A bill that would eliminate the limited ability of schools to levy on voted taxes has been called cataclysmic by educators.

The embattled mayor of Cleveland Heights won't make the ballot for reelection and refuses to step down.

And signs a national parks.

Ask people to tattle about negative comments concerning American history.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Ohio lawmakers are working on property tax relief measures and one bill.

House Bill 335 would end unbolted taxes on what's known as inside millage.

Critics say it would devastate schools and public services.

Mayor Kahlil Seren of Cleveland Heights will not run for reelection.

He failed to turn in enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, and he says he will not step down even as a recall effort continues.

The national parks, including the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, have put up signs asking visitors to report anyone or anything in the park that is negative toward American history.

And you've just finished blocking those scam turnpike toll tax.

Now comes a similar scam trying to swindle you by posing as the Ohio Department of Vehicles, which doesn't exist.

Don't click on any links.

Joining me for the roundtable from Ideastream Public Media, deputy editor of News Stephanie Check Wolinsky and environment reporter Zaria Johnson.

In Columbus, the managing editor of the Columbus Dispatch, Rick Ruan.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

one of many property tax relief bills in Columbus, which would prevent schools from levying unbolted taxes on what's known as inside millage.

Would be cataclysmic to schools and small local governments.

Critics say.

The bill, HB 335, sponsored by Republican State Representative David Thomas of Jefferson in Ashtabula County.

Rick Inside millage is in the weeds, but basically a small percentage of value home value can now be taxed with no vote.

That's right.

So you have you know, we all go to the ballot every year to vote on school levies and other agencies that ultimately add to your tax bill.

But under Ohio law, there is a portion of property tax value that can be taxed with without a vote.

And that equates to about 1%.

And, you know, we're talking about mills here.

That's complicated in and of itself.

When we say Mills, what we mean is basically a dollar for every $1,000 of value on your home.

All right, we've got an hour.

Can you just go ahead and explain everything about millage to me now?

No, I don't think we have enough.

No, we do not have enough time.

It is definitely in the weeds.

But the key that when we say inside millage is this is the percentage, the 1% that the government or the local school district can levy.

What that what we're hearing from the lawmaker who's put this bill forward is it should always be a vote.

We're hearing from the school districts, including in Franklin County, where your folks did a great story yesterday.

There are huge implications for schools.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the I think the estimate that I saw was that this would cut about $2 billion from schools in Ohio.

And that's based on some preliminary analysis from the Legislative Service Commission.

That's equates to about 20,000 teachers, according to the Education and Policy Institute, which analyzes the budget for the state's major school groups.

That would mean roughly 20% cut to the teaching workforce in Ohio.

That is going to reverberate pretty much everywhere in the state.

You know, in Franklin County, officials are warning that agencies here could lose as much as $427 million and that this could hit safety forces like county sheriffs offices along with schools.

They're talking about $230 million loss for school districts in Franklin County alone.

And for some schools that could be more than 50 15% of their operating budgets.

We know that the state is responsible for funding public schools.

We know that the school funding formula was ruled unconstitutional several times, that there's been efforts to to balance the way funding is done.

But if you cut out property taxes, is there a plan that's put forth by Representative Thomas or others how you would replace the property tax millage from the inside?

MILLS And again, that's just one of many efforts to reform property taxes as they relate to funding schools and local government.

Well, as you said, Mike, Representative Thomas thinks that all of the taxes should be voted on.

So he's acknowledged that this would leave a hole for schools.

But he said that they could make up those losses by going to the ballot themselves.

They can sing sic income taxes or sales tax levies.

They also could potentially seek additional property tax levies.

But schools are worried about the uncertainty that that would bring.

They say that about 70% of new school levies fail and they would have a gap in funding there.

New levies would take several months to start rolling in.

Right.

Talk to the people in Parma, where there have been many levies that have failed in succession.

There's also pushback by small and midsize communities.

They'd be impacted too, because this money doesn't just go to schools.

That's right.

Local governments are very much concerned with the proposal.

You know, the Ohio know league, they say that millage comprises up to 15% of the general fund for communities that it represents.

And that 153 local governments rely solely on inside millage.

