(quick upbeat electronic music plays) - New Cuyahoga County executive Chris Ronayne is putting a focus on housing, helping the unhoused, and improving what he calls middle market housing.

Governor Mike DeWine's agenda for his new term, likely his last in elected office, focuses on public health and mental health.

And a power struggle among Republicans in the Ohio House deepens.

Ideas is next.

(grand staccato orchestral music plays) Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and Governor Mike DeWine got to work this week on their agendas.

Ronayne introduced legislation to county council that would help those who are unhoused and pledged to strengthen the middle housing market.

DeWine, with his sight set on his political legacy, says his focus will be on public and mental health.

The power struggle among Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives is not settling down.

The man who thought the speakership was his now says he's the leader of the House Republicans, not the representative who won the Speaker vote.

And a new voter reform bill signed by the governor means in-person voters will now need a photo ID to cast ballots.

It's already being challenged in court.

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

Joining me from Idea Stream Public Media, supervising producer of Newscasts, Glenn Forbes and senior reporter Kabir Bhatia.

And in Columbus, Karen Kasler, Chief of our Ohio Public Radio and Television State House News Bureau.

Let's get ready to Roundtable.

Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, submitted his first legislation to county council this week.

He seeks to fund organizations that operate homeless shelters or provide supportive housing.

Ronayne is also seeking money for emergency shelter for young people in the custody of the county.

Glenn, Ronayne says housing is really a primary focus for him in general, including strengthening middle market housing.

What's he mean by that?

- Yeah, it was kind of just what it sounds like, right?

Middle market, kind of middle class housing.

Early in the campaign, you know, about a year ago at this point, he talked about housing in cities like Parma or South Euclid, which are more, you know, middle class, blue collar type - - [Mike] Lakewood maybe.

- Neighborhoods, yes, exactly.

- [Mike] Euclid.

- And what's happening now is that the city of Cleveland has actually changed their abatement policy to, the tax abatement policy to try to, they're actually gonna reduce the tax breaks in the higher market areas or market rate.

And they're offering more affordable kind of, they're offering more tax breaks to these middle market parts of the city.

And it amounts to about 100% percent uh, a 100% abatement to about 400 or 500, $450,000 of the first amount in that house.

And for the higher market houses, it's 85% for the first $350,000 for those market rate houses.

So they're increasing the incentives, you would say, for these middle market houses.

And as you mentioned, he's also, you know, looking toward what you would call the opportunity or the lower market and some people who are suffering with homelessness or the youth supportive housing, youth shelters, things like that.

So it's a kind of a bottom and a middle approach right now for Chris Ronayne and it's continuing a county effort that actually started in 2019 where they were gonna shift the focus from demolishing houses to rehabbing some of these homes.

And that was a $30 million program that was started in 2019 under the previous administration.

So just, you kind of see that continuation of middle market housing or opportunity market housing, as they call it.

- And when we talk about that countywide, it's also a big focus in the city of Cleveland.

We saw a restructuring of tax abatement in the last administration in the city of Cleveland where it used to be, you know, if you're gonna buy a place or certain kinds of renovations in Cleveland, you don't have to pay city taxes.

Now they're talking about, wait a minute, some of these neighborhoods may not need that kind of incentive, other ones do, middle markets as well as lower markets.

One of the thinking, one of the lines of thought on that is that if you don't aid these middle markets, they become the lower market.

- That's true and the other thing that happens is, you know, we all talk about gentrification and things like that.

Sometimes what will happen in a middle to kind of market rate is that, you know, you'll have wealthier people move in, the property taxes go up, it prices out the people who have been in that neighborhood for quite a while.

So this was a study that was commissioned by the former mayor, Frank Jackson.

And the adjustments have been made, as I said, to kind of incentivize more of that middle or opportunity market housing, as they like to call it.

They are trying to put more investment into the neighborhoods, we've heard of that for a long time.

And this is kind of, again, a continuation and you could certainly see the county and the city working in concert here for this effort.

(stately orchestral music plays) - Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb proposed the creation of a civic participation fund, what's been called the People's Budget as part of his plan to spend the next round of American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

Glenn, there's a group, Participatory Budgeting Cleveland, or PB CLE, held a rally outside city hall to support this idea after it was announced.

So this is something that's really grassroots.

- Yeah, this is an interesting story.

And Mayor Bibb said on a very popular, well-done program, I can't, remember the name of it.

- [Mike] Sound of Ideas?

- I think it was the Sound of Ideas, yeah!

He talked about - - [Mike] With Rick Jackson perhaps?

- With Rick Jackson, the host, the silky smooth voice and all that.

It was an incredible show.

No, but he said something interesting there that this is one of the ways that you can get people more involved in the political process if, and this in turn he's hoping will increase voter turnout, which we know in the city of Cleveland is not very good, be it for mayoral elections or any other kind of election, really.

The participation doesn't seem to be there so, one of the ways to try to get people more involved is to give them this pot of money to work with and, yeah.

- Like how would you spend it basically?

- Yeah, pretty much.

And so it's $5.5 million in a pilot program.

These are American Rescue Act funding dollars from the federal government and one of the members of PB CLE as they're called, Participatory Budgeting Cleveland, KeShawn Walker said, "You wanna move money from here to here and have just left it in the middle, who's the everyday working class individual there left in the dark?".

So it's that old, but you know certainly valid, issue with government that there isn't a lot of transparency and I'm sure some members on council, "Well of course it's transparent, we put all our meetings on -" - [Mike] Yeah right.

- "On TV and they're online" but you know, again, I feel like this is a way to try to get people more engaged in the process.

And if they have more of a say of where this money is going, you know, maybe they'll pay attention to other appropriations, right?

Other budget line items in the budget and things of that nature.

- All of us have had this experience 'cause you're not a reporter or become an editor or a newscast director or a arts reporter unless you've covered local government when you got started.

When you looked at your first budget, Kabir, it's not, I mean, no one has any idea what this is.

And suddenly you're looking at it and you go, "I don't know what this is".

And they go, "Oh, that's how we spend all our money in the city".

Can you imagine if you don't have, if you're not being paid to do that, you don't have an incentive to it to try to understand what's going on.

So this seems to be a way to carve out in a small pilot program, but then perhaps grow the ability for citizens to actually have an impact and to see exactly how the money is spent.

- Yeah, they get to see how it's spent, maybe even help decide how it's spent.

This is about an eighth of the ARPA dollars.

I think there's 40 million, this is five and a half.

But then you've also got, as you said, Glenn, all the council, a lot of the council people are saying, "We are transparent".

Councilman Blaine Griffin, I think, was the one who said, "No, this is, that's our job, you're supposed to come to us, tell us what you need, your ideas for the money, and then we help push that through and decide".

- It may be what was the math you just did there?

I was told there would be no math.

There was... - Five and a half out of 40.

- Right, so it's a fair, but the total budget is $1.8 billion.

- This is just ARPA I should... - Nearly a $2 billion budget.

- Just the latest tranche of ARPA.

- Right, and so in the city of Cleveland - - [Mike] It's a pilot.

- Nearly $2 billion budget, they're saying, "Okay, here's five and a half million dollars".

It's like you said, it's a pilot program, let's see, you know, critics of government and people who are critical of government would say, "Could they really do any worse?'.

You know, could Participatory Budget in Cleveland really do any worse with $5.5 million?

I mean, it's not, it's a small amount.

And in fact, their long term ask is for $30.8 million, this Participatory Budgeting Cleveland group.

That's still a very, I mean that's less than half percent, right, of a $2 billion budget.

- Council member, Rebecca Maurer says she supports the idea and she talked to Gabriel Kramer, I think she had the quote of the story, which was, "The people closest to the problems are the people closest to the solutions".

So they'd know what's going on, let them spend some of the money.

- And much like our first story about, you know, middle market housing opportunity, opportunity markets, things like that, this is another idea to get more money into the neighborhoods.

The criticism for a long time has been, you know, you focus on the areas of downtown, you focus on the revenue areas.

What about all the neighborhoods?

So this is an, I'm very interested to see how this pilot program pans out with $5.5 million.

And it'll be interesting to see if they get more funding down the line.

- One of the other things that Participatory Budgeting can do, Kabir, is it gets you involved in this, but then maybe it kind of lights the fire of civic engagement involvement.

One of the things they're talking about is this might spur more people to become involved and to just vote.

- That's true, that's exactly what a lot of people at P B C L E, I gotta make sure I say that.

- [Glenn] You don't wanna say PB CLE?

- PB CLE, I'll say that.

- [Glenn] That sounds like peanut butter, but anyway.

- Now we're gonna get calls.

(Mike and Glenn laughing) Yes, the PB CLE folks, that was kind of their hope that, you know, a lot of people will be engaged, as you said, Glenn, that a lot of folks maybe feel we don't get the attention outside of downtown that we should.

And maybe that's led to a lot of disenfranchisement, a lot of people deciding, I don't even wanna bother voting.

And I think Mayor Bibb, really part of his campaign, was telling people, "Look, you're gonna be part of the process, you're gonna be heard, if you don't happen to live in downtown, in that revenue center".

