(upbeat music) - The lame-duck legislative session is over in Columbus, and some high profile measures failed to pass.

What did pass is a bill changing voting rules, including a photo ID requirement.

And fired MetroHealth CEO, Dr. Akram Boutros, files a new lawsuit against the hospital's board claiming breech of contract and defamation.

"Ideas" is next.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to "Ideas," I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The lame-duck legislative term in Columbus ended after a marathon session that stretched through Wednesday, and into the early morning hours Thursday.

When it was over, several high profile hot button measures stalled out, including a move to raise the vote threshold for passing Constitutional amendments.

Voters, however, will have to produce a photo ID when they vote in person, one requirement in a bill making changes to the voting rules.

In Akron, City Council approved the White Pond Reserve Development over the objections of vocal opponents who say they will not back down.

And ousted MetroHealth CEO Dr. Akram Boutros filed a second lawsuit against the hospital system, seeking millions in damages for breech of contract, defamation and other claims.

We'll talk about those stories, and the rest of the news on the reporter's round table.

Joining me this week from Idea Stream Public Media, reporters Gabriel Kramer and Anna Huntsman.

And in Columbus Andy Chow, News Editor the Ohio Public Radio and Television State Health News Bureau.

Let's get ready to round table.

Ohio lawmakers closed the book on the current legislative term after a marathon session that ran into the early morning hours on Thursday.

Some high profile bills failed to get through, one that required a valid photo ID for in-person voting passed.

Andy, photo IDs have been, have been a touch point for a long time, Ohio finally said you're gonna need 'em.

- Yeah, this was one of those issues where a few years ago there wasn't a lot of support for it, there would have been so much backlash that people, that legislators would say I don't wanna deal with it.

It did seem to come to this point over this past lame-duck session where there were enough Republican legislators in the House and in the Senate who thought it would be a good idea.

It also didn't hurt that they attached the measure to a much larger bill so it would probably make it harder for people who had an issue with photo ID laws, but supported the other measures that were in the bill to vote against it.

So it looks like Ohio has this law coming in the books, unless Governor DeWine vetoes it, but the idea of a photo ID has been met with a lot of backlash because of, well two things.

One of the arguments is the people who want photo IDs say it will make Ohio's elections more secure, it will cut down on voter fraud, but what we have seen over and over again over every election cycle is that voter fraud is not only rare, but exceedingly rare.

It makes up a tiny, tiny fraction of a percentage of people who are trying to maybe defraud the election system.

So it's already a very secure system.

And then there's a concern that if you create more requirements, create more barriers, that it'll make it less likely that people will vote.

- And the question then, Gabe, is which people?

So the whole idea of photo identification, on the one hand you need photo IDs for a lot of things, so it's a basic thing, if you wanna vote go get an ID.

You don't have to be a driver, you can go and get a state ID without a driver's license.

But who are the people most likely not to have those IDs?

- Well I think it's, when we talk about how there are things that you need a photo ID, you need a photo ID to drive car, you need a photo ID to get into a bar sometimes.

You need a photo ID to travel in some cases.

So I think those are aspects of privilege.

Those are things that, with privilege you have the ability to do those things.

Not everyone can afford to do those things.

If you can't afford to travel, there's no reason to go out of your way to buy a passport.

If you can't afford a car, maybe there's no reason for you to go out of your way to go through the process, which is costly, to get a driver's license.

So these are people, there are people who have no reason to go get these things, so yes we're talking about more disenfranchised, more (indistinct) communities that this is going to more impact, and we talk about that there are some parts of the world, particularly we think about Cleveland where in this past election voter turnout was in some wards, in predominately black wards, 6%, 7%, 14%.

- [Mike] Dismal, yeah.

- So this is already an action that's going to be taken against a lot of those folks who are already not showing up to the polls to even further have more reason to not show up to the polls.

- Let's run through some of the other election-related changes that were made.

Again, all this has to be signed by Governor DeWine, he does have the power to veto.

The bill shortens the timeframe to get absentee ballots returned, and shortens the timeframe to request them, so in the past if you had your ballot post marked on election day it could be 10 days after that, and they would still count it.

Now that number drops down to four days.

- That's right.

And post marked the day before the election.

