- [Mike McIntyre] Jury selection begins in the corruption trial of former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder and former Republican Party chairman Matt Bourges.

Why did Ohio declare natural gas a green energy?

Dark money plays a role.

And Ohio's Attorney General says it may be early April before a grand jury considers the Jayland Walker shooting investigation.

Ideas is next.

(exciting music playing) Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Jury selection is set to begin today in Cincinnati as the corruption trial of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Bourges begins.

Arguments are expected to begin Monday.

The Ohio Attorney General says it could be early April before a grand jury will be able to convene and hear the case against Akron police officers in the shooting death of Jayland Walker last summer.

Derek Merrin, the state representative from Toledo, who expected to be house speaker and says he's still the leader of House Republicans, has introduced a bill aimed at increasing transparency and confidence in State House leaders.

And a string of movie theater closings this week in northeast Ohio signals the enormous impact the pandemic has had on our entertainment habits.

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

Joining me this week from Ideastream Public Media, reporter Gabriel Kramer.

From the Buckeye Flame, editor Ken Schneck, State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler in Columbus is with us, too.

Let's get ready to round table.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin today in Cincinnati in the trial of former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Bourges.

Both face federal racketeering charges tied to the passage of House Bill six.

State House News Bureau News editor Andy Chow will be in the courtroom starting next week to cover the trial for all the public media organizations that make up the Ohio Newsroom, including us.

So he joins us now for a few minutes to lay out what we can expect.

Good morning, Andy.

- [Andy Chow] Hey, good morning, Mike.

- [Mike] Good to have you with us.

Householder all along has claimed there was no wrongdoing here.

This is just politics.

Prosecutors need to prove otherwise.

But basically the argument is, when we talk about the sausage making of politics, it's gross, it's ugly, it's disgusting, but he's saying not illegal.

- [Andy] Right and in the few public statements that Larry Householder has made since his arrest, that includes appearing before a house committee, fighting against his future expulsion, and then appearing on the house floor once again, fighting against an attempt to expel him, which did succeed and he was expelled from the house, Larry Householder would be brief in his comments, but basically make the argument that what he did was not illegal.

But what he did was something where he believed in legislation that he thought should pass anyway, and that he was just paid by special interest groups who believed the same thing he already believed.

Now, what we know through many different avenues, such as a deferred prosecution from First Energy and from plea deals from other co-defendants, is that that is not the case.

And that instead, millions and millions of dollars flowed through dark money groups into a 501C4, allegedly operated by Larry Householder, in order for him to rise up through the ranks, to take power from the Ohio House, to become house speaker, to help his allies become elected.

And then in return, pass HB six, that nuclear power plant bailout bill.

- This really was an amazing thing.

He had left the speakership and left the house, I think in 2004.

Then had returned and to ascend to the highest of power there.

People would wonder how that might happen.

What the prosecutors will allege is it was money.

- [Andy] Well, and part of the story goes from federal prosecutors and investigators is that he was sitting around in 2016 and made a deal with certain people in his quote unquote enterprise, to say, "Hey, I'm not only gonna return to the Ohio House again, but I have this scheme in place to take over power."

Now remember at that time there was a certain hierarchy of people already in the Ohio House that people assumed would rise up through the ranks to become House Speaker.

At the time, Cliff Rosenberger was thought to soon become house speaker and then Ryan Smith.

Cliff Rosenberger ended up leaving for another alleged scandal.

And then Ryan Smith was the one who took over representing more of the majority of the House Republicans.

So the fact that Householder was able to come back to the State House and then individually on his own, using his own political coffers, support his own allies in Republican primaries to end up winning and come to the house and vote for him as speaker, instead.

- Hmm.

Karen, let's step back.

We mentioned two other defendants who may testify here.

There actually were a total of five at the very beginning.

Can we just step back and say, besides Householder and Bourges, who are the players here?

- Well, we've got lobbyist Juan Cespedes and also Householder political strategist, Jeff Longstreth.

They have both pleaded guilty.

Also involved here, Andy mentioned First Energy.

They agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement, essentially a plea deal, with a $230 million fine and agreed to cooperate.

In that plea deal, they admitted that they bribed two public officials, Larry Householder and former PUCO, Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, Chair Sam Randazzo.

He has not been charged.

His house was searched by the FBI in November of 2020 and he resigned.

But again, he has not been charged.

The other lobbyist who was charged in this case, Neil Clark, died by suicide in March of 2020.

There's also a 501C4 called Generation Now, which is the group, the nonprofit that the money was moving through.

The organizers of that have also admitted guilt.

So the only people remaining here, really, at least in the initial case, are Householder and Bourges.

But former US attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers, who actually filed this case has hinted that there might be others.

He's not working on the case anymore, but he said the case is not over; the investigation continues.

- What's the status today of HB six?

- [Andy] Well, HB six was a big, comprehensive bill.

It bailed out nuclear power plants in Ohio.

It subsidized a coal plant in Ohio and another coal plant in Indiana and it wiped out Ohio's green energy standards.

The nuclear part of that has been repealed in a couple of different ways, mostly because the nuclear power plants, the new owners of those plants, decided that they didn't need the subsidies, anyway.

And they went through a different way to get the money, instead.

The coal subsidies are still there.

That was propped up through a provision that allowed for a charge of up to $1.50 on everybody's electric bills to subsidize these two coal plants and the elimination of the green energy standards is still in place.

And that was a huge hit to environmentalists and other advanced energy groups who believe that Ohio's Green Energy standards, these rules that helped incentivize things like wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources, that has gone by the wayside, too.

So a lot of impacts still remain through the ripple effects of HB six.

- We often see a long stretch of time between an indictment and a trial, but two and a half years seems long by any standard.

What are your thoughts on the length of time that it's taken and what's been happening in the meanwhile?

And what does that portend for how long this trial is expected to last?

- [Andy] So there's a couple of things here.

This has been called the largest corruption scandal in Ohio history.

And I think when you look at the case, prosecutors really wanna make sure that they get it right.

Because like you said, Mike, not only has it been a long time since the arrest to this trial, but there have been millions of documents of evidence being poured into the case.

Trial lawyers on both sides have said, "Hey, we need more time to look over all the evidence against us."

And on top of that, I think another surprising thing is that we have not seen any other indictments come down.

We heard from agents and from prosecutors that more could happen, but that never happened.

So who have the prosecutors been talking to?

Who's gonna take the stand?

I think it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens next, because we could start seeing more of the missing puzzle pieces come into place to make a clearer picture of what's going on here.

- Andy, appreciate your time with us.

Go ahead and get on back to work.

We're gonna let Karen carry the rest of the State House news for us today.

- Can I add one thing here, too?

- [Mike] Please do.

Yeah, I was gonna transition to that.

Yep.

- Yeah, house bill six, I mean, this was, as Andy just mentioned, a sweeping energy law that did all sorts of things.

And for a long time we kept hearing about how this was good for Ohio's energy portfolio.

I mean, Governor DeWine talked about how, that's why he was gonna sign it, because Ohio needed the nuclear power plants to keep going.

The judge in this case has made it clear that he is not going to tolerate a defense of House Bill six as Larry Householder's defense.

That this trial is not about House Bill six and whether it was good or bad legislation, that this is about the charges against Larry Householder.

So I think that that's an interesting thing to note.

That while House Bill six has been changed in many ways, there are people who still defend it as a good piece of legislation and Larry Householder is one of them.

- Let's talk about the, as the Householder case and House Bill six investigation heads to trial, another energy policy decision by lawmakers in Columbus is being scrutinized.

We discussed here on previous shows the passage of a bill that was signed by the governor and makes it easier to drill for oil and gas on state owned lands, including state parks.

The bill also labeled natural gas as a green energy, and it turns out there was a lot of dark money from the natural gas industry spent convincing lawmakers and the governor to declare that methane gas, a fossil fuel, is a clean energy like solar and wind.

Karen, reporting from cleveland.com, details the heavy involvement of a dark money group linked to the natural gas industry driving this legislation.

- Yeah.

And the Washington Post also reviewed some documents showing two groups, the Empowerment Alliance, which is a dark money group that has ties to the natural gas industry and also the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which a lot of political watchers are familiar with, is a conservative group of lawmakers, businesses, other donors who fund it anonymously.

Those two groups were involved.

And of course, ALEC is where often Republican lawmakers get model legislation that they take home and pass in the states.

And that's apparently what happened here.

And Republicans say that this was about promoting Ohio's natural gas industry, that gas is cleaner than coal.

And that's true.

You might also remember the gas, the shale gas boom that Republican former governor John Kasich used to talk about a lot.

But natural gas is not green energy.

It has a higher methane footprint.

It's not green energy.

And that's a really important thing to note here, that this law does change that language, but it's not green energy.

- All right, let's just call the color the color.

It's green, right?

So we're talking about money.

It seems ridiculous that you would call a fossil fuel a green energy.

And the only motivating factor for that would be to try to get people to use more of that fossil fuel.

Obviously that would be what drives the dark money group.

Our political leaders bought it.

- It's the money, right?

That's the money piece.

And it's where verbiage really can.

Well, we can convince people if we use the language, my best friend is an environmental scientist, and when I'm feeling like a troublemaker, which is often I just yell clean coal at her, and she gets so angry and it's just fun to watch.

But yeah, it's not a green energy.

But if we call it that, then people will sign onto it.

So all we're really doing is calling it that.

And when some politicians have been asked about this, their response is, "Well, it's greener energy.

It's greener than coal and oil."

But as Karen said, it's still, and it does.

It emits about 50% less carbon dioxide, but it releases methane, which does so many more harmful effects.

- And the question, yeah.

And the question then is if you're calling that green energy, then what does that do to the pursuit of other things that are actually renewable energies, which is what many would define as green energy, such as wind and solar.

- So much of this is getting the public to sign onto it.

And we know at this point that calling it green energy does get people involved.

And so yeah, it does hamper folks embracing and investing money.

That's the key piece.

We have to invest money in solar and wind.

And you can't do that if people think, "Oh, well we found the solution."

It's not renewable.

- The state representative who lost out on the house speaker vote, but still maintains he leads house Republicans wants to improve transparency and ethics at the State House.

Derek Merrin, a Republican from the Toledo area, introduced a bill to require lobbyists to report all income they make from clients and prevent public elected officials from serving on corporate boards.

Is this tied, in any way, to this whole scandal.

- Well, he was asked that.

And he had this press conference where he was flanked by some of his supporters, and that question was brought up and he said, "No, this is about transparency in government," and that he was gonna propose this if he had become speaker.

It would've been house bill one under his speakership if he had become speaker, like he was expecting to be.

I think it is interesting though, one of his supporters stepped to the microphone then and said, "Hey, we've got a problem here among Republicans."

This was a Republican involved scandal.

And we, as he referred to his group, the Integrity Caucus, are gonna fix this.

Now the question is, of course, will some of these proposals go through?

There are five different parts of the bill you just mentioned.

Two of them, and some of them are a little bit more inside baseball, so to speak.

But you had Democrats who say, "Hey, we've tried to do this before and it got nowhere."

That's gonna be the question, is it gonna actually move this time?

Are there gonna be ways that we get more transparency in government and be able to see some of these things as they're happening?

- So perhaps the Democrats who supported Jason Stephens for speaker might also then say, "Wait a minute, we've been wanting to do this for a while.

So now we're gonna go ahead and jump over and support Derek Merrin on this issue."

And then you've got, I don't know, chaos.

- Well, and that's a really good question.

The Democrats are the super minority here, but they do have a voice.

And it's really interesting to watch all of this happening.

But of course, nothing can happen until the house actually gets its rules set and makes committee assignments and all that stuff that hasn't happened yet.

There's a session next week and these folks who back Derek Merrin say they wanna change some of these rules.

They say two thirds of their caucus, two thirds of Republicans back Derek Merrin, those people should get two thirds of committee chairmanships and committee seats on those committees.

And we haven't heard anything from Speaker Stephens yet on this, but that would be really interesting for him to award two-thirds of committee chairmanships to people who voted against him, essentially.

- I said chaos.

I could also just use the word politics.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost says the case against eight police officers involved in the shooting death of Jayland Walker won't be presented to a grand jury until at least early April, nearly nine months after the 25 year old Akron man's death.

