(quizzical music) - The state is launching a new college scholarship lottery in hopes of increasing vaccination in young people.

The new Ohio legislative maps now face a lawsuit, because they still heavily favor Republicans.

And Cuyahoga County executive Armond Budish wants to make a temporary quarter percent sales tax increase a permanent tax.

"Ideas" is next.

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(dynamic music) - Hello, and welcome to "Ideas".

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Ohio is launching a new lottery, Vax to School, doling out scholarships to entice young people to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The ACLU of Ohio and voting rights groups have filed a lawsuit with the Ohio Supreme Court saying new legislative maps disregarded reforms mandated by voters.

And a quarter percent sales tax increase was supposed to sunset soon, but the county executive wants to make it permanent to pay for a new jail and future spending needs.

We'll talk about those stories and much more on the Reporters' Roundtable.

Joining me this week, Ideastream Public Media senior reporter Nick Castele, from "The Buckeye Flame", editor Ken Schneck, and in Columbus, Statehouse News Bureau reporter Jo Ingles.

Let's get ready to Roundtable.

DeWine said yesterday that the state will award five scholarships, $100,000 each, 50 scholarships of $10,000 each, to vaccinated 12 to 25-year-olds.

Younger patients, including children, are becoming sick and requiring hospitalization due to the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Many of them are not vaccinated.

The vast majority in the hospital are not vaccinated.

Jo, these incentives are aimed at those 25 and under.

No new incentives for those older than that, 25 to 50, which is also a category being looked at, but there's a real question here about whether it works.

We saw the Vax-a-Million, and the governor claimed, yeah, this was right online.

It got people to get vaccinated.

Some studies said maybe not so much.

So, what are the hopes for this and the chances that it's actually going to prompt somebody who is reluctant to get the vaccine?

- Well, you know, you're right.

There are a lot of studies that said it didn't work, but Governor DeWine says it did, and he said people especially like that idea of scholarships instead of the cash.

You remember Vax-a-Million gave cash, and people were kind of iffy about that, but he said the scholarships, people love that.

So, he's trying to get people who are of the age that a scholarship would be very valuable, that group that's 12 to 25, that's what he's going after.

And if you look at their stats, only 46%, he says, of students 12 to 25 have been vaccinated.

You look at the older folks in the state, 65 and up, that's like 80%, 85%.

So, you're looking at a big difference in age groups, and you start seeing the vaccination levels kind of fall off around 50.

50 and up people, more people are vaccinated than not, but then you start getting under 50, and that's where you have problems.

So, and especially with that younger group, so that's why he's going after them.

- Ken, you can understand the motivation.

If younger people are getting sicker, then it's obviously, and you see those numbers, then you think, okay, the vaccines are working with the older population.

Let's get the younger people vaccinated, but you wonder whether there's a point now, 18 months into the pandemic, where someone needs some other kind of incentive.

You know the information.

You're either completely against the vaccine, you have thoughts about, maybe incorrect thoughts, about what it might do to you, those types of things, you have some other kind of objection to it, or you just aren't going to do it.

Do you think that incentives, at this point, are still worthwhile?

- It feels a little gimmicky, right?

I guess we're just gonna blow right by the fact that we're calling it now Vax to School.

Are we just not even discussing that?

We're just gonna keep moving?

- It didn't click for me until right now, when Mike said it, I'm like, oh, Vax to School.

- So, apparently, we're gonna talk about the substance of this, but sure, we should not blow by that.

But yeah, you know, one of my favorite quotes from this week was that DeWine spokesperson saying that Vax-a-Million changed the conversation around the vaccine from one of fear to one of excitement.

But as you said earlier, you had that study from the Journal of American, it was in "The Journal of the American Medical Association".

It was Boston University's School of Medicine publishing the study that said there was no evidence that this lottery-based incentive in Ohio was associated with increased rates of adult COVID-19 vaccinations.

So, I think there's a little bit of spinning of the wheels.

It feels like we're just throwing stuff at the walls and see what's going to motivate people, but the data just isn't necessarily there to support this method.

- And Jo, let let's talk about why this is happening.

