The Browns have offered more details about how they envisioned public funding to cover half the cost of a new domed stadium in Brook Park, Ohio.

Senators approved a controversial bill aimed at ending liberal indoctrination on college campuses.

and former Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel has been tapped to serve as Ohio's lieutenant governor.

IDEAS is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for joining us.

The Browns have given a detailed look at how they envisioned public financing for half the cost of a new $2.4 billion domed stadium in Brook Park.

Governments would issue bonds and then pay them off with various new taxes and fees.

Senate Bill one, touted by supporters as a way to fight liberal indoctrination on college campuses, is on its way to the Ohio House after drawing intense opposition from the public.

But approval by the Senate, the former football coach of Ohio State University and president of Youngstown State University is now the lieutenant governor of Ohio.

Is it a temporary foray into state government for Jim Tressel, or will he seek to move up to governor next year?

And Lee Fisher, the former Ohio attorney general and lieutenant governor, now serving as dean of the Cleveland State University School of Law, will become president of Baldwin Wallace University on July 1st.

Joining me to talk about all of this week's news from Ideastream Public Media, associate producer of newscasts, Josh Boose from the Marshall Project Cleveland, a nonprofit covering the criminal justice system.

Editor in chief Phil Trexler.

And in Columbus, Statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

A higher education bill aimed at combating what supporters view as liberal bias on public college campuses passed the Ohio Senate Wednesday.

21 to 11, with two Republicans joining the Democratic opponents.

It bans diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, among other things.

Let's dig into this a little bit, Karen.

The bill has a number of provisions.

A main focus is removing diversity, equity and inclusion or DTI efforts on public college campuses.

And I have to say, I was talking to some folks this week who were saying that there on college campuses where DTI programs are being shuttered.

Yeah, I think that's been the main focus of this proposal.

This would ban most DTI programs and training.

There are some exceptions, but not too many.

I mean, the whole idea is to really go after DTI, which has been a Republican talking point for a while.

And of course this bill was proposed in the last session of the General Assembly, got through the Senate, got through a House committee, but didn't get to the House floor.

And this focus on DTI has been a huge part of that.

And that's been also a focus of the opponents who were very concerned about what an elimination of DTI, which they say is vaguely drawn in this bill and really isn't clearly define what that could do to scholarships, what that could do to recruitment for not only race and gender based efforts, but also military status, people with disabilities, you know, others who are not often thought of as being the beneficiaries of DEI programs.

Yeah.

What is diversity and what is equity and what is inclusion and doesn't necessarily mean what the supporters of this legislation think it means.

And that's where the big rub is.

How are you going to enforce this?

How are you going to get your arms around it as a university?

Right.

And I think, you know, this comes along with these five independent academic centers that have been set up that were set up in the last budget at five universities, including Cleveland State and Ohio State.

And these were intended to focus on constitutional research and thought regarding civic activities in American history in this kind of stuff.

This follows the same kind of thought process of bringing these kinds of ideas to college campuses because supporters of these bills feel that there isn't enough attention to these that conservative voices are not being heard on campus.

Of course, opponents and there were hundreds of them who turned out I'm pretty sure they set a new record in terms of the length of a committee hearing the night before this vote, eight and a half hours it went.

And they say that there is no evidence that this isn't happening, that conservatives aren't coming forward and saying they're being discriminated against.

And when you look at Ohio's voting patterns, Republicans are winning all over the state for many, many years.

There's really this indoctrination by liberals on college campuses they say is not happening.

One of the issues, too, is it's talking about diversity of thought in classrooms and that professors need to be mindful of that.

But professors are saying, well, we're concerned if someone says the earth is flat.

I've got to acknowledge that if someone says the Holocaust never happened, I have to treat that as if it's a valid point of view.

Yeah, and the ACLU says that this is a violation of the free speech rights of professors who don't want to deal with that, because these are not facts.

And you want to deal in facts as a professor.

You want to teach your class your way, dealing with the facts, and that students don't deserve to have time.

They're paying for being spent on things that just are not part of the curriculum, that are not factual, but the sponsors will come back and say, that's not the idea, that the idea isn't, you know, to encourage, say, Holocaust deniers to come forward.

That's not what this is about.

