The Ohio House budget was released this week and puts in $600 million in bonds for a new Brown stadium.

The budget moved away from fully funding the bipartisan K-12 fair school funding plan.

And a city council leader tested the waters for a possible run for mayor.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm an A huntsman in for Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Ohio's new operating budget is being drafted in Columbus.

This week, the House delivered its version.

Republican lawmakers decided not to fully fund the final two years of the bipartisan fair school funding plan, although they say K-12 schools get more in their version than proposed by the governor.

Cuts to food banks remain in the House version, even as demand remains historically high.

What is in the budget?

$600 million bonds toward the proposed dome stadium and development complex being pursued by the owners of the Browns and the president of Cleveland City Council tested the waters for a possible mayoral run with a city wide poll.

Joining me to talk about this week's news in Studio Ideastream, Public Media, local government reporter Abby Marshall and senior reporter Kabir Bhatia.

In Columbus, we have Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get started.

The Ohio House unveiled its version of the state budget this week.

The two year spending plan makes several changes to proposals put forth by Governor Mike DeWine in his budget.

One major change involves funding to K to 12 public schools.

With House Republicans signaling the intention to move away from the bipartisan fair school funding plan agreed to in 2021, Okay, Karen, I have to admit to you, I was doing research on this and I don't fully understand it.

It seems like people are saying one thing, The House is saying another.

So walk us through how much is the House proposing for public schools in its budget?

Well, Republicans said in their budget it will add $226 million to traditional public schools over current levels, and they're not fully funding the fair school funding plan.

That, again, is this bipartisan proposal that took a six year phase in.

There was about $1.8 billion that it would have taken to really fully fund that.

And we had gotten hints that that was the way it was going to be.

I mean, Speaker Matt Hoffman had said that's unsustainable and that there were other ideas that they were looking at.

And so I'm not surprised.

I mean, Hoffman has also said that previous general assemblies can't hold future general assemblies to specific plans like this, which they're often held to tax cuts, for instance, but not this school funding formula.

But what they're using now is what they call a bridge formula, which sounds like it's going to get them to the next two year budget and then maybe they'll be doing something different.

But I think for most district, the concern is not this.

In fact, Republicans say that every district will get some sort of they'll get the same level of funding, if not an increase.

So no district is getting cut under this proposal.

But there is a very concerning part of this plan that they're putting out there that would cap what money that districts can hold in their operating accounts as carryovers.

It would cap that at 25% and anything above 25% that those districts are holding would have to be refunded to property.

Taxpayers and school districts say this is potentially the devastating part of this.

Okay.

So Speaker Matt Hoffman says this new plan amounts to an increase for schools.

But can you explain, is that an increase over what the governor was saying or is it an increase overall?

It's an increase over current funding levels.

And when DeWine proposed his budget, he used the Ferrer school funding plan, which which everybody describes as kind of a bedrock or a foundation here.

But DeWine use that for the school funding plan, but did not update salary and other financial data used.

2022 figure.

So it wasn't fully funded in DeWine's budget.

Arguably.

And again, the House is saying we're adding $226 million to this.

It's going to be more funding than current levels.

No district is going to get a cut.

That's what we're hearing from Republicans.

But then again, there's this other half that is really important that school districts are very concerned about for the long run, not just this two year budget, but going down the road.

Okay.

So despite this, though, I mean, the reactions are already pouring in, as you mentioned, from districts, if the budget is approved, as is could be, or Northeast Ohio public schools are going to lose a lot of money by walking away from this funding plan.

That's true.

I'm looking at I've got the numbers here.

So the Canton schools, for example, Kansas City is going to lose $34 million.

