Welcome to the Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable from Ideastream Public Media.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost won't finish out his term through the end of this year, a move that could shake up state government six months before the November election.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr addressed a City Club crowd last night while protestors filled the Euclid Avenue sidewalk outside.

An independent review of Akron's police department recommends 58 action steps to improve policing.

And Cleveland has launched a trapping program to help residents deal with nuisance critters.

And joining me to discuss all of those stories and more news from the week from Ideastream Public Media reporter Zaria Johnson and Deputy Editor of News Glenn Forbes.

Good to see both of you.

I'm Ideastream's nuisance critter.

I'm here again.

Sorry.

Can get rid of them.

Yeah, especially.

Yes, exactly.

Dealing with it all the time.

Very good.

And in Columbus, a woman who traps varmints using nothing but a microphone.

Ideastream's Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Hey, Karen.

Hey.

Good morning.

Very good to have you with us.

And you can join us, too, by sending an email to SOI@Ideastream.org.

All right.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Attorney General Dave Yost announced yesterday he's resigning eight months before his term ends, and a year after being forced out of the governor's race when the Republican Party endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy for the nomination.

Yost will take a leadership role with the national Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that advocates on issues such as abortion and religious liberty.

Governor Mike DeWine will name his replacement, and it could set off a huge chain reaction in the government.

Karen, you broke this story.

The GOP endorsement last year really seemed to take the political wings off of Dave Yost, and there was some speculation about what might come next.

Now we know.

Well, this was an interesting story because it happened.

It broke early in the evening.

I mean, I'd been kind of following what was going on.

And then there's this blog called The Rooster that suggested that this was going to happen.

And so I was able to put this together pretty quickly.

It's not really a big surprise in a way, because the way that the law works is if an officeholder leaves office after the primary, well somebody has to fill that office and it can't be filled by anybody who ran in the primary, you know, like an opponent.

And so, or they could I mean, it could be filled, I guess, but they wouldn't be able to run again.

So this is kind of a weird position here, because this person will either be, like you said, a caretaker or a placeholder or this person could be somebody like Keith Faber, the state auditor who is running for attorney general, who will be on the ballot for attorney general later.

It's kind of an interesting position.

Yeah.

And so what do we think the governor might do?

Because there's a lot of people speculating if he if he names the auditor to take the AG's job, then the person running for auditor who holds another position would move and another and another, and we'd have a huge shakeup in government, which could happen.

And then each of those people will run as a GOP incumbent.

Or would the governor be more conservative and say, let's put in a placeholder, a lawyer I know, someone who's worked in some other part of state government, something of that nature, or perhaps a deputy that's already in the department.

Well, Governor Mike DeWine knows well what the attorney general's office does because he was attorney general for eight years.

He made that clear in his statement yesterday when he said that he's going to give this careful consideration.

But yeah, if Faber is appointed, then that opens up the auditor's office.

Secretary of state Frank LaRose is running for auditor.

That opens up his office.

Treasurer Robert Sprague is running for secretary of state.

That opens up his office.

So, yeah, there'd be kind of a domino effect here.

And I'm not sure that DeWine would want to shake up state government that big.

And the optics of that might not look really great, but it would potentially give those office holders an advantage of running as incumbents.

So I guess it remains to be seen here.

DeWine certainly knows a lot of lawyers, and there are people in his administration that are going to be looking for work because he's leaving office.

I do have to say, I'm a bit surprised there haven't been more situations like this involving appointments by President Trump to federal positions, because Ohio is such a strongly Republican state, has a lot of Republican officeholders.

But that may be because many of our officeholders are older and Trump seems to be targeting younger people in his federal positions because they can stay in those positions longer.

Let's talk about where the attorney general is going.

I mentioned it's the Alliance Defending Freedom.

This is a controversial group.

It's one that the Southern Poverty Law Center says is an anti-LGBTQ hate group.

It has been involved in a number of Supreme Court victories, which is something that, that Yost, played up.

And some of those victories involved overturning Roe v Wade.

It involved, not having, a cake decorator not having to sell a cake to a gay couple, that was getting married.

So, let's talk about his decision to join that particular group and, and sort of the the positioning of that group.

Well, this is a Christian conservative legal law firm, and a lot of the issues that they championed are issues that Dave Yost has talked about.

I mean, Yost was really clear in his campaign for governor, the short lived campaign for governor, that he is Christian, which, you know, that became an issue in the governor's race, or at least one of Ramaswamy's opponents tried to make it an issue.

But, that was certainly interesting.

When Ramaswamy was endorsed by the head of the group, the conservative Christian lobbying group citizens for or Citizens for Christian Vote.

Citizens for Christian Values.

They've changed names.

in the last couple of years.

But anyway, so back to the ADF, the, Alliance Defending Freedom.

It's been involved in fights over abortion, trans athletes and girls sports.

The law on women's education and sports, known as title nine as it relates to gender identity, human trafficking.

These are all issues that Yost has worked on.

And so it almost seems like a natural move for him to join an organization like this.

And I think we're talking about the Center for Christian Virtue.

There you go.

That's.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

It used to be Citizens for Community Values.

Now it's center for Christian Virtue I apologize.

Same initials.

Yeah, right.

Okay.

Fair.

You have, voters were not in the mood to take on more taxes in Tuesday's primary, whether they were property taxes or the latest trend in school districts, income taxes, many school issues were asking for more money.

And those all went down in defeat.

Some of the renewals did pretty well, though.

And Glenn, the tax payers, payers have made it clear they're being crushed on property tax demands.

That message didn't waver.

It seemed in the primary.

Yeah, you summarized that well.

It didn't seem to matter if you were asking for new taxes, whether they were property or income taxes.

Those were being rejected.

The renewals, were mostly approved.

It was an interesting strategy by some districts to say, listen, there's a lot of talk around property taxes, talk about abolishing property taxes.