And so the, that, there's a lot of talk about the photo ID requirements, and deservedly so, but this one, I think, is one of the issues that's going under the radar that really could make a huge difference, could really make a big impact to the way elections are run.

So right now, if you get your ballot post marked in time, it just needs to get to the Board of Elections within 10 days after election day.

That's a pretty reasonable timeframe for the postal service to be able to receive, to be able to deliver your ballot.

This shortens that window to four days.

And there's big concern, especially among overseas and military voters who might not be able, who are much further away to get their ballot here within that four day window.

And there's a lot of talk about certain, about races that are already very close.

When we see the results on election night those are the unofficial results, but then they continue to receive these mail-in ballots, and they continue to count the provisional ballots.

And those later elections, those later votes, can really make or break an election.

We just saw a race that was too close to call on election night here in Central Ohio.

It was a state, state House race, that the person who was not winning on election night ended up winning their race because those other mail-in ballots came in, and those provisional ballots were counted.

So shortening that timeframe is gonna be a really big change, and I expect to hear more critics come out against it.

What's interesting is when we're talking about the timeframe of mail-in ballots, the other change that you mentioned, Mike, is getting your request for a ballot in seven days ahead of time instead of three days ahead of time.

That's actually an issue that had bipartisan support because although the current law in Ohio said you can request an absentee ballot three days before election day, that's not a reasonable timeframe to actually request your ballot, get it back, and then to send it in again.

So there were a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who supported that change in statue.

- When we think about how this would effect elections, if we look back to this past election, it was a common storyline for Democratic candidates to encourage voters to vote early, get their mail-in ballots in early where Republican candidates were encouraging voters to show up on election day.

Show up on election day in droves on election day, and really show their turnout.

And that's a, it's interesting because if we talk about who this is going to effect, this could very much have the effect particularly on Democratic voters, and a lot of political analysts will tell you that voter turnout is, new voters tend to be more Democratic voters that often are young.

Young voters are more often to be Democratic voters.

That's been true of the last few elections.

So it's definitely a GOP tactic to do what they can to prevent people from going to the polls 'cause it works in their favor.

- [Andy] And- - [Mike] Go ahead.

- And on the flip side of that there is some stirring and conversation among the Republican crowd that says maybe conservatives need to dial back the rhetoric when it comes to potential voter fraud because if you talk about it too much, and you put up too many barriers, you're sending a message to your conservative voters that maybe it's not even worth voting at all.

And so there's a concern that their could be a backlash in the Republican circles as well.

(dramatic music) - Some high profile measures did not pass, including the effort to increase the voter threshold for passing Constitutional Amendments.

That's something that state, Secretary of State Frank LaRose proposed.

It looked like it was going well for a while, and then early in the week we got an indication that there was a lot of disagreement among the Demo, I mean the Republican caucus.

- So the thing about lame-duck session is that you begin to put all the pieces together, but things don't usually surprise you in the moment because you do sort of see these breadcrumbs leading to the ultimate result.

And this is one of those things where we started to see the, this resolution to raise the threshold to 60%.

We started to see that losing steam throughout the final days of session.

So when we did come to the last day of session, it was a pretty well known fact that it wasn't going to pass because it didn't have enough support in committee, or it didn't have enough support on the house floor, it needed 60 votes on the house floor, and then it didn't have enough time to move through the Senate in time.

Plus, because there's a little bit more time at the front end of the next session, I think there were a lot of Republicans who said hey, if we really wanna do this, we can come back again, and do it before January ends.

So in the end it was a really big thing that took up a lot of air in the room, honestly, at the state house a lot of people were talking about it, a lot of people were focusing their efforts on it, and at the last moment it just seemed to stall.

- And what's interesting, even as it was stalling, one of the sponsors, state Representative Brian Stewart tried to rally support by saying hey, there are abortion measures coming.

There are people that wanna enshrine abortion rights in the Constitution, we need to make that harder, basically.

That still didn't give it enough traction.

- Yeah, there seemed to be kind of this one last hail Mary throw to try to get it through.

Again, not enough votes, and not time, and I think it's notable that there were a lot of legislators who were out sick, and so the fact that you weren't able, they weren't able to have the super majority because of absence is another thing that happened too.

