The secretary of state directs election boards to limit ballot drop box use this fall.

The Browns have a new stadium named regardless of where they play.

And drought conditions worsen across Ohio.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Anna Huntsman, in for Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRoche has directed county boards of elections to limit how voters use ballot drop boxes during this fall's election.

LaRoche is also suggesting lawmakers take that idea further and ban boxes completely and he wants proof of citizenship added to the voter registration process.

The Browns begin their season this weekend.

Fans will take their seats at the newly christened Huntington Bank field and don't even think about shortening that to a catchier nickname.

The hot summer has helped along drought conditions in Ohio.

For some in the state, the drought conditions have not been this severe in decades.

And Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne delivers his State of the county address and his plans for the year ahead.

Joining me for the Reporters roundtable, we have in studio from Ideastream Public Media senior reporter Kabir Bhatia and reporter Matt Richmond, Statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler join us from Columbus.

Let's get started.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has directed county boards of election to limit voter's use of ballot drop boxes in this fall's election.

Well, Rose's directive requires that a voter can only put their own absentee ballot in a drop box.

Karen, this directive from La Rose comes after he suggested lawmakers consider doing away with ballot drop boxes completely.

He says his concern is over ballot security.

Can you tell us why this is?

Well, specifically ballot harvesting, which is the practice of gathering up a whole bunch of ballots from different voters and then bringing them in and dropping them off all at once.

And Republicans feel that that invites fraud.

Quite often that's used by voting groups or groups that are trying to help the elderly or the disabled or people who live in rural areas bring their absentee ballots in.

But he's raised these concerns, saying ballot drop boxes maybe should be eliminated entirely.

He made that suggestion in a letter to state lawmakers in in which he also, as you mentioned, suggested that proof of citizenship be provided at voter registration and that that should be required.

But this decision on ballot drop boxes comes right at the 60 day deadline before the election.

And I've talked to some people who say that this really bothers them because one family member in their family would bring their ballots to the ballot drop box and drop them off.

And now that can't be done unless the person goes in and signs that form.

And that takes time.

I talked to legal and voters director Jen Miller about this.

She said that some people won't be able to do that because drop boxes are open 24 seven.

The board of elections is not right.

And this has been a contentious subject in Ohio for a few years, specifically around ballot drop boxes.

And recently, the state was on the losing side of a ruling regarding drop boxes and voters who need help.

Right?

Yeah.

And that was the suit filed by the League of Women Voters of Ohio, which challenged one provision in this big House bill, 458, which was signed last year.

It was the one that required voters to show photo ID.

It eliminated most August special elections, even though we had an August special election after that.

It also limited counties to one single drop box, and it had a list of family members and only those family members who were allowed to drop off absentee ballots in ball drop boxes for people who are disabled and legal.

Even though the League of Women Voters sued and they won, the judge ruled that that list violates the Voting Rights Act.

So that list is not in place.

But now this is in place that says that if you are dropping off your ballot, dropping off someone else's ballot, you need to go into the building and sign a form saying you have permission to do that.

Right.

Okay.

So just to be clear, because I know the original list said something like, Grandparents can take your ballot in, but grandchildren can't.

Which I thought was kind of interesting because you'd think that maybe grandkids would be wanting to help their their older relatives.

But just to be clear, because of this lawsuit now and you can take ballots for anybody, even not a family member, and you just have to go in and sign the form or or is it still specific people you can do this for?

No, it's it's as long as you're willing to sign the form saying and you have the permission of the voter, which assuming the voter gave you this ballot to take in and drop off, you do have that person's permission.

Then you go inside the form and that's that.

The question that I have and I haven't been able to ask the secretary of State, Frank LaRose, this is how it is going to be enforced, because as people come up to the ballot drop boxes, unless there's somebody standing out there taking your ballot, how are they going to know if you're dropping one ballot in or two ballots in or whatever?

I suppose they could check the film or whatever.

But it's it's for some people, it is a restriction that they feel is unnecessary and that even Governor Mike DeWine says Ohio does things right when it comes to elections and that changing the election law all the time is something that he feels there needs to be proof that the law needs to be changed before he wants to find any more legislation that would do that.

