Lawmakers hammered out a final budget that would send $600 million in unclaimed funds to the Browns for a move to Brook Park, an effort to repeal Senate Bil one which restricts diversity, equity and inclusion on colleg campuses won't make the ballot.

And a Franklin County judge ruled Ohio's Ed Choice voucher program unconstitutional.

The latest o what will be a long legal battle ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

A reconciliation committe of Ohio House and Senate members hammered out a new two year state operating budget this week.

The $60 billion spending plan includes money from unclaimed funds for a Brown's dome in Brook Park, a flat income tax and changes affecting school funding.

Republicans say it puts more money toward education than ever before, while minority Democrat say it underfunding education.

The governor must sig the budget in the next few days, will strike out any other provisions with his line item veto.

Ohioans would pay a 2.75% income tax regardless of what they make.

Majority Republicans who hav steadily cut state income taxes have pushed for a flat ta or even no income tax for years.

Democrats, none of whom voted for the budget, said the flat tax and other provisions will benefi only the wealthiest of Ohioans.

Another education issue to discuss.

A Franklin Count judge said this week that Ohio's Ed Choice voucher program is unconstitutional.

It's just the first round of what's expected to be a lengthy legal battle and a grassroots effort to ask voters to repeal Senate bill one fell short.

The law targets deep programs, among other things, on college campuses.

Joining me for the roundtabl from Ideastream, Public Media, deputy editor of news Andrew Meyer from New five reporter Michelle Jarboe.

And in Columbus, Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

one of the most watched items and the 5000 plus page budget was whether the Browns would get $600 million from the stat for a new complex in Brook Park and where the money would come from.

The final budget incorporates the Senate's plan to tap unclaimed funds for the Browns and other future stadium projects.

Former Ohio Attorney Genera Mark Dayton said he would file a class action suit if it's enacted.

Karen, the state was always behind the idea, it seems, of a dome stadium and putting money into it.

But the unclaimed funds idea won out over originally Mike DeWine's idea of taxing the sports betting and then also the legislature, the House's idea of of floating bonds for it.

Yeah I don't think the doubling of the tax on sports gambling operators was ever going to fly with Republican lawmakers.

In fact, they said they didn't want any tax increases in the budget at all.

And so that was immediately stripped out.

But apparently the idea of creating a fund was something that they were interested in because the Hous did that 30 year package bonds.

There were a lot of questions about whether the Brown's project would raise the money that would be necessary to pay back those bonds.

But now we've got this unclaimed funds, about a third of the state's unclaimed funds being pulled into this sports and cultural facilities fund.

$600 million of that is earmarked for a grant that the Browns are supposed to pay back over.

I think it's 16 years and then the rest we're still waiting to see exactly where all that will go.

But the idea, I think, was let's create something so that all of these teams and all of these facilities that want money don't keep coming back to us asking for money.

They can go to this fund instead.

What about this argument, though, that the state it really isn' the state's money to allocate?

Well, and that's I think it's an interesting question.

It is tru that when you go back for years, I mean decades here, you go back to even Voinovich and Celeste who were using those unclaimed funds to cover budget holes and for other purposes.

So it has been done before.

But former Attorney General Mar Dayton, along with former Jeff Representative Jeffrey Crossman, both of them are former lawmakers, both Democrats.

And they say that they aren't sure why it hasn't ever been opposed before legally, but they say it's not the state's money to lend out like that.

It's it's the lawyers get punished if they borrow money from that's being held in trust and let somebody else use it, though.

So why should the state be allowed to do this?

So I think that's a really interesting question that I'm expecting.

We'r probably going to see some sort of legal discussion over because it seems like this is something that I mean I mean, it's in the budget, so I don't know where DeWine stands on it, but it could go forward.

We'll find out in a couple of days.

Yeah and that's what I'm wondering.

I was trying to try and find out if DeWine actually had the budget yet, because we're talking about 5500 pages here.

And he goes through it al and he issues line item veto, as he has in the last three budgets that he's signed.

So it's expected that he' going to go through all of this and maybe strike some things out.

And because he said there's some things he' not really thrilled about, but we're there will be able to see those line item veto and see this budget signed by Monday.

He hadn't gotten the bill as of late yesterday.

