(intense ambient music) - First Energy's name is coming off of Cleveland Brown Stadium.

Akron on Edge awaits a special grand jury decision in the Jayland Walker police shooting death case.

And the seven Democrats running to lead the city of Akron take questions directly from voters.

Ideas is next.

(intense ambient music) Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The Browns will no longer play in First Energy Stadium.

The team and the utility agreed to end their naming rights deal.

It'll once again be Cleveland Brown Stadium, at least until another big corporate sponsor forks over a 100 million or so.

On edge, that's how community leaders describe Akron as the city awaits the decision of a special grand jury and paneled for the Jayland Walker police shooting case.

Buildings are boarded up, barricades erected, and the city is restricting public access to City Hall and the Justice Center.

The outcome of the special grand jury will likely impact the final week to the Akron mayoral primary.

This week, the seven candidates fielded questions from residents at a debate.

We'll talk about those stories and the rest of the week's news on the reporters' round table.

Joining me this week from Idea Stream Public Media, Cleveland political reporter, Abby Marshall and underserved communities reporter, Gabriel Kramer.

In Columbus, Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau Chief, Karen Kassler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

The home stadium of the Cleveland Browns will no longer carry the First Energy name.

The Browns and the utility announced yesterday they reached a deal to end the naming rights partnership early.

The deal was $107 million over 17 years, beginning in 2013.

Abby, the announcement from the team was about one sentence, we really have no idea of what the terms are, but this is something that's been driven by city council and public sentiment since this case came to light.

- Right.

Both organizations are being pretty tight-lipped about it.

When I asked the First Energy spokesperson about if this scandal or local political pressure played any sort of role, she said that they are just shifting company priorities, and you know, I didn't hear back from the Browns.

So that's pretty much all that we know.

They did not mention the scandal at all.

And what we do know is that this is effective immediately, and it does, as you said, cut short their 17 year deal, about seven years short.

- So you'll assume that maybe some money went back if it was $107 million or payments aren't being made, that will get made up with another naming rights deal.

But I wonder, Gabe too, if one of the things behind this is the fact that the Browns are gonna be asking for big money from the public, as well as ponying up some of their own for a renovation of the stadium, they've said now, not a new stadium, a renovation of our own, not a roof, 'cause that would be too expensive, but we're still talking like it could be a billion bucks.

It would be hard to get City Council to get behind that if the name First Energy is on it, and they've been railing against that.

- The Haslam family, the owners of the team, they want to be in good graces with council and the fans.

They're not exactly strangers to bad public relations opportunities in the last few years.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you know, signing the quarterback to Tom Watson with such baggage, you know, they had no problem with that.

But as they're trying to gain more support from the fans to get a new stadium and for it to be so costly, certainly they wanna be in their good graces and this is a step in that direction to kind of step away from another situation that has a lot of not so great baggage.

- Abby, I mentioned city council members had been talking about taking the name off this, I know a couple of outspoken ones.

Mike Polensek and Brian Casey have spoken up at meetings, and in fact, council pass a resolution.

- Yeah, last May, Brian Casey drove the charge to pass a resolution that encouraged the Browns to remove the name from the stadium, and when the announcement came out yesterday, council sent a pretty swift email saying that they're pleased with the decision, I spoke to Brian Casey yesterday who also said that he's happy about it and that the name on the stadium should reflect something Clevelanders can be proud of.

- Yeah.

Although it's going to reflect whoever pays the most money.

I mean, whether you're proud of it or not, you'll have a name of some corporation on a stadium usually.

It was kind of unusual, Gabe, that Cleveland had Cleveland Brown Stadium when it was first built because it wasn't a naming right deal, it was a real unusual thing of the 30 stadiums.

- Right, and the Haslam's are no strangers to finding money-making opportunities, they found one, they took it.

And moving forward, whoever is the new company or situation that names the stadium or pays to name the stadium, that could be a big economic driver for a new stadium moving forward if they're able to support some funds for the city.

- Karen, State lawmakers had tried to remove the stadium name in the past too, but those efforts didn't seem to go anywhere.

- Yeah, two Northeast Ohio Democrats had proposed removing the name of First Energy from the stadium, representative Jeffrey Crossman and Casey Weinstein, and they also asked the Public Utilities Commission to investigate the naming rights deal.

That was back in 2021.

Nothing has moved on any of that as far as I know.

I was looking on Twitter last night and somebody made the suggestion that Browns fans ought to all chip in a little bit and buy the naming rights and name it "Municipal Stadium" and really bring back the good old days of the Browns.