Let's try income taxes.

But that didn't work either.

Just one of the 11, in northeast Ohio passed.

It wasn't all bad news.

When we talk about some of the bigger districts, Lorain managed to pass their levy, averting 100, projected 160 layoffs.

But other big districts.

Parma hasn't passed one since 2011.

That one failed by a 20 point margin.

Mentor was unable to pass, a 4.9 mill levy.

And you hear, at least in measure, there was some talk among, the school board members and some advocates saying, look, this is administrative bloat, right?

And that's a kind of a common argument you hear against some of these, levies, whether they be property or income taxes.

So, you know, remember, again, in a primary, you're talking about 20 to 30% voter turnout, but it didn't seem to matter whether it was income, right?

Or property taxes.

If it was a new tax, it was going to get rejected mostly.

And so we're seeing school districts ask for income taxes because of all of this pushback.

We've heard about property taxes.

There's an effort afoot statewide to repeal property taxes.

And so they said, okay, how about a different kind of tax?

I think the word here is tax, not property or income.

That's exactly right, Mike.

Parma in particular, like Glenn mentioned, they failed by almost had 24 point margin.

And they said we could have lightened the load on the property tax if this income tax levy passed in particular.

But it seems to be a trend right now.

People don't want taxes, period.

Like Glenn said.

So that's what we're seeing.

And think about the timing too.

I mean, Sound of Ideas yesterday, right?

Talking about high gas prices.

And everybody sees it when they're driving around.

I mean, again, just kind of bad timing for these districts.

When you go into your polling place and you're thinking about an increase in property or income taxes, if you're worried about food and putting gas in your car, does it really matter which which way it comes from?

So there were some timing issues associated with the schools, but I think this is a trend where people, people who are motivated to vote, particularly in a primary like this, are going to say we don't want any new taxes, whether they're income or property.

Karen, you're looking at this from a more global perspective statewide.

What are we seeing on school issues statewide?

And what are the what the electorate saying about these, whether they're income or property tax levies?

Well, the major school groups in Ohio say that this isn't necessarily really bad news in terms of the way levies have been done, because income tax levies, there were a lot of them.

They tend to fail, and there were fewer totals to school levies on the ballot and renewal levies on the primary ballot than in recent years.

Also, more school district income tax levies, more new levies, more continuing levies, so that mix there resulted in a lower passage rate than, say, last year.

But school groups are not yet ready to be really concerned about it.

But, you know, obviously this property tax struggle is real for many people, including people who do work for schools.

So there's going to be a lot of discussion, I think, as we get through this year about what do we do about property taxes and all the things that property taxes fund.

Libraries did well, though, in a lot of these cases, cross state.

And that's pretty typical 12 of 14 libraries across the state pass.

That is again, pretty typical.

And I think it really does show the difficulty that the situation is because people vote for levies.

That's why property taxes are where they are.

People want these local services.

But then there's real concern when these property taxes go up.

So it's a it's a complicated situation.

And so again, I think there's going to be a lot of discussion about where do we go from here and how can we help taxpayers while not cutting the services that they want.

Let's talk about one specific local issue I know, Zaria, that you keep an eye on as our environment reporter.

And a lot of folks were, talking about this in Richland County.

Our Ohio newsroom did a story on this, prior to to the actual election.

And it was about large scale solar and wind projects essentially banning those.

And property owners saying, hey, we should have the right to determine what we should do.

And there's a big pushback against it.

In the end, the voters sided with the politicians there who said, yes, we're putting in this ban.

And, residents in Richland, Richland County did a lot of legwork just to get the issue on the ballot so that they had the opportunity to vote for it.

But it did.

The ban did pass, by a pretty slim margin, about less than 53% of the vote.

So it'll move forward.

As presented by county commissioners last year, 11 of the 18 townships in the county will ban these large scale, solar and wind farm projects.

But the remaining townships and other municipalities in the county will be unaffected.

And, Karen, this vote came after a state law allowed decision making on these alternative energy projects to be blocked at the local level, and not necessarily just a statewide decision.

Does that apply also to fossil fuels or no?

Under a 2021 state law, It does not.

That law gave local officials power to kill wind and solar projects, but specifically carved out oil wells and gas plants.

So no.

SOI@Ideastreamm.org is the email address for you to join our conversation.

I'd love to have you talk about whether it's the elections or the changes in state government with Dave Yost leaving, or any of the other topics that we're going to be addressing during the program today.

Feel free to shoot an email to SOI@Ideastream.org.

Karen, two marquee races as we move toward November are going to be the Ohio governor's race for the US Senate as well.

Big money is going to be poured into them.

No surprises in the primary.

But, but we're now essentially in election season.

Oh, yeah.

We've been in election season.

So are we ever out of the election season?

Right?

I know it's really amazing because we're talking about four year offices in the Senate.

We're talking about a six year office.

And yet it feels like there's already always somebody running.

And the US Senate race is interesting because whoever wins this race, which will be either, incumbent Republican Senator John Husted or Democratic former Senator Sherrod Brown, they'll only be in that office for two years, and they'll have to run again for the full term.

So this is it's just we're we're definitely in it.

And so you're going to start seeing a lot more negative ads, a lot more negative stories, especially at the top of the ticket with Vivek Ramaswamy on the Republican side and Amy Acton on the Democratic side.

There's going to be a lot of money in those races because Republicans want to hang on to those offices.

Democrats feel that there's vulnerability here.

And in those statewide offices, many of them in these primaries were not competitive.

There was one that people expected to be pretty close.

That was Brian Hambley running against Allison Russo in the Secretary of State's, the primary on the Democratic side, and it ended up not being very close.

Yeah.

And I think that really showed that having some name recognition and that sort of thing.

I mean, Allison Russo has been in the legislature.

