It's the Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable from Ideastream Public Media.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Welcome.

Amy Acton rolled out her property tax plan this week, well-timed as it's during Ideastream Explores: Property Taxes, our week of intensive coverage of the issue.

We'll explore her plan and see what her opponent Vivek Ramaswamy said about his approach to property taxes.

The EPA scrapped a plan that would have made it easier for data centers to discharge spent water directly into lakes, rivers and streams.

Mother Jones, a national magazine, published an investigation examining public records relating to alarming allegations against Congressman Max Miller of Bay Village.

Northside Market in Akron closed unexpectedly, a big blow to the small businesses there, while the International Institute of Akron got some love from the community for its work with immigrants.

And happy 230th birthday to you, Cleveland.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more from Ideastream Public Media, Akron-Canton reporter Anna Huntsman, and Deputy Editor of News Andrew Meyer.

Good to see both of you.

Good to see you.

Good to be here.

All right.

In Columbus, a woman who on her birthday in January will only be 190 years behind 230-year-old Cleveland, Ideastream Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Hey, Karen.

I am a journalist, so I don't do math that quickly.

I'm not sure if you insulted me or not.

No, in fact, I said I'll wait for a second for you to do the math, and then you're going to quickly agree with me.

Because we're both 39 and holding.

Sure.

Okay, yeah, yeah, I agree with you.

That's great.

You're good with that one.

All right, good.

I was told there'd be no math in this job.

All right, you can join us by sending an email to soi@ideastream.org.

Maybe you've got some math tips for us.

That'll be great.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy have shared more details about how they each plan to address property taxes should they be elected governor.

Dr.

Acton this week unveiled an extensive written plan while Ramaswamy made comments during a speech about the shape his policy will take.

And Karen, Ramaswamy initially campaigned to eliminate all property taxes.

That's a movement that's been afoot in Ohio for a little more than a year.

And in fact, looks like they're going to try to make the ballot next year.

But he proposed more recently something new.

He was at an event in Strongsville.

It's, it's a sort of a walk back of this scrap the tax plan.

Yeah, I think it just kind of clarified a little bit more where the money would come from to roll back property taxes to pre-pandemic levels.

And, and that's been the question all along, is, is the state going to make up that money?

Are schools just going to have to come up with that money and absorb that loss?

Are local communities going to have to make up the difference here with more levies?

So that's been a question all along here.

And he says that, you know, cutting the bureaucracy will be a way that he can do that.

He wasn't very specific about that, but he has a history with, he at least started with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with Elon Musk when President Trump took office.

He didn't stay there long, but he- that was definitely in his, in his past here.

So it's, it's something that a lot of, Republicans have talked about in terms of "doge-ing" the government.

But this is- you're talking about, you know, eliminating property taxes, rolling back property taxes.

These are billions of dollars that local communities rely on for schools, law enforcement, libraries, all these things.

And so rolling them back without a timeline or a plan or telling anybody how you're going to do that is, is kind of a- it's a vague proposal.

So what we had before was him aligning with the idea of eliminating property taxes.

By the way, we talked last week about how he wants to eliminate capital gains and possibly the income tax.

But the, the change now is what he's saying is he wants to roll them back to pre-pandemic levels, levels, cap them there.

What he's saying is during those times fire departments and police departments operated just fine.

There was enough money for the basic services.

And so it wouldn't eliminate that money.

The money would still be there.

It would just be at the level that it was 6 years ago.

Well, things have changed in 6 years, and, you could look at the economy and, and show very specifically that things have changed.

In fact, this week, for instance, I covered a story about how rents have risen in the last 6 years significantly more than the hourly wage that you would need to afford a basic 2-bedroom apartment.

So, you know, talking about our economy now as being the same as it was in 2020 is- it's not really comparable, I don't think.

And again, these are the kind of questions that we're hoping to get some answers from.

I mean, we're fairly early in the real meat of the governor's race here.

I mean, we've been following it for a while, but a lot of voters don't start paying attention until, you know, the end of the summer.

So there's still plenty of time for both Ramaswamy and Acton to be more specific about what they're going to do when it comes to property taxes, other tax cuts, that sort of thing.

Right.

And what we heard from Ramaswamy was a line in a speech.

And so you would think eventually we'll get some details and a, and a plan.

That's what we got from Amy Acton this week.

She rolled out her plan.

And let's talk about the thrust of that.

There was a rebate that was involved in that.

Tell me about the rebate that she proposes.

Well, she's talking about, it's essentially a circuit breaker, though her campaign says it's not a circuit breaker.

Circuit breaker is when a property tax, or when your top property tax bill gets to a certain percentage and you make a certain income, then your property tax bill will drop or you'll get a rebate.

And so this is kind of part of that.

She's talking about a rebate of about $1,000 to a certain group of homeowners.

I think it's household incomes under $132,000 with houses valued at under $350,000.

If their property tax bill went up by 4%, then they would get this $1,000 rebate from the state.

And that's just one of her points in her plan, which really seems more targeted property tax cuts as opposed to Ramaswamy's broad, "I'm just going to roll back all property taxes to pre-pandemic levels," which I also might add, I'm not sure that Ramaswamy can do that without the legislature.

Now, most of the legislature has endorsed him, at least most of the Republicans in the legislature, but that could be a really tall order for him to do that because property taxes are approved by local voters.

Yeah, but if you ask this legislature to cut taxes, don't you think the answer would be yes?

Well, yeah.

And yet we've heard some pushback on Amy Acton's plan, which is tax cuts, from Republicans who are obviously in preference to Ramaswamy's plan.

But her, she's got like 4 points here.

She would raise the homestead tax exemption, the household income for that.

Right now it's about $41,000.

Raise it to $50,000, which means about 55,000 older and disabled homeowners would qualify for that homestead tax exemption.