(laughing) - Yeah, back when you could just, we should just tear the seats out and everyone shows up in t-shirts and shorts in the middle of December or February.

- They used to win a lot (laughing) way back in the day.

- Way back in the cardiac kids days.

Another thing, the federal prosecutors, we've been talking about First Energy and federal prosecutors say they may not even be done with the House Bill Six investigation, even though we've got this conviction of Larry Householder and Matt Board, just a former GOP chairman in Ohio.

Clearly they're gonna be appealing those charges or those convictions, but we also then are not done with the investigation we hear.

- Yeah, I talked to David DeVillers, the former US attorney for the Southern District of Ohio who actually brought the case right after the conviction.

And he had said all along the investigation was continuing and he said, listening to comments that his replacement, the current Southern District of Ohio, US attorney Ken Parker, had made suggested that, "Yeah, this is not over and there are other possible things that could happen here."

And indeed, Ken Parker was actually at the trial of Larry Householder and Matt Borges a couple of times.

So I think that the case is not over.

And so this may be an effort by First Energy to kind of walk away from this and try to rebrand and regroup and figure out what's gonna happen next.

(intense ambient music) - A special grand jury began reviewing this week the investigation by the state's crime lab into the fatal shooting by eight Akron police officers of Jayland Walker last June.

The workings of a grand jury are secret, so we don't know what evidence has been presented or whether witnesses were called.

A decision may come sometime next week, and the city is preparing for protest.

Abby, Anna Huntsman reported on a story this week that many in the city feel on edge as they wait for the grand jury's decision in boarding up buildings and putting up barricades doesn't make anybody feel less tense.

- Right.

Last summer, there were a lot of emotions, this is another black man that was being killed by police.

They wanted justice.

And when you think about boarding up the buildings, you're expecting violence more or less, or riots or something of that sort.

The Walker family's lawyer, Bobby Dello has said that he does not appreciate that because it's kind of laying out an expectation that that will be the case and that county or city leadership does not believe in its citizens to not go that route I guess.

- I should note you're talking about last year, you know this firsthand, you were a reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal covering this story.

- Right.

- The idea, Gabe, that the city is preparing by creating a protest zone, which the police chief says is a place where we just won't have traffic and it'll be more peaceful for people, more space for you to protest.

And the fact that they're boarding up buildings, because you've seen in some communities where people throw things through the windows or whatever it might be, and unrest happens.

He says that's just the smart thing to do, that he hopes people behave peacefully, but we're gonna prepare in case they don't.

What about the optics of that?

- I mean, similar to what Abby said, I think it sends a message, maybe unknowingly that we don't necessarily trust that it's going to be peaceful, we don't necessarily trust that it's going to be done within our own expectations.

I mean, to preemptively board up windows, to preemptive put up fences.

I think, it definitely, I mean, it's going to look, it's going to look like they are in need of protection, it's going to look like that they're expecting that.

So I think, we have a tendency these days to think about these things and directly go back to the summer of 2020 where there were a lot of protests in the name of Black Lives Matter.

And things did get, I guess to some people out of hand in a lot of ways.

So I think, it's easy for law enforcement to be drawn to that, but to neglect the other side of things to say, "Hmm, I'm already having a predetermined notion about what's going to happen", I think kind of neglects the feelings that people are having where they're upset.

So it's kind of putting up these guards and not really listening to the words of people saying like, "Look, we have a distrust in the system and we want to address this and this is how we're going to go about it."

- But given history and what you've seen happen in some communities, and you mentioned 2020 and Cleveland, there was a lot of property damage, that type of stuff, and these kinds of protests.

You can't board up a window that's already been broken.

So their thought is, we're just being preemptively smart.

- Yeah.

- In protecting this area so that if something like that does happen, we're prepared.

- And I think there needs to be somewhat of a prove it situation.

I think the boards are up, the fences are up, and it's up to Akron citizens and people who are gonna be out there protesting to do it peacefully, to prove the situation that it's gonna go the way that both parties think it should go.

- We've seen a number of these kinds of situations to come about where there are protests and you'll get coverage of it on the news and then it kind of moves on.

What about Akron being at the center of yet another one of these responses to whether it'll be an indictment or non-indictment?

And again, I think if these police officers are indicted, I don't think you're gonna see the same concern police have if they don't get indicted.

And I think that's one of the things people are thinking, "Okay, maybe somebody already knows something."

