Vice president elect J.D.

Vance stepped down from the Senate, and Governor Mike DeWine will appoint his successor, Dr. Amy Acton announced she'll run for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2026.

And Cleveland passed new ward maps, shrinking council by two seats.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Vice President elect J.D.

Vance has resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate.

Governor Mike DeWine will choose his replacement.

And at the time of the show's taping, the governor had not yet announced his choice.

If I were a betting man, I'd say it'll be Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted.

But there's no wagering on this show.

Dr. Amy Acton plans to run for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2026.

You know her from the pandemic when she headed up the Ohio Department of Health.

Governor DeWine signed a flurry of bills into law this week that were passed last month during the lame duck session, including the so called Parents Bill of Rights.

And Cleveland City Council approved new ward maps that reduce council to 15 wards instead of 17.

Joining me for the roundtable from Ideastream, Public Media reporter Abby Marshall and associate producer of Newscast Josh Boose in Columbus, Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Vance resigned his U.S. Senate seat at midnight Friday, clearing the way for the governor to name a replacement.

There's been no shortage of people who want the coveted seat.

Karen Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted is long viewed as a successor to DeWine.

But we keep hearing that he may be the one in line for J.D.

Vance's seat in the Senate.

Is he the front runner?

I think he is thought to be the front runner because we're finding out that DeWine is keeping this very close to him in terms of how he's handling and what his thought process is.

I mean, he has said very publicly what he's looking for in a U.S. Senate candidate.

And he said that even last night when he was at Mar a Lago with President elect Trump, with other Republican governors, he said he wants somebody who can focus on Ohio, but also national issues, but also who can run next year in a special election and also who can win a primary and run in 2026, which would be the next term for that particular seat.

So this is somebody who has to be able to raise a lot of money and be able to do a lot of work in terms of campaigning to basically two cycles back to back.

So Houston looks like that he's the one, but there are some others.

I mean, the list is long.

I think Ohio former Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken is a possibility.

I might not even count out somebody like Vivek Ramaswamy who had taken himself out of the running when he was appointed to head the department of Government Efficiency.

But he's a billionaire.

He's got a lot of popularity.

Who knows?

It's it's I think, Houston, it looks like it's his job to lose.

But again, who knows?

And we would probably hear something about that maybe today.

No, I doubt it.

No, I doubt it.

I DeWine said last night at Mar a Lago when he was asked when he would have an announcement, he said probably next week.

So I would imagine that he's going to let things go.

I mean, people in Ohio have their minds on Texas today.

You know, so for the Ohio State game, and I think that DeWine just wants to give an opportunity to the weekend before we get back into this again.

And we're just days into 2025 and already it's election season for Ohio governor, which doesn't happen until next year.

DeWine is term limited, leaves the field open.

We know Attorney General Dave Yost plans to seek the Republican nomination if Husted is appointed to the Senate and has to run there, he wouldn't be in the race either.

But we did get some action this week, too, when the former Ohio Health Department director, Amy Acton, who came to prominence in 2020 when the COVID pandemic first broke, she announced she intends to run for the Democratic nomination to fill her former boss's job.

And I saw some speculation, too, online, Karen, that Steve Del BAC, who is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms chief, he has submitted his resignation because a new administration is coming in.

His last day, I think will be the 18th of this month.

There's talk that maybe he'd want to seek the Democratic nomination as well.

So he's getting busy.

Yeah, he ran in 2018 for attorney general, I believe.

And so he's got at least a little bit of statewide experience.

He is a possibility, certainly.

Amy Acton.

I think she's one of these figures that people really remember her.

A lot of people have strong, positive associations with her because of the pandemic.

But then, of course, there are people who don't like her.

I mean, one of the reasons she resigned in June of 2020 was because of the threats and the protests against her that came to her house and really targeted her personally for the frustration that people were feeling as the state was enacting current policies.

So I think that the Democratic field looks a little thin, not only for governor, but also for all the other executive offices.

Attorney General, Order Secretary of State, treasurer.

All of those are going to be up in 2026 as well.

On the Republican side, if indeed Houston is appointed to the US Senate, that certainly clears the way in some respects and does a huge favor for Attorney General Dave Yost, because Houston's raised about $5 million to run for governor and has obviously a statewide profile.