That's a big deal for those small and mid-sized community communities that don't levy as many additional taxes.

I mentioned at the top, too, there are a number of measures, one of which is citizen led.

There's now petitions being circulated.

Don't know if it'll result in a ballot issue this year.

Actually unlikely, some say, but sometime this year, perhaps next year, we might be voting on a constitutional amendment that says no property taxes in Ohio.

Sure.

And I can only imagine that that will, if it does make the ballot ultimately, which is a cumbersome and expensive process for for any group that's seeking to do, you can ask the groups that have been on the ballot over the last several years, but should it make the ballot, I imagine that it will face a bipartisan and wide ranging coalition seeking to stop it, given the implications at hand here.

Cleveland Heights Mayor Kahlil Seren will not make the September primary ballot ending his bid for reelection because he failed to collect enough valid signatures to qualify an effort to recall.

The mayor is ongoing.

Also this week, a report from a law firm into allegations of intimidating behavior on the part of the mayor's wife found evidence of screaming and cursing but not a hostile work environment.

Seren said he will not heed calls to step down.

Stephanie His ballot petition was short by a significant number of signatures.

He turned in what would be enough but done.

They have to validate them and he ended up falling pretty far short.

That's right.

He needed 342.

He turned in 492 and still failed, fell short.

He sent an email out to staff saying that he got about 39 too few, so he just missed the cut.

He won't be on the September ballot.

And you know, a lot of people are talking about a lot of controversy certainly surrounding his administration.

We've talked about that, allegations that his wife used anti-Semitic slurs, that she also was abusive to staff.

She's not a member of the staff of city hall, but yet seemed to be acting in that way.

There's a lawsuit against the administration by a former employee.

There's a lot of that going on.

And what the community has done as a result of that is said, listen, you've got to go.

It's time to step down, He said very firmly.

Once again, he's not leaving.

And he also sees this really as a racially motivated attack on his ability to lead.

Yeah, he says that he's facing political opposition that is rooted in racial prejudice.

Essentially.

He had a press conference, I believe it was Thursday or excuse me, it must have been Wednesday.

The days are screwed up for me because of the day off yesterday.

But he he was at a church on Fairmont in Cleveland Heights.

He was talking about the accusations that are against his wife.

And he essentially said, people oppose me, they oppose my platform.

And this is the result of that.

This is this is motivated by racial animus, not by any real concern.

But this report that you referenced, this doesn't address those allegations of anti-Semitism that have really roiled the community.

This is related to an incident early in the year.

It was a discrete H.R.

complaint in which a staffer said that the mayor's wife, who is at city you know, city Hall for some reason was screaming and cursing and acting aggressively in the building and that she felt unsafe.

The result was that the law firm that did the review said that that technically this didn't equate to an unlawful hostile work environment, but that was because she didn't target any anyone individually.

And so it was sort of an uncomfortable situation, but not necessarily reaching the legal limit there.

And so the investigation basically recommended she shouldn't be at city hall like.

Yes.

And I think that's the question that's sort of underlying all of this is why why is she there?

And he he spoke to that during his press conference a little bit.

He said that she was there for support and then connected it back to the feelings that he was being unfairly attacked.

I appreciate you, by the way, being there as an editor and our reporter Gabriel Kramer being there.

And a really interesting session that the mayor had that you referred to, where if somebody wanted to get up and say anything to him, they had to come up and sit next to him up on the stage.

It was just a somewhat bizarre format.

It was a different format.

Certainly he had a chair set up on a podium next to him or on a raised platform.

People who wanted to speak reporters, members of the public alike had to go up and sit down next to him.

And, you know, one of the one of the people there were his supporters were there.

And so and people who oppose his administration were also there.

And one of the people who who got up to speak, who was collecting signatures to have him recalled, said that she didn't certainly feel comfortable with that.

It felt, you know, that she was subjected to, you know, kind of catcalls or not catcalls, but heckling, heckling.

That's the word I'm heckling from his supporters.

Yeah, Yeah.

But you know, it was a healthy mix of both supporters and opposition at that meeting.

You mentioned that she's one of the people circulating petitions.

So while the mayor says he won't step down, there is still a citizen effort to compel that?

That's correct.