She was the House minority leader.

That may have played a role here, because the Democratic Party did not endorse in that race.

And so, you know, it's it's it's interesting to see how endorsements have played.

I mean, going to the Republican treasurer's race there, Jay Edwards, a former state representative, was endorsed by Vice President JD Vance and Senator Bernie Mareno.

His opponent, Christina Roegner, she's a state senator from Hudson, was endorsed by Vivek Ramaswamy.

And Edwards ended up winning, especially because of his strength in Southern Ohio.

And what I think was really interesting here is that there were, you know, when you start talking about party affiliation, you can't tell who or how who a person voted for, but you can tell who that voter is in terms of affiliation with a party.

And there were a lot of Republican ballots that were pulled more, because there are about 1.4 million Republican voters in Ohio.

And then on the Democratic side, there were about, I think, 870,000 ballots on the 707, 791,000.

There we go.

But what I'm trying to get to here is that Republicans seem to vote for Republicans, Democrats, all the Democrats in Ohio, all the registered Democrats would have had to turn out for Amy Acton to have gotten the votes.

She did.

That suggests that there are independent voters that are looking at Amy Acton, and that's the group that both these candidates need.

Glenn, let's talk about some of the Congressional races.

And one particularly a lot of them weren't close.

Again, these are primaries.

They're usually pretty well decided a forehand.

But in this case, the seventh district Congressman Max Miller.

No real challenge there, but he's going to be facing now, Brian Poindexter, who ran against seven other people.

And one of them, a pretty popular name, ran for governor once, was the executive in Cuyahoga County Ed Fitzgerald.

But Poindexter vanquished them.

What was the secret to that?

I think it's that, I don't want to call it a throwback, but let's call it a return to that Blue Dog Democrat idea.

Poindexter, a union ironworker, played on that quite a bit.

He did get money, from a Blue Dog Democrat group.

And think Sherrod Brown's messaging.

Right?

Dignity of work.

Trying to get the unions back, on the Democratic side.

And it's interesting because when you look at the national races, some of the unions, though, they'll say we're endorsing the Democrat.

We know a lot of our rank and file are going to vote Republican.

But we're endorsing Democrat, I think what, what what Democrats in this area are trying to do is get that union vote back, again, kind of playing on that dignity of work idea.

You see Poindexter in the hard hat, you know, in some of his ads and things like that.

He did get money from the Jobs and Democracy PAC as well.

So this will be an interesting race.

The Cook Political Report out of The New York Times still says it's about five points in favor toward the Republican Max Miller.

But it's kind of that return to, you know, trying to get back some of those union voters and Poindexter is the vehicle for that.

It seems, in this area, you mentioned that PAC money, that PAC money is, fueled with, artificial intelligence money, Anthropic, folks that are, involved in that are, funding that PAC that, that, that after the fact became a big issue for, for his opponent.

It did.

Ed Fitzgerald didn't like that.

He said it was, you know, trying to they're trying to hijack the race, by, by putting this money into it.

But, you know, Poindexter is also, he was quick, on the email Tuesday night, after, you know, declaring victory.

And he's got, you know, some impressive endorsements to the Democratic side.

Bernie Sanders.

Ro Khanna, these these representatives from Congress and in the state, Nikki Antonio, the Senate minority leader, out of Lakewood, who's, who's been in state politics in this area, a well-known name in this area for a long time.

So he's got the endorsements, that can drive people, certainly on the Democratic side to the polls.

So I think that was some of the secret there.

And maybe your, you know, working class area, blue collar area.

And, I think that that probably won the day for Poindexter Real quickly.

Another race.

Marcy Kaptur, the incumbent in the ninth district, she barely squeaked by against Derek Merrin last election.

She's going up against him again.

Sets up the rematch.

Right.

The dream rematch between, Derek Merrin and Marcy Kaptur.

Who, you know, her district has seen a lot of geographical changes.

It used to kind of snake, closer into Cleveland.

Now it ends in the Vermilion area to the east.

Kaptur, longtime Democrat, longest serving woman in Congress, beat, Merrin by about 2,300 votes in the last, general election.

So, should be close again, you would think.

And, Merrin beat, Josh Williams, who is a fairly well known state representative, and Madison Sheahan, who was an ICE deputy director, but he was able to, hold off those challenges.

All right, Karen, last thing on elections.

Two Supreme Court races in November.

Depending on voters, we may see an entirely Republican court.

Yes, there is one elected Democrat in statewide office, and that is Jennifer Brunner on the Supreme Court.

And we had the primary on Tuesday for the four Republicans who wanted the chance to run against her.

And that primary was won by Colleen O'Donnell, who is the daughter of former Justice Terrance O'Donnell.

And, you know, now it's going to be O'Donnell versus Brunner.

And if indeed O'Donnell wins, that would mean that there could be no Democrats in statewide elective office in Ohio.

But of course, we don't know what's going to happen in the other races that are on the ballot.

All right.

Got some feedback from some of our, listeners as we talked about school levies, etc.. Ken says "I'm 77 years old, have never voted against a school levy until a few years ago.

Until funding for private religious schools stops, as unlikely as that seems, I won't be voting yes again.

And that's Ken's point of view.

Also, Steven says "If there was a robust public discussion ahead of time about what needs to be funded and how to fund it, they could all avoid the unnecessary series of trial and error ballot measures and simply get the best proposal on the ballot the first time."

That's Stevens point of view.

We'd appreciate yours as well.

SOI@Ideastream.org.

Akron's police department needs to modernize its use of force policies, improve training, and increase transparency to improve policing and rebuild community trust.

Those were some of the recommendations from an independent review of current policies released by the city yesterday.

And Glenn, let's talk about the framework for the review for this police department.

What do we hear?

It was kind of a long time coming.