This is about really the free exchange of ideas and making sure that all voices are heard, especially in controversial topics.

And the bill lists some of those controversial topics marriage, electoral politics, abortion, some of these things some folks feel are settled issues, though there are opinions, but the facts in some of these seem to be settled, according to some folks.

Josh?

You know, I think it's I was listening to that committee hearing this week and what really struck me, Karen mentioned the eight and a half hours.

What really struck me were the students that were getting up.

One in particular from Ohio University.

She said she moved here from North Carolina and now she's going to go probably back to North Carolina or another state.

Several students, The common denominator was we're going to have to pick up and move.

Now, whether it be because of their involvement with LGBT groups on campuses or just concern about what happens next.

And I've heard those are already disbanding as well.

And this Karen, is before the law is even passed, as I mentioned, I talked to some folks at Tri-C where the D-I program there is changing drastically at other universities and two year colleges, too, and that's without this even being passed yet.

Yeah.

And sponsor Jerry Serena says a lot of these changes have been happening even they were happening when Senate Bill 83 in the last General Assembly was being discussed that some of these things were already moving forward.

And I asked him, why is this necessary if some of the things you want to see happen are already happening?

And he said, we need to keep this moving.

And of course, there's the federal effort that's going on, the elimination of D-I programs at the federal level.

And so this is this is definitely a push toward eliminating those programs by Republicans who feel that they are discriminatory.

But then you have students and faculty and Democratic groups and others, unions, especially, are involved in this as well, who say that this is this is not discriminatory, this is not divisive.

This is meant to bring in people who have been underserved, who haven't had these opportunities to go to college and to do some of these things that D-I programs are encouraging them to do.

So this really has set up a a battle between those two philosophies and the idea of students leaving and faculty leaving or faculty not wanting to come to Ohio.

That's another thing that opponents will point to.

But supporters say show me the evidence that that's going to happen.

the Browns late yesterday unveiled a financing wish list for the team's plan to build a new Dome stadium and entertainment complex in Brook Park.

The Haslam group said its plan is to leave the Cleveland lakefront and kick off in the new facility to open the 2029 season.

So Josh, we got a little bit more specifics this time on financing.

It's still the same though, which is you pay half public and will pay the other half.

Let's talk first about the amount shouldered by local governments and where that revenue is supposed to come from.

Sure.

So, again, looking at this big picture, $2.4 billion for this project, 1.2 coming from local governments, that's $600 million from the state.

That's what the Haslam's are proposing.

They want 178 million of the borrowing from county sources covering payments for bonds.

They also want $600 million from local governments, from the county and from Brook Park.

How will they get new revenue, if you will?

Well, they're going to increase the bed tax.

At least that's their proposal.

Six and a half to seven and a half percent.

It was last increased in 2019.

And then also a tax on rental cars, a county authorized tax of $6 per rental car.

In addition, there would be an increase in the admission tax from three and a half percent in Brook Park to six and a half percent.

And what the Browns are saying is, look, we're taxing the users.

The people that come to the stadium will pay for it.

The people who stay in hotels will pay a higher fee for those.

The increase in the bed tax and the rental car fee would be from folks that are out of town.

But all of that is just money that pays for bonds as you as a public are on the hook for.

So you mentioned the state at $600 million where it would float a bond, basically get a loan for that and you're on the hook for it, but you're securing that bond.

And then the other 600 million, 422 million would come from Brook Park paying it back.

And you mention 178 from the county.

But that still puts the public at risk.

And we're hearing from folks like Chris Ronayne that that's not going to fly.

Yeah, Chris Ronayne said last night, late last night in a statement that, look, this is a Hail Mary pass is how he put it appropriately.

And will this, you know, could this even could this even happen?

I think the bigger thing, too, Mike, is a lot of people are looking at the overall view of what's happening in the county, what's happening in Cleveland, and the immense need should this money go towards a new stadium, if you will, a new whole project in Brook Park, as opposed to other needs in one of the poorest cities in the country?

Phil, the Browns said that private money will cover the related development, as I mentioned, retail hotels.

So it puts the price at $3 billion.

But of course, that's money that is directly to them.

It's no longer going downtown.

They're going to this contained complex.

They're going to build it.

They're going to profit from it.

Yeah.

This is really, you know, one of those issues that has a lot of folks divided.

And I'm speaking as a Browns fan.

Josh and I were talking before.

Josh is a big Browns fan, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, we all you know, we at some point you'd like to to see that Cleveland has a nice thing.

You know, there's that that camp, you know, it's like we have an opportunity to build a dome stadium that will have lasting impact, that will draw, you know, a Super Bowl, you know, the NCAA tournament.

You know, we would have a nice jewel to show off.

And the flip side is to Josh's point, you look at the economics of it all.

You know, the poverty rate in the city of Cleveland, you know, the struggling economy that folks in Cuyahoga County are facing.

So it's, you know, the one nice thing or do you want to be practical about it?

Well, you could have a nice thing on the lakefront to talk about renovating on the lakefront for $1.2 billion, which the city has said we're almost halfway there.

Right.

So they do have another option.

The question is, do you want this in Haslam's?

Jimmy Haslam specifically said, if we don't do Brook Park and we pass on it this time, I don't know if anybody is ever going to put $2 billion of private money into Cuyahoga County.

He's basically saying this is really one of those once in a lifetime chances.

They said we have 175 acres that are flat.

It has power.

It's a big deal.

It's clean environmentally, it's serviced by major state highway, two interstates right across from the airport.

You're never going to find it again.

Do it now.

But the the proponents of keeping it downtown say we have spent all this money on infrastructure downtown and we need that to be part of the formula.

Yeah, absolutely.

The Browns have always played downtown.

You know, that's that's that's their home base.

You know, moving out the park is really like outside of the box.

And we you know, again, that practical side comes back.

I mean, we're talking, what, two dozen dates a year, you know, talking $3 billion to provide a venue.

And I just got to say to, you know, looking at this from a public relations standpoint, the Browns are constantly one step ahead.

I feel, of everybody else there.

You know, like like you mentioned quoting Mr. Haslam, talking about that no one else is going to do this, you know, $2 billion right now.

We need it, you know, pushing the urgency, talking to state lawmakers, especially after getting some pushback from county and city leaders.

So I think it's it's it's interested me their their tactics here going you know looking at this project The Ohio House and Senate confirmed former Ohio State University head football coach Jim Tressel as Lieutenant governor.

Tressel replaces Jon Husted, who was appointed to replace J.D.

Vance in the United States Senate.

question now is, is he a caretaker on a temporary assignment for the next two years, or will he shake up the governor's race in 2026?

Karen Yeah, that's a good question.

And he's not answering that.

I mean, he he's giving answers that are really kind of in that vague well, I'm not ruling it out.

You know, I spoke to him earlier this week and tried to get him try to nail him down.

And it just the it's not happening.

I think right now he's focused on getting sworn in, which will happen in about 90 minutes here at State House or maybe 2 hours.

And then moving forward.

It's just such an interesting nomination.

It's such an interesting choice for this office, because he's not an overtly political person.

I mean, he's been connected to conservative causes and that sort of thing.

But he's not he's never sought public office before, even though he's been talked about being a candidate.

So this is just such an it's kind of an out-of-the-box choice, I think, in a way.

Well, he has been related to some conservative causes, including the the the business that brings students off campus for Christian education that we've been talking about and a number of other of those things, too.

So there's that's where the criticism has come from.

All of the Democrats who did not vote to approve him.

Right.

Yeah.

The concerns and also the concerns about his connection to the law that put the Youngstown City schools under state control essentially, and took that away from the elected school board when Youngstown City back during the previous report cards when they were failing in so many categories.

So there are some questions by Democrats about this.

But I mean, Tressel has huge name recognition across Ohio.

I talked to a political science professor who called him essentially a folk hero for bringing Ohio State its first national championship in 30 years when he did it in 2022.

So he's got a lot of name recognition, a lot of favorable opinions around the state about him.

So it's just it's a really interesting time to to be part of this, I think.

And the organization I was talking about was life wise.

Thank you for the bar for letting me know that on the screen here.

And as I understand, one of his former players actually started life wise.

So that may be part of the connection as well.

Got it.

We mentioned the legendary status, Phil, of of Jim Tressel, but he left Ohio State in under a cloud.

I mean, he had to leave.

Yeah, it wasn't pretty.

You know, there was a tattoo game struck in about 2000, 1011.

And, you know, just as shocking as to hear him running for or being appointed lieutenant governor, it was shocking that he was caught up in a scandal.

I mean, he had this reputation as a straight shooter.

He was as conservative as his offense was back then.

But, yeah, it was not pretty.

You know, his players were taking money or taking tattoos in exchange for, you know, their championship rings there, you know, their wins over Michigan, the little trinkets they get for that.

You're looking back now where players are getting millions of dollars of it.

Right.

It's laughable now, but it wasn't laughable then.

And the NCAA came down hard on Tressel.

I mean, he was basically blacklisted.

He certainly he certainly reinvented himself, though he didn't go from that to I'm a man under scandal and you won't hear from me again.

He went to work for the University of Akron.

He was a he was then appointed president of Youngstown State University.

And now this role.

So certainly didn't hang his head down.

And, you know, in anticipation of this question coming up, I talked to some lobbyist friend He's not necessarily a caretaker.

He might be a sledge hammer in waiting.

There's a lot of division there with the, you know, who's going to run in 26.

My back is not announced yet, but he's expected to in that candidacy is not fully being embraced down in Columbus.

So I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility.

And it could set up a nice little race between the vest against Dr. Amy Acton and lab coat.

So the vest against the lab coat, Yeah.

And then you've got Vivek Ramaswamy and you've got Dave Yost.

And we're going to this is this is the stuff, the Jazz's Karen up.

She's getting her popcorn out, right?

It's it's, it's really getting very interesting though the vest he was Tressel was here briefly yesterday and I was asking him about the vest and he said this was the only vest he had that didn't have Ohio State or Youngstown State or something else on it.

So he has to update his vest collection.

I guess BALDWIN Wallace University tapped former Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher as president this week.

Josh is not going to be an easy job.

He's moving into as many colleges and leaders of colleges are facing a lot of troubled waters.

Sure.

You know, like many colleges, Baldwin Wallace over the last year had some big challenges.

We're talking about declining enrollment, higher costs, and we've seen that obviously, in other campuses across northeast Ohio, in the country, for that matter.

The last year.

BALDWIN Wallace had a $7 million budget deficit.

Program cuts, job cuts within the last year as well.

Fisher is going to step into his role on July 1st.

He says he's going to immediately create a team to really tackle some of these big issues that are being dealt with at other universities as well.

We're trying to, you know, the budget overall restructuring, some of the stuff that you can see that Cleveland State has done in the last six months or so.

But something interesting I thought, too, when he came in and when this announcement was made, he said, I'm not coming in with answers.

I'm coming in with questions.

So he does not have all the answers.

He admits that.

And he says he's approached all of his jobs like that.

Well, definitely a thoughtful guy.

He was a head of the CEOs for Cities.

And he notes at the College of Law that he came in when there were record budget deficits, record low enrollment and rite Aid, that chip.

So I know that's why the folks at Baldwin Wallace are excited.

So there's Lee for Lee Fisher's next step.

Cuyahoga County leaders are reconsidering a policy that blocks the release of body camera footage and deputy involved shootings.

film.

Why did they explain in their policy that they don't release video?

What explanation to the county give to the reporters?

Basically, they're sticking to the old policy that was commonplace throughout law enforcement for four decades, and that is, you know, hiding behind it's still under investigation clause of the how public records law.

Mm hmm.

That, of course, has become outmoded, basically because of the the struggles and the the fights from from activists and the public.

They want to see these videos when they're when they are there, when they're there.

You want context, right, as to what occurred Phil, let's get a little background on the investigation that you all did that ended up shining a light on this policy.

Yeah.

The shooting takes back us to October of 2024, and this involves the downtown safety patrol that Sheriff Patel implemented last year, kind of to quash some of the unrest that's going on downtown late at night.

So there was a carjacking that took place.

Three teens were involved there, a chase.

The chase ended up at 26th and Superior.

The car teams crashed.

Their cars started to run.

Deputy got out, thought he saw a gun, opened fire, striking the 15 year old in the leg.

And the bullet went through.

