East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King has been indicted on public corruption charges.

The economy is the biggest concern for your neighbors, according to a new poll.

And Cleveland City Council wants to increase penalties for street takeovers.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The mayor of East Cleveland and a former council member have been indicted on theft in office charges.

Most of your neighbors are worried about the economy, immigration and public safety in that order.

According to the Neo Voter Voices poll commissioned by Ideastream, Public Media and two other media partners, Cleveland City Council wants to toughen laws cracking down on street takeovers.

While in Columbus, police just went out and made a huge number of arrests and confiscated vehicles in Operation Burnout.

And Cleveland City Council is trying to manage shrinkage as it loses two seats due to population loss.

Joining me for the roundtable, ideastream Public Media's Local Government reporter Abbie Marshall and health reporter Steven Lengel.

In Columbus State House News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

The mayor of East Cleveland has been indicted on charges of theft in office, joining several previous office holders and police who have faced corruption charges.

Abby, the charges here allege that King used city money to pay companies that he owned or that his family owned or family members owned.

That's pretty basic in terms of public corruption.

Yeah, you would think so.

It's alleged that he used $75,000 in city money to pay the companies, as you said that he or his relatives owned.

Of those 12 charges, four are felonies, which include two charges of theft in office and two counts of having unlawful interest in public contract.

The rest are misdemeanor laws.

But it is worth noting that if he is convicted of one of them, which is soliciting improper compensation, he'll be disqualified from holding public office for seven years.

And in the meanwhile, while he's under indictment, what happens to his office?

Yeah.

So he could still be removed from office under Ohio law, given a Supreme Court in Ohio Supreme Court decision.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor said that he would ask for his removal from office.

I was tuned in for a little bit to a council meeting yesterday where they were talking about a financial recovery plan that King was leading.

And there was a lot of confusion about what exactly is going to happen.

You know, the consultant was saying, well, I already gave these documents to the city, and they said, well, we don't have them.

How can we get them as counsel?

So it seems like there's there's always been some tension between council in the mayor's office.

But now there is going to be a disconnect, it seems, between the bodies.

I tuned in to that committee meeting last night, too, because I was curious to see how much conversation there would be about this indictment.

It was mentioned in passing.

There was public comment.

And Pat Vlahovic, who's a member there, had noted it as well, but it wasn't the purpose of the actual meeting.

There was some mention of it.

But what they were going over were the mayor's recovery plans for the trouble that they have and all the problems that some of the council members have with that.

Right.

And speaking of Patt, she often emails the show and listens.

She's the vice president of East Cleveland City Council.

She took issue just now with my using the word blow a blow to the city.

I think when a mayor is indicted, it is a blow to the reputation of the city, she says.

It's not a blow.

It's a step forward.

It's an opportunity for East Cleveland to end the corruption and to move forward in that point of view.

That is exactly what one of the public commenters said yesterday when they began.

You're supposed to give public comment based on what the they will be speaking about on the agenda.

And someone stepped up to the mic and said, today has been a great day.

And Patt asked, is this relevant to the financial recovery plan?

And he said, Well, it is because now we can financially recover.

So that was an input of one of the the citizens that again noted this is a charge and he has the right to defend himself against this charge.

Haven't heard from him yet, hadn't gotten comment from the mayor yet on this issue.

As I understand it, he was in his office yesterday.

The city of Cleveland has endured this with previous elected officials as well.

Yeah, this marks the third out of the last four mayors that have faced criminal charges.

We saw one that was that pled guilty to obstructing an FBI investigation into corruption in East Cleveland.

Another was sentenced to nine years in prison for taking $50,000 in bribes and five that involved $5 million in city contracts.

This is a city that we have seen a lot of issues in terms of criminal charges and problems.

There were about a dozen, more than a dozen police officers in recent years that were indicted, including two that have been jailed for pulling people over and robbing them.

So I'm sure this is something that has exasperated the public and kind of eroded public trust.

And I think that that's what Pat is getting at, is that maybe this is an avenue if people are feeling tired of the way that they are feeling represented, this is a path maybe to get different leadership, if that's what the people of East Cleveland want.

We saw recently a call by a council member, Tom Billings, who said we need help with our police force.

