(upbeat music) - For a third time, the Ohio Supreme Court has struck down State legislative maps calling them unconstitutional because they aren't balanced.

The debate between Republican candidates for governor has been scrapped after Governor Mike DeWine and then his top challenger, Jim Renacci pulled out, and the Rock Hall says Dolly Parton will remain on this year's induction ballot, despite her request to withdraw from consideration.

Ideas is next.

(upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for joining us.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission swung and missed again, strike three on its new maps for the Ohio house and Senate districts.

The house Supreme Court said the maps were unconstitutional because they still unfairly favor Republicans.

The move upends the May Primary.

Ohio voters will not hear the Republican candidates for governor in a scheduled primary debate later this month.

After the governor declined, the debate unraveled because his top opponent also bagged out.

Cleveland property owners and landlords have a year to make their rentals lead safe compliant, but getting the word out has been challenging, advocates say, and the Rock Hall says Dolly Parton will stay on the 2022 induction ballot, despite her request to withdraw from consideration.

We'll talk about all of that and the rest of the week's news on the Reporter's Round Table.

Joining me this week from Idea Stream public media, Senior Reporter, Nick Castele and Multiple Media Journalist Gabriel Kramer, and in Columbus, Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission is O and three at drawing new maps for the State's legislative boundaries.

Your house Supreme Court said strike three this week ruling the latest maps still unfairly favored Republicans.

The Secretary of State says because of the delay, the 3, May primary can't include State legislative races, though that's the legislature's call.

It's weird, Karen, that we've had the conversation about this after map one, and then the rejection, map two, then the rejection, map three, the rejection.

It seems like it's a broken record.

What's going on here?

- Well, I think now we're starting to really get to a point where the full May Primary, which would be all the Statewide offices, the Congressional offices and the Legislative offices, the Statehouse and Senate offices, getting them on the ballot is really becoming impossible, and Frank LaRose, he's been warning about this for a while, his letter that he sent to House and Senate leaders, Republicans, and Democrats, and Governor Mike DeWine last night, really spelled that out.

His language has got a little bit tougher each time he's sent these letters.

I thought this one was really interesting though, because he specifically said what he called a cascading series of delays beyond our control have brought us to this point, and he talked about things like late census data and lawsuits, what he called out-of-State special interests.

He didn't mention that he as a Republican member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission has voted with Republicans for all of the maps that the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional, and the Court has been pretty clear in its rulings on what it expected, it seems like, and so now we're in this position where, without a legal set of maps for the Statehouse and Senate, candidates don't know which district they live in and in Ohio you have to live in the district that you wanna represent here at the Statehouse.

So that's the point that we're at right now.

I think that there are some things that could happen in the next couple of days, but one of those things is probably not moving the Primary.

The legislative leaders have said they have no desire to move the primary or split the primary in two, and so we're kind of at this, we're at a different kind of impasse I guess, not in just an impasse on maps, but now we're at a different kind of impasse.

- We not only have a timing crunch, but what's a thought that there would be a map that would pass constitutional muster, given the O and three by this commission?

The Court gave some suggestions and even suggested that there be an independent map drawer brought in to get this done.

It should be done out in the public, it hasn't been, that's something the Court said needs to be done, it took to task the leaders of both the House and the Senate saying that they really run and an opaque process.

What are the chances of anything being different this time?

- Well, I think bringing in an outside map drawer is potentially problematic because whatever map is drawn, it has to be approved by the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

So is there going to be a map that seven people or at least four of them would approve?

And so that's been the continuing question here, when you start talking about bringing in outside people or the Court saying, here's a map that you could use, it still would have to pass the Ohio Redistricting commission.

I think at this point, there is a thought that this might be moving into the Federal realm.

I've been talking to some Republicans about this there's this Federal lawsuit that would try to take the whole thing over into a three judge panel of Federal judges.

There's also the possibility, I've heard, that maybe the US Supreme Court might be somewhere involved.

I mean, there was a case that denied an emergency ordered intervene in North Carolina just a couple weeks ago, but there was some language in there from Justice Brett Kavanaugh that suggested that if the Court receives requests from another State to look at this, then maybe the Court, the US Supreme Court might look at it, and this was a case that specifically talked about gerrymandering.

- [Mike] Right.

- So I don't know where we're headed here, but again, I think one of the things that's pretty clear is there's no desire to move the Primary or to make it two separate primaries, so we're running up against deadlines.