They have to get a certain number of signatures collected.

Then city council has to act, I believe, by July 9th to get him to get the recall effort on the ballot for September 9th.

And there is the city you mentioned the city council.

They have had a vote of no confidence.

They've had a number of votes in regards to the mayor showing their opposition to him.

Several of those members of council are on the ballot for mayor.

That's correct.

In fact, quite a few.

It's sort of a who's who.

There's the Cleveland Heights City Council vice president Davida Russell, the city councilman, City Councilman Jim Petraeus, University Heights chief of staff Deanna Bremer.

Fisher's on there.

This the former South Euclid City Council member.

Martin Marty.

Oh, I'm expand there we are.

Thank you.

And attorney Laura Laura Kingsley Hong so crowded field won't include the mayor.

Cuyahoga County Council members delivered a reality check to county executive Chris Ronayne this week by telling him the county needs to accept that the Browns are moving to Brook Park, Ronayne has been staunchly opposed to the plan to move the Browns Stadium to Brook Park, saying it will harm downtown and it's financially too risky for the public to invest in.

Stephanie Council says the county needs to do it its own study to determine the financial impact of a Browns move.

Yeah, we have two studies out.

We have one by the Browns that says paints a glowing picture of of economic growth and prosperity.

We have one from the Cleveland from Cleveland that disagrees significantly says that this will be a threat to the economic realities of downtown and the county council.

People are saying we need to figure out what this looks like sort of globally for the county to determine what we should be doing and where we should be putting our marbles, essentially.

Mm hmm.

And they have talked to they have talked about the fact that the Browns move is happening like Ronayne continues to fight against it, continues to talk about how it's a risky deal and how the county shouldn't put money into it.

But now we have several members of council saying, wake up, it's happening.

Yeah, it seems like we're going through the stages of grief.

Maybe, you know, we started with anger and now we're we're reaching acceptance, or at least some people are.

That was Sunny Simon who was talking about that.

And to paraphrase, she was she just said, whether we like it or not, it's a reality.

It's happening.

And we need to make a plan and figure out where we're going to land.

I'm not sure all of them don't like it, Marty Sweeney said.

It's an exciting project.

Mike Gallagher was talking about that, saying, Last I checked, Brook Park was part of Cuyahoga County.

So they're starting to beat the drum about how this might be an eventuality.

Ronayne has said County is not putting money into this.

There was an ask for $600 million from the state, $600 million in total from the county.

Now it looks like there's a possibility that Brook Park would have taxes and other things that would add up to about 400,000 or 400 million.

Sorry.

Yeah, I don't think in millions in my I actually don't think hundreds of thousands either.

But when it comes to when it comes to the county's investment in that, Ronayne has said, no, you guys don't need the money, fine, we're not going to give it to you.

But now we're hearing counsel may say we're going to vote on that anyway.

Ronan can veto it, but then it could be overridden.

Yeah, I mean, the county the county can the commission can go it alone to use the UCA term Council.

The council can they can they can put they can they can give out loans for between 150000 to $2 million for projects.

They that's part of their purview and they could they could decide to do that.

That's not that's not exactly 200 million it's not 600 million either.

Yeah right.

The front offices of the state's many professional sports teams like the Ohio Senate's idea for using unclaimed funds to pay for sports venues, including the construction of a new dome stadium in Brook Park for the Browns.

using unclaimed funds, is something that we've heard from a lot of sports teams.

Hey, that sounds like a great idea.

That's something we could participate in as well.

That's right.

The sports teams seem to think that that it's a great idea because of sustainability and flexibility.

The Senate is, in fact, proposing taking about $1.7 billion in unclaimed funds that they would use to pay for the state's share of the Brown's project and then have additional money left over to pay for other facilities.

You know, these are things like unreturned security deposits, final pay checks that Ohioans have never cashed.

There's some precedent for dipping into that in the past.

But, you know, the Senate has to get this over the finish line in the reconciliation process.

That's the Senate's plan.

The House had a plan to basically float bonds to borrow the money and back it with some guarantees and some money up front from the Browns.

So some ideas Governor DeWine wanted to double the sports betting tax.

So a lot of that needs to be hashed out.

