- Prominent elected officials faced with an Ohio Supreme Court order to draw fair legislative district maps just up and quit Thursday.

Now what?

President Joe Biden visited Ohio's north coast to tout his infrastructure bill and the billion dollars it'll provide for great lakes restoration, including the Cuyahoga and black rivers.

And the boys and girls clubs of Northeast Ohio say the county should not consider citing a new jail in their Slavic village neighborhood.

Ideas is next.

(upbeat orchestral music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The Ohio redistricting commission declared an impasse and quit this week rather than do what the Ohio Supreme Court ordered and compromise on a fair map for state Senate and House districts.

President Joe Biden touted his infrastructure bill in Ohio with big money going toward great lakes restoration.

A site under consideration for a new county jail in Slavic village does not sit well with the neighbors, including the boys and girls clubs of Northeast Ohio.

And the NBA all-star weekend tips off in Cleveland with fans, celebrities, and star-studded basketball, but no defense.

We'll talk about all of this week's top news on the reporter's round table right now.

Joining me this week, Marlene Harris Taylor, the managing producer directing our health coverage at Idea stream public media, WKSU senior reporter, Kabir Bhatia, and Ohio public radio state house news bureau correspondent, Andy Chow.

Let's get ready to round table.

The Ohio redistricting commission had one job, but rather try for a third time to pass constitutional state House and Senate district maps, majority Republicans declared an impasse.

They gave up.

Now what?

Andy, let's start with what caused the impasse.

- Oh boy.

Well, what caused the impasse.

The, what we're seeing right now, and this is a process that's started well beyond last September when the first round of maps were adopted, is that we have Republican legislative leaders in Senate president Matt Huffman and House Speaker Bob Cup, who have had their own staff creating maps.

And then you have Democratic leaders in the house and Senate who have their staff creating maps.

And in the past, not with map drawing, but in any sort of policy making when you have compromises working beyond, with both parties, you usually see two plans drawn up.

They come together and then they work with those two plans to find something in the middle.

But we're not seeing that right now, Huffman, Cup on the Republican side, Allison Russo and Vernon Sykes on the Democratic side, they don't seem to have any path towards meeting in the middle.

We have heard from the Democratic leaders who did present a map last night, and that map was rejected by the Ohio redistricting commission.

We've heard from Democratic leaders that they want to work with the Republicans and that the Republicans just are not budging.

They're not coming to the table in good faith and drawing up maps that could be, that could comply with the Ohio constitution.

And so, like you said, this was the third time that the Ohio redistricting commission has come together to try to pass a state legislative district map.

These were supposed to be done by September.

They were found unconstitutional.

Those maps were found unconstitutional.

The second ones were also invalidated.

And now for a third time, now the Ohio redistricting commission has decided that they're just not going to do anything more about it.

- Help me understand this argument.

So the Democrats came up with a map that they said meets that 54% Republican, 46% Democrat split.

And the Republicans said that that itself wouldn't pass constitutional muster for other reasons.

So what are those other reasons?

- The other reasons, the claims by the Republican leaders, the other reasons are that they, those districts are not compact, that the district lines end up cutting through different municipalities and different precincts that end up splitting neighborhoods in one way or another.

And that is an argument that the Republicans might have some standing on.

But what Democrats are saying is, but you haven't even tried to come to the table to work on a map.

And while Republicans allege that the Democratic drawn maps are unconstitutional, the Ohio Supreme Court has officially found the Republican drawn maps unconstitutional.

So the Democrats are saying that the Republicans don't really have a leg to stand on here if they want to say that the Democrats are creating unconstitutional maps, where Supreme Court justices have officially ruled that the Republican maps are unconstitutional.

And Mike, the other thing here is that you do have a lot of different personalities happening among the legislative leaders who are sort of, you know, pushing and pulling one way or another.

And maybe they have political standing here, but that's why you have the statewide elected officials also on the redistricting commission.

You have governor Mike Dewine, secretary of state Frank LaRose, and auditor Keith Fabor.

And they, by design in the Ohio constitution, were supposed to bring some of that balance, where maybe if you have legislative leaders duking it out, you have these three other leaders who can become the swing vote to sort of push things along.

And what we've heard from fair maps advocates is that they're saying that these statewide elected officials have not been proactive enough in getting people to come to the table.