So I don't know.

It's going to be a long weekend at the governor's residence.

I guess he'll have to figure out what it is that you do to stay up all night.

He'll have to do he has a staff so I presume that they're going to be working some overtime.

Very good.

Michelle, is this unique?

It's it's unorthodox, but there are other state that use their unclaimed funds in a way that Ohio's proposing to.

Well, there's a really important distinction here and there's some nuance to it.

So like Karen said, Ohi has used unclaimed funds before for a variety of things, including affordable housing loans, and just to pad the General Revenue fund.

And there are other states that use unclaimed funds.

But what lawmakers are talking about right now is a lega taking of the unclaimed funds, which they have never done before.

So think about it like a bank has your deposits and they keep a certain amount of cash on hand and then they can use the rest of the deposits to make loans or investments.

That's what the state that's what Ohio has done.

That's what other states, for the most part, do with unclaimed funds.

What Ohio is talking about doing now, very few states do, which is we are going to tak legal ownership of those funds.

And after ten years, you can never get them right.

So so and that that is at the heart of this lawsui that Mark, Dan and Jeff Crossman are talking about filin if this becomes law, is the idea that this violates the takings language in the Ohio and U.S.

constitutions, that this would be an unconstitutional taking a private property without compensation?

There are two states that have what are known as like permanent achievement provisions.

And I realize that word.

It's like, what is that word?

I had never heard it before.

I was working on this.

Yeah, that's what Ohio's talking about doing.

Basically, it is the state permanently taking the money.

The two states that have that are Hawaii and Rhode Island, they do it after ten years, but it's with very small amounts of money, less than $100 in the case of Hawaii, less than $50.

In the case of Rhode Island.

There are two other states that put limits on how long you have to put in a claim for your unclaimed funds.

At 25 and 35 years.

But they do not take legal ownership of the money.

So there are still some other avenues, like through the courts, for people to file claims.

So what Ohio is doing is very unusual, or what Ohio is proposing to do is very unusual.

And there are national unclaimed property groups that are really raising a ruckus about this.

Now, meanwhile, we hav this local angle of Chris Rooney in the county executive who has been opposed to funding for Brown Stadium.

He doesn't think that rating, in his view, unclaimed funds is the right move.

But he had a press conference really to just assail the entire budget.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

I was there on Wednesday and, you know, he he is very unhappy about many things in the budget, concerned abou what could happen with Medicaid.

Of course, the county is very focused on social services and he's worried about some of the cuts that could affect low income people.

But a lot of what he had to sa was related to the Brown said, you know, he was saying tapping unclaimed funds is morally, ethically wrong.

And there's this legal question about the legal ownership change.

He also was pretty appalled at lawmakers late night move to change the wording of the model law to make it more easie for the Browns to move to Brook Park, more difficult for Cleveland to get leverage in negotiations with the Browns.

And then he's still holding the line on not giving the Brown County money on the model law.

What was interesting about that is not just that they decided to make changes to it, but they decided to make changes.

While there's an activ pending lawsuit to two lawsuits, there is a state court lawsui that the city of Cleveland filed early this year against the Browns.

And then there's a federal court lawsuit that the Browns preemptively filed last fall against the city.

And that was done, as you said, late at night last minute.

There wasn't time for a conference and discussion, Andrew, early in the morning.

And I think the excuse I saw or the reason I should say that I saw is, well, we wanted to make sure we got it right and that's why it came in so early in the morning.

So very last minute.

Not a whole lot of time to challenge that.

In addition, one of the things that Ronayne talked about was that the Browns have said we're going to give Cleveland some money for its lakefront plan because we're going to leave the lakefront.

But Ronayne said there were conditions tied to that, which included the fact that the county has to pony up some money.

And he was basically saying, look, if you want to give money, go ahead.

But these conditions are unacceptable.

Yes, He said that on Wednesday in response to a question I had asked about how, you know, some critics are saying that he ought to sit down at the negotiating table with Clevelan and the Browns and other parties to try to negotiat a better exit deal for the team.

And he was saying, look, in conversations with the mayor of City of Cleveland, Haslam Sports Group has said, we will give you money for the lakefront.

But only if the Cuyahoga County issues bonds to hel pay for the Brook Park project.