- And then lastly on the issue of abortion, there was nothing passed in regards to abortion.

There was some thought there could be as much as an outright ban on abortion, that didn't go.

But also there was some clarifying language that was talked about regarding the existing heartbeat law because it's being challenged in court now because of vagueness.

And that seemed like something that definitely would happen and didn't.

- Yeah, there were a lot of factors when it comes to issue of abortion in Ohio.

You just mentioned two of the things.

There were a lot of Republican Legislators who wanna pass a total abortion ban, and they've been saying they wanna do that for years and years, now they actually have the chance to do it, and they didn't really move forward on it.

And that's a big question mark.

And then like you said the clarifying language where it's wrapped up in a lawsuit right now, and it's being held by the court so there are legislators who said well why don't we pass some clarifying language?

But I think the other factor there is to remember that it is on hold right now.

There's a current appeal, there's an appeal that's coming to that hold to the Ohio Supreme Court.

So I think there's other legislators who are out there thinking why not, let's just wait to see where the court process takes this to let that play out first.

(dramatic music) - The push to overhaul public education by taking power away from the state school board also stalled.

Lawmakers combined the bill with another banning transgender athletes from girl sports, but it failed to pass.

Let's, let me ask you about one other, and that is the education overhaul, the idea that there was gonna be power stripped from the Board of Education, the state Board of Education, put into the governor's office.

It was combined with the bill that would ban transgender athletes from girls high school sports.

That whole bill collapsed, it failed to pass.

- Remember how I was saying that usually you can read the tea leafs, and figure out what's gonna happen?

This was not one of them.

This was a huge surprise at two a.m. in the morning to see that at the very end, after hours and hours of debate and negotiations and a possible compromise, to see this fail at the very last second was a really big surprise, and that's when we all, all of us reporters, started scurrying around to talk to different people to see how the wheels fell off of this thing.

And what you found throughout the day during all those debates was that the Senate really wanted to pass its education overhaul bill.

This was a big centerpiece for them that they wanted to pass before the end of the year.

But there was not enough support among certain factions of the Ohio house Republicans.

And so to really quote, unquote, sweeten the deal, they took that giant 2000 page education overhaul bill, and rolled it in to the anti, to the ban on the transgender athletes bill, and then to really sweeten the deal for those, for the more conservative wing of the house Republicans, to sweeten that deal they added what's considered sort of an anti-vaccine revision into that bill as well.

So it was really this hodge podge put together bill.

We aw the stack, it was more than 2000 pages of Legislation.

- [Mike] I saw it on the Twitter feed, yeah.

- And at the very, we actually had to wait longer because it needed to be printed off before the legislators could even debate it.

And at the very end, when the Senate Republicans really, it seemed like they thought that they may have had it wrapped up, at the very end it was voted down.

And what we saw is the Democrats, who were already against all the, the transathlete ban, the Democrats were gonna vote against it, and then you have the more conservative wing of the House Republicans who voted against it because they didn't like their education overhaul.

And one more thing to add here is that when you really take a step back I think that there are a lot of legislators out there who are thinking, Republican legislators out there who have been calling for this ban on transgender athletes for a while, now they're realizing oh, wait a minute, did I just vote against my own bill that I've been wanting to see pass for a while?

So it was really just a big scurry at the end.

- [Mike] I love that, did I just vote against my own bill?

- They did.

They ended up voting against their own bill.

And I think it's one, it was almost like a power grab because we're gonna see a new change in leadership in the House Republicans next year, and I think that might have been a message that the Republicans, the House Republicans wanted to send to the Senate Republicans is that they didn't wanna get pushed around.

- Last thing, and that is the most important thing on your Twitter thread.

Andy, you flipped a half bottle of water into the air, I think it might have flipped around three, four, I've seen this, you have like 2,000 views on Twitter, I think 1,000 of them are mine.

It lands perfectly on the table in front of you.

What a move.

- It was settling a debate.

Somebody said I couldn't do it in one try, and I was like watch me, so... (dramatic music) - Former MetroHealth System CEO Dr. Akram Boutros has filed a second lawsuit against the MetroHealth Board of Trustees, claiming breech of contract, defamation, retaliation, intimidation and other things.