The Delta surge, obviously, is driving this wave of cases, and it's a tough adversary.

It's not, it's worse than the original virus, but what are we seeing in terms of those numbers?

I mentioned more younger Ohioans are getting sick and going into hospitals, but I think they've laid that out.

Dr. Vanderhoff has laid that out, that it is pronounced.

- It is pronounced.

The Delta variant is said to be about six times more contagious than what we've seen in the past, and when you've got students, you know, starting school, and we saw those numbers shoot up right after school started, you know, you've got students, and half of them, well, at the beginning of school, about two thirds of them were unmasked.

Since then, they've gone to masking in most, a small majority of the schools, I should say, it's like 50-some percent, but still, there's a lot of schools out there that are not requiring masking, even now.

And they saw this surge as the whole masking thing, you know, school started and there wasn't much masking.

They saw this surge, and there was a lot of people contagious with this, and a lot of them were younger.

Our children's hospitals are full.

They're saying that they have RSV cases, which is a respiratory syncytial virus.

They've got a lot of those.

They get those normally, in a non-COVID year, but with the COVID, it really has caused problems.

- And the hospitals are in a bit of a bind, too, because we have this surge, and there also, then, are fewer caregivers for those patients.

It's a subject you looked into in the last week.

Tell me a little bit about that.

- Oh, that's a huge problem, Mike.

If you look at the hospitals, they're saying that some of them, for instance, Toledo, last week, there was about a five-hour period that emergency squads could not go to any Toledo hospital with a patient.

They had to take patients elsewhere, because they were on what's known as emergency bypass.

Some other places around the state have had the same problem.

And the situation is that the healthcare workers are just getting burned out.

It's a problem, because they are exhausted, and there's emotional and mental fatigue, too, that comes with this.

We've seen a lot of retirements in the last year, of doctors and nurses, healthcare workers, and it's not just the doctors and nurses.

It's, like, all of the support staff, you know, the people who carry the trays in the room and clean the room.

I mean, all of those positions, it's really caused a problem, because they don't have enough people.

And when you've got a shortage of staff, you cannot take on more patients, and that's what they're seeing right now.

- There are still a bunch of anti-vaccine measures gaining traction in the state house, several suggesting ranging from blocking mandates for COVID-19 vaccines to blocking all vaccine mandates.

Where are we going with that?

And is that something that can really pick up steam and overtake this other point of view, which is you ought to be vaccinated?

- Well, the lawmakers are hearing from folks who don't want vaccine mandates.

We've seen protests at the state house in recent days, recent weeks, and a lot of people are saying they don't want these mandates that require, you know, especially like the Biden mandate that says businesses with 100 or more must mandate the vaccine.

A lot of people say they don't like it, and they're getting in the ear of top lawmakers.

You've got to remember, we've got a Republican-dominated legislature.

Their constituents are largely the ones pushing the anti-vaccine message, and so, I think we're going to likely see a lot of effort in that way in the next couple of months.

- And the people listening, in many cases, are vaccinated.

Bob Cupp, who is the speaker, is talking about crafting legislation to provide a path forward.

He's listening, as you said, to these folks.

He himself is vaccinated.

- Yeah, yeah, you know, that's the interesting thing.

Earlier this year, I kind of did a, I don't know, a survey, you could say, of the lawmakers to see where they stood, if they themselves were vaccinated.

And yes, Speaker Cupp and Senate President Huffman, both are vaccinated, but they say that that's not the point.

They say the point is that people who don't want to get vaccinated should have the right to refuse it.

(dramatic music) - Cuyahoga County executive Armond Budish has proposed permanently extending the life of a quarter percent sales tax increase to pay for a new jail, and after that, whatever expenses come up.

Nick, this is one of those things where you kind of expect it when it's passed.

They say, hey, it's only 20 years, and you know, at some point, somebody's gonna say, well, it's not really a tax increase.

It's already on the books.

This is an easy call.

And that sounds like what Armond Budish was trying to argue.

- Yeah, I mean, this is really maybe one of the last significant acts of the county commissioner system of government.