You may recall a couple of years ago, the mayor, Akron Mayor Shammas Malik, wanted to hire a group that, was headed by former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Council decided that price tag was too high, $640,000.

So they revised that down, where they put a limit of $350,000 for the review.

So they got the Police Executive Research Forum brought in.

Everybody agreed on the price tag.

They agreed on the framework.

They work with the University of Akron.

They interviewed a lot of, not only, you know, community members and stakeholders, but a lot of officers as well.

And, of course, we should mention that the use of force, has certainly been controversial in Akron, when you look at the shooting of Jalen Walker, the fatal police shooting of Jayland Walker, in 2022, Jazmir Tucker in 2024.

So that's kind of the backdrop to all this.

And a lot of interviews and Ideastream Public Media reporter Matt Richmond dove into this, and there's a lot of mention of a Supreme Court case.

Graham versus Connor and the precedent set, their objective, objective reasonableness.

Basically, an officer should be evaluated by whether a reasonable officer would have acted the same way, not by the motivations of the officer or whether force could have been avoided in hindsight.

And what the Police Executive Research Forum said is, without fail, every officer mentioned this court case, and every officer meant every person they interviewed affiliated with the police department.

And that was unusual.

And they said it was unusual that, you know, a casual mention is sometimes unusual, let alone pretty much every person that they interviewed talking about this.

So what Shamnas Malik said about that is that can be the floor of expectations.

Is this court case what was established in this court case?

He's basically saying we can do better.

That it's not the ceiling.

That case is not the ceiling.

We can do better.

They also talked a lot about, in the recommendations, the quote, the sanctity of life that appeared many times.

It's like that should be more on the minds of officers, the sanctity of life, and trying to avoid some of these use of force situations.

There were five different planks of areas of reform that were necessary.

There were 58 action steps, one of which was to put a dashboard up for the public to see.

And they did.

And the city says they've made 18 of those 58.

They've promised that people are going to see these action steps as they're being done, in real time.

Yeah.

The dashboard was one of the big things that is now up, publicly available.

But it's a lot of these things that we talk about.

And when we talk about the city of Cleveland or Akron or anywhere, we're talking about police reform, crisis intervention, communication, mental health crises.

You know, the themes are consistent, right?

When we talk about police reform and, transparency, obviously, as we mentioned, a big one, too, with getting that dashboard up and publicly available.

All right.

One other thing that I was surprised at going through that report is there was a point about duty to intervene, and what that meant was essentially, it would require police officers to act if they witnessed misconduct by other officers, and have protections against retaliation, if doing so.

That's the thin blue line that's being crossed there in this, in this report, when you, hear criticism of police unions or internal investigations, that is something that comes up, you know, from people who are criticizing them, is like, it's not objective, right?

If an if an officer or supervisor is kind of investigating themselves, there's that old line, we've investigated ourselves and we found that we've done nothing wrong.

And that applies in a lot of government agencies.

Right?

A lot of people say that this is an issue throughout government.

And, it's it's being said here that it is also an issue with police forces.

All right.

U.S.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, told a City Club of Cleveland audience last night that chronic disease is the biggest crisis we face as a nation, and he played up his Make America Healthy Again initiative.

Outside, about 100 protesters rallied to decry his handling of the nation's health, including his stance on vaccines, with one prominent sign reading "Welcome to Cleveland, Doctor Plague," Glenn, unlike Senator Bernie Mareno when he spoke at the City Club, the crowd inside the City Club did not interrupt or jeer during Kennedy's speech.

He had plenty of supporters in there.

He did.

And that, you know, you mentioned the Bernie Mareno appearance and that really seemed to kind of, change things at the city club or maybe, again, kind of return to what they wanted this to be, which is a forum where, again, First Amendment free speech.

Look, the majority of people out there, want this kind of interaction.

They want people to be able to protest outside.

They want the speaker to be able to be heard inside.

They want both sides heard.

I would say the majority of people are looking for forums like that and not to speak for the City Club, but I think the City Club is is after a forum like that and less of the kind of the jeering and the interrupting that we saw, when Bernie Mareno was, was at the City Club.

So, yeah, both sides, were able to be heard.

The audience was, you know, on both sides, as you said, respectful in their disagreement, I would say, and no issues outside.

So I think that's good news for everybody.

Zaria he talked a lot about the nation's poor health, and he blamed that essentially on our diet.

There are some of the things that he brought up that it seemed like everybody could get on board with, which is, yes, we we need to eat better.

Yes.

We should, have a better handle on hospital costs and, and the pricing for, for prescriptions.

He talked about having a, a dashboard where you could see what things cost before you bought them and said, you know, you get that for everything else you buy, and you should have it for this as well.

So there were some of these, the points, but specifically about the diet.

He was so on that he linked, a poor diet to the reason for, many chronic diseases here in the United States.

And he said that, revising dietary guidelines is something he's proud of accomplishing.

During his time so far, he said that flipping it around the food pyramid and moving different things to the top and also, removing unhealthy food from the SNAP benefits, the Supplemental Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is another, thing that can contribute to sort of turning the tide on, poor nutrition and then turning the tide on chronic health conditions.

Is there any chance that they would put Peanut M&Ms at the top?

I hope so, I believe they work great for me too.

I mean, there I'm expressing what the problem is.

He is, by the way, a fitness buff.

I saw this picture on social media.

The pull ups.

No that this was, Carl Munday.

our, friend, the former investigative reporter, had a picture of himself and RFK Jr working out at a club in the flats.

So obviously the secretary got here a little bit early and and got a workout in, before he got here, though.

Emelia Sykes expressed the sentiment that many of his detractors outside at the protest did.

They said he and she said, and they were agreeing.

He spews conspiracy theories and junk science.

And Glenn, a lot of this comes down to vaccines.

The the the secretary has tried to change the recommendations for vaccines for children and was blocked by a judge in that regard.

