(light music) - Ohio's new budget is signed and sealed.

What does it deliver?

Groups trying to put abortion rights and recreational marijuana issues before voters have turned in their petitions.

And the plan for Cleveland's iconic West Side Market includes more prepared food and places to eat it, "Ideas" is next.

(uplifting music) Hello, and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for joining us.

After months of wrangling, Ohio has a new two-year operating budget.

It expands private school vouchers and bumps up public school spending.

It strips power from the Ohio School Board and it keeps power in the hands of local communities that wanna ban flavored tobacco products.

Groups trying to put a reproductive rights amendment in a statute to legalize recreational marijuana before voters took a big step toward the ballot by turning in more than a required number of signatures.

Now they await validation.

Early voting will begin next week for the August special election where voters decide whether to make it harder for citizens to amend the state constitution, and at least one group says it's watching who votes and who fails to.

And the latest master plan for the aging West Side Market has been unveiled.

It seeks to make the iconic facility more than a market.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more from Idea Stream Public Media, deputy editor of news, Stephanie Czekalinski, and local government reporter, Abbey Marshall.

In Columbus, state House news bureau chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Ohio has a new two-year operating budget after the House and Senate hammered out their differences and Governor Mike DeWine signed off early Tuesday on the Independence Day holiday after making 44 line item vetoes.

Karen, you mentioned in your reporting that with the extra federal money, the budget negotiations this year were not about stretching dollars that we've seen in the past.

- Yeah, for once, there's plenty of money to go around which is a nice problem to have, but it also does create a new set of problems which is what do you do with that money?

And certainly when it's one-time money, you wanna consider that it should be invested in something that's a one-time expenditure and not perhaps used for tax cuts or something that would be longer term.

So that was the struggle here, was to try to find out what could be done with all this extra money that would make the budget sustainable over time because there's a state law that Ohio has to have a balanced budget, and you hear that a lot but it's the law.

So it's not that big a deal that they balance the budget, but keeping it sustainable over time is really the issue.

- When I'm looking at the news coverage, I see some references to the large number, nearly $200 billion and some references when you're reporting to a lower number.

That's 'cause we're talking about different things, the spending part of it, as well as the other funds that are included.

- There's a lot of things in the budget.

There's the General Revenue Fund which is the $86 billion figure that we've been using.

There's also the all funds, there's a lot of different funding coming in from different locations.

I mean, the bottom line of course is that this budget is huge as you mentioned.

I've put up some pictures of it on Twitter and on our website, statenews.org.

It's two whole desks of paper that's stacked up pretty high.

It's an enormous document and takes a long time to read through.

And so I guess I was a little bit surprised when Governor Mike DeWine had signed the budget somewhere after midnight on the 4th of July.

I woke up accidentally at about four o'clock in the morning and looked at my phone and went oh, hey, he signed it.

- You don't have an alert anytime the governor signed something?

- I must have slept through that one, I don't know.

- Actually you didn't sleep through it.

It's telekinetic apparently.

The State House leaders say everyone got a little bit of what they want.

No one got all of what they wanted which is usually what a negotiation is.

But very few Democrats voted for the budget and you hear some of them that said basically it was a negotiation between Republicans in one house and Republicans in another chamber.

- Yeah, I think there were seven or eight Democrats in the house that voted for it and no Democrats in the Senate voted for it.

I think the Democrats that did vote for it found some things in there that they did like, but certainly most Democrats were very concerned about the expansion of vouchers, those taxpayer paid vouchers that go to people who wanna send their kids to private school.

They were concerned about the income tax cuts and the concern that they would benefit the wealthy over everybody else, and some other things that are in this budget because the budget has to pass and so that's why there's a lot of policy that's folded into it.

I mean, there was the attempt to put into this budget that bill that would do the overhaul at colleges and universities that conservatives want, that they say well, push back on cancel culture and will bring more what they call intellectual diversity campuses, but would also ban faculty strikes and ban most diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

So the policy issues that are in here are kind of the sticking points for a lot of Democrats I think.

- When you talk about the idea of expanding vouchers, it's the biggest expansion in know Ohio history.