All these indictments, the people not wanting to work for that police force, we are in some trouble in terms of keeping our people say if he's asking for the county sheriff or someone else to take over.

Yeah, it's a it's a real problem that people feel over there.

I did a story last Christmas where I was with a community member that actually goes out and gives the people of East Cleveland presents.

He goes up to their houses and gives them presents.

And that was something that was a problem, is that police would help shut down the streets so that all the volunteers could go out.

In some people it made them really concerned and weary.

And the community member that was leading this charge basically said, you know, this is maybe a way to help people see that the police force here isn't out to get you, which is a feeling that I think many of them have.

Political hatchet ads and a few nice state.

Your case ones are peppering the television and radio airwaves and the web.

A new poll commissioned by Ideastream Public Media with Partners Signal, Ohio and WKYC TV might help to explain the common themes of many of those ads Biggest takeaway harkens back to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run and James Carville's famous comment It's the economy, stupid.

All right.

So let's not call anybody stupid, Stephen, but it's the economy.

Well, yes.

And 64% of those respondents were worried about the economy, 45% were very or extremely worried.

And more than half said this is the issue most likely to shape their presidential vote.

I thought that was interesting.

So it's two different questions.

One was how do you feel about it?

And people are jittery and uptight.

And then secondly, it was if you rank on a list what the most important issue is, it's driving your vote.

The number one issue was the economy by more than 50%.

That's not a plurality.

That's a majority when the choices were vast.

I mean, it was a number of things you could choose from.

People are thinking about the economy.

It's why we're seeing that in a lot of these ads.

The question, I guess, then for voters in northeast Ohio and throughout is who has the better plan for the economy?

Right.

And one of the things that comes up when you discuss this is, you know, this idea of tariffs.

And one of those mean and one of the concerns that some economists raise is that if you have an across the board tariff increase, what does that mean for people that day to day lives?

Many economists argue that across the board tariffs and the retaliation that can result from those really can equal many ways a tax increase for the majority of voters, which is not good for the economy nor for voters.

Right.

Tariffs being obviously a Trump campaign plank.

On the other hand, there was also the question was basically about the affordability of groceries.

So it's really about it's about inflation and a number of people said that is a big issue for me, the affordability of groceries.

So then it gets down to who's responsible for inflation, is it the Biden policies, etc..

So we see these poll answers then kind of weave into the into the national conversation, have you?

Yeah, I think that it's worth noting, too, that in this poll, a lot of people said it wasn't an issue with finding work.

They said it's not a problem with getting a job.

It's that wages are totally stagnant compared to the cost of living and how quickly that it is going up.

And so I think it makes sense that the economy would be top of mind for people when talking about these other issues, because if you can't afford to put food on your table and you can't afford to live.

That kind of makes it hard to think about any other social or otherwise issue and look at that domino effect.

So if you can't afford to put food on the table, can you afford to say yes to a school?

Levy?

And what were one of the questions that we ask?

And by the way, this was a survey that was ideastream Public media said we want to do this survey.

We went out and got partners with Signal Ohio, which run signal Cleveland here locally as well as WKYC TV.

And we sat down and came up with these questions.

These were things that we wanted to ask people.

So this was not something based on outside polling firm from outside Ohio.

This was us saying, what do we think is important?

And one of the things that we asked about, because we've seen it locally, is what impact do these property reassessments have on your decision of whether you could support a levy of any sort?

And we saw a large number of people saying these assessments, even though they don't go percentage for percentage in terms of how much it costs you in taxes, that it affects whether they would say yes or no.

Stephen.

Right.

Nearly 51% of the respondents said they're less likely to support tax levies due to higher property taxes and where there's where this would affect people or would affect levies comes down to things such as the Cleveland Metropolitan School District has to tax increases.

They're seeking a ten year tax to generate $52 million per year in a bond issue to borrow $295 million to build new buildings and improve existing ones within the school system.

Then there's also Cuyahoga County voters deciding on issue 55, which would extend the county cigaret tax for ten years for Cuyahoga arts and Culture to support the arts.

Yeah, we have to note whenever you mention that that ideastream get support from Cuyahoga arts and culture for the arts coverage that it does and also that independent of our newsroom ideastream has supported that campaign.

We looked up campaign filing and ideastream has been a financial supporter of that campaign.

We want to make sure that that's disclosed.