We have seen and heard some speeches from DeWine, Fabor, and LaRose about trying to come together.

But at this point they're sort of throwing their hands up and saying, well, the legislative leaders weren't able to get together.

So I guess what can you do?

And so you heard from that speech from governor Mike DeWine last night, he said clearly that he believed the commission has a constitutional obligation to follow the constitution, follow the court order, and draw maps.

And DeWine said that he was disappointed that the commission wasn't able to draw a new map last night.

He thought it could happen.

But in the end it didn't really seem like he did much about it to make that happen.

- The other two statewide office holders, you mentioned Keith Faber and Frank LaRose.

LaRose was basically worried about the idea that we're close to violating federal laws.

He's worried about the primary May 3rd and how that might have to be moved and it hasn't been yet.

Keith Fabor though, expressed his frustration this way.

He said, "Simply put, I don't think either party deserves a damn thing."

- Yeah and so what, and that's his argument against this big constitutional requirement that the Ohio Supreme Court keeps harking on, is the idea of proportionality.

And that has been the key measure in all of this.

Who in Ohio votes for Republicans and how many Ohioans vote for Democrats?

And on average, over the past 10 years, 54% of the state has voted Republican and 46% has voted Democratic.

So you take that ratio 54/46, and you apply that to state legislative maps.

That is constitutionally required.

What Keith Fabor is saying is, yes, maybe you try to make districts that swing for Democrats and swing for Republicans, but he also believes that there's an important aspect that's missing, which is competitiveness.

And again, the argument back and forth is there is no provision in the constitution that requires competitiveness.

So you have a lot of people on this commission who are arguing back and forth about what the constitution is actually even calling for.

And the bizarre thing about all of this is there are seven members on this panel, three of them actually wrote this law.

They wrote this provision of the constitution.

Keith Faber, Matt Huffman, and Vernon Sykes were all in the room, drafting that bipartisan anti-gerrymandering reform that passed in 2015.

- Marlene Harris Taylor, you wanna jump in there?

- Yeah, Mike, you know, the reason that Ohioans passed this in the first place is they wanted fairness in the drawing of these districts.

And our lawmakers are failing us on that, particularly the Republicans.

And I was really thrown back by governor DeWine.

It felt like he could have really taken a stronger stand.

I mean, he is the governor after all, I know he's a Republican, but I thought his language was pretty soft actually, where he talked about, well, we have an obligation.

Isn't it a little bit more than an obligation for them to pass these maps?

And I just wanted to point out also that this is the first, this is not the first time that Republicans have ignored the Supreme Court in Ohio.

Remember that over 20 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the way that we fund schools in Ohio is unconstitutional.

And I don't think we've even solved that yet.

So Republicans have a history of just ignoring the Supreme Court in Ohio.

And my last question is what are the consequences?

- Hmm, well, that's a good question.

We'll put that to Andy.

I do want to note when it comes to the school of funding, there have been Republicans and Democrats over decades that haven't gotten that done either.

So point taken about the legislature not acting on that, or in this case, the Republican dominated commission acting on this.

What about the repercussions and what happens now, Andy?

- So Mike, this whole week has been, I've been living in a what-if scenario, because the writing's been kind of on the wall that the commission might have done what they did last night, but until they actually did it, it was sort of hard to follow.

So I've had conversations with different people, including former Supreme Court justice Paul Pipher, who's on the Ohio judicial conference now.

And I asked, "What happens in this kind of scenario where the Ohio Supreme Court has issued a ruling and has told a government body that it must follow this ruling.

And that government body said, nope, we're not gonna do it.

What happens next?"

And he pointed out what Marlene just pointed out is that you've had legislators who have four times in a row not done anything about school funding formula being found unconstitutional.

And this is when justice Pipher actually mentioned that a long time ago during one of those lawsuits, he thought that the court should actually attach an injunction where the Ohio legislature wouldn't be able to pass a budget, an entire state budget, unless they fixed the school funding formula and other, he said other justices thought that might be too extreme.

Then he brought up another point where, a few years ago, the former director of the Ohio department of natural resources ended up not following an order issued by the Ohio Supreme Court.

And they did find that director of the ODNR in contempt of court.

