(intro sound effect) - A pilot wind farm on Lake Erie, the first offshore freshwater wind energy project in the nation, got a boost this week from the Ohio Supreme court.

Cleveland City Council seeks to help renters stay in their homes when facing eviction by enacting a pay-to-stay law, and will Cuyahoga County build a new jail?

County Executive Armond Budish is pushing forward while critics wanna slow the process.

"Ideas" is next.

(orchestral music plays) Hello, and welcome to "Ideas".

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the Icebreaker wind farm project proposed for Lake Erie was properly green lighted by the Ohio Siting Commission, opponents had filed suit to stop it over concern for birds and bats.

Just in time for the return to school, the Ohio Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention weigh in on guidance for COVID-19 with some big changes.

The CDC says social distancing is no longer recommended.

Critics of the plan to build a new Cuyahoga County jail, which has been in process since 2019, say Executive Armond Budish is rushing the process and Cleveland City Council passes legislation to help tenants who are behind on their rent so they can stay in their homes if they offer to pay off their tab.

We'll talk about that, and the rest of the week's news on the Reporters Roundtable, joining me this week from "Ideastream" public media, digital producer, Stephanie Czekalinski, and criminal justice reporter Matt Richmond, and in Columbus, Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to Roundtable.

The Ohio Supreme Court issued a ruling Wednesday that clears a big hurdle for the first ever offshore freshwater wind farm in the nation.

Six turbines would be sited in Lake Erie, eight to 10 miles off the Cleveland shoreline.

The court ruled that the Ohio Siting Board acted appropriately in granting a construction permit.

2009, Karen, was when LEEDCO was established.

This has been delayed for a long time, and it's not just for one reason.

Regulatory hurdles, legal problems and an unfriendly legislature as well.

- Yeah, and I think this LEEDCO says is the final hurdle potentially, but I think there are some real questions about whether this will actually be built.

I mean, the permit was issued in 2020, and the Supreme Court said, like you just recapped, that it was issued appropriately, that there was enough data on the impact on birds and bats from this, that would potentially allow this to go forward.

But I think now the question is, when would construction actually start?

And there's no date set, and LEEDCO is now saying that this was the last thing that needed to be in place.

They really needed to kind of regroup here.

And so I think we're now looking to see if this is gonna happen because it certainly would be unprecedented, it's North America's first attempt at trying to put a wind farm in freshwater and in the Great Lakes.

And so I think that's one of the reasons why it's gotten a lot of attention and was certainly cited in the Supreme Court majority opinion as being an unprecedented project.

- Matt, Ron Richard is still there, and he's the head of The Cleveland Foundation and he heads the board for LEEDCO, but many of the players that were there in 2009 and through all of these years are different now.

- Yeah.

From what I've gathered, the last employee of LEEDCO left recently, I remember talking to one official from there, after the siting board issued the first permit that had what a lot of people saw as a poison pill that said that eight months outta the year, the turbines had to be shut down overnight.

And at that point I remember just a sound of defeat in his voice.

And so, yeah, it would be interesting to see if they can start back up.

- And that has since been lifted.

There isn't a requirement that they'd have to be turned down at night, but they would have to do a lot of tracking and measurement about the impact during certain months.

- Yeah, that's right.

And what the Supreme Court said, and some of the briefs filed said was, that the estimates for the number of birds and bats killed are far lower than onshore wind or projects that we do on land all the time.

- Karen, this is a push at a time when the United States is talking about wanting better climate change policy.

And in fact has recently passed new climate change policy.

And so this would be, you would think, an effort to harness wind for energy, which would be less damaging to the environment.

And yet in Ohio, there has been a convoluted history in regards to the push for alternative energies, including the dispersal or dismantling of the energy portfolio plans that were put in place several years ago.

- Yeah.

The US House today is gonna vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which puts $360, $370 billion into green energy projects around the country.

And so, yeah, this is a effort that has really gotten a push in the last couple of years to try to do more green energy projects.

But like you said, in Ohio, I mean, in 2008, there was a bill that was passed that would require electric utilities to get 25% of their power from renewable sources by 2025.