And that, again, has nothing to do with with our newsroom or the discussion that we're having today.

Let's talk about public safety.

Those that was another one of the big concerns, particularly in urban areas.

Right.

So looking at this, you had 30% of households saying they were affected by safety issues over the past year.

However, at the same time, 55% crime said crime was about the same where they lived.

But when you dug a little deeper, you saw that 27% of black voters said public safety was their number one issue.

And that was the largest percentage among black voters.

And 43% of urban residents said their households dealt with safety related issues the past year.

And looking into it, this really got to the issue of gun violence, which is a common theme that we've seen here, as there have been incidents of violence in places such as Euclid and Cleveland Heights.

And in fact, Cleveland Heights has had several gun related incidents within their schools over the past week.

And in fact, the school system has now begun adding metal detectors at the schools that will begin this next week because of those incidents.

And Abbie, when we talk about that, it permeates local politics.

We talk about public safety.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

In Cleveland, we see that as a struggle.

So even though crime is down here in Cleveland, 13% this year compared to the last three summers and homicides are down.

Perceived safety is a big deal.

And there is a major problem right now in Cleveland and kind of across the board in the country of of filling uniformed police officer positions.

We are down more than 230 empty positions.

And this was after already in the last few years cutting the budgeted number of police officers.

It is hard to get people to sign up to to be a police officer in a city.

And that's something that when I speak to residents, they want a more of a police presence.

So even if statistically crime is down across the country and here in Cleveland, perceived safety and how people feel is just is top of mind.

Karen, I know you don't have the poll in front of you, but let me share something about the abortion question that we asked and then get some reaction from you, because that's obviously a big issue in the statehouse.

The question was, which statement comes closest to your own opinion on abortion?

Either it should always be legally permitted or be legally permitted with some limitations, be illegal except for cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, be illegal, except to save the mother's life exclusively or always be illegal.

And when we looked at these choices and group them together, they always permitted or permitted with limitations is well over 50%.

So when we look at the numbers and they were certainly skewed more Democratic than Republican, but if we look at the overall number, more than half of people say that abortion should be illegal or should be legal, either always or with some limitations.

We're looking at that play out on the state level in terms of of races, too.

Yeah.

And that tracks with how voters voted last November.

57% of voters approved issue one last November, which was the Reproductive Rights and Abortion Access Amendment.

So that really kind of goes in line.

And I think that's interesting because I often have concerns about polls, especially those that ask about specific elections or specific candidates who is polled is really important.

But polls about issues in general have less of that snapshot in time factor.

Who wrote the questions is important, and that's why I'm glad that you said that journalists wrote the questions in the Northeast, Ohio voices poll, not third parties, not academics.

And I think that really potentially makes a difference.

Nothing against third parties or academics.

No, no.

But it's it's a different kind of.

Yeah.

And we did it and we did get assistance from the Community Research Institute.

They know how to do these kinds of things.

And and so we got some input.

But certainly you're right, it's who writes it.

But also we were very insistent that this was about issues that we don't want to know.

Who do you think should win or who will you vote for?

Will it be Sherrod Brown or Bernie Moreno, or will it be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris?

That really wasn't it, because those horse races, we've also horse race polls, we've also found to be basically worthless when it comes to Election Day.

I would also add on the abortion questions that were asked there.

You know, there's been some criticism from Republicans who opposed issue one last fall saying that they think voters were confused or whatever.

Well, that poll, if you expand that to the entire state, I don't know whether you can or not.

But that poll suggests that no voters weren't confused.

Voters knew what they were voting for when they voted to support the reproductive rights and Abortion access Amendment.

That that poll that you, the Northeast Ohio Voices poll seemed to suggest that, yeah, they knew what they were doing.

And as a matter of fact, Baldwin Wallace The Community Research Institute did do an independent statewide Pulse poll, which you can look up and we've reported on as well.

So they did expand it out statewide.

Let's talk about issue one.

Voters were asked about issue one.

It seeks to take politicians out of the mapmaking process for congressional and state districts.

A big portion of voters have not made up their minds, which could send this issue down to the wire, it seems like.

Yeah, a third of the voters in this poll said that they were unsure.

Now, this is a poll of Northeast Ohio voters.

