(dramatic jingle) - Akron mayor says he won't run for a third term next year and the field to succeed him is already getting crowded.

Cuyahoga County officials know the jail is a big problem, but there's little agreement on how to solve it.

And the Lake Erie Walleye fishing tournament cheating scandal has caught national attention.

Ideas is next.

(dramatic music) Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Akron Voters will choose a new mayor in 2023.

Mayor Dan Horrigan announced this week he will not seek a third term.

The field to succeed him is already getting crowded.

There's nothing close to agreement from Cuyahoga County officials on what to do about the outdated and overcrowded jail.

A steering committee this week voted down a proposal to buy property for a new jail, and a consultant said, "renovating the existing one doesn't make sense."

A cheating scandal in a Lake Erie walleye fishing tournament in Cleveland caught national attention this week after two contestants who had been declared winners because their catch was heaviest, were disqualified for allegedly cheating.

Their fish were sliced open to reveal lead weights inside.

And the Cleveland Guardians will open their post-season run today hosting a best of three first round series with Tampa Bay.

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

Joining me this week from Ideasstream public media, Director of engaged journalism, Marlene Harris Taylor and supervising producer for Newscast, Glenn Forbes.

In Columbus, Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan announced this week that he will not seek reelection in 2023.

The field to replace him is getting crowded already.

So, there's a lot going on Glen in Akron politics.

What's interesting about this is the election is next year, right?

So there's a primary, and then there would be a general next November.

So we're, we've got a long time, a long runway here, but the mayor has chosen this time to sort of put an end to the worst kept secret and confirm it saying, "yeah, I'm not running."

- Well, who doesn't Like a year's worth of campaign, right?

I mean we could, The people of Akron will be thrilled to have a year worth of campaigning.

No, it's interesting now because we have this open primary and it's not like Cleveland, where Cleveland, you've got the runoff election.

So, it's really gonna come down to the Democratic primary.

It's interesting how this kind of like affects our concept of time.

This is what I was thinking about, 'cause Horrigan seems like kind of like a newcomer, right?

He declined to run for his third term and I guess maybe after Don Plusquellic was in there for 30 years, right?

That Mayor Horrigan kind of seemed like a newcomer, but actually he wasn't, you know?

He'll end up serving his, his eight years.

Tara Mosely, a councilman, considering.

Councilwoman, sorry.

Considering getting in the race.

That's pretty interesting.

We thought Sage Lewis might get into that race, but he's actually running for Ward eight councilmen.

- This is the activist in Akron.

- He's a small business owner and an advocate for the homeless who has been battling with the city over encampments and you know, tent cities and those kinds of things.

And was not, he was, I think it's fair to say he was an adversary of Mayor Horrigan, but he is not running for mayor.

He is running for Ward eight council, which.

- Is Shammas Malik's Ward, the person who's signed up to run for mayor.

- And I was just gonna say, we talked about kind of this generational, you know, gap if you will.

We've got Marco Summerville, who the deputy mayor now endorsed by Mayor Horrigan, I don't wanna say kind of representing the old guard, but in a way he does, Shammas Malik is 31 years old.

He was part of.

- [Mike] Summerville I think is 70.

- He and Shammas Malik was part of this, and again, I don't want to call it a rival proposal for the Citizens Review board for the police, but 'cause there are similarities between Mayor Horrigan's proposal and the citizen's proposal, but Shammas Malik was one of the councilman kind of leading the charge in this alternate, or really the first proposal that's gonna be on the ballot that's actually a charter amendment issue.

We talked about that last week and it is quite confusing, but there are some similarities as far as, you know, will this have an impact on the upcoming election regarding that charter amendment?

It's hard to know.

- [Mike] Right.

- But there is a lot going on in Akron and now you have this open primary, you mentioned Jeff Willi, who's a longtime politician, started when he was 17 years old and Kenmore actually, is being part of the senior citizens council out there.

So.

- He's kind of the old guard too, right?

He's like around 61 is my understanding too.

- [Mike] And what's cool Marlene is that generational difference.