As you mentioned, the secretary of state also wants to require proof of citizenship before a person can register to vote.

What's Le Rose's concern there?

Well, again, the question of ballot security and whether in this case, non-citizens are voting and non-citizens can't vote by state law and by Ohio Constitution voters just to prove that a couple of years ago.

And so the secretary of state goes through the voting rolls and makes sure that everybody is a citizen.

And he recently found that 597 cases out of 8 million registered voters in Ohio were non-citizens.

Some of those people just registered.

Some of those people voted.

And he's referred those over to prosecutors.

But this is a very, very rare circumstance when people do register as non-citizens and vote.

And quite often, as we talked to an immigration lawyer, it's a mistake.

People think they have the ability to do this.

They don't realize that this is not allowed.

And so that's another claim, along with this ballot harvesting thing that Republicans are pushing in this election that suggests that there is fraud that's happening and there's no widespread fraud in elections in Ohio or elsewhere.

And elections officials have said this over and over and over again.

But these questions still keep coming up and these laws keep changing.

And as you change the laws, you make it harder for people to follow along with what they're supposed to do.

And LaRose is asking state lawmakers to make these changes.

So what has their response been and is it possible any more changes could be made before early voting starts?

Well, they are not here.

They will not be here until after the election and during that lame duck session.

They have a lot of bills to look at already.

And so I don't know that they're going to act on this right away.

I mean, a bill that would be proposed now at this point would have a very difficult time getting through all of the other bills ahead of it unless it's a super high priority.

But I could see the idea added to an existing voting bill that makes some big changes, including allowing hand counting of ballots.

If a board of elections or voters decide that they want to do that.

And that bill also would delay the scanning of absentee ballots until after the polls close, which could potentially delay the results on election night.

So that bill is still out there.

And some of these ideas, I suppose, could be added to that.

But we won't know until after the election.

Let's move from the statehouse to northeast Ohio now.

Cuyahoga County Executive Kris Ronayne gave his second state of the county speech yesterday.

The speech was delivered from the Huntington Convention Center downtown.

Matt Ronen gave kind of a couple of initiatives that will be forthcoming.

One of them is an affordable housing fund.

How is that going to work?

Well, you know, there were there weren't that many details.

It'll be it'll be funding for, you know, building around the county.

But it's not really clear exactly how who would be eligible and how the money would go out.

Hmm.

He was talking about housing in other ways, too, though, with I know that there's this property tax, the rising property taxes, got homeowners concerned and Ronayne says help is going to be coming.

Yeah, he had sort of two points that.

First there there will be some some programs particularly for for seniors who need some assistance with their property tax payments.

And then also and you know, there was a press conferences earlier this week or last week with county and municipal officials about how they need how they want the state to make some changes to a state law to give some some relief to property owners.

Mm hmm.

And I know something else he talked about was trying to get guns off the streets.

Does he have a plan for that?

And did he say much details there?

Well, this has been a bit of an ongoing dispute, I guess you could say, between the sheriff's department and Ronan's administration and county council.

The sheriff during the budget cycle and basically since he took office, has been asking to expand the sheriff's department's role in in policing the county.

And usually, you know, typically they are traditionally they've focused on running the jail and providing security and services at the courthouse.

And when he came in, he immediately launched a downtown safety patrol, which is a few sheriff's deputies last summer, who were patrolling downtown.

And they talked about how a lot of guns and a lot of arrests, a lot of guns were taken off the street and a lot of arrests were made during that.

Mm hmm.

And so he tried to expand that and said that, you know, there should be a similar sort of patrolling by the sheriff's department around the county in, you know, wherever it might be requested or potentially, you know, wherever they.

The sheriff's department said it's needed.

County Council did not go with that idea.

They they didn't allow for the expansion of of his staff.

And they said basically that, you know, you need to you know, there are issues at the courthouse.

Judges at the courthouse have asked for more security there.

Why aren't you focused on that?

And then, you know, there were some questions about the overtime that was already being racked up.

And so right now is at an impasse.

But county executive Rooney says that he's working to come up with kind of a an agreement or a plan with county council to have this expanded patrolling by by sheriff's deputies.

Ronayne also gave an update on getting children out of the Jane Edna Social Services office and into housing.

Now, this was a pretty big story a few years ago.

Matt.

So can you give us some context on this?

And where does running say it stands now?

Yeah.

You know, first sort of noticed that the kids were asleep in there years ago and that continued.

And when he took office, there was some pretty extensive reporting by Cleveland.com about, you know, how big of an issue that was and how it was causing concerns for the staff there.

Mm hmm.

You know, when he took office, there was a plan to create a few beds.

I think it was like eight or ten.

Right, Because that's that was the whole that's why the story, you know, was so big, right?

There's not really it's not it wasn't really set up for that kind of kid staying over.

Right.

Right.

But, you know, kids were being dropped off.

Kids who didn't have stable housing were being dropped off.

There.

And it's a county building that is kind of dedicated to serving these these kids.

And so they couldn't just send them away.

So they needed to find beds.

And so, you know, they had a few.

And he says that they have come up with a plan to expand the number of beds that can be able to create to around 58 with some outside funding and in partnership with the centers, a county not nonprofit, that, you know, kind of works on issues like like these.

Okay.

I also want to talk about the protests during the speech.

So these were some from some folks who want the county to divest from Israel.

How did that impact the speech?

Well, so I watched on the stream.

You couldn't really hear those interruptions.

It was interesting to watch County executive Ronan respond to them.

At first he sort of was acknowledging people, saying, I respect your First Amendment rights.

You know, and then they were off camera.

They were led out of the the venue.

And then it kept happening over and over again.

And eventually he just tried to ignore it, kind of you could see him stumble and you kind of hear a little noise.

And then he you just try to keep going without even acknowledging them.

And it was, you know, some of the protest groups that have been coming to county council for months.

Initially, it was asking for the county to issue a declaration calling for a cease fire in Gaza.

And that has kind of evolved now to test the county to stop investing in Israel bonds.

And he was asked about that during the Q&A portion, correct?

Yeah.

He was asked directly if he would do that, if he would stop the county from vested bonds.

And he said, no, that is not something he's open to doing.

He didn't explain why, but he just said, nope, closed door on it.

More to come on that for sure.

Kabeer.

Ronen also detailed the creation of a music and entertainment task force.

What's the role there?

I'm smiling because you said detailed, and by all accounts he didn't really detail it per se.

Last week he teased this and then yesterday it sounds like he really just teased it again.

Last week at the Rock Hall, they announced this study about the music ecosystem in the music economy in Cleveland.

Greater Cleveland really did go well outside of that.

And they talked about using possible liquor taxes to fund this.

And then Ronayne said at the time he would like to have some sort of committee.

Now, if anyone remembers, there's the arts czar, Randi Kaye Brown, who's been there, I think, about a year and is in charge sort of the the the point person for arts in city hall.

This sounds like a committee that would be and possibly under her.

We don't know we don't know details using that word again.

But they would be a committee that's part of county government, not city government that looks into similar sort of things, but just for the music industry.

Matt.

I did want to also ask that, you know, these ideas, they have to get through county council first.

So what's the relationship between the executive and the council?

It's been interesting.

There have been some things that have gotten a lot of pushback from from county council and the county council sort of slow walked.

It seems that Council President Purnell Jones and and county executive Ronayne have a pretty good relationship and Jones kind of tries to kind of humor his colleagues on council but get Ronan's kind of initiatives through the most recent one that is kind of been held up at county council is a big change to the way that the executive office is allowed to spend money that, you know, it would raise the cap on the amount of money that needs approval from county council to be spent and do a bunch of other things.

And yeah, that's one of the things that just kind of sitting in county council, there's a lot of like, you know, why should we given this, You know, we've had many problems and corruption in the past where it seems like we're just opening the door to more of that.

So, you know, they're not just kind of going along with everything executive says, but it's not a broken relationship, I guess, would be the best way to sum it up.

Last thing on this, you've done some reporting on the new county jail that's sort of planned.

And did he mention that at all in the speech?

Well, you know, it's interesting.

After covering it before county security came into office, you know, every step, every decision was kind of publicly aired.

So it took years of planning and and studies and discussions and these endless meetings with all the stakeholders in the county.

That is all.

And he only said during the state of the county speech that it's moving along, that they have their land, they have a good partner in Garfield Heights there.

I mean, right now they're in the design stage of it.

We haven't seen any drawings, but yeah, that's, that's where they're they're at.

The Cleveland Browns will be playing their home games at the newly renamed Huntington Bank field for the next two decades, regardless of whether they stay at their current stadium or build a new domed site in Brook Park.

The team announced the deal earlier this week.

FirstEnergy previously held naming rights at the stadium, but that deal ended early due to the scandal involving the company and the passage of the so-called nuclear bailout bill.

House Bill six could bear.

Few details have been made available about how Huntington paid for the naming rights.

Well, I think the how I mean, there are bank so they can pay for it.

But how much?

We only know that it's more than the 6 million a year that first energy was paying and that's really all that they would tease yesterday's press conference was was short on certain details and that was one of them.

But it's they did say it's more than the $6 million a year that first energy paid the Browns.

So and you know, kind of there is some uncertainty still about where the Browns will be playing.

But that didn't impact the deal.

It didn't impact the deal and they wouldn't talk about it.

It was kind of the elephant in the room.

And I don't know I don't know the exact quote for Mr. Haslam, but essentially we're not here to talk about that today, which seems very unusual when it's you know, it's sort of the example that I thought of it would be like if you saw your teacher at the store.

Right.

And she was caught shoplifting and then the next morning in class, she doesn't mention it.

She just goes on teaching.

It was kind of like that.

I'm not saying Mr. Haslam did something wrong, of course.

I'm just saying it's the elephant in the room and they wouldn't address it.

Yeah, they kind of just said, We're not taking questions about that.

I think that he did say it's a good question, but we're not going to be answering it right now.

So I was wondering how are they going to fit all of those letters?

Is it going to have to wrap around?

Are they going to be very small?

So that also was not address Huntington Bank field.

That's a little still not the longest.

I feel like there's so many NFL stadiums out there where I'm like, that's the name.

It's like, yeah, well Cleveland Municipal Stadium was longer and they they figured out ways to display that.

So I think they'll be fine.

Rocket mortgage.

Rocket mortgage Fieldhouse.

That's a long one.

It is official though.

Matt Cleveland City Council approved the name change the next day, but Councilman Mike Pulisic was not happy about the change or how it happened.

Yeah, sort of.

The the I don't know, the the senior member of a council is often trying to make sure that outsiders show it.

The proper respect.

It it is supposed to come to council for approval.

And so he was a little upset that they had their big announcement with all the media on the day after a holiday weekend.

So all the media didn't really have anything else to do on the Tuesday morning after holiday weekend.

And then it went to council and he said that that was not right, brought up that, you know, there is an undisclosed but presumably tens of millions of dollars going to the the Cleveland Browns for this and just kind of raise the question of whether there is any money that can go to the owner of the stadium, the city of Cleveland, to whom?

Well.

Council President Blaine Griffin then said he knew about the deal, but he couldn't disclose it.

How did that go over?

I don't think anybody should have been surprised that they came to Council President Griffin to kind of make sure that nothing happened when they went for approval the next day and to sort of show him the disrespect.

So, you know.

Yeah.

I don't think anybody was was surprised that he knew.

So we're not sure how much it cost and we're not sure where the stadium is going to be.

But one thing was clear from the announcement, Kabir, the stadium is not going to have a nickname like others have had in the past, right?

I don't know how you can make a rule about that, legislate that, you know, people call it what they call how many people still say the Q Right.

And it's rocket mortgage for that's not even a reference to the current name.

So yes, he was very clear about that.

And he said that the head of Huntington Bank has a bad history, a bad connotation with nicknames in the past.

He's kind of alluded to something and I think everyone was thinking, what is it was very mysterious.

And if you look into his his background, first of all, the company's based in Columbus, Huntington.

