Budget haggling will begin between the Ohio House and Senate, who must agree on one proposal to submit to the governor by month's end.

An exodus of employees is at the Cleveland International Film Festival, is raising concerns in, Sandusky is ready for its close up.

30 years after the comedy classic Tommy Boy ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

The budget process in Ohio has reached reconciliation, where the House and Senate hash out their differences.

And there are two versions before sending a budget to Governor Mike DeWine for his approval.

One group that didn't hash out any differences, Democrats whose amendment attempts failed and none of them voted to approve the Senate's budget this week.

The artistic director of the Cleveland International Film Festival, the last of the full time employees on staff before a change in leadership has resigned and a number of former employees express their concerns to the festival's board about the current culture there.

The leader hired last year said change is never really easy.

Rallies are planned across the region and across the nation tomorrow as Washington, D.C.

host a military parade honoring the 250th birthday of the U.S.

Army on President Donald Trump's 79th birthday rally.

Organizers say the no king's protests are a way to take a stand against what they see as encroaching authoritarianism.

And I'm going to dig into my closet for one of my many little coats, you know, from right after the wedding so I can wear it to the Tommy Boy Festival set for August in Sandusky, where the film is set, you won't find Callahan auto parts in Sandusky, but you will find a good time in August.

Joining me to discuss all of the news of the week from Ideastream, Public Media, senior arts reporter and Tommy Boy expert KBIA, Marcia and health reporter Taylor Wisner in Columbus, Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable Ohio Senate Republicans passed their version of the budget on Wednesday.

It included money for a new domed Brown stadium and would create one flat state tax bracket.

No Democrats in the Senate voted for the budget.

that it needs to be signed by Governor Mike DeWine, who, by the way, does have line item veto power.

Karen, any chance I'll use it?

Oh, I think there's a very strong chance he'll use it.

He used it 44 times in the budget that's currently in place or two years ago, and I think 20, 25 times in his first budget.

So, yeah, I think there's a very strong chance.

I don't know what he'll use it for.

I mean, I think that there were there was some concern on his part about the funding for the Browns Stadium and that I wonder if that's not been resolved with this proposal to use unclaimed funds rather than a package of 30 year bonds.

But we'll just have to see.

Right.

He's for the Browns getting money.

He just wanted to have a different mechanism.

The doubling of the sports tax the Senate came up with using unclaimed funds, which they say are just sitting there.

We're not doing anything with them.

So it sounds to me like it's just a mechanism thing, but they're on the same page about funding the Browns.

Yeah.

I mean, considering that there has been funding for stadiums, the Browns, however you want to look at it in Dwayne's budget, the House budget and the Senate budget, it looks like there's going to be something that comes forward that gives the $600 million that the Haslam's want for that domed stadium project in Brook Park.

So none of that, none of the Democrats voted for that.

They actually failed to have an amendment on the budget to which is HB 96, to get the funding out of there.

None of that prevailed.

Obviously, we have supermajority in both the Senate and the House.

Right.

And one Republican even voted against the budget in the Senate.

And it was pointed out that this is the first budget since 2021 that did not have a single Democrat that voted for the budget.

And I don't know that the Brown Stadium is the only reason.

I'm certainly Democrats are very concerned about the flat tax proposal, which would take all of the two existing income tax brackets in Ohio and flatten them down to two and three quarter percent, which amounts to a tax cut for people making over $139,000 a year in Ohio.

And Democrats are very concerned about that, paired with the cuts that they think are coming unfairly to many programs that they support.

It sounds like when they talk about needing to make the numbers work, that flat tax thing might be a thing that there's a little bit of wiggle room not going down to 2.7, 5% flat.

Maybe there's some some compromise there.

I don't know.

I think Speaker Matt Hoffman has said that he likes it and Republicans have talked about this for a while.

And you have a vague ramaswamy who is right now the leading candidate for governor there, the Republican candidate running for governor who has said he wants to eliminate the income tax and a flat tax is seen by many people as a way to move toward elimination of the state income tax.

And the state also got some good financial numbers that show that things are going fairly well.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the two or three quarter percent flat income tax is what turns out to be the final result.

But the RAMASWAMY does not have the veto pen.

No, of course not.