- Oh, absolutely, and there's this, I mean, you can go to any national publication and find a story about Jayland Walker and you can find coverage on what's going on and stories about anticipating what's going on, in any publication, that's a national publication, not just what's happening here at Idea Street (chuckles) and where that could be a journal or whatever.

So there's a lot of eyes on this and it's just, it's unfortunately another name on a list of black men who were involved in the killing or.

- Were killed.

- Who were killed by police.

And it's not just Akron.

I mean, this is a thing that's happened across Ohio several times the last few years, and I think it really has a perception of what Northeast Ohio is like.

And you have two cities, the two largest cities in the region that are fighting for oversight, who are fighting for police reform.

And I think that's kind of at the bigger picture of this, is this is an opportunity to test that reform, this is an opportunity to say, "Are things changing since Tamir Rice and are things changing over the last few years?"

And I think people are gonna be looking at the situation across the nation as a test to progress in the name of police reform.

- Mm-hmm.

(intense ambient music) - The special grand jury's decision will come as the Akron mayoral primary race reaches its final weeks.

Seven Democrats are running to succeed Mayor Dan Horrigan.

No Republicans made the primary ballot.

So the winner on May 2nd is most likely the next mayor, barring any big time independent getting into the race.

Gabe, police accountability and reform in the aftermath of Jayland Walker's death remained an issue, it was one of the questions asked by members of the public, this debate was interesting because it was people who submitted their questions and then were able to come to the event and ask them themselves.

But that was, again, a theme.

- And it's no surprise, I mean, like police relationships with citizens is top of mind for Akron people.

And it has been for a long time.

I mean, obviously what's happened to Jayland Walker and the Grand Jury trial has people, as we said on edge, but it's top of mind now.

You had people at the debate yesterday with signs reading "Justice for Jayland".

So this is definitely something people talk about.

It was a big topic in the election last year in Akron.

So it's really not at all a surprise for people in Akron to want to continue this topic.

And then when you consider the current mayor, Dan Horrigan, he got a lot of flack for the way things were handled with Jayland Walker's situation.

So people in Akron want someone who's going to be making police relations, police reform a priority.

So to hammer on these candidates, that's absolutely not surprising.

- A wide range of questions, Abby, that were asked by the public.

Anything else stand out to you?

- Yeah, I think that with the public safety, just going back to that, you have Shammas Malik who helped actually draft legislation that was passed in a voter ballot initiative last November that established this police oversight board.

And there was a lot of criticism of him by another candidate, Mark Greer, talking about how one of the candidates, Imokhai Okolo was failed, he was failed to be seated by the council members and he kind of took aim at Shammas for requiring a super majority of council members to approve this candidate.

And in the end, he was not seated and they had to seat someone else.

And Malik basically said, "It's not the way the legislation was written, it was a failure of the council members that refused to seat him because police union did not support Okolo."

- Right, so they dug into that safety issue pretty hard.

I thought one of the things, I was there at the debate helping with the production of it, I thought, and Rick Jackson, by the way, was a moderator.

Andrew Meyer helped facilitate the questions in the audience, both from Idea Stream Public Media.

I thought one of the more interesting questions was a woman who, named Nancy McDowell, whose question was asked by Rick Jackson because she couldn't make it to the event.

She said, "I have three daughters, two PhDs and one MD that have all left Akron.

How can we make Akron a place people want to live and work in?"

And I heard that and I heard Cleveland when they said Akron and I heard Toledo when they said Akron and I heard all of these cities, I guess except for Columbus, 'cause that's where everybody's kid is going now.

(chuckles) - Yeah.

- Including mine.

But yeah.

What about that Gabe, the idea of basically brain drain?

- The brain drain.

I mean, this is something that, as a, I'll can still consider myself a young professional, me and my peers talk about this all the time.

- Well, you're not old.

Well, thank you, (laughing) I appreciate that.

You know, it's this concept that does Ohio, not just Akron, not just Cleveland, not just Toledo, but Ohio as a whole, isn't an attractive place for young people to want to come to settle.

Every voting statist will tell you that younger generations tend to be a little bit more progressive, a little more liberal.

A lot of policies in Ohio are not heading in that direction, whether you talk about reproductive rights, whether you talk about gun laws.

So I think that there's a lot of things where you wonder, "Okay, there's a lot of reasons people are leaving Ohio, how can you make maybe Akron different than the rest of Ohio or Cleveland different than the rest of Ohio?"

And obviously economics is a huge part of this.

I think there needs to be an, people want an economic driver to retain that talent.