But it sounds like 600 million is coming the Browns way.

And these sports teams, including the Guardians and Cavaliers, sent the letter to the state House saying they supported this idea of unclaimed funds.

But in the meanwhile, there's been a run on unclaimed funds.

Yeah, that's right.

So there's been a big spike in the number of people who are checking out the state website to see if they have any unclaimed funds out there.

I checked it myself and found a few small, small dollar items out there.

You know, the state typically sees a few thousand people a day file for claims that jumped in the day that this was announced to about 17,000 claims that day.

Since then, the state has seen 5000 to 8000 claims a day, and clearly that's much higher before.

This has been good PR, I guess, for, you know, people finding out that they might have some money lingering out there.

You're so lucky because I checked and I found nothing.

Are you saying you found, like, chipotle money or like going out to a fancy dinner money?

It was generously triple A money when you consider inflation.

Very good.

And, Stephanie, I think you did a little bit of searching as well.

Absolutely.

Our family has a unique identifier.

Last name.

So it's easy for me to check the whole family.

And we did.

And we're going some some are going through the claims process.

It's not as easy as you would think.

It's harder than canceling a Netflix subscription interest.

Yeah, a recent text message scam is targeting drivers.

According to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

If you receive a text from the non-existent Ohio Department of Vehicles claiming you owe traffic fines, the BMV urges you to delete it and report it immediately.

Most importantly, do not click any links in the text message.

I got a number of these.

Stephanie, I'm assuming you might have to.

Everybody I've talked to has had this thing.

You as well as.

And it does kind of alarm you.

It's like, okay.

And I'm thinking to myself that I have a I mean she do or Sanders would probably look at that a little more closely than I would.

But still, you'd be like, wait a minute, did I have something I forgot to pay and am I going to get in big trouble?

But what we're seeing is you got to just delete these.

Yeah, you do.

I mean, it preys on that anxiety that that, you know, that some unseen website is going to catch you up and you're going to owe some bill that you didn't realize.

Like, that's real.

But they rely on their they're kind of lazy and they rely on the fact that we're a little bit lazy, too.

Like the the name of the organization that said that it was the bill was from didn't exist.

Yeah.

The Ohio Department of Vehicles is actually the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and everyone knows what the BMV is, but you can get Ford Department of Vehicles.

But you need to really look at extremely yeah I mean and this is the thing you have to be hyper vigilant all the time and it's exhausting.

But you know that little device that gives them access to you also gives you access to the Internet.

So Google away my friends, just don't click the link.

And if you are somebody that got this text, first of all, delete it.

But you can also report it to the FTC.

You can report that the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Trade Commission to the FTC, they're the one that tracks the tracks.

This kind of fraud, if you fell for it and you clicked on it, call your local law enforcement and report that.

And to get in touch with the FTC, you go report fraud.

One word report fraud, FTC, dot gov.

And it's a widespread scam.

We talk about Ohio and the BMV, but this is happening in a number of other states as well.

Oh, it's nationwide.

And they just swapping out fake Ohio revised code for Virginia, revised codes or whatever it is.

They're just swapping out the state name and keeping the code the same, sending it off.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has posted signs in the national parks that request visitors to report any actions or comments that are negative about either past or living Americans or that failed to emphasize the grandeur, beauty and abundance of landscape and other natural features.

One of the locations for the signs is in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Actually, there are several of them there, the Boston Mill Visitor Center and elsewhere.

And Zoraida, you were out at the parks doing some reporting on that.

When you first look at it, it's the ordinary let us know what we need to do better, what needs to be fixed or improve.

But then when you get down to that last item, you're thinking, what exactly are they saying?

And you talk to some park visitors who were also concerned about that.

Yeah, and to be honest, a lot of the people that I spoke with didn't see the sign when they got to the park or any of the signs.

They got to the park because they're pretty easy to miss.

They're pretty small.

And like you mentioned, the first few lines are your average.

Let us know if we need to be repairing stuff here.

So I had to show a lot of people a photo of it on my phone to get their reactions and I could see their visible reaction by the time they got to that last line.

For most of them, just like confusion on their face or even like jumping back a little bit.

And I talked to a few people.