Today was the day that overseas and military ballots were supposed to be mailed out.

The legislature changed that date, now they're waiting for a Federal waiver, which is likely to come down, but, again, time is really ticking away here.

- Gabe, what do you make of the Governor's comment?

He's on this commission that Republicans and Democrats should work together on the map.

It sounds to me like that was the point in the first place.

- Exactly, so if you're someone who hears these comments on the Governor, you're thinking, Wait, what have you been doing?

Wasn't that what we were expecting out of you, but apparently that's not enough for them to work together and try to come out with something, and you said earlier that, you know, the Court is suggesting someone from the outside coming and drawing some maps.

There's a lack of public input in this process, so it's beyond just these groups coming together and trying to figure something out, so, you know, certainly I definitely see the public thinking, "why would he say such a thing?"

"This is what we've been asking for."

- Nick, the Republican said we got there this time, because if you look at it, it's 54% Republican, 26% Democratic, it reflects the makeup of the State in terms of partisanship, but the Justice said some of those things that you call democratic were really tossups and so it doesn't quite get there.

So the Republicans argument has been gutted a little bit in this.

- Well, and there was another argument made by Republicans that, you know, some of the democratic proposals, endangered Republican incumbents, and the argument was that that was not constitutional, but the majority on the Court really didn't see it that way.

They said, you know, there's nothing constitutional about protecting incumbents who were elected in unconstitutional districts in the first place, and so, I mean, you can see that the majority, which includes Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor a Republican is really not having the Republican side's arguments here.

- Let's talk about the mechanism here, Republican Justices who dissented, said, "there's already a mechanism to deal with maps" "that don't meet bipartisan goals for approval," "and that is that they would only be valid for four years" "rather than 10."

So they think the mechanism is already in place, that is the argument.

Karen, what the Justices are saying is four years or 10, that still has to be constitutional.

- Right, and they have said in their rulings, both in the Congressional map and also in the Legislative maps that these constitutional amendments, that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2015 for the Legislative amendment and 2018 for the Congressional one, that these were the rules, and they feel, I think the Justices feel that they have laid out a clear path, but certainly the dissent this time was really strong from, there are three Republicans who, and the vote has been the same every time at the Ohio Supreme Court, the vote has been the three Democrats and Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, who is a Republican voting to strike down the maps, the three Republicans on the Court voting to keep the maps, and the two that really wrote a very strong dissent this time, Justice Sharon Kennedy, who's running for Chief Justice and Justice Pat DeWine, the son of Mike DeWine, who's on the Redistricting Commission, they really pushed back on the language and some of the things that happened in this ruling saying that this was a power grab, that this is nothing less, nothing more than that, and so really strong language from two of the three Republicans who are dissenting here, and it's really kind of, I'm seeing a lot of frustration, at first it was the Democrats who were frustrated and the opponents of the maps who were frustrated.

Now, I'm hearing and seeing a lot of frustration from Republicans, who are frustrated by the process, which they've controlled this whole time, by the way, but also they're frustrated that Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor has cited with Democrats and is keeping this thing going on, and so there there's really been, I think a lot of anger that Republicans have directed toward the Court and toward Maureen O'Connor in particular.

- What about the threat of contempt charges?

It was put on hold, but there was, the Court was saying, "We're gonna hold you guys in contempt" "cause you didn't get the job done."

So they tried number three that also gets struck down, are they gonna be dragged before the Court to explain themselves?

- I don't know the contempt charges or the contempt issue was raised last time because the Redistricting Commission didn't even do a map, and so this time, at least there is a map, so I don't know if they'll revisit that issue, but I'm also hearing another word here at the Statehouse, impeachment, and perhaps that could be something that might be talked about in terms of potentially impeaching some of the Justices here so this is, it's really starting to feel like the frustration is mounting to the point where we may get real political conflict, and another thing that I'm hearing too is, that there's finger pointing going on toward the Court from some Republicans about the relationship among the Justices on the Court.

It wouldn't be the first time that there was conflict among the Supreme Court Justices.

There was a notable fist fight, I think back in the late '80s, early '90s between two Supreme Court Justices, but there's been some finger pointing toward Maureen O'Connor not getting along with Sharon Kennedy, who's running for her seat, you know, and it's really extraordinary when we're talking about something so important as picking the people who are gonna come here to the Statehouse and decide things like what your taxes are and other issues that are specifically designed for State Government to deal with It's really incredible.