The suit claims that MetroHealth cost Dr. Boutros more than $8 million in earned compensation, severance and benefits, and quote, obliterated Dr. Boutros' legacy at MetroHealth, and destroyed his future, costing him opportunities for perspective employment worth at least $20 million additional dollars.

Gabe Kramer, this has become rankerous.

We're not seeing sort of a quiet thing being played out.

These press releases are being sent out by Dr. Boutros' lawyer, responses immediately by the board.

We've got a very public, and looks to be intracted, intractable situation.

- Yeah, Dr. Boutros is definitely not stepping down.

And he had, what, a month left to go in his tenure there at MetroHealth?

- [Mike] Right.

- Definitely doesn't want to take retirement so easy as he's got a month left.

So I think this, the initial lawsuit that we heard about a few weeks ago was that basically Boutros was saying that the hiring process for the new CEO was done in private, or at least decisions were made in private, meetings were held in private, and that was what the initial lawsuit was for.

- And that's wrong because it's a public hospital, and has to follow Ohio's open meetings law.

- Exactly, right.

So this new lawsuit, as you mentioned, claiming defamation of character, wrongful termination, breech of contract, essentially what they're claiming is that this is a retal, by firing Akram Boutros the board was retaliating Boutros for basically drawing attention to what was probably improper doing by the Board of Trustees.

Now I think a big piece of information that's happened between the two lawsuits was a board member, Terry Monoly, stepping down from his role, and providing support for Akram Boutros, basically saying the board was wrong in what they did, and Boutros was fired improperly.

- Interesting.

And I said there's always response.

So the MetroHealth PR Team put out a response to his stepping down saying he didn't engage in any of the deliberations, he wasn't a part of, Monnolly wasn't, wasn't in the meetings, hadn't done these things, and was simply saying he thought it was wrong, but wasn't part of the process that they went through.

Interestingly, in that first suit, so there's two suits, and the first one that Gabe mentioned, Anna, was about open meetings and improper hiring, and basically improper firing of Dr. Boutros as well.

In it they've added in their amended complaint yesterday a text that was sent from the board chair to this Terry Monnolly, who was not in the executive session meeting, which is a private meeting that you can have for deliberation of issues, but under public meetings laws you need to then come into the public, and that's where you conduct your vote.

The note according to the lawsuit, the text said "Terry, the board just voted to fire Akram."

You can't do that in an executive session.

And this was hours before the vote was taken in public.

That's part of the argument that Dr. Boutros is making is that's an example that he says has happened repeatedly, which is that they're conducting business behind closed doors.

- Right.

I'm looking at the amendment to the lawsuit now, and there's a screenshot of a text from Vanessa that says "Terry, the board voted "to terminate Akram immediately," and it's from, it's at 5:46 p.m., and the meeting notes say that the vote was taken at 7:30 p.m.

So kind of potentially showing here that that had occurred.

And of course MetroHealth has once again responded, and said this is plain and simple he was fired for taking $2 million in bonuses, and this is just, we're moving forward with a new CEO, just kind of that generic, or not generic, but the statement you would expect from them.

- Right.

(dramatic music) Akron City Council voted seven to six this week to approve the controversial White Pond Reserve Development.

Opponents packed council chambers for the raucous meeting in which they were escorted out by police.

Council agreed to sell 65 acres of unused land, which includes forest and wetlands to Triton Property ventures, for a mixed use residential and retail development.

A number of vocal Akron residents say they don't want the White Pond Reserves' wetland and ecosystem destroyed, and emotions were high at city council's meeting this week.

Anna, you were there, there's no replacement for being there.

They wanted to have their say at the council meeting, but there are specific rules about when the public gets to talk, which is basically at the end of the meeting.

They asked for hey, we wanna talk now, and there was a vote taken on that.

- Correct.

So, as you mentioned, public comment is held in Akron City Council regular meetings, at the end of the meeting, and people are given three minutes to speak.

They also can sometimes have opportunities to speak in committee meetings earlier in the day, but that's up to the committee chair at this point.

And so wouldn't you know the committee meeting beforehand they were not permitted to speak, so they did not have an opportunity to get one last comment in before the vote was taken.

But, as you mentioned, right before the vote was taken, Councilwoman Tara Mosley, who's now running for mayor, made a motion on the floor to allow people to speak who had signed up to speak, and that motion was voted down.