There is a committee that, recommends policy on vaccines.

He replaced the entire committee.

Some of them are anti-vaxxers, or people who certainly are more skeptical of vaccines.

That's really seems to be the one of the big bases of his, of his opposition.

I think I want to go back to something that you said about about the diets.

You know, it seems like that should be something that everybody could agree on.

I mean, these were formerly in terms of the diet stuff and things in our food, the food supply in the United States versus Europe.

Those are things that used to be, Democratic issues.

Right.

And I think you're correct in that I wish we could argue over what we want to argue about and agree on what we can agree about.

But things are so politicized now that, if there's one thing that we disagree about or even if it's a big thing like this vaccine issue, then we have to disagree about everything.

And then and we have to, you know, protest everything.

And, and disagree with every move that someone makes.

And that does happen, you know, on both sides.

But you're right.

The vaccine issue is a big one for a lot of people.

It's been a big one for the last six years since since the since the pandemic.

And you've got people kind of digging their heels in on both sides and saying, this should be, a choice.

As you mentioned, there, Robert Kennedy Jr.

has decided to, maybe change out some of the people that are more supportive of the vaccines.

He's clearly against vaccines.

People like Emelia Sykes are, are, are for them and think that they should continue.

So are most medical professionals.

Most medical professionals are for, you know, the vaccine and the vaccine schedule.

All right.

Many more stories for us to talk about on the Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable.

We're going to get to those in just a moment.

But first, here's Stephanie Haney to tell us about the Sound of Ideas next week.

Hello, Mike.

Here's what we have coming up next week on The Sound of Ideas.

We're starting things off on Monday talking about community for parents, especially new parents, because this can be a particularly lonely time for people.

And those relationships are important.

Studies have shown that.

So we'll talk with parents who appreciate community, and also people who have built villages to help support those at all relationships.

On Tuesday, we are talking about cycling, but not just recreationally.

We're talking about people who use cycling as a form of transportation and the bike to work movement.

So we'll hear from people who are supporting people that choose that for their lifestyle.

On Wednesday, it's a health topic.

We are hopefully going to have more warm, sunny days here coming up in Northeast Ohio.

So we want to make sure that people are prepared in terms of protecting themselves from UV rays.

And there are some misconceptions about sunscreen, so we'll clear those up and let people know what they need to know to stay safe outside.

On Thursday, it's our law of the land series where we bring you news that you need to know about laws impacting our everyday lives.

And we're talking about the rescheduling of marijuana at the federal level.

Of course, this is subject to change based on breaking news.

Back to you in the studio.

Great stuff, Steph.

Thank you very much.

You are back with The Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable from Ideastream Public Media.

I'm executive Editor Mike McIntire, along with Glenn Forbes and Zaria Johnson, and in Ideasream's Statehouse News Bureau, the chief there, Karen Kasler.

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This is like this is like your homework.

Like you're studying.

You're listening to the Reporters Roundtable.

Then you go take the quiz.

Exactly right.

It's the one test I ace every week.

45 staff members at Kent State University are facing layoffs.

University President Todd Diacon said the school must cut cost heading into the 2027 fiscal year.

And Zaria, how much money does the university need to cut?

They need to save $18 million to balance their budget.

And this is because of in part, inflation and increasing operating costs at the university.

But also they've dealt with less state funding and what they expect to be decreased enrollment and also fewer international students because of changing visa status.

But, President Diacon said that they've been gradually decreasing their budget over the last ten years.

So that kind of put them in a better position than other universities in the state.

Who's getting laid off?

We don't know yet.

They're still working on, finalizing the budget for the university next year, and the board of trustees will be voting on that their next meeting.

So we don't yet know what positions will be affected, but they're expecting to make that announcement in the next couple of weeks.

And certainly Kent is not exclusive.

We've been reporting Conor Morris has and we've done it on this show.

But basically every college has some sort of cost cutting measure that's in play.

Yeah.

And in Conor Story Diacon and laid out examples of other universities that are experiencing similar things.

As to what Kent's going through right now.

But he said that they've been working on making cuts elsewhere by asking, campus vice presidents to cut their budgets as well.

And they're still going to be, supporting employees by offering 2% raises to any employee not represented by a union.

So there's a bright side to this.

It seems to be at Kent State.

The CEO of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority has been given recommendations for service cuts, which await her sign off.

At this moment, you've been covering this story, so remind us what's going to happen to the RTA.

Yeah.

So they're the, at the committee meeting on Tuesday, they recommended implementing all of the cost saving measures when it comes to these, service cuts.

So that includes the weekday frequency reductions for the number 78 bus and the number 86 bus, and also weekend frequency reductions for the number three and the number ten.

And I have plenty of in-depth explanations of that online.

There'll also be, running the waterfront line on special events only and discontinuing the B line.

And the B line got a lot of pushback because a lot of people want to see that serve.

It's a free service.

It's a kind of trolley.

Yes, that's a trolley.

And so a lot of people wanted to save the B line, but, it just seems like the RTA can't justify spending on it.

At this point in time.

And this stuff happens, in August, right?

Yes.

So goes back to August 16th, assuming that they're approved by the general manager on the water front line.

Decades ago, once it was built, we started calling it the Ghost Train because it would go frequently and there was never anyone on it.

And I think this is an acknowledgment by RTA that why should we run it if people aren't using it?

Yeah.

And it's interesting because RTA officials have said with everything, with all of the the development happening or potentially happening in some cases on the lakefront, it could be revived.

But it's just one of those situations.

Right now where because of the situation with the RTC budget, it just makes more sense to reduce that service for now and revisit it later if something were to change on the lakefront.

Yeah, I think I think back to when they actually I'm so old.

I was there when they built it, when they were thinking about building it, it was supposed to be a loop, and it was supposed to be a circulator that got you around, and they ended it right by where the stadium is.

