Residents are pushing back on development projects, large and small in northeast Ohio, arguing that they're bad for the neighborhood.

Senator John Houston testified for the defense in the bribery trial of two first energy executives.

The case will soon be sent to the jury.

And while some other states refused.

Ohio is sharing our voter data with the Department of Justice.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Residents are mounting opposition to projects and communities across northeast Ohio, from a data center to a service garage.

Will their voices prevail?

Or will the developments happen anyway?

Senator John Houston testified for the defense in the corruption trial of two former first energy executives, and the prosecution's final question him incensed the defense, who claimed prosecutorial misconduct.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRosa turned over records on voters to the US Department of Justice, while some other states resisted.

And keep your eyes peeled for Bigfoot.

There have been several purported sightings in Portage, Trumbull, and Mahoning counties.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more from Midstream Public Media, Akron Canton reporter Anna Huntsman and health reporter Taylor Wisner, and from Columbus Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Community anger continues to build in Perry Township and Stark County, where a data center development is planned, and New Russia Township in Lorain County, where land near the airport is eyed for a manufacturing mega site.

But it's not just massive projects that are mobilizing opposition.

In Cuyahoga County, Fairview Park residents complained publicly to their council representative about a service garage planned for their neighborhood.

And in Shaker Heights, more than 300 neighbors have unified to oppose upgrades, including lights to university schools football stadium there.

So let's take these one by one.

Taylor, let's start with Lorain.

The project in New Russia Township.

It's huge.

It's massive.

They're saying it's a unique property.

There isn't anything like it in Ohio, right?

It's a very large proposed industrial development in a very rural part of Lorain County.

Developers want to rezone about 600 acres of farmland from agriculture to residential to industrial, and the land would connect more than 900 acres already owned by the county near the airport, which is already zoned for industrial use.

So the county's proposing this major infrastructure investment to support this development as well.

There's gonna be a new sewer line running from the site to a treatment plant in northern Lorain County, and water upgrades capable of supplying millions of gallons of water.

So you would say, okay, hey, it's vacant land.

It's farmland.

And we're going to be able to benefit from this because these are big employers.

You might get some jobs more so perhaps, than a data center.

So all good win win win.

And yet, when we see the residents come out, they're saying, hang on a second, not a win.

We have a way of life here.

This is farmland and open land, and we want to keep it that way.

What were their concerns specifically about development there?

Yeah, I'd characterize it as widespread criticism of this proposal.

The biggest concern, I think, is just the uncertainty that residents feel like they're being asked to approve a massive industrial rezoning project, that they don't know exactly what's going to be built there.

And I think there's also fears of just the loss of farmland and the rural character of the community.

And residents, of course, don't want the congestion from traffic that they've seen happen.

It was interesting.

There was a lady from Avon Lake who said, hey, we love the amenities that we have here, but traffic is a nightmare and that's what you guys have coming.

We also had a couple of little kids that got up and testified and talked about how it would be a change for them.

It's interesting to me because this is this is really sort of engagement with government at its basic.

You know, you're at the township trustee meeting in huge numbers.

We had Matt Richmond and Zaria Johnson who have been covering that story.

You've got a feature coming up that's going to be on our air next week to talk about it.

And the vote is next week.

It's scheduled for March 17th.

The question is whether or not they'll be heard.

And we have the trustees there to listen to that.

But these things seem to have some sort of motion on their own.

What's needed now is what a zoning change.

Yes.

So, you know, ultimately, I think they're they're looking to have the zoning change you that they're hearing from you know, the developers.

They don't have a specific company that's committed to developing developing the site, but it very well could go ahead without that.

So, yeah, essentially they're saying that, you know, by putting together this, this big project, they could bring in some, like, really incredible investment into the community.

Yeah.

You know, which could bring, semiconductor manufacturing, which could bring thousands of jobs.

So I think they're really trying to weigh sort of community concerns, but also just the the insane potential of this site, like you said, that, you know, I think there's concerns it could be a data processing center.

I think they're hearing that they're not really looking, I think, in that direction.

But that's still a concern that residents have that like, what is even the site going to be.

Yeah.

You said the word could a few times.

There is no solid plan.

And that's one of the residents who got up and said, listen, if you ever ask for a zoning in your neighborhood, you want to you want to build a shed.

You have to tell them, I'm building a shed, this is what I'm doing, or I'm bringing.

In this case, it should be.

We've got this business on the hook.

They're going to come if we do this zoning change.