It passed the legislature almost unanimously, only one vote against it.

But then by 2014, the legislature was really trying to pull back on those standards.

They froze the standards for a year or two.

And then in House Bill 6, which was the nuclear bailout law, they eliminated those standards basically after 2026, there aren't those standards anymore.

So yeah, this has been a long process where Republicans were supportive and even former Governor John Kasich was supportive to the point where he vetoed a bill that would've pulled back on those energy standards.

But now we're seeing Republicans have really pushed back on that and have said, these should be voluntary standards, not requirements.

- What are they expecting to generate in terms of energy?

- Well, it's a fairly small project.

I mean, it's six turbines, there's Cuyahoga County, Cleveland are already signed up to buy, combined, about a third of it.

And I think, the idea among a lot of supporters is that, this is just sort of the beginning, that this would be to prove it can work, to start kind of establishing the industry to put these windmills in the lake and to keep them running.

And, the other thing is that, to get it off the ground, there's a lot of local support.

There's still money from COVID relief, that's kind of waiting to be spent, the Port Authority, part of their role is to invest in development projects.

And so, there's a lot of public money that may be headed towards this.

- And to that end, the Icebreaker project proponents say that it's projected to have a $253 million local economic impact and would create more than 500 jobs.

This is according to LEEDCO, so interesting to see whether that comes to fruition.

Let's talk a little bit about, Karen, the decision by the Supreme Court.

It was almost unanimous, but one of the Justices dissented.

- Yeah.

It was a six to one decision and the lone dissenter was Republican Justice Sharon Kennedy.

And it's interesting because the majority opinion was written by Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner, and those two Justices are facing each other for Chief Justice on the November ballot.

And it really does show some of the differences between Brunner and Kennedy.

I'm trying to think of a case recently where they have been on the same side.

Kennedy has been one of the lead dissenters on all the redistricting cases.

And of course, Brunner, the two other Democrats and Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor were saying the maps that the Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission had passed were unconstitutional gerrymandered.

So it really does show that stark difference between Sharon Kennedy and Jennifer Brunner, as we go into the election season.

(orchestral music plays) - As students begin returning to classrooms for the new school year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revised its guidance on COVID-19.

One of the biggest changes, social distancing is no longer needed, says the CDC.

Stephanie, let's talk about the new guidance from the CDC.

So social distancing, that's out, but there were a couple other things in there that I thought were surprising.

It used to be, if you're exposed, you're supposed to quarantine.

Now they're saying not so much.

- Right?

I mean, even for people who aren't vaccinated, that recommendation has been removed, they do recommend that if you're exposed, you wear a mask for five days to sort of stop the spread, but whether you're vaccinated or not, that standard is now the same.

What the CDC's recommendations do is sort of shift the onus from institutions like schools and businesses to individuals to sort of stop the spread.

And a lot of people are saying that it's sort of a recognition of the fact that we're at a different point now in the pandemic, the majority of Americans have some kind of immunity, whether that's from a prior infection or the vaccines, and death rates are down, hospitalizations are down.

And so, we have changes like the fact that they're no longer recommending that schools or businesses screen regularly, screen people who are apparently healthy.

That's no longer a recommendation.

And, they're leaning into the idea that individuals should look at the community levels that the CDC publishes and make decisions based on those.

- But people would make those decisions, not communities with either requirements or even guidance.

- Sure.

I mean, the CDC, isn't a regulatory agency anyway, so these are just recommendations, but schools and other institutions do try to follow these recommendations.

But yeah, what they're saying is check your community levels, check 'em out regularly.

And if you're a high risk person, the responsibility is basically on you to take additional precautions to stay safe.

- Yeah.

It really seemed like just an acknowledgement about the way things are now.

And it's kind of pointless for them to try to get people to do otherwise.

- Right.

If the water is rushing, you're not gonna stop it.

- Yeah.

- [Matt] Right.

In fact, one of the key things, and you've kind of alluded to this, is they're just trying to meet people where they are and where they are is here.

They're not social distancing, those types of things, but it's interesting to hear that they they're talking about how they don't wanna disrupt work or school life.

