it was a fake gun, which the kid kept saying.

But the question here is whether the police officer acted too rashly in shooting.

- Yeah.

The body cam footage was released on Monday.

And from what we can tell, it seems like the officer pulls up and says, Hey, can, where are you going?

Hey, can I see your hands?

And then you hear the, the shot.

So we can't really see what was going on.

We can only really see the window of the police car in the footage, but it, it looks like it happened very quickly.

So that is something that people are, are really up in arms about here in, in the city is whether that happened too quickly, whether the teen already had his hands up or whether he did still had the gun in the video, you can see the fake gun lying on the ground after the they, after he shot, after he shot.

And there, yeah, I was trying to think of the word.

They put handcuffs on him at first and all that.

- Got it.

Couple of other things about the state of the city.

And one other thing about violence, the mayor noted that gun violence in the city is a concern and that he's going to be deploying something in the summer that he hopes will head that off.

- It's called a, a street team where it's people that are trained, but they also maybe have had experiences in the criminal justice system experiences with gun violence.

And they'll actually just kind of go out into neighborhoods and talk to community members.

So it's not a police, it's a, it's a messengers go.

That's what they're called.

They go out into the community and have these conversations.

I thought - Participatory budgeting was interesting 'cause in Cleveland that was a big Yeah.

Hullabaloo and then ended up not happening.

The mayor says they're gonna give it a try.

There, it sounds like it's limited to a number of projects in certain - Wards.

It's in the very early stages of the process.

This kind of, I mean, the mayor has talked about this a little bit this year so far, but they, he actually presented the budget to the community before it was voted on by city council.

And I was at those meetings and a lot of people were saying, man, we have a lot of thoughts, but it doesn't seem like this is gonna go anywhere because this needs to be passed by the end of March.

So the community was asking, Hey, can we see this sooner?

And so the mayor has said, yes, we absolutely this next budget cycle, maybe in the summer when we're starting to look at the capital budget, what the city's gonna invest in.

Could we maybe take it to ward meetings and have each ward vote on a project that they, that they really care about?

So there are really no details yet, but the merit is, is ex he seems to be really interested in it and in some form.

- And last thing, the city is seeking input on how to transform the inner belt.

Big topic in Akron.

- Oh yeah.

This is a decommissioned stretch of a highway that never ended up panning out than it when it was built, built, but it, it decimated a community because all these businesses and homes in a predominantly black area were had to be taken out in, in order to build that highway.

And so now it just sits there.

And there have been conversations for years now of what to do and could we empower the community that was affected by it in this process.

So now what he's looking at is basically taking proposals of what could be done.

Community members have a lot of different ideas, so they do wanna hear from the public, but they're, they're gonna be looking at some proposals in the coming years.

- Governor DeWine, state of the state speech Wednesday focused heavily on education and policies aimed at Ohio's children.

He announced plans for childcare vouchers to help families and endorse legislation that would limit cell phone use in schools.

Karen, how would childcare vouchers work and how would the state cover that cost?

- Well, it looks like what the state plans to do is extend a voucher program to families who make up to 200% at the federal poverty level, which is about $660,000 a year for a family of four.

And the state would subsidize that it looks like using money from the federal government, from the American Rescue plan funds that the state still has available.

And while that is something that got some support from both Republicans and Democrats, Republicans said they are concerned about the cost, though Democrats say they actually want that eligibility raised even more so that you've got more opportunity for people to access publicly funded childcare because it's been acknowledged that Ohio really has some serious issues with regard to affordable childcare and that that's something that potentially harms the state in terms of economic growth, because people have to have childre if they're gonna work.

- The governor wants there to be cell phone use limitation in schools.

He wants that now to be a state thing.

Before he had said he wanted districts to do it, he wants lawmakers to try again to draft a social media bill to protect children.

All of these are things that he's talking about, but his relationship with those in the legislature isn't exactly, Rosie, is there any chance any of these ideas of his will get any traction?

- I think the, the cell phones in classes thing is really interesting because house speaker Jason Stevens said after the speech that that's something that he thinks schools already have the power to do, so the legislature doesn't need to get involved in that.

But then Senate president Matt Huffman, who I should note, they did these separate responses because they're likely to run against each other for speaker next year.

So there's a little bit of a relationship issue between the two of them as well.

But Huffman said he thought it was a great idea for schools to have policies that ban cell phones.

So there's maybe not agreement on that.

But certainly the message that cell phones are a problem, that social media is a problem for young people, especially teenagers.

It has gotten through the legislature.

I mean, this proposal on requiring social media companies to get parental permission from anyone under 16 who wants to use them, that was in the budget.

That's now the subject of a lawsuit.

And it's not gone into effect in Ohio right now.

But it's something that I think there are a lot of legislators who really like that idea and wanna do something.

You've got lawmakers on both sides who are concerned about that.

- Years of planning paid off Monday, the total solar eclipse dazzled thousands throughout Akron Cleveland and across a swath of Ohio and no traffic jams to be found.

And despite it being early April when Ohio Clouds took the hint and cleared out before the big event, the big question is what to do with all those eclipse classes.

First thing is, I looked at the weather today and said this, so could have been Monday.

Yeah, right.

And I looked at the weather yesterday and said, I mean, we got lucky.

- Yeah.

We got so lucky.

- It wasn't incredible.

Ecse Miracle.

Yeah, right.

- Truly - It was.

I mean, it was like sunny, pretty much.

Well, I'm, I was down in Akron, and so we didn't see, I know Cleveland, it was rainy in the morning, but for the most part here it was a little bit cloudy.

And then as soon as it hit noon, it, they just cleared away and it was full sun.

Wasn't it - Spectacular?

- It was spectacular.

Yeah.

I, I mean, the moment itself, when it started getting darker and chilly, I was like, wow.

Yeah, this is really - Cool.

Karen, you were gonna head north a little bit, did you?

- I did.

My son who wants to be a rocket scientist actually, and finds this all stuff very interesting, wanted to go to Edgewater Park and we, we viewed it there and it was amazing to be in a park with a whole bunch of people and how everybody reacted to it.

You know, when when the mo when the sun disappeared and people were kind of yelling and everything, when the sun came back, people applauded.

It was just, it was wonderful.

- And we had a story on our website in terms of what to do with the Eclipse classes.

There are organizations that collect them Yeah.

And are gonna use them where the, where the eclipse might go next?

Yeah.

- So you can drop 'em off at the Cleveland Public Library, the Cuyahoga County Pub Public Library, and there are a bunch of other locations through the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District.

They're gonna be sending 'em off to Astronomers Without Borders, who are gonna reuse any eclipse glasses that are still functioning, sending 'em off to other countries that are gonna experience the eclipse sooner than we will - Next.

Most local libraries are taking them as well, not just in Cleveland area.

Good.

- Yeah.

Perfect.

Yep.

- Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 7 WKSU, five months after Ohioans voted for issue one and placed reproductive health protections in the state constitution.

What is the state of abortion access?

We'll talk to experts about the implementation of the amendment and how it's impacting health decisions.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.