Governor Mike DeWine released his final biennial budget proposal this week.

Ideastream uncovered revealing text from Cleveland City Council members and a new Cuyahoga County jail complex will cost a whopping $900 million.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Governor DeWine offered his priorities for the state's next two year budget this week.

It includes a hike in cigaret taxes to fund a child tax credit and a doubling of the sports betting tax to fund professional sports venues in Ohio.

The legislature will likely make many changes.

Cleveland City council members in a text thread defended council member Joe Jones, who was under investigation for harassing or bullying five women.

They cast doubt on the claims of one and threatened to retaliate against the city vendor that raised the allegations.

The council will now get professional conduct training.

The Metro Health system's Board of Trustees faces yet another lawsuit from yet another dismissed CEO Erica Steed sued this week, alleging discrimination and harassment and building a new Cuyahoga County jail complex in Garfield Heights.

Got a lot pricier.

The estimated price tag of $750 million has risen to 900 million, and groundbreaking is still more than a year away.

Joining me for the roundtable from Ideastream Public Media, supervising producer of Newscast, Glenn Forbes and environment reporter Zaria Johnson.

In Columbus, Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

The governor offered his priorities for the state's next two year budget, and it includes a doubling of the tax on sports betting from 20% to 40% to fund professional sports venues and youth sports programs in Ohio.

Other highlights of the $218 billion budget over two years includes fully funding public education, including near doubling of the CIGARET tax from one from a buck 60 to $3.10, and that would fund $1,000 per child tax credit.

Guaranteed admission to a house public universities for students who graduate in the top 5% of their class, and a new program for kindergarten through third grade students to have eye exams and glasses.

Lots of different things, lots of, I guess, peanut butter pretzels in there for you.

Karen, before we dig into the details, this is the governor's wish list and we've seen his wishes disappear in previous budget budget cycles.

We expect that would be the case again.

We've also seen him get some of the things he wants.

You might recall in his first budget, for instance, the transportation budget, which there are four budgets in the state of Ohio, and one of them is the transportation budget.

It's a separate budget that needs to be signed by March 31st.

But in that one, in his first year, he proposed a gas tax increase.

He got a gas tax increase, not as big as he had proposed, but was there in the last budget.

There was an expansion of vouchers up to 400% of the poverty level.

That was his idea.

And then the legislature went and ran with that and expanded it to make it vouchers that are for anybody, any family, regardless of their financial level.

So we do see him get some of what he wants.

But certainly the legislature comes in and puts their fingerprints all over it most.

Quite often we look at that as being a tax increase.

There is or a tax cut, rather.

There is no tax cut in this budget for an income tax.

And in fact, DeWine said pretty clearly that he's been governor for six years now, and he has not had any company say that they did not choose to come to Ohio or they need to come to Ohio because of Ohio's taxes.

He said that taxes are very competitive here.

So I feel like that was an interesting shot toward the legislature, as they are certainly looking at the potential for tax cuts and even a flat tax, even eliminating the income tax.

These are ideas that we keep seeing over and over from Republicans in the legislature.

So what's the process now?

He's presented his proposals.

Which body takes it up and what are their deadlines?

What are we going to see?

Well, the House has already started to take it up.

The House Finance Committee met this week to look at the budget, to hear testimony from Budget Director Kim Mechanics.

And then we'll start to hear from all the other different agencies that are in the budget, and then they'll come up with their own proposal.

Their plan is to pass the budget by April 20th, which is Easter break, as lawmakers like to take that time off.

And then it goes to the Senate.

The Senate makes its changes, they pass it, and then it all has to come back to a conference committee.

They have to figure it all out, send it to the governor.

He has to go over it and line item veto items that he doesn't like.

All this has to be done by the end of June.

End of June.

All right.

So we've got a long road ahead of us.

And I should say that there have been plenty of times that it is not done by the end of June.

And that does just kind of delay things.

It puts some payments kind of in limbo, so to speak.

But everybody does get paid eventually.

It just makes the process a little bit more uncertain in those weeks or days when it's not signed quite yet.

All right.

Let's dig into some of the details.

The budget fully funds the third phase of the Patterson School funding plan, but lawmakers have signaled that that spending is not sustainable.

Well, it fully funds it up until the 2022 year.

So there is a question about whether it's fully funded in terms of current costs.

And that's been an issue, I think, throughout this fair school funding proposal.