And so that's one of the reasons why this happens, that has been the argument for a lot of people that have been opposed to these kinds of measures for the last two years.

- [Stephanie] Right.

- But the difference now is vaccination levels and people who have had it already levels.

So we have immunity that's built up in the community.

- That's correct.

I think one of the interesting things that were in the changes was the language that surrounded what you do when somebody in your household has COVID, right.

Previously, they were like, you need to isolate that person, but that doesn't really reflect the reality of where people live or how people live, or how easy it is to isolate if, for example, you're sick and you have little kids, like they really don't recognize that isolation is a thing.

So, now what they're recommending is more practical things like do your best to isolate, practice hand hygiene, wear a mask, those sorts of things.

And so the recommendations are getting more practical.

You can get natural immunity from an infection, and it is also true that even if you're infected, it's easy for you to get the BA.5, the new Omicron variants that are now dominant, but it is safer to just get the immunity from the vaccines, according to experts.

And it's not something that they're even recommending that you try to time, like if you're eligible for a booster, if you're eligible for a vaccine, go ahead and get it taken care of.

And don't try to wait, for the next vaccine to see if it is targeted towards the new variants or whatever, that you do get protection from serious disease.

And that is really what this whole change is about.

It's no longer about like trying to completely cut off the spread, it's about preventing people from being hospitalized or becoming seriously.

- Well, one thing I was wondering if you looked into say, I think in the announcement, they mentioned that they're also focusing on, make sure that there's treatment for everybody.

- [Stephanie] Yes.

- And I remember, two years ago or so, it seemed like you had to be the president or really well connected to get Paxlovid, where you live, is that changed now?

- Yeah.

I mean, it's certainly much more available and- - [Mike] I got it.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Yeah.

What we've heard from the public is, it's much easier to reach out to your doctor and say, hey, I just got a positive at-home test, can you get me a script?

And so some of the barriers are coming down and obviously, the supply issues have been mostly resolved.

- At the time I had COVID.

So I'm double vaxxed and COVID, so I guess that's real immunity now.

- [Stephanie] Yeah.

- But at that time, they were just changing the rules where you had to have a public health professional, you had be referred to a public health doctor who then could prescribe Paxlovid, so your doctor just couldn't do it, and that has changed now, doctors can prescribe, and so I think that is a little bit more loose.

I just want to dig into this one thing, 'cause one of our staff members had this question, waiting to get their second dose of a vaccine, had the first one was, just about to go to the second, had a doctor's visit, a regular annual checkup and said, hey, I should go get that right now, right, and the doc was like, well, let's wait.

- [Stephanie] Right.

- So is it wait or is it not wait, or is it if you're halfway vaxxed, then you wait, then- That's the question.

- I talked to a doctor at University Hospitals just yesterday.

In fact this is a story that's gonna come out pretty soon.

- [Mike] Listen.

- Yeah.

- [Mike] Right off the wire too.

- That's right.

I mean, this is hot off the presses, the doctor that I talked, to Dr. Keith Armitage at University Hospitals, said that, because there's so much uncertainty in the pandemic, he doesn't recommend trying to wait or time things.

The vaccine that's available now is not necessarily targeted towards those new Omicron variants, but it still provides that protection against the severe disease, which is really what you're looking for in your vaccines.

So he said, because there's so much uncertainty, because we don't know exactly when these vaccines are gonna show up.

If you can get your booster, go ahead and get it.

And he also said that, if you're really good at timing the vaccine that, maybe it's also time for you to buy some cryptocurrency (Mike laughs) because you're obviously have an amazing crystal ball.

So it's just a very fluid situation, and the fact is what we have now will provide you with some protection, according to him.

- Let's move on to a couple of questions about monkeypox, the virus is beginning to get more attention.

What are the public health recommendations for that virus?

How does it compare to the response to COVID-19?

- Well, public health officials are responding differently.

Monkeypox is not, according to them, as transmissible as COVID-19 is, it's transmitted in different ways.

You have to have extremely close skin-to-skin contact, or face-to-face contact to pass the virus along.

