(upbeat music) - Ohio lawmakers are preparing a bill that would ban abortion here if the United States Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

Akron looks for ways to keep people in stable housing and reduce evictions.

And Cleveland State University has an abrupt change in leadership.

Ideas is next.

(upbeat orchestral music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Anti-abortion lawmakers in Ohio are ready to ban the procedure here should the United States Supreme Court overturn the landmark case of Roe versus Wade.

Akron is known as the eviction capital of Ohio, and it's looking for solutions to help keep people in their homes.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission is in no hurry to pass new maps for state legislative districts.

It'll meet just two days before its next court imposed deadline.

And Cleveland State University's board of trustees made a change at the top.

Harlan Sands is out as president.

Provost Laura Bloomberg is in.

We'll talk about those developments and the rest of the week's news on the Reporters Roundtable.

Joining me this week from Ideastream Public Media, WKSU news director, Andrew Meyer, and multiple media producer, Gabriel Kramer.

In Columbus, we have Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, chief, Karen Kasler.

All right, let's get ready to round table.

The US Supreme Court is expected to deliver a decision in a Mississippi abortion law case in June.

It's the most direct challenge to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in decades.

Ohio lawmakers who oppose abortion want to ban it if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

They're working on a so-called trigger bill that would be triggered by the Supreme Court ruling.

Karen, the bill does not include many exceptions, actually I think there are no reception, exceptions, not even for rape or incest.

- Well, there are some exceptions for the life or health of the woman, but there were Democrats on the panel who said, including representative Beth Liston, who is a doctor herself who said that there were complications with those exemptions, that they were needlessly complicated in some respects, they really were more of an affirmative defense rather than an exemption.

So they also said that those situations could be dangerous to women who for instance, have an ectopic pregnancy.

They need to have the pregnancy terminated.

And they're in a part of the state where they don't have the medical facilities that are available.

So yeah, there are a lot of questions that have been raised about what those exemptions, how they would actually work in real life, but there are no exceptions for rape or incest.

And that was one of the things that was brought up that got the most attention in terms of the sound bite from representative Jean Schmidt, who is the sponsor of the bill.

- Speaking of that, let's hear her.

This was when she was asked about a hypothetical teen rape victim.

And the fact that that person, because of this bill would be forced to carry a baby to full term.

Here's Schmidt response.

- It is a shame that it happens, but there's an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is.

To make a determination about what she's going to do to help that life be a productive human being.

- How did that go over?

- Well, that was certainly controversial.

And it's one of the questions that reporters had had for Jean Schmidt after the hearing wanted to ask her a little bit more about that, but of course there are still some reporters who are wanting to ask her about the, what was, what's been called the don't say gay Ohio version of the bill that she's proposed.

And so she was chased down the hall again, as she was a couple weeks ago, after that bill was proposed.

And she didn't have any further comment on that, but obviously that's something that abortion rights advocates have said that is just way too far, and they're very concerned, of course.

- Andrew, Ohio is not alone.

There are a number of states that have these trigger laws, either in effect or ready to pull the trigger on those.

- Trigger laws, and also something known as zombie bills, which is, sounds pretty frightening, but basically the legislation either ready to go or ready to be moved into the go position, should the Supreme Court take that action about two dozen states around the country.

Conversely, there are about 15 states in the country that have passed codifications of abortion rights.

Not surprisingly, those states are along the East Coast and the West Coast.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, it's gonna, or if the Supreme Court moves it to a state issue, then it's going to be up to individuals.

If they need to find abortion services, it's gonna come to them determining whether or not they have the means to get to one of these states driving hours or longer, - [Mike] Right.

- to be able to take advantage of those services.

- We don't know what the Supreme Court will decide in the Dobbs case or how much it'll impact the Roe decision.

So, and that's a point here.

What if it is, we talk about a trigger law happening being triggered by an overturning of Roe v. Wade.

But what if there's a ruling that just severely limits Roe v. Wade or makes it almost gone, but not quite, does that then trigger the law, or is there any clarity about what would happen in that case?

- I think we're still looking for some clarity, but I wanna go back to the point that was just made about the way Ohio would change in terms of abortion access, if Roe were overturned, or if it were turned back over to the states to deal with abortion, as they wish.