And it just never fulfilled its potential as a result of that.

Some members of the public are demanding service increases.

Actually, not just we don't want these cuts, but you should increase more.

How are they proposing than those get paid for?

Yeah, a levy, that's the biggest thing that transit advocates and transit riders are asking the RTA to at least consider.

They've said at the public hearings a couple weeks ago, if you put a levy on the ballot, we'll we'll vote for it.

We want to see an increase service.

We think they think that, increasing service will bring more riders, increase the revenue coming out of ridership for the RTA and, the general manager, other RTA officials have said it's something they're looking into, but they want to make sure that if they pursue it, when they pursue it, they want to make sure that it's likely to pass.

I'm sure they were closely watching, you know, some of the primary results, too.

We just talked about, you know, any kind of increase in tax, seem to be turned down when it comes to school levies.

Renewals?

Yes.

Increases.

No.

So I'm sure RTA was watching that and specifically transit levies.

And there was a transit levy in Stark County.

The Stark Area Regional Transit Authority was asking for some money, the first tax increase for in the last 30 years.

And the voters said no.

Yeah.

No, it would have been a 0.1% additional tax increase on their current 0.25% sales tax that they have right now.

And it would have gone to, reinstating some service they had to cut last year, maybe bringing about new routes, replacing some super old busses in their fleet.

But that levy failed with, just more, more than 51% of voters voting against it.

So it, it would make sense for you to Greater Cleveland RTA to look at that as an example of what the culture around RTA levies is like right now.

All right.

Remember that recall attempt of Mayor Justin Bibb?

While it was short lived, petitioners calling for his recall was an uphill effort that didn't seem to have much momentum from the start.

They've now suspended their campaign, the group says targeted intimidation from the mayor's staff and supporters made it difficult to rally more support.

It might also be that the mayor was elected overwhelmingly in Cleveland, and that was already, as I mentioned, an uphill battle.

But we saw that, supporters of the mayor at the very beginning, at their first press conference, ministers who are supporters of the mayor went and essentially heckled the group.

They did.

That's a good way to put it.

That was, you know, our Ideastream's Abbey Marshall was there, and she was like, hey, this is kind of crazy.

There are people who showed up in our, you know, kind of yelling or trying to shout them down.

The first press conference ended abruptly.

I think the bottom line on this here's the deadline to turn in those signatures was today.

And earlier this week, they had about half the signatures they needed.

They needed, I don't know, another 4000 or so signatures.

So, it wasn't going well.

For for the petitioners, accountable.

Accountable Cleveland, a coalition of about 25 local residents and business owners, complaining about the mayor's expenses, whether it be his personal security, whether it be, you know, office furniture or some of the other news reports we've seen and things like that.

And I think, you know, it's interesting that, you know, they would talk about these threats to personal safety, intimidation tactics and all that.

And the press conference started in that way, where you've got people showing up and kind of shouting them down.

Now, there's nothing wrong with disagreement.

We don't know if it raised to the level of, of of personal threats or intimidation tactics or anything like that.

The mayor's office isn't commenting at all.

We've we've tried to talk to the mayor and his staff about this.

We.

Abbey hasn't heard anything back.

So for now, it is not the recall is not going forward.

This group says they're going to support alternative candidates.

If they choose to run against the mayor.

Okay.

Cleveland's struggles with making homes lead safe continues to struggle.

We learned this week that a hotline for residents to get help wasn't monitored for two years because no one knew the code.

And I saw that in the report and I said, really?

Yes, really.

787 unanswered voicemails just sitting there, just sitting there from anybody looking for home repairs to get their homes remediated from this toxic, poisonous lead.

And this is from some really awesome reporting from The Plain Dealer.

But they weren't addressed because nobody had the code to listen back to the voicemails, and they dated back to July of 2024.

So this is a few years now of these voicemails sitting in the inbox, many of which didn't get addressed.

Rebecca Maurer did say that some of these callers were able to get into the city, get in contact with the city and other ways, but they won't know how many of these calls didn't get addressed.

And this is all happening at the same time as the city is struggling to spend money that they've gotten, to remediate some of these homes.

I reported back in February when they lost state funding, $3.3 million in state funding because they didn't spend it quickly enough.

So and part of that was because they were looking for applicants that were qualified for the funding.

So, it just seems counterproductive.

And there the city is now working on finding ways to avoid this from happening again in the future.

You mentioned Rebecca Maurer.

This was a mess.

It seems like that she walked into.

She is a former council member who is now the senior advisor for Lead Accountability for the Bibb administration.

She's got her work to do, but also will bring someone in to help address communication issues.

Yeah, it's essentially like, public facing representative to both hold the city accountable and be a point of contact between the public and the city when they need help.

Finding the right avenue to programs their resources to getting their homes remediated.

And so Rebecca Maurer has said that they've made some progress in sort of speeding up this, this process, for residents.

But the job posting is open right now for that person in particular.

They've got another grant.

You mentioned they lost some money from the state, but they've gotten a federal grant that if it isn't, under contract by the end of this month, they're going to lose a whole lot more.

Yeah, it's even more money.

It's $11.1 million.

And they have to get these homes under contract by the end of this month.

In order to maintain that funding at this point.

But so far, the program is processed nearly 60 homes and, 19 of those were taken care of last month.

And, they've already identified 100 additional homes to take care of next, with 72 already being accepted into the program.

All right.

There was a surprise winner in the auction of the Notre Dame College campus.

Akron Children's Hospital submitted the winning bid in the private auction for the nearly 50 acre campus in Euclid.

So, Glenn, what do we know about that?

What are they going to be?

Another branch?

Is it what do they expect to do?

Not a whole lot at the moment.

We don't know what the winning bid was.

This is a private auction.

And a U.S.

district judge must approve the sale.

