(soft music) - The Ohio Supreme Court strikes down new legislative maps for the Ohio House and Senate, ordering new maps to be completed on a tight deadline.

United States military medical personnel are coming to Cleveland to help with the Omicron surge.

And the effort to protect Cleveland's children from lead poisoning gets a major financial boost.

Ideas is next.

(soft music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Statehouse News Bureau correspondent, Andy Chow, in for Mike MacIntyre this week.

Thanks for joining us.

It's back to the drawing board for the State Redistricting Commission.

The Ohio Supreme Court threw out the maps for Ohio House and Ohio Senate districts, saying they were gerrymandered in favor of Republicans.

The swing vote came from Chief Justice, Maureen O'Connor, who suggested in her opinion, that voters might consider taking another step to remove map-making from the influence of politicians.

The Cleveland Clinic will get help from United States Air Force medical personnel during the Omicron surge, and the clinic will offer help in the effort to protect kids from lead poisoning.

We'll talk about those stories and the rest of this week's news on the reporters round table.

Joining me this week Ideastream Public Media senior reporter, Nick Castele, and also from Ideastream Public Media, health reporter, Ann Huntsman, and my colleague, Statehouse News Bureau chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get started.

The swing vote in the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling against the House and Senate maps, came from Chief Justice, Maureen O'Connor, a Republican who sided with the court's three Democrats.

- Not only was she the swing vote, she was adamantly against what these, how these maps were created and said that maybe a new process needs to take shape.

- Yeah, and I think that that's really an interesting thing.

She wrote a separate opinion specifically saying that she wanted people to understand if they didn't like this process, they could go back and amend the Ohio constitution again, because this process came about from a 2015 constitutional amendment that was overwhelmingly approved by voters.

What's interesting in talking about that specific thing, she talked about independent commissions that are happening in Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, and she said that those activists who are concerned about the way redistricting has been done, should look to those independent commissions perhaps as a way to go about it, and maybe bring that to voters.

Well, in an interview for our TV show, The State of Ohio, this week, I talk with Catherine Turcer of Common Cause Ohio.

She's been on redistricting now for decades, and she was the driving force arguably behind the 2015 constitutional amendment.

And she said that actually voters in Ohio have had two chances to approve independent commissions and have rejected them both times.

In 2005, as part of a package of amendments called "Reform Ohio Now", and then in 2012 with a amendment that was backed by a group called Voters First.

And she said voters were suspicious of independent commissions not being accountable to the voters.

And yet the Supreme Court case, Catherine Turcer notes, says that it was the elected officials who are not accountable to voters, and that's why the maps were thrown out.

- And so, you know, these voter rights groups that mounted the lawsuit, democratic groups also joined in on the lawsuit, they're saying this is a victory, but we're still not done here.

What's next?

You know, the commission has 10 days to come up with new maps.

That clock is ticking.

So what's going to happen next?

- Yeah, arguably we are in day nine, counting down to day eight.

And we still at this moment have not heard anything from the Ohio Redistricting Commission about when they're gonna meet, who even the members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission are because if you look at the commission's website, it says that the commission has been dissolved, because the commission's work was done.

So I guess we assume that the commission members are still the same commission members who approved the map, which has five Republicans and two Democrats, and we still don't know when they're gonna meet.

We don't know what they're gonna do.

We don't know whether they have a map already that they're gonna approve.

If they approve a map where all seven of them agree that it's a map, that's a 54/46 split, Republican versus Democrat, and all the members of the commission agree, do we get a tenure map, which is supposed to be what was the goal of all this?

You know, we don't know.

And I think that all of this is so new, it's all unchartered territory, because this is the first time we've done this.

And so I think it's very interesting that the court came down with this decision on Wednesday, and we still have heard absolutely nothing from the redistricting commission, other than we'll get back to you, basically.

- Yeah, from what I've been hearing from redistricting commission officials, they thought maybe the court would have been, if they strike down the maps, that maybe the order would have been more prescriptive and would have said more of exactly, okay, this map didn't work, so what is a map that does work?

And so there's a lot of questions out there.

- Yeah, absolutely.

But again, the clock is ticking, like you said.

I mean, arguably the court's order gives the Ohio Redistricting Commission til January 22nd.