And we had that in Cleveland when you had a longtime politician and the council president Kevin Kelly running against a much younger candidate in Justin Bib, and we're seeing that in Akron too.

That choice, generational choice it's really a - [Marlene] It is.

style choice I would think too.

- And Malik, Shammas Malik was a supporter of Justin Bibs too, when Bib ran.

So, he really is very much a part of that generation, right?

Of wanna bring a new style to politics because it's kind of hard for, for Will height and for Summerville to say, "you know, I wanna make change."

When I've been in office for so long.

That change message, which you hear so often in elections, it's hard for voters to identify with when you've been around and you've been doing the policies, right.

- Yeah.

And the interesting thing about this, as long as we're talking about, you know, Cleveland, I've been thinking about, you know, Mayor Jackson and Kevin Kelly, right?

Who is president of council.

Mayor Jackson was in favor of Kevin Kelly.

He did not win.

And then I wonder about this endorsement of Mayor Horrigan for Marco Summerville.

You know, does that hold any weight with Akron voters?

I don't know.

- [Mike] Right.

- I guess we'll find out and I think it is gonna gonna come down to this generational divide.

- [Marlene] Well, you know.

Oh, I'm sorry.

- I was just gonna say, I do wanna make one key distinction 'cause this has gotten me tripped up before.

Mark Co. Summerville.

- Yes.

- This is the deputy mayor.

- Yes.

- Formerly a council president in Akron.

The current council president Margo Summerville.

- Right.

- Oh, that is two.

- So, they're two different people.

Margo is Marco's daughter.

- Correct?

- But when we say Marco, we're talking about.

- Senior.

- I should've named my daughter Glenda.

(laughter) - I dunno why I didn't do that.

- Well, I just wanted to say that I, I'm not a northeast Ohio native, but I have several friends who are from Akron and I checked in with them and they said the Summerville is really, you know, he's a staple in the community.

He's everywhere.

- [Mike] Yeah.

He's on every board, you know, everybody knows him.

And he runs a business, he runs a funeral home there and his business has been successful.

So, you know, he's a person that a lot of people know.

His name recognition is really high, as you mentioned, the daughter who, you know, came into politics as well.

So, I'm sure he'll be a force, with or with without the endorsement.

But, I do agree it's gonna be about do you want a generational change in this election?

You are a northern Ohio Native, Northwest?

- [Marlene] Yes, I am.

- So, you could tell us all about Cardi Finkbeiner.

- Well, you know, Cardi was a character.

People don't know about Cardi over in this, in this neck of the woods.

- I Covered, I covered Cardi Finkbeiner.

I used to work for WSPD out in Toledo and what a, and what an interesting guy he was.

- [Mike] And I worked for the Blade.

- [Marlene] He was fun.

- [Mike] One of the greatest names in politics.

- [Glenn] Absolutely.

- [Marlene] And he's still around.

- I do wanna mention though, what we're talking about Horrigan as if there is some bad legacy to him.

He, many people say carried a progressive agenda into the mayor's office.

Obviously last year has been one of great difficulty with the shooting of Jayland Walker and the whole idea of police oversight.

But there are some things that people will point to regardless of who you want to see succeed him that say, Mayor Horrigan took action, got some things done.

One of them, Marlene, is the health equity summit that you and your team recently attended.

- [Marlene] Yeah.

The whole, the entire health team went over to Akron to a day long summit that brought together healthcare workers, activists, people who are concerned about health equity.

And some of the things that we've been pointing out in our connecting the dots between race and health project, around these systemic things that are keeping people sick, year after year.

And these folks came together to listen to data, to share ideas.

They even had a session for the workers themselves because of the trauma that they've been through to help them heal.

So you're, you're right, Mike, this is a summit that's well known, well attended, and will definitely be part of his legacy.

But you know, one of the things that also surprised me is not being from this area, is that Akron has never had an African American mayor.

So, this might be an opportunity for Akron to have its first African American mayor.

- [Mike] Several candidates are African American in this race.