Yost spoke to the Akron Beacon Journal this week about the investigation.

Gabe, if Yost's timeline holds up, it'll be nearly a year after the shooting before a grand jury makes a decision on the case.

Yost says, "While speed is important, he doesn't wanna cut corners."

- And he said he wants to be thorough.

And he said that this particular case is complicated.

There's a lot of aspects to it.

He said that cases like this will often, well cases will often spend 400 to 500 hours of working on a case.

And this one's already crossed the 1,000 hour mark.

And if you think about it, eight police officers involved in the chase, that's body cameras on each officer.

There's a lot more things perhaps to review.

So being thorough is probably going to take a lot of time.

- We've seen a lot of change in Akron since then.

The Police Review Commission, a civilian oversight board.

There's been a lot of activity and activism in Akron as a result of this.

What is the thought about the length that it's taking?

Has there been any reaction from family or supporters of change?

- Well, I think certainly it's easy for people to.

This situation was very public.

I mean, there was a lot of protests after the fact.

It's coming at a time where people are really starting to pay attention to police brutality much closer.

And certainly, there are gonna be people who are wondering, "Is this getting neglected?

Is this being overlooked?"

And I hope that there's a connection between those concerns and the people who are working on this, that that is not being overlooked.

That actually is a thorough process.

Which is why, I think, Yost decided he needed to say such a thing.

So certainly people want action taken and want to see that the right decisions are taken care of for family on every side.

- A group of parents claim at a federal lawsuit against the Hilliard School district near Columbus this week, that teachers are discussing LGBTQ topics with students without parental consent, including gender identity and sexual orientation.

- These are not random parents.

We should highlight from the start that one of the parents actually has testified several times on the State House floor in Columbus for the Safe Act, the bill that would ban gender affirming care in the state of Ohio.

So these, a lot of these parents, of these eight parents, are well-known actors in the scene of trying to deny LGBTQ equality in the state of Ohio.

These parents are seeking primarily two things.

They want the district, the Hilliard School District, to clarify their policy on outing.

What the parents are saying is that if a student shares their sexual orientation or gender identity with any member of the school staff, be it teacher, school counselor, or school nurse, anyone, that the school should automatically inform parents that that has been shared.

They say that that is an issue of mental health and the parents should be kept in the know.

Teacher organizations, teacher unions, certainly school counselor unions, social work unions who say it's against their code of conduct to share information like that, say, "No, that is not an automatic sharing.

That would be outing, and it's not healthy for the student."

Ironic that what's trying to be protected here is mental health.

So that's the number one thing they want.

The other thing they want is for the school to ban these badges.

So these badges say, "I'm here."

The words, "I'm here," with a rainbow flag on the front.

And they signal that this is a teacher who has resources, who can be supportive of the LGBTQ community.

Their objection, these eight parents on the back of the badge, there's a QR code that links to different resources for teachers who wear this badge.

And they say that the parents say that one of the links there links to pornographic material.

Now the superintendent has now, in the past 24 hours, issued a statement refuting so many of these claims, chiefly that those QR codes aren't visible to any students.

So the parents have said, "Well, students could scan the QR code and get access to pornographic material."

And the superintendent has said, "That part doesn't face," and it doesn't.

It doesn't face outward to the students.

So he went point by point through the Hilliard School District will most certainly be filing a response to this lawsuit.

- All right, let's talk about the issue of the outing.

'Cause I wanna walk through this.

If you are a parent, I've put myself in this position.

If my child is telling a teacher about sexual orientation or gender identity and I'm clueless, which I would hope I would not be clueless, I would want to know so that I could give the support and the affirmation to help my child.

So I would maybe be on the side that says, "Yes, tell me."

But I can imagine that you might tell parents who then would try to reorient their children or have some sort of punitive effect, which is the bad side of that.

But what about the idea of sharing with parents?

And do parents have a right to know that information, especially to use it in a good situation?

- Sure.

So what's being conflated here is the idea that parents are not being told automatically that of a student's sexual orientation or gender identity.

And the idea that these, and this is one of the quotes from the lawsuit, over and over, that these activist teachers are actively keeping parents out of the mix.