She's also talking about limiting private lien sale- private tax lien sales, which Ramaswamy was supposedly involved with, with a house here in Columbus, and loans of 18% interest or higher, which is, for a lot of people, considered a predatory loan.

But I think the biggest-ticket item on her list is fully funding the Fair School Funding Plan, which Policy Matters Ohio, which is a progressive group, said that the legislature underfunded the fair school funding plan by $2.75 billion in the last budget.

So that's a, that's a big, big part of what the questions are about where the money comes from.

And since you brought up Policy Matters, they obviously did not like Ramaswamy's plan.

And when it comes to Acton's plan, they said it wasn't nearly enough.

So neither one of those, one better than the other, but there needs to be much more done according to that organization and their analysis.

All right.

A reminder.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yep.

And you can join us Monday here on The Sound of Ideas.

That's the recap show for our Ideastream Explores: Property Taxes series.

We're going to talk to reporters about all the stuff that they found out over this week about the funding for everyday services in Northeast Ohio, about the need for tax cuts if there are.

And we'll talk about all of that, major takeaways from the week-long reporting project.

And on Thursday, July 30th, you can watch a television special at 7:30 p.m.

on WVIZ PBS.

That's the capstone to our Ideastream Explores project.

Following vigorous public opposition, the Ohio EPA has dropped a proposal that would have made it easier for data centers to discharge spent water used for cooling into lakes, rivers, and streams.

Karen, so how exactly is the EPA, what did it do?

There was public opposition to a permitting process change that it proposed.

And so it said, okay, we're not going to do that.

And I saw the words "for now."

I'm not sure what that means either.

Well, and that's a good question.

But what the EPA was talking about doing was coming up with this streamlined process for all data centers, because as we've talked about, there's a lot of data centers in Ohio and a lot more coming online.

And so the EPA was thinking about this kind of one-size-fits-all approach that would allow data centers to- right now they are discharging water into wastewater treatment systems, and this would allow them to discharge water into streams and rivers and Lake Erie.

The comments that they got were just- they were flooded with comments, if you'll pardon that pun there.

About 7,000 different individuals and groups wrote saying that they did not like this idea at all.

So, the EPA has stepped back, saying, OK, we're going to now do it on a case-by-case basis, which is how they've been awarding permits.

If you have a permit, that allows you to do something different than just discharging to wastewater treatment systems, which is how most data centers are doing it right now.

Now.

So for now, the idea of discharging the water into freshwater supplies into Lake Erie is not gonna go forward.

Right.

And so there were concerns that were brought up by these environmental organizations, politicians on both sides of the aisle.

And that was an interesting part too.

It wasn't just activists who were anti-data center folks.

It was politicians from the left and right that were saying this might not be the best policy in terms of discharge directly into lakes, rivers, and streams.

Data centers are starting to become like traffic cameras where it's kind of a bipartisan issue.

Republicans and Democrats are on both sides of this issue where you've got Republicans who are saying that data centers, you know, are part of national security and they have jobs and Democrats even saying that they are union jobs that help build those things.

And then on the other side, you've got the environmental concerns and you've got some of the other issues that are happening with data centers.

But the environmental concerns are a big part of this.

And so Republican U.S.

Senator Bernie Moreno and Democratic candidate for governor, Amy Acton, both are on the side of the EPA should not have allowed this permit process to go forward, that there should not be this discharge of wastewater from data centers into freshwater supplies.

So it's, it's interesting to see how people on different political views are falling in line on data centers and how they view them.

All right.

Let's turn our gaze a little bit more local now.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority is considering another round of service cuts as it works to close a $30 million budget gap.

They already approved an earlier round of cuts.

It's supposed to take effect next month.

So before they even take effect, they're talking about, Andrew, even more cuts.

If approved, what will it mean for riders?

Well, it's going to mean less service.

They're looking at proposing cuts on 5 lines, basically halving the amount of service.

3 of the lines will go from every 15 minutes to every 30 minutes, and on another 2 lines, 30 minutes to once an hour.

There is one line that they're considering eliminating altogether, but they're saying that people will still have A bus stop that's walkable, the service will just be less frequent.

The sum total is they expected to save about $4 million, and that's important as they face that $30 million overall funding gap that they've got.

And so it's a, it's a pretty large gap.

We're seeing another set of cuts.

It's interesting to note the RTA is going next year to be asking voters for more money.

And they're looking for a 0.5% increase in the sales tax to get more money.

They're a little vague on whether or not that means a full restoration of service.

They're saying, well, we'll see what we can do.

But it seems more a matter of they may be able to restore some service, but more or less hold the line.

It's interesting when you take a look at the 5 lines, the one line that's losing predominantly, that's really impacting the East Side.

So I don't know what more to read into it than that.

But East Side particularly taking a hit by these new rounds of cuts.

All right.

We're going to stay on transit systems, this one in Akron.

But before I do that, was there a memo that we were all supposed to wear pink?

Not to my knowledge.

I didn't see a memo either.

Yes, we're all just- no, there was.

Okay.

Yeah.

The pigeon landed outside my window.

I had a little rolled up scroll of paper.

That's what that noise was this morning.

Oh, all right.

Let's get back on the bus.

In Akron, Metro RTA reached a new deal with one of its employees unions.

But it's not the big one.

There is a much bigger contract out there.

Correct.

This is with the Teamsters Union.

So they represent mechanics, facility maintenance, and other maintenance personnel.

And they reached a 3-year collective bargaining agreement with that group.

But the- I think it's about 300 folks who are in the Transportation Workers Union Local 1, TWU, Mike.

They are still negotiating.

That's been ongoing for, I think, quite some time now, several months.

Overall.

But last or early this- earlier this month, they decided to go ahead and authorize a strike if they can't come to an agreement.

What's dragging it out?

So there's a few different things.

I would say the main is over wages, and they haven't had raises in a few years.

A state independent arbiter- arbitrator, man, I'm really struggling this morning.

I got to do some tongue twisters.