But that could open the way for Vivek Ramaswamy to potentially run for governor.

And he's got lots of money.

So the the field is kind of open there on the Republican side that there are a lot of people who have already some name recognition who might want to run.

Karen, why do you make it all about money in in in fairness, it isn't all about money.

I mean, Sherrod Brown outspent Bernie Moreno in the US Senate race and Marino won.

So the person who spends the money, the most money doesn't always win.

But money is critical when you're talking about trying to reach a statewide audience, especially if you don't have name recognition.

The governor put his signature on more than two dozen bills this week, signing off on legislation passed during the lame duck session that ended just before the holidays.

One of the most notable bills signed by Governor DeWine was House Bill eight.

It's called by the supporters of the bill, Parents Bill of Rights.

Opponents call it Ohio's version of the Don't Say gay law.

Karen, The bill has a second component to allow students to leave their school for religious instruction, too.

So let's talk just a little bit about that.

When will the law go into effect and what is it going to require educators to do?

That's a good question, because most laws go into effect 90 days after they're signed, unless they have an emergency clause that's put sometime in March.

But that's when the school year is still going on.

So I'm not sure exactly how districts are going to implement that while the school year is still happening.

So I think that remains to be seen.

House Bill eight, the Parents Bill of Rights, what was that was what was termed it was an interesting path to get that to be signed.

And it wasn't signed publicly in front of reporters.

It was signed in a private ceremony.

And then DeWine took questions later from reporters.

So that kind of indicates the controversy about this.

And even House Speaker Jason Stephen said he didn't want the bill to pass as it was with that religious release instruction that was a religious release policy in there.

He wanted it to be a so-called clean bill.

So there were there was some pushback on this, but a lot of people are interested in it.

So briefly, the religious release policy is essentially that students could be released from school for religious instruction off campus in school districts, maybe required to come up with a policy.

That policy could be released every day, release every month, release every year.

You know what?

School districts can come up with their own policy, but they have to have one that allows students to leave for religious instruction.

And then also what the so-called Parents Bill of Rights does is requires K-through-12 school officials to, among other things, notify parents if their child is exposed to sexually explicit instructional content, or if the student asked teachers or counselors to identify them by a different gender.

Basically, supporters say this These kind of rules will ensure that school officials don't withhold important information from parents about their children.

But opponents say this would put LGBTQ students at risk because they're basically outing them to their parents, who may not be receptive to that.

Yeah, and school officials say this covers all school employees, not just teachers, but also counselors and medical people.

And everybody in the school district.

And so there's a real concern about kids who are vulnerable, not reaching out to people at school if they need help and what school officials will be required to do, how they could be potentially held responsible for some of these things.

So this is as concerning.

Let's talk real quickly, Karen, about the changing changing guard there in leadership in both the House and the Senate.

So we now have a new Senate president, a new House speaker.

Yeah.

And it wasn't a surprise like it was two years ago when the person who had been selected by the Republican caucus two years ago, which was Derek Marion, did not win the speaker's race when this law actually when there was a vote on the floor this time, Matt Hoffman, who had been the Senate president, was selected as speaker in November.

He was elected a speaker on the floor this time.

And Rob McAuley, who he worked with very closely in the Senate, is now the Senate president.

So we've got a change in leadership and Hoffman and McAuley get along a lot better than Hoffman and Stevens, the former speaker do did.

And so we're expecting things to potentially move a little faster than they did in the last two year session.

And Hoffman has already signaled that the fair school funding plan is, in his words, unsustainable.

We can't afford this money, he says.

So when people say school funding is unsustainable, needs to be changed, some might say, okay, great, they're finally going to fix school funding.

What he's saying is the fix that was already put in is too expensive.

We can't be doing that anymore.

Yeah, and that's a real concern for public schools.

This was a bipartisan plan that came out of the Paterson plan, which was former Speaker Bob Kopp and former Representative John Paterson had come up with this formula that, again, this is really complicated, but essentially it takes into account income in a district as well as property taxes to come up with how much state money goes to districts.

And Hoffman is signaling that this is he's not going to go ahead and do the third installment of the phasing of this fair school funding plan.

And he's going to push back on that.