Now, I reached out to the Browns about this.

They declined to comment on anything they wrote and had to say on Wednesday.

And I also reached out to the city of Cleveland about this.

I haven't heard back from them.

And Ronayne said, That's a gift with strings.

We're no we're just not going to parties.

That's right.

He is holding the line.

Karen, the city has hinge its efforts on this model law.

A lot of people say, listen, what it's meant to be is that you and I can have a tea move to Las Vegas or something, not a team to move a few miles south to a suburb.

But now we see that the change in the law is going to make even the argument here more difficult.

Yeah, and I have to say like a couple of things in this budget, this really came out of the blue.

I don't think a lot of people were expecting to hear this.

And so when they start reading the budget again, this is starting at 1130 at night going into 130 in the morning, they're going down through eac and every line they've changed.

And that one struck a nerve for me as I was listening.

So afterwards I asked the House finance chair, Brian Stewart, who was the chair of the conference committee, what is that about?

And he said it' about clarification of the model law that it's about moving teams out of Ohio.

It's not about moving team within the same county in Ohio.

According to him, it' about moving teams out of Ohio.

And I said, do you think that that settles the lawsuit?

And he said, yes, it does.

He thinks that that settles the lawsuits.

So this is another thing that kind of just surprised.

I think a lot of people because this was not really expected and it really gets into som some very specific issues that Cleveland and COG County have on this whole deal in general.

A Franklin County judge ruled the ed Choice voucher program is unconstitutional.

It's only round one of a three round fight that surely will end up in the Ohio Supreme Court.

Yeah, for people who are opposed to vouchers, this is a big deal because they've been waiting for a while for this.

This lawsuit was filed in 2022.

And so this is something that they were hoping for.

But that's that's the first of several.

You've got the appeals process and then you've got the Ohio Supreme Court.

And the question is whether supporting vouchers is constitutiona under Ohio's state constitution, which says there has to be a a form of common schools an it has to be fair and equitable.

And so that's been the issue that goes beyond this.

And you've got groups that are supportive of the lawsuit, the third of the state school districts are in this group called Vouchers Hurt Ohio.

And they say that that language in the Constitution is very clear and that funding vouchers has hurt public education.

And it's unconstitutional on that.

And they say they're going to the Ohio Supreme Court, which right now has one Democrat and the rest of Republicans, they say those Republican justices are strict constitutionalists or strict constructionists, rather.

So they should read the language.

That's very clear, very simply.

And so they feel confident.

But in all reality, it's goin to be an uphill battle for them.

And th state has long argued that the that vouchers or scholarship that support the student, not the private school so that they go along with that.

The judge didn't buy that argument.

Yeah I mean, it's still the idea of what does that mean for public schools?

90% of kids go to public schools.

It's in the Constitution that you have to have the system of public schools and it has to be supported.

So the judge who is a Democrat here in Franklin County, and certainly people who are politically in-tune, will point that out.

She ruled against this.

But once again, the process continues on.

And the you don't want to predict what the Ohio Supreme Court's going to do, but that's the reality that they face.

Andrew Connor Morris Our education reporter who you work with on a daily basis, caught up with local educators for their reaction.

What did they say?

Well, Congressman, on this story, for years now, he's been monitoring the expansion of choice.

Over the years, he's been in touch with various school district who are being impacted by this.

This week, he followed u with the school board president in north in Canton who basically said, look, you know, private school are playing by different rules.

They've lowered the bar for them.

They don't have to report to the state report card.

They're not subject to public records request.

They are there's a much lower standard held to private schools and to public schools.

And it's just not fair.

How will the new state budget impact schools and libraries?

What will a flat income tax mean?

Democrats, none of whom voted for it, criticized the budget as disproportionately helping the wealthy, while Republican backer say it offers much needed relief to taxpayers and fund schools more than ever before.

Karen, first, let's just talk about the school funding.

The Republicans and all the emails I saw said a recor setting number amount of money is now being invested in public schools.

And the emails that I saw from Democrats said they are underfunding schools, they are putting schools behind the eight ball.

And this is one of the worst budgets for education.

Well, the funding of a Fair School funding act, the fair school funding plan, which was passed in 2021 and has been a part of the six year phase i throughout these three budgets because it was so expensive to phase it in all together.

