President Biden commuted the sentence of former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy dimora, who is serving time for corruption.

Cleveland City council has released New ward maps to reflect a smaller council, and the Browns released more details on its plan.

Brook Park site football and hotels, offices, apartments and retail ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1500 people Thursday.

Among those receiving clemency, former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora.

His conviction more than a decade ago drove a change in Cuyahoga County's form of government.

He was released to home confinement last year due to health issues.

New ward maps show how Cleveland will be represented by city council, which will lose two seats due to population loss.

And the Browns owners revealed more details on their proposed complex in Brooke Park.

In addition to a stadium with a roof, there would be hotels, retail and apartments.

The governor said he's stepping into the fray between ownership and the city of Cleveland.

Joining me for the roundtable from Ideastream Public Media, supervising producer of newscasts, Glenn Forbes and senior reporter of Arts and Culture, could be bought here in Columbus.

Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

President Joe Biden announced yesterday he was commuting the prison sentences of nearly 1500 people, one of the largest single acts of clemency in history.

Among those receiving clemency, former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora.

compared to I had been released from prison as I mentioned last year as part of the CARES Act, very end of the Corona Aid Relief and Economic Security Act.

Basically, if you didn't have a violent conviction, if you had been good in prison and if you had some health problems, which he does, you were able to be out.

But still he was under the shadow of a sentence.

That's all lifted now.

That's lifted.

He can go where he likes.

I believe he was staying with family in Streetsboro, which is in Portage County, south of here, just north of Kent.

And not that anyone's going to find him, but now he can go wherever he like.

He's pushing 70 years old and he's I think there's about 1500 people that Biden commuted the sentence who were part of the CARES Act, which was really to ease the burden on the prisons during coronavirus.

So there weren't as many people so close together.

So they were all still in confinement, but at home they were allowed to be released.

And the thinking goes, since then they've been good.

They haven't committed any crimes, these 1515 hundred.

And so they said, all right, let's just let's just commute the sentence rather than have that hang over their heads.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So somebody like De Mora, now, he's he's free to do what he'd like despite his health problem.

You think back to this, Glen and all of us were in the news business when.

When Jimmy Timor.

I remember when the arrest happened outside his seven Hills home.

You think back to this.

He was sentenced to 28 years.

Originally it was reduced to 23.

And people were were thinking that was a bit excessive.

Although it was a huge scale public corruption case.

This really does kind of turn the page on a chapter in northeast Ohio history.

It does.

And not only that, Frank Russo, the former auditor who was also sentenced, got 22 years.

He passed away several years ago.

So it does kind of turn that that page in the county.

Of course, we have a different county form of government now that voters, to my recollection, overwhelmingly approved in 2009, where you get rid of the three commissioners.

Now you have the county council and the county executive.

I think you hit on it.

Mike.

I used to work for Mike Tristano and we talked about this all the time and he thought, you know, he didn't like Dimora personally.

He thought Dimora was guilty, but he thought 28 years was completely ridiculous.

I think it was about $450,000 or so in, I guess, improper benefits.

There were trips, there were wiretaps.

I mean, this was salacious, right?

When you listen to the wiretaps from the FBI, we're talking about prostitutes.

We're talking about trips to Vegas.

We're talking about all these other things.

So it's not so much a matter of whether or not people thought Jimmy Damore was guilty.

It was 28 years.

Right.

And why did he get 28 years?

It was because he was not cooperative.

And then that brings up another question about the judicial system.

And I think Trevor Sarno and a lot of other people made the point that, look, you have people who commit, you know, a very negligent homicide, let's say, which is a violent crime, certainly.

And those people get 10 to 12 years.

And Jimmy Damore is getting 28 for a pizza oven in his backyard and assigned, you know, Chris Wells, Ohio State Jersey and so.

And bags of money.

Sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now, I think we do have to note, though, that Jimmy Tamura, not only did he not cooperate, but throughout his entire prison sentence, throughout the trial that led to it, he's maintained his innocence.

He has said, yes, I was given gifts.

They were disclosed on my on my disclosure forms, my ethics forms that I had to do.

I've done nothing wrong.

There was no hookers.

There was a trip to Vegas.

It was on the up and up.

So from the very end, that man has maintained steadfastly his innocence.

And not only that, but one of his points was I couldn't get anything done by myself.

There were two other commissioners there who had to, you know, vote with me.