The arbitrator basically said to give a lump sum this year with, I believe it's a 3% raise, but that's kind of a sticking point.

Another part of this is they do not get June- the Juneteenth holiday off, and they're a majority Black workforce, and other major cities allow that for their transportation employees.

So they've been at the bargaining table.

I believe the last time they met was July 10th, and the Metro officials are saying, we're ready when you are for another July meeting, and it just hasn't happened yet.

Apparently.

Okay.

Before we move on to our next story, a little bit of feedback from our listeners on the issue of data centers.

Pat sends a note saying they need to develop a non-harmful coolant for the data centers.

Water isn't necessary.

That's her point of view.

We also have a thought from Dave who says the only data centers I support are public libraries.

That's a good one, Dave.

Appreciate that.

By the way, it's a 4% raise that the arbitrator recommended, not 3%.

Just wanted to fact-check myself.

Okay.

All right.

We got it.

Should the Cuyahoga County Sheriff be an elected position?

Right now it's appointed.

Discussion about that turned testy at a county council meeting this week where Councilmember Martin Sweeney sparred with County Executive Chris Ronayne and County Council President Dale Miller.

Councilmember Meredith Turner said she was quite disgusted.

Andrew, let's talk about what happened during that meeting.

Well, basically, the county executive called out the Councilmember Martin Sweeney and said "You're putting together, you're putting forward a measure, you're backing a measure that you really don't know anything about.

And why are you doing it?

We don't even know why you're doing that."

And that's when things really kind of spun out of control.

Yeah, I've covered Marty Sweeney for years.

He's not going to let that one slip.

And in fact, he was like, hold on, can I respond?

Can I respond?

Can I respond?

It was a direct attack.

And that's when we saw things get a little bit testy.

Yeah.

And, you know, you had one of them saying to the other, you're red in the face.

And the other one said, you're red in the face.

Yeah, I'm a little redder than you are.

Okay.

I know you are, but what am I?

Yeah.

And then Meredith Turner, which I thought was an interesting line, she said, listen, we're not Washington.

We're not Columbus.

We're not Columbus even, right?

We're supposed to get things done here and not have this kind of decorum.

So there's a lot of theater going on here.

But the basic sticking point this week was over whether the county should have an elected sheriff.

Council is pushing for it.

The county executive is really more interested in more power to both hire and fire the sheriff himself.

Yeah, that was- what was interesting is Sweeney is putting forward this proposal, and the County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley backs it as well, which is let's elect the sheriff.

It shouldn't be something that the county executive can appoint and have purview over.

What the county executive put forward is not only should we not do that, you should give me a whole lot more power over the sheriff's department.

And they voted that down.

They voted that down.

So he wanted that to be a charter amendment.

That was voted down.

Yeah.

There were other charter amendments that were put forward there, one of which was the sheriff.

It doesn't look like that is going to make the ballot as well.

They are having a Health and Human Services levy, and that's what Ronayne said they all should be concentrating on.

Yeah, because as we've reported in the past, Matt Richmond doing some good coverage of what's going on in County Council, that Ronayne has come forward and said, look, we're going to end the year this year with about $3 million left in the kitty for HHS.

Looking ahead, we're looking at deficits of tens of millions of dollars.

I think the positive note from council this week is they at least agreed to send on the charter amendment to the fiscal office to look at how much revenue an increase in the levy could generate.

So that's forward progress on that.

And in regards to the sheriff proposal, the idea of electing a sheriff, The Committee of the Whole passed that along, so then the council would vote on it, but it didn't have the requisite votes.

It's- Committee of the Whole is the same as the council.

The same members are members of that committee, but it didn't have the 8 votes you would need to pass it.

So the thinking is, unless something changes before the next vote, that's not going to go forward.

Neither is a proposal that, that was to let the council make appointments to certain boards and commissions.

Alongside the executive.

That also didn't seem to have it.

So they have all of these.

When we reported in the past, it was 6 different amendments, 6 different amendments that they were hot to trot to get on the ballot this year.

And now, yeah, maybe not.

Okay, well, we'll see what kind of relationship they all have at the next meeting.

But certainly, I'm gonna bring my popcorn.

Anna knows this, she covers city and county government.

Most boring thing in the world is to go to a meeting where, you know, they're discussing amendments.

But then once people start going after it a little bit, it becomes a little bit more theatrical.

Yeah, they get theatrical down in Akron too, I will say.

Lots of back and forth at times.

And of course, you know, some folks go up to the podium and sing.

You know, it's never a dull moment at city council.

I was going to say that.

I've heard the singing.

It's great.

All right.

Congressman Max Miller of Bay Village has been accused of child abuse and domestic violence as he seeks reelection.

Miller, a Republican, represents Ohio's 7th District.

He's being challenged by Democrat Brook Park Councilmember Brian Poindexter.

And a Mother Jones magazine investigation this week provided new details from more than 2,000 pages of court filings, some of them divorce filings as well, and police reports obtained through public records requests, including allegations of drug use, verbal abuse and violent behavior against women, all of which Max Miller denies.

Moreno, his wife Emily Moreno has- I'm sorry, Miller has denied the allegations.

And, his- the divorce proceedings that I discussed earlier in the records, where Emily Marino- her father is the U.S.

Senator Bernie Moreno- adds to the intrigue.

And that's something that Mother Jones dug into, Andrew.

The report detailed a March meeting between detectives, a caseworker, and a doctor to discuss Miller's 2-year-old daughter with Emily Moreno.

And tell me about what this article presented about that.

Well, there was an issue concerning bruising that the 2-year-old had on their collarbone.

They had a broken collarbone, and there were questions that basically the investigation wasn't able to resolve.

The findings of the investigation was that the claim of any wrongdoing was unsubstantiated, which means simply they couldn't find enough evidence to determine what happened.

Yeah, Miller said it was consistent with a seat belt kind of injury.