Instead, what we're hearing is give us the ability to market this land.

And I'm telling you that folks are going to come.

And I can understand where if you're a resident there, you're like, which folks and what exactly?

It's a lot of ifs, and it's a lot of, you know, what benefit is this going to bring?

And is this going to change my home?

Obviously, there are a lot of unknowns.

I will say from some of my previous reporting, what I've heard is that regional planners, people like Team Neo, where they're talking about big developments for Northeast Ohio.

They've said that there's some concern that there's not there's a lot of land in Northeast Ohio, but not a lot of it is already ready for people to come in and develop.

So they've been advocating for funding because they're saying, this is why we lost out on Intel, for example.

So Intel in the Columbus area, northeast Ohio, didn't really have any space that would have been able to just kind of go right ahead for that kind of big construction project.

And obviously there's uncertainties about Intel as well.

So I just wanted to say that this is kind of a bigger thing where people are saying, we need to get these big pieces of land that we've got here in Northeast Ohio already.

But of course, the people who live right around, they're not always going to be for that.

Hey, Karen.

We we, Anna just mentioned Intel, so let's talk about that in Lincoln County.

That's the apex of the mega site developments in Ohio to date, but it I haven't seen anything there yet.

I mean, some stuff, it's there some progress.

But at this point I thought we'd see some manufacturing there.

What's the what's the status?

From what we can see.

I mean, you know, the Intel project was supposed to be producing chips late last year, early this year, and they've had to push back the project several times.

I think the scheduled date of operational production of chips is now either 2020 or 2030, or 2031, and then a second plant completed in 2031.

I mean, it's just it's really been pushed back a lot since the big day of the unveiling of what was considered to be the largest public private project in the state of Ohio.

So it's it hasn't gone as well, I think, as a lot of folks were wanting it to and most of that is related to Intel's financial issues.

They're saying now 2031 for this fabrication plant to become operational, maybe 2020, 2032 for a second plant there.

Right.

To happen, is there any fear that that none of that will happen because of what we've seen so far in terms of the the air being taken out of the ball?

No, I mean, not from what state officials are telling us.

Intel just spoke to the Ohio Department of Development fairly recently about their progress, saying that they've invested, $1.4 billion in Ohio just last year, not planning on another delay.

And every time we've talked to governor Mike DeWine about this, because this was a huge project that he was heavily invested in.

He says he's confident that it's going to go forward, that there's so much money that Intel's already spent that to walk away from it, just wouldn't make any sense for the company.

Okay, well, speaking of data centers, that's where we're seeing a lot of ire being drawn in Perry Township and Stark County.

Big meeting this week there, too.

Sorry, I was there as well.

I think you were.

You're working on a story on that?

Yeah, we were.

Bunch of stuff there.

Yeah.

So what about the push back on, in Perry?

Yeah.

This project has kind of been already moving forward.

And the concern from residents, I mean, there are a lot of different concerns, but one of the big ones is what they say is a lack of transparency.

So this project has been kind of known about in the regional planning circles.

The trustees have known about it.

But residents just kind of recently found out over the last few months have been hearing about what this is going to be.

It's going to be, 100 acres, multiple buildings.

It's in this current tract of land that's right across from the medalist, formerly Timken Steel Plant on Fair Crest.

And so the difference here is that this land has always been zoned urban, not always, but since the 80s has been zoned industrial because it's right across from the plant.

But it has just been kind of been farmed and just kind of left agrarian, if you will, all this time.

But now, proponents of the project say this is going to bring big tax revenue for both Perry Township and Canton, and that it's going to be a huge project.

The job creation is another sticking point with residents because it is supposedly going to bring construction jobs.

But once that's done, it's really not.

There's really nobody in there.

They're not, you know, droves of people in there running a data center.

We've heard that as the theme across the state.

And we talked about this last week, the pushback across the state to the data centers.

Ohio has 200 of them.

It's a it's a leader in the nation.

But there was there's stories that came out last week and were emphasized again this week, $4.5 million from the state for data centers that are going to create essentially ten full ten jobs.

Yeah.

And that seems to be one of the big issues.

What are the other ones across the state where people are pushing back against data centers?

Well, it definitely the noise concerns.

There was a noise ordinance amended in Perry Township to be 70dB.

One of the residents at the meeting, actually one of my former teachers, Keith Brown, he brought his dustbuster and turned it on during the meeting to show everybody what the noise was going to be.

So that's a big concern for people, is that loud?

It was pretty loud in the small room.