The filing deadline for candidates is February 2nd.

So you have hundreds of people who wanna run for reelection, people who wanna run for election in the Ohio House and Senate, who were waiting on this because they need to know what district they're gonna be in so they can file the paperwork on February 2nd.

And you know, our colleague Joe Angles did a story this week with a sitting state representative, Brian Stewart, from down in Southern Ohio, who said that filing deadline, the primary, all these things may have to be moved because we still don't know what's gonna happen here.

We don't know whether the court's gonna approve a map if the commission comes up with a map, we don't know what's next.

This is all brand new.

- Let's bring Nick Castele in here.

Nick is a Ideastream Public Media senior reporter.

Nick, this is something that could really impact Cuyahoga county and Cleveland and Cleveland's neighborhoods if the commission has to redraw these maps to probably bring in more democratic seats.

- Well, that's certainly always a concern for Democrats in Cuyahoga county.

I mean, there's generally a feeling in Cleveland that the Statehouse is out to get the cities and, you know, having more representation down in Columbus, I think would certainly be preferable for local officials in Cleveland and Cuyahoga county, who are always concerned about things like home rule, about bringing resources back to their particular communities.

And so I imagine there'll be watching this very closely.

- So Karen, the decision was a four-three split.

Like we said, Chief Justice, Maureen O'Connor, a Republican, you know, not joining the other Republicans, joining the Democrats instead.

The three other Republican justices on the Supreme Court dissenting.

What is the reaction from Republican officials from around Ohio?

- I think most of the reaction that we've heard has been, hey, we're still looking over the ruling.

It is 146 pages.

There's a lot there, there's no question, but really the reaction has not been all that strong with the exception of Ohio Republican Party chair, Bob Paduchik.

And he put out a statement yesterday saying, "It's a failure of leadership for the Chief Justice to take 90 days to make this decision and leave only 10 days for the commission to clean it up.

She is responsible for this mess."

So here you have the Republican Party chair going after the Republican Chief Justice, saying it's her fault that we're in the situation that we're in, which I think is pretty extraordinary.

But other than that, we haven't really heard a whole lot from Republicans or from Republican affiliated groups, who would certainly be celebrating if these maps were upheld.

We've been hearing primarily from the groups that were opposed to the map saying that this is a victory for voters who voted overwhelmingly to approve the process of changing this and now we're going forward hopefully with, these groups say, maps that'll be more fair.

(soft music) - The Biden administration will send US Air Force medical personnel to Cleveland to help the Cleveland Clinic weather the Omicron surge.

Anna, how will the air force personnel be deployed and why to the Cleveland Clinic?

- It was literally a month ago that myself and my colleague, Lisa Ryan, went to, we had exclusive access to Cleveland Clinic's intensive care unit where the beds were completely full with COVID-19 patients.

And that was a really heartbreaking day, it was really rough to see, and unfortunately, the situation really hasn't improved since then.

And it's compounded, not only are the beds filling up, but it's compounded with these staffing shortages across the board.

So there are plenty of beds, but they can't even staff them because they don't have enough people, whether they have left to due to burnout or just wanting to get out of the industry or they're out sick with COVID-19 actually.

And so, you know, Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, has called in the National Guard to help hospitals, but now it has gotten to the point where the Cleveland Clinic asked for federal help as well.

And so there was this whole process where hospitals could apply to have medical teams from, you know, the US Department of Defense to come out and assist them.

And so that's what Cleveland Clinic did.

And so along with six, or excuse me, along with five other states, Ohio, it was announced yesterday is getting 20 members of the Air Force.

They are all medical staff.

So these are nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists.

They're headed to the Cleveland Clinic next week, and they're gonna help them be able to open up more beds.

And another thing that Cleveland Clinic is actually known for, is that they are, typically, because they usually have the capacity, they're able to accept patients from other maybe smaller hospitals in the area, but they haven't been able to do that because they've also been overwhelmed.

So the hope is that these US Air Force members will be able to kind of relieve some of that staffing burden, open up more beds in the hospital and hopefully the Cleveland Clinic is able to treat more patients as hospitalizations continue to surge.

- Anna I know that how you specifically noted that they are medical personnel, and they're just not support staff.

They are doctors and healthcare professionals.