I mean, who's the most famous person from Akron, Ohio?

We talk about LeBron James, right?

I mean.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- Right, crazy, right?

Now he's obviously an outlier to this situation, but it's hard to not see him as a role model of a guy who found great success in Miami, who found great success in Los Angeles.

And not to make everything about sports, it's certainly not that, but I think people need to, people want to see ways that their kids and young people can find success in the 330 as I'll say, where I was born and raised.

- Medina.

- Yeah.

- Close enough.

- You know, it covers a lot of ground.

(laughing) - I want to end with a shout out to Shirley Simon, another one of the residents who I think asked the icebreaker question somewhere midway through the debate.

She said, "Which one of these candidates would you wanna serve under as the deputy mayor?"

And it was just hilarious because people were really thrown by that.

Tara Mosley, I think she literally spun in circles and then they kind of each talked about the qualities of the other candidates.

And I think that's, to me, it was an interesting moment because we've seen on the national scale, and the statewide scale, all of this acrimony between candidates.

And there was some at this debate, but they were forced to say what was good about somebody else, and we got that perspective, Abby.

- Right.

So you saw Shammas Malik and Tara Mosley picking each other, obviously they're the two candidates that are both on council right now.

Mosley seemed to be a popular pick.

(chuckles) Joshua Schaffer, who is a cell phone store manager, he also picked Mosley.

And it's just nice to see some lighthearted amicable back and forth in banter.

(chuckles) - It was good.

Jeff Willhite, who is a council member for the county, also got a couple of picks.

What was really awkward there though is at Marco Somerville, the deputy mayor in Akron said, "Yeah, Jeff, I think he'd be the guy I'd pick.

He's really smart, he gets things done."

And then the very next person that speak was Jeff.

And they said, "What about you?"

And it was sort of like that somebody says, "I love you."

And you say, "That's nice."

(laughing) Because he then just went, "Well, I love everybody here."

And he didn't pick Somerville back, which was, I think a funny moment in the debate.

Anyway, these debates have all kinds of those moments.

That was the second one put on by Idea Stream.

You can find it at ideastream.org by the way, if you wanna watch back at both of those debates, and then make your informed decision, the primary is coming up, it's May 2nd.

(intense ambient music) The new Cuyahoga County administration wants to pour money into the existing Cuyahoga County jail while moving ahead with plans to cite a new jail.

Something that caused a lot of controversy last year, Abby, what led the new administration to the conclusion a new facility was the answer, which I don't think really was ever a question?

- Right.

I will, I guess, that was kind of the question, are they gonna build one?

Are they not gonna build one?

Are they gonna fix the existing site?

Renaine didn't give a lot of details in the press release yesterday about the jail, but he basically re-upped concerns of maintaining this jail long-term, saying it would be a challenge, and it's just easier to start from scratch.

- And one of the things that they've talked about is maybe we don't need as big a jail if we don't have as many people in the jail.

So he made one move, which was substantially to hire an expeditor, somebody that would make sure that the jail isn't full.

Like is there a possibility that this person could be released or that there could be some diversion or some of those kinds of things?

But Gabe, somebody whose basic job is to make sure the jail isn't packed with people that shouldn't necessarily be there.

- Right, I mean, I think that, another thing that people have concerns about the location of the jail is they want it to be accessible.

I mean, these are human beings in this jail.

So yes, you want it to be a place that is safe for them, a place that is comfortable for however many people are there, but they want it to be a place where families can visit and easily access, so you want to have access to proper RTA, public transit, to have it in a very far away place that a bus can't get to is a concern for a lot of people.

- I mean, it can get there, it just isn't a route.

I mean.

- Right, yeah.

- Conceivably, but Garfield Heights off of the bridge there, the 480 Bridge, it's a hall, it's 11 miles from downtown, that's one of the reasons it was discounted originally.

I mean, it's a county jail, you can put it anywhere in Cuyahoga County.

- Sure, but you want it to be centralized in a sense.

I mean, there's two sides to this river and there's people on the further west that wanna be able to access it.

And the transportation road location was pretty central.

I think it sat in the northeast corner of Ward three, which is pretty center of the city.

So I think people want it to have as perfect a situation as possible, but that certainly has its challenges.

- In addition to people getting there, it's having people who are having court dates get there, the jail folks have to transport them from a jail to the courthouse, which is downtown, unless they're talking about building a court tower in the new spot too.

Also, lawyers who have to get there and represent their clients and have offices downtown.

There's a lot arguing for a downtown spot and a lot arguing against it because there just isn't the space for it.