RJ Pearson was one.

He was from Oregon, was in the park for the first time with his wife on Tuesday, and he told me that they like to visit national parks specifically because of the history lessons they have on the Native American community and in America.

And his concern was that these signs could be a sign of a bigger push to water down that history and maybe remove it entirely when the park is are typically a place for people to come together and learn about other cultures in an open sort of communicative space.

And similarly, Amy Smith and Julie Kinzel were first time visitors from Philly, and they they said that anti-American views weren't present at any of the national parks they visited.

But their concern is that with these signs, the implication might be that people who are anti-American visit the parks.

The parks themselves are anti-American.

And so they're concerned that this might be part of a larger effort, a larger move against the National Park Service.

So the question is what they're really exactly driving at.

And the Trump administration has talked about, you know, not not looking at our history as something that is that is negative, that people should be embarrassed about what people are looking at.

This is essentially part of a national whitewashing.

Yeah.

And it's part of a federal executive order called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.

And they aren't just popping up at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

They're popping up at parks.

They're being put up in parks across the country by the end of last week.

And they essentially want to review any content, public content, and make sure that it doesn't disparage Americans that are past or living.

And this includes during the period of American colonization.

So I think the view of it potentially being whitewashing is an understandable one based on the context we've been given so far from the Department of the Interior.

And I wonder about the part that says that actions or comments, quote, fail to emphasize the grandeur, beauty and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.

I mean, if you say this is an amazing tree, do you have to have also said that's an incredible, amazing, awesome tree and then it's okay?

Like, how much grandeur do you need to communicate?

Yeah, and I'm curious about that too, because the national parks are like they show that they show these beautiful landscapes that we have here in the country.

And that's what I love about visiting CBP is being able to step outside of the office and go enjoy it visually without being told that it's something awesome and beautiful and amazing.

So that's a great question that maybe I should ask at the start of next week to find out.

It's good to be the environment.

Reporter You go to the national park and you're quote at work.

Yeah, I'm still working.

And so what can trust me, it's quite a nice speech.

Yes.

Two Republican lawmakers want to take aim at a reproductive health amendment that voters approved in 2023.

Their Ohio prenatal equal protection Act relies on the U.S. Constitution and would ban all abortions and criminalize the procedure.

It also would ban IVF treatments.

Rick, the voters decided in 2023 this constitutional amendment.

The question is, can lawmakers legislate around that?

And the way they're doing that is to essentially point to the U.S. Constitution.

Yeah, that's right.

So the 2023 amendment guaranteed abortion rights up until fetal viability, which is generally around 24 weeks into gestation and state law cannot conflict with that.

And in fact, some existing laws that were being challenged in court already have been struck down.

We're talking about Ohio's six week abortion ban, the heartbeat bill from several years ago, and a 24 hour waiting period for an abortion.

But this proposal appears to be aimed at challenging how the amendment itself would hold up in the federal court system.

Backers want to establish personhood for fetuses, which would give them a chance to challenge the amendment under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Hmm.

It would also ban in vitro fertilization, IVF treatments.

That's that's certainly a step farther, too.

Yeah, that's right.

But, you know, it's unclear whether this really has legs in the legislature.

There are some fissures among anti-abortion groups.

Some like I think some of the groups backing this legislation think Ohio Republicans haven't gone far enough since this amendment was passed.

But others saw that amendment as a pitch by Ohioans.

Republican lawmakers had simply gone too far in restricting reproductive rights.

You've got really powerful anti-abortion lobbies that aren't supporting this legislation.

In addition to outlawing these things, it would also criminalize the activity not just for the provider an abortion, but also for the person who had one.

That's right.

And that's a real shift from how Ohio has traditionally legislated these things.

And one of the things that I think is turning off the the anti-abortion lobbies that seem to have the most sway on on Capitol Square.

You know, you'd be typically targeting health care providers in this kind of legislation.

But in this case, it would represent a significant change of posture and potentially charging mothers.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven.

KSU Another episode of Talking Foreign Policy in conjunction with Case Western Reserve University.

Have President Trump's actions on the world stage ushered in a historic turning point in foreign policy?

Host Michael Scharf and guest provide context.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe