(gentle music) - Wildfire smoke and no rain, yet another weather wrinkle in Northeast Ohio.

The Ohio Senate unveiled its budget proposal and it would bring big changes to education.

And Cleveland has set its sights on a post-pandemic vision, focused on recreation and residents.

Ideas is next.

(dramatic music) Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Skies around Northeast Ohio have been hazy as smoke from wildfires burning in Canada makes its way south.

The smoke combined with the drought are worsening air quality and that's a problem for the vulnerable, especially those with respiratory ailments such as asthma.

The Ohio Senate unveiled its version of the state budget this week.

It would expand private school vouchers and strip much of the power away from the state school board.

Cleveland has a vision to reimagine itself post-pandemic, switching from a focus on workers to a focus on residents and visitors, creating a connected downtown in walkable neighborhoods.

And a new poll revealed how voters chose Shammas Malik over six other candidates in the Akron mayor's race.

Women were a huge factor.

We'll talk about those stories in the rest of the week's news on the Reporter's Roundtable.

Joining me this week in studio from Idea Stream Public Media, Supervising Producer of Newscast, Glenn Forbes, and Akron-Canton Reporter, Anna Huntsman.

In Columbus, Political Reporter Haley Bemiller of the USA Today Network, Ohio Bureau.

Let's get ready to round table.

It's been dry for weeks in Northeast Ohio.

Hundreds of wildfires in Canada are sending smoke here, sometimes casting a haze over us and worsening the quality of our air.

The fine particles are especially dangerous for the vulnerable, the elderly, children, and those with breathing difficulties such as asthma.

Anna, the situation essentially is a perfect storm, a dry one, that's leading to a combination of problems for everybody.

- Coming from the south in Akron, I feel like as I drive into Cleveland, it does get hazier, so it's kind of interesting that it's a little bit hazier up here, but when it comes to the dry conditions, it's so, you can notice it, it's even drier down in Akron.

My grass has been yellow for the last three weeks and this is actually one of the longest times.

I think it's the second longest that we haven't had rain in Northeast Ohio, it's been 18 days, so yeah, as you mentioned, it's not only dry, but the air is filled with those fine particles as a result of those wildfires so people might be experiencing sneezing, dry cough, sore throat.

And I have heard of some people even having some eye conditions at G-eyes, burning eyes, things like that.

- So you, for a long time, were the health reporter here so let's talk about what recommendations there are for folks to protect themselves, deal with this.

- Right, and as as you did mention, obviously the number one is don't go outside if you don't have to, especially people who are more vulnerable groups.

So the good news is that this is gonna be short-term exposure for most healthy people, it's not gonna be a huge deal, even though it was unhealthy air quality for a few days.

However, people with certain lung conditions like asthma, it might affect them a little bit more.

So the number one is to limit your time outside as much as possible, but that's not always possible, so they actually are recommending, if you feel comfortable, to wear a mask again, and this is the KN95s or the stronger masks because the particles are actually around the same size as respiratory viruses so just like those helped the spread of covid-19 and still continue to help the spread of covid-19, that can also help keep you protected.

- Help thwart the spread of covid-19.

- Thwart the spread, yes.

- Okay.

Indoor filtration, not a bad idea either.

Sometimes indoor air quality can be bad.

- Right.

- I heard this morning on NPR, drink a lot of water as your eyes and mucus membranes are moister, that's a better thing.

So all of those are good ideas.

Glenn, it hasn't rained in around three weeks.

You might say great for golf and hiking and picnics, but we need rain.

- It has been great for golf.

I never remember, I mean, you and I have been in this area for a long time.

I never remember anything quite like this throughout May and in the beginning of June, it's pretty incredible.

And I saw some stories where, you know, this is strawberry picking season.

There are a lot of farmers and said, "There are no strawberries this year.

We just don't have the crop."

And in suburban life, the flowers and all the planters and things like that, the grass is very important in some neighborhoods, and unless you're gonna run the sprinkler every single night, it looks like August out there right now, basically, it's been pretty surprising to see.

- I've talked to some experts, they're like, "It's okay, the lawn will come back.

You don't have to go crazy with the water at this point."

But you're right, some people are, they really want it green, right?

- I also heard that, yes, strawberries are gonna be an issue, but with some crops, it's still early enough in the planting season that they don't need as much water yet so corn and soy, so we'll see if it continues to affect certain crops, but the farmers aren't really sounding the alarm bells yet, but they are definitely very concerned.

The other interesting thing about the lack of rain is that the rain could have helped with the air quality right now, so again, this perfect storm due to lack of storms.

- It's a cleanser.

It's a type of shower, right?

- Sure.

- Then the amazing thing about this is just a couple, it seems like it was just a couple weeks ago, it might have been a month ago, where we had a frost and the farmers were saying, "All our grapes are frozen and our hard work is," and now, you know, just a couple weeks later, it's crazy to think we had a frost and then a week or two later we hadn't had any rain, and now we're into this drought a couple more weeks later.

It's just been a very strange spring.

Haley, what's it like in Columbus?

- So it definitely has been hazy down here the past few days.

I think our air quality was like 131 last I checked so it's been high enough to bother sensitive groups, which apparently includes me because I've been feeling it.

- Oh no.

- When I go outside, my throat, my sinuses start to get a little agitated.

I think we're supposed to be out from under it soon, but yeah, you can see, especially when you go downtown Columbus, you can see the haze kind of sitting over the buildings and nothing compared to what's happening in New York, or even I think it's a little bit better than what you guys are experiencing up there, but it's definitely lingering and it's been super dry down here too.

We had like a sputter of rain last weekend, but it wasn't nearly enough to make up for how dry it's been.

- Right, the crops are saved and then the rain stopped.

- Well, and I wanted to add that I've seen some discourse on social media of people from the West Coast who are kind of like, "I can't believe this is getting that much media attention that the Northeast is having so much haze from wildfires when this is something we deal with every single year."

- Right.

- And I feel like it might be similar to when it snows in Texas.

- I was just gonna say that.

- And we all make fun of them.

- There you go.

- And now maybe I'll reserve my comments next time around.

- Yeah, right, we are not used to this and so I'm sure they're taking a look at that.

And one other weird thing, Glenn, it's been a little chilly.

I've had a hoodie on a couple of days in June and part of that might be because of this haze.

- It's been a more, a little more mild recently anyway, but if you think about the haze, it creates kind of a clouding effect, right?

And I mean, so those solar rays from the sun don't reach the ground.

They're reflected back up into sky, into space, whatever, so yeah, it keeps the surface temperature a little cooler.

There's actually been evidence in the last, I don't know, 30 years, whenever we have these volcanic eruptions, when there's a lot of ash and gas high into the air, they actually found that the temperature dropped one to three degrees Fahrenheit over the next couple years after some of these volcanic eruptions so it is interesting to think about it having kind of that cooling effect, but that's what's happening.

Not all the rays are getting down to the earth's surface.

- Whenever there's any weather event, obviously there's a question about whether this is tied to climate change, whether it's weather or climate, and whether it's a long term type of thing.

Sherrod Brown was saying yesterday that he hopes people look at this and there'll be more effort to protect waterways and air quality, et cetera, and sort of harken back to the Clean Water Act and the Cuyahoga and Lake Erie and it's role in that.

But when I listen to forecasters and meteorologists, they're hesitant to chalk this up to climate change, necessarily.

- They're treating this as a single event.

And even though there have been wildfires, of course, in other parts of the country, they're looking at these Canadian wildfires as a single event, not necessarily predictive or indicative of anything.

You'll also hear people say, "Well, it's a problem with the forestry system.

The Forest Service needs to step up and clean things out and whatever else."

But I think under a drought like this, no matter how much cleaning of the forest you do or whatever, no matter how much debris you take out of there, when conditions are this dry, it's much more likely that you're gonna have these types of fires anyway.

(dramatic music) - The Ohio Senate unveiled its $85.7 billion budget proposal this week, focusing heavily on education.

It greatly expands the state's private school voucher program and strips the Ohio State Board of Education of most of its power.

Senate President Matt Huffman says the budget takes an innovative approach to funding.

Haley, the Senate proposal expands voucher eligibility, as I mentioned, it's from 250% of the poverty level to 450, about 135,000 for a family of four.

Families making more would also be eligible on a sliding scale based on income, but the push here is essentially to say, just like the Backpack Bill, it seems, a voucher should follow a student wherever they wanna go to school.

- Yeah, Huffman is a big proponent of school choice so no real surprise that universal vouchers are in this version of the budget.

I do think it's interesting what he put in place, once you surpass that 450%, the higher a family's income is, the more that, the less you may be getting from the school voucher program.

I'm curious how Democrats are gonna respond to that.

They're generally concerned about school vouchers because they worry it's gonna take more away from the public school system and with universal vouchers, disproportionately benefit wealthier families, but if they're getting a little bit less than students under that 450% level, I'm curious if this is something Democrats can get behind or if they're still gonna have kind of the same concerns about universal vouchers.

- And we'll have to note here that this is the Senate version of the budget.

There are three budgets, basically.

The Governor put out his budget, the House has its budget, which it passed.

The Senate is now working on its budget, and in the end, this is all gonna mash together and they're gonna have to reconcile it.

- Right, so the Senate's expected to pass theirs I think next week and that leaves a couple weeks for everyone to hash things out before the June 30 deadline.

It's unclear at this point if there's gonna be a need for what's called conference committee, where they basically, the House and Senate go in and figure out the differences.

I think some folks are interested in just getting this done, but there's a lot of frustration in the House over some stuff that was removed from the House version of the budget.

- And some things that might be added in.

I hear that there may be some amendments to the budget before it moves on for a vote.

One of them is Senate Bill 83, the idea of overhauling higher education.

It's been called an anti-woke measure.

Something that Jerry Cirino up this way has pushed.

That could be folded into the budget.

- Yeah, I'm pretty sure that'll be in there.

That's a high priority of the Senate right now and I think they're interest in getting this passed through the budget, knowing that after this budget wraps up, they're gonna go on break, they're not gonna be legislating too much in the coming months and they, despite how controversial this bill is, Republicans wanna see this through.

- Our email again, is soi@ideaStream.org.

That's what Susan at Willowwick used to tell us that she says quote, "I guess if Jerry Cirino thinks it will not pass as a separate bill, he'll do anything to get it to pass.

He'd be ignoring a large number of people who testified against it."

And that's Susan's point of view.

Again, you're invited to comment on anything we're talking about today at soi@ideaStream.org.

Glenn, a study this week by the Ohio Education Policy Institute shows more voucher recipients are students who already attend a private school and there are fewer students in poverty using them before.

Basically, students are a little more well off or are using vouchers.

And so Democrats question that, the expansion of the voucher program and the intended original purpose was to get students in poor-performing districts into better schools.

- Yeah, Idea Stream Public Media's Education Reporter, Conor Morris, followed up on that, did a nice story on it.

And yeah, you look at some of these numbers, if you, under the Senate proposal, if you're earning 450% of the federal poverty level, which is $135,000 for a family of four, you'd get $6,100 for K through eight students and $8,400 about for high school students.

And as that number goes up, as your income goes up, those numbers do go down a little bit, but even at 650% of the poverty level, you still get a quarter of that.

And I think it's interesting because there's this push we've seen both after the coronavirus pandemic and the response from a lot of public education and also this issue we're talking about now with kind of the perception that there's this woke curriculum or whatever, we are seeing more students and families choose to go to private schools.

I mean, we're seeing it anecdotally and I think we're seeing that statistically as well.

We're seeing an increase there.

So that's kind of interesting to watch, but yeah, it seems as though more families who are earning more, are taking advantage of this program, which Republicans would probably say, "Well, that's the design.

That's what school choice is about."

- There's another separate bill we alluded to that would have taken the State Board of Education and basically taken away its power, put the power into a position in the cabinet of the Governor.

That's also something that's folded in here, Haley.

- Yeah, that's been another high priority of Senate President Matt Huffman.

He tried to actually get this legislation passed during lame duck last year and didn't hit that deadline, but this would take a lot of the power away from the state board, which is elected, and critics of this legislation have pointed out that Huffman introduced this idea after more Democrats joined the state board.

They argue that they're trying to limit the power of elected officials, so another pretty controversial bill would really change sort of how K through 12 education is managed in the state.

- Again, we'll see if that makes it to the final budget that gets onto the Governor's desk.

He'd likely sign it though for that.

I mean, he clearly wants to have it as a cabinet position.

- Yeah, I don't see any reason why he would oppose this at this point.

- Glenn, the Senate would also expand the back-to-school tax holiday to two full weeks in 2024, would cover almost any items less than 500 bucks, with some exceptions such as tobacco and alcohol products, but it's been very popular the two-day tax holiday, now it would go to a couple of weeks.

- Yeah, you're right, it has been very popular.

In Cuyahoga County you're paying about 8% sales tax.

I mean, that's a pretty good chunk when you're talking about back-to-school supplies, back-to-school clothes.

So yeah, this would expand it from one weekend to two weeks at the beginning of August and more goods and services would be eligible for that exemption.

It's an estimated $1 billion in tax breaks.

Now, it would be items priced at $500 or less, but of course does not include things like alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, things like that.

- You remember back to school?

- [Anna] Those classic back-to-school items.

- When we used to go to Zayres back to school in Cleveland and your mom would buy you a nickel bag.

- Yeah.

- No.

- Isn't that nice?

(Mike laughing) But yeah, we have to make these specifications now because we have medical marijuana in the state and I would argue that for some upperclassmen college students that alcohol may be a part of their back, no, I'm kidding, but anyway, all that stuff you cannot use on the tax-free couple weeks.

And interestingly, there'd be a provision that beyond 2024, if there's more than 50 million in excess money in the state's general revenue fund, it would automatically expand beyond a single weekend that would be beyond 2024.

- That's a good point because the budget really reflects now, Haley, it seems that Ohio is pretty flush with money due to taxes, covid-19 relief dollars still yet to be spent.

- Yeah, ahead of this budget cycle, the state officials pointed out that Ohio is in a pretty good state financially, so they have this extra money.

It's getting to the point with the covid money where if it already hasn't been allocated for something, it probably will be allocated soon, but this kind of cushy place that we're in motivated the Senate to include the sales tax holiday, knowing it's something people are gonna like.

No one's gonna have any gripes with a break on their sales taxes.

(dramatic music) - Women voters drove Shammas Malik's win in the May primary for Akron Mayor, according to a new poll.

Anna, I heard you say this week on the Sound of Ideas and wanted to dig in more, so many women backed Malik that he didn't even need a single vote from a man to win.

- At least according to this survey.

If you scale up the survey, which was done of 500 registered voters in Akron, and it was weighted so that it reflected the actual voting population, so yeah, if you would do the math and convert the number of people who voted for Malik, yeah, he wouldn't have needed a single male vote to win which is really, really interesting and actually, it was a little bit surprising to people who analyze these numbers because you would expect that women would go for the sole woman candidate in the race, Tara Mosley, and you know, she did well with women as well, but again, overwhelmingly women supported Malik.

A lot of people think that's because of his progressive message, but I also speculate that it could also be because of his personality.

He's very approachable, very polite, and when he talked about this at a forum earlier this week, women started cheering and raising their hands in the air.

It was a very funny moment.

- People are expecting a lot from him.

They want change.

That's one of the things the poll showed.

He's gotta deliver that.

- Well, that's what voters and also people who didn't vote for him reported in the survey that they were still optimistic about his campaign and what he could do for the city.

I mean, that was his whole message though.

He was very focused on change.

We need to do things differently.

We need to change the process.

We need to be more transparent in City Hall.

These are all his campaign talking points so it does make sense that people who supported him are gonna be more in favor of doing things differently in the city, but that is a lot of people talking about fresh ideas in the survey and that's what they wanted.

- It's kind of awkward how we have to keep saying presumptive mayor because he isn't the mayor elect, really, because there's a chance someone could run.

Who knows, there could be a write-in or he might not end up running or a million different things, but even as not the mayor elect, he's showed up at the Conference of Mayors, which was in Columbus, at the invitation of current Mayor Dan Horrigan.

- Exactly and he was able to network and he actually was saying that he didn't know what to call himself when people, when he introduced himself to people.

But he did mention that he spoke with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, who a lot of people have compared the two because they are both people of color, both kind of the change candidates for the city versus the other candidate who was more, has been in the city for a long time type of thing.

And he had talked to Justin Bibb and Bibb was saying how he had a month and a half to plan his transition.

Malik is already getting the ground running and he has seven months to do this, so yes, even though he is the presumptive mayor, because he does not have a challenger, he's already talking through transition and things like that.

- And Anna, two young mayors in two cities that have not had young mayors- - Exactly.

- In quite a long time.

(dramatic music) Cleveland wants to re-envision itself as a place for recreational and residential activity downtown because so many workers who used to come downtown don't anymore, their home where the pandemic first sent them.