At least one of them had to vote with me on a lot of these projects.

So the famous quote was, if you're going to do a thorough investigation, do a thorough investigation include everybody, Don't just pick and choose who you want to include.

So he was defiant throughout the process, even when there was, you know, like I said, evidence on those wiretaps and things like that.

And you have to wonder, did he receive that large of a sentence because he was so kind of uncooperative and bold, but he ends up serving, what, 11 years anyway, and now he's completely free.

He was supposed to be on house arrest until 2030, and that is no longer the case.

Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin this week unveiled new proposed ward maps that eliminate two of council's 17 seats due to population loss, something it's required to do each decade based on census data.

Griffin said Tuesday.

The goal to keep neighborhoods together and use natural boundaries was, quote, imperfect.

Lee achieved.

The reaction was mixed from some of the other members.

Longtime Ward eight Councilmember Mike Polansky, who's happy about nothing, praised the new maps for being more transparent than decades past.

Well, first time council member, first term council member Rebecca moore, who is Ward 12, is going to be split into six pizzas, pizzas, six pieces like a pizza, raised concerns about the fairness of the process.

Glenn Griffin said It was a tough process and it looks like it was.

They had to start from the corners because of the shape of Cleveland, so that when you started to get to the middle, it was going to get a little bit more carved up.

But there was a certain number that had to be in each ward.

They wanted to try to make them more contiguous.

If you looked at the the reconfiguration in 2013, I believe it, or a decade before, it was a lot of weird shapes.

So he's trying to make that better.

But he said it was just imperfectly achieved.

It was tough to do.

Yeah.

You mentioned you mentioned a lot of things there, first of all, so obviously they've got to get down to seats.

This was another voter approved charter amendment in 2008.

They're going to reassess due to population loss.

Well, as we know, Cleveland proper certainly suffering from population loss.

So Griffin saying, hey, well, this is never going to be easy.

We got to cut these two seats anyway.

When you look at the numbers, yes, each ward has to have more than 23,600 and less than, you know, roughly 26,000.

Yeah, I got to give credit to Abby Marshall from Ideastream Public Media.

She has a very extensive report on this.

And she did talk to Councilman Moore, who feels like she was singled out in this process and gerrymandered and gerrymander.

She's not in her own ward anymore.

And so the quote that she gave to Abby was, I'm concerned they're sort of a you line up or your drawn out approach, this mapmaking process because she's butted heads with council leadership, obviously, including President Blaine Griffin in the past.

She feels like this was, you know, somewhat retribution.

They got into a a tiff, if you will, in late November, where she accused Griffin of gerrymandering during a speech on on Chamber City Council chambers.

And Griffin said this has been a fair and transparent process.

And then he added, some council members had approached him with concerns that Moore was not a team player and they did not trust her.

So this has been going on for a couple of weeks here, you know, this dispute.

But it it remains to be seen.

You know, what actually happens.

This is the first iteration of the maps and it's not going to change much.

He said they've got one chance in early January to pass it.

They put it out to the public.

If there's changes, it's going to be very marginal and that has been an issue with the public.

You mentioned, Mike, balancing the dean of City Council who's been around for for a long time, saying this is the most transparent process he's seen.

But residents are saying that we have not seen enough of this.

There has not been a community engagement process.

And Patrick Britten also told Ideastream he's a ward 12 resident.

They'll use whatever excuse they feel is the most appropriate to not have to engage the community in this process.

So it's not an easy thing to do, obviously, but there have certainly been a lot of complaints about this, this version of the maps, which you point out could be the version of the maps.

Ward 12 is Councilwoman Morris Ward.

She is now drawn into the same ward five as Councilman Richard Starr.

So you would assume they might have to run against each other, although in Cleveland City Council and I do not know this, you don't have to live in the ward to run for that ward so you can run for another.

So there are all kinds of things that still could happen in Ward ten.

Councilman Anthony Hairston and Ward eight, Councilman Mike Polansky are both in the newly created Ward ten.

So the sick, the, as you mentioned, would conceivably possibly have to run against Harrison should he want to run again.

And we noted earlier this year that Jenny Spencer said she's leaving at the end of the year.

Her ward then would be someone new.

There isn't there isn't somebody that one of the council members that's in that ward at this moment.

All of them are up for reelection in 2025.

So we are going to have a pretty active political year in Cleveland.

City Council will definitely be an interesting year, as you mentioned, in 2025.