That's been a lot of the discussion about this.

The governor had proposed that in his initial budget.

The House took that out and wanted to go with a different formula.

The Senate brought it back in, but it's not fully funded because it's funded at 2021.

Salary and financial data levels.

So Democrats will point out, okay, you funded the the program, the fair school funding formula, but you didn't fully fund it.

And so that's been one o the points of contention here.

And the concern is, of course, that there are some school districts that could potentiall lose money under this formula.

And that's been part of the floor of the formula that's out there.

But also there's this other half that would require school districts, if they have more than 40% of their operating budget being held in cas from collected property taxes, they have to refund the rest of that money t property taxpayers who paid it.

And while that sound like a great deal for property taxpayers, school district say this is going to potentially throw them into financial chao and some of them will have to go right back to the ballot to ge the some more money to operate.

And so they're very concerned about this idea that really came forward in April that they haven't had that much time to really push back against.

And they say those two things together, along with some other property tax bills that lawmakers are talking about separately from the budget, are really setting schools up as they feel for serious financial issues.

They're calling it property tax relief to have this cap carryover.

But the Democrats say there's no real relief in that.

Yeah, because they say that school districts are going to have to continue to go to voters to ask for levies and the budget also changed the language, certain levies, emergency levies, things like this.

So it really puts school districts they feel behind in terms of trying to make sure that they have enough money to continue to budget.

All of thi kind of relates back in some way to the discussion about vouchers that we were just having and the concerns that vouchers are getting, the funding that really should be going, according to public school advocates, to public schools, because they're in the constitution, the state is required to fund those.

Let's talk about the income tax.

The Republicans, many of them in the legislature, have wanted a flat tax.

Actually, some of them want no state income tax.

Now they're going to get the flat tax, 2.75% a year starting in 2026.

So the idea that everyone pays the same percentage, some might say, okay that's equitable, that's fair.

What we're hearing from critics of that is that the people who will benefit from that are really the wealthiest Ohioans, those who are not making as much money won't see a big benefit.

Yeah, and I have a chart that I'm looking at right now that shows specifically the breakdown that if you make over $100,000, this reduction of the tax bracket to two and three quarter percent does benefit you.

For instance, if you make $110,000 a year, it's $75 benefit.

But if you make two and a half million dollars a year, then the benefit is $18,000.

Now, if you make under $26,000 a year, you don't pay income tax.

And it's those people in the middl between 26,000 and 100,000, that the question i how much are they getting back?

How much benefit are they getting out of this?

And this is costing the stat $1,000,000,000 to implement this flat tax.

And Democrats will say that's $1,000,000,00 we could have put into schools, we could have put it into somewhere else.

Republicans continue to say that lowering property or lowering income taxes makes the state more competitive when they're trying to bring businesses in.

But I have to point out that DeWine has said two things on this.

He has said that there were no income tax cuts in his original budget because, as he has talked to businesses, they have told him that's not why they choose Ohio.

They don't care about Ohio's income tax rate.

That's not why they come here, that Ohio's rates are competitive.

And he's also said he wanted to see a tax cut for working families.

So those two thing are really interesting to note that DeWine has said that while his Republican colleagues have pushed this flat tax, is he is he just saying that or will that be a conviction that might drive him to use the red pen?

That's a really good question, and we won't know until he actually does.

But he has never proposed an income tax cut in any of his budgets.

His Republican colleagues in the legislature have.

And there's a document from the Legislative Service Commission that says that tax income tax cuts since 2005 have basically cost the state $72 billion.

And of course, like I said advocates will say that's money that could have been invested otherwise.

But Republicans say this is the way to go.

States are doing thi and we need to be competitive.

And they will say that that's the people's money.

They get to keep it and spend it as they wish.

Absolutely.

We've got another issue, and that's about library funding.

We got an email from Susan in Medina County.

She says, Talk about this provision buried in HB 96, which is the budget, which would require public libraries to place materials related to sexual orientatio or gender identity or expression in a portion of the public library that is not primarily open to the view of persons under the age of 18.

She urges people to contact th governor for a line item veto.

What about this, this issue?

At first we can talk about that and then also about funding.