Yeah.

But just I mean, that's going to be that's one of the main concerns.

Traffic is another concern.

In the environmental concerns and the unknowns there as far as the water usage and the electricity usage and things like that.

So there's a lot of different concerns across the state when it comes to data centers.

And also, I think there's still that uncertainty that we were just talking about.

Is it really going to pan out to be this big boon, you know, for the economy and in some of these communities, like in New Russia, if you don't like something, you still have the zoning process and they need to come to you for some sort of change.

In Perry, as you noted, it's already zoned that way.

So we're going to we're hearing people that who are talking at these meetings, are they being heard?

Is there any chance that this project doesn't happen?

I talked to one of the trustees, and he said, at this point, there's really not much that the Perry Township trustees can do.

It was never in their hands really, to begin with.

They were already in the process of amending the noise ordinance.

They said, when the developer came to them and said, hey, here's what other communities have done and their noise ordinances for data centers.

Can you do this?

And they approved it.

And a lot of folks have, you know, concerns that the trustees just did that and didn't tell anyone what was coming in there.

The trustee says it's not their common practice to tell people when if something is zoned already for a project.

Right?

Industrial.

It's not our practice to say what it's going to be.

But I think, on the other hand, people are saying this is a data center.

That's something that us residents really need to know about.

Because of all the concerns that we've we've mentioned here as far as whether anything can happen, my understanding is right now, they're in the process of working with the county commissioners.

About the final plans, the tax.

They're figuring out the tax abatement right now as well, and kind of the details behind that.

So at this point, it seems like if people want to be contacting people, it's at the county level.

And then the city and the township would have to sign off on it.

So I'm still kind of unclear, you know, on who is going to have the final say, but it sounds like it's at the county level.

And it's not just these major big projects.

So, you know, it's not as big a deal if you want to upgrade a stadium, tell the people in the neighborhood in Shaker Heights that it's not a big deal.

If you want to put a salt dome in a, in a service center, in the middle of a neighborhood, tell the people in Fairview Park that.

So let's talk about Shaker.

Homeowners are opposed to this football stadium for university schools.

Lower campus.

They have a high school that's not there.

It's out in I think it's on Hunting Valley, but the they want to play their football games there.

That means they need to put in a turf field.

They need lights, bleachers that would go up and the folks in that neighborhood are saying, including the former mayor, Judy Rawson, are saying that's not appropriate for this neighborhood.

Yeah, it's very heavily residential in that area.

In fact, everything was zoned residential.

I was reading until 95, and that's when they were able to make room for some churches and I guess maybe a business or two.

But, this right now, it's just kind of a grass field.

And as you mentioned, they want to put in turf, they want to put in lights and then also bleachers.

That would see almost a thousand people.

And that is just very different than what's currently around that area.

So residents, about 300 of them have signed this petition saying that they really don't want that to be there because they're they're concerned about the lighting, they're concerned about traffic and what that's going to do, for the neighborhood.

But what they're asking for at the very least, is to some zoning restrictions.

So that's kind of where that's at right now.

And the school has said, first of all, putting the the sporting events in that neighborhood places it in a location most accessible to younger families, one of the most effective ways to build community for both of our campuses.

And then also notes, listen, it's it's it's meant for this.

It is a stadium.

We can we can make enhancements and we're going to work with the community.

6 or 7 football games in a year.

There might be some lacrosse games, but you know we'll work with that there.

The conditional use permit that could be issued that might get into some of the details on parking and other types of things.

But that's again an issue where I think the community and the government that's making these decisions need to get together and and make decisions.

And in this case, it's still pretty early in the process at least.

So they haven't even submitted it.

Right?

Right.

This is all in anticipation that they're going to ask for, conditional use permit.

They haven't even asked for it yet.

Right.

So that's what I'm saying.

It's very early in the process.

So people are getting their opinions and now and speaking up now very much on the front end.

And then once it even gets, submitted and requested in city or I don't know if it's city council or I guess village council, whatever the government body is, it has to have three readings.

Anyway, so this is very early on in Shaker Heights.

It's definitely city council.

Yep.

And let's go to Fairview then.

In that case, it's not something that hasn't been submitted or decided yet.

The city has said, we bought this property.

We're going to be putting a service, center behind the properties on Mastic Road.

The people that live there say, hang on a second.

No, you said you were going to build it, back behind the the current city hall where the garage is now.

And instead, they've had this new plan and one of the biggest issues for the council member there who heard from residents last night at City Hall is that and his name is Rick Reilly.