You know, the commissioners approved this in 2007, the idea being that this would help fund the convention center project, which was just getting underway after a lot of debate and discussion.

And the quarter percent sales tax has really become like a gift that keeps on giving for Cuyahoga County.

They used this money for the convention center, for the Medical Mart, now called the Global Center for Health Innovation.

They used it for the Hilton Hotel.

They're even using some of the money from this, for the Q deal, the deal to renovate what's now Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, so this has been a source of revenue for a lot of these big dollar projects that the county has taken on in the past decade.

And so, from that standpoint, I can understand why, you know, the county executive would say, well, we gotta continue the life of this thing, because this has been our go-to source when we're looking for money to fund these big projects.

- And it's technically not a tax increase, and it's also a playbook that has been used repeatedly.

I remember, it was well before your time, sonny, but I remember the turnpike was supposed to sunset tolls.

They were going to go away, and they said, wait a minute.

I think we need to build a third lane in each direction between Toledo and Cleveland, and we think we need new interchanges, and so the tolls continued and then went up from then.

So, when somebody says something is going to sunset, I don't know if anyone believes it.

- Well, and I think, once a tax increase has passed, whether that's by the voters or not by the voters, you know, there may be a cynical expectation that it's never going to be taken away.

I mean, we'll see.

We'll see what kind of audience this gets with county council.

You know, at least both of the declared candidates for county executive have criticized this.

Lee Weingart, Republican, was critical of it, and I saw Chris Ronayne, a Democrat who's also running for county executive, criticize the approach as well.

So, you know, you can see that, as we're looking ahead to 2022 and county executive elections, you know, politics is gonna play a part in this as well.

- Some of the argument might not be that we don't need the quarter percent sales tax to stay, but we need the voters to have a say.

- Sure, there's a process argument, too, that if you're going to have this additional tax, people have been paying, you're gonna extend the life of it, they ought to have a say in it.

I mean, the sin tax was passed by voters as well, a tax on alcohol and cigarettes for the stadiums, and so, you know, from that standpoint, I can see the argument that you'd say, well, this should be put before the voters as well.

Of course, there's risk in that, too, 'cause they might vote it down, and you gotta find a half billion dollars somewhere to build this jail if they really want to do it.

(dynamic music) - The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the League of Women Voters, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute have filed a lawsuit with the Ohio Supreme Court over new state legislative maps, which they say unfairly favor Republicans instead of heeding bipartisanship mandated by voters.

But Jo, the Supreme Court will decide this challenge, and the role of Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor is what could move this case one way or the other, right?

- Right, right.

Justice O'Connor is thought to be a more independent-thinking member of the Supreme Court.

She's also, this is her last hurrah.

I mean, she's not going to be running for reelection, because the Supreme court has age limits, and so she can't run.

She's prohibited from doing that.

So, everyone's kind of looking at her to see what she will do.

I mean, in the past, she has ruled against some of the things that would have benefited her party, she's Republican, and she has ruled against that in the past.

But you know, who knows?

This is really kind of a crap shoot, but it's one that the ACLU, that the groups that are behind this, are willing to take, because they feel these maps are so gerrymandered and so different than what voters wanted.

- The Republicans claim they did follow the new rules, and said that since they won 13 of 16 state elections, 13 of the last 16 state elections, they're entitled to up to between 54 and 81% of the seats, which, obviously, Democrats, voting rights groups disagreed, and I wonder if voters might, too, the fact that they went to the polls.

Ken, when you hear about the idea that legislation was passed by voters that said we need to have a more fair system that reflects the number of Democrats and Republicans in the state, and then we have a map that reflects basically what's already happened, what do you conclude?

- We can easily conclude that people are gonna feel disenfranchised pretty quickly.

And so, I think, as Jo said, this is a story we just have to keep following up on and really highlighting the sense of urgency, 'cause this has very real effects on the whole political process in the state of Ohio.

And redistricting is a national issue, and we're seeing this all over the country, but Ohio is disproportionately getting a lot of the press on this, just because of the way that it's being done and deadlines not being met and who really has a voice in this process.

