(light music) - Recreational marijuana is now legal in Ohio, but lawmakers are working on changes.

Abortion protections are now in the state constitution and proposed Amtrak expansion in Ohio receives federal funding for study and planning.

"Ideas" is next.

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

I'm Marlene Harris-Taylor in for Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Adults 21 and older in Ohio can grow, possess, and use recreational marijuana now that a new state statute is on the books, but lawmakers still have a number of changes they're planning to make.

Cleveland and Akron City Councils are trying to decide how to potentially change their public comment procedures for meetings and the potential expansion of Amtrak in Ohio moves forward with the award of federal money for the study and planning.

Joining me to talk about these stories from Idea Stream Public Media, criminal justice reporter, Matt Richmond, and Akron Canton reporter, Anna Huntsman, and Columbus Statehouse News Bureau chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Ohio's recreational marijuana statute approved by voters last month is now on the books.

The statute allows adults 21 and older to possess, grow, and used marijuana.

Lawmakers worked this week to make changes to the measure which passed with 57% of the vote.

But while a bill made it through the Senate, the House adjourned without taking any action.

So Karen, what's going on there?

- Well, this is an example of how lawmakers will see a deadline coming and have plenty of time to do something, and then they don't do it but they can work really fast when they wanna work really fast.

So lawmakers, Republican lawmakers have been talking for a long time about how they wanted to make changes to Issue Two, even before Issue Two passed.

They were concerned about the tax revenue and where it was gonna go.

They were concerned about the potency of products.

All of that came into play in a proposal that was unveiled on Monday, so we're down to three days on Monday before the law was gonna take effect, and I should make it clear here that because Issue Two was a law, lawmakers can change that without going back to the voters.

Whereas Issue One, a constitutional amendment, that can't be changed without going back to the voters.

So lawmakers have always had this opportunity to change this once it was passed and the idea was to change it before it took effect so people would know the rules.

So this huge package was proposed on Monday by Senate Republicans and it included a lot of things, changes in the taxes and the potency.

But the one thing that was really a surprise for some people was it eliminated the home grow provision which under the law, you could have six plants per person, 12 plants per residence.

That eliminated entirely, people got very upset by that.

- [Marlene] They heard from folks on that one, huh?

- It was arguably the most popular part of it for people who were really motivated to go out and vote and so there was a discussion then from a bill that came from the House on restoring a lot of what Issue Two did, but making some changes.

And then finally, senators came together on Wednesday and passed a compromise package that allowed for home grow of six plants, it changed the taxes from 10% to 15%, and it did a couple other things including allowing for expungement of marijuana-related, possession of marijuana-related convictions for people asked for that which is something that was not in Issue Two.

So it got through the Senate 28 to two, one Republican one Democrat voted against it, and that's where it sits right now.

So the law's taken effect and these changes are halfway through the legislature.

- So how involved has the governor been in this?

Has he been involved behind the scenes?

- Well, he held a press conference right after this happened, on Wednesday evening, basically saying to the House you need to pass this change as soon as you possibly can with the understanding that it wasn't going to take effect before Issue Two and the law would take effect, but it will take effect at some point if the House passes it and DeWine signs it.

DeWine says he's been meeting with lawmakers involved with this all along.

The day or two days after the election he even said he wanted to make some changes, but the will of the voters needed to be respected.

And so of course, that's a question here, whether people feel the will of voters has been respected, but he's asking the House to pass this.

Even though it's gonna take effect later, he says these are changes that are important and people need to know what the new rules coming forward will be.

One of the other big changes, I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice here.

One of the other big changes is that the bill will allow medical dispensaries that currently exist to sell to non-medical customers within 90 days.

- Would that help things get up faster in Ohio if these dispensaries that are already working are allowed to then now sell recreational?

They already have the infrastructure in place.

- Right, and that's been one thing that even the group that put this on the ballot, the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, said DeWine could do that right now through an executive order.

But if you have to wait for the infrastructure to go into place, and now that the law is here, the infrastructure can go into place on how to regulate the sales of non-medical marijuana, it's gonna take time.