Is that his misgivings about the merits of the proposal pale in comparison to his anger about the process that's been followed so far.

So let's talk about, Fairview Park.

Taylor.

Why are they so unhappy?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like you said, I mean, I think they're angry because they weren't notified ahead of time about this plan.

I think there's a real disservice to these sort of like agreements that happen that, you know, aren't made public.

And then until, I guess they're kind of finalized and then the public is like, wait a minute, I, I didn't know about this.

I wasn't consulted.

I, you know, didn't get to talk about it before it became sort of set in stone.

So, yeah.

So residents, some residents, the more vocal ones hired an attorney and they sent a cease and desist letter, asking officials to halt the project.

But, yeah, I mean, sort of the same concerns that we're hearing at all these projects, you know, noise complaints, concern about property values, concern about, yeah, the salt dome, potentially.

And trucks in their neighborhood.

So the appropriateness of it in this neighborhood rather than on Lorraine, which is a commercial thoroughfare.

Correct.

And the other issue that, that is afoot here is that there is a meeting on March 16th of City Council.

In fact, when people had called the mayor to say, what are your thoughts there?

The mayor should be available after that meeting.

So the question is, what will city council decide there?

The council member who met with people last night said he's going to try to slow it down, but we'll see what happens in that case.

Closing arguments are scheduled for the next week in the bribery trial of two former First Energy executives.

The defense rested its case yesterday after testimony from Senator John Husted, a witness for the defense, on Wednesday.

Why was John Husted there?

Well, he was lieutenant governor during the period where the Public Utilities Commission had, opening for chair right after Husted and DeWine were elected in 2018.

And so he met with, former CEO Chuck Jones and former senior vice president Michael Dowling to talk about basically what FirstEnergy, you know, was interested in seeing here.

And, he said it was not unusual for utilities to, you know, want to have some say in who the PUC chair was.

And he was his job was to gather information about candidates for the CEO chair, turn them over to DeWine, and then DeWine would select the Puco chair eventually.

And he ended up selecting Sam and Dasa, the late Sam Randazzo, as chair.

And he said the first energy actually did not support Randazzo as chair.

They wanted somebody else.

So kind of is is pushing back on that argument that the prosecution has made that the first energy wanted Randazzo because they were bribing him to get favorable treatment for the company when he was in that position.

you and I were both watching this at the same time and talking back and forth with each other because it was on zoom at the very end.

There's a question that Matt Meyer, the, the assistant Ohio attorney general, asked that stopped the proceedings.

There was an objection.

It ended up, after the objection, the prosecution said, or the defense said prosecutorial misconduct and claimed that he had done this a number of times.

What happened there?

The trial did, by the way, go on.

They didn't say that it was misconduct.

And there was a mistrial.

But what was the the the debate there?

Well, the defense was concerned that the question was basically they felt, where Matt Maher was asking, Sandberg used it.

Hey, do you think that my client should be or that the defense, Jones and Dowling, that they should be convicted of the crimes that they've been accused of?

Let me give you the direct quote he said he said you wouldn't want anyone involved in compromising the integrity of a puco chair.

To be held accountable would you?

Yeah.

And I mean, it was questions like that, and he'd ask a couple of questions like this.

And the defense got really upset saying that basically the prosecution was asking Houston to admit as a defense witness that, he wanted to see Jones and Dowling convicted.

And so they've said that this has been I mean, they've asked a couple of times for the trial to be dismissed.

They actually got a couple of charges dismissed through, earlier in the week.

And so this is not unusual, I would think, for a defense team to try to do this.

But the trial did go on and the defense did rest.

And it was kind of, I think, a surprising end in terms of the quickness of it.

And so we should be hearing, jury deliberations coming up.

We have to do closing statements and then jury deliberations.

All right.

Ohio has turned over a copy of the state's voter registration database to the Department of Justice, though a number of states have refused.

8 million people are registered to vote in Ohio.

What was the reasoning in Ohio to say, yes, it's appropriate to hand these to the DOJ.

Well, I'd love to speak directly to Secretary of State Frank LaRosa, ask a couple of times, and I haven't been able to get him directly, but his spokesperson sent me a statement that basically said, that Larose believes that the Department of Justice had the authority to ask for this information, that the information would all be protected by privacy laws and, that this is information that in many cases is publicly available now, though not all of it.

I mean, we're talking about Social Security numbers in, in this group of, information, and those are not publicly available.