A hearing is set for May 28th.

The sale, expected to close, on June 30th.

So we don't know the winning bid.

And we don't know exactly.

What what what?

The vision is from Akron Children's Hospital, either.

But you mentioned nearly 50 acres, right?

So that property for Akron Children's, if it goes through and Zaria, if it doesn't, the contingency is the number two.

Yeah.

South Euclid, they'd be able to get it.

So, they were the second highest bidder.

And they did congratulate the hospital on the winning bid.

But they said that they are looking forward to figuring out or finding out, I guess, what the hospital plans to do with it.

So that remains to be seen.

But they did acknowledge that Akron Children's is sort of branching out onto the East side, and they have all these, different campuses on the east side, Beachwood, Mayfield Heights.

So they just want to know what's next and where that might go from here.

You're doing pretty well when you can outbid the government.

Hey, like for sure.

Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam were also doing pretty well.

Can you outbid them financially I don't know if you can.

And they donated $12.5 million to fund blood cancer research and treatments.

And University Hospital is going to get a chunk of that money.

Glenn.

Yeah.

Right.

2.5 million to, Cleveland University Hospital.

Seidman Cancer Center.

They're going to establish an endowed chair in CLL research, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and an innovation fund that will, toward driving advancements in care.

Dee Haslam, has been diagnosed with CL, so this is very personal to her.

And, obviously, 2.5 million, to University Hospitals to try to combat this disease.

And what do we know about that disease?

Well, it is a form of leukemia.

It's a it's the most common form of leukemia in adults.

No cure.

Modern therapies have made it a manageable, condition.

The, center in England, that was founded in 2021, that's going to get about $10 million of this 227 medicines in the making, 75 institution supported.

So there there is kind of an organized, you know, a push, right, and an organized push to, try to combat this disease.

And now they have another $10 million to, to do their work.

And again, 2.5 million to University Hospitals here in Cleveland.

All right.

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History CEO Sonia Winner resigned abruptly Tuesday after eight years at the helm.

Zaria, what do we know about the circumstance?

Because it seemed really sudden.

I mean, she had gone through a big, fundraising campaign, very successful, a remake of the museum.

And yet what I was hearing was, you know, kind of the personality was an issue for some people that, that work there or that that, were associated with.

But it seemed just so very abrupt and sudden.

Yeah.

And the museum hasn't publicly released any information on the reason for her departure.

But, like you mentioned, Mike, there was some reporting in the Cleveland Scene about, an anonymous email, an anonymous employee who talked about, allegations of a toxic work environment.

They mentioned, sexual misconduct and safety concerns and alleged that there were 87 employees who left the museum under, Winner's tenure.

So that could play a role in that.

We just don't know for certain for now.

And I need to just reset that was reporting that was in Scene.

That's not something we independently corroborated.

We have no idea if there were allegations of those sort.

We have heard, people saying the environment, the work environment, there wasn't ideal and last year that museum was at the center of controversy, there was a string of resignations, as we noted.

And there was an effort by the staff to unionize.

Where does that any of that stand?

Do we know?

Yeah, it seems to be unresolved at this point.

But it is worth noting that, like you mentioned, there has been a significant amount of improvements in the museum in the last couple of years.

Even this year, they were they made it into the USA today's list of best museums.

So a lot of good work.

But the questions around unionizing and the work environment still remain to be seen.

All right.

Bomb threats were confirmed at five local school districts just yesterday, leading to evacuations and lockdowns.

And this comes after the Akron Zoo and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo received similar threats earlier this week, leading to weekend evacuations.

No explosives or real dangers were found at any of the locations, but this, this is really becoming epidemic.

We're talking about public places, schools.

And they've got to respond.

In the zoo's case, people are there on the weekend, on a Sunday, and they're you got to get out because it may be real.

Yeah.

It's too bad that, you know, we're using these technological advancements for these purposes, right?

These kind of, you know, evil purposes.

I think we all, you know, 25 years ago, there was, school threats and you would evacuate, but it was like, you know, kind of these one off things.

Five schools just yesterday, Medina Alliance, Amherst, Lorain, Shaker Heights, and then the zoo issue.

And this is a nationwide problem to this, obviously, you know, isn't just in Ohio.

But these are more sophisticated, more organized swatting attempts, you know, threats that are coming in, you know, purported, groups that are organized and doing this, the FBI is, is investigating these, but it's just it is a widespread problem.

And, you know, we see this elevation now to these public places like zoos, where you've got thousands of people over, you know, many acres of land trying to enjoy their weekend.

And they've got to evacuate because abundance of caution and all of these other things.

You mentioned that it was swatting.

That's the term for it.

And that's basically because you're you're inducing the S.W.A.T unit to have to reply to, to a call, S.W.A.T being Special Weapons And Tactics.

Karen, lawmakers hardened the penalties for these types of things, these swatting calls not too long ago.

Is there still discussion about that in Columbus?

Did the penalties it doesn't sound like it's stopping these calls.

Well, we haven't seen lawmakers discuss a whole lot because they've been gone for the primary, and they're going to be in an election for a little while yet.

Yeah, that's exactly.

But the law that you're talking about took effect in 2023.

It elevated swatting from a misdemeanor to a felony to try to stop some of these hoaxes.

If there's serious physical harm in the event it's a second degree felony.

Those convicted can be ordered to pay restitution.

And all that came from a fake school shooting reported at eight Ohio schools in September 2022.

So obviously, the concern about what's happening here is real, especially for people who are evacuated, who are affected, who get those texts saying this is happening when it's not.

Yeah.

And we saw it there was in Rocky River just a couple of weeks ago that there was a hoax call.

You just wonder how technology is not catching this.

If someone makes a call or some sort of threat, how are they not able to, you know, connect?

Who did that?

We've got Flock cameras that tell you everywhere you drove.