So once again, expanding it to the entire state, you wonder whether that can be done.

But I will say that, you know, at this point, less than 30 days before the election and a third of voters say that they are uncertain.

That could potentially show that there might be a hill to climb here for issue one.

There's still advertising on the air.

There's still the whole next couple of weeks of information going out.

But that does suggest that people are approaching it a little bit more cautiously.

You have less than half.

Yeah, 49% who say that they do support it and 21% say that they oppose it.

So there's I think that 30% is really, really interesting to know.

That might tell you, though, that if the the the yeses are 49%, the nos are less than half of that.

And there's a large group of undecided.

You would assume perhaps that if the percentage holds, those folks would go to the yes side that essentially this poll, if you look at it and you're a supporter of issue one, is an encouraging one.

Yeah, but I think when it comes to this particular issue, state issue one is so complicated.

It's got, again, a three page ballot summary, which the backers of Issue one have repeatedly they sued over the ballot summary.

If people are confused, they're more likely to vote no or to not vote at all.

Right.

And so that's that's the real question here, is how do how do the backers of Issue one reach that 30% and whether that 30% is a statewide number?

And if you're an anti gerrymandering person and a reader and you sit there and read the three pages, you'll see in it that it says it would gerrymander rather than not gerrymander.

And so you might say, okay, that's the key word I needed.

And so that's really where it comes down to.

More people might vote based on what they read at the polls.

Then all of the talking that we're doing.

Yeah.

And I talked to Republican former Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor for our TV show the State of Ohio this week.

She wrote the amendment, not the ballot language.

I asked her if she thought the ballot language could potentially swing the vote.

And she said, quote, You mean the illegal unconstitutional, the language that Frank Laura's drafted that purposely tries to sway the voters to vote no on this amendment?

What does she really think?

Oh, she goes on.

That's just the start of her answer.

She was very frustrated.

And as if she won, backers have been about the language.

They feel the language does not represent issue unfairly and does not represent what the amendment would actually do.

They say they want to ban gerrymandering.

The ballot summary, as you mentioned, says, adding It requires gerrymandering.

Right.

voters are requesting.

Mail in ballots aren't doing it right.

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections said more than 8000 ballot applications have been invalidated because they were not filled out correctly.

Stephen, the issue here appears to be voters just not reading the form carefully.

They're not providing the information that matches their voter record with their board.

As a result, with their application.

And so they're essentially saying, give me a ballot.

What they're getting back is, you know, do the paperwork.

Right?

Right.

So it was found that about 5% of these forms were returned and it was due to either the wrong date of birth, the wrong address, not providing the correct I.D..

So pretty simple stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So so I guess our admonition here is, look that form over carefully follow the rules or they're going to kick it back.

Karen, voters who may not have voted since the last presidential election, this may be their first encounter with changes the state has made, especially the tougher voter ID requirements.

The House voting advocates concern.

there's still a concern about whether people know that they need to bring a photo ID to vote or if they go back and have to secure their provisional ballot.

They have to bring a photo ID.

So it's important to remember that you need a valid state issued photo ID and you can use a passport, you can use a driver's license, these sorts of things.

But but you need that.

You can't use a utility bill or a student I.D.

So.

Right.

If you're going to vote early voting, which, by the way, has begun.

Bring your ID with you.

You need to have that done.

Send you back.

You'll have to go get it and bring it with you.

So make sure you have it Cleveland City Council wants bigger penalties for street takeovers, where people gather race and do stunts.

This in response to a series of takeovers that shut down nearly 20 streets and a portion of I-90.

Broadly, what do they want to do?

Yeah, so so first of all, it will more clearly define some of these terms, such as street racing donuts, things like that.

And having a definition will allow police to go after people with maybe harsher penalties than just traffic tickets.

It will also allow the city to impound vehicles and vehicle components like steering wheels, tires, mufflers, things of that nature.

Council met this week and they just said things were outrageous.

And honestly, watching those videos, it's pretty incredible, I guess, for lack of a better word, display.

You're talking about nearly 20 streets in one highway that were shut down that weekend.

So they're saying they don't have the tools for police to go out there and say, hey, you can't do this.

I'm going to confiscate and the reason I ask about this is because I looked at the Columbus Dispatch and in Columbus they had this Operation Burnout where they went out and and cracked down.