- Right, absolutely.

And that's something that Cleveland Clinic has really needed, I mean, all hospitals at this point needed.

But as I noted before, the Ohio National Guard is helping out at many hospitals, but there's, you know, just groups of those guards, people who are able to do medical tasks.

Many of them are just support staff and they are working to help clean the rooms when, you know, a patient is discharged or they can even help lift patients when they're, you know, things like that.

So of course still very important tasks, but clearly there's a need here for clinical staff.

And so that's what these medical professionals from the Air Force are being called in for.

- So these hospital systems, they're getting slammed with COVID-19 patients, how is this affecting other services like maybe not essential surgeries?

- Right, so all of the hospitals in the area have had to postpone non-essential surgeries.

Cleveland Clinic just announced this week they are going to continue postponing those through the end of this month.

And so they've been postponing those since December.

You know, so unfortunately this impacts a lot of people.

Of course, it's not emergency surgeries.

And if it's a surgery where you don't need to stay overnight, that can still go forward, but for these types of surgeries where you need a hospital bed and you need to stay overnight, and it's not an emergency, unfortunately those have had to be postponed to free up staff and to free up beds.

As I keep saying, there's just simply not enough people there to take care of patients.

And so that was another thing that happened this week, is it was once again postponed.

I mean, I feel like at this point, we're just gonna have to keep reporting on that.

It just seems like every week we're hearing it gets postponed again.

- Anna I know you've been asked several times and like you said, the health team here has been doing such a good job really going on the ground and reporting on this.

Is there any sense from healthcare personnel, from doctors, nurses, others, that may be the tide might be turning as far as people taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, people who may be weren't taking it seriously in the past, maybe starting to take it seriously?

- You know, I think that there is a sense that throughout the pandemic, I have heard from healthcare professionals when I was reporting on, you know, vaccinations, started off really great and then they kind of started to falter over the summer, not as much interest.

And I remember asking healthcare professionals, what do you think it'll take to get these back up?

Is it, you know, the vax-a-million, things like that.

And they consistently were saying, we think it's gonna be another surge would have to happen.

And I remember being at that point so naive and thinking, oh, well, we're probably out of the waters there, but, you know, unfortunately there is a major surge happening right now, and I don't know that there's a quite a sense of, you know, this is something to be taken seriously because I have heard from doctors and nurses in the hospital that they're often kind of having to have these stern conversations with patients and their families, some patients who are in the ICU with COVID-19 and struggling, still don't even believe that they have COVID-19.

And obviously we've heard medical professionals as well talking about how they've had to talk to families about the best course of action and families have not believed in it, and, you know, things like that.

So I don't know quite yet if there is a sense of this, but I feel like I've heard at least from, you know, conversations on social media and seeing overall public opinion, I feel like people who are vaccinated and boosted thought that they were pretty good and then Omicron came around and can evade antibodies very well.

And so I think a lot of people are talking more about, yep, I'm masking up again.

I'm going to buy my KN95 just because, you know, unfortunately this is happening.

- Yeah, Nick Castele, speaking of people who are taking this seriously, mayor Justin Bibb has been out there talking about how the city can maybe improve vaccination numbers.

How is the city doing?

What's the city doing lately when it comes to responding to the pandemic?

- Well, earlier this week, the new mayor of Cleveland and the new mayor of Cincinnati held a joint press conference, Justin Bibb and Aftab Pureval got together virtually on Zoom and spoke to the press corps in their respective cities to say, you know, we'd need resources from the state, particularly more rapid tests, as well as, you know, PPE, things like N95 masks, to make sure that we can get through this new surge of the coronavirus.

And, you know, Bibb focused also on Cleveland's vaccination rate.

According to the city's Public Health Department, only about 45% of the city has received a full round of vaccinations.

Now that's either two shots of Madonna or Pfizer or one of J and J, the boosted rate is even lower, about 17%.

And mayor Bibb said, that's not good enough.

He wants to see the city doing more, getting out into the community to try to spread the word about vaccination and encourage people to get the shot.

Now, there was no discussion at this about mandates of any kind.

So we're still talking about that sort of person to person trying to convince people to get it, but I think it's gonna be be a challenge.

And the mayor has convened a COVID-19 task force, which I believe his predecessor also had.