And, you know, obviously, school public school leaders have been saying, hey, we put $1,000,000,000 into vouchers in the last year and yet now you're pushing back on this, saying this is unsustainable for public schools.

But this really sets up potentially some questions and some maybe even some battles over school funding coming up in the budget process, which starts early next month.

Cleveland City Council introduced and approved new ward maps during its meeting this week.

The city is required to redraw ward maps every ten years based on census data due to population loss, and Cleveland Council had to ax two of his its 17 seats.

I remember then when there were 22, I think it was.

I mean, it's been going down each decade consistently.

ABC Council president Blaine Griffin at the outset said he wanted the maps to keep neighborhoods intact.

Follow natural boundaries.

That doesn't seem to be how it worked.

Right.

And you know, he said he did the best that he could.

But regardless of what happened, not everyone was going to be happy.

There are a lot of stipulations that go into how these maps are made, what is required of the maps.

Actually, they have a tool set up where you can go practice making your own maps to see if you can kind of piece it all together.

But essentially you need about 25,000 residents per ward, a give or take a margin of error.

And obviously where the population is a centralized will affect how those ward boundaries are drawn.

So, you know, he said he did the best job that he could, keeping neighborhoods intact, but not everyone is happy with how it turned out.

Protesters and at least one contacted me said that they believed it was a secretive process, that there should have been public hearings.

And I guess there was some early public input, but not the kind of public input that they wanted.

And yet only two of the council members voted against it.

It seemed like council was pretty well in line with with voting yes on these maps and.

Well, yeah.

And so given the public hearing.

So Blake Griffin did host a few public input sessions and now these were ahead of the maps.

They weren't presented.

It was just kind of like what is important to you?

And again, a lot of that is keeping neighborhoods intact.

And so people were critical of that process.

They had to move a lot swifter than they thought.

I want to note that, which is kind of why perhaps it seemed rushed near the end.

They thought that the city charter gives until April 1st to make these maps, but there was a change to when these needed to be completed.

And then when it comes to the council members that voted for it, two voted against.

But part of that is, I mean, when you think about who wants to lose their job, a lot of these people will be running, presumably again, for seats within a within the city.

So it kind of goes to when politicians are making their own maps, What kind of goes into that and the politics of it.

One of the no votes, Rebecca moore, who's in Slavic Village and a number of other neighborhoods now is in, and there's six different neighborhoods have been cut up, amazingly so.

And there's a back story.

I think you've seen public interplay between her and Blaine Griffin, and she's disagreed with his leadership on some issues, sort of looking at this as some sort of punishment.

Sure.

Yeah.

And that's something that I have spoken to her about and that kind of played out very publicly on City council floors where there was a back and forth between Rebecca moore and Blaine Griffin, where she said, I think that there's kind of some foul play here.

And he came onto the floor and said, you know, I've had council members tell me that they don't trust you and that you're not a team player.

And she said that that comment in and of itself was evidence that maybe she is being drawn out.

Now, look, there is going as long as politicians are drawing their own maps, there are going to be these accusations of gerrymandering, especially from those who lose out.

And when I spoke to Rebecca, she kind of made the point to that.

It's interesting that Council was supportive of issue one in the fall, where that would have moved state mapmaking out of the hands of politicians and put it into citizen.

So she kind of argues that there should be more public input going forward and also that, you know, she has sat through public hearings, as have I, as the government reporter, on seemingly really mundane and standard things.

So it's interesting that this did not get any public hearing at all.

But I think, you know, as I say, I mean, you've done some fantastic reporting on this, so great job over the last several weeks here.

We were talking in the newsroom amongst the newscast division ourselves that, you know, Yes, all this fighting, all this infighting that's going on, the bigger picture is they're losing population big time.

And that's why that's the genesis of these seats going, you know, getting fewer and fewer.

And then the question becomes, well, why are we you know, many cities are doing this, obviously.

So I think that's an interesting question, too, going forward.

And we do have races all this year in those new wards.

The representation will start in 2026.

That's when we'll see the wards basically be divided.

Well, I also think it's.

Josh that is a good point, but it also is worth noting that Cleveland does have a relatively large number of of ward seats.

When you look at Columbus, there are nine total and that is a much bigger city.

Yeah.

So it kind of goes back to how council views their roles do.