It's gonna take time for these new dispensaries to start up.

But if you allow the existing dispensaries that are selling medical marijuana to sell to any adult, that's seen as a way to get this going forward and not have to wait 90, well, this would happen within 90 days, but not have to wait several months.

- Karen, where does the coalition that helped pass the measure come down on the changes?

- Oh, they're not happy.

They bring up the point that these changes, if they do go through and again, they're only in the Senate.

They have to pass the House and DeWine has to sign the bill, this really guts what voters approved in Issue Two and maybe you can argue that voters didn't necessarily know a whole lot about it other than it legalized recreational marijuana.

But it was all there in the document.

It was in our coverage.

Things like the revenue going to a program for social equity and jobs.

The idea behind that is to help people who've had marijuana-related convictions get some assistance in starting cannabis businesses.

There were some lawmakers that had a problem with that and in their changes, that's completely eliminated, and so- - Excuse me, Karen, what were the problems they had with that?

- Well, the idea was that, as it was put by Matt Hoffman, that drug dealers should not be getting public money to start drug businesses.

That's certainly not fair to say it that way.

The whole idea behind the social equity and jobs program was to help people who had been convicted of something that's not gonna be illegal anymore from starting a business to bring it to the public so.

- Yeah, we're gonna go through a weird period here where we're gonna have people who were just recently convicted of this, maybe still in jail or just getting out of jail, and then a bunch of other people making a whole bunch of money off of this suddenly.

- Well, and I think one of the other things about this that's important, I asked Tom Heron with the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol why there wasn't anything in Issue Two that's specifically addressed expunging records or making sure that people who had been convicted in the past of something that Issue Two would make legal would be forgiven for that?

He said that he didn't do that because that would've possibly created two ballot issues meaning more signatures, more campaigning.

But the legislature definitely has picked that part up and said there needs to be a process to help people expunge their records for something that they're not gonna get arrested for anymore.

- So Karen, when do you think we'll see this wrap up?

- This could go to the House next week.

The question is will enough members of the House be on board with this?

Seems likely because again, the idea was always to make some changes here, but then of course, the question will be what will the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol do about it, if they can't do anything at all?

So this is still kind of in flux.

But as it stands right now, the voters passed Issue Two it went into effect yesterday, and recreational marijuana is legal in Ohio.

(bright music) - The Abortion Rights and Reproductive Health Amendment passed by voters last month is now in effect as well.

But unlike the marijuana statute, lawmakers don't have the ability to tweak what voters approved.

The measure passed with 57% of the vote.

So Karen, Ohio has a number of laws that exist on the books though that conflict with this issue including the so-called Heartbeat Law.

Many agree that the law is likely to be struck down.

Is that what you're hearing?

- Well, that is the ban on abortion after six weeks.

It's currently in the Ohio Supreme Court.

It was being heard on a technical issue out of Hamilton County, but the Ohio Supreme Court asked both sides, all the parties in that case, to file arguments on what effect Issue One would have on the six week ban because it seems silly to argue a case about a law that is now unconstitutional.

And what's interesting about this is Attorney General Dave Yost who had done a legal analysis of Issue One and Issue Two before the election and it said that the six week ban would be eliminated if Issue One passed, well, he was an opponent of Issue One and now he has to argue essentially that it is unconstitutional.

But he says that the court battles over it should continue.

He doesn't wanna see it immediately eliminated and that's an important point about Issue One is that it doesn't automatically eliminate laws related to abortion.

There's gonna be litigation on all these things.

On the 24-hour waiting period, on transfer agreements between abortion providers and hospitals.

All of this stuff is gonna be litigated in court to figure out exactly what laws were affected by Issue One and what laws weren't.

And my Statehouse News Bureau colleague, Jo Ingles, talked yesterday with some doctors who are now trying to figure out how this affects them, and many of them are so worried about the law and what could happen, the existing laws before Issue One passed, that they're operating under the same rules that they have been all along because they don't wanna get involved in a legal fight.