So, obviously there are people who are very critical of this.

Other states like you just mentioned have declined to release this kind of information, including some Republican states, Idaho being one of them.

And, what I think is very interesting, too, is that as we were just talking about, former Secretary of State John Houston, when he was the secretary of state, he was asked to release this kind of information to the Trump administration back in the first Trump term, and he declined to release it, saying that this is information, this public, this private information is not available for him to release, that it's not protected this way.

And so he released only a link to publicly available voter registration information.

And eventually, Trump disbanded that so-called election integrity commission that he had set up in the early part of his first term in office.

And Laura's had no such misgivings.

It doesn't appear that way.

Again, I'm still hoping to have a chance to talk to him, but he has said that he feels that, this is appropriate and that, this goes along with what he is required to do as secretary of state.

Ohio State University's board of trustees tapped Provost Ravi Bellamkonda as the university's next president.

It was a lightning fast selection process after former President Ted Carter resigned last weekend amid a scandal.

it was interesting to me, Karen, that Bellamkonda, a hire of Carter's, became the president in such a fast fashion.

Yeah, I think there may have been an effort to try to maybe smooth things out here, because Ohio State's gone through a lot in the last couple of really years.

I mean, you've got the whole Richard Strauss saga that continues.

Is the doctor who was accused of, sexually assaulting hundreds of students back in the 70s and 80s.

And then you've got, the whole Les Wexner situation and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and then, of course, this story with Ted Carter and the podcaster and resigning.

So there's a lot going on here.

And I think that maybe just putting somebody into that position, rather than doing an interim president and then doing a national search, maybe this was the way to kind of at least deal with one of the things that's been going on for a while.

I have to admit, I thought that might happen, that there wouldn't be a broad search and they would appoint someone immediately.

But I thought that person would be Jim Tressel.

Yeah, I mean that that was something that was talked about a lot.

I mean, as we listened to governor DeWine state of the state speech this week when he praised Tressel multiple times, it almost sounded like, okay, as he's saying goodbye to him because he's going to go up the street and be Ohio State's president.

It sure seemed like it was a position that it was trestles to win or lose.

But, obviously that's not the way that they went.

And everything that I've read about the new president, he's got, a resume of really good experience.

People seem to really like him.

So maybe I know there was some criticism about the process, that it happened so fast that people there was no input from students and other groups.

But, this may be just kind of an attempt to right the ship as quickly as possible and move on to other things.

You mentioned the state of the state, and the governor gave that this week, spoke for about an hour or so.

It's spanning his 50 year career.

This is really going to be the capstone to it.

And he addressed a couple of things.

Seatbelts, child safety.

But a lot of things he just didn't talk about in that state of the state speech, too.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the one thing that a lot of us were expecting to hear about was something that Speaker Matt Huffman had suggested we could hear about, which was this potential bond issue, to raise a permanent stream of funding for H2 Ohio, which is DeWine's signature clean water initiative, and lawmakers cut it in the last budget cut.

Some of the funding that, DeWine wanted and, DeWine said later when we asked him about what?

Yeah, Hoffman had said, he said, well, yeah, I do want a bond issue for November, but he didn't really bring it up in the speech.

He casually mentioned H2 Ohio and then moved on to these other things.

He also didn't talk about the death penalty, which my colleague Sarah Donaldson has been trying to ask him about that and what his position as he keeps saying that he's going to have something to say about it soon.

But that was not the form.

Bigfoot is on the move in Portage County, with sightings now also reported in Trumbull and Mahoning counties.

Someone please get an in-focus authentic photograph.

Lucy sends a note.

She says, my husband and I heard a joke about Bigfoot that stayed with us.

The reason all the photos of Bigfoot are blurry is because he's naturally blurry.

Oh, that would make sense.

That would make a lot of sense.

But these reports are going when I see them.

So I mean there are people that are very seriously thinking that this is what they see.

And maybe, perhaps it is, but boy, I don't know what's going on.

It was interesting that there's several different you know Streetsboro man away Garrett Saville.

All people have called in and told the Bigfoot Society.

So it's kind of interesting.

Yeah.

You see it on social media too I've been following it.

People get in on the fun.

Restaurants and businesses are editing Bigfoot and saying, hey, he came here today, right?

So people say, tell us about your sighting.

But what I would say is, take a picture.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven weeks you.

We'll learn about how high school students in the late 60s and early 70s made their voices heard through publishing underground newspapers.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching.

And stay safe.