More told Abby Marshall and Ideastream.

It's unclear what her future plans are, but she's not ruling out another council campaign next fall.

Mike, She just, you know, won her seat a couple of years ago.

I remember interviewing her on this show after she won and she feels like she has a lot left to give.

And while her future plans are not entirely clear, it doesn't sound like somebody that's ready to hang it up at this point.

Opioid settlement money for two northeast Ohio counties may be in jeopardy after the House Supreme Court sided with pharmacies in a dispute over whether the case brought against them was a product liability or a public nuisance case.

federal jury ruled in favor of Lake and Trumbull counties in 2021, saying chain pharmacies, CVS, Walmart and Walgreens helped fuel an opioid crisis.

On the legal theory that pharmacies created a public nuisance when the opioid crisis overwhelmed communities, the pharmacies appealed the case, leading to the Supreme Court's ruling.

It could negate Karen more than $650 million that the counties were supposed to be getting.

Well, yeah, this was a divided Supreme Court.

So the four Republicans on the court, plus Democrat Jennifer Brunner, ruled that basically Ohio's Product Liability act, which was amended in 2007, covers product liability for all products, not just defective products, but all products.

And so that was really kind of the core of this.

Now, there has been settlement money already paid out, and in fact, this decision and other decisions really led forward toward that national settlement and other settlements as well.

And so the settlement money that's been paid out would not be endangered.

But there are real concerns here, not only about the opioid settlement, but just about how this could potentially affect other settle or other court cases that involve people trying to sue a big corporation for something.

And one of the co counsels on behalf of the counties, Peter Weinberger, said that the ruling will have a devastating impact on communities and their ability to police corporate misconduct.

He said that claims across the country to obtain nearly $60 billion in opioid settlements are based on this nuisance public nuisance claim.

So if they're not allowed to use public nuisance claims, that's trouble, right?

NPR covered the story as well and a statement that they got from Wal-Mart about this.

Wal-Mart said that is Ohio's Supreme Court's ruling was a rejection of efforts to and this is a, quote, radically expand public nuisance law, which of course, means suing companies over products that are already regulated.

So, yeah, this is considered to be a potentially far reaching result here.

And it's like I said, it may not affect it doesn't affect the settlement money that's already paid out, but future stuff could be in jeopardy.

And just as Mike Donnelly said, it makes a difference how that money was supposed to be used.

It's not as though it's just money for gain.

It's money to be used to try to combat all the damage that was done by the opioid crisis.

And you look at places that are funding treatment programs and all of those types of things.

Yeah, that was the whole basis of suing under that public nuisance law that these products, these opioids, these painkillers that were prescribed in such big numbers, people got addicted to them that caused a public nuisance in that there was a huge number of rise or a huge rise in the number of kids in children's services agencies and foster care and some of these other, you know, obviously people that are dealing with recovery and that sort of thing.

So obviously the opioid crisis had huge far reaching effects and this was an attempt to try to deal with some of those.

Several city leaders in Akron have called for the police officer who fatally shot a teenager to be fired.

The officer shot 15 year old Jasmine Tucker on Thanksgiving night and they were investigating shots fired.

We talked about the dash cam video.

They actually the body cam video and all of those issues in regards to that.

But given that it's under investigation by the state, yeah, we still have council members that say fire him right now.

Is that something that's realistic given what the city charter is and the way these things work in the process now?

Very unlikely as Bureau of Criminal Investigation is still investigating.

So not just unlikely there, but as part of the contract with the police union, they say you can't just remove an officer.

There's a whole number of steps that they would have to take to justify removing an officer or somehow penalize them, suspending them, anything like that during the actual investigation and and before all the hearings are complete.

And yet one of the council members said, okay, given all that, okay, fine.

But still, the mayor should be radical, should be radical.

And I can understand the sentiment Council, of course, is divided on that.

But Jan Davis, one of the council members, did say the mayor should essentially be radical and go ahead and do something about this even before the investigation is complete.

We talked about this after the shooting and after we saw the body cam footage.

One of the big concerns and it was something that the mayor mentioned in a press release and then later council President Margo Somerville discussed was the amount of time it took between the shooting.

The suspect is down, the teenager is down.

And now minutes and minutes go by before any aid is rendered.

I think I think they said 7 minutes and they're wondering why that happened.

And hopefully the BCI investigation is asking those questions as well, why that happened.