Yes, but I mean, I think that this is a goal.

I mean, Republicans have been pushing income tax cuts in budgets going back to 2005.

And while there have been mixed results, when you look at the actual overall, I mean, Ohio's job growth and job losses have been worse than the national average.

But Republicans will point out that, hey, we've still gotten more income tax revenue every year, though it's been about a $13 billion, I think, revenue loss every year.

That policy matters, the liberal think tank has pointed out, and that that money could be used for something else.

So this argument of getting rid of the income tax continues on with Republicans in supermajorities in the House and Senate.

It looks like it's moving forward.

Let's talk about education funding.

Public schools.

Education funding has run the gamut from the House and the Senate version.

Senate would provide more money, but still bases funding on a 2021 cost, which some say districts amounts to a cut because it's not looking at inflation.

The bigger districts are saying many of them are just going to get hammered.

Some are going to be like Cleveland staying flat.

But but many, like Youngstown and Canton, will see big cuts.

Yeah, And this there's a double whammy here when it comes to schools.

You've got the fair school funding plan, which was not it was completely set aside in the House version of the budget.

They used it as a framework but said they were moving into a bridge formula, as they called it.

The Senate funds the last two years of the implementation of the Fair School funding plan because it was a six year implementation, but only at 2021 level.

So it's still not fully funded.

And so school advocates have been concerned about that.

But on top of that, you've got this cap on the cash reserves that schools can hold from property taxes they've collected and those two things together, along with another bill that's not in the budget that would do some other things with income tax or with property taxes, really have schools very concerned about how they're going to make sure that they don't go into deficit spending and that they don't have to go to voters for levies because voters are really tired of levies.

Seven and ten levies fail in Ohio right now.

Let's talk about the impact on the state's Big eight, the Big eight Urban districts.

Taylor Ideastream Connor Morris looked at the claim that the majority of the schools would get a boost under the Senate's budget.

That's what they're saying.

But he found that when you look at these big urban districts, many of them would lose money, some would be flat.

Yeah, yeah.

Connor found specifically in northeast Ohio, our biggest urban schools, Canton and Youngstown, stand to lose the most when looking at the Senate's proposal compared to how much they currently receive in state funding.

Be about a $6.6 million drop in Canton, $5.6 million drop from Youngstown over the next two years.

Two of the big eight, not the biggest, obviously, are Cleveland and Akron.

Those would remain relatively flat.

Yeah, about the same.

None of the budget proposals fully fund the fair school funding plan, and analysts say that will hurt poorer district.

More to how so?

Yeah.

Well Ohio's highest poverty school districts will lose more based on the Senate proposal compared to the fair school funding plan.

That's according to public policy matters Ohio that that think tanks analysis the fair school funding plan it's in its fourth year of a six year implementation.

It attempts to base the school funding on things that advocates say better represent the costs of education.

You know, increasing funding for districts with high numbers of low income students or students with disabilities, for example.

The Policy Matters analysis suggests that the highest poverty schools would lose out 576 million over the next two years under that Senate proposal.

If the current fair school funding plan is not going forward.

But we're hearing from Senate leaders KBIA that this represents the most money in a budget to public schools.

That's what they're saying.

This is this is the most we've ever invested in public education ever before.

It's a record amount of investment in public education.

And, you know, sure, it continues the fair school funding plan, but only at the 2021 level.

Karen mentioned the issue with carryovers as well.

So you can say that that's what's going to happen.

But overall, overall, you can say that.

But when you look at how it's going to hit poverty stricken districts and all these other little things that are in there, it makes you it gives you pause.

Karen, how is that being reconciled in Columbus where there also has been a major push toward vouchers, basically taking money that would have gone to public schools and bringing them with students to private schools?

In some cases, they would have enrolled anyway.

Now they're getting a voucher to pay for it, and they believe that that's fair because that's where they're going to school.

But that's another impact on the public school system.

Yeah, and especially since most vouchers, at least in the last round, went to kids who were already in private school, who had not gone to public school.

But it's interesting this time, the voucher conversation has really been pushed aside because of the all this property tax discussion.

And so you're hearing so much more about school districts being very concerned about this cap on the carryover.