You wonder if if, if we'll get better at this.

And I'm not, well-versed in this at all, but.

But you've heard, police officials say for ever, right?

Since we've been covering that, the criminals always are trying to stay one step ahead, right?

So criminals have this technology.

Police are, you know, trying to, I guess, in some ways, catch up with this technology.

But you would think that with competing technologies and you mentioned resources of the government and things like that, that it would be, at least possible to catch some of this and try to shut it down.

All right.

Well, I would just say get a life.

This is what you do?

It's ridiculous.

Cleveland has launched a trapping program to help residents deal with nuisance wildlife.

For years, City council has received complaints about groundhogs, raccoons, skunks, the ones that are not wanted.

These are animals, by the way, that are important in nature.

When they're in your basement or your backyard, maybe not so much.

So Zaria it's a pilot program for now.

Tell us, what it is.

And what you can do if you're somebody that's got a problem with a nuisance critter.

and it will go through the end of October.

Residents can contact the company Freeman Nuisance Animal Recovery and Remedy directly to handle any sort of wildlife damaging their homes.

Why shouldn't they any in particular?

Skunks, raccoons and groundhogs you can call apply online.

So if they're digging a hole in your home or building a house for themselves underneath your front porch, that these would be good reasons to call and get these animals taken care of.

And it's interesting because the city, previously had residents just do it themselves.

But now the city is encouraging residents not to trap them with using their own traps, not to release these animals anywhere else.

Call this company Freeman to take care of it.

And city's allocated money for this in their budget.

So it's a good thing for residents to take advantage of.

And there are a number of suburbs that have these, these types of services or that you can get a trap from them.

Humane trap and be able to trap these animals.

Cleveland's moving into that with the number of complaints it has, and I knew we'd hear from Lucy in Seven Hills, big animal lover on this issue.

And she makes the point.

"Please be careful.

with the language used to refer to sentiment beings such as possums, groundhogs, raccoons, etc.. All these.

I think she means sentient beings.

All these animals are relevant to our ecosystems.

There are humane, non-lethal ways to remove them, but our state wildlife agency makes it hard for well-meaning citizens to help due to public trust violating regulations.

And that's Lucy's point of view.

Ohio aims to make it easier for older adults and their caregivers to find state assisted resources using a new online tool.

Karen what is this the website basically.

But how is it going to help people with this care?

Well, the state is recognizing that that is the fastest growing demographic in Ohio.

By 2040, 25%, a quarter of the population is expected to be over 65.

So they're trying to come up with a way to bring together information not only for people over 65, but also for their caregivers, where they can get some information about health and about, nursing homes or assisted living facilities and about data, how the state is using all this data that might be collected, trying to put that in one place.

And so this is the aging campus that the state launched last week, just to try to get all this stuff together, because it's really kind of scattered around.

And this will hopefully allow for people who are over 65 or who are helping people and caregiving for people over 65 to find information quickly and more easily.

All right.

We have just a couple of minutes left.

I want to get to some of your reporting.

This area on great new developments, including a walking and biking trail, will be built along Lake Erie, connecting Cleveland's east side areas such as Beulah Park, Villa Beach, Shore Acres.

Tell me about that.

Yeah, this is one of a couple initiatives happening right now to better connect residents on Cleveland's east side to the lakefront, where there's been a bit of a disparity there for years now.

So this in particular is a $13 million project.

It'll be a ten foot wide multimodal trail.

So you can like park, sorry, walk, bike, do a few things on the trail.

It's a little over half a mile long.

It'll have kayak ports, lookout points, a bunch of great amenities for people who want to get outside.

All right.

And, Glenn, we had it on the agenda about talking about the Cavs, but I just don't want to.

I'll turn it over to you, Mike.

We're not talking about the Cavs, and I just real quickly, there is a new name for the a name for the women's soccer club coming to Cleveland.

Tell us what it is.

It is Astra which is Latin for stars.

There you go.

You see it on the screen there.

If you're watching Astra, the Cleveland Astra.

Be careful when you say it.

Very good.

Yes.

Of course.

Exactly.

It gives way to a whole lot of comments about how a team might be playing.

Luckily, the Browns aren't named that.

By the way, I just got to question number five.

The CEO of which of the following abruptly resigned this week after eight years at the helm.

Is it the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Sherwin Williams Bath and Body Works, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

If you were listening a few minutes ago, you would know.

You know the answer is Bath and Body Works.

You know, I'm just kidding.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's it for today I appreciate it.

That's a wrap, Glenn.

Thank you very much, Zaria.

Thank you as well.

And thank you, Karen Kasler at the Statehouse News Bureau.

And to get the last word on today's topic.

Send us an email.

SOI@ideastream.org and Monday on the Sound of Ideas, Welcoming a new baby to the family can be a joyous time, but it's also a time of deep loneliness for new parents.

We'll talk to parents about the need for community during that period, and if you missed any part of today's show, you can listen to a rebroadcast tonight at nine on 89 seven WKSU.

Catch the television version at 5:00 tonight on PBS on WVIZ.

You can also catch it on YouTube or the podcast platform of your choice.

And this Sunday is Mother's Day.

I wrote an essay for The Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine about my mom, may she rest in peace, in 2001, describing her as the Queen of the Diamonds from my sandlot baseball youth.

You want to hear me read it?

You can join the Power of Words event May 21st at the Music Box Supper Club with a whole bunch of other folks.

So happy Mother's Day today to all the mothers on our show.

To Karen Kasler, that would be the only one.

Congratulations and happy Mother's Day to you.

All right, well, I guess that means I can yell at you guys.

Yeah, sure.

And Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers, and all of our mothers and anyone we're associated with.

Good to talk with all of you.

And we're going to end today with BoyzII Men, A Song for Mama.

Mama, mama You know that I love you You know I love you mama...