But and members of the public, I think, at this council meeting also were bringing that up that why did it take so long to render aid?

So that's something that needs to be answered.

Is there an explanation that has been given yet?

I mean, there are many you could think of, which is they needed certain kind of equipment.

Perhaps they didn't have it or or they thought the person was still a threat or whatever it might be.

But we haven't any of those not not specifically.

Somebody alluded in one of the hearings or one of the council sessions to to calling for body shields or that sort, even though the person was down.

So I should point out one of the other council members, Jeff Fusco, he's playing this right down the middle and he's been in Akron politics for a long time.

And he's saying also, let's just wait till the investigation happens.

Nobody jump to conclusions.

Let's not make make any moves.

And I think he's respected enough that that's probably what's going to happen.

Every graduate of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is now eligible for automatic admittance to Cuyahoga Community College.

And what it means, Glenn, is you don't even have to apply once you graduate.

You can just matriculate directly to Tri-C. That's right.

And it seems like an arrangement that really makes sense for both sides.

You have Cleveland schools who some students are already taking classes at Tri-C, so they're already enrolled there.

Mike is, you know, the process of applying for college is quite cumbersome, a lot of headaches, a lot of time and things like that.

So and Ideastream is kind of Morris spoke to a student and said it's not it's going to be nice not to go through so many hurdles because I'm already enrolled.

There are the credits are already there.

So this is also a data sharing agreement essentially where Tri-C is going to get all the information that they need on these students to help kind of ease that process.

I know that Cleveland students take, you know, tours of Tri-C, so there's that idea of familiarity.

We're making it easier.

And you have this, you know, great option.

You're already enrolled essentially, and to further your education, it lifts a hurdle and therefore you might have more students getting higher education.

That's a good thing.

As we heard from some of the folks that were interviewed, including the president of the college, Michael Baisden, we've seen colleges struggling with enrollment.

We've seen colleges struggling with, you know, things like declining birth rates and things of that nature.

So this is a move for Tracy to try to keep those enrollment numbers up and help the students that are in the city of Cleveland.

So like I said, it makes sense for both, right?

We need it for the students.

But also, as we've been hearing, colleges and universities are facing an enrollment cliff.

There's been all kinds of budget cuts and problems.

It this is an idea perhaps where Tracy is saying maybe that'll help people, as we said, matriculate easier and boost the enrollment numbers.

The Browns owners gave a more detailed look at what they envision beyond a stadium with a roof in Brook Park.

And Glenn, when I looked at that, I just thought, this is taking something and making it sort of this hermetically sealed place to go.

But they're talking about making it more than just coming for a football game.

Apartments, two hotels, lots of retail, some of it gameday related, but some of it not.

They're putting together a pretty expansive project proposal.

Yeah, you throw in office space in there and all this other stuff, this is one of the most sprawling ideas of a football village we have seen.

I've been to the one in Green Bay, which is this on a much smaller scale, but you know, there's breweries there.

There's essentially rec fields outside of of the stadium itself.

And it is really this idea like we've been talking about, of a football village.

The question is, you know, the stadium is the first part of this.

How long will it take for everything else to be developed?

But obviously the question even before that is, is are they going to get the financing or should it to go there?

There's still a debate, right?

Or should any of it be developed?

Listen, the Haslam's want this because they get to control, you know, the revenue.

This is their land.

They have an option to purchase it, which obviously it seems like they would they would like to do.

The question is still, if this is now double the cost of renovating the current stadium, and as we've seen recently from the Northeast Ohio Transit blog, who's been all over this story, he's he's Ken Prendergast has has broken many of these stories.

What the what the Haslam's are saying is if we do renovate that downtown stadium that's just kicking the can down the road, it'll give us another 15 to 20 years, I think a 25 to 20 5 to 30.

But still, we need this large for development.

They're landlocked on the lake.

They also say that the city proposed Burke Burke Lakefront Airport site.

There's too many questions about not only when they can get that off the ground, but there's environmental issues with with the landfill.

There's something about they need to have even more space because of with that footprint, because of, you know, some of the environmental stripping, the way distributing the weight.

Thank you very much.

So it continues to be a complicated issue.

They don't seem to be getting any closer.

And now the governor is involved and there's this posturing between the Greater Cleveland partnership.

Each side is trying to get the Greater Cleveland partnership on their side.