They don't wanna have to go to court and deal with this.

They just wanna provide services for their patients.

- Yeah, there's no clarity.

They're worried about getting in trouble.

So Karen, that seems like we're the opponents then are gonna focus their energy, on all these lawsuits.

- Right, I mean, you've got two members of the House, two Democratic members of the House who have proposed legislation that would eliminate some of these laws, the 24 hour waiting period and things like that.

Also these two Democrats are also doctors and that's not gonna go anywhere.

That's been pretty clearly defined by Republicans is that legislation's not gonna go anywhere.

They wanna go ahead and allow the courts to do what the courts are gonna do with regard to all these.

So this is gonna take a long time for Issue One to be fully implemented and we're gonna be talking about this for a while.

(bright music) - Cleveland City Council is considering making changes to its public comments policy.

Possible changes include limiting speakers to only addressing council business, but Mayor Justin Bibb doesn't appear to be on the same page as council, Matt?

- Yeah, it's not his call but just sort of as a political matter, he doesn't think it's a good idea to restrict public comment.

He also, should be noted, usually doesn't attend city council meetings.

And it started back in September when there were some comments that were anti-Semitic and that were kind of discriminatory against a couple of groups.

I don't remember all of what was said.

But after that, council members were pretty upset about what one commenter had said and started considering ways to change the rules.

And they were especially looking at maybe restricting comment to items that are on the agenda and they already have rules about kind of decorum and not about attacking individual council members by name, but possibly strengthening those in some way.

And nothing's happened yet because there's been a large outcry and it sort of came to a head after a more recent meeting when activists who wanted council to make a public call for a ceasefire in Gaza because the mayor and Council President Griffin had earlier made comments in support of Israel, and so they kind of wanted a little more of an even-handed approach from council to the issue.

And they've showed up in numbers at council and some council members said that they felt threatened by some of the people who were there, and so it sort of came to a head after that.

- I see, so it's not unusual though for city councils to have rules, to have ways that they limit commenters.

In fact, Anna, Akron City Council has dealt with public commenting and how to manage input from meeting attendees.

What have they done there?

- Yeah, exactly, so kind of around the same time that this is going on at Cleveland City Council, Akron City Council starts reconsidering its public comment period.

Now here's some key differences.

So right now, Akron City Council's public comment period is at the end of the meeting and there's no limit on how many speakers there are.

Now there is 'cause they just passed new limitations.

But before that, ever since I've been going to city council, anybody can come and speak.

They just have to sign up before the council meeting and they can speak about whatever they want.

There's also a similar rule where they are typically not supposed to address council members directly.

They're supposed to address the chair.

So again, as somebody who goes to city council meetings, some nights there are one or two people and then the meeting is over.

Recently with the Israel-Hamas War and the resolution that council passed initially really supporting Israel, not really mentioning Palestinians, public comment has been over an hour.

I mean, there have been 15, 20 people there.

- [Marlene] Wow.

- So recently, in recent weeks, the council president and vice president introduced an ordinance that would limit it to 10 speakers and it would be at the beginning of the meeting.

They're saying this helps make public comment more meaningful because people can speak on things before council votes on it.

However a lot of people were really against this because they're saying why would you limit what the public wants to say to you?

They also have this rule now where you can only speak once every 30 days.

That caused a lot of controversy too because people are saying what?

I can only speak once a month and why is this?

- Right, why can't I come back every week if I want to?

- Exactly, if I'm really passionate about something or I want to get something changed, why can't I come every week and talk about it?

And they're saying well, because we're only doing 10 people, we want to make sure there's as many people as possible and it's not just the same 10 people speaking every week.

- I see, keep it open, but they don't wanna be there all night is basically part of this, right?

- I'm sure, and I mean, that is definitely probably part of it.

It is interesting that public comment is at the end of the meeting.

So I mean, again, sometimes coming home, to cover this story, I'm not home until 10 o'clock because of public comment.

And a lot of people were saying it feels retaliatory because of the recent weeks where a lot of people have been coming.