And that's one of their charges, is to talk about how can we get more Clevelanders to get the shots, that they are protected, or at least better protected against new variants of the coronavirus.

- So this is, you know, of course, mayor Bibb is coming into office sort of inheriting a current pandemic.

Is there any sort of sense that there's a new sense of urgency in how the city is handling this?

- I think that is what Bibb wants to communicate.

And he was very clear about that saying that he wants to tackle this as an urgent problem.

And, you know, there was certainly more urgency, you heard more urgency here than maybe you did from past, the prior administration, but I think the question will be, do you see more urgency?

What does the city actually do about it on the ground?

And that's gonna be the big question, because I believe there were efforts in the past to try to get people vaccinated, certainly, you know, community health centers in Cleveland have been trying to do that.

So that's what I'm watching for, is to see what exactly is the city going to do differently now to really make a difference in this vaccination rate.

- Anna yesterday the United States Supreme Court ruled on the Biden administration's vaccine mandates.

The court stopped the vaccine and testing mandate for large businesses, but they're gonna keep allowing the vaccine mandate for most healthcare workers.

How's that playing out in Cleveland?

- Right, so this was not totally unexpected.

I have covered this the past couple months, I've talked to hospital officials and other healthcare officials at nursing homes, and the thought was that this mandate, because it was tied to federal funding, Medicare and Medicaid, that it would likely hold up in court.

So again, not an entire surprise, but I did check in with our local hospitals, Cleveland Clinic and university hospitals here in Cleveland, Metro Health had on its own imposed a vaccination mandate for employees back I think in October or November.

So they had already done that, but Cleveland Clinic and university hospitals waited until this federal mandate came out.

And as soon as it was held, or as soon as it was paused federally, they both paused theirs as well.

And so employees who were not vaccinated were able to keep their jobs for the time being.

And so I have heard so far from Cleveland Clinic and they said that they are planning to comply with the federal rule, but that they're reviewing it and they will have more information in the coming days.

I have not heard yet from university hospitals, but you know, if they don't follow this, they will lose their Medicare and Medicaid funding potentially.

So this is a big deal.

So I expect that they will resume their mandates, but it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

- And Karen, Ohio not only joined this case, they were the lead plaintiff arguing at the US Supreme Court.

- Right.

This was attorney general Dave Yost's office.

Solicitor general, Ben Flowers, was the one who actually argued the case.

Ohio was the lead case among 27 Republican run states that were protesting, not whether vaccines work or whether a mandate is a good idea or not, in fact, Dave Yost says he's vaccinated himself and urges people to get vaccinated, but whether the Biden administration had the authority to tell private businesses with more than a hundred employees, that they had to either tell their employees to get vaccinated or subject them to tests.

And what was interesting, of course, in this case, which was argued a week ago, was that Ben Flowers argued it remotely because he had tested positive for COVID.

So that was something that was noted quite often.

But yeah, it was a big win for Ohio and for Yost, because Ohio has sued the Biden administration several times in different things, and so this was a big win for him.

(soft music) - Cleveland mayor, Justin Bibb, named key people to his administration this week, including Carrie Howard, as Chief Public Safety Officer.

So Nick is this a surprise?

Is this a surprise that Bibb kept Howard onboard?

- I would say yes and no.

Yes it's a surprise in that Howard was one of the public safety officials who spoke against Issue 24, the charter amendment ballot issue that gave new powers to the citizen community police commission.

Bibb was a prominent supporter of Issue 24, and that really became one of the defining issues in this general election.

So in that sense, it's interesting that he's keeping someone on who did not agree with him on this issue last year, but I can also see why the new administration would want to keep someone on who has experience within the law enforcement world.

You know, Howard previously was the city prosecutor and he also ran for judge a number of years ago.

And so, you know, as Bibb is trying to work out his relationship with the police department, maybe having someone who has already worked with them in the past could be helpful for him in building those bridges with a police force that may be skeptical of this new regime under Issue 24.

And so I think from that perspective, it does make sense that he'd wanna keep someone on like that.

Like I said, Howard also ran for judge several years ago.

So I imagine he has some knowledge of the political world and Bibb is something of a political outsider, he might need that kind of experience within his office.