(upbeat music) - There will be no primary debate for Republican candidates for governor.

Last week, Governor Mike DeWine declined the Ohio Debate Commission's invitation.

Yesterday, his top opponent, former Congressman Jim Renacci also pulled out.

Without a Governor, it's not much of a gubernatorial debate, his camp reasoned.

Why do you think first the Governor and then his top challenger bagged out of the gubernatorial contest, the debate?

- Well, I'm disappointed, first of all.

I think debates are a great opportunity for the candidates to go face to face with reporters asking questions, you really get a sense, I think of who the candidates are and going beyond just their rallies or campaign events or ads.

But I can understand why DeWine would've pulled out because I mean, the polling, what little there is has shown that he's got pretty much a commanding lead and the other two candidates who accepted; Jim Renacci and Joe Blystone, they've been attacking DeWine, not just personally calling him a dictator and a tyrant, but also they've been attacking his policies and spreading some disinformation and lies about COVID and vaccines and that sort of thing.

So I can see why DeWine wouldn't wanna be a part of that.

Ron Hood running kind of a stealth campaign, nobody has really heard from him since he announced that he was running.

I mean, he doesn't do events, he hasn't done any ads, he has barely a presence on social media, so I'm not sure what's going on with that campaign.

So I think that it's not surprising, it's disappointing, it's not surprising, and Jim Renacci, he and Joe Blystone, Jim Renacci has a lot more money than Joe Blystone and yet he and Blystone are kind of running neck and neck, and so maybe he decided that this wasn't worth the opportunity for Blystone to get a leg up on him, so he just pulled out.

- Nick, you're the political junkie here, at least locally and Karen of course at the State level, but if you look at this just from pure politics, wouldn't you think this is one line of argument, Karen gave the other one that Jim Renacci, would take the opportunity to say, "Okay, well, the governor's not here," "so I'm gonna spend an hour bashing him in abstentia."

- Well, I think you are right, like Clint Eastwood talking to the empty chair.

- [Mike] Exactly.

- Well, you know, I think on the one he hand, you know, the DeWine, the incumbent, you know, always wants to, the incumbent always wants to limit the number of debates, the challenger will march up and down the street saying, why won't he debate me?

I think once you pull DeWine out of the equation, then like Karen said, you've got Renacci, who, you know, is a better funded candidate up against sort of a dark horse Candidate in Joe Blystone, but you know, maybe then he feels like he's kind of the front runner in that situation, and doesn't want to give a lot of free air time to the guy who's, you know, possibly gonna edge him out in a Primary.

- [Mike] Gabe.

- Nick, I wonder if this is a situation where as in the world of the internet becoming more easy to access and more easy to create your own platform, I wonder if this is an idea of politicians wanting to create and control their own message.

Have a space where they can create and say what they want to say without being asked any questions by anyone or, you know, they can create what they want to say and say what they want to say, where they want to say it, rather than having to be told or asked whatever they want in front of other people.

- It's a really good point because that's, I was in line with what Karen said.

I like the idea of a candidate standing there.

I wanna know how he balls up the mud and throws it back when someone's thrown it at them.

- [Gabriel] Respond to something, right?

- I wanna see it in real time.

I just wanna know how they react to those things, I think debates are valuable, but you also wonder whether debates are gonna be passe, like why have a debate if you can reach out as President Trump did until he was banned on Twitter, and essentially pour your own message into your own followers.

- And we've also seen debates, I mean, and I'm thinking about the Presidential Election 2020, presidential debates just come off as bizarre and strange and so contentious that it almost makes, you know, both contenders kind of not look so great.

So yeah, definitely not that I'm saying this is necessarily the best strategy, but to have the opportunity to control your message on a platform that you can control, I could see the comfort in such a thing for sure.

(upbeat music) - Former Cuyahoga County Commissioner, Jimmy Dimora convicted on dozens of public corruption charges and sentenced to 28 years in prison a decade ago will be re-sentenced on June 8th, after a Federal judge threw out two of the bribery charges against him.

Nick, 28 years I think a lot of people looked at and said, "Wow, that's a whopper of a sentence."

when you look at the number of public officials who have committed similar types of crimes and gotten, you know, six to 10 and out in four or whatever it might be, he's already served 10 years.

When you look at this and here re-sentencing, you might think, well, maybe he's got a chance to really get out, but it doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal given the number of cases that were against him and how many were rejected.