I will say there have been some controversial issues within the last two years that I've been covering Akron.

There was a White Pond development debate where a lot of people were coming.

After the police shooting of Jayland Walker, lots of people coming to city council.

I did hear that some council members were saying, one council member in his 20 years of being on council, he said he's never felt so threatened and whatnot from some of the things that people are saying.

So that's where it stands.

I just wanna add another ordinance was passed that banned signs and banners and backpacks which will be interesting for us journalists who need to carry our laptop into the building.

Just wanted to say that.

- So where does Akron's new mayor fall on this?

What does he think about public comment and his new rules?

- Good question, so the incoming mayor, Shammas Malik, is a current council member.

So he voted on this, but he was very much against these new rules, kind of saying he feels like it limits their free speech.

He doesn't want to limit the people who are coming.

He heard from his constituents that they are not for this, but ultimately I think it passed nine to four so, or eight to five I think with this one so.

But yeah, he was very much against it.

- Okay, so Matt, Cleveland City Council though, they're facing a legal complaint, right?

From a commenter who had their mic turned off during a commenting period.

- Yeah, that was also during the September meeting where a local activist named Chris Martin was given a public comment, and he brought up a campaign finance issue and started basically reading off names of council members who have received funding from sort of a pot of money that is controlled by the city council president.

It's called I believe the Council leadership Fund basically and then he funds council members' campaigns.

And the council president cut his mic off on the grounds that Martin was speaking about individual council members by name which he said was against the rules.

Chris Martin did not accept that interpretation of the rules or his actions and he is suing council, along with the First Amendment Clinic at Case Western Reserve University who they, a couple years ago, also represented us in a public records lawsuit.

- [Marlene] They provide their services for free?

- Yeah, yeah, and on the grounds that, and I don't wanna get too, try to talk too much about the law, but the basic idea is that if you allow public comment, you can't restrict a commenter based on what they're talking about.

You can make general restrictions, but particular topics can't be restricted.

And they say that in the council policies from the beginning, there were things that were questionable under the First Amendment.

- I see, so they can't be selective and I don't like what you're saying, so I'm gonna cut your mic off.

- [Matt] Exactly, yeah.

- So where do things stand with that?

- I know that they filed the lawsuit.

I know that they tried to work with council and that didn't get anywhere.

And so I don't know what what council's gonna do, if they're gonna further restrict the rules.

I would imagine that they're not planning to loosen them without a court order, but yeah, it's kind of when it goes to court, it could take a very long time.

(bright music) - Federal funding has been awarded to study the potential expansion of Amtrak services in Ohio.

One route receiving study funding would link Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton.

It's one of four routes selected for study the funding.

So Anna, what other routes are under consideration here?

- Right, so there are four routes in Ohio and the other ones are the one along the Great Lakes, so Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit.

It would expand there.

Also routes linking Columbus to Chicago and Pittsburgh and then increasing service from Cincinnati to New York City, Chicago and Washington, DC.

So those are the four routes that are being looked at here.

- So the study is just one step?

- It's the first step and many people are saying this is a really big step to get this kind of funding, $500,000.

It's the initial process of the study.

So looking at expenses, potential ridership, travel times, those key factors that they need to know before they can really start planning how to expand that service and develop it out.

So this is the initial work, but rail advocates are saying that within the next five years, they're confident we could see this passenger rail expanding.

- That would be so awesome to have that in Ohio.

Now the money for this study came from the federal infrastructure bill, right?

- [Anna] Yes.

- So we've been hearing that oh, that money's going out and we'll start to see projects in our states.

Well, this is one of them.

- Exactly, yes, so this has been officially announced and this is something that Amtrak has been interested in for quite some time.

They're saying that Ohio is one of the most underutilized states for passenger rail.

Columbus, one of the largest cities in the country without passenger rail.

- That's amazing, that's mind blowing to me.

- So what are some of the reasons you're excited about this?

- Well, because I think that it would be great to just have all of our cities connected in that way and for people who don't have the ability to drive, it would make it more accessible.