- Right.

So yeah, there's a lot of open space in this county outside of downtown.

So you kind of see how both things goes.

I will say, I think for a lot of people, it's easier to empathize with the families of the people in the jail rather than the people representing them.

- Good point.

Abby, do we know what types of short term fixes the county wants to the existing jail?

- Not really.

They didn't give many details again about the updates they want to make.

But last year, the public works department for the county said that it would cost about $19 million to make the required fixes to keep the jail quote unquote "operational".

So we don't really know what that looks like.

And I'm not privy (chuckles) to what the jail looks like on the inside either.

- I don't know if you've ever been in that jail, but it not pleasant.

Not a whole lot of light, not a whole lot of window.

I mean, if you go in there, I don't think you're gonna have a good frame of mind.

And that's one of the things they're talking about in terms of a renovated jail or a new jail I mean.

- [Gabe] What were you doing in that jail?

(chuckles) - Good point.

(intense ambient music) A new law that could force state agencies to allow oil and gas drilling on Ohio owned lands, including state parks went into effect last week.

But the state is still working on establishing the process to approve drilling lease requests.

For that reason, the state rejected an offer from Encino Energy of Texas to frack under Salt Fork State Park in Gurnsey County.

Big, huge wide open spaces there.

And the idea is it could be fracked because the law had changed, Karen to say, instead of could, consider these requests, the state must consider them.

- What's interesting about this law is this permission to, or this change in language to make it so that state agencies and the state must consider permitting on frack and fracking on state lands.

It was added to a bill that would change the limits on how many chickens and other live, poultry livestock people need to buy.

So it was added into a poultry bill, and that's one of the things that people who are trying to stop this law from taking effect, have seized on saying, "That violates what's called the single subject rule."

So that means you can't just add a whole bunch of things that don't relate to one another and pass a bill that way.

So that lawsuit is still out there.

But right now the law has gone into effect and a judge has not stopped the law from going into effect.

But the state has not yet come up with the process by which companies can ask for permits to frack and drill in state parks.

And that process is going on, there was a hearing on Monday, there's another hearing where they're gonna announce the decision coming up this coming Monday.

But the people who showed up at the hearing were obviously very concerned about drilling and fracking in state parks.

They've been urging the state's Oil and Gas Commission to back away from this to find another, to find some way to not approve these permits.

I don't know if there's going to be a way that they can find that because the way the law was written.

- So when they do frack in a place like that, what kind of assurances do you have that it's not going to ruin somebody's time in the cabins or the lodge?

Is there some regulation in terms of the kind of fracking operation that'll happen?

- Well, I think the oil and gas industry and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association actually did show up at that hearing last Monday or this past Monday to talk a little bit about their concerns about the rulemaking process, but did not address the concerns from people who are seriously worried about the effects on the parks and the environmental damage, the economic damage, they brought up how many people visit state parks every year and the economic impact of that.

I guess, the oil and gas industry says that there won't be visible impacts, that everything will be fine.

But there's certainly a lot of skepticism on that part.

And I think that the state is gonna have to potentially answer that question and deal with that when it comes to being honest about the regulation and the kind of guardrails that are gonna be set up in place if indeed these companies are permitted to drill and frack on state lands.

One other thing that is interesting here is that Senate president Matt Huffman has said that he thinks a state income tax cut can be financed through drilling and fracking on state lands.

So it certainly seems like there are state lawmakers who are in favor of this thinking it's going to be an economic boom.

- There's a lot of money being dangled too.

When I mentioned Encino Energy, they're talking about a couple billion bucks for Salt Fork.

- And that's where I think Matt Huffman is coming up with that because certainly an income tax cut or going to a state flat tax or whatever, lawmakers are gonna decide, "We'll see them back next week and they'll be talking about the state budget."

It will be in the billions of dollars potentially.

And so will this be enough to backfill the loss of revenue and make sure that a state income tax cut could go forward?

But there's also the question of sustainability.

I mean, these are finite resources and we saw during the shale boom a couple of years ago that these things have a lifespan and companies come in and they drill and then they leave when they're done.

And what's gonna be the impact of that on the economy, the parks, everything?

(intense ambient music) - Monday on The Sound of Ideas on WKSU, sociologist and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Matthew Desmond joins us to talk about his new book, "Poverty by America".

Desmond argues that the rest of us reap the benefits of keeping others in poverty.

(tranquil ambient music) I'm Mike McIntyre, Thank you so much for watching, and stay safe.

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