(dramatic music) Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, says he will reorganize his office to create a public integrity unit where investigators will look into potential election fraud.

Something he has said is not a problem in Ohio.

LaRose says the unit would help increase Ohio's confidence in election results.

So Karen, there are some that look at this and say he's pandering to the election fraud crowd by basically saying, "we're gonna keep doing what we're doing, but now we're gonna gussy it up and call it an integrity unit, a public integrity unit."

But there are others, and even the folks from League of Women Voters and other organizations said, "Yeah, we welcome this because it maybe it will increase public confidence to know that their subpoena power, and that they're looking closely into it, so we'll know that these elections are fraud free."

- Well, he says this public integrity division will consolidate things that his office is already doing when dealing with investigative functions, campaign finance reporting, voting system certification, voter registration integrity, the investigation of election law violations.

Some of these things are things that people have complained about for a long time.

I mean, campaign finance reporting, there are quite often candidates who miss those deadlines.

We don't find out the information that we need to know about where their money's coming from.

And so, there's some real questions that could potentially be answered by this.

I think it is interesting to know that the division will begin operation on October 10th, which is Monday the day before the voter registration deadline.

But yet, investigators that will be integrated in this, won't start until after the 2022 general election.

And, you know, if there's a problem with elections, which Franklin Rose has said repeatedly that they are well round in Ohio, the 2020 election was the best run election that Ohio had ever had then.

And there were 77 people, 77 possible cases of voter fraud that were referred to prosecutors out of the more than 5.9 million people who cast ballots in 2020.

So this is very, very, very low.

You know, if this is a serious problem, why are we doing this now as opposed to earlier?

And so, my State House News Bureau colleague Andy Chow was working on that story.

He talked to Franklin Rose about that and is gonna be talking to some other people about the timing of this.

While it's important to make sure that public integrity around elections is preserved, is there really a big concern here?

(dramatic music) - Cuyahoga County is no closer to replacing its downtown jail.

The 12 Member Justice Center Executive Steering Committee rejected a proposal to purchase Land on Transport Road for the construction of a new facility.

And a consultant said, "renovating the existing jail just isn't practical."

It's interesting to me that this no vote from the steering committee comes after the three folks I mentioned.

The judge, Brendan Shean, Michael O'Malley, the prosecutor, Colin Sweeney, the public defender, all expressed extreme reservations and even said they might sue if this site was purchased.

- It, again, you have a lot of competing interests here, and a lot of reasons for people voting this site down.

You had some people saying, we're only voting this, we're only voting no on this site because of the environmental concerns.

Then you have others saying, we're we're voting no on this site because we don't, we're not sold on the fact that we need a new jail.

And then you have this lawsuit as Prosecutor O'Malley and Judge Gian have gone out and kind of hired their own consultants.

Now they say there was no influence.

They didn't say, we, you know, we never told this group DLZ to either, you know, come up with a plan to renovate, or a plan to move, or we never told them what to do.

- [Mike] Right.

- So unfortunately, it certainly does seem like kind of back to square one.

They looked at a site in Slavic Village, but there was concerns that that was too close to a Boys and Girls Club.

What kind of message does that send?

You know, we don't wanna build it in a neighborhood.

I don't know where they go with this now, but it continues to be a huge issue.

Meanwhile, some things at the Cuyahoga County Jail have improved, but you mentioned talking about this for years, It was 2018, I believe, when the US Marshalls report came out that said, "this is inhumane."

- [Mike] Well, people were dying at the jail.

- [Marlene] Yeah.

- People were dying at the jail.

And you know, part of that was because, you know, Metro Health came in and now they've kind of taken over medical care.

The intake process has improved, or so they say.

So, it seems like things are running a little better at the jail, but to your point, it's in such kind of disrepair with a lot of different, you know, whether it be the HVAC, or the electrical or the cells, or just anything with that infrastructure, it seems like it's not really feasible to renovate it.

Meanwhile you have the county, their stated goals are to make this more of a, kind of a care facility is the wrong word, but to use more of these, rather than control.