- And Nick, it's not just the legislature on the panel to make this decision, it is the governor and the secretary of state, and the governor basically just said, well, I guess that's the way it's gonna be.

Like, there wasn't like a pushback that said, hey, we gotta do what the voters wanted.

You didn't hear that really from anybody on that committee, except those who were challenging it, the Democrats who were challenging it.

- Well, and then you add to that the fact that this whole process has been delayed, you know, partially because of the late arrival of Census figures, but it's added more uncertainty in the mix.

There were supposed to be deadlines, you know, set by the Constitution, and so, you know, the timeline is kinda out of whack as well.

(dynamic music) - Ohio lawmakers heard testimony this week on two bills that would impact how teachers instruct students on history, race, and current events.

Ken, the phrase critical race theory gets thrown out frequently, but educators at the hearing say it's not being taught.

Teachers need to be able to teach about race in an inclusive way, so what about this touchpoint of CRT?

- What if I just start crying on the show right now?

Do you have a handbook for responding to that?

So, right, so in addition to "The Buckeye Flame", I am a professor at Baldwin Wallace, and I'm a professor of education, largely teaching about diversity in higher education.

This is literally what I do.

The first thing that I would caution people about is exactly what you said, with that phrase critical race theory.

Any time you hear someone say the phrase critical race theory, just stop the conversation and say, oh, what do you mean by that?

And see if there's an answer to it, because what is being described as critical race theory, Rocky River is a great example, right?

There was this big brouhaha in Rocky River about, well, they're teaching critical race theory, when in fact, no, that's not what was happening in Rocky River.

They had been teaching this for well over a dozen years, just about acceptance and diversity and tolerance and anti-bullying.

And so, one of the first pieces is just stopping people and saying, is this something that's actually being taught?

What is it that you mean?

- And what I've heard when you ask people what they mean is, essentially, it's a curriculum that makes white people feel guilty about being white.

- Whew, so that's where we want to pivot to these two bills, and this is where I, there is no stronger encouragement that I can do on your show right now to say please read these bills.

You have to go, and they're available online, please read the content of these bills, because these bills do so much more than what people are talking about.

One of the things, so there's a lot of different pieces where they're outlined.

One of them is that student with this, and I have to read this to you, 'cause it's just fascinating, student work for, affiliation with, or service learning in association, this is what's being prohibited, any type of learning with any organization engaged in lobbying for legislation or any action project that involves social or public policy advocacy, any work with any organization that's doing any type of advocacy would be banned under one of these bills.

And then as you said, yes, there's a whole enumerative list of 13, 14 different types of teaching that they want banned, and one of them is that any type of teaching where an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex.

It is a bill that, by the way, is impossible to enforce, so this is, it's just silly.

This is something that what's going to happen is a parent will say this is being taught.

The teachers will say that's not actually what happened in the classroom, and a lawsuit will be filed.

But whatever encouragement I can give to people to please, please read these bills, because they're about so much more than you think they're about.

- Jo, what's going on in Columbus, then, as a result of these hearings, and what are the chances of these bills moving through the legislature?

- Well, there is a groundswell of support among Republicans for these bills, but the Democrats don't much like them, as you can expect.

They say that this is a way for, you know, the state to kind of clamp down on being sensitive to others and teaching diversity and the kind of things that would make the classrooms and make students better people, basically.

So, right now, we have that going on in the legislature, but if you look at, a lot of this surrounds misinformation.

There are a lot of people, as Ken said, who are talking about these bills.

They aren't familiar with what they do, and they're actually coming out after school boards about these bills.

I mean, down here, we have one school board, it's a suburban school board, and one of the members of that board has received threatening letters.

Other school boards have received threatening letters, school board members, and I know that this is a conversation they're having northeast Ohio as well.

And it's really causing a lot of, it's going to be an issue, because next year, this year, even, when there's school board races, this is going to be an issue, and people are so misinformed about it that, you know, who knows how that will turn out.

- [Mike] Ken?

- And this is about so much more than race.