And again, I'm terribly simplifying this, but basically the fair school funding plan was trying to push back against the claims that Ohio's school funding system was unconstitutional because it's based on property taxes.

This factors in property taxes and income tax into a district's overall the money that they get from the state for student aid.

And so that's what the fair School funding plan is intended to be.

It was a six year phase in to try to bring school districts up to a financial level that would satisfy this.

This is the third or the final phase in that six year period.

DeWine wants to fully fund it up to 2022 levels.

The legislature has said.

Speaker Matt Huffman in particular said this spending increase is unsustainable.

We're concerned about this.

And so we're very interested to see what happens with the legislature and where they fall on school funding and how much they're going to put toward it.

All right.

Let's talk about sports betting.

40% is a whopping tax even for those who are used to losing 100% by betting on the Browns, It would generate an estimated $288 million more in the next two fiscal years for stadium projects and youth sports.

DeWine has indicated it might help the state contribute to a new or renovated Browns stadium.

How's it going over?

Well, I think DeWine may be a little bit tired of the continuous parade of requests and questions about stadium funding projects in the state, getting involved in those.

And so he has suggested that the tax on gambling operators, sports gambling operators, not the tax that individuals pay, but the tax on the operators go up to 40% and that's interesting because when it first went into a place in 2021, it was 10%.

He requested it go up to 20% in the last budget and now is suggesting 40%.

And he said that money would potentially go toward a fund that could be used for new sports stadiums, for sports development complexes, for youth sports, whatever.

But to take it away from the general revenue fund, away from taxpayer funds and put it in another fund, that would be totally separate.

And so I think that's where he wants to steer some of this conversation.

But he's already running into some resistance, I think, from lawmakers who are saying this is a huge increase and this is not where we want to go right now.

But we'll we'll we'll have to wait to see on that.

The House Speaker, Matt Hoffman, the minority leader, Alison Russo, the Republican and Democrat, both say they're skeptical of it.

And interesting Now, I finally understand when I read that Alison Russo said, how are we quadrupling it?

And I said, wait, it went from 20 to 40.

What's going on with her?

Math.

It started at ten.

Yes, that's right.

That's her.

That's what she means by that.

And when you go into even the House Finance Committee chair, we have a new House Finance Committee chair in Brian Stewart.

He's a Republican from Central Ohio.

He has said, hey, in two football seasons, we've gone from 10% to 40%.

This is a huge increase.

He is skeptical as his bride, Rhode Sweeney, the Democratic ranking member who says she wants to hear some more vetting on this one.

Well, first of all, when Governor DeWine said about the sports sports gambling companies, they're getting Ohioans to lose massive amounts of money every year.

I felt personally attacked by that.

That's number one.

Sorry, I didn't realize you were drinking their coffee.

So that's.

So that's.

Yeah, drinking coffee.

I should I should.

I should specify.

So that's number one.

Number two, whenever there's a tax increase on anything, we always talk about how the companies are going to pass it on to consumers.

So he can say this is a tax increase on the sports gambling companies.

But does that mean that Ohioans will pay more on their winnings?

Does that mean that the companies will kind of change their odds in Ohio, meaning you, rather than banning betting $105 to win 100, now you have to bet 115 to win 100 or something like that.

To put that in simple terms.

Karen, go ahead.

I hear you.

I just I think this is not only is this a way I think maybe DeWine looks at as a way to kind of deal with this whole sports stadium money request.

But also, he's not been a fan of the sports gambling industry since it started.

He feels that they're too aggressive.

They go after people.

They shouldn't go after young men in particular.

And I think this is a way that he's kind of pushing back on what they've been doing, as well as the continuous requests for money for a sports stadiums.

We've seen this too, really, when casino gambling came in and then sports gambling comes in.

We've even seen it a little bit with with marijuana where the people vote to have this particular whatever in Ohio.

Right.

They vote to have this particular issue in Ohio and approve it.

And then Governor DeWine and the lawmakers kind of start, you know, tweaking it.

And it seems like, you know, he is such a socially conservative governor, He didn't want this stuff in the state to begin with.

And that's kind of what it seems like.

And then they try to restrict it as much as they can.

They took away prop beddings, prop bets from from from college sports and things like that.

So they've been kind of manipulated.

Manipulating might be the wrong word, but they've been changing these things as soon as they've been approved by voters taxes since he's got cigaret tax going up, he's got the sports betting tax going up.

I mean, there's no secret about that.