Glenn, let's talk about the plan.

It folds in a number of areas he's already worked on from studying a land bridge connecting the lake to a feasibility study on getting rid of Burke Lake for an airport.

- Yeah, there's a lot of different entities that have to get involved with this and have to sign off on it and I don't mean to say that there was not a lot of meat to this press conference 'cause there was, sometimes it's just hard to envision, but here's what they're saying.

They're saying because Mayor Bibb and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne are in alignment on this, that this is gonna get done because you've got the county who can help out with the ports and the waterfronts and things like that and so it was funny, Chris Ronayne had a quote because he asked, he said, "I asked Justin Bibb what he needed help with and he's always quick with an answer.

He sees I need help on the waterfront, I need help in public safety."

And there was another one, I can't find the quote at the moment, but the other piece to this is, is that the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, this downtown organization, is gonna hire 20 more people to try to help with this safety issue.

They're also gonna be trained in mental health crises, deescalation techniques, but here's the point on this too.

When you talk about the waterfront, you talk about the Cleveland Browns, you talk about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so those are two big entities that are gonna have a big say on what happens down there.

They're gonna have to work with them.

Then what Ronayne had said is, "We've gotta get that highway out of there, the highway that divides us and everything."

Well, that's gonna be a state issue too.

I mean, so they have confidence that they can get all these other entities, I don't wanna say to sign off on their plan, but at least work with them on their vision, but it's gonna take a lot of different entities and organizations to make this plan a reality.

- And Chris Ronayne, as you mentioned, he's the county executive in Cuyahoga County, if you're not familiar.

You mentioned safety and that's a really important issue.

And you mentioned the Browns.

Just this week, a couple of Cleveland Browns players were held up at gunpoint, their jewelry stolen, their car taken.

Another one reported a stolen car.

When we look at that, you do realize that there are perceptions and some realities about safety in the city and that's another thing that the mayor is going to have to overcome.

- It's unfortunate and I don't mean to to say that there's causation or that this plan won't work or whatever, but a couple weeks ago they had talked about their plan to combat crime in the city and while they couldn't hire as many police officers as they wanted, they were gonna hire these crime analysts and they were gonna use technology to be more targeted in their enforcement, and then a week later they had a record number, not a record, but a run of homicides throughout the next several days and it just, that juxtaposition wasn't great, but it kind of underscores your point that they're trying this new approach, targeted approach, more crime analysis, the ShotSpotter gun detection, all this kind of stuff to try to make up for the lack of officers, but can you really make up for the lack of officers and manpower?

That's what they're gonna try to find out.

(dramatic music) - A bipartisan group of Ohio politicians is pitching the Buckeye State as the future home of the US Space Command, touting Ohio's history with the Wright Brothers and astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn.

Alabama initially was to land the headquarters, but concerns over the selection process has prompted reconsideration.

Interestingly, this is one of those things all the politicians get behind and they say, "Let's do Ohio," but not JD Vance.

He said, "I talked with some folks, we don't really have a chance, so I'm not signing off on this thing."

- That is interesting, isn't it?

I did notice his name was missing from that, but I gotta tell ya, I did not have on my 2023 bingo card that Max Miller and Emilia Sykes would get together on two issues, not only rail safety, but now here on the US Space Command.

And what Sherrod Brown and a lot of the other lawmakers are saying is this makes sense for Ohio.

We've got NASA Glenn, we've got the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, we've got the research, the Armstrong facility in Sandusky.

It makes a lot of sense to have it here.

They figure why not make the lobbying effort, but I guess JD doesn't wanna sign on if he doesn't think they've got a shot at it.

- Well, and another part of this too is Central Ohio and part of the argument that they made is that Central Ohio is kind of becoming a big tech area.

We have Intel coming down here, so you know, lawmakers are saying, "Ohio can handle this."

We've proven that big businesses and research and tech hubs wanna be in Ohio, you know, why not?

Why not Space Force?

(dramatic music) - Monday on the Sound of Ideas on WKSU, we'll dig into the Higher Education Enhancement Act that may yet become part of the Senate's budget proposal.

It seeks to remove perceived liberal bias on college campuses.

We'll also dig into a study that looks at how voucher use in Ohio has changed in the last decade.

Voucher recipients are more wealthy and more likely to have attended private school already.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.

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