Yeah, I saw that the there was a meeting with the mayor of Cleveland, Justin Bibb, the Cuyahoga County executive, Chris Ronayne council president.

So both of their councils, Pernell Jones, junior at the county, and Blaine Griffin at the city, they went to a meeting at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, which is the local chamber of Commerce, and said, We want you to back our plan to make sure they don't move to Brook Park.

Meanwhile, a member of the board of the GCP is D has one who sent an email to her colleagues the day before said, Hey, they're coming tomorrow before they come, I want to tell you what a great idea it is that we moved.

So this back door politicking is going on with the movers and shakers.

But also now we have the governor, as you said, getting inserted into this.

He's talking to both sides.

I don't know what then he can come up with except to say, yes, we can fund what you need in Brook Park or we're not going to fund what you need.

I think that would be basically the deciding factor.

It seems like he is trying to play peacemaker and at least get them a little closer together.

But everything we've heard from the state and I think, you know, Karen would would verify this, this is kind of a nonstarter.

And it goes back to contribute this much money to one team for one stadium, because you also have the Bangles, the Blue Jackets, the Guardians.

I mean, you name it, there's there's a ton of teams.

I think you have like a couple of the CIO teams that you coaches need.

So, yeah, we'd love we'd love to finish.

Absolutely.

We'd love some of that.

But this is it.

And the interesting thing about this is even though the lease at the current stadium goes through 2028, the has reportedly want to start construction within the next year and a half of this Brook Park facility so that this timeline is being moved up.

And now you're starting to see that posturing really take down some of the power players really starting to get involved.

Karen, I was just going to say yesterday, Governor Mike DeWine invited the state House press corps over for breakfast, which he does every year around this time.

And he told us that he was going be in Cleveland yesterday and today talking with officials about this whole project, because he was specifically asked, is is there going to be any money in the budget that goes to Brown Stadium?

And he just said he's now on a fact finding mission.

He wants to meet with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, not only about the stadium, but also about the plans for the lakefront and to try to figure out how that fits into everything.

So I don't think that putting that kind of money toward the stadium has been really popular around here, though.

Senator Matt Dolan, who is leaving the legislature and obviously part of the Guardians, has said there could be bonds that could be issued on this.

So it's I think this is a developing story that's not going to go away anytime soon.

You may remember some time back we talked about the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling that boneless doesn't necessarily mean no bones.

The Supreme Court had another bite at the Nugget this week and the justices did not change their order.

One dissenting justice called it justice called it asinine.

Another said the original ruling was rightly subjected to ridicule.

Karen, we've got some spicy action going on over at Supreme Court.

Yeah, this was a revisiting of that case because you'll recall that case came out, I believe it was in the summertime and became a big campaign issue for the Democrats who were running for the Supreme Court.

All of whom lost those races for the Supreme Court.

But this is a case that has really gone national in terms of whether boneless chicken should be expected to still be boneless.

And the justices who said that is the case as kind of stood by it and said, nope, they're the chickens have bones, so you need to be prepared for it.

There's no such thing as a boneless chicken wing.

But Joe Deters said, as the justice Joe Dieter said, it's like chicken fingers.

We don't expect those to be fingers.

So that was his argument.

On the other hand, we've got the other justices that are saying, wait a minute, if it's labeled boneless, you should expect no bones, not bones.

And I think that that brings up the question about labeling things.

I mean, there's a bill here at the state House that I mean, doesn't have time to get through, but would require that things that are plant based not be labeled as like burgers or things like that, because that's not meat.

So if we can't trust what things are called, what we've called them all this time and think that they're going to be one thing, it's just it's very confusing, I think.

One to move on and mentioned Rocky Colavito, unknown to many youngsters, perhaps the most popular Cleveland baseball player of all time died this week at the age of 91.

He was a terrific player in 1959 to the Detroit Tigers, a disastrous trade.

He came back in 65, but the damage was done.

It's called the Colavito Curse, The curse of Rocky Balboa.

The curse lives.

That's my familiarity with him.

But I also want to mention real quick, he would come back to Little Italy.

He's got a statue there.

He was just within the past couple of years would come back to Cleveland.

My good buddy, Dave Santoni, who still plays catcher and fast pitch baseball in his early seventies while I was there the day after at the statue, I think Channel five interviewed him, but really, really cool.

His most amazing feat, by the way, June 10th, 1959, four home runs against Baltimore in a single game.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.