And I said, all right, that's something that the court has at their disposal, what happens?

And he says, it's really nothing.

It's just a slap on the wrist.

It's not, it doesn't have to go too far when it comes to penalties.

So what happens now?

We're still in that what-if scenario.

We don't know what's gonna happen next.

And I know what we need to bring up also, is in the jumble of all of this, with the Ohio redistricting commission not following the court order, with us still not having maps.

There is now a federal lawsuit that's been filed because of this mess that we're in right now.

- So we have, the federal court will have to answer that.

And then today, when the Supreme Court, at nine o'clock this morning, were supposed to get this set of maps that were to be done by midnight last night.

They're not getting them.

What might they say?

- So now what we have are two things that could be going on.

The Ohio Supreme Court on their own could be making any sort of decision when it comes to holding the redistricting commission accountable.

And just a reminder on the Supreme Court, it's a four three split with chief justice Morion O'Connor the only Republican to end up siding with the Democrats in the majority.

So the court is also split on these recent decisions as well.

So what happens next?

The Supreme Court can decide if they want to hold maybe the commission in contempt of court.

Again, that's a big hypothetical, but then also you have the original challengers to the maps, these fair district advocates, like the league of women voters, the ACLU, a national Democratic group.

They also now have three days to file their objections, and they could maybe mention what they want to see happen next.

Mike, I think you brought up earlier this idea that's also been floated around, that maybe the Ohio Supreme Court can pick a different plan that's already been proposed to the Ohio redistricting commission, but that would be susceptible to a lawsuit, because in the Ohio constitution it says that the Ohio redistricting commission has the authority to pick maps, not the Ohio Supreme Court.

- Can I tell you, I am so glad to have the foremost expert in Ohio on this topic, because it is a dense, confusing, as I mentioned, a mess, and you are untangling it beautifully for us.

So thank you for that.

President Joe Biden stopped in Northeast Ohio this week to trumpet the billion dollars his infrastructure bill will pour into great lakes cleanup, including cleanup of the Cuyahoga and black rivers.

We won't say how the president pronounced Cuyahoga.

It was Cuyahoga, I think, but you know, it's a tough one when you're not here every day and listen to it.

And by the way, we all disagree here sometimes with the Cuyahoga or Cuyahoga I'm 'hoga guy.

Marlene, big money though.

- Yeah, I think he also mispronounced Maumee too, I heard.

- [Mark] Right, you're a Toledoan, so that would've gotten you.

- Yeah, I mean, but yeah, this is a big deal.

I mean, the great lakes are so important to our region, and we all know that this money has been needed.

People have been advocating for money to clean up the great lakes for years, but this is like the president trying to get outta Washington and get out of that dynamic that's going on between Democrats and Republicans there, and get out to the Heartland as they call it and sell his program.

He, you know, the Democrats are banking on this infrastructure deal helping them to win in the next election cycle.

And so we'll see more and more of this, is the president going to different communities, community by community and saying, hey, this is what you're getting out of the deal.

But I think that this is a pretty big deal, what we're getting.

- And Kabir, when we talk about that infrastructure bill, only Senator Rob Portman and representative Anthony Gonzalez, they were the only Republicans who supported the infrastructure bill.

They praised the funding that was provided for the great lakes, but even governor Dewine's people said he was too busy with the redistricting situation to make a statement.

So it's interesting that this, even when we talk about a billion dollars for our lakes and rivers is still a partisan issue.

- I don't understand how clean water is a partisan issue, but somehow it's become a partisan issue.

And you talk about people voting against their own self-interest, I guess that's filtered upwards to maybe some elected officials who feel that they were too busy.

There was a lot of statements coming out from Republicans, some of them who were just running for office, saying the president should be in Washington DC dealing with the crisis in the Ukraine.

But Portman himself has been all over the Ukraine crisis for years, even, you know, back 10 years ago when this first started happening.

So for him to be there and supporting this I think is a huge benefit.

By the way, one thing that I just wanted to mention, this is a billion with a B, right?

For three rivers around here.

3 billion, triple that amount has been spent in the entire last decade on the entire great lakes.

So that gives you some idea of the scope of this 1 billion concentrated on these three rivers, what it might accomplish, which is probably, hopefully going to be a lot.