There was some insinuation maybe it looked like it could have been a handprint or something like that.

He's denied this vigorously, and again, there is no charge or allegation in that regards that is, that has moved to that level.

There are other charges that were dug into in that article, including a pattern of people accusing Miller of violence, particularly women.

And this is something that's dogged him over the years.

It has come out in previous media reports over the year.

There's a back and forth both between his former wife and also former White House press secretary in the first Trump administration, Stephanie Grisham, who's previously accused him and written about him being quote-unquote physical with her.

Miller is responding to those allegations, and we've seen that.

He did not respond.

There was basically a spokesperson who made some denials and some things that they would not respond to, but have we heard from him directly about this?

No, we really haven't.

There's been at best just non- no comments made, not even a, I'm making a no comment, just no response from the congressman or his representatives directly to Mother Jones about this.

And at best, I think his former wife, her attorney said, we're not going to comment.

And Karen, what's intriguing about this too is we have a sitting congressman and the U.S.

senator from Ohio that are embroiled in this.

And in fact, Miller has said that he believes Bernie Moreno is trying to sabotage his reelection chances.

This is just an ugly, ugly situation, and the fact that you've got 2- a US congressman and a US senator involved just makes it even uglier potentially.

But yeah, he's accused- especially he's accused Emily Moreno of trying to sink his career because he's actively campaigning.

This whole situation, you've got Max Miller writing to Bernie Moreno saying some things like, you know, you know I never hurt our daughter.

You're calling her a liar, basically, to her father.

And Bernie Moreno not publicly responding at all.

But it's just, it's, it's a nasty situation.

And telling him to control his daughter and making some threats about people will know you, Bernie Moreno, more, more closely than your wife even does.

Believe me, that kind of thing.

So, yeah, this is getting to be pretty nasty.

Do we have any idea about whether this is impacting in the polls on this particular race with Poindexter and Miller?

I'm not sure, because the polling in Ohio just hasn't been as prevalent as we've seen in years and years ago.

But you do have 2 big political advisers and watchers in the Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball out of the University of Virginia that have both moved that district from likely or safe Republican into kind of a leaning Republican.

So the race has gotten closer, at least.

I don't know that necessarily it's because of this or because of other issues, but certainly this is not the kind of story that if you're running for reelection, you wanna see in the newspaper, on TV, on the radio, or in a publication like Mother Jones where they went through so many different, documents and, and put some of the nastiest stuff right there for people to read.

What's interesting is we're hearing, from the Republican side, that, you know, they were criticizing Democrats for Graham Plattner who was running for a Senate seat and had allegations against him.

And why didn't they get him out of the race earlier?

And eventually did.

And then here's this issue where there are allegations against Max Miller, not from unknown people or somebody you could pin as, you know, somebody that's got a liberal agenda.

Stephanie Grisham was a spokesman for President Trump.

Emily Moreno is a prominent Republican as well, whose father is a U.S.

senator.

And yet there are no calls, it seems, from the party that he should step down.

Yeah, that's been a criticism when the whole Graham Plattner story started to break.

You saw some commentators going on cable news outlets saying, well, hey, what about the allegations against Max Miller and other- bringing up other examples?

And the typical answer was, well, we're not here to talk about that.

So, yeah, there is a real question about if Republicans are concerned about what happened in the Graham-Platner case.

Well, what about this one?

Okay, I asked you to send in your email thoughts, and you have.

I'm going to share another now about data centers.

This is from Joel in Akron who says, would it be that much of a barrier for data centers to be required to use closed-loop water cooling instead of discharging it?

That would seem to solve multiple concerns at once.

Same thing with requiring data centers to generate their own electricity.

That's Joel's point of view.

We invite yours as well.

At soi@ideastream.org.

And we've got a lot more to talk about on this show, including the sad and sudden closing of Akron's Northside Market.

For now though, here's Stephanie Haney with a look at next week on The Sound of Ideas on 89.7 WKSU.

Hi there, Mike.

Here's what we have coming up next week on The Sound of Ideas.

Monday, we will round out our Ideastream Explores: Property Taxes series, looking at some of the reporting that's come out from our newsroom over the past week.

On Tuesday, we'll also bring you a new installment of Easy Day Away, our series looking at trips that you can take that are easy to get to from parts of Ohio, that won't cost you a ton of money, and you don't have to stay overnight if you don't want to.

We're looking at Dayton and Yellow Springs in Ohio this time around.

On Wednesday, we enter the chat about whether Daylight Saving Time should be permanent.

This is after the U.S.

House passed a bill calling for the change.

We'll also look at what happened in the 1970s when Congress tried this before.

We'll round things out on Thursday by looking at reporting from Mother Jones by the Center for Investigative Reporting related to U.S.

House Representative Max Miller on allegations of violence against women and drug use.

We'll also talk with 2 Northeast Ohio natives who will be competing in the Women's Decathlon World Championships coming to Oberlin College in August, and we'll bring you our latest installment of Shuffle, our backstage pass to Northeast Ohio's music scene.

Back to you in the studio, Mike.

Thank you so much, Stephanie.

And when you guys are in Yellow Springs, I hope you visit WYSO, our friends at WYSO, the NPR station there, who are in a brand new building, refurbished school, I believe it is, that the comedian Dave Chappelle has put up the money for.

In fact, he owns the building and the broadcasting is done from there, but really impressive facility.

So check that out along with all the other cool stuff, Antioch, etc., at Yellow Springs.

You're back with the Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable from Ideastream Public Media.

I'm Ideastream's Executive Editor Mike McIntyre, along with Ideastream reporter Anna Huntsman, deputy editor of news Andrew Meyer, and Ideastream's Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler.

And before we get back to the show, I'd love you to go and log on and take our Ideastream news quiz.

You can find it on our website at ideastream.org/quiz.

You can also have it sent directly to your inbox.