And this is one way that he's kind of literally putting his money where his mouth is.

(stately orchestral music plays) - The Akron Teachers Union and the Board of Education both approved a new three year labor contract this week.

The deal was hammered out last week as the district faced a Monday strike deadline.

It gives teachers raises over the next three years and addresses safety concerns.

The concerns teachers had about safety, is that addressed in the contract?

- It is, they were going to change the definition of assault from actual, I believe it was actual... - [Mike] Just physical.

- It says contact currently, and I forget what they wanted to change to.

- [Mike] Harm, harm.

- Harm, yes.

- [Mike] You had to be harmed, you had to be injured.

- Yes, you had to be injured, it wasn't just contact and the teacher said, "No, because we're already having a problem with this, don't make it even easier, less consequences for students if they contact us or in some other way impact us physically".

So that is staying at "contact" because the teachers really feel this is something that needs addressed.

It's something that actually, you know, needs maybe shored up even more.

We don't need to lessen the penalties for this, lessen the definition.

So that was one, that was, seems in every article I've read and everyone I've talked to, that was one of the main things, even beyond the healthcare cost or raises or things like that.

- The contract is not a solution for all the safety concerns teachers and parents have with their kids in the schools.

The district did pledge to do more.

It just isn't necessarily laid out specifically in the contract... - [Kabir] No.

- But they said they're gonna do more.

- They're gonna start having administrators, teachers come into the meetings and talk to, they said, we're not gonna bring them before the board for criticism, we want to hear from them, hear what's happening, and then come up with ways to have solutions to this.

Because I think right in the thick of this, there was a couple students that brought guns to school.

There was a stabbing.

So that was, I mean it's never good to have that in a school, but in the middle of all these union negotiations, I think that really highlighted that something needs to be done.

- And then you see in Cleveland, just this week, a student at John Adams High School, who, was that the school?

I believe it is.

- I think it was, yeah.

- Who was shot at a bus stop and killed right outside the school, not necessarily in the school, but the idea of safety in and around the schools.

Obviously not something that's limited just to Akron.

- [Kalib] True.

- Those incidents in Akron certainly did complicate the negotiations.

The teachers had been working without a contract since June.

Quick shout out to Idea Stream Public media's Connor Morris.

I hope he's finally getting some sleep because he had a busy, very busy, he's always busy, but he had a busy weekend and a busy couple days there.

You know, he was talking to parents and some of the teachers and one of the things they said, I think everybody understands the value in going to a model of more, you know, positive reinforcement.

But what the concern from parents and some teachers was these kids who are causing some of these violent incidents simply aren't facing enough discipline.

- Right.

- You know, we understand this philosophy, but at some point there has to be some sort of discipline.

There has to be some sort of, you know, deterrent.

And there's of course a lot of debate on that back and forth, but the opinion of some of the teachers and parents out there was the kids that are causing these problems simply aren't facing enough punishment.

(stately orchestral music plays) - Governor DeWine says he plans to focus on mental health and public health in his second term, likely the last in a long career in elected office.

The governor says he wants to focus on extending economic opportunities for Ohioans, too.

Karen, the governor is looking to create his legacy as he enters what's likely his last term in elected office.

- Yeah, and that inaugural address, I mean, if you watched it on the Ohio Channel, it was well-produced.

I mean, it was a really terrific presentation.

Whether there was a lot of substance behind it, that's gonna be the question.

Now, DeWine did, started out his speech by calling out and asking for applause for all the first responders and medical professionals and so on during COVID.

I mean, the pandemic robbed him of some time that I think he had hoped to have as governor doing things other than trying to contain the pandemic.

It also gave him a lot of support from people who thought he was doing good things until some of them thought he wasn't doing good things.

So, but this, there were a couple moments in the speech that were really interesting to hear him say that legal immigrants are welcome and to talk about how Ohio has welcomed people from Ukraine.

And then to say, "Yeah, come to Ohio if you want lower taxes and a good quality of life and access to higher education and art and theater, come to Ohio".

Well, Democrats might and did say afterwards that, "Hey, there's a problem with some legislation that doesn't encourage people to come to Ohio, that doesn't make people feel welcome here".

- Yeah, I've heard them say, you know, don't come to Ohio if you value your reproductive rights.

Don't come to Ohio if you value rights for LGBTQ people.

There's a number of those things that are the counter to that, and does the governor sort through that in any way?

I know in an inaugural speech he won't because that's simply a scripted speech, but what has he said about those types of criticisms that Ohio is not welcoming?

- Well, I think this last term here, and we're expecting this is gonna be his last term in public office, he just turned 76 last week and he had always said that governor was the job that he had wanted and that he enjoys the work.

So I think it'll be interesting to watch and see what he actually does with his final term where he's not necessarily looking for going on to the next office, but maybe more looking for legacy building.

Whether he will push back on some of these bills that could come out of the legislature, which again has a super majority of Republicans in the House and Senate.

I think hearing what he does with his budget coming up at the end of the month, that'll give us some clues about some of the ideas and things that he finds our priority.

So this back and forth between him and the legislature will be interesting to watch, especially given what's going on in the legislature.

(bold orchestral music plays) - The power struggle that erupted in the Ohio House Speaker vote is still going.

State Representative Jason Stephens of Lawrence County became Speaker after 22 Republicans, a minority faction, joined with all of the Democrats to defeat the more conservative State Representative Derek Merinn of Toledo.

Merinn had been the choice among the majority of Republicans and says he, not Stephens, is the leader of the House Republicans.

- There's basically two different groups of Republicans plus the Democrats.

And how does that square with whatever the governor wants to get done or whatever kind of budget he presents?

- I wish I knew at this point.

It will be something absolutely to watch.

It's really extraordinary in a way that the guy who was chosen to be the speaker, Derek Merrin, he was chosen in a Republican caucus vote in November.

He lost the vote on the floor because Jason Stephens had brought in some Republicans, but also all 32 Democrats.

And now you've got people who supported Derek Merrin, which include 43 people who voted for him, well, 42 and him, and then also some influential groups such as The Center for Christian Virtue and the Ohio Christian Alliance.

These groups that say, "Hey, this was a betrayal of Derek Merrin and we're really worried that Republicans have partnered with Democrats and won't move important pieces of legislation".

Democrats have said there was no grand deal here.

They just felt that Jason Stephens was more willing to work with them on issues such as education.

And the big one that I think is, we're all watching, is this proposal to require voters, at least 60% of voters approve constitutional amendments.

And that Derek Merrin group has pushed that plan forward again, whether it gets passed by February 1st to get before voters in May, that's the real question.

- [Mike] Real quick, what's the Speaker have to do with that?

- Well, the Speaker controls what comes to the floor essentially, and if he doesn't want that to go forward, it's not gonna go forward.

I mean, right now, again, the deadline is February 1st.

Right now we have no house schedule, which is set by the Speaker, and no committee assignments, also set by the Speaker and his leadership team.

So right now there's, it's kind of a holding pattern here.

And so trying to move legislation forward, you can't do it if the House isn't gonna meet and there aren't gonna be committees to hear the legislation.

- It was very interesting to watch both speak, both the Speaker battles at the national level and at the state level kind of play out at the same time.

And I saw a conservative pundit say something to the effect of, "Establishment Republicans have no idea how much their base hates them".

Now the interesting thing about that is I think, I feel like at both the national and the state level, it almost doesn't matter because Mitch McConnell is still in power.

Governor DeWine still won by a hefty margin.

So, even if that is true and the base truly hates Establishment Republicans, they're still not voting Democrat, it's still not swinging things to the other side in a state like Ohio.

So what incentive is there, right, for Establishment Republicans to, you know, kind of not do something like this, right?

There's a lot of hand wringing and things like that, but ultimately the power stays with the Establishment Republicans, regardless of what the base thinks.

(bold orchestral music plays) - The governor was busy signing off on legislation in the run-up to his inauguration, including a sweeping voting reform bill.

It's already the subject of a legal challenge though.

- Right, the group that's headed up by Marc Elias, who's a democratic lawyer who helped with lawsuits over redistricting here in Ohio and in other states.

He also was involved in all the cases that former President Trump filed after he lost the 2020 election.

And so he's pushing forward with a group of people representing unhoused Ohioans and also labor unions to try to challenge this law.

The voter photo ID component, already you do have to show ID when you go to vote.

It doesn't require photo ID at this point, but this law would require that for voters, it does set up some sort of a mechanism that people can get free photo IDs if they need them, but it also limits ballot drop boxes to one per county, which can be a big deal if you live pretty far away from the county seat where the Board of Elections is likely to be centered.

And it's, there's some veterans groups who are very concerned about the closing of the window, shortening of the days that, of the extensions, so to speak, that when ballots come in from overseas, from military voters, that sort of thing, it was 10 days that they could come in and still be counted, now it's down to four and there are some veterans groups who say that's really not fair.

(bold orchestral music plays) - A social media post this week went viral and started a conversation about workplace culture involving women professionals, especially in law firms.