And rather than controlling the inmates, make it more of an environment where they can get, you know, other education, and healthcare, and things like that, to try to cut down on the recidivism rate.

So, you've got a lot of competing interests, a lot of competing thoughts.

And then the big issue is everyone says the costs are gonna continue to go up.

First we had an estimate of 500 million, now we're up to 750 million dollars.

And they're saying, "this is only gonna get more expensive the longer we wait, but we are going to continue to wait 'cause we can't find a site that enough people can improve."

- It seems in one project, Marlene, a microcosm of the kind of politics we see in Cleveland.

Where everybody agrees something needs to be done, but then we start getting into camps and now last minute something is scuttled.

- Nothing gets done.

- [Mike] Yeah.

I don't know where we go from there.

- Well, you know, it's not just Cleveland when it comes to jails, it's always, I don't care what community you in, what city, hard to find a new site for a new jail because who wants to jail in their neighborhood?

- [Mike] Right.

- Nobody.

And so.

- [Mike] And you don't want it, and you don't want it on prime downtown property.

- You don't wear on prime downtown property.

So usually, people start looking at these parts of town that are not the best part of town for jails.

And you always have this problem.

But it's just so strange to me that a lot of the messaging around why we need a new jail is because, you know, it's, "the facility is crowded, it's bad, it's in disrepair.

We want a place where there'd be more natural light, but we're gonna put it on a dump."

I mean, those two things just don't seem to go well together.

And we just did a piece on the health team about asthma rates in Cleveland and Akron in certain communities.

And it does seem to, it seems to me like you're just creating a problem down the road where people who would be in this facility would later on have all kinds of asthma issues and things like that.

So, it's one of these things where you have to think about what can we do with our current facility?

As Glenn said, there's certain people who said, we're not convinced that we can't renovate this current space and make it better.

Well, one way you could renovate that current space and make it better is maybe think about bringing down the number of people who are in there.

- Interesting.

And that's speaking of renovation, this has become, Glenn, a political discussion amongst the two people who want to be the next county executive.

So Lee Wagar has talked about, "can't we renovate the smaller jail and then build something else?"

And Chris Renee has come out and said, "no, I don't like that location either.

And we should be continuing to have conversations on this."

This will probably be something that is front and center when the election happens.

- I was just gonna say, I think it moves to the front of the line.

I mean there are a lot of issues in Cuyahoga County, but with this kind of, you know, as I said, back to Square one, with this site being rejected, I think it does become close to the number one issue in the county when you talk about the county executive race.

I should also mention that as far as that transport road site was concerned, Clevelanders for public transit, Clevelanders for public transport, the advocacy group says, "you know, this site was a 30 minute walk from the nearest transit station, and for people who want to, you know, visit people who may be in jail, who have to take, you know, public transportation, a 30 minute walk, you know, that's an hour each way if you're taking public transportation."

So there are other groups that were truly against this site for those reasons.

(dramatic music) - The controversial end of a fishing tournament in Cleveland made national headlines after the two fishermen who had declared winners were disqualified.

At the weight-in the tournament director had doubts about the winning duos haul.

So he asked to inspect the fish, cut them open, and found lead weights inside.

How did, can you imagine, I dunno, how did that happen?

- It's, well, it's pretty amazing.

And to make this even better, the head of the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Association, his name is Jason Fisher.

- [Mike] Great.

- [Marlene] No way.

You made that up.

- So Jason, so Jason Fisher was looking at these fish as you said, and he thought, Oh these, you know, dime a dozen, four, five pounders, whatever.

Then they start weighing at, you know, seven and a half, eight, whatever it was.

And the, the fellow competitors start grumbling about, "yeah, yeah, Roy," you know, and these two John Runion, I believe.

- [Marlene] Runyon.

- Jacob Runion.

- [Glenn] Jacob Runion - And Chase Kaminsky.

- And Chase Kamenski.

There were questions about them before, they had failed a polygraph test.

One of them had failed a polygraph test in a previous tournament.

I didn't know they had polygraph tests.

