Unverified rumors abou immigration enforcement actions flooded social media channels locally as protests persist in Minnesota.

The Cleveland Clini wants to add a level one trauma center to its main campus.

Two others already exist.

Is Cleveland big enough for three?

And First Energy wants permission to have more and longer power outages.

Ideas is next.

Hello, and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Social media reports were filled with unverified speculation about immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in northeast Ohio over the last week.

This, as the president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Ac to quell protests in Minnesota.

Cleveland Police said it's not their job to enforce general federal immigration laws here.

The Cleveland Clinic wants t ramp up its emergency services at Main campus, to be certified as a level one trauma center by 2028, joining University Hospitals and Metro Health, which said the decision by the clinic is alarming.

First energy wants regulator to weaken standards, giving it more leeway to have more and longer power outages.

Meanwhile, a Cleveland public power transformer explosion on Cleveland's west side provided a firework show, cut power to local residents and damaged homes and appliances.

And the attorney general handed a setback to the effor to repeal a new law that changes the recreational marijuana statute passed by voters.

Joining me to discuss these and other stories from this week, Idea Stream deputy editor for News Glenn Forbes and reporter Abigail Boater in Columbus State Hous News Bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Social media was fille locally with unverified reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities in Cleveland.

As people continue to see the Ice mobilization and protests play out in Minnesota.

Cleveland Police took the extraordinary step on Wednesda to issue a statement saying it's not the cop's job to enforc general federal immigration law.

So, Glenn, what else did th Cleveland police statement say?

Yeah they said it's important to note Cleveland officers will never ask about an individual's immigration status.

Essentially, what they're saying is we're here to protect public safety.

We're here to go after, you know, violent crime, violent crime, suspects and things of that nature.

And it's interesting, when you look at that in the backdrop of several year of people on council and Mayor Justin Bibb, in fact, saying where 2 or 300 officers short, you know, under budget.

So what they're saying is we've got to take care of ourselves first.

We got to take care of violent crime first.

You know, we're not responsible and we're not going to we're not responsible for enforcing general immigration law.

Was was the crux of the statement.

Sounds like it could be kind of a dangerous statement, though, given the fact that the federal government has said you got to get on board, and if you aren't, then you're a sanctuary city.

We're going to defund you.

We know that our mayor heads up the Democratic Mayors Association and has said some things about the Trump administration.

So I just wonder if Cleveland worries about where it's positioning itself when you have an administration that clearly will take action if it thinks you're not on board with their policies?

Yeah.

Just observing, it's a statement that kind of tries to walk the line, you know, it's not thumbing its nose.

It's not as, maybe it's charged as some of the rhetoric coming out of, Minnesota between the governor and the mayor of Minneapolis.

But it is saying, you know, it's not saying we're not going to cooperate.

What it's saying is it's not our responsibility, and we have other priorities.

And so I do think they're kind of trying to walk that line.

This is interesting, Mike.

I think all of this started with a Facebook post from former state senator Nina Turner on Sunday night.

And it says, I've seen unconfirmed reports of Ice agents knocking on doors on the West Side talking about Cleveland today in the Denison Avenue area.

It's important to know your rights.

It seems like that's what kind of kicked off the firestorm.

An idea stream reporter.

Gabriel Kramer called Margaret Wong and Associates who, came out with a video with one of their attorneys talking about the riots and things like that.

And they said, you know, that was kind of the impetus for that.

That Facebook post was kind of the impetus for what they were saying.

And they told, Gabriel that they get calls once in a while about ice knocking on people's doors, but not Wednesday that they knew of.

So it's something they kind of they get some reports of it here and there.

Right.

But this was all kind of hearsa and speculation, but it shows, you know, where the attention is and and how much obviously of of a hot button issue this is currently.

Yeah.

And obviously that's on top of people's minds.

You're seeing it in the national news.

Not only what are those reports about on the West side, but also Abigail in in Cleveland Heights, the Cleveland Heights page was filled with, those kinds of reports.

There were folks that were saying that there's a church, where, these Ice agents were staging.

And so the pastor of the churc even had to issue a statement.

Yeah.

He he said that they did not grant any permission to federal law enforcement to use the parking lot and that it would be considered trespassing.

And he, you know he went a step further and said that the church is a sacred space that belongs to God and that ISIS unauthorized use, this space is a desecration of their holy ground and an affront to God's justice, which and I feel like this is like a lesser situation that's been happening.