An attorney posted a screenshot of a text message on LinkedIn that had been sent to a female attorney by a male partner of a Cleveland law firm.

The highly inappropriate message used explicit language to criticize the female lawyer for leaving to take a new job right after her maternity leave, accusing her of seeking the new job while on leave, which by the way, is perfectly above board.

Let me read you the text with some redactions for mild bad language.

The text said, "What you did, collecting salary from the firm while sitting on your A except for finding time to interview for another job says everything one needs to know about your character.

Karma is a B.

Rest assured regarding anyone who inquires, they will hear the truth from me about what a soulless and morally bankrupt person you are.

Karen, the attorney who shared the text was not the woman who received it, said she did so to spotlight the toxic culture women, especially mothers, face in the legal profession.

I would think it goes beyond that to in general the things that some women professionals are up against.

I wonder what your reaction was when you read this story.

- Yeah, I can't imagine why she was looking for another job.

You know, I just can't.

(Everyone laughing) It's beyond me.

But yeah, absolutely, I think that there is this perception that maternity and paternity leave are both times to just sit around and you're kind of on vacation, right?

No, you're not.

Especially if you're a woman recovering from giving birth.

You need that time not only to physically recover, but also to bond with your baby, maybe figure out how to do all this stuff that you're trying to do.

And so it's not an opportunity to just sit around and do nothing, there are some real things that are going on personally when you're on maternity leave and obviously this woman felt that this was an appropriate time to look for something else.

I mean, that sounds like a really toxic place to work and I don't wanna judge anybody just based on one text, but my goodness.

- Right, somebody might have reached out to her or she might have looked for a job, which by the way, as I said, is perfectly appropriate while you're on leave.

- [Karen] Absolutely.

If you you wanna look for something else, you're not doing it while you're on the clock, literally.

And when, and apparently she came back and then took it.

It wasn't like, you know, "Hey, I'm not gonna come back from this leave", that was a courtesy that was extended as well.

- The language in the text, I mean, I can't imagine anything taking maternity leave, taking paternity leave, looking for a job, that would warrant this sort of language at somebody.

But putting that aside, it's just baffling to me that this person thinks that you're, as Karen said, sitting around doing, it's not a vacation.

There's lots to do.

There's bonding with the child, there's taking them to the weekly checkups, that sort of thing.

The baby don't sleep.

- [Karen] They're sleeping!

- Yeah they're sleeping when can get it.

- [Mike] Oh yeah you gotta work that in there, too.

- Yeah, my wife, Sarah, is amazing that she's able to handle a newborn, and then we've also got, of course, four other kids.

So the fact that he was so upset about this, I think, as you pointed out, probably led to her trying to find another job in this toxic environment.

But I'm just baffled that in this day and age, people find maternity or patern-ally leave, paternity leave, see how tired I am?

Paternity leave.

(All laughing) Something that was, that's a vacation and you should be attacked for that.

- Yeah, you got a little yellow spot there on your coat.

- I don't wanna talk about it, you don't want to know.

- It almost seems to me like it's kind of a natural time to think about this, right?

Because what are the two thoughts that enter your head with a newborn or really with any child?

How am I gonna pay for this?

- [Kabir] Right!

And how can I spend more time with the child, with the baby, with my family, with whatever?

So to me, and you know, just listening to Karen and Kabir, of course, it kind of seems like this is a natural time to kind of take stock of what's in front of you.

And like I said, how do I pay for this and how do I spend more time with the family?

That's, both things are directly related to your work.

- [Karen] Absolutely.

- I'll note that you guys are both absolutely right.

I took paternity leave for my children and in my daughter's case it was four months unpaid leave.

And I did, I mean, you're busy as you can be with two kids, but also sometimes you just go to Marc's and walk around because there are other people there.

You put the kids in the cart and you're like, okay, there's people.

- [Kabir] That's true, it's different.

- And leaves like that are so important to give people the opportunity to do whatever they need to do.

I was on a bereavement leave recently and it's important to have that opportunity to get your head together, figure out what you're trying to do and for people to have an attitude of you're just not doing anything while you're not working is, I mean, it's mind blowing that people think this, but there is still that pervasive attitude out there.

- And the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association said it was flooded with responses to that and obviously all of them, many of them in support of the female lawyer who took the other job.

(bold orchestral music plays) Monday on the Sound of Ideas on WSKU, the team is off an observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

In our time slot, we bring you a special that charts Dr. King's journey to a philosophy of nonviolence and his legacy as a proponent of peace.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

(upbeat piano music plays)