And also, again, I referenced this bill that was just proposed last week that would eliminate what's called inside millage, which is levy money that can be levied by school districts and local governments that doesn't have to be voted on by voters.

And it would cost schools about $2 billion along with the cost that they would expect from this losing all this carryover money.

Schools are very, very concerned about their future and their their stability in funding from all of these things, all coming just in the last couple of months.

They really haven't had a lot of time to push back on some of these things because some of these ideas really kind of came out of the blue right now.

It's the thing.

These are not blockbuster stories.

You can't just close them.

Yeah, I mean, most kids in Ohio go to public schools and so trying to find a way to fund them, but also to still provide property tax relief to homeowners who have been struggling.

No doubt about that.

There are more than two dozen bills in the legislature that would try to deal with some of the issues that property tax owners are seeing, especially now as those property tax bills are coming due.

I there's been this idea of let's go to the schools who are sitting on all this money and have them refund that money to taxpayers and give immediate tax relief.

But schools say, wait a minute, that's money that voters approved for us to have.

And also we've been using that for our operating budgets and to save for other things, we need that money.

The Senate version of the budget has less money for Medicaid than the House version.

There are concerns that not only adults will lose coverage, a funding is cut, but also babies and toddlers.

Yeah, I mean, child advocates have been very concerned about this budget because of that.

But also there's not the money that they were hoping for for child care eligibility, which is something that's been talked about as being an affordable child care crisis.

It's actually the Ohio Chamber of Commerce has been lobbying for something with regard to child care because people are literally saying they're not going into the workforce or they're cutting back their hours because they can't afford child care.

And so the concerns about Medicaid in particular and the language that would eliminate Medicaid expansion if the federal budgets if the federal match drops below 90%, that would eliminate, you know, 770,000 people who are on Medicaid expansion.

There's real concerns about the cuts in Medicaid here.

The resignation of Cleveland International Film Festival artistic director Mallory Martin is putting the focus on the institution where there's been an exodus since a change in leadership a year ago.

former employees described a toxic belittling work environment under the executive director who started a year ago, Hermione Malone.

And they say they've brought their concerns to the foundation or to the the film festival's board but have seen no action.

Malone said she was brought in to write a financial troubled ship and that change is never really easy.

So Kabeer, you talked to her yesterday evening.

She says the organization's 1990, the financial forum that nonprofits file tells you all you need to know about why she was hired.

Yeah, the numbers on there in the 1980s only go through 23, but they still show a trend since COVID of expenditures creeping up.

Or maybe not even creeping.

Maybe jumping.

Yeah, shooting is a more accurate word, but revenue has been kind of flat and it's not been at the levels that it was before the pandemic.

If people remember, it was not one but two years that they had to go virtual for the for the Cleveland International Film Festival.

And since then, those things have not rebounded.

And, you know, you look at the audience numbers, those have not rebounded either.

She noted that after an executive director and a beloved one with a long tenure like Goodman leaves, there's going to be some friction with new leadership.

Sure.

And, you know, it was it's like new Coke, I guess you could you could look at it that way.

Somebody new comes in and there could be a clash of management styles, clash of goals.

And she was saying also, maybe it's time for people to think differently.

But the the way that some of the employees, whether they had been there for the transition or had come after that, that was the way some of them described.

It was, as you said, a toxic, somewhat abusive environment.

Yeah, change is one thing.

And saying, boy, this person's different.

Their style is different than the person I'm used to.

That's one thing.

But a toxic office culture is quite another.

How did they explain what has been going on?

What how they view this as being toxic?

Well, I guess just the demeanor, the tone of conversations raised, voices, people being somewhat targeted.

And this is, again, the former employees, their opinions on on what happened, their description of it, people not being treated fairly, that sort of thing.

You know, the general stuff that you would find in a work environment and said this is this is not good, this is not for me.

No festival is about to celebrate its 50th festival.

You reported some concerns about the finances.

We talked about the 1990, but two banks who were sponsors last year have not yet re-upped and the biggest sponsor in 2023.

PNC did not come back for last year's festival.

So there's real concern about the biggest year really coming up the 50th.

There's been all kinds of thought about how they'll plan for this golden jubilee and yet the money is a big concern.

Sure.

I mean, the the way that it used to be described to me years ago is that they start planning for the film festival the day after the previous years, and we're now over two months out from that.

And as you said, PNC, they were there for four years.

They did not come back in this current year a few months ago, Dollar Bank and Huntington, who have been there for a while as well, they were there this year.

They have not yet committed to the next year coming up.

And one employee said it seemed that that could be predicated on how the finances are going.

But Permian, by the way, was very confident that there will be a 50th.

One thing that she's seeking to do is to make the office virtual after August, when their lease up is up in Ohio City.

That means employees could be from anywhere If you had an artistic director that they are now from Cleveland, it could be artistic director from anywhere in the country.

That is freeing.

And it's something that she said is that could be done.

But you answer the question about what does that mean about the Cleveland ness of the Cleveland International Film Festival and to be fair, she said, well, how would you define define the Cleveland ness?

And she's someone I mean, she's from Detroit, but she did live here for 13 years previously.

And if that's the general tenor of of the films and the way they're picked and everything, her response was, well, the team that picks those those films has been in place for several years.

That has not changed.

And currently those people are still the same.

However, all of those folks are freelancers that live around the country that work virtually just like the plan for the entire office would be going forward.

And then finally, you sought comment from the board President Joe marinucci, and a number of the former employees say that they reached out to him.

They weren't satisfied with with what action had been taken.

What was his response when you asked him for comment?

Well, he said, you know, you're speaking to her, me and later this was yesterday.

So he said, I'm going to leave questions to her.

And he left it at that.

There is an email we obtained that shows that there is a nonprofit management consultant type firm, developed professional development firm that's going to be coming in.

And he said that the people involved in that have seen the emails and the communications that have come from former staff and are aware of them and will be taking those into account.

Rallies are planned across northeast Ohio and the rest of the state tomorrow to protest a military parade being held in Washington, D.C.

The parade will mark Flag Day, the 250th anniversary of the U.S.

Army and the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump.

Rallies are being held nationwide under the banner No Kings.

career.

No kings, obviously is talking about we don't want a ruler.

And what I've heard from these folks is essentially this is a a fight back against authoritarianism.

Sure, it's the rallies that'll be happening in contrast to the parade that's happening in Washington, D.C.

It's folks saying that, as you said, we don't want any kings.

We don't feel that this is a good use of federal funds and we don't think that this is something that should be happening.

However, the Trump administration and people who are in favor of the parade said it's going to increase recruitment for the military and that's going to make them more visible.

They've also said you can't put a price on patriotism.

The price tag of this rally in D.C., the military marches raise criticism.

Supporters say it's a good thing because you'll spend millions of dollars, but it will boost recruitment.

Right.

But it's $45 million.

And that's before you factor in Secret Service, law enforcement, security, that sort of thing.

So that is a pretty high price tag.

And you look at that and then you consider, well, wait, didn't we just go through and we're going through a lot of cuts from Dodge and people being laid off, cutting social programs and then hired back and some of them hired back.

Yeah, that's true.

But $45 million in the context of that, I think is not sitting well with a lot of people.

But as you said, they they feel it will increase recruitment for the military.

In addition to this being a pushback against the march, there also is the issue of what's going on in Los Angeles and the fact that the National Guard and the Marines are being asked to come in and to police protests on American soil.

It seems as though this would be part of that that will be folded into the protest, in my view.

Sure, it will be.

And I mean, we've got as you said, the National Guard is coming out in Los Angeles, Marines deployed, that sort of thing here.

People I think, are have noticed that there's increased activity at the recruiting center in Akron, North Hawkins Avenue.

But earlier this week, DeWine spokesman said, no, I think that's just general activity that they usually do for routine training.

Public health leaders in northeast Ohio say the move by the Health and human services secretary robert f kennedy jr.

To disband the vaccine advisory panel of the centers for disease control and prevention could impact the availability of vaccines and feed skepticism.

TAYLOR Let's talk about the board, what their role is in public health and and the fact that they were disbanded and then apparently reconstituted.

Yeah, well, this board it's a CDC board, advisory board, basically.

They look at reams of data about vaccine and make sure that they're safe and effective before making the recommendations.

Those recommendations are interpreted by the CDC and sent to local public health departments and doctors who tell you what vaccine to get.

So there's yeah, a lot of concern that these replacements, you know, may not recommend may, you know, change sort of the standards that all of the very time typically credential previous people in the board had.

And so there's just questions of what they could do.

And the issue there is that if they don't recommend vaccines, the CDC might also not recommend vaccines.

And then insurance companies usually go to the language of that group, that advisory council, in determining whether or not they should cover it.

So there's a real question locally that if insurance companies don't start covering these vaccines, who will and will people be able to afford them if they want them?

It's interesting because there's obviously been all kinds of debate about vaccine.

There are people that say that they're bad, that they cause autism, that there's all kinds of problems with vaccines.

They're bad for you.

What we've always then pointed to the CDC and said, yeah, but the CDC says these are safe, they're effective, and they're necessary for a lot of things.

Mumps, measles, rubella, all the way into COVID without with a panel of the CDC that might be less inclined to approve vaccines.

You wouldn't have that sort of ace in the hole to argue against somebody who says vaccines are not efficacious.

Yeah, so there's two issues there.

I think there's growing movement, right, of of people who look at some of these studies that have been discredited.

I should say that, you know, vaccines cause autism has has not been proven by scientific studies.

They haven't been replicated by one study that people often cite that isn't that scientists pretty much dispute.

And there are a number of things where people are saying vaccines do this and it's based on not peer reviewed study or correct one doctor who has some credibility.

But it doesn't it doesn't hold water.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this is like scientists throughout the community agree with this.

So there's a concern that, yeah, this is going to cause more people to be skeptical of vaccines and there's going to be public health threats due to more diseases spreading because people not getting vaccine vaccines that can prevent these diseases from spreading.

And there's also concern that, yeah, what's going to happen with this board and what is the CDC going to do with it with their recommendations?

I think public health officials are looking to what Kennedy's going to do to changes to the CDC and HHS.

I think that's where things stand.

Health, Health and Human Services.

Yeah, good to have your reporting on that, because obviously we're relentlessly local.

But when things are national like this and how they affect us locally, it was great to hear your thoughts with public health leaders here about how that might affect health care in northeast Ohio.

And I'll just jump in and say they they they if you want a vaccine and they're recommended, you know, by physicians and doctors, local health officials are saying we're going to work really hard to make sure they're available at people to no cost.

So.

The city of Sandusky is going to lean in to its Hollywood fame this summer with a festival celebrating the 30th anniversary of the movie Tommy Boy.

It was a 1990 film starring Chris Farley revolved around his efforts to save the family's Callahan auto parts in Sandusky, Ohio.

Although the film wasn't actually shot there, David Spade played the snide sidekick, and Farley gave me the lyric I sang.

Every time I try to put on the size 36 coat, I used to fit into camera.

You know the song Fat Guy in a little coat.

I thought you were going to sing it now.

Okay.

The movie may have been set in Sandusky.

It wasn't filmed there.

Callahan is not a real company, and yet it's one of those things that the cities embraced.

Yeah, they feel like it really captured the city of Sandusky of the mid nineties.

You look there's a Cedar Point mug in the background you see the Sandusky register It was a lot of it was shot in Canada.

So there's Canadian accents but we're not that far from Canada across the lake so yeah hey so and also the police cars they perfectly captured apparently the look of a Sandusky mid nineties police car which I'm not familiar with but people from Sandusky loved seeing that.

So it feels like it was shot there.

I'm going to be there because it just sounds like the funnest, catchiest thing in the world.

And it seems like Sandusky has been trying to do this for a while.

They were going to do it for the 25th, but then COVID happened, so they had to kill it.

But now they were able in between to get Peter Seigel, the director, he's going to actually be there.

He's going to be doing some Q&A, is they'll be showing the film right there downtown on on a big screen, and then they'll be the other cool things you have with festivals.

There's the big festival nearby at the same time, a few blocks away.

So yeah, yeah, Brewing Festival.

So it's going to be a big, big fun town thing right there downtown.

Sandusky.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven WKSU, Jenny Hammel will lead a conversation about the current housing market and why first time homebuyers are finding it hard to get their foot in the door.

A recent survey found the average age of a first time home buyer in the U.S.

is now 38.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.