He's it's clear Kieran were where his priorities lie.

Well, yeah and I think that that's actually legislative priorities in some respects.

I mean certainly the legislature is not a fan of marijuana and you've seen a lot of efforts to try to make changes in that law that voters approved.

But that's the thing about a law that voters approved.

The legislature can make changes to those if it's a constitutional amendment, it's a lot harder to make changes.

You have to go back to the voters and change those things.

Like you might recall with the casino gambling issue, we had to go back and revote on where the Columbus Casino was going to be because the original proposal had it in downtown, had been moved out onto the west side of Columbus.

So this is I think sentences are seen as a way to allow people who would engage in a particular activity to pay for a particular activity as opposed to spreading it to everybody who may not want to attend sporting events or might not want to do some of these other things that sin taxes do support.

Also, a change in marijuana taxes.

Right now, a third of the marijuana taxes go to a fund that benefits host cities.

The governor would redirect that money to the general fund to pay for jails.

Yeah, and that's got some people a little bit upset.

My State House news bureau colleague Sara Donaldson talked to some township trustees who say, hey, this is the money that we were told and we've been counting on using.

And now they're going to just pull it out from under us and direct it to somewhere else to jails, which is a big, big, important thing for local governments to deal with.

But yeah, that's that's potentially another area where DeWine could have some issue with local governments who are saying, hey, we don't like this idea.

I will tell you, though, that one of the other ideas in the budget is to promote or to spend about $1,000,000,000 more on local governments in the local government fund and also about $1,000,000,000 more for libraries, which is interesting to note, too.

All right.

Karen can talk about this for an hour, but I do want to take just a couple more minutes because I kind of teased a few other things.

We just at least mentioned them.

The Ohio C program would literally help young school kids to see.

How will that work?

Yeah, it would allow for kids to get eye exams.

Kids who fail eye exams at school can get more thorough eye exams, can get glasses if they need them.

The whole idea being if you can't see at school, then it's really hard for you to perform well at school.

The governor not only proposed automatic admission to those graduating in the top 5% of their class in Ohio, but he'd continue the Merit Scholarship program that offers $5,000 in scholarship money for those who go to public universities in the state.

He's trying to keep the smart kids here.

Yeah, and this 5% of each high school class getting $5,000, that's been a big success.

And so he's trying to really keep those students here and to have them consider public universities in Ohio as opposed to just taking their their smarts and going elsewhere.

The estimate for the Cuyahoga County Jail complex and Garfield Heights was originally 750 million.

This week we learned it's 900 million and construction isn't set to begin until August of 2026.

Glenn, what's with the 150 million more bucks?

Yeah.

So Jeff Appelbaum is the chief consultant on this project.

He's with project Management Consultants.

I suppose that's fitting.

But regardless of that, yeah, this estimate is now up to about $889 million and some change that $785 million in design and building cost, they have built in $100 million projected for county costs.

These are things like permits and insurance and any other, you know, costs that the county might incur according to Appelbaum, they have built in these cost escalations over the next five years.

That's inflationary issues, right?

He's saying that hopefully those projections are wrong, it could go down.

But he also said that has not been the history in the past.

So they're using something that's a little more conservative, according to him, and they're saying this is going to be $889 million, get ready for it.

Essentially now financing.

You mentioned that construction won't start until really the end of the summer of 2026.

The financing on this won't close until early 2026.

That's their timeline.

So there's still a fair amount to be determined here.

And when you say financing, going out for bond, borrowing the money, but they'd pay it back with this tax that the that the public approved in 2023.

Correct.

A 40 year extension of the quarter percent sales tax to fund this facility in Garfield Heights massive facility.

You know the trend now is to go toward this campus idea the figures on this 852,000 square feet, almost 1900 beds, 20,000 square foot professional development building, which would include for the sheriff's department, they would separate inmates with mental health needs, detox, different security levels, things of that nature.

So it's a massive project.

And now we're learning that the latest projection is about $889 million, plus a far cry from what they have now.

Another former CEO of the MetroHealth system is suing the hospital doctor, Erica Steed, who was fired in August, alleges harassment and discrimination.

Another suit by her predecessor, Dr. Akram Boutros, is still pending.

Larry.

Now it's the second suit.

There was already a suit from Akram Boutros, who was dismissed and similar charges against the board for its improper handling of his employment in this case.

Let's talk about what Steed is claiming in the lawsuit when she says harassment.