They had nearly 200 arrests.

They confiscated 70 vehicles that I mean, if I was somebody that want to go take over a city and do donuts around an intersection, I'd come to Cleveland, not Columbus.

Sure.

I guess that that's kind of the idea of why I was organized to come up here.

I mean, again, the question goes back to we can put these laws on the books, but as council said, they are not in charge of police.

They can't really make police enforce things.

So it's kind of up to the mayor's office to prioritize this.

And Cleveland division of police to make sure that that's enforced.

And again, there is a concern about enforcement because of our lack of uniformed officers.

Again, there's a 230 more than vacancy vacancies within the police department.

So that becomes the concern there.

Let's talk about West Sixth Street.

Concerns about public safety led the city of Cleveland to no longer provide permits for the tailgate party That's on West six.

It's before Brown's home games, sometimes after a little bit, too.

Potentially could return next season.

I saw a lot of fans who were interviewed on television saying that they thought it was a terrible deal.

But the city is basically is just saying it's not safe.

Yeah, and they said that this isn't necessarily going to stop next year or anything like that.

They're in talks with organizers about how to make the events work next year, including beefing up security, maybe even hiring private security as well, to balance those public safety concerns with people also just wanting to be downtown, and especially when we're talking about revitalizing downtown and bringing people downtown and the Browns Stadium and potentially keeping the Browns downtown public, it all goes back to a place of public safety and something the mayor's office has said that they want to crack down on.

Is this lawless behavior, which we've heard them describe with the street takeovers and with these tailgate parties.

Cleveland City Council wants input from the public as it sheds two seats due to population loss.

A process mandated by the charter every decade.

Abbie, every decade the charter says you've got to take a look at the population and right size your city council.

I know this has happened before.

There used to be I think it was 21 members of council.

Now it's down to 15, 17, 17, it'll be down to 1515.

Right.

And so I would think that's kind of Lord of the Flies.

Somebody has got to survive, right?

Sure.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think that's part of it a little bit.

No one really wants to lose their job.

So the argument between some of these council members that are not happy about this process, which again, is mandated by the city charter and the city charter says about 25,000 constituents per ward council member.

So you lose population, you lose council members.

The argument is, though, that we've been operating with this population.

So the same amount of work, less people, that's less time spent with constituents.

The argument is also that council's budget is less than 2% of the city's general revenue fund.

You're really only losing four positions two council members, two aides.

There was a an idea tossed around at a committee chairs meeting on Monday about perhaps taking this as a ballot initiative to voters as a charter amendment in 2026 to maybe stop this from happening, because they're saying, you know, we might not be able to serve you as well as we like.

But again, I want to compare this to a city like Columbus, which has upwards of 900,000 people, and they only have nine council members.

We have 17.

Cincinnati also has nine council members.

So, yeah, they are going to have to take a hard look at the the boundaries and where they're going to lose potentially council people, but they're bound by specific things within the charter and what they require.

So is there is this big lobbying campaign and who do you lobby as it is it Blaine Griffin, the council president and you try to get him to help you or, you know, if they combine to two wards, somebody is going to come out on top.

And is it the favored person?

I mean, they're all Democrats.

It's not like there's a party situation here.

So what is the under like the behind the scenes look at this.

So they work with consultants.

And as I said, there are requirements within the charter of what how they need to go about this.

So they're working with outside consultants.

There is, like I said, 25,000 constituents per ward.

Council member You're asking me What I want to know is who are they trying to balance?

We'll figure that, you know, we don't know that yet and we still don't know to who is who might retire, who might leave in that time as well.

And also, we don't know where we are going to lose these seats.

It is likely going to be on the east side.

We were we have seen in these inner ring neighborhoods, particularly on the east side, population loss because they are bound to a plus or -5% of that 25,000.

So when you're looking at the west side, particularly the far west side, where populations are more stable, it's unlikely that we're going to see much change there.

But then the issue becomes that we are going to see representatives of a larger geographic area that's more snow to plow, more grass to mow, even if there are less people.

So I think that that is a concern among council members as well.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on WKSU.

The head of the American Libraries Association discusses access to information in a democracy.

And to my friend Dan Coughlin of Fox eight, who died this week at 86 Safe Home.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching.

And stay safe,