- [Marlene] Who knew?

- in these fishing tournaments.

But it, you know, so they're weighing these fish, and Jason Fish are saying "this, this isn't right."

He starts cutting 'em open.

He's like, I want to inspect the fish.

And apparently, Kaminski and Runion balked at that at first.

Now we know why they balked at that.

He finds these lead weights in there.

- [Mike] They're like sinkers, you know, little round egg shaped lead weights.

- With fish filets.

Don't know where we got the fish filets from, but they put the fish filets in and, you actually told me it's so the weights didn't clank together.

- Truly that they put that into the stomach of the fishes, I guess shoved it down its throat.

I don't know.

But what lengths they went to and they, the ire that you heard from the other fisherman, you could understand that this is, a serious business.

- [Glenn] Well, like you said.

- There was a lot of cursing going on.

And I would've been afraid if I was them, when I looked at the video.

- [Mike] Oh yeah.

- Once they were busted, if you will, these other people started really getting angry.

- In fact, Jason Fisher said to one of em, "you should go, I don't want anything to happen to you.

- Right.

Right.

Get outta here before something bad does happen to you.

And it, and it probably would have.

I think, but you mentioned it, this is, this is big, big business.

This is not a sport that I pay a lot of attention to, but I've got buddies who are fishermen and things like that.

And the sponsorship dollars, I think this was a $30,000 tournament or close to it.

These guys had previously won a fishing boat for some of their tournament winnings.

I mean, so what you have now is you have the Ohio Department of Natural Resources involved.

They're investigating, prosecutor Michael Malley, who we just talked about as far as the jail conversation.

He says they'll be prosecuted if they broke a law, - [Mike] It's fraud.

- It's Fraud!

And you're attempting to get thousands of dollars in either money, or fishing boats, or endorsements, or whatever through fraudulent means.

So, this is gonna be investigated by both the state and Cuyahoga County.

- [Marlene] What I don't understand is if you had already been asked to take a polygraph test at a previous fishing competition and failed it, doesn't it seem like you would be a little more careful the next time around?

I mean, I guess they figured we got away with it.

We can keep getting away with it.

- [Mike] Well, allegedly.

- Allegedly.

Oh, allegedly.

Thank you.

- [Mike] Right.

- But it kind of goes back to our last conversation about, you know, no trust in stuff anymore.

You know, just cheating, just abounds now in our society.

Right?

- I thought I'd seen it all, but now I've seen something I didn't expect I'd see.

- It's - [Marlene] Weights in a fish.

- Yeah, I didn't even know it was possible.

- [Glenn] It's A, and I, you know, I always hesitate to say we, this is another inside baseball thing.

It's a great story.

Obviously it's not a great story when you're talking about, you know, people fraudulently cheating in these fishing competitions.

But, it's one of those stories that really gets your attention that you never thought, you know, who would've thought a week later, this tournament happened a week ago.

Who would've thought a week later we'd be talking about a fishing tournament on Lake Erie?

- [Marlene] And not just us, Glenn.

Media, National Media.

- [Glenn] National Media was on this.

I mean, this is a big deal in the fishing community.

It's a national story.

And, you know, not only that, but it's big for this industry.

The people who are involved in it.

And Jason Fisher came out a day later and said, We're gonna fix this, to all my members, you know, and all the fishermen, all the competitors.

We're gonna fix this.

- [Mike] You have to x-ray fish now?

- We're gonna do boat checks.

We're gonna, basically what he was saying was, we're gonna make changes so it never gets this far again.

Where they were declared the winners and then Jason.

- [Marlene] They're about to run off with the check.

- They're about to run off with the check, Jason Fisher says, I wanna inspect these fish a little more, and here we are.

- And he ended up, by the way, apologizing for the profanity that he used, which you could understand for as angry as he was and the amount of energy and time he put into it.

But, - [Glenn] Absolutely.

- There were children around.

And he just said, "no one deserved to hear that kind of thing."

- [Marlene] He just got caught up in the moment.

- He stood up and apologized for that the next day.