I think mine arrived this morning, but preparing for the show, so I don't get to do it afterward.

But it's better to do it after the show anyway because it gives you all the answers.

Maybe, I missed one today.

You did miss one?

Yeah, there's, there's some stuff that we are not covering today.

Some sneaky stuff in there.

Sneaky stuff.

Okay.

Yeah, so try to beat me.

All right, so 7 out of 8.

So try to get better than 7 out of 8.

All right.

The unexpected closure of Akron's Northside Marketplace has left dozens of small businesses in search of a new home while raising questions about support for local entrepreneurs.

And Anna, why is it closing?

It was a sudden thing.

That's not great.

It was sudden.

But at the same time, it wasn't totally surprising because it's been having financial issues for, you know, the past few months.

It's been publicly out there that there were issues going on.

But the vendors say they hadn't been getting paid since December.

So this has been ongoing.

But Testa Companies, which is a, you know, local real estate company in that- in the Northeast Ohio area, they took over from the previous owner, Justin Lepley, a couple of months ago.

And they really were trying to make it work.

Joel Testa was the developer of the building.

He says it's a passion project for his family.

They were trying to make it work with some different business models.

They had hoped they could become a nonprofit, but unfortunately the problems were just so bad that they had to close it altogether.

And I have to say, this is definitely sad for the Akron community.

I live right around the corner and I don't know if you've been there, Andrew, either, but this is just kind of the place where you could go to get those unique gifts around the holidays or a unique little birthday gift for somebody.

There were all sorts of different vendors, clothing, jewelry, stickers, artwork, honey.

Akron Honey was there, and they're actually the ones who kind of put it out there that, that there were problems happening.

Noms, it was a restaurant in there, and it was just a really unique place.

Over 100 vendors.

And basically how it worked is they paid rent and the marketplace would sell their items for them.

They didn't have to be there all the time.

But unfortunately, that did not work out.

So there is another marketplace, the Mercantile.

Yeah.

And there's some discussion about whether folks would move there.

But we heard from some of the vendors that maybe they don't- they're not really trusting retail right now.

Yeah, I heard from at least one vendor, Jillian Klemm, Jilly Jelly Art.

She told me that she at least is feeling kind of cautious about it, kind of a bad taste in her mouth right now after, you know, what happened here.

The Mercantile is opening in September.

And I talked with one of the co-owners, Shane Wynn, who said, yes, Yes, please apply.

We would love to have vendors here.

But she also said, I understand if, you know, you want to wait it out.

We're a new store.

You know, we totally understand that.

And she said she hasn't gotten many applications yet, but that is a possible option.

There are also going to be grocery options there as well.

So that's another- that's an up-and-coming thing for downtown Akron.

So that's a bright spot at least.

And with the Mercantile, they're doing a different business model from the Northside Market where, as opposed to just waiting for payment once something is sold.

The mercantile is going to pay the vendors upfront.

Okay.

Right.

So like consignment almost, it seems like.

Yeah, a little bit different because- Oh, right.

Yeah.

The other way around.

Right, exactly.

Okay.

The opposite.

Whatever I say, reverse it.

Yeah.

Just like Willy Wonka.

All right.

Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, and former Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, a Democrat, are putting partisanship aside to urge local leaders and public health officials to work together to better prepare for the next public health crisis.

And Karen, this is rooted in the pandemic, the Good Health is Good Governance plan.

What does it recommend and why are these 2 people coming together to promote it?

Well, this was really interesting.

I got to talk to both of them for our TV show, The State of Ohio.

And, you know, I hadn't talked to either one of them in quite a while.

So it was kind of interesting to have them both at the same time.

In the same interview.

But they were brought together by a group called the de Beaumont Foundation, which was set up by the guy who founded Brookstone, the store, the retail store.

And it's really focused on public health policy.

And so, they've come up with, or at least they're talking about, this roadmap they say has 5 specific courses of action for local officials and local health experts to take to try to improve public health and do specific things like get personal protective equipment or come up with data that people can trust about certain public health issues.

And, you know, obviously those are 2 things that we talked about during the pandemic.

Ohio was one of the states that really struggled to try to find that personal protective equipment.

So they say that there are polls that show that people don't trust the federal government and federal authorities when it comes to public health, but they still trust local and state officials when it comes to public health.

And so public health is incredibly important.

Anytime you could have a train derailment and have a gas leak, or, or who knows what could And having a plan in place at the local level is really important to make sure that people are healthy and stay safe.

Do they really trust the state to deal with public health?

Because I've seen commercials that paint Amy Acton, who with Mike DeWine was trying to protect people during the pandemic and recommended wearing masks, and there were closures of businesses, which was immensely disruptive, but essentially putting on her that this was a, this was a terrible thing to do.

And we don't trust state leaders to do such things.

Well, and I think that's really interesting to have these 2 folks talking about this public health policy in light of what we've seen from Republicans really since the pandemic.

You had this split in the Republican Party of people who were very concerned about Governor Mike DeWine's health orders because he has said several times that he is the one behind those public health orders that Amy Acton signed, that she's now being criticized for by the Ohio Republican Party.

And so, you know, I even asked Kasich in particular, you know, you had Republicans who were pushing back on public health policy during the pandemic.

And he said he thinks at the local level, that's not as partisan.

It's not a partisan issue to talk about public health at the local level because you're dealing directly with people.

You're dealing with crises as they're happening on the ground.

And so he says this doesn't have to be partisan, and he expects that it wouldn't be partisan.

But everything's partisan now, isn't it?

I mean, and Kasich obviously has run toward the middle.

I mean, starting in 2016 when he did not attend the convention here in Cleveland when Donald Trump was nominated to run then.

And if you watch his social media, I know you said you hadn't seen him in a while, I feel like I see him twice a day because this guy is on social media all the time with a, hey, I'm John Kasich here and this is my favorite sandwich.

But he certainly, with his commentary and others, is setting himself up when we have very partisan right and left sides as trying to take this middle lane.