When she says discrimination, what does she mean?

Yes.

So she says she's claiming that she was subjected to what she calls a 360 degree review in her first year as CEO that had one of those those hurt.

Yeah, you feel her pain.

And and she's saying that other people who served in that position before her weren't subjected to that same type, that same level of review.

But she's also highlighting that as recently as March 2024, she had there were favorable performance reviews, even though the reason that she the site they cited for her poor termination was her poor performance.

And then she's also suing for about excess of $25,000 in damages and also accuses the board of defamation after her termination, like sharing her travel expenses with the media.

Right.

Media reported on the fact she traveled a lot of places.

And how do we get that information?

Apparently, because the board had released it, although.

Yeah, the question is whether that makes them culpable.

When you say in excess of $25,000, every lawsuit has to say that.

So we're talking about way in excess because there was already a negotiation where she wanted to be made whole from from funds, the rest of her salary and some lost wages.

I know in Akron Boudreau's case its loss of possible future earnings.

So let's talk about the reaction from MetroHealth.

It was not they didn't mince words.

Yeah, they like you said, they called her allegations baseless.

And they also said that they're prepared to defend itself.

And all the individuals that were named in the lawsuit against her accusations.

So it I mean, that pretty much sums it up.

They're ready to fight this.

And I mentioned already that Akron Boutrous has also has a suit active against them.

He filed a suit.

He withdrew it when he was ill and getting treatment.

Now that he is better, he has refiled that lawsuit.

Included in that our ethics commission findings and other findings from state officials that show essentially there was no crime committed and no ethics violation given That's something that he thinks will bolster his case.

But yeah, you've got now a hospital system that the public relies on.

This is, you know, this is a hospital for people who aren't swimming in money, and it does in a very important job in the community.

And now you've got a board that's that's really occupied with two very serious cases.

Yeah.

And, you know, I was born at MetroHealth, so this kind of hit home for me in that way.

But I definitely will say that from the people who the hospital serves it, it could be concerning for them, especially like you mentioned, seeing the board tied up with these cases and these lawsuits and maybe raising questions for them, like what does this mean for my health care and who's focusing on the health care side of things at this point in time.

And a text thread among city council members contained a comment by one that appeared to be retaliation against a city vendor destination Cleveland.

Shortly after the nonprofit raised concerns about the conduct of another council member, Joe Jones.

An investigation later found Jones violated the council's sexual and non-sexual harassment policies involving a number of women.

Council President Blaine Griffin said that council would hire a consultant to look at policies to, quote, deal with the culture at City Hall.

Glenn I was working with Abby over the weekend and Stephanie checked Olinsky as this story unfolded, and it got a little bit bizarre.

But first there's this text thread in which member Anthony Hairston is making comments and his first comment that he makes that we see in this text thread that we were what we requested was a destination.

Cleveland will never get my support.

Now, this is right after destination Cleveland had me.

This was back before the investigation was completed when they made the allegation.

And Richard Starr giving the 100% five times emoji.

They're clearly talking about the allegations that are going.

And then you see more in there.

That's basically saying, hey, he asked for it, gave his number out because everybody has a number like basically saying we don't believe that this was anything untoward.

Yeah, they're clearly in support of Joe Jones, one of their colleagues.

There is some conversation about, you know, you're going to kind of have to watch the way you talk with people, the way you interact with people.

I wouldn't say making light of it, but getting up to that point, maybe.

But then there's this line Destination Cleveland will never get support from me again, and that raises flags in terms of retaliation.

Like, you know, you've made this accusation against a colleague.

You're not going to get my support.

They're not just saying, well, we've got to watch what we say around destination Cleveland.

He's saying destination Cleveland will never get support from me again, which is a different ball of wax.

What's interesting is that was, again, the first comment in the thread.

And so when Abby said to him, are you talking about the Joe Jones allegation?

Because right after that you are talking a lot about the stuff about Joe Jones when you say that, because clearly the timing of that and he says, no, I'm not talking about that.

And she said, all right, well, then what were you talking about?

He said, That's for me to know and you to find out.

I mean, you know, it was just a bizarre, I thought a bizarre answer.

But more bizarre was she called to make to ask questions and basically say, hey, I see this text thread, What do you mean by it is?

And both of them indicated that they stand by the words that you saw on the text thread.

But both of them independently indicated by by saying, I go to the bathroom standing up.