Yeah, it went through his head.

Yeah.

He.

No, no, it was not a fatality, but the mothers of those teens didn't even know which agency had shot the child because there was no information.

And I think we all can empathize with that.

You know, having, you know, a 15 year old child shot in the leg, you want know, you know, who did it, why they did it, you want to see the circumstances.

And frankly, the public wants to see the video.

And I think to I mean, on the police's side and the sheriff's side, in this case, he's chasing after car thieves.

He thinks he sees a gun.

So we're not it's not a judgment about whether the shooting should have happened.

The question is, let us see it right.

Let us let us see it.

Be transparent.

Let the public, you know, come to some conclusions, whether they're a good shot or a bad shot.

And so we'll hopefully get maybe as your indication from your reporters that as soon as today, they certainly are looking at their policy and it looks as though they may change their policy to be in line with Akron Cleveland, other local police.

Right.

In response to the demands basically, of the public.

Cleveland and Akron did adjust their policies.

They released their videos within seven days.

The sheriff's department, which, you know, really is not known for patrol activities, and they're doing it now more with this downtown patrol unit.

So they need to come up, you know, if they're going to be patrolling the streets of Cleveland, they need to adjust their policy.

Yeah, there was a time when the sheriff obviously they took care of the rural parts and the city police took care of the city parts.

Now we've got the sheriff integrally involved in in in downtown coverage as well.

A judge has ordered Governor Mike DeWine to take $900 million in federal unemployment assistance offered to the state during the pandemic in 2021.

DeWine turned down the help back then, saying he was concerned the federal assistance would prevent people from returning to work.

The judgment, as I said, of this class action suit by Mark, then the governor responded to it at all.

And not that I've heard, and I have to tell you, this is a story in 20 years of reporting on the state house.

I've gotten more calls and more emails on this story from people who want that money.

They want to know what happened to that money.

They want to follow this case because they were due money.

This was a federal program that was supposed to end in September of 2021.

DeWine ended it in June of 2021 under pressure from business groups who were saying that it's hard to find workers because this money is still going out.

And so the argument has been that these people are due money.

That's what Mark Dann has been arguing, saying that the governor didn't have the authority to stop the program.

And this has been a long time waiting for some of these folks.

Whether they actually see that money or not is the real question here.

320,000 people in the class action suit.

What do you mean?

Whether they actually see that money?

Didn't the judge say that he's going to take it?

Oh, the court system continues on.

The state the state could appeal.

We're still waiting to find out if it's going to.

But this has been before the Ohio Supreme Court once before on a different issue.

So I don't know that this is the final word here.

And there are other complicating factors, too.

The legislature has changed.

The Congress has changed, The presidency has changed.

There might be other priorities in Washington before this money can be claimed.

Right.

And that was part of the judge's order is claim this money before it gets reappropriated for something else.

So the question then becomes, what's the state going to do?

Are they going to appeal this or are they going to go ahead and do what the judges ordered here?

The Rock Hall released its 2025 nominees this week.

It's a wide ranging list with acts from the 1980s and 1990s, figuring prominently nominees for induction as performers are the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Billy Idol, Joy Division Slash New Order.

Cyndi Lauper.

Madonna.

Oasis.

Outkast.

Phish.

Soundgarden and the White Stripes.

Three long eligible first time nominees, Bad Company, Joe Cocker and Chubby Checker also made the list.

Artists are eligible 25 years after the recording debut, and that's what freaked me out.

Josh and Phil and Karen is that the White Stripes are 25 years old.

I do this every year and I'm going to pretend like I'm a music aficionado, but every year I pop up some names and I'm like, I can't believe they're not already in there.

Chubby Checker How is Chubby Checker Twist, Limbo, Rock, Ernie in there and Joe Cocker?

I can't.

How is he not How is he not in there?

That's a good question.

Every year I do, I do this.

And yeah, I was also surprised to learn Chubby Checker is 83 still life?

Get him in there.

Monday on the sound of ideas on 80 97w KSU.

The team is off for the Presidents Day holiday in our timeslot at 9 a.m.. We'll bring you a marketplace special on financial literacy for kids at 9 p.m. will delve into charisma in business and politics.

Some people have it and some don't.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.