Yeah, and I think it's important to note that Kasich's not a moderate when it comes to certain issues.

I mean, to call him a moderate on things like abortion would be wrong.

But he definitely has moved toward the center, and he even made a crack during our interview about how the old Kasich would have said- would have been a lot more aggressive in this, but the new Kasich is more like, let's talk about things, let's consider things.

So I thought that was kind of interesting that he has recognized a little bit that his style was pretty aggressive when he was governor, and now he's starting to bring in more points of view.

And yeah, he does have- he's got a radio show on SiriusXM, and he's got social media.

He's a commentator.

He's still out there.

I just hadn't talked to him for a while.

So, and it's, it's, it's fun to talk to people you haven't talked to in a while and kind of catch up a little bit.

Right.

Summit County is beginning a nearly $4 million renovation of the county jail intake area.

Officials say the project will improve access to medical and mental health care for those booked into the jail.

So what improvements are they looking at there?

So they're going to have a new drive-through sally port, which is the gates where police vehicles take in folks to get them booked in and transported into the jail.

Apparently the old one was leading to a lot of double parking.

It caused a lot of backups and delays.

So they're going to still keep that, but they're going to be using that now for more of the intake process, and they're hoping by using that space and kind of revamping it, they're hoping that this will be better for mental health examinations.

They said about 70% of the folks there are dealing with some sort of underlying mental health or psychological issue, and a jail, not the best place to be dealing with that sort of thing.

So they're hoping that these improvements will help them screen folks better and just have more access to that sort of thing.

And how are they going to fund it?

Well, a $2.9 million grant from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, and then almost $1 million in funding from the county, Summit County.

All right, let's talk about more money in Akron.

The city will invest about $8.5 million in federal housing funds for affordable housing, neighborhood revitalization, homelessness services, and home repairs.

So let's talk about this housing plan.

What is the goal of it this year?

Yeah, so it's important that you say this year because this is funding that comes every year from the Department of U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And basically it's a couple different grant programs that they get millions of dollars in funding from.

It's about $8.5 million overall.

And they're broken up into different buckets.

But it's geared toward low to middle income housing.

And some of the funding actually specifically must go to low income housing and homelessness.

So a couple of the different things that they're talking about, well, I think the biggest one that I wanted to mention is down payment assistance program.

So this is something that the mayor has talked about for a while.

It was recently recommended as part of the Civic Assembly on housing, as, you know, we need to help folks who are maybe low income, but, you know, housing that builds generational wealth, that builds stability, owning a home, I should say.

So that's going to be up to $7,500 per individual or family.

There's different income requirements, and that's coming from the Community Development Block Grant funds.

And thanks for not just saying CDBG.

You're welcome.

Okay, next I'll talk about the ESG, Emergency Solutions Grant Fund, and those are going to be for rapid rehousing and some different emergency housing for people who are experiencing homelessness.

There is a little bit there in the budget about tiny homes, another thing that the mayor has been talking about for a while, but it just hasn't really gotten off the ground yet in Akron, but they're going to try that again this year.

There's also HOME funds, and unfortunately, Mike, I think that's one of those acronyms that just over time They don't really say it anymore.

It's just HOME.

So I can't tell you what it stands for.

You got a phone.

I tried.

I Googled it.

I really did.

I couldn't find it anywhere.

If someone out there wants to correct me, I apologize.

But yeah, that's some of where the other funding is coming from.

So this is, again, this year's allocation.

It had to go through city council.

It had to go through a public hearing.

And that's what they're going to be focusing on.

So now we know what they're going to be doing with their federal funding this year for housing.

Exactly.

I do like the idea that you sort of get ahead of time.

Here's where it's all going to go.

It's pretty transparent.

Yeah, it's actually- yeah, it's a very transparent process.

As they make it up.

They present it to city council.

You get to hear from all sorts of different partners because there's a lot of different agencies that work on housing and homelessness in Akron.

So a lot of people get involved.

So yeah, it's really interesting to see the allocation there.

And I did, I maybe forgot to mention that there's also some home repairs and revitalization as part of it too.

So if you are someone who already owns a home, there's some assistance available now if you want to make some repairs to it.

All right, since we're on an Akron kick, I'm going to move this story up and talk about the immigrant and refugee services organization in Akron.

This is the International Institute.

It opted out of federal money because of restrictions that have been placed on what they can do with it.

Tell me a little bit about the International Institute, which has this great reputation, why it made that decision, and then what the community did to help them out.

Absolutely.

So this news broke a little bit earlier this week.

They have been the go-to, basically the sole agency in Akron that's tasked with resettling.

So when refugees and immigrants come here and they're looking for, you know, assistance, they help them find housing, they help them with employment resources, and they help them get on the path to citizenship.

And that's specifically resettlement program, and it's federally funded, has been since the 1970s.

Well, basically, as we all know, since Trump took office last year, there have been some changes to, big changes to refugees that are allowed to, to come into the country, who is considered a refugee, what countries are recognized.

And because of those different requirements and the changes that have been happening even this year, the International Institute said, we feel like they're excluding people and we're just gonna go ahead and opt out of that program because we don't feel like what we're doing, it's just not effective at this point.

That's got to be a big hit.

Well, and they haven't even resettled anybody over the past year because of the new changes.

So they opted out of that program, and then the Trump administration essentially canceled all their federal funding because they had other funding for different grants, and they do a lot of different services too with people who have already been resettled.

So they do language services, legal services as well, and so they lost all their grants, and they said it was about 70% of their budget.

So they're gonna have to cut staff.

They're gonna have some reduction in services.

They say their doors are still open.

They're still here, especially, you know, for folks who have been relying on them.

They're still here, but they took a big hit.

So they announced that earlier this week, and I just talked with the executive director, Madhu Sharma, yesterday.

She told me in 2 days the community stepped up.