And even for people who do like to drive, there are times that you would love to just be able to sit back, right?

- I was just curious because those are some of the reasons that advocates for this are also excited, saying it's gonna help connect the state better.

Also thinking of economic opportunities, what if somebody who doesn't have access to a car or who doesn't have a very good car wants to get a job at this expanding Intel in the Columbus area, but they live in Cleveland and they don't wanna uproot their life.

What if they could take the passenger rail?

I mean, it's gonna be a long time, but it's just things like that where they're saying that this could really help be a boon for the economy.

- Now one point we should make though is that this is not high speed rail.

- Correct, that would take a lot more money and a lot more time to develop the tracks that way.

This is not gonna be high speed.

It would be about, I think it would be five hours from Cleveland to Cincinnati at this point which that's about a 4.5 hour drive.

But again, though, I mean, I've seen some statistics saying that rail is 17 times, you're 17 times safer on a train than in a car.

I mean, think of all the car accidents that we're seeing lately and how dangerous it can be at times to be in a car so.

- [Karen] Can I jump in real quick here?

- Oh, yeah, sure, Karen.

- Some of the concerns about the passenger rail network here are the scheduling and how that would actually work in terms of connecting the train station with the downtown area and some of these things.

That's been some of the hold up here because you might recall in 2010 when it was a big issue in the governor's race between Ted Strickland and John Kasick.

And Kasick made it clear when he won and became governor, that he wasn't gonna accept federal money to start some of this planning because there was a real concern about one train a day going to each city and would you be able to actually go to a city?

And then you'd have to spend the night or how would you get from the train station to where you wanna go?

So there's a lot of things involved here beyond just getting on a train and the trains aren't gonna run like they do like in Europe and even on the East Coast where you get multiple opportunities to get a train.

It's gonna take a while to get to that point if it gets to that point.

(bright music) - The city of Akron released a report and recommendations this week on the future of the Innerbelt.

So Anna, this Innerbelt, what was it supposed to do and how do we get to where we are now?

- Yeah, so this is not necessarily unique to Akron.

This is something that was going on in the 60s with urban renewal projects across the country where cities were declining, people were moving to the suburbs, and they were trying to figure out how to connect the downtown area with the suburbs.

So they start this highway, this construction of the highway, and what it did though is it displaced what was a thriving Black community in that area between downtown and West Akron, and guess what?

The highway was never completed and it didn't do what it was supposed to do.

It was never really put to use, and so now you have now these underserved neighborhoods in that area, many of them who could have been on the track to home ownership and generational wealth now unfortunately in an underprivileged area.

- It's sad to say that that happened in cities across the country during that whole period that was called urban renewal.

- Yes, exactly, and so what the city is doing now is, and this has been a years-long process, is trying to figure out what to do with that area but also how can we empower the people who we were affected the most by this?

And so they went through a lot of listening sessions.

They conducted feedback, they conducted surveys.

They had even some engagement events where people went to the Innerbelt and they shared stories.

They had this whole reunion and the city saying we understand that this is a dark past and we need to understand the past before we can move forward.

So that's kind of the approach they took.

Now they come out with this report about what do we do now?

There's some short-term recommendations such as an apology from the city which Mayor Dan Horrigan issued an apology the other day when this report came out.

There's also some long-term recommendations about could we put this area into a land trust?

Could we make a Black cultural district for this area so?

- Are those the ideas that have been coming from the community?

- Exactly, so this is kind of what they heard from the community, so now they take all the feedback that they got and they put it into this report, again, with some things that we can do right now and some things that are gonna take a few more years.

- Are people gonna be okay with an apology being the extent of getting rid of past wrongs or addressing past wrongs?

- That's a good question.

I think that it will probably be welcomed by many who feel that there was never an apology sort of thing, but I think this will be interesting to watch to see now that they've got this feedback, where do they go from here?

(bright music) - Monday on the "Sound of Ideas" on 89.7 WKSU, we'll hear more about the potential for Amtrak expansion in Ohio.

(soft music) I'm Marlene Harris-Taylor in from Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for watching.

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