Yeah, and this is a double hit according to libraries, because this is a concern tha potentially this is censorship, potentially this is unconstitutional.

But also the practical matter, they say the language is very broad and vague.

And so to try to implement that language would be difficult.

Some library systems and we have some really great library systems in Ohio that have million of volumes and pieces of media.

They're going to have to go through all those and figure out what meets that standard.

And when I was talking to the Ohio Library Council earlier this week, they said for some districts or for some library systems that could take years and cost millions of dollars.

And so that's a real concern.

And they call it an unfunded mandate because they're no getting extra money to do this and they're not getting extra time to do this.

So they're very concerned about that.

A grassroot effort to repeal Senate Bill one which sets new rules for the states, public universities and communit colleges banning most diversity, equity and inclusion programs has failed to make the ballot this is a huge hurdle for a volunteer group that has to gather signatures in 44 of 88 counties and have to explain what the law does and why they want to put it before voters.

I mean, this takes a lot of work and they had very little time to make this happen.

The deadline for submission is July 2nd, and they were trying to stop the law from taking effect today.

So they submitted they were going to submit yesterday, but they said they just fell short.

The unions, educatio unions are against this as well because there's a provision there about not striking.

Yeah, and that was part of the question was what was what were those education unions going to do about Senate Bill one?

Were they going to try to do the repeal effort, which we saw way back in 2011 with Senate Bill five, when unions really pushed back against that law, which would have changed collectiv bargaining for police officers and firefighters and teachers and all that.

Unions really came out against that.

The Education union said they were going to focus on litigatio rather than the repeal effort.

So the repeal effort was really left to a lot of volunteers.

And so, again, that's very difficult.

It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to get all those signatures.

And they just they didn't have the time.

Jason has an email about SB one.

He says the restrictions of DUI and in Ohio schools seems to run afoul of the First Amendment.

Are the restrictions something that would stand up in court?

Well, and that I think that's where the litigation element of the question is and that the education union had been looking at litigation to try to figure out if they could challenge the law on that basis.

So far, there's been no litigation filed.

That doesn't mean it won't happen.

It's just that's not what happened.

What's happened so far.

The Cuyahoga Count Board of Elections has certified petitions submitted this week to recall Cleveland Heights Mayor Kahlil Seren.

Residents will vote on it.

Michelle Sarin, who didn't get enough signatures to run himself and we talked about that last week.

Now, is going to perhaps face a recall vote.

The only way to avoid that is to resign.

He said he's not doing that.

Well, I would say it' not totally clear what he'll do because he put out an announcement on a statement on Monday saying to residents, you elected me to serve a full term.

And unless you decide otherwise through due process, that's exactly what I intend to do.

But then just yesterday he sent out a statement saying he will take his responsibilit seriously to, quote, carefully consider the full ramifications of resignation.

Resignation?

My apology.

Once the council clerk certifie the validity of the petitions, which is scheduled to happen on July 7th.

So so that language is a little bit murky.

So I guess it's just a wait and see.

A centur old bronze statue of President William McKinley didn' come close to meeting its maker.

The sculptor died in 1950.

But it did nearly meet its end after a runaway recreational vehicle barreled down the road and smashed into the base of the statue outside the Stark County Office Building Andrew.

The statue of McKinley.

This is a I loved looking into the history of this.

It's not just that it got hit by an RV and is unscathed.

A great survivor.

This thing survived the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and then it was in a smaller community in California and was hit by vandals in the 2020s and 2023 made its way to Canton.

So at least it's had a few stressful years until this latest is this thing used to get dressed up for Christmas.

There was all kinds of things.

But in the San Francisco earthquake, the sculptor said, I can't save it.

And he left.

People passing by said, Let's save that thing.

They brought it out onto the street that lay down on its back and it survived.

It was in the middle of this cobbleston street pointing up to the sky.

That statue is in Canton.

You can't take that down.

People don't.

And it's not a challenge, but an RV can't do it either and neither can a an earthquake.

Monday o the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven.

KSU.

I'll be in for Jenny Hammel and hosting a conversation on political violence.

The recent shootings of lawmakers in Minnesota and attempted assassination of the president and threats against other state and congressional lawmakers have led to calls for more security and to cool the temperature of political rhetoric.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.