And the Ohio State University just did a study on this, my Statehouse News Bureau colleague, Jo Ingles has a story up on our website about it.

That basically says that right now, people in Ohio are about 99 miles away from an abortion providing facility.

And if this changes, then that takes it to hundreds of miles away.

And again, that potentially impacts people who have less money to travel.

That can't take the time off work.

Sometimes there's an overnight stay involved, you go to a different state.

And so all of this really does make a difference.

When it comes to Ohio's heartbeat bill or so-called heartbeat bill, it looks like that's the kind of measure one of these laws that was passed in anticipation of Roe being overturned that would actually be put into effect.

It's banned right now in terms of enforcement, because it's working its way through the federal court system.

But that's kind of one of those that if Roe were overturned or if certain restrictions were overturned, then that's one of the bills that could likely take effect.

And again, that's a bill that would ban abortion past the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can be as early as six weeks.

And that's earlier than many women even know that they're pregnant.

(upbeat music) - Akron is known as the eviction capital of Ohio, a summit to discuss solutions this week brought together agencies focused on eviction, as well as landlords and tenants.

Gabriel, you also produced a segment on that, 'cause we previewed that session here on The Sound of Ideas.

Organizers, you spoke to talked about wanting solutions to come out of the summit and not just talk.

So often you have these summits people say a lot of things, they wanted something concrete to come of it, any chance that that might happen.

- Right, it's easy to look at these summits and think, okay, now what?

And then now what never actually happens.

So when they talk about what kind of things they really wanted to have concrete solutions or head in the direction of concrete solutions, they talk about things like what kind of resources can be connected to tenants who need assistance in rent payments, who need assistance in getting connected to legal protection.

And on the side of landlords, they want to have conversations with landlords to say, hey, maybe there's things that you can do to connect with your tenants or educate them on what your responsibilities are when it comes to eviction in regards to your tenants.

So there are actionable items that took place but also I think they understand, the organizers of the summit understand this isn't gonna change overnight.

This issue is pretty bad, but at least they can head in the right direction with something versus the nothing that they've had for so long.

- I thought one thing that sounded like it shouldn't be novel was the idea that landlords and tenants communicate with each other better.

And I know in Cleveland where there's a right to counsel law now, there seems to be some much better progress.

And landlords are just saying that as well because these lawyers in those cases are facilitating communication and conversation.

And so we can work out a thing and make because nobody wants the eviction, even the landlords, that's expensive to them, but that's one of the recommendations that came out of the summit.

Let's talk to each other.

- Right?

And it's easy to paint a picture of greedy landlords as wanting more and more money with tenants who have less and less money.

And a lot of times that is the case, but I spoke with a landlord earlier this week, Gary Wyatt and he liked to call himself a nonprofit landlord.

I don't think many landlords are gonna consider some themselves that.

- [Mike] Right.

- But he said, you know what?

He likes to do with his tenants is he likes to build this relationship, understand what's going on in their lives, if they are down on their luck, because they're going through some family issues that are costing them money.

Maybe they have some medical issues that are costing them money.

Maybe it's easier for them to pay rent on, in the middle of the month versus the first of the month.

And these are the kind of conversations, you build this relationship.

And then all of a sudden you have empathy toward the people that you are providing a home to.

- Yeah, they're not dead beats.

- [Gabriel] Absolutely.

- Right, there might be a reason and a way to work out a situation.

- [Gabriel] Everyone has a right to housing.

Everyone has a right to a home and landlords, it's a business, but they take on a responsibility for providing that and coming together to figure something out is definitely something they wanna come to because eviction should be the last resort.

- Andrew, we just, a few years ago, just pre pandemic, went to Akron, The Sound of Ideas community tour did and went to the library there packed.

I mean, there were so many people to talk about the eviction problem in Akron.

So now we're several years beyond that, there'd been an eviction moratorium in between.

And yet I keep hearing about Akron being the capital of evictions in Ohio.

Why does it have that distinction?

What is it about Akron?

- Well, I'm not sure I would call it the perfect storm necessarily, but there are a number of factors at play here that really drive this.

One of them is that Akron has a very high percentage of housing that is rental stock.

Now you add onto that the median income within the city, which is on the lower side.