The people who voted down, to not want people to speak, voted for the White Pond Development.

- So when that vote happened, obviously the folks that were assembled weren't very happy about it.

- [Anna] No.

- And what kind of response, and what kind of, I know they were vocal, what were they saying, and then what was the result of that?

- Well they immediately, a number of them began booing.

A lot of them were yelling that they were not in favor of this.

A lot of people were yelling "Shame, shame."

And council president Margaret Somerville banged the gavel a couple times, and asked for order.

And they had been speaking out throughout the meeting as well.

So after that happened President Somerville called for the police to clear the chambers.

and so this was about- - [Mike] Wow.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I'm just thinking back to that moment because it was kind of, and there's video of this, I was kind of deer in the headlights to be honest with you because I was like wait, so much is happening, I'm trying to tweet that the vote was, that they approved it, I'm trying to hear what people are saying, and then wow, the police are being asked to clear the chambers.

And it was about five minutes of chaos, I will say, because I had questions of are they kicking everybody out for the whole meeting?

- [Mike] And you can't do that, right?

- You can't do that.

What's the law behind this?

And then I kind of went out in the hallway where people were, and some people went and just left because there, I did not hear this myself, because I wasn't out there at the time, but people said that police told them to disperse, so a lot of people left, but then a couple minutes later, a couple council members came out, and said hey, we're just gonna carry on with the rest of the agenda while you guys are out here, but you can stay, and we'll let you in one by one for public comment.

So you are, they were allowed to stay, and they also continued streaming the meeting so people could watch online.

So they didn't necessarily limit everybody's access to the meeting in that sense.

But there was that time of confusion, again, from my perspective as well, someone being there trying to figure out what's going on, there were five minutes of are people totally supposed to leave the building?

But then realizing no, you can stay.

And of course there were, I mean actually when I was coming into the meeting there were concerns about capacity and fire code.

They had to check with the fire Marshall because there were that many people that showed up.

So of course when you have a number of them leaving because they think they're being forced to leave, they didn't get to have their say.

They didn't get to have that comment later on.

- So what happens now?

The vote was yes, the development will move forward, but the White Pond opponents aren't stepping down.

- No.

You know, it's always something, Mike.

And so this is kind of interesting.

So there is a, there's an ordinance in the city's code that kind of dictates how the city's supposed to go about selling land.

So they're either supposed to, I think, advertise it for three weeks, or it can be approved, a land sale can be approved with a two thirds vote, and this is a 1990 law.

It was not a two thirds vote, it was seven to six, it was very close.

So there are questions now of whether it actually did pass, whether that 1990 law is still in effect.

They're trying to get legal opinions on this.

There's two different sides.

The city has said that they're not concerned about it.

It's possible that it's an ordinance versus charter thing.

If it was in the charter than it would have been not correct.

- [Mike] Right.

- So I'm still looking into this, still trying to get some answers here, but that is something that has been brought up.

So it is, I mean it'll be interesting to see what is decided here.

- Mike, I think it's easy to, well understand the frustration behind the process certainly, but if I draw a comparison from Akron to Cleveland, the two most dense parts of your region, Cleveland is a place that lacks green space, and there are residents all over Cleveland that are yearning for this type of green space, so I can understand how Akronites are there, concerned that their green spaces might be going away.

- Absolutely.

That was one of the biggest reasons people didn't want it to be developed upon because in this area there isn't a nearby park.

This land has been for sale for 15 years, and during that time residents nearby have utilized it for walking, bird watching, there's different species there to look at.

Now the city of Akron says though there's such a depurate need for housing in the city, and this is land that was never supposed to be a park, just the way it's zoned and whatnot, and just kind of the conditions there.

And so they're saying this would be a great opportunity to have some housing.

The plan is for rental homes, and market rate apartment, so that's another kind of question here, people are saying we need affordable housing, and this is not gonna be affordable.

The city says we need all kinds of housing.

We need to just attract more people 'cause we're losing population.

(dramatic music) - Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on WKSU, education reporter Connor Morris talks all about the situation in Akron schools, the vote to spend money on security, and the need to address system issues effecting students.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks so much for watching, and stay safe.

(gentle music)