- Right, I mean, he still, even if you throw out those two charges, you know, the number of charges that have still stuck to him in the eyes of the Court are something like 30, 30/31.

So, you know, he still has a lot of charges that he is currently convicted on.

So, you know, I don't know the ins and outs of the Federal sentencing guidelines and how much time he could actually have shaved off his sentence, but looking at just the number of charges that are still on the books against him, you know, right now, it doesn't seem like it's gonna be very much.

Now, you know, the appeals process is still going on.

You know, Judge Sara Lioi made this ruling after she was instructed by the Sixth Circuit, to revisit the convictions against him in light of a Supreme Court ruling that basically said setting up phone calls don't count as official acts that someone could be charged with bribery for.

So, you know, it seems plausible to me that, you know, you could have a decision here that then gets appealed, that there may be more opportunities to ask, you know, an appellate Court to revisit this, and although the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court has already declined to hear this appeal, I, you know, not being a lawyer, I don't know exactly how many other avenues Dimora's legal team has to continue making their case that, you know, the book was thrown at him too hard.

- And it has to be said, he said all along that he didn't do anything wrong that he admitted or disclosed anything that he received to the Ohio Ethics Commission, that stuff wasn't admissible in Court.

So he just continues to maintain, there's not a point where he offers remorse, he says, "I didn't do anything wrong."

- Right, and even his legal team said, you know, his conduct is not really what's in question here it's whether that conduct is legal, and the one point you made is another issue that, Dimora's attorneys have been raising ever since his conviction, ever since the trial really, which was that he did make disclosure on ethics forms of who had given him gifts, but those ethics forms were not admitted as evidence in the trial.

So the jury was not able to consider those.

That's an issue they've raised as well as, now this Supreme Court decision essentially narrowing the definition of bribery in Federal statute.

(upbeat music) - The Rock Hall says Dolly Parton will remain on the 2022 induction ballot, despite her request to withdraw from consideration.

Interestingly, Troy Smith of the Plain Dealer had a good point.

Maybe just changed the Rock Hall's name.

If people are saying, "Well, that's not rock and roll."

It's interesting that Gabe, that Dolly Parton said, "Okay, I just wanna raise my hand and say," "take me off the ballot."

Rock Hall then said, "Nope, you're already on it."

- Yeah, you know, I don't know if that's such a huge deal, just be like, we're gonna throw you in there anyway.

We're gonna let people decide whether or not you belong in the Rock Hall, but I think the idea of changing the name, you know, that's been discussed before, Jay-Z had a suggestion of change calling it, the Music Hall of Fame.

You know, when I think when we think of the words, rock and roll, you know, Gary Harris, the CEO of the Rock Hall has said, you know, "We're looking for artists that embody rock and roll."

And I think what does that really mean?

And you know, when Alan Freed, coined the phrase, rock and roll, I don't think he was necessarily defining a type of music, he was just describing the music of the time.

So what we're talking about out when we induct artists into the Hall of Fame are, you know, it's almost like popular music, right?

It's almost what's popular at the time.

Is it American music?

You know, So I think, you know, to say like, you're not rock and roll enough is I think limiting to what music really can be and what it is, cause when I think of the most popular well to me, when I think of Dolly Parton, the song I think of is Jolene, right?

Jolene is more related to Tapestry or anything on that Tapestry album by Carole King than it is anything that Florida Georgia Line does.

So she's, to me, she seems more fitting for the Rock Hall of Fame than she is in a lot of ways, a country music artist.

So it's so subjective and think, you know, I don't think it's right for us to limit what belongs in Rock Hall of Fame, and that's just my thinking, you know, when I compare it to like the Professional Football Hall of Fame, what does every person at Hall of Fame have in common?

They all worked in professional football, everyone in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, what do they all have in common?

They all make music.

They don't all make rock and roll necessarily, I guess.

So, yeah maybe consider and change the name I suppose, but I don't know, I think really what we're doing is calling it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to honor Alan Freed, and we're putting people in there to honor the careers and music that they've created here in the United States.

I know this started when, when hip hop artists started to get nominated and it seemed to have a bit of a racial tinge, frankly.

- [Gabriel] Sure.

- That's not rock and roll, but now we're talking about country music, rock and roll music, basically all music.

So yeah, maybe there's a thought about what rock and roll is it's a shuffled deck.