It's being called universal voucher program, although it's a sliding scale in terms of the income that people make, but it's also an indication that this is where we've been going.

The Republican legislature has expanded vouchers according to some reporting by Connor Morris, our education reporter, from about $175 million in 2014 to an estimated 604 million this year.

This is a drive toward what we've heard referred to as the backpack bill, universal vouchers.

- Yeah, we pretty much have the backpack bill in a sense.

I mean, this is universal vouchers essentially because any family who wants a voucher can get one.

If you're above 450% of the federal poverty level which is about I think $135,000 a year for a family of four, you get a smaller voucher.

But this is really the direction that people, that Republicans have wanted to go and what's interesting is that there was an increase in voucher spending, a 77% increase in voucher spending from fiscal year 23.

77%, whereas there was a 12% increase in traditional K through 12 public school spending from 2023.

So obviously there's a lot of interest by Republicans who created this budget in expanding vouchers and really getting close, if not to the universal vouchers area.

- And does it satisfy those who are against the expansion of vouchers, 'cause it takes money away from the schools, to know that there was also an increase of spending for public schools?

- Yeah, and I think that's part of the reason why Democrats did support this because in the compromise that happened here, the Senate had cut half a billion dollars from traditional K through 12 public school spending.

Then in the final budget, that was restored, but the Senate also got this expanded vouchers.

The House had wanted some expansion of vouchers but not as much as the Senate.

So you could look at it as a trade off and I think that there were some Democrats who did.

But certainly there are those who say this is not the way that we should be going when it comes to vouchers and how they do remove, in their view, funding from public schools.

- Let's dig into some other parts of the budget.

I mentioned the governor got his red pen out, Stephanie.

He made 45 line item vetoes including language that would've prohibited local governments from banning flavored tobacco products.

A number of local communities have done that.

Some are considering it.

- That's right, there are bans already in place in Columbus, Toledo, Bexley which is a suburb down right next to Columbus, and it's something that's been proposed here in Cleveland.

The governor's veto means that the bans that exist can stay in place and that if Cleveland decides to move forward with its ban, that it's free to do so.

It's unclear whether or not Cleveland will do that.

There's been some debate about whether or not council would support it, but the governor's veto means that cities are still able to do that if they choose.

- It has the right to, it's local control.

- Certainly, yes.

- In this case, a number of other cases where there isn't local control, but this is one where there is.

- Yes, you can still make the choice, those local municipalities.

- Another veto from the governor allows universities and colleges to enforce vaccine requirements.

There was a push there in the budget that said the colleges can't make that a requirement for living in the dorm.

- Yeah, the line said that, the provision that he took out said that college students could decline required vaccinations for their religious convictions or reasons of conscience.

And he said that, DeWine said that he considered that overly broad and was worried that it may compromise the health of students, staff, residents, and faculty, so he nixed it.

- Another thing he nixed, Abbey, is an effort to exempt more childcare providers from the state's Step Up To Quality program.

So the idea is if you're gonna be providing this childcare, you are rated and you are listed in that, it would've allowed a number of providers to not do that and that's something that PRE4CLE, the Cleveland organization that's pushing for quality universal childcare, says is a good thing that it got next.

- Right, yeah, so the Step Up To Quality program is like a five star rating for preschools, childcare that meet or exceeds state standards.

Basically the proposal was to exempt more of those childcare providers from having to use that system.

PRE4CLE basically said while this might look good on the surface, it would actually, if it went through, affect childcare programs that serve more than 80% of Ohio's children and would make them exempt.

So DeWine said that's a matter of ensuring quality for children and parents, so we're gonna keep it in place.

- Karen, the governor put the brakes on the plan to have a two-week sales tax holiday next August.

Generally what it is is a few days.

So you get a sales tax holiday for back to school stuff and the budget wanted to make it two weeks, and he said maybe we shouldn't decide that.

Maybe the budget managers should.

- Yeah, the legislature had expanded the sales tax holiday in August that's a weekend to two weeks, and it also expanded the dollar amount that people could be relieved from sales tax for purchasing 'cause I think the sales tax holiday right now is less than $100 and it's a certain list, but this would expand it to anything under $500.

And DeWine said he was really concerned about the estimates that this would cost the state $750 million.

He said we don't know that number and he wanted to see a little bit more study before going ahead and putting that into law and potentially costing the state more money maybe if more people did take advantage of it.

(intriguing music) - Consultants and city planners have now unveiled their master plan for revamping the century-old West Side Market and it's gonna take $44 million.

That's a lot of smoked kielbasa.

- Abbey, this is not the first master plan that's been prepared for the West Side Market, but there's a feeling this time that it's a little bit different.

- Yeah, and I think the key to that is this proposed handover to this nonprofit that will be specifically focused on managing this market and any other public markets that Cleveland might have in the future.

So the consultant the city hired actually does this for a living.

He specifically consults public city-owned markets and he says that this is how most other public markets are run.

All of his recommendations were really in line with other public markets in Ohio like Finley Market in Cincinnati, North Market in Columbus, but also places like in Seattle, Pike Place.

Among vendors, that's not necessarily the thought process that things might be different because they've received a lot of promises and what they view as unfulfilled promises over the years.

Were political grand standing when you think back to the fight between council and Mayor Bibb over how much money they were going to allocate recently to the West Side Market, and they kind of feel like a political pawn in all this so it's kind of like we'll believe it when we see it.

- It's interesting you mentioned the North Market 'cause I've been there a number of times and it's basically a place to go have lunch.

By the way I recommend Momo Gar, great place.

But if you go in there, there's a million choices of places to eat but it didn't seem to me like there's a whole lot of the kind of feeling I get at the West Side Market which is that's where I'm going to Kate's Fish or that's where I'm going to cheaper meats or all of those kinds of place.

So what the West Side Market is going for is both, it's they want to have a yes and.

- Yeah, a main thing that they said that they wanted to keep is the character and the current purpose of the market, but they want to make it that destination that you're talking about.

So one of the proposals in which is a big revenue driver because the West Side Market actually loses a lot of money, about $700,000 every year that the city has to subsidize.

And so one of the proposed revenue drivers is actually creating a prepared food hall in the North Arcade where the produce stands are kind of spread out right now.

Move the produce stands to the East Arcade and then put a prepared food hall which has infrastructure for I believe 12 vendors to sell food.

And part of that is also creating seating 'cause as you know, if you go in right now, you can go up to that second story and overlook, but there's pretty limited seating.

So indoor-outdoor seating and kind of making it that destination, but you can also still shop for your produce, and your groceries, and things that you were mentioning.

- Couple of bars too I hear.

- Yes, bars as well which will also provide the option for the arcade, because it's a separate building, to stay open later and operate maybe on a different schedule than the market does right now.

(intriguing music) - Ohioans will decide on August 8th whether to increase the voter support needed for citizen-led efforts to amend the state's constitution.

State Issue One will raise the threshold to 60% of the vote.

Currently amendments can be passed with a simple majority.

- The deadline to register to vote for the August special election is this coming Monday, so you've got to get your application in.

If you don't have your application in or you think you do, check.

You can go to the Board of Elections'' website.

If you're not registered, you still have time to do that by Monday.

Karen, the registration deadline is Monday, but early voting begins the very following day.

- Right, and that's typically what happens is early voting starts the day after voter registration.

But your point about a lot of people not knowing that this is happening, that's really what's happening here is that a lot of people don't know that there is an August special election which has been the argument that those opposed to Issue One have said is part of why they're opposed.

because so few people potentially are gonna turn out and potentially make such a huge change in the constitution.

I mean, going from 50% to 60%, affecting all future constitutional amendments.

Obviously this is targeted and Republican lawmakers, some have confirmed this.

It's targeted toward that abortion rights amendment for which those who support it filed their petitions to get on the ballot this week.

But this would affect all future constitutional amendments and so you do have some conservatives who have argued that this is, it's not fair to put abortion in that amendment as the main issue to change the constitution and raise it to 60%.

It shouldn't be one issue that divides and decides the constitution because there are a lot of things in the constitution that 60%, maybe there wouldn't be support, but there certainly would be a super majority or a simple majority support for it.

- You mentioned Republicans, and we've talked about this before, but all the living ex governors, all kinds of other folks who are opposed to State Issue One.

- Yeah, the coalition, I've said this before, is like nothing I've ever seen.

I mean, it's hundreds of groups.

Ohio's four living ex governors, five former attorneys general from both parties.

You've got a lot of groups that are out there who are against this.

They ran their first ad in the last week or so.

This is the coalition called One Person, One Vote and it's interesting to see the ad because they're going directly in the way that the people who put Issue One on the ballot are also trying to argue.

Both sides are gonna argue that this is about protecting the constitution and that a vote no or a vote yes protect the constitution.

And so for voters who are confused, quite often voters who are confused vote no.

So it's gonna be interesting to see how both sides take that same argument and spin it their own way.

Of course, you've got supporters on this who are the anti-abortion groups, the pro-gun groups, the big business groups.

There's been a lot of talk in churches and other areas to try to bring supporters out to vote on August 8th.

- Stephanie, I was in a meeting yesterday, speaking about advertisements coming out now.

One of our editors said she had gotten a flyer, she handed it to me, from One Person, One Vote which is the organization that is opposed to State Issue One and they are also in favor of the abortion amendment in November.

The line at the bottom of this flyer took me by surprise and I looked it up.

It's a tactic known as voter shaming apparently and here's what it said at the bottom.

It said, "Whom you vote for is private, but whether or not you vote is a matter of public record.

We will be reviewing public records following the election to determine whether or not you joined your neighbors in voting."

And I thought is this a threat?

- Yeah, I mean, call it voter shaming.

Call it social pressure.

It sounds a lot like peer pressure.

It comes from political science research.

They found that people who felt like they were being watched by their peers were more likely to turn out and vote.

And as Karen was talking about, voter turnout is the name of the game in this election.

And in so many now because our political system is so polarized.

And they need people to turn out and so it sounds like they are, One Person, One Vote has confirmed that this is a genuine piece of advertising and it sounds like they're going for it.

- It's the first election that implements all the changes passed by the legislature in election laws including only approved absentee ballot applications are being accepted.

That's creating some problems 'cause there are organizations well-meaning that might print up a ballot or an application and say hey, fill this out and send it in.

They're not allowed to give you an absentee ballot based on that.

- Yeah, in December of last year, there were a bunch of changes made.

Remember all those, we talked, the media talked a lot about the changes to the voter ID laws.

But we didn't talk as much about the changes to the absentee, how you get an absentee ballot, and one of the changes was that you have to use this uniform state mandated form.

So you can't get just any old form and go to the Board of Elections', and say, "Hey, I want an absentee ballot."

- Like the newspaper would print one and you could use that.

You can't use that anymore?

- You can't do that.

It was just recently reported that there were a couple of ballot applications that were rejected that had been printed out of the "Cleveland Jewish News."

The Kaya County Board of Elections' rejected about 30 of them.

So if you submitted those, it sounds like there's still time, you need to contact the Board of Elections' and see if you can get your application in.

- Again, well-meaning, I mean.

- Well-meaning, yes, absolutely.

- But again, they've made it now that it has to be an official form.

Even though it all says the exact same thing, it has to be the official state form.

- Right, but there are changes in the law that have confused people.

(intriguing music) - Groups trying to get an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot delivered more than 700,000 signatures to be verified.

The threshold to make the ballot is 414,000.

Karen, the signatures delivered are more than required, but some think it should have been a lot more and it's not a record.

- No, they submitted 70% more signatures than they need and so that's a lot, but that's pretty much the standard.

You really have to go well above the number of valid signatures you need to make sure that you have enough valid signatures because the failure rate on these things can be all over the place.

I mean, people sign who are not registered voters.

People sign and then they move there.

There's all sorts of things that can happen that make a signature invalid.

And so submitting that number of signatures, more than 700,000 is a big deal.

But I think one of the things that's even a bigger deal potentially here is they submitted signatures from all 88 counties.

They're only required to submit from 44 counties right now, though Issue One would change that and require any group to submit from all 88 counties.

Now Ohio Right to Life has been saying that typically the rule of thumb is you submit double the number of signatures to make sure you get that.

I think it's really about the failure rate and the abortion rights groups had actually been bringing in petitions and checking those signatures for validity before they turned them in.

So they're pretty confident that they have the number of signatures they need.

- There's been some criticism because there's paid signature gatherers and that seems to be pretty much normal in any campaign.

- Oh, absolutely, I mean, there are obviously paid signature gatherers and volunteer signature gatherers.

There are advantages to both and disadvantages to both.

I mean, certainly volunteers are free, but they're volunteers whereas paid circulators, they are paid and they are professional, but they also can have a higher failure rate sometimes because they are often paid by signature.

So all of this is part of the calculus of why these groups went with this abortion issue this year.

I mean, there was a lot of discussion about whether they were gonna wait until 2024.

But with the whole 60% voter approval thing happening and with the abortion law being in flux as it is, they decided to go this year.

- Let's talk about the cure period.

If they have things that are rejected and end up getting lower than the 414,000 they need, they're right now is in the law a 10-year, what they call a cure period where you can go and get the signatures required.

Issue One would eliminate that.

Does that affect this particular endeavor?

- Yeah, nothing in Issue One affects this, that that 10 day cure period is still there.

So if they come short of the 414,000 signatures they need, they can go back and get some more.

But if Issue One passes, then of course, any future constitutional amendment, that 10-day period would go away.

And the argument from the sponsors and the people who back Issue One is that hey, in the real world you don't get a do-over if you don't get the job done right the first time.

But the groups that oppose Issue One have said this really would put a tremendous burden on those citizen organizations that want to put constitutional amendments before voters.

It's just another way to potentially keep citizen groups off the ballot in general.

- All right, let's talk about legalized recreational marijuana.

The folks who are backing that also delivered their petition signatures this week.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol delivered 223,000 signatures.

It needs 124,000 to make the ballot.

You might look at this and again, some people don't even know there's any on any of the ballots.

But if you look at it and you say wait a minute.

One was 414, the other is 124, why the difference?

So will you explain that?

- Yeah, this is the difference between a constitutional amendment which takes a higher signature threshold and then this, the legalized marijuana effort, in an initiated statute.

And an initiated statute is when the group decides to propose a law to the legislature.

The legislature has, I think it's three or four months to adopt it.

And if they don't, then the group can go back and get more signatures and take that issue to voters.

The statewide smoking ban, this is how that was put into place.

And so what they're hoping to do is do that, but the danger here is it's a lower signature threshold so there's potentially less money that you're spending right outright, but the legislature can override this law if they don't like it.

Even if voters approve it, the legislature could come back and repeal it because it is a law.

And so that's why a lot of groups have chosen the constitutional amendment route for fear that if they pass a law at the ballot box, that the legislature would just come back and repeal it.

- The supporters have said they put some things in there they think would help to make that not happen though.

- Yeah, and I think part of it really comes down to the opposition to legalized recreational marijuana.

There is strong opposition among some Republicans in the legislature to legalize recreational marijuana.

Whether that's strong enough to override voters if they do approve this, I don't know and that's a good question for the future.

But I think also it's important to look at they did submit about 223,000 signatures, they need 124,000.

That's not a big margin of error unfortunately and so I'm gonna be interested in watching the validation of these signatures to see if they make the ballot, whereas the abortion rights issue, 770,000, they needed 414,000.

(intriguing music) - Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb says he'd be happy to host Beyonce's tour here in the rock and roll capital of the world.

The megastar canceled her planned August 3rd concert at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, citing unspecified logistical issues.

Cleveland is ready and not far away.

- Beyonce in Cleveland?

- My fingers are crossed.

- Okay, yes.

- Fingers are crossed, and when you look at what, for example, when you talk about stadium tours, what Taylor Swift is doing for local economies, it's no shock that Mayor Bibb wants to feel that here with someone like Beyonce.

(intriguing music) - Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on WKSU, should schools lock up students' cell phones during the day?

Akron is expanding a pilot program saying phones contribute to safety issues and behavioral problems.

We'd like your thoughts on that topic before the show.

Is it a good idea to make cell phones inaccessible while class is in session?

Call now with your thoughts, 866-578-0903, or shoot an email to soi@ideastream.org.

(intriguing music) I'm Mike McIntyre, thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

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