This is about prohibiting teaching, advocating, or promoting of divisive concepts, so, certainly, on the LGBTQ side of the spectrum, there's a lot of fear that teachers will not be able to have conversations about LGBTQ identity or, again, anything that is being defined as divisive.

- Speaking of LGBTQ and education, let's talk about a scoop that thebuckeyeflame.com published with just this morning, or last night?

- It was like an hour and a half ago.

- Okay, so just this morning.

The New Richmond Exempted Village School District in Clermont County told teachers they must remove, quote, rainbow stickers or rainbow imagery that could indicate the teacher and/or classroom is a safe person or space to speak to or about LGBTQ-plus issues.

So, they're against rainbows.

- They are against, you know- - [Mike] And much more.

- And much more, and this is a direct tie-in to the school board saying that displaying rainbows is political and it is divisive.

That is truly what they are saying, the board of education there.

They also are halting the supply and use of any forms that allow students to provide their preferred gender identity, their pronouns, and a name that they want to be called during school, which, you know, I was called Ken, not Kenneth, so I provided a name of myself.

That's something that we all do.

So, this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

For folks who don't know, New Richmond is about 2,500 residents.

It's it's down in Clermont County on the Ohio-Kentucky border, so down in that southwest part of the state, and I don't think that they anticipated that this was going to get as much attention as it has gotten even in the past 90 minutes since we posted it.

So, there was a school board meeting on Monday night.

They had advocates there, members of the local LGBTQ community, both LGBTQ parents, parents of LGBTQ students, and LGBTQ alums of the school, and they gave impassioned testimony.

It's all up on YouTube, and the board of education just said, "Yep, thanks," and breezed right by it.

- There were also some who testified in favor of this stuff.

- There were, there was one gentleman who is running for school board, and his comments were, well, the LGBTQ people have resources.

They can just go to the school psychologist, which was a nice move, to pathologize being LGBTQ, and another gentleman who said that this is just not fair to students who are not LGBTQ, because they will not feel welcome in a space that has rainbows.

This is a real story.

I just want to highlight, this is not something that I came up with 'cause I was bored and wanted to be funny.

This is like an actual thing that is happening in an actual place in Ohio.

(dynamic music) - The Metro Health System told stakeholders this week it plants to focus on keeping seniors healthy as that age group expands.

It's also going all in on in-home care, using technology to monitor patients.

That's something, Ken, that has been done as a result of the pandemic.

It's kind of pushed forward some of these we can do it from here, taking care of people.

But Metro Health is basically saying we're going all in on this.

- Yeah, I loved reading about these changes, and specifically the partnerships with the Metro Parks and adding this green space, this green identity to the work that they're doing.

I didn't even know that there was a free grandparents' day at the zoo.

- [Mike] Right, and at that, the Metro Health will do health screenings and those types of things.

- Yeah, so this is just responsive, right?

This is the very definition of doing responsive health care.

And so, they seem to have their finger on the pulse of what's going on and are moving forward with new initiatives.

- And Nick, it's a partnership with the Metro Parks, but when you look at the campus that's being remade on West 25th street, it basically is a Metro Park.

- Yeah, I mean, you look at the renderings that they've drawn up, I mean, you've got the new hospital buildings in the center of all of this green space in the Clark Fulton neighborhood.

- [Mike] Like 25 acres or something.

- Yeah, I mean, and you can see walking paths, you know, lots of parks, and so this is a part of their new vision for the hospital.

Before, it was a lot of concrete and streets and roads, that kind of thing, so this will be, I think, a much more, you know, green space.

And, you know, then the other side of this is, I guess, reaching out beyond the hospital campus itself and trying to give people more care in their homes.

I think we're already seeing lots of people, particularly seniors, turning to home health care, you know, to meet their health needs, having people come to their houses so they don't have to get in a car and drive somewhere, particularly if they have trouble with transit.

And so, you know, I can see the logic behind embracing this new model of healthcare that's really already happening out in the world, and Metro is getting onboard.

- And that's going to do it for us this week.

Monday on "The Sound of Ideas", we'll look at the need for affordable and quality childcare and how that issue impacts working parents in Ohio.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for watching and stay safe.

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