And then finally for all the Gary Wyatts of the world who are out there, who live locally and want to connect with their tenants, it's really hard to suss out just who owns the greatest extent of rental properties in Akron.

A lot of LLCs, a lot of distant, if not international ownership of these properties with landlords who you can't really identify, even with some good legwork and basically looking to just guess much cash out of this as they can.

They're not locally, they're not connected with their tenants.

And there's not really any driver for them to stay on top of the maintenance of those properties as well.

- Yeah, Gabe, it's hard to have a conversation with somebody who doesn't, you don't know who they are.

- Right, and we spoke to a tenant earlier this week at (indistinct) who had spoke to that.

A lot of landlords live out of town and because they live outta town, they're distant and they're neglectful of their homes.

They're neglectful, we have homes, falling apart and homes going through issues, and with landlords far away, there's a struggle of communication, therefore they're not on top of the issues.

Some homes have landlords that can walk around and say, oh, I see that you have your lawn needs cut.

I can come over and take care of that.

If they're outta town, they're not gonna be able to take care of that.

But to that point, these are issues that are not exclusive to Akron.

And part of this summit is to say, hey, maybe we can look around at other cities and see how they are handling things.

And for Akron to maybe look at Cleveland, what's happening with the right of council law.

And also these are the out of town landlords is a big issue that Cleveland's Mayor Justin Bibb brought up just a few weeks ago.

- And to circle back to where this part of the conversation started, whether or not this is only so much talk, only blowing so much smoke just for the appearance community legal aid the organizer of this prevention summit is on the front lines of working with the tenants and also trying to reach out to landlords.

So they're the ones that benefit from the most, from generating ideas, new ideas about how they can really help fight the eviction crisis in Akron.

Hopefully it can serve as a model for other cities throughout Ohio.

(upbeat music) - The Ohio Redistricting Commission has until May 6th to draw and approve new maps for the state's House and Senate Districts.

The commission says, it'll meet on May 4th, not leaving much time before the deadline, which no one expects the commission to take seriously anyway.

- We've talked about this, what we are calling the map making mess, Karen, but how do these commissioners justify not even meeting when the two democratic commissioners and actually joined by one of the Republicans said, okay, let's get it done.

- Well, I mean, you could argue that there really isn't a whole lot of incentive to get another set of maps done because a panel of three federal judges has ruled that if there aren't constitutional maps in place by May 28th, meaning they've passed the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which is five Republicans and two Democrats, and are upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court, which has rejected all the maps that have come before it so far, if those two things don't happen by May 28th, then the federal court will implement a set of maps that have already been ruled unconstitutional.

And so with that already out there, you could make the argument that there isn't a whole lot of incentive for Republicans to get together other than they could potentially be held in contempt.

I mean, that's something that the challengers to these maps have said should happen other than maybe working with Democrats and coming up with a map that can last for 10 years.

So we don't have to keep doing this every couple of years, but right now that's certainly the question.

I think that certainly these candidates, they're all candidates, the entire Ohio House and half the Ohio Senate is up for reelection or election this year.

That's certainly top of mind for some of these folks.

But right now it seems according to a letter from Republican Speaker, Bob Cupp, who is the co-chair of the commission, that it is not feasible for the redistricting commission to meet before, two days before the deadline.

So that's the date that they've set Wednesday, which is the day after the election.

- Why bother?

- Well, and that's a good question.

Again, it's and I think that that's a question that a lot of people have wanted to get an answer to because it does feel like there isn't, again, there isn't a whole lot of incentive to do this.

Now the Ohio Supreme Court has made it clear what they wanna see.

They want the process that started in the last round of map making to continue where there were two outside map makers who were hired.

They were set up in a room here in the Statehouse with a live stream camera, and people could watch what they were doing.

The Supreme Court wants that process to move forward, so that that is the map.

Those are the maps that are approved by the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

You might recall that the last maps that were approved, which have been ruled unconstitutional, the commission threw out those independent outside map makers.

They're not really independent, 'cause one's a Democrat and one's a Republican, but they threw out that attempt and came back with one of their previous maps, kind of tweaked it and turned that in.

- I just set my clock by the way, my alarm to go off this afternoon because I keep forgetting I'm going to be out of town on election day, and early voting exists.

And so I gotta get my vote in there.

So thanks for bringing that up again.