They are a legislative body, but a lot of times they are fielding calls from residents and some of them do take it upon themselves to solve these issues.

You know, sometimes people will call their council person instead of calling 311 when they have a problem, because that's the most tactile way to access your government.

In many cases, the Cleveland Browns are still pursuing a dome stadium complex in Brook Park, Cleveland said Friday it'll see the team in court over the model law intended to make it harder for teams to leave cities.

Bibb has had asked the city and asked the Browns as the city seeks to prevent the team from moving to Brook Park whether it intended to comply.

What the answer was this morning see in court?

Yup.

And we have seen this escalation in the Haslam's had actually already contested this law, this art model law and and asked for it to be deemed unconstitutional and basically what it says is that teams that play in taxpayer funded stadiums like the Cleveland Browns have to give the city that they live in a six month heads up as well as give time for the city or an investor, quote in the area to buy the team.

Now, when I've spoken to legal experts, they say that might be kind of ambiguous, given that Brook Park could be considered in the area.

But in the meantime, Mayor Justin Bibb has said, you know, we are going to move forward with implementing this law because the Haslam's have not taken that time to field these offers and give someone else a chance to buy the team.

However, just because they have to take or field the offers doesn't mean they have to accept them.

And so now the Haslam's are saying, Yep, see you in court.

Other news just came over just now.

The Browns have announced that they're going to have one of their home games next year in England.

They're going to play at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

Often teams will do that.

And it's interesting because that means one fewer game in Cleveland.

That's not good for the Cleveland economy either.

But that was an announcement today that the Browns will be playing there.

And then also with the new term beginning at the state house, it's anticipated the Browns will ask lawmakers to pick up part of the $2.4 billion for the Brook Park complex, which will have a rough stadium and a bunch of other stuff.

And we got some thoughts from a legislative leader on that this week.

Karen?

Yeah, actually, I asked and other reporters were asking the new speaker, Matt Hoffman, the new Senate president, Rob Cauley, the Senate Minority leader, Nikki Antonio, who is from Lakewood, and House Minority Leader Alison Russo about this.

And three of the four Russo said she hadn't heard from the Browns, but the other ones had said they're really concerned.

They have a lot of questions about what kind of money would be involved here.

Are we talking about actual state funding?

Are we talking about tax state backed bonds?

What are we talking about here?

There's no concrete proposal on the table.

And I also asked Governor Mike DeWine about that in his press conference this week, and he tried to make a joke about Browns quarterback problems.

He is a Bengals fan, so let's deal with that, I guess.

But he said that he's he has he was very vague in his answer there and really didn't have anything to say about whether he supports it or not.

Hmm.

We've mentioned that there would be precedent here the lawmakers have been concerned about, yeah, you funded $600 million of a Brown stadium.

You know, good luck saying no to the Bengals and to the Guardians and to the Reds.

That's right.

Yeah.

I think that's the real question for state lawmakers is whether you want first of all, whether you want to see the team move out of downtown Cleveland, a ballpark.

But also if you give a deal to the Browns, who's next in line?

And certainly we've got a lot of professional sports teams that would be standing there saying, hey, if you're going to give the Browns this, we've got our hand out as well.

I think we all know you can't just give one of your kids a Walkman.

I'm showing my age again.

Sorry.

She's like, Yeah, like, what's a Walkman?

The Haslam's have not revealed a lot of detail about funding, but we're hearing how the State Abbey is a little bit reticent.

But we know more than just a little bit reticent is the county who's saying we don't have the money to pony up for this.

We are.

And every time that county executive Chris Ronayne even came here on Sound of Ideas and said as much, it's basic math.

If they want the public to foot half the bill, when you're talking about a $2.4 billion investment versus $1 billion to renovate the current stadium, he says it's kind of a no brainer on the numbers of it all.

But also they have been really adamant about keeping the Browns downtown and keeping that economic activity and the investments that have already been happening downtown there.

And he says it's not just beneficial to the city of Cleveland, but the entire region in Akron got a $10 million boost from the United States Department of Transportation as it seeks to reimagine a decommissioned section of the Inner Belt Highway cut through and displace predominantly black neighborhoods when it was built in the seventies.

Mayor Thomas Malik says the federal money will be matched by the city.