- And when we say areas of concern, what we mean are places that need to be cleaned up.

- Yes, which typically means pretty much the entire great lakes industrial rust belt, unfortunately.

But yeah, in this case, the black Cuyahoga and Maumee rivers, and that's how you pronounce black.

- Got it, that one you got.

The boys and girls clubs of Northeast Ohio have joined the opposition to a plan to cite a new Cuyahoga county jail in their Slavic village neighborhood.

Marlene, the boys and girls clubs calls the consideration of the site a slap in the face to their organization, why?

- Well, you know, I mean, this one is a tough one, Mike, because people in this community, I believe, feel like there's a need for a new jail.

I don't know if there's been a survey about that, but there seems to be a consensus that there needs to be a new jail.

Where do you put it?

Well, people in this Slavic village neighborhood are saying, you know, we've been an under-resourced neighborhood and we're just starting to come up.

You know, we're on the rise, we're just starting to get on the rise.

And then the fact that there might be a jail here.

We have these young boys who are in particular, I should say, young people who are coming to the boys and girls club for mentoring, you know, they're trying to help them see a better life.

And then they would would see this jail off in the distance as the argument that they're making, and that they would say, huh, is that where I'm headed, to this jail?

I mean, I don't know if every kid would think that, but I think it would be a little, it would be a little bit of a damper on that community if it's right in a neighborhood near where, not that far from the boys and girls club, that's the argument they're making.

- Kabir, there are many unknowns about this new jail though, Like how big it should be, how much it's gonna cost.

I know there's been some push for getting contracts signed already before we even know, is the jail population inflated or deflated because of the pandemic.

There's all kinds of questions that are still swirling that would go into where the location of the jail should be.

- Yes, you, Mike, you stole what I was gonna say, which was we know everything that they are set on this jail, except for the size, the cost, the funding source, and the location.

Other than that, they're all...

Yes, but to answer your question, they're not sure about any of this.

Is it 500 million, is it 550?

Armen Butish says convention center tax to fund this.

Who knows if that's going to go.

Just this morning, Ken Pendergrast, who we hear from a lot here in our stations.

He put up on his blog sort of analysis of where this jail should go.

And he was saying there's a site with a container storage facility that would be perfect.

And I think the city, I wanna say it was the city, I can't be for sure.

They are considering moving that container storage to this Slavic village site, which wouldn't be, of course, nearly as hopeless looking as a jail according to what some folks are saying, and then they could put the jail where the container site is.

So all of this is kind of murky, behind the scenes.

No one's quite sure what's happening.

And they're not even slated to announce anything until I think next month, but they did say we want this thing built by 2025.

And I wanna say 1800 is what I read for the population.

But as you went noted, that could be changing.

- You mentioned Armen Butish, and Pat on Twitter is making a little fun of us because we were talking about the president mispronouncing Cuyahoga, and she said, well, you guys on Sound of Ideas can't even agree on how to pronounce Armen Butish's name.

Well, I have to say, I agree with you, Kabir, it is Butish.

So Pat, I think we got that right.

Although I think we blew it on Ken Prendergast, there's no R at the end of that.

So we're trying, all right, we're doing what we can.

- The extra, it's early and the extra R was for really cool.

And Butish was from when I spoke with him, when I spoke with him in person.

One thing I wanted to point out, though, there is the state prison just up the road from where this site was.

Not really visible in the neighborhood, but this is also, the Bohemian hall is there, the velodrome, and as Marlene noted, this neighborhood is still coming back from the loss.

There was the housing bubble, St. Michael's hospital closed.

So I drive through this neighborhood very frequently as you can probably tell, and putting a jail at the end of this street, I think a lot of the citizens have a good point about how it would look visually to people there.

- Just a brief mention of the pandemic now, after it dominated so many of our Friday conversations over the last two years, and it's good news.

COVID-19 cases continue to trend downward in our region and statewide.

Marlene, there was a while ago, and we would say 2000 isn't such a great number.

But when you talk about finally dropping below 5,000 and having these numbers continue to go down, is it fair to think that there's light at the end of the tunnel?

- It does feel that way, Mike.

It feels like the veil is finally lifting.

And we have health officials across the board who are in agreement from the local to the state, even national saying things are definitely better, but they're still cautioning that we're not there yet.