You just sparked it in my head and I've set the alarm, Karen, thank you.

- And it's important too to remember this is the only weekend that people can do early voting.

There hasn't been early voting throughout on the weekends.

You can do early voting until Monday and then Tuesday, early voting at your local precincts.

But remember early voting is only at the early voting center, which is at the board of elections in every county.

- Right, and the election, obviously the primary is Tuesday.

One of the primaries, we'll have a separate one once we finally get these state legislative district maps.

Let me just ask one other thing, and that is, we had seen the two Democrats on the redistricting commission saying let's meet and no one else joining with them.

But last, this week we saw auditor, Keith Faber, a Democrat join them.

What's behind that.

- Yeah.

Keith Faber is one of the, he's the only Republican on the panel who has actually voted with the Democrats to not approve one set of maps, not for the same reasons, but he did actually join them in one of those votes.

He wrote a letter to the speaker saying that he wants to have a meeting.

He said there should be a meeting as soon as possible.

And so that may have been the impetus to move this meeting forward because it apparently takes three members of the commission to call for a meeting, not just two, which is what Cupp had said.

When the two Democrats on the panel had wanted a meeting, he said that that's not enough to call a meeting.

All of these rules are designed, I think, to preserve order and to keep things moving but they actually have not been keeping things moving when it comes to this redistricting commission.

And I think as this brand new process has gone forward, there's been of course a tremendous amount of frustration and a tremendous amount of confusion because I know I'm constantly having to explain to people what's going on with our map situation.

Why is there a congressional election going on, a primary going on when those maps have not been ruled constitutional?

Why do we not have Ohio House and Senate candidates on the May 3rd ballot?

Why will there be another primary for them?

It's all very, very confusing.

- Voter turnout is going to be dismal as it usually is in primaries.

I can't imagine what a second primary voter turnout is going to be.

I mean, we might be in the single digits.

- Yeah, I mean, who knows?

And certainly the candidates wanna see that voter turnout come up, but when again, you're talking about Statehouse and Senate Districts, which there are a lot of people that don't even realize there is a difference between the Statehouse and Congress that there are, these are two entirely separate groups of people.

And so to try to get voter education and get those voters engaged and interested in the process when this has been going on now for months and months and months, I know it's very frustrating for advocates and this is not the way that they were hoping this would turn out.

(upbeat music) - Harlan Sands is out abruptly as president of Cleveland State University replaced by provost, Laura Bloomberg.

Sands gets nearly a million dollars in a lump sum payout and a teaching position at the law school.

You did some reporting on this Andrew yesterday.

What's the deal with Harlan Sands?

He got a balloon payment and he's still gonna collect some salary.

- Well, not surprisingly, whenever you hear about a premature departure of a university president, there's usually something that they agreed to when they signed on the dotted line initially, that gives them some sort of soft landing should something like this happen.

He's gonna get two years worth of salary at his base pay, which is for 164, roughly $1000 a year.

So multiply that by two.

Also, he's not completely out the door.

Part of the agreement also includes a spot on the tenured faculty of the law school.

So, and he's gonna be paid 75% of his base salary for that.

So a little bit of a soft landing there.

He will be outta the house that Cleveland State has been providing him.

He's gotten till September to find new digs, but he's not out in the cold without a penny to spend.

- What a surprise though, Gabe given that just last year, the university extended Sand's contract, he had worked on this Cleveland State 2.0, plan the future of the university.

I guess everybody's wondering, but was there a single issue that might have pushed somebody over the edge here?

- Right, and it's hard to point to a single issue 'cause it was just last year that they extend this contract till 2026.

So it's not exactly like they didn't like the guy.

So we really wonder what happened last couple years.

It's kind of fun watching Twitter talk about, on Twitter seeing CSU students talk about Harlan Sands, some of 'em kind of not really know what he does or who he is.

- One of them even posted a picture that said, this is how he parks every day.

And I can say that now.

And he was like, he was up against the yellow line or something.

- Yeah.

So maybe he wasn't the most popular mark students, - That's Twitter.

- But I also credit to the Cleveland State student media, the Cauldron, they interviewed students across campus and a lot of 'em were surprised, but also a lot of students were indifferent, just unsure about what that really meant for them because on from there day to day, they don't know what the president really does.