Those two have been conflated together.

And what gets confusing here is that it conveys the idea that teachers are saying, "And don't tell your parents."

And that's not actually what's happening.

These are students who are going to teachers and sharing.

If I can speak from the I.

The first person I came out to was a teacher before I came out to my parents.

My parents ended up being amazing, but I didn't feel that safety, yet.

And so many students experience that.

Regardless of how parents actually respond, they want to almost, it's like a pilot program.

You want to come out to someone who you trust first, who is not in that parental role.

So what the lawsuit is alleging is that, that teachers are keeping this from parents.

And that's not necessarily the case.

Many teachers are saying to students, "Well, what might it look like if you shared this information from your parents?"

Now, key piece of this lawsuit is that part of the rationale that they are citing these parents for why they are justified in this lawsuit is that anti-LGBTQ sweeping resolution that was passed by the State Board of Education in December.

When that was passed, I spoke to many lawmakers in the state, including state Senator Nickie Antonio, who was one of many who said, "It's a resolution.

It doesn't have any teeth to it."

And while that might be the case, we are now seeing that that, and you can't see me doing air quotes, toothless resolution being used as a rationale for lawsuits moving forward from parents.

- It's been a tough week for big screen lovers in northeast Ohio, where a string of closings means fewer options for those who want to see movies in a theater.

Are we seeing a huge change in the way we seek entertainment?

So let's talk about that.

Are are we seeing a change, a shift?

Ken, do you go to the movies?

- I do.

I really make a point of supporting the Capitol Theater.

It's the only movie theater on the west side.

It's walkable from my house.

But other than that, I don't, I don't go as much except for a bit.

I'm a Marvel devotee, so gimme a big Marvel movie and I will be there every single time.

And I would rather watch it with a group of folks than sit alone.

- It's interesting it's based on the kind of movie, Gabe.

I think the last one I saw in a theater was the Top Gun remake.

Because it was going to be amazing in terms of the visuals and stuff.

But many others, it seems much more convenient to sit in your chair, watch it at home later, or in your case, because people who are younger than me know how to get things immediately just kind of somehow pirate it.

- I can say, I don't wanna take away from the fact that, certainly movie theaters closing has an impact on a lot of people.

One for entertainment, but two for economic reasons.

For me, I've gone to a movie theater in the last 10 years.

I can count on both hands the amount of times that's happened.

I mean, it's very few.

I'm not a big movie theater person.

- Did it not help that they put in these reclining chairs and a lot more space?

- Honestly, I didn't know about that until much after it happened because I'm not a frequent goer.

It's kind of costly to go to the movie theater.

If I'm being honest, and maybe it's just a me thing, I'm not a huge movie watcher.

My habit of being addicted to YouTube, specifically.

But streamed videos in short formats, when the pandemic started, that habit only got worse.

- So attention span is an issue then, too.

- That's a real issue.

- Yeah, that's true.

- Sitting there and now lately, by the way, there have been these three hour movies.

It's like, "Does anyone know how to cut film anymore or whatever?"

- Well, three and a half hours because that's a good half an hour of commercials in previous.

- Wow.

Good point.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association is partnering with eSports Ohio to promote the organization's upcoming tournament.

eSports are video game competitions and 250 schools have eSports teams.

Gabe, it's interesting 'cause we're talking about the athletic association and eSports, and I can just hear people my age and older just cranking, "That not sports.

They're not athletes."

- Well, okay, so perhaps maybe eSports is not the most athletic thing in the world.

But it is absolutely a very serious competition similar to you would find in other sports.

And it's not just competition.

It's a form of entertainment for people who want to watch competitions.

And it's growing so much to the point that there are high school teams, college teams.

I've got a good buddy, Aaron Jaggers, who's a regular listener to the Sound of Ideas.

But he moved from Shaker Heights to San Antonio because he got a job working at a university there as an eSports coach.

He was a head eSports coach at Shaker Heights High School.

This is not only great opportunities for young people to be competitors, but for my buddies to get jobs.

- Monday on the Sound of Ideas on WKSU, we'll hear from the CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Baiju Shah, on a new sustainability summit being held here next week.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

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