- right and it, music evolves, right?

Music changes where, you know, I can think of, you know, 99 Problems and Death of Auto-Tune by JayZ have a very similar to sound, what you'd consider just classic Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So to just throw in bands in there that, you know, sound like Pearl Jam, I think it, you know, just, you know, is a dishonor to all the musicians that have grown from whatever it is Alan Freed was talking about 70 years ago.

(upbeat music) - Next March, Cleveland will require that all rental properties built before 1978, the year Congress banned lead paint be certified by the city as lead safe.

Nick, you were digging into this this week to see how it's gone for Cleveland and it's slow.

- Well, there's been, you know, this Lead Safe Law was passed in 2019 and there's been a lot of work setting the stage for trying to make these rentals safe from lead paint.

So raising a 100 plus million dollars, trying to create an industry of private lead testers, the lead inspectors are not city employees, they are private contractors, and so, you know, you need to build an industry of that.

So all of this setting of the table has happened, but this is the year now when the city has really got to make sure that all rentals are safe from lead paint.

the last, that last check, about 9,200 units of rental housing have been certified as lead safe.

Sally Martin, the new Building and Housing Director tells me there could be as many as a 100,000 units out there, and the city only has about 60,000 units, 61,000 on its rental registry.

So there's a lot more rental property out there to test, and a lot of it flying under the city's radar right now.

So that's sort of a dual challenge now, for the lead safe Cleveland Coalition and the city, to get out there and find these rentals and make sure they're not poisoning kids.

- You've talked to a lot of landlords and some of them are saying the word's just not out it was really word of mouth, but people don't, a lot of people just don't know about this.

- Well, I spoke with one, I haven't heard from any landlords yet, but I have heard from the people who've done the lead inspections.

So one of the top lead inspectors who's done, I think the second most so far told me when he was cold calling landlords last year, people just hadn't heard of this, they just didn't know about it, they were surprised to even learn there was a law.

So it, you know, it seems that there is some work that needs to be done in getting this word out.

I know that the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition says they have enlisted landlords and they're trying to get the landlords to spread the word too, and so that's gonna be the challenge this year.

(upbeat music) - As the weather warms up, ice cream shops will begin reopening, but it'll take more than sunshine to reopen the iconic Daisy's in Slavic Village, after the death of its operator and a ransacking by thieves.

I get ice cream there whenever I go to the Washington Park Golf Range and then I'll swing by Daisy's and know a lot of the great people there.

It's had some hard times lately.

- It certainly has, and last, you know, so, a guy who grew up in Slavic Village, Anthony Trzaska, he's a business developer, he is a lawyer, but he's a champion of Slavic Village.

You know, he took over operations of Daisy's in 2018 and you know, wanted to keep this institution going, and then, you know, obviously the pandemic hit everybody earlier or late last year, the man he hired to run the business, Walter Hyde, well respected chef in the area passed away, and then earlier this year, the place got ransacked, appliances, ice cream machines were stolen, copper piping was stolen.

So, you know, they're going through some tough times, So I don't think you can expect Daisy's to open up like that, but I think, you know, with some resilience, some effort, some hard work, Anthony's plan is to, you know, bring it back up.

He always called Daisy's when he ran it with Walter Hyde, Daisy's 2.0, he's really planning a Daisy's 3.0.

- What I got from that story was the importance of certain places in a town.

It doesn't have to be City Hall, and it doesn't have to be some rich guy's house.

It's this little, really non-descript ice cream joint where people would line up from the window and go all the way down Fleet Avenue, It's where the baseball teams were, where the families go, you know, poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods that experience high crime like this one need those places too.

There was a thought, and I got this from Anthony, knowing him from years ago that a place like Daisy's would be sacred.

- Right, and I think it's one of those things where, you know, there's a lot of places you might think and suspect they, this place might get robbed, you wanna rob this place, but there's some things that you don't touch, right?

There are institutions.

It would be like, you know, if the west side market, all of a sudden was part of an attack, right?

- [Mike] Or a church.

- A church, right?

There's things that you don't do, and unfortunately, Daisy's, you know, wasn't as sacred as maybe you thought it would be.

So, they were subject to theft, but now they're gonna be subject to something new something something to get in because people love Daisy's and the people who run Daisy's love the community back.

- I love the word you used resilience, cause this is gonna be a story about that, eventually.

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

(gentle music) (upbeat music)