So we've talked about this.

We had a Sound of Ideas community tours in Akron, which I think was just tremendous.

There was a community meeting the other night where our Abigail Boater was there to cover it.

And then this surprise comes Here's 10 million bucks.

But it seems like we're getting some momentum.

Abbey, toward the the reimagining of this space.

Yeah.

And before I moved to Cleveland a few years ago, I lived in Akron for about two years.

So this is a really big deal.

People down there care a lot about this highway to nowhere.

So they hired an urban planning firm last summer to develop a master plan.

And residents have been able to give their input on the findings and kind of what they would like to see happen with the inner belt.

And I think given the history that you touched on with it impacting a lot of black neighborhoods, there are people that are still dealing with the consequences of that.

And so engaging the residents is really important and something I think people are really glad to see happen there.

That was interesting in our coverage.

The things that they've said they want to see, they want to see community gardens, tree scapes, all kinds of pop up fruit stands, like a Parisian boulevard, like a lot of different ideas that people are coming up with.

Yeah.

And so kind of that blend of urban play.

I always think it's fun when you take something that's, you know, basic urban things like a highway and turn it into green space like that.

Other residents have said things that they would like to see community centers kind of serving those areas as well.

So I think that I will be really interested to see what they do.

I'll certainly I go down to Akron quite a bit still, so I'll certainly be interested to see what goes on, but I'm glad to see it's getting the TLC.

You can go visit Anna Huntsman, who's living in Akron, and our other reporters who are based there in order to cover everything that moves in that area.

I think, too, about the high line in New York City and going to Chelsea market by walking along this amazing park that used to be a highway.

So maybe that's one of the ideas that they'll still pursue.

But Josh, Mayor Malik also released a capital budget this year.

It's wide ranging, as you would expect, that it's got everything from gaming place to do gaming to to repaving streets which you'd expect.

Yeah $368 million budget in that includes upgrades to different community centers 48 miles of road resurfacing.

There's money in this budget to demolish different commercial buildings.

Also important, replacing LED service lines that is in this budget as well.

So and matching funds for the city's polymer cluster, too.

That's very important.

So there's a lot in this bill.

I do know that a lot of people at different events when we talk about what people want to see the city focus on a big part of that was community services for affordable housing, for different housing.

And right now that is 2% of the budget.

Now, the city planning director went on to say, look, a lot of that funding as far as housing comes from the federal government.

So we're kind of waiting to see what happens from that realm before the city plays a part in that, because right now it's only 2% of that budget.

So the housing, 2% of the budgets and we found the most popular dog names in Cuyahoga County.

Is yours on the list or is it an original?

Regardless of the name they all answer to who wants to go outside?

In Cuyahoga County, you found out the bell was rule the dog house.

And don't tell my human niece Bella that, but Bella is the most popular dog name.

It is.

I pulled all the dog licenses.

Newsflash.

If you didn't know, I guess I found out some people don't.

You do have to register your dog with the county in the state of Ohio.

And that is not just for the protection of, you know, others and making and keeping track of vaccinations, but also if your dog gets asked, they can find out who that belongs to and reunite you.

And so I did some data analysis and looked at top breeds and top names.

You can go to Ideastream dot org.

I actually made a search.

I made my data searchable so you can type in your dog's name and see how many dogs are named that in the county.

But Bella Luna, Daisy, Charlie.

Lucy, Buddy.

Max, Bailey, Cooper, Molly.

Those are the top names.

Kind of what you would expect.

But I had some fun looking at.

That was my softball team.

And now they're.

Oh, yeah.

Charlie, Lucy.

Sally Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So you also looked at breeds.

We have noodles, schnauzer, poodles that are like £45.

They're not little tiny lapdogs, but not among the most popular breed you've got.

Yeah, they're the first.

The top breed is actually no breed at all.

Mixed in other popular ones were Labrador retriever mixes, German Shepherds, Pit Bulls and Golden Retrievers.

And I actually looked at Mike there are 58 Otis is 240 Cocoa's Josh there are 94 Henry's and there is only one Woodley Which is my, my little.

You're so original.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven KSU In honor of President Carter's legacy of volunteerism, we're going to talk to some super volunteers in our region.

What benefits does volunteering have for our communities and ourselves?

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.