And so they're being very cautious in making sure the public understands that these are two different animals.

Although there's two outbreaks that have happened, close in time to each other, we're dealing with different things.

That's what they're saying.

That saying, it is a public health emergency.

The Biden administration has declared it a public emergency last week, I believe.

And this is something that has spread across the globe and is spreading all over Ohio, as well, with the 75 cases.

- I wonder do you, should we not be shaking hands again?

(Stephanie laughs) - [Mike] I don't think that's an issue.

- Ever started shaking again, okay.

(Stephanie laughs) - No, you can fist bump, but you can also shake hands.

This actually, I mean, this is an interesting thing because when you bring up this topic, people get concerned and the topic is the fact that the vast majority of people, according to W-H-O who are suffering from monkeypox, the transmission was from men who have sex with men.

That is the vast majority number.

It wasn't that way where it began, but it is that way in the United States and a number of other places.

That does not mean the stigma that this is somehow a gay disease, that this is something that's limited to a single community.

This is a public health issue.

But the fact of the matter is the transmission is very close physical contact.

- Yes, that's absolutely true.

It's not a sexually transmitted disease, but it's a disease that can be transmitted during sex, touching one of the lesions or something, that kind of close, close contact is really what spreads it.

What's interesting about monkeypox is that there is a vaccine available, that vaccine has arrived in Cuyahoga County, according to the county health department.

And it's been distributed in Cuyahoga County to a number of hospital systems.

Those hospital systems are putting together a plan for distribution and trying to determine who will be eligible when, but another interesting thing about the reporting surrounding monkeypox is the fact that we just yesterday received a press release that Summit County had notched its first case.

- [Mike] Right.

- But that case wasn't actually in Summit County, that individual contracted the virus and became ill while traveling out of state, they're going to continue their isolation out of state.

And so that's not actually a case of monkeypox that happened in Summit County.

It's just vagarities of how they report things.

That person has a Summit County address, and so it gets counted towards Summit County.

- [Mike] Interesting.

- Yeah.

(orchestral music plays) - Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish is moving ahead on siting a new county jail, while critics say the process is being rushed, and the public is in the dark.

The Steering Committee working on the project seemed poised to approve the land purchase in April, but instead voted to do an environmental study of the property and commissioned a new study on whether the county actually needs to build a new jail, which we thought was settled business, but suddenly, Matt, in April, it wasn't.

So we have a whole lot of stuff still up in the air.

On the one hand, you have Budish submitting a purchase agreement for the site.

And there's another report in the works about the feasibility of renegotiate, or renovating the existing jail, which way is the county going?

- Yeah, it's getting very complicated.

I think it seems that the county wants to keep this moving forward this year, 'cause you have to remember there's a new county executive coming next year who will be overseeing where whatever stage this project's at.

- Right.

That'll be Lee Weingart or Chris Ronayne.

- [Matt] Right.

- They're the two candidates.

- Okay.

- So, from what I gathered this week is that, the plan now is to let those two studies be completed, put the information in them out into the public and continue discussions all the way, this would go all the way into October, 'cause that's when the updated study on the condition of the jail would be completed.

- Still bad.

I don't know.

(Mike laughs) - I mean the last one was 2014, I believe, quite a few years ago and it has not- - [Mike] It didn't get better.

- It didn't get better improve.

No.

So, their plan is to let the public portion, and there's a Justice Center Executive Steering Committee that has officials from across the county courts, Prosecutor's Office, Public Defender, and from the city, continue their discussions and make their votes and county council will hold off on the votes that really count, which is buying the land, and having a sales tax extension to finance it, hold off until all that's done.

- And there's also by the way, discussion that there should be a vote of the public on a sales tax extension.

- Yeah, well, both of the candidates, for County Executive have said that that part of it, the sales tax extension should go in front of the public before it's passed.

- I thought an interesting thing that I heard from Prosecutor O'Malley was that he thought this was being rushed.

And that part of the reason it was being rushed is 'cause Budish is done at the end of the year and he wants this feather in his cap or get it done before he goes.