If you look into his background, I believe he went to Stanford.

So that's the San Francisco area.

I believe he's from Philadelphia.

At least he spent a lot of time there.

So if you look at those two, the stadiums in the past, these are not the current stadiums.

There was Candlestick Park in San Francisco Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.

Veterans Stadium was nicknamed the vet.

That's what people in Philadelphia call it, San Francisco Bay Area, Candlestick Park, the stick.

I'm wondering if that's not the bad connotation that maybe he was referring to, because I can't find anything in his background.

That's unless, you know, he played Little League at some ballfield that was that was named I don't know somebody.

Yeah, I did a lot of Googling about this, too.

I could not figure out what Huntington Bank nickname in the past caused problems.

Karen, could you figure it out?

I don't know, because we have a Huntington Park here in Columbus where the Columbus Clippers, the Guardians farm team place and people call it Clipper Stadium or Huntington Park, I there's no weird nickname that goes along with that.

And I'm struggling to come up with a nickname I can say on the air for Huntington Bank field.

So I'm just trying to think like in the future, what could people possibly, yeah, Hey, if they win, you know, call it a ham sandwich as long as they're winning, right?

Well, maybe he's listening to this conversation.

Hopefully he's listening to this conversation and maybe he'll email us and let us know and clarify.

He's texting her, right?

Yeah.

Well, see, I think there is no doubt that people would be coming up with a nickname, especially after Jimmy has said no, let's call it something.

Yeah, you can't tell us not to and we won't, but The US Department of Agriculture has designated 23 Ohio counties as natural disaster areas due to drought.

The counties in the disaster declarations have experienced eight or more weeks of severe drought.

Karen, how does a federal disaster declaration help and is there potential the state could follow suit?

Well, a federal disaster declaration means that federal financial assistance can come to support the communities that were affected by this.

And yeah, the state could absolutely do something in terms of following suit.

The question is whether this will happen.

But I mean, it's a huge swath of the state that is in this extreme severe drought conditions, but almost all of the state is experience, some experiencing some sort of drought.

And you've got the director of the Department of Agriculture, Brian Baldridge, who says this is historic.

It's the worst in the southern, southeastern and southern parts of the state.

And the biggest concern right now is for livestock farms.

So this is something that's been building all summer.

When we started getting heat back in June and no rain, all of it is coming to this conclusion that it's very, very dry and there's very little relief and on the horizon.

Yeah, this is especially difficult for farmers, as you mentioned.

Karen Kabeer, do we know how it's affecting the crops this year?

Well, not good.

They have, as you said, a lot of drought conditions.

There's a map that sort of tracks this sort of thing.

They've had it for almost 25 years, and I think never in that history have they been at what's considered exceptional drought, which is for in so many parts of the state.

So it's obviously not helping, especially because they were planning on a pretty, pretty normal rainfall this year because in April, you know, as you're starting the planting season, it was a lot of precipitation and rain.

And since then it's been kind of feast of feast or famine.

And it's not expected to get better as we head into the fall.

No, at least not this month.

I mean, we're having but we are having cooler temperatures.

So that's going to help.

It won't, you know, evaporate.

The moisture that we do have is much.

But as far as actual new rainfall, not very much predicted.

the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission is bidding to bring the Special Olympics USA Games to Cleveland in 2030.

The commission announced this week it's entering the bidding process.

The games are held every four years in major cities.

Could be a greater.

Cleveland Sports Commission president David Gilbert says the impact for Cleveland would be generational.

Yeah, I mean generational.

I'm not sure that's a pretty general term.

So maybe he's he's thinking community pride and certainly you could say that.

But they only have these games every four years.

Cleveland has bid in the past on the World Olympics when like in the thirties.

I think so.

I think we're due for something.

Obviously, we didn't get that one, but I think we're due for having one of these.

And it brings in a lot of athletes, 5500 athletes and 100,000 of their family members and other attendees.

So it can be pretty big and pretty important.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven.

KSU We will talk about a major music study on Greater Cleveland's music ecosystem with local music venue owners.

I'm in a Huntsman Inn for Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for watching.