I've been seeing videos of people trying to say, this is, you know I'm don't grant you permission.

This is private property.

Can't be on.

I don't know, I saw a video where it worked once, so, I don't know how much federal law enforcement listens to the private property, but they said they were not contacted, did not grant permission.

And I think it's important to note, Glenn, that we did do some research on this.

And I've seen other media do it as well.

We don't have confirmed reports of, first of all, I guess in general, although they have been around forever, regardless of what's going on in in Minnesota.

But we don't have any.

First of all reports individually.

But but that there's a wav here, as there was in Minnesota.

There's 3000 federal authorities in Minnesota are at least, on their way at the moment.

Yeah, certainly not seeing anything of that kind of presence.

And again, it there's really haven't been any confirmed sightings, just some reporting here and there that, you know, and I think people again, when it's top of mind, people can see a uniformed officer and think, well maybe that's ice.

You're seeing people getting out of a van and they're dressed, but maybe they are because they it could be you're doing enforcement actions.

The question is, you know, is it widespread?

Right.

And it doesn't seem like that's the case.

Right now, certainly not with what we've seen in in Columbus, closer by, or in, in Minneapolis.

So, yeah, a lot of hearsay, but, I again, I should point out that not only Margaret Wong and associates, but idea streams.

Gabriel Kramer, did a story on what are your rights?

And we put that back up on on our website and, and shared it out again because people are talking about it and obviousl some people are very concerned.

Karen.

U.S.

Senato John Houston issued a statement regarding Ice this week.

He basically told Ohioans to, you know, stand back and let them do their jobs.

Yeah.

He was talking to reporters on a virtual press call about some other things.

And of course, he was asked about Ice.

He said protesters are free to speak out against Ice operations and to help people who are being detained.

But he said do not interject yourself into the process of law enforcement.

He also added that he doesn't want to see people intervene in an Ice operation because then, in his words, you get tragedies like we saw in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, in Columbus, we've had Operation Buckeye that happened last month.

About 280 people were arrested in a three day period.

And people who are watching the operation say Ice is still here, but they have tapered off.

Their main operation.

That happe First, energ is asking the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to lower reliability standards for power outages, basically allowing for more outages that last longer before it's determined that standards weren't met.

A first hearing is scheduled for next month.

Glenn First Energy says its data backs up this request.

What's it seeking from the Puco?

Well, they're looking for Cleveland Electric Illuminating, which is part of FirstEnergy.

They're a subsidiary.

They have not been able to mee their standards of their outage standards for the last two years.

The stat looks at average power outages.

How long did they last and how many times does an average customer lose power in a year?

So Cleveland Electric Illuminating is looking for, basically another 15 minutes per outage from 135 minutes to 150.

Other companies are asking for another three minutes or another 12 minutes.

But basicall they're looking at an average.

And I think people hear this and they say, you know why?

Why do you want to extend, you know, the, standard, why do you want to give the utilities more time to put our power back on?

We'd like our power back on quicker.

Not not slope, not more slowly.

They're just saying, hey, we want we don't want to be out of compliance.

So give us a little more leeway here.

But.

Right, right.

And people are saying, wait a minute, I want to fix like in a minute.

That's funny, you're talking about these minutes.

But when, you know, I know people in Lakewood, they had outages.

They were hours and days.

Right.

And, you know, the Ohio Consumers Council, there's a spokesman, John Blackwood, he says, you know, if you look at it as an average, if you take all of these power customers and if you took two, look at it as an average, you could be an entire day without power.

And on an average basis, that only accounts to a couple minutes to for some of these companies, if you think about it, in every hour in a in a right time period.

And the other problem wit this is people are paying more in utility rates, and we're supposed to get infrastructure improvements and things like that.

And for energy is saying, well, we haven't been able to realize the benefits from those infrastructure improvements yet.

So you can understand why, power consumers are saying, wait a minute, we're paying more.

You, said that a lot of this was for infrastructure improvements.

Now, you're saying that we can't realize these infrastructure improvements yet.

And the reason why you need more time is because the equipment is outdated.

Right?

So it's kind of a certain, you know, a cyclical thing that that consumers are saying, well, wait a minute.

How can this be?

Yeah.

And Abigail, I'm thinking about Lakewood because I mentioned them.

There was a big hearing there and and residents saying we want action.

And then to get the response being, hey, we'd like to get a little more time to to have even longer outages must be infuriating to them, not just Lakewood, Cleveland, Barberton.