So, I think there, we had read stories about questionable hires from him, but I think, I know that there is one particular group of students that were a little bit disappointed in Harlem Sands and that's the students against Marshall.

This is the student group that is yearning for a change to the Cleveland State law school's name.

And they met John Marshall, a former slave owner and former Chief Justice of the United States.

They had been kind of hammering at the university for a couple years to make a change to the school name.

And then they had recently said, we really want a change before this May commencement.

That's not going to happen.

And they had really felt these students had really kind of put it on the current board trustees and Sands to make a change and they hadn't done that.

So I can speak about what that group was, but there's a lot of students at Cleveland State.

- So they think that with a new president, maybe someone else will have a more receptive ear.

- Well the student group had made public comments and press releases about how they were looking forward to Dr. Bloomberg taking over because of her history in civil rights justice, civil rights activism.

I know that there were rumblings about her having a meeting with stakeholders in this issue earlier this week.

Let's keep in mind.

She had just taken over this role just a few days ago.

- [Mike] Right, and doesn't officially have the title.

- Or doesn't officially have the title.

And it's probably been pretty abrupt for her as well.

But I know that the students against Marshall organization wanted to be involved in that conversation.

We're not sure who was involved in the conversation, but this is really just the beginning of her role in this and there's a lot more headed our way as far as what will happen to the school change.

- Andrew, you've worked for a decade on the campus of Kent State University and also covered a lot of the tumult at Akron, the University of Akron, where there was a new president and then the new president was out pretty quickly.

What is a situation like this, this kind of a change.

And in this case, an abrupt one, like we did see in Akron, what does that do to the campus community?

What is the impact of that?

- Well, certainly the number one is morale, both in the staff, the faculty and in the student body, in the case of UA several years ago, with the departure of Scott Scarborough, his tenure was marked by controversy.

He was very well paid.

He had a very similar departure in terms of leaving the presidency, but remaining on faculty, still getting paid a nice sum.

It's the question of ultimately in a case like that and like this, just how are you spending student money, when students pay a lot of money for tuition?

And they see the big checks that are going to leadership, and they're not connected with leadership.

And it raises questions about whether that's really the best use of the tuition that they're paying.

The other converse is you generally see a couple of different models when it comes to university leadership.

You have the controversy that surrounds somebody like Harlan Sands, but then you look at other leaders like Todd Diacon, current president of Ken State University, Bev Warren, who are very much outgoing and focused on connecting with students.

And I think a lot of that is really what are the expectations of an individual university president when it comes to what they need to be doing?

Do they need to be raising money?

Do they need to be connecting with students?

I would argue they need to be doing both.

- Yeah, the answer is yes.

You know, and I'll take even further, Andrew when Beverly Warren took over at Ken State, she took over for Lester Lefton, and their personalities were so different, and I think what gets lost is Lester Lefton made so much money for the university, but he had this image as being kind of prickly among students.

And that really goes a long way with students.

And if that was an issue for Cleveland State students here, I could see how someone else might do a better job.

One thing that does surprise me, and maybe Andrew, you can speak to this is, Cleveland State went ahead and just made a decision about the next president, rather than doing a search, which would've cost them university quite a bit of money.

That surprised me.

I don't know if that's unusual though.

- I find that surprising as well.

Usually the stance is you go to an interim leadership and then you mount some sort of search because you want to present the idea that you are looking for the best and brightest, not settling for what you have at hand.

And that's not aspersion on Laura Bloomberg, but simply you want to reassure your faculty, your staff, and most importantly, your students that you're finding the best to lead your institution.

And Laura Bloomberg has been at Cleveland State for just a very short amount of time.

- Right.

One of the things that I've been hearing from folks is there, a lot of people are encouraged by the fact that she's come up through the academic ranks, whereas Harlan Sands did not.

And in fact, you mentioned Scott Scarborough, the replacement there, Matthew Wilson was also a lawyer and came from the, he was a faculty, but also from the legal side.

He left pretty quickly.

- In just about a year.

He had higher aspirations and he found them.

Now, Gary Miller is currently the UA president and things have seem to stabilize a bit under his tenure.

- Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89.7 WKSU, we'll look at the history and future of Northeast Ohio's Towpath Trail, the connector between the Lakefront and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.

(upbeat music) (air whooshing)