And so from that point of view, I can see why he might do it.

- So you've got a couple of things here.

You have mayor Bibb who wants to build among his office, his relationship with law enforcement, but then you also have the city's ongoing effort to build a relationship between the community and local law enforcement.

So how will all that play out, or how do you see all that playing out in these coming days and the coming months?

- Well, I think that's gonna be a big issue for this new administration, because on the one hand, you know, Bibb has come into office with a lot of voter support, and Issue 24 also had substantial support from the voters.

Bibb actually outran it a little bit, but they both, you know, won more than 60% of the vote.

At the same time, law enforcement I think is very skeptical of this issue because it does give this citizen board power over the disciplinary process and also investigative powers among other things.

And so Bibb has got to figure out how to make this thing work.

The city is also contending with an increase in violent crime that we've seen during the pandemic.

That doesn't seem like it's going to be going away anytime soon.

Now, Howard is an interesting figure in all of this because although he did seem to oppose Issue 24 last year, he also had angered the police union to be honest by firing a number of officers last year.

And they actually called a press conference to denounce him and express their frustration with Cleveland's long running, federal consent decree.

So I think Howard, you know, does seem to have some police reform chops, while at the same time he was maybe not as far along in that spectrum as Bibb was during the race last year.

(soft music) - There was a big infusion of money this week for the Cleveland Lead Safe Coalition.

The Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland City Council announced a combined contribution of $67 million for the city's Lead Safe Home Fund.

Most of that money's coming from the clinic to make Cleveland rental properties lead safe.

The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition has now raised $115 million to target lead poisoning in children which causes long-term cognitive problems.

So Nick, the clinic is contributing $50 million in addition to what it's already pledged last fall, what does this money mean for the city?

- Well, what this means is that the city has access to more than $100 million now to help landlords predominantly, but also some homeowners now, afford to make their properties lead safe, to do the work particularly around windows and doors that can help reduce the chipping and peeling of old paint that could be a risk for children.

You know, the general thinking is that any house built before 1978, likely has lead paint in it somewhere, because that's the year when lead paint was banned.

That describes by and large most housing units in the city of Cleveland, which are anywhere from maybe 70 to more than a 100 years old.

And so this is a huge issue in the city.

And in the past, the city's program has largely been reactive, responding after a child tests positive for lead poisoning, to try to fix up the property.

And, you know, in the words of some, particularly the plain dealer that's been doing a lot of coverage of this, children were being used as lead detectors.

It's the kid testing positive that tells us there's lead in the home.

And so this infusion of money could allow the city to be proactive rather, and fix these properties before someone tests positive for lead poisoning.

But the big challenge is going to be now actually getting this money out of the door.

City officials have said for quite a while now that one of the issues is building up a workforce.

A workforce of lead inspectors, a workforce of contractors who can actually go out, do the work that needs to be done and certify that these houses are safe from lead.

The city has until March of next year to make sure that all rental properties are certified as lead safe.

So the clock is ticking down, and now this is when the real work gets going.

- And Anna, this is something that, you know, the city has been needing for a while.

This is a lot of money going towards an important health issue.

- Yeah, absolutely.

As Nick kind of mentioned before, lead exposure in children can lead to a lot of problems, including behavioral issues.

So a lot of times, if a kid is acting out in school, that can actually be tied to lead exposure.

And obviously these issues continue throughout the rest of a person's life.

And so many people in the city have been trying to focus on this for years, but also this kind of signals what the health team has been covering a lot, which is the shift of hospitals working on things that are not traditional healthcare.

So this is a hospital system that's trying to help with lead abatement here.

And we've reported on the Cleveland Clinic, you know what it is, we've asked the Cleveland Clinic and other hospitals what they're trying to do to address racism as a public health crisis and lead abatement is a big part of this, because it disproportionately affects a lot of black children in the city.

And so this is just another one of Cleveland Clinic's efforts that they're trying to do as far as this, but again, lead exposure really contributes to a lot of poor health outcomes in children.

- Monday on 90.3, WCPN on Martin Luther king Jr day, a special episode of Humankind that explores the power of nonviolence and forgiveness.

The Sound of Ideas crew is off for the holiday and will return Tuesday morning.

I'm Andy Chow, thanks for watching.

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