They've all endured big outages in the last year.

Yeah, they've been very very loud and vocal about this.

And, you know, the city's really statement saying that this move would increase the harm that our residents suffer.

I mean, think about critical power, a power for critical equipment like, CPAp and oxygen and medical equipment having to miss work and school, exposure to extreme heat and cold, having their food spoiled.

I was I was at my friend's house in Shaker on New Year's Day and their power went out.

It was quite got quite chilly very fast.

So and to have to contend with that, I mean I think her power had been out a couple of days before for a couple of days.

So, they're saying as as Glenn was saying, I mean, if rates are going up, people are paying more and they're getting less good of a service.

And, I mean, I think it's these cities in particular and their residents are just really tired of it and are really wanting some action to be taken.

Let's talk about why these outages are happening.

The the utility first energ says, one of them is increased rainfall and trees essentially being toppled.

We had one on my street, by the way, completely uprooted, fell down, hit power lines.

One of our neighbors had a big repair as a result of that.

But they're saying these these big trees are a big problem.

Yeah, and they're saying that specifically, it's trees that are outside of thei trimming zone that are falling.

So they're saying the increased rainfall is causing that to happen more often.

The aging lines and equipment.

Another thing people are frustrated with is that they're not clear on where the updates that Glenn was talking about are happening.

So it's like very ambiguous, like when they can expect things to, to get better.

Yeah.

Well, one thing that interested me though is, is that, the utility is saying it's trees and Lakewood and Cleveland are saying, no, it's not, it's it's your line failures, your equipment failures, human error by the company.

Don't blame it on the trees.

Yeah.

Lakewood said that there was 33 of the power outages.

Came from line failures, equipment failures or human error, and only 12 were du to trees, the company maintains.

So, you know, they're kind o saying that that doesn't add up.

That excuse doesn't it doesn't add up for us.

All right.

Let's talk about another utility.

In the news this week, Glen, a number of households were without power for more than a day after a massive transformer explosion in Cleveland.

I saw it on social media.

It was a fireworks show.

Yeah.

And, at least one of our, employees here is home today waiting for an appliance repair person because his microwave started smoking and the, the dishwasher doesn't work after this transformer explosion.

He lives nearby.

Let's talk about that.

What happened with, Cleveland public power?

Yeah this was quite a visual event, and, somewhat ironically, happened during a Cleveland City Council meeting.

So I was hoping they were going to talk a little bit about that, but I don't think word, you know got to them during that meeting.

This was, like I said, quite a show.

Cleveland Public Power says it was an electrical faul that damaged homes and meters.

This was a substation that, you know, pretty much blew up, like you said, not blew up.

But, you know, as you mentioned, as you met.

Yeah.

As you mentioned, the, you know, the fireworks show that that occurred there.

So no injuries were reported.

But, Cleveland Fire was talking about some strange reports.

The the chief there said it's highly unusual to hear about power line glowing red after the incident.

It it affected about a thousand Cleveland public power customers and residents.

You know, you mentioned, utility issues or, appliance issues and things like that.

One resident told channel five that, his wife was holding their son and shielded and shielded him from debris and sparks flying all over the place.

Yeah, the electrical box in the and a meter in the house, apparently.

Right.

This is a terrifying, inciden for a lot of these homeowners.

Down in the west side of Cleveland.

But Cleveland Clinic announced Thursday that it intends to earn certification as a level one trauma center at its main campus by 2028.

That would make three in Cleveland alone, something MetroHealth, which operates a level one traum center, says is unsustainable.

Abigail Metro Health is concerned there's going to be too many trauma centers, and that really is one of Metro Health's bread and butter as a safety net.

Hospital is.

That's always been the place.

In 2016, university hospitals joined them.

But forever Metro Health was known as the level one trauma center in Cleveland.

Yeah, yeah.

And they yeah, they said that they looked at other cities similar size to Cleveland and that they don't hav three level one trauma centers.

So they really couldn' see a future in which Cleveland could sustain that.

And they said that that having three would harm patient outcomes and increased costs for the whole community.

How is a leve one different from a level two?

Because the clinic has a number of level two centers and it has emergency rooms.

What does level one do that gets it?

This certification?

It has like more specialized surgeons, physician and critical care specialists.

So they get like the, the worst of the worst, mos severe or complex emergencies.

They're able to handle better than a level two.