They don't wanna see all these mask mandates, for indoors I should say, go away completely quite yet.

They feel like we need to get the rate of transmission down from where it is, 'cause it's still high.

They want it to be more like moderate or low before we drop these, but it doesn't seem to matter.

People are dropping it.

We don't really have a mandate in Ohio anyway, it's more of a personal thing.

Or store by store, business by business right now.

And so people are kind of doing what they wanna do anyway, Mike, but I do wanna, I don't wanna be Debbie downer here, but I do wanna say that there is this other variant out there, the BA-2 that's circulating in South Africa right now.

It's not, doesn't seem to be causing a lot of panic or anything like that amongst public health officials, but it is something they're keeping their eye on.

- It's interesting, we had on NPR earlier today how California is changing some of its rules going into the idea of this being an endemic rather than a pandemic.

And we've heard from the centers for disease control and prevention, there's gonna be new guidance coming out sometime soon about masking too.

So we'll keep an eye on that, and I know our health team will.

Andy, about half of the national guard troops called up during the Omicron surge have gone home.

So that's another sign that, as we're starting to send deployed troops back home, that we might be on the other side.

- Yeah, and as you remember that they were sent to different regions, including the Cleveland area, because of the surge of Omicron and because of the surge of the variants.

But, so the fact that they're coming home is a big indication that the state is seeing a decline in cases, a decline in hospitalizations.

And then they're thinking that things are looking better.

- The biggest stars in the NBA and tons of celebrities will make Cleveland the center of the basketball world this weekend.

This whole weekend, the fun starts today with the NBA crossover fan event, it starts at noon.

Tonight, the celebrity game, including Cleveland mayor Justin Bib and Brown's defensive end, Miles Garrett.

I don't know if you ever saw that video clip of him rejecting a dunk once, but mm, unbelievable.

Other celebrities playing, Machine Gun Kelly and Tiffany Haddish.

I was not invited.

I think they knew how aggressively I'm known to clear the paint.

The slam dunk skills challenge and three point competitions headline Saturday's events, and again, the all star game is Sunday.

That will feature absolutely no defense whatsoever.

It's a big deal though, Kabir.

This is the universe.

NBA has such a reach.

- NBA has a global reach.

Everyone, all eyes are on Cleveland as they say, there was the event last night at the rock and roll hall of fame where they were broadcasting from there, the events that you've already gone through, all of the events.

And you know, I'll just say, my mother a couple years ago went to Indonesia for student, not student teacher, but to exchange teaching.

And the first thing they wanted to know about was when we had the all star game here, which I guess it must have been 2015 or 16.

And then they asked about LeBron.

So those were the two things they knew northeast Ohio for.

And it does have a global reach as you mentioned.

Everyone's gonna be watching us, so everybody behave.

- And speaking of LeBron, he will be here.

And team LeBron is the team that both of the cavaliers, Darius Garland and Jared Allen, are on.

So I suppose we're gonna be rooting for team LeBron again.

Marlene, are you playing in the celebrity game?

- I'm not, they didn't ask me, Mike.

I just wanted to ask, have you seen those ticket prices for these events?

- Yeah, they sent something out and they said, here are the discount tickets.

And I think the cheap ones real high up in Laudville were something like 1600 bucks.

- Yeah, I'm like, wow, who can afford these?

I guess the folks coming from outta town, because I know I can't.

- And this NBA crossover experience I talked about is not a free event either, it's 30 bucks for that ticket.

A lot of great stuff though, our Gabriel Kramer was there last night.

We've got coverage right now on our website, ideastream.org, and throughout the weekend, Gabe and Glen Forbes are going to be at the events.

We're gonna be covering that on our website, ideastream.org, and check out our social media channels as well, @WCPN on Twitter.

So a lot of good fun on tonight.

And Andy, it's not bringing you up north?

You're gonna watch on TV?

- Yeah, they did ask me to participate, but I was busy with redistricting stuff, so I had to stay here.

- The burden.

Monday on the sound of ideas on 90.3 WCPN, the team is off for the president's day holiday.

In our place we bring you new voices at the table.

The program explores the experience of newcomers to politics as they try to break down generational barriers.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for watching and stay safe.

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