$25,000 in donations has already come from folks.

That's at least 300 people that they've heard from in that sense.

But then more additional messages.

People are, you know, the community has really stepped up.

And she said, we asked for the community's help because we wouldn't be here without the community that we have.

And a lot of people were immigrants or they, their parents are immigrants who benefited from their services and they're saying, hey, we want this to continue so we're gonna help however we can.

It's a great testament to what they're doing from the community, but I would imagine that $25,000 doesn't come close to the federal funding that they're losing.

No, and you know, we didn't get too much into the specifics about that because this is all still relatively new, but you know, Sharma did say they're gonna have to probably reduce about 15% of staff, and they have 32 staff members.

So I mean, again, I'm a journalist, I don't do math, but yeah, it's, it's not great.

But they're- they assure you that, you know, our doors are open if you need us, we're not turning anybody away, you just might have to wait a little bit longer, and we don't have- we might not have the staff that we usually have.

And they wouldn't have the restrictions that would have been placed if they had taken the federal money.

Yes, they said it really conflicts with their mission and values.

Okay.

Members of New Era, the Cleveland branch of a nationwide activist group, have sued the city of Cleveland for alleged civil rights violations tied to their arrest and trial last year.

Andrew, let's talk about New Era and what this whole issue is about.

So New Era is a group of men who patrol Cleveland neighborhoods.

They're trying to push crime out.

That's what they say they're doing.

They're primarily working in Buckeye.

The thing that's really gotten them attention is their armed patrols.

Now, they own their guns legally.

And they have every right to do so.

But that has rankled Cleveland officials.

And what has driven this new lawsuit is Antoine Tolbert, who's the leader of the group, was arrested in 2024, accused of kidnapping a man who was allegedly trying to sell marijuana to a minor.

This all stemmed from a boycott of gas stations on the East Side.

This is very convoluted.

Basically, they went to trial along with Austreeia Everson and Rameer Askew in 2025, accused of a number of things and were acquitted.

And now they're filing- they filed a civil rights lawsuit that's accusing both the city and a detective specifically with various civil rights violations, and that they're basically targeting them because of all the reasons you mentioned.

There are also allegations that they were shaking down the gas station owner and for protection, those types of things.

All of that acquitted.

The charges were brought, the trial was had.

Now they're saying, okay, now we're gonna say the whole reason this all started was malicious and we're gonna sue you.

It was all, you know, they're saying it's all about retaliation, so they are suing at this point.

I say this is really involved.

Matt Richmond over the years has been tracking the story and reporting on this story.

He's done some great reporting which you can find at ideastream.org, and I highly recommend our viewers go check it out because it's It's really an incredible story to read.

All right.

And we'll keep following that issue as well.

Public funding for the arts in Cuyahoga County may need new revenue sources within the next decade, according to a report that recommends planning begin now before the current source of funding, the county's cigarette tax, expires.

So there was a study and really it started, Anna, with some good stuff, which is Cuyahoga County does a nice job funding its arts organizations.

And residents really support it and are, you know, in favor of it being funded significantly like it is.

I was just gonna say it's kind of like a good news, cautious bad news situation, because the good news is it's well-funded and people are really supportive.

The bad news is the main thing right now is the cigarette tax, and people aren't smoking as much anymore, which I think is also probably good news too.

But they're estimating about a $1 million loss in that each year because they're just not collecting as much revenue from it as they used to based on the people not smoking as much anymore.

So, so now they're kind of saying, all right, let's be proactive and figure out, is there something we can do now to figure out how to continue funding this at the level it is today?

So you can't just raise- I'm sorry, you can't just raise the amount, the percentage of smoking tax if smoking keeps going down.

It's still going to go down.

It's going to go down.

Exactly.

And so, yeah, what were some of the alternatives that they were- Well, they were looking at some other funding models from other cities and regions, particularly in the Pittsburgh area.

It has a regional sales tax of 1%, and that goes to arts, libraries, and parks, and it seems to be doing pretty well.

And then Columbus has an approach of combining a ticket fee on large events and kind of putting that everywhere.

So they're kind of looking at those, but again, early stages of just looking into how can we continue funding this and what can we ask of people.

And it would be hard to talk about a sales tax in Cuyahoga County, already the highest sales tax in the state by far.

Correct.

And I mean, also we've got these conversations about property tax being cut down, income tax being cut down.

Exactly.

So it'll be interesting to see how that all goes.

All right.

The New York-based arts collective MSCHF has proposed building a large public art installation on Cleveland's lakefront as part of the nation's 250th birthday.

Little detail has been released about the anonymous donors and who would actually create the art.

The city's planning commission was to consider it today, a much faster than normal timeline, but pulled the item from its agenda.

And Andrew, part of the reason I think that they pulled it were a list of questions that our Steve Litt, our art and architecture critic, presented to the city.

He has a lot of concerns, and in looking at the arts community, a number of people, although anonymously, because this is a big-powered project and people are a little bit afraid to step out in front of it.

What are we looking at here?

Well, what we do know is it's an installation along the lakefront that would feature 250 10-foot-tall sculptures of generalized human figures.

the heads would be very specifically crafted off of real people, ordinary people, but that's the extent of what we know.

Yeah, we know it would be bronze, maybe like, like the Oscar statue, and then the, the heads would be some sort of stone.

Yeah, I mean, to me, I'm- I was reading Steve's article about this and it's like, this is kind of like Easter Island but not.

Yeah, but you know, the problem that Steve had in his analysis of this is the complete lack of transparency about not even seeing images of what's proposed, the background on this group, MSCHF, Mischief, yeah, and what they've done, whether or not this is legit or a prank.

And you've got people who are involved from North Coast, Scott Skinner, also I'm gonna get the Gilbert wrong.

David Gilbert.

Yes.

yes, David Gilbert, saying, yeah, no, no, we can vouch for this, we've checked this out.

but, you know, meanwhile you're saying- we're hearing a lot of, take our word for it, it's legit.