But how can something be rushed when it has been delayed so long?

We're talking 2019, I think.

- Yeah, that's when that Justice Center Executive Steering Committee started meeting and discussing and sort of everybody kind of learned about the possibilities for building a new jail, learned about this state of the current jail.

And it was a lot of discussion.

It was a lot of sort of educating all the stakeholders, and they voted unanimously last year that they wanted to build a new jail.

And then I think from that point, everything started getting really real, so, the selection of land happened, kind of, that's a confidential process.

- [Mike] Right.

- So that went on for several months.

And so, I think there's a feeling that the land was selected, the vote happened very quickly, these meetings of the Justice Center Executive Steering Committee happened during the day.

They're kind of scheduled in this sub page within the Public Works page of the county's website.

So it's difficult for the public to get there and to be fully informed.

And then yeah, these last stages seem to be happening very quickly while everything else took like three years.

- [Mike] Hmm.

(orchestral music plays) - Cleveland City Council approved eviction protection legislation this week that allows renters to stay in their home if they offer to pay back rent and reasonable late fees and court costs.

So Matt, this ordinance allows for rental assistance too, such as from federal pandemic assistance dollars to be used as a form of payment to stay.

- Yeah.

They can- Renter could tell the landlord or show to a landlord that they have that money of available to stay in the apartment.

- There's a housing court in Cleveland, the judge, in this case, would still have the final say.

- Yeah, yeah.

There've been a lot of changes in the housing court and it's a place where they've always tried to do what they can to get rent paid, and to keep tenants in their apartments.

And so, I don't know how much this will really change the way things work in housing court.

- Karen, some of this rental assistance money is pandemic money.

There are a number of advocates who say, the state needs to put the remaining money of its American Rescue Plan Act cash toward assistance programs like this, not just one time expenditures for infrastructure.

Where is that conversation going?

- Yeah.

Out of the $5.4 billion the state has received from the American Rescue Plan, $3.5 billion has gone out to paying off the federal debt for unemployment compensation, investments in water and sewer projects, money for pediatric behavioral healthcare facilities.

Again, one time projects.

And this has all been reported by my Statehouse News Bureau colleague, Andy Chow, these groups that are advocating for the money, the rest of the money to go to services like this have created a tool which you can find at ohioarpatracker.org, and I'll tweet that out, that kind of shows where this money is going, but they're saying there's a COVID cliff coming up.

As soon as the national public health emergency ends, possibly in October, then that's gonna cut off benefits for a lot of people who have gotten those benefits during the pandemic.

And so they say that there's gonna be a need for food banks.

Food banks have already asked for $50 million from the state, but also for offices that process benefits for low income services including rental assistance.

They say that the rest of this money really needs to go to people who are really facing that cliff of those benefits being cut off as soon as potentially in October.

(orchestral music plays) - Ohio marked Dolly Parton day, this past Monday, and celebrated the country music legend and soon-to-be Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, not for her career on stage, but for her advocacy for literacy.

She was a guest of First Lady Fran DeWine at a luncheon, celebrating the success of the Imagination Library, which sends free books every month to children ages five and under.

Parton started the Imagination Library in 1995.

She's been a big supporter of reading and inspiring children to learn.

Ohio, by the way, now has more children enrolled in that program than any other state.

Karen, this was a passion project for the First Lady and the governor too.

- Yeah.

It's one of the things that they talk about quite a lot.

Fran DeWine travels the state, going to different libraries promoting this.

I did a profile on her a couple years ago, and the big thing that she wanted to talk about because it's been a big project for them.

It started in Ohio in 2019, but the program, like you said, has been out there for much longer than that.

And it's interesting because Dolly Parton started it with her father who was illiterate.

And so the whole idea was to try to improve childhood literacy and try to get kids interested in reading.

And so they've distributed 186 million books around the world at this point, and they're hoping to hit 200 million books by later this year.

- Monday, on "The Sound of Ideas", on 89.7 WKSU, we'll talk about microplastics in drinking water.

And we'll hear an interview with Tim Beal, author and professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University about his new book.

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

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