- [Glenn] Yep, Yep.

(dramatic music) - The Cleveland Guardians open a best of three playoff series with the Tampa Bay Rays today at Progressive Field.

The young guardians are playing into October defying expectations.

We learned today from your story, Glen, they're kids.

- These are guys that, you know, in most organizations would still be playing in Triple A.

They would be still playing in the minor leagues, or double A.

- And in fact, a thing you brought up in your story, and I mentioned to Marlene today and she said, "you're kidding me?"

Is that they're not only younger than any other Major League team.

- [Glenn] Yeah.

- This team, on average age, is younger than any triple A team.

- It's absolutely incredible.

And the fact that they have embraced this brand of baseball, well, it's a couple things.

I mean, first of all, if you look at the trade of Francisco Lindor, everybody grumbled about Trading Linor.

And he is a great player.

Carlos Carrasco also in that trade, another veteran pitcher.

They brought on two guys who are essentially all stars.

I mean, Andre Giménez second baseman was an all star this year.

Amed Rosario has just completely embodied this contact hitting, you know, great base running first to third.

So they.

- Great short stop, defensive globe.

- They've hit, they've hit on trades, they've hit on the scouting and the drafting, their player development obviously has been, you know, outstanding.

And this is, I believe only the eighth time in the 100, nearly 150 year history of Major League baseball that the youngest team in the league in, in all of baseball, has made the playoffs.

And I heard from assistant GM Matt Foreman, it's the first time in the American League that the youngest team has won their division.

- Karen, you along with me, were closely watching the World Series in '95 and '97 in 2016.

I had the chance to cover those for the plane dealer when I worked there.

You do realize sometimes when, even when you have a team that has a spark like this, or has the best talent in the league, you still gotta deliver at playoff time.

- Absolutely.

And I'm looking forward to that in the next two games.

So, hopefully there won't be a need for a third game and in the good way, that is.

But I think it's really important too, to know that the, we all always talk about the farm system with the Guardians, and how they've built up these players coming up from the lower levels there.

Triple A Columbus, double A Akron, and High A Lake County all had games, had seasons rather, where their teams finished like 20 games above 500.

- [Mike] Right.

- So, that means that there's a lot of talent even just behind the talent that we're seeing today at 1207, and tomorrow, and then the games will be over because we will have left.

- And it's not just the idea that they've, that they've gone there and had talent, but also Glenn, and you had this in your story today, they get a winning culture at a lower level so that when they come here, they're used to that.

They win.

- The organization is very focused from the front office and President Chris Antonetti down to, you know, player development director, Rob Z Folio, who I talked to, they all said it is so important to win in the minor leagues.

The Akron Rubber Ducks won the double A Championship in 2021.

Columbus has won championships in the minor leagues.

So it starts, it gets that, it gets that culture going.

And the other amazing thing, there was no minor league season in 2020 because of the pandemic.

And two years later, the youngest team in baseball is the Central.

- [Mike] Where all those players were playing.

- Where all those players were at.

They had the year wiped out.

- And quickly, Marlene, to weigh in, over all of this is a veteran coach who seems to have a way with young people.

He understands how to let them do their thing.

- That's wonderful.

You know, because hey, we know as managers, Mike, that you, you gotta let people, when they have that talent, to let them express the talent the best way they can.

And that's how you build a winning team.

Listen, I'm not as well verse as Glenn and Karen on this, but I'm just rooting for the team.

- [Mike] Amen.

And John, John Adams who won't be there will be there in spirit.

Go ahead Karen.

- Yeah.

I was just gonna say in expressing your talent and letting your talent express itself, even if you have to put a helmet on because you're afraid you're gonna get Headbutted by Josh Nailer.

- [Glenn] The incredible Hulk.

- [Mike] Got it.

All right guys.

That's it.

That's all the time we have.

Thanks so much.

Go Guardians.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas, on WKSU It's Indigenous People's Day and we'll spend some time talking about the Indian Child Welfare Act, which will soon be in front of the US Supreme Court.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.