It's interesting because I've talked to some people and they're, they're really scratching their heads over why the clinic would do this.

Because level one trauma center don't actually make money.

No.

So the question is, why would you do it?

Maybe it's an issue of the clinic.

Just saying.

We want in-house to have the top tier of everything.

And perhaps that's one of the reasons we'll continue to follow that story and how it might affect the the publicly funded in some ways, safety net hospital, Metro health.

Yeah, absolutely.

An effort to repeal a new state law that makes changes to the recreational marijuana statute passed by voters and bans intoxicating hemp products, suffered a setback this week.

Ohioans for Cannabis Choice wants to block Senate Bill 56 from going into effect.

While it looks to put an issue before voters to repeal it, Yost was very critical of the summary language on their ballot petition.

Right, Karen?

Yeah, and it's not really unusual for the attorney general to reject the petition at first submission.

But like you said they're trying to stop this law from taking effect in March.

And so to try to do that, they've got to get their petition right and get all the signatures into Yost, get it approved so that the law can be stopped It's just part of the process.

And so they coul still make the November ballot, but it's stopping the law from taking effect.

This is a coalition of hem retailers and cannabis retailers who want to change the provisions of want to stop Senate Bill 56 and which made some big changes to that industry the hemp industry that basically bans most intoxicating hemp and THC and CBD beverages.

But it also changes the law that voters approved on marijuana in 2023.

Yeah, it changes that in some ways.

It could criminalize you have to keep gummies in their packaging if they're not, and it could be a crime.

There's a number of other things that that they're concerned about.

Yeah, it caps the THC content.

An adult use marijuana flower at 35% and extracts at 70%.

If that's something that means something to you.

It also, I don't mean you, Mike.

I mean you in general.

It increases penalties for exceeding the homegrown limit of six plants per person, 12 plants per household adds penalties for smoking or vaping marijuana in a vehicle.

And it also changes where the marijuana tax money goes, because when voters approved it in 2023, it was designed to go to social equity and jobs program.

The bill completely gets rid of that.

So Yost said basically there were six areas of concern he had, and he said, there's time to resubmit it here.

But some of these things were significantly misstated.

And he said one thing that wa in the petition was even false.

All right.

Well I dig into this bag of Doritos.

I'm going to move to another topic for you, Karen.

Equal Rights Ohio is now at the start of a petition drive to put not one, but two proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot.

What would those and they hav the same kind of requirements.

They need the 400,000 plus signatures and 44 of the 88 counties.

What are they asking voters to approve?

Well, they had wanted it to be one issue, and it's basically an anti-discrimination issue.

And it's got a very long list of categories of people who could not be discriminated against.

But also it would change the law that's in Ohio law and in the Constitution and protect same sex marriage, because right now, in the law and in the Constitution, it says that marriage in Ohio i between one man and one woman.

But then they this was broken u into two separate issues here.

And so they have two separate petitions that they're working on.

My statehouse News Bureau colleague Joe Ingles is actually checking in with them today.

So we should have an update later on.

Republican lawmakers in the state House are backing bills to make it easier to pursue fraud against child care provider that receive government money.

And others say the system is solid and just needs tweaks.

governor Mike DeWine last week said Ohio has guardrails and won't see the kind of frau being investigated in Minnesota that involved Somali run centers that sparked a wave of accusations against Somali child care providers in Ohio that the governor said were unfounded.

And Karen, two Dayton area Republicans, are proposing some reforms.

But they don't necessarily shar the alarm seen on social media.

Yeah.

In fact, Phil Plummer and, Tom young, when they had their press conference, were standing with the director of the Department of Child, Children and Youth, Karen Wendy, who is part of the DeWine administration.

And they talked abou how this idea of there's massive fraud in Somali run daycare in Columbus is is gaslighting.

And they mentioned that, yes the state does need to make sure that it's anti-fraud provisions are beefed up.

And that's what their bill does.

But they said that they actually praised the state, saying that state has done a good job of staying ahead of fraud and that there really isn' this widespread fraud that we're that certainly was happening in Minnesota, apparently, which is interesting because when you first hear they're proposing laws after all of these allegations that are made, then you think maybe they are thinking these allegations are true, but this is literally just some tweaks.

They're saying the system is, working fine, right?

They said that.

But then the next day we have Josh Williams, who is locked in a primary, to run against Marcy Kaptur, the longtime Democratic congresswoman from Toledo.

He talked about, his bill, which he does with DJ Swearingen from Sandusky.

And, that bill would actually require cameras and video for any publicly funded child care.

They would have to install those, and they would have to make sure that the Department of Children, Youth had access to them.

Those videos in real time, so that attendance checks can be done and spot inspections can be done.

It really increases the power of the attorney general to investigate, and it stops payments quickly if there's suspected fraud.

So they say their bill goes further than the other bill.

But we've got two dueling bills here on a subject that we've been tol there isn't widespread fraud on, and the state has anti-frau measures in place, but certainly there are those who don't think it's enough.

What impact wil the Browns development in Brook Park have on the traffic, infrastructure and parking?

This week, the Northeast Ohio area wide coordinating agency, Nowak, convened a public discussion.

The good news they don't appear to believe it'll be a nightmare.

Glenn, the top line from NoCo was basically impact may not be so bad, mainly because we were built for a bigger population.

Our our transportation infrastructure.

Yeah.

When you think about the interstates and you think about the highways already surrounding the airport area, and just the highway system in general here in northeast Ohio, a great Gallucci, the Nowak executive director, says, you know, we're built to absorb a lot of this.

Expect some delays, of course, but not anything crazy.

It's, you know, like the normal, game day delays that we see in downtown Clevelan for Browns, Guardians or Cavs.

Tell that to somebody who has a flight.

Yeah.

At Hopkins and is trying to get by, that transportation traffic.

I mean, there are definitely going to be snarls, but their point is this is not something that' that's going to be disastrous.

I was surprised to see that again.

Based on the modeling, Nowak expect virtually no impact on travel.

To travel time to Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

But the other important thing is that, you know, that street infrastructure closer to the stadium, they are going to have to make some improvements there.

They're talking about right now.

There's too many one way streets.

There's too many stop signs.

So they're going to have to put in improvements, pedestrian bridges, things like that.

That price tags about 64 million.

So some they estimate.

So some improvements will have to be made.

They'll have to take out some of those impediments and things of that nature.

But basically their message was and I won't be that bad in the kind of improvement you're talking about, are also necessary because there's 22,000 parking spaces in this private development.

But there's might be more vehicles.

And so you need to get people there if they're parking off site.

So pedestrian bridges and other other wayfair's this this whole plan by has sports group the ownership of the Browns.

Depends on a large volume of of people coming to enjoy all kinds o events, not just Browns games.

But you know, restaurants, retail, team Hall of Fame, things like that.

Yeah.

The hotels, they're counting on that traffic.

So you need to make room for it.

Karen, we mentioned this last week, but the legal challenges on the constitutionality of using the unclaimed funds, the state's unclaimed funds to fund a part of this, which the state proposes a $600 million.

There's been a challenge to that.

It's delayed the money.

A lot of people don't think the challenge is going to be successful, but it can be successful in essentially dragging out the clock.

Yeah, and it seems to alread be doing that because you've got former Attorney General Mark Dan and former state lawmaker Jeffrey Crossman who are suing over this.

They are suing in federal and state court.

The transfer was supposed to start on January 1st, but it has not moved forward.

And so they're fighting i basically on two fronts, saying it's unconstitutional for the state to take money.

It's holding for other people and just use it for this purpose.

But the state says they have the authority to do this.

Okay.

Now there is a way to keep an eye on Odot plows.

They're visible on the Waze wayfinding app.

The plo icon will automatically appear when a driver approaches a plow that has its green strobe lights engaged.

When you spot them, give them some space.

Sometimes you don't know where the snow is going to hit, generally the snowbelt, but you will know where the snow plows are now because some, plows better than others were handling the snow yesterday.

Odot plows, they're visibl on the Waze wayfinding app now.

So when you look at your ways, the plow icon will appear and you'll know, okay, that's that's where it is.

Part of the reason for this is not just because we're busy bodies and want to know, but we got to stay away from these plows.

There have been a ton of accidents with Odot plows throughout this season, and Odot hoping this is one way that would inform you just stay away.

Yeah, don't crowd the plow.

Is is the phrase.

And here's the other interesting thing about this.

You're not going to win in a battle with a snow plow, right?

Like, I mean, what kind of personal vehicle would you have to have?

So there are a lot of good reasons to stay away from the plow.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven KSU, the team is off for the MLK Junior holiday.

Enjoy programs dedicated to the life of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr and his timeless speeches that still inspire.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for watching and stay safe.