Yes, both of them said that.

And I thought to myself, what are you trying to convey with that, with that message?

Well, I think a couple of things.

When I read through this story, when I read through through the text, Councilmember Hairston and Councilmember Starr are they communicate in a like fashion, right.

Similar ways of communicating.

They both use the same euphemism for essentially being a man of their word.

I think that's what they're that's what they're saying.

I stand up when I use the bathroom.

I don't sit down.

If I said it, I meant it.

And then Starr says, I stand up when I use the bathroom.

I stand on business whenever I need to.

So basically what they're saying is they're not backing down.

Yeah, from what they said, say it.

This is the way it took.

This is what took Reddit by storm.

Yes.

Like everyone just sort of following my post, they also said the bathroom.

They didn't indicate what kinds people were thinking.

Number two is probably not a good that's probably not a great idea.

And it reminds me of a Chappelle's Show sketch that I'm not going to get into right now, but that's neither here nor there.

This turned into quite a text thread among council members with the Dean of Council, Mike Pulitzer, who's been there since 1978, encouraging, you know, some some unity in saying let's not, you know, basically get to the point of no return on this.

There's Rebecca moore who's a new council person.

She found herself in the middle of this where other council members are accusing her of running straight to the media.

What she said to them was, hey, this isn't this isn't appropriate.

I don't think.

You know, she basically spoke up and and they're like the other part of it.

And then they said, well, clearly, she must have been the one that went to the meeting.

As I said, we had a public records request for this, but she must have been the one that tipped off the media and and said an indicated to Abby, well, maybe we were just trying to smoke somebody out.

Maybe this was just kind of a little trap that we were setting.

That's what people do all the time.

It's just, again, it got more and more bizarre rather than listen, we support our colleague and and, you know, maybe that text read because we didn't think it was public was a little out of line and Stephanie House Jones Ward seven saying refrain from texting whatever conversation actions you believe are needed to have have those in person.

So there were all kinds of council members weighing in on this.

And as you mentioned, the bottom line Council president Blaine Griffin saying everybody's going to take this retraining to ensure that, you know, there's an understanding that retaliation will not be tolerated and just ensure cultural changes that strengthen how we work together as a legislative body.

That's the word from Council President Blaine Griffin on this retraining for all council members.

Outstanding reporting by Abbi Marshall.

Stephanie, Jacqueline, skin yourself.

Great job.

Well, they really dug into it.

And I think that's an important thing that we do.

That's why the public documents are public and we request those and just make sure that things are on the up and up.

There's still a question, too, about whether there should be a private texter out among council members, all of them together talking about public business.

All of that should be stuff that we hear in the public.

And finally, the Super Bowl is this weekend and the Browns will not win.

I would bet on that.

But I can't afford the taxes.

Who you got Karen chiefs are Eagles blizzard meteor strike I yeah yeah.

Okay no and Glenn I believe I just want I want one word that's chiefs are eagles That was a good answer from Carrie.

You're not going to get one word That was a good answer from Karen.

I really don't have a lot of time.

I kind of like the Eagles here.

I'm sick of the Chiefs, but I've never been an Eagles fan that I like.

So wait, Mike Edelman is an Eagles fan and he's our education director and a great guy there.

You met one.

Most Eagles fans that I've met I don't like.

Their fans are kind of obnoxious.

I'm rooting for my best to win.

So I stopped giving those massive amounts of money to the sports gambling companies that Mike DeWine says I wanted on the record that I do not bet on.

Sports Zorya I have a feeling you're looking to me.

Earlier we talked about this.

You were like, not really caring about that.

Yeah, I mean, I'm here for the halftime show always, so I'm really rooting for Kendrick Lamar.

He's bringing Sizzle out.

But I did see online people are saying if the Eagles when we might get a really good episode of Abba Elementary out of it.

So I'm also rooting for the Eagles I guess at this point.

Yeah, I like that.

I'm pretty excited about Kendrick as well and I'd love to see who else he gets out there on the stage with them because I think it's going to be star studded.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 80 97w KSU nationwide shooting deaths have fallen since the COVID pandemic, but not in some communities.

Cleveland and Mansfield, for example.

We'll explore a new series from Ideastream Public Media that focuses on gun violence.

And let me take a minute on this 60th birthday of Vizzy to say thank you to viewers like you and WBEZ.

I'll be 60 soon, too.

Don't worry.

60 is the new 40.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.