Yeah.

And so what he's calling for- and this has happened in the past when the Cleveland Museum of Art had its wonderful, renovation and addition- there was public hearings ahead of time.

And here's the architect Rafael Vinoly saying, this is what I'm going to do, and what do you think of this, and getting feedback.

Here we have a major piece of property, and Steve's point is, we're doing a lakefront plan.

Do we have to do it around this, or will this fit into it?

And let's all take a look at it and vet it.

And I wonder if that's going to be the case now.

And one of the concerns that Steve raised in his story is, what does this have to do- how does this really connect with Cleveland?

And as I hear, it's tens of millions of dollars and someone else is going to pay for it.

So that's something that would make somebody interested in listening.

But you want to make sure- you mentioned the background of MSCHF.

They've done some kind of stunty kind of art things, selling Nike shoes with a drop of human blood in them, calling them Satan Shoes.

They sold out immediately.

All kinds of things like that make you wonder, okay, is this really like a, like a high-level Chicago Bean kind of situation, or could it be something that's a little more pranky.

So something I'm sure that Steve will continue looking into and our Kabir Bhatia will be covering it as a news story as well.

Steve's on the opinion side, so he's not covering this as a news story.

All right.

Renovations have wrapped up at the Ohio State Fairgrounds just in time for the annual state fair.

And that runs from July 29th to August 9th.

And Karen, you're gonna be there, of course.

You gotta see the butter cow.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Butter cow reveal is coming up on Tuesday.

So look for that.

We'll all be there.

I hope it's a nice cool day that day.

But let's talk about the renovations.

A couple of new buildings.

Yeah, $460 million renovation.

And if you've been to the Ohio State Fairgrounds in the last, you know, 10 years or so, you saw that some of the buildings were looking old, kind of run down.

And so that was the goal of Governor Mike DeWine when he first took office.

He wanted to do this Expo 2050 campaign, which would really revitalize the buildings on the Ohio State Fairgrounds and try to just bring them more into what people want.

For instance, air conditioning, especially during the State Fair, which tends to be the hottest week of the whole year.

Put the butter in there too.

Yeah.

Well, now in the dairy building, there is air conditioning, at least where the butter cow is.

So, you know, and there's ice cream in there too.

There's 2 new buildings, the Ohio Showcase Building and the Ohio Agriculture Center.

There's also a new area where this Taste of Ohio Cafe that used to operate is now going to be operating.

And that's where you really get some interesting food options.

There's wine in there.

So there's a, there's a lot of different things that the Ohio State Fair is going to be doing.

But the biggest thing is that finally the dust has moved and the construction is gone and finally they can open it up.

And for DeWine's last fair, he gets the opportunity to open this up next week.

Right on time.

All right.

Ohio brewers took home more than 100 medals at the U.S.

Open Beer Championships held this year on home terroir in Oxford.

Anna, how many Northeast Ohio brewers were awarded?

And let's talk about some of the standouts.

We only have about a minute to do this, but let's hit our favorites.

Okay, I was gonna say I've got some puns brewing this whole time, so I'd like to talk about it.

Ale take it from here.

Lots of places from Cleveland.

We've got Hofbrauhaus.

The Brew Kettle has locations across Northeast Ohio.

In Akron, Akronym, great to see them back open and winning awards.

Missing Falls, which is a great place.

Masthead in Cleveland.

Market Garden.

I'm not gonna say all the beers.

Unfortunately, I haven't had any of the ones that actually won, so, but they all sound good.

I have.

I've had the street lager, the Mexican-style street lager at Immigrant Son Brewery.

My friend Andy runs that place.

They got a silver medal.

Congratulations to them and all of them.

Cleveland is a beer town for sure.

And you know, when you do those puns, you're a real pilsner.

Pilsner.

Anyway, we still have a week or so to spend with one of our panelists today, but this will be her last roundtable after 7 years at Ideastream Public Media.

Anna will be moving, but not far, to a new role creating content for the marketing department at her alma mater, Kent State University.

Anna, you were an intern at WKSU with Andrew and later came on full-time as an associate producer, then covered health as a reporter before eventually becoming our Akron-Canton reporter.

I appreciate your passion for sharing impactful stories, moments of joy in Northeast Ohio, great stuff.

But you're such an asset with the multi-tools, television, radio, social media, hosting, and of course, you're our resident pun expert, the princess of pun.

Anna Puntsman, that's me.

That's you, exactly.

But so great to have you here and be able to contribute to your progress as a, as a journalist.

And I know you're going to kill it in the next job.

Thanks.

Yeah, it's really, really bittersweet.

it kind of feels like returning home to Kent State, and I'm excited to continue telling stories.

I'm not completely leaving, you know, storytelling or anything like that.

So really excited about it.

But I mean, I started here when I was 22 years old, so I kind of have grown up here in many ways, and I'm so grateful for all the opportunities that you guys have allowed me to do here, basically.

So thank you so much.

We've benefited from it.

And Andrew, I know you think so as well.

We got one half second for you to say great job, Anna.

Great job.

Thanks, Andrew.

All right.

And happy belated birthday to Cleveland.

It turned 230 on Wednesday.

What did you do for your 230th birthday, Andrew?

Round of golf.

Okay, good.

By the way, if you want to celebrate, you can go to the public library starting tomorrow.

There's a celebration of the 10 years since the Cavaliers won the championship.

That might have been the biggest party, bigger than any birthday party in Cleveland.

So do head there.

And that's going to be it for today.

I want to say thank you to you, Anna, and of course Andrew, and to you, Karen.

Thanks for being with us today.

Thank you.

All right, and today is the last day of Ideastream Explores: Property Taxes.

To check out content from this week, visit ideastream.org.

Our closing song today in honor of Cleveland's 230th birthday is Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday.

And I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for listening and watching and stay safe.