- [Jackson] Ohio Republicans unveil their map to redraw the state's legislative districts.

Ohio's COVID-19 surge continues with hospitals filling up.

Voters prepare to whittle down the mayoral candidates field in Tuesday's primary.

"Ideas" is next.

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(inspiring music) - Hello, and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Rick Jackson, in for Mike MacIntyre, thank you for joining us.

Ohio Republicans unveil their proposed map to redraw the state's legislative boundaries.

The mat preserves the Republicans super majority, meaning a veto proof majority in both the Ohio House and Senate.

Ohio's COVID-19 cases, moving upward.

Ohio's top doctor says this wave of cases was felt first by central and Southern Ohio hospitals, but says Northern Ohio hospitals are now also being strained by the demand for medical care.

And in Cleveland, voters prepare to choose among seven candidates in a mayoral primary.

We'll talk about those stories ahead on the reporters round table.

Joining me this week, Ideastream Public Media's managing producer for health, Marlene Harris-Taylor.

Also with us from Ideastream, multiple media producer Gabriel Kramer.

and from Columbus, statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get started.

This is the first time the state's redistricting process takes place under reforms approved by voters to make the process more fair, less gerrymandered.

Map only involves the state legislative districts.

We get to Congress, redraw those later.

Ohio of course will lose one seat as a result of data collected in the census of 2020.

Karen, this map they threw out there yesterday, if approved, it projects to preserve the Republican super majority and potentially even add to it?

- Right, this map from the Ohio Senate Republicans and Senate President Matt Hoffman in particular is the map that was adopted by the commission yesterday as kind of a starting point.

It's the second map that's been proposed by a member of the commission.

The first map from the Ohio Senate Democrats was unveiled last week, and the whole, the difference between these two maps is pretty stark.

I mean, when Democrats came out with their map, they said that it would have 54 Republican districts, 45 democratic districts in the House, 18 Republicans and 15 Democrats in the Senate, Then Senate president Matt Huffman, with the maps that were unveiled and then adopted yesterday, the majority members of the commission said that they instructed their map drawers to not consider any sort of proportional breakdowns by party, which is interesting, because the constitution specifically says you have to look at the statewide portion of districts whose voters, based on statewide and general elections during the last 10 years favor which political party.

So that's part of the constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2015.

Well Republican said they didn't consider that.

However, the maps that they proposed have gotten really bad reviews from people who wanted a more non-partisan process or frankly Democrats who wanted more seats for Democratic districts.

They say there's an app, Dave's Redistricting App, which is a national app that looks at redistricting in all the states.

It says 66 of 99 house districts would lean Republican, 25 of 33 Senate districts would lean Republican, which is the way it is actually right now.

So 67 though in the house is even more than a Republican super majority a couple of years ago.

- When they ignore the demographic data for party, they also ignore demographic data for everything else, like race.

- Right, and that was specifically asked by the two black members of the panel who are Senator Vernon Sykes, and his daughter who is House minority leader, Emilia Sykes.

The question asked, what about the Voting Rights Act?

And the map drawers again said they were not, they were told not to consider that information.

And so it makes these maps really difficult to try to process in terms of how they work with Federal and now Ohio constitutional law.

- You said they were told not to, told by who?

- Well, and that was a question that was asked.

And you have to assume that since these map drawers work for Senate President Matt Huffman, he's the one who submitted those maps, but Emilia Sykes, the house minority leader said, hey, I'm a legislative leader.

You say legislative leaders told you not to consider this information.

I'm a legislative leader, and I didn't have anything to say about this.

I didn't tell you that.

So, you know, all of this feeds into Democratic concerns that these maps are not going to be drawn fairly, that they've been drawn already, and that they're just being presented in a process that's supposed to be more transparent and more open as voters approving that constitutional amendment in 2015.

And yet it doesn't seem to them that these maps are showing that that's actually what's happened.

- Gabriel, it's not just Emilia Sykes.

there are voting rights groups complaining this process hasn't been transparent all along.

- Yeah, there's two specific groups that were vocal about being disappointed in transparency of what's in what's going on.

We had the League of Women Voters, an organization that was key in pushing for new maps, a new redistricting system, and then Common Cause Ohio, another voter rights advocacy group, both disappointed that there's no real clear process of how exactly these groups are going to work together.

And after not meeting the September 1st, initial September 1st deadline with a plan, I think it's fair to say that they have no idea exactly what's going on or how does it come about?

And we're five days away from another deadline without any real clarity of how these two sides are going to come together on what they should do moving forward.

- Karen, the GOP staffer who testified before the redistricting commission said the map does adhere to the reforms approved by voters, but that's like letter of the law.

It doesn't appeal to the spirit of the law.

- Well and that is the whole question of this constitutional line about the redistricting commission having to consider the statewide proportion of districts whose voters, based on elections in the last 10 years favor each political party.

The amendment says that that should correspond closely with the statewide preferences of the voters of Ohio and the voters of Ohio in 2020, for instance, 53% voted for Donald Trump, 45% voted for Joe Biden.

That's not what the Ohio Senate Republican maps would suggest according to analysis by people who look at redistricting and did these numbers and made the conclusion that these maps are not, they're not balanced.

They're not going to reflect that 53-45, it's more like two-thirds of the House and Senate would be Republicans, as opposed to the 53%, which was in the last election.

- You know Rick, it makes me wonder if there's going to be any anger about this from voters in Ohio, from the people who went out and voted for that constitutional amendment?

I mean, there's so much to be angry about right now, I wonder if this will get lost in the shuffle, because so many people, other than our wonderful listeners of the round table, don't pay attention to everyday politics, and so will this rise to the level that voters will actually pay attention to this and will there be any repercussions, or is it just a vicious cycle?

Because since Republicans and Democrats are in protected districts, will there be any voter outrage in those protected district?

- Hmm, you would imagine that the minority party voters in a district that's majority the other way would fight back, but yeah, what reference do they have Karen?

- Well, there is anger, I mean, I'm seeing it in these redistricting commission meetings where there was a series of 10 of those in one week.

They went around the state and then yesterday, there were these two meetings from the redistricting commission, one where they voted to adopt these maps and another where they heard public comment.

And there are a lot of angry people, who say this is not what we voted for.

We voted to change the process that happened in 2011, when the maps were drawn in a secret hotel room in Columbus.

We don't want that anymore.

And the question though is a really good one that Marlene's asking, is this the kind of thing that people are going to pay attention to and rise to do something about it?

Because you know, the whole idea of the maps really creating who ends up coming to the State House and then those people decide who, what districts are, what the districts look like for Congress.

These are all tied in together, and these are really important issues.

And right now it looks like we're headed down the road to creating maps for only four years as opposed to 10 years.

And that sets up a whole different political scenario.

- That what I as about to ask, if we don't get Democratic buy-in, this becomes a temporary map.

And we do all of this again in a couple of years.

- Yeah, I think that there's a real risk here.

Not only is there potential chaos with candidates who were trying to figure out whether they want to run for office, what district they live in, to run that district could change, but also things could potentially change big time in four years, I mean, Republicans will often point to how Democrats could have changed the way that State house and Senate district maps were drawn with the proposal from then Senator John Houston, back in 2010, but Republicans will say, "Hey, Democrats didn't want to change it in 2010 because they thought they were going to win in 2010."

And so that issue died, and of course, then Republicans ended up sweeping into office in 2010.

That created then the desire by voter citizen groups to bring this issue to voters in 2015.

Things could change a lot in four years.

I mean, we have a major election where three of the members of the redistricting commission will be on the ballot next year and who knows what might happen.

- [Jackson] Gabe?

- I think it's important that we have the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, determine the planned map, the proposed map from the GOP side of the commission, that that was unconstitutional.

And they made a statement saying so, and I think that, you know, when we talk about sides coming together, I mean, it seems almost impossible.

Emilia Sykes made a comment saying that the GOP proposal is such an extreme that it seems like a bargaining technique to say, we're going to give such a extreme proposal, hopefully to land upon something still in the GOP favor, which, you know, still doesn't mean that we're coming together to find a common solution.

(inspiring music) - The state's top doctor says the numbers we are seeing during this latest increase of COVID-19 cases are troubling.

Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff gave an update on the pandemic yesterday.

While we're not at an all time high of cases being reported, Dr. Vanderhoff says daily case rates are 20 times what we saw in July.

Dr. Vanderhoff, Marlene, says the surge is impacting the Southern Ohio hospitals first, but we're starting to see it here too.

- Yeah, he said that, you know, what we're seeing in the South is likely going to move up to the North, which is the region we're in, in Cuyahoga county, very very soon.

And what's interesting, Rick is that, you know, the cases come first and then come hospitalizations and then come deaths.

So if we see this huge spike in cases, we know in a week or two what's going to happen is the hospitalizations are going to be pushed even higher, and unfortunately the ICU capacity is going to be pushed even higher.

And what hospitals keep saying to us is that even if they have beds, they may not have staff for people in those beds.

And we see in other states, where they're already having to ration care and we hate that word, rationing care, but it seems to be headed our way.

- That's, yeah, you have a good handle on what's happening here.

Karen, are you hearing from other states or from those Southern hospitals in Ohio about rationing care yet?

- Well, the State hit its high in terms of hospitalizations from COVID on December 15th, 5,308 people hospitalized then, and 863 people on ventilators.

That was then, now we have, as of yesterday, 3,178 people in the hospital.

So that number is increasing every day.

And there is at least one region of the state, in Southern Ohio, where, in extreme Southern Ohio, where they've already reached the peak that they were seeing in December.

So there's a real concern about hospital capacity here.

And it's not just COVID of course, it's also other things that, that was the whole thing in the very beginning, is you didn't want to pack the hospitals with people who were sick with COVID because people need hospitals for other things like car accidents and having babies and all this kind of stuff.

And now doctors are saying that they're also seeing not only those things, but also COVID, but also a resurgence of things like RSV, which is a virus that hits little kids, but then also people who put off medical care during the pandemic, now they're having issues with some of those illnesses and they're seeking hospital care.

So all of these things together, plus the effect that this has had on health staffs and health professionals who have been quitting, who have been saying, I need time away from this.

All of this together is causing a real concern.

- Yeah, and then on top of that, Karen, now we have the President coming out yesterday and basically saying that all hospitals, nursing homes, healthcare facilities who receive Medicare and Medicaid, and that's basically all of them, have to now comply with making sure that their staff is vaccinated.

And we heard from the Cleveland Clinic CEO, that he was concerned that they would lose staff.

The EWH CEO said last week, I believe it was last week, that they will lose staff.

- Metro Healthy said that when they added their complicity, that everybody there has to, but we know we might lose people.

- They know they might lose people.

So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out, if they actually do lose staff now that this mandate is coming in and Cleveland clinic indicated to Cleveland.com that they're going to follow the order, that they're going to put the mandate in place.

- I saw that this morning as well.

It's interesting, we have that iconic image in our heads when COVID was striking New York city first, and the clinic sent like a busload of people and all the nurses being applauded as they walked in to help New York.

We can't do that anymore, we don't have enough for us, much less helping those around us.

- Right, it's like everybody has to really worry about their own situation.

But one great thing that we do have in Ohio, I have to say this, is that they came up with this zone system and they put the states, the areas in the state into zones.

So if one zone gets overwhelmed, you know, then people from other, or healthcare workers from other regions will go into that zone and resources will go into that zone.

So like for example, Southern Ohio is being hit hard now.

So I would imagine I haven't interviewed anybody about this, but I would imagine they're deploying resources to that area based on what health officials have told us.

But if you think about it though, Rick, if all the zones become overwhelmed at once, then what do we do?

- Let's move on to children, they're testing positive for COVID-19 more, and some of those kids, Marlene, being hospitalized.

- Yeah, you know, and one of the things, remember Rick early on in the pandemic, the feeling was, well, you know, this, - We thought they were immune.

- We thought the kids were immune, this doesn't affect the kids, and yes, kids are resilient, more resilient than older folks.

And kids tend to still recover from this more so than older people.

But there is a certain percentage of kids that are ending up in hospitals.

And we're hearing from the children hospitals in our state and across the country that their hospitals are filling up with kids, and there's also long-term complications that are impacting some kids, a small percentage, but who wants that to be their child, to be that person in that small percentage, right Gabe?

- Excuse me, I'm not a parent, but I, in my mind, I'm thinking if I hear about a child testing positive, and I think we saw 10,000 cases in Ohio last week of children who had tested positive.

And to me, that's scarier than one of my peers who are millennial age or gen Z age.

I think about a child testing positive, that's scarier to me; again, I'm not a parent, but even if that demographic of people tend to be more resilient to it, but that's scary to me.

And here we are a year later, you know, heading into a new school year with more lax rules on masks, you know, fewer sessions online.

So it, you know, it, like you said, they're more resilient, but it is a little more scary to me to think that we are heading toward a world where children are being more effected than they were in the past.

And we're not protecting them the way we were a year ago.

- Exactly, and we've seen school districts that are not masking have to close down or say, you know, we're going to take a break for a couple of weeks and see what happens, and school districts where masking is in place, we're seeing fewer cases.

- Karen, we were talking about the idea of the president's mask mandates for companies.

There have been more private sector mandates coming along, including the City of Columbus this week.

- Yeah, the city of Columbus issued a mask mandate, which takes effect today.

And this is something that I would not be surprise to see other cities issue because Democrats in particular have been pretty supportive of mass mandates.

Democrats run Ohio's largest cities.

And that's where there's been the earliest and most spread.

I mean, arguably people in Franklin County where Columbus is should have been wearing masks indoors anyway, because we did have high spread, but I would not be surprised to see this move on, even though certainly we were just talking about the Republican candidates for US Senate and even some of the Republican candidates for Governor have sounded off saying that they feel like these masks mandates go too far.

- We were talking on schools in addition to the private sector, there's an effort, I guess, in Warren County to keep kids in school, exposed, or try and find a way to keep kids in school even if they haven't been vaccinated or masked after they're exposed.

Marlene, that's gotta be scary to a lot of parents, as Gabe was saying.

What do you mean you want to keep my kid after they've been exposed?

- Right, and it's counterintuitive to everything that the CDC has said, everything that we've heard the scientists say, when a person has been exposed, the protocol is for that person to isolate, to stay at home, to quarantine for at least a couple of weeks and to be tested and to have a couple tests before we, and we know the virus is gone.

Bringing a person who has the virus around the population who cannot be vaccinated right now?

That's just asking to spread that to that population.

- You see Columbus doing one thing, trying to protect their people and other outside places like in this case, Warren County, not.

That's gotta be, when you talk to doctors, they have to think that's the worst case scenario.

- That's absolutely the worst case scenario.

And that's one of the things that'll be really interesting, when this, from President Biden's sweeping changes that he announced yesterday, he touched on kids in schools a little.

The federal government does not have the authority to come in and tell states and local school boards what to do, but he said that they're going to do everything they can to encourage and push for teachers, for example, to make sure that they're all vaccinated and to do everything they can to protect kids, because we're seeing this, this patch quilt of regulations happening, as you just said.

In one county, things are like, hey, come on in.

It's fine, we're not going to wear, COVID?

What COVID?

What's that?

What's COVID?

And then the other counties, you see people who are totally masking up, so that there's just not consistency right now with what's happening.

- Gabe, this week also brought us news that the Cleveland Orchestra, Playhouse Square, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, all we're going to require now proof of vaccine or a recent negative COVID test for people who attend their program.

- Not surprising at all.

That seems to be the way venues are going.

One thing that I think is interesting though, is the orchestra is not going to limit seats within their venue, but they are going to follow CDC guidelines and require proper masking for anyone to attend.

But this goes along the lines of social consequences.

If you're not going to get the vaccine or willing to play ball and get a negative COVID test, which is a process that is kind of annoying, if I'm being honest with you, getting this COVID test.

- Especially for people who are now being mandated to do it weekly.

- Right, exactly, so, you know, this is the way venues are headed.

So I'm not surprised at the Rock Hall or, you know, the Orchestra or any venue is heading this direction.. - [Kasler] Not all venues though.

- Not all venues.

- Let me just add, there's a big concert tonight in Cincinnati at the Great American Ballpark with Billy Joel.

- [Jackson] But that's outdoors.

- It is outdoors, but still, the whole idea was I believe in the Biden announcement yesterday, was that venues, no matter what, should be at least considering some of these things, but also for instance, Ohio State University has its first home game tomorrow.

And there's no mask mandate there.

And it's interesting because Ohio State has a mask mandate or has a vaccine mandate for its students, but yeah.

- Is there a capacity limit at Ohio State?

I mean that we're talking about 100,000 people coming into a stadium.

- There never seems to be.

(panel laughing) Every year, it seems like it gets bigger and bigger, but yeah, I mean, and I know that Dr. Anthony Fauci has said these outdoor games where people are seen without masks and we've all seen the pictures from last week's college football, all the images there, that these are not a good idea right now.

And so that's something that I think there are some public health concern over that.

(inspiring music) - The field of seven candidates seeking to become the next mayor of Cleveland will be reduced Tuesday as voters have their say in the primary.

First time in 16 years, we know there'll be a new person leading the city of Cleveland.

Mayor Frank Jackson retiring at the conclusion of this, his fourth term.

Gabe, this is a big opportunity for voters to have a say in how we move forward as a city, but turn out as expected to be pretty darn low.

- Yeah, big opportunity for sure.

This is the first time in my adult life that Cleveland will have a mayor who isn't Frank Jackson.

And, but yeah, voter turnout is expected to be low.

I talked to, you know, representatives from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

They're expecting in this primary about a 15% turnout.

I mean, you could see that.

- [Jackson] 15, 1-5.

- 1-5, 15%, and that's very low.

And when you have a city with, you know, by about 250,000 voters, that's just, that's just a few thousand voters.

I mean that's 15,000 votersish, in a sense.

So, you know, this is a, a very low turnout to be expected, although I will say absentee ballots at this point are outpacing 2017's mayoral primary for ballots, it's still very low.

And people haven't really turned out in masses the way you'd expect.

- We don't see big polling.

We don't know which of the seven is doing how well, but we can see from, as you were saying, early voting, certain precincts where you might think this guy or this lady has an advance.

- Right, so you're seeing ward 17 and ward one turnout, you know, that's Camps Corner, Mount Pleasant.

So those are the votes, those are the wards that tend to turn out.

So that's no surprise there that those are the wards turning out as well.

But yeah, you're looking at some candidates finding support in those neighborhoods, potentially more than others, but again, polling isn't exactly the accuracy we would like it to be.

- Marlene, the candidate that does advance with the two candidates right now that advance, eventual winner, no shortage of challenges.

And one of those things has to be how inequity in this city impacts public health.

- Yes, and excuse me, and on top of that, Rick, the health department in the city is, you know, the best description I can say is a mess.

You know, the health department has had problems for years here in Cleveland and many changes at the top.

And so that's going to have to be a big focus of the person coming in, what to do with that health department before they can even think about tackling the health inequities in the city.

And you know, so much of what we think about outside, that's not in the hospital setting impacts people's health.

So think about the gun violence in Cleveland and not only the medical issues that come out of the gun violence, but the trauma that's being created in communities that are experiencing and living with this violence every day.

So you have to put in the gun violence along with the other health inequity issues, such as food deserts, infant mortality, so much to be tackled in Cleveland right now.

- Yeah, things we've talked about recently, they're redoing of the sewers, the tree canopy, all those things.

- Exactly.

- Do impact health.

- [Marlene] Environmental health, absolutely.

(inspiring music) - Ohio Supreme court will decide whether some drivers who receive tickets from Cleveland's traffic camera program get back the money paid in fines.

Drivers who leased cars or were driving employer owned vehicles and got tickets filed a class action lawsuit in 2009.

They want 4.1 million in fines and 1.8 million in interest from 05 to 09 refunded.

Karen, the traffic cameras in Cleveland have been dark since 14, why has it taking so long for this?

- Well when the camera program was instituted, there was this order that owners of cars would get tickets.

Well, these people said, Hey, we weren't the owners of the cars, so we don't get the tickets, we shouldn't get the tickets.

The law was changed, but in that interim where the law was in effect, and before it was changed, there were people who were leasing cars or driving company vehicles, and they got tickets and they say they're entitled to, it's a little over $5 million between the cost paid and the interest paid on that.

But the city of Cleveland says, hey, they did not appeal those tickets, they paid the fines.

And so they're not entitled to anything, but then the leased car owners, they say, well, hey, the process was never intended to be easy for people to appeal; it costs money, it takes time.

And so it wasn't fair to begin with.

So this is more wrangling over a traffic program, like you said, it's been defunct for since 2014.

- On Monday's Sound of Ideas on 90.3 WCPN, we'll highlight a new anthology of short stories, essays, and poetry, focusing on immigrant communities in Northeast Ohio.

It's an apt kickoff to Cleveland's Welcome Week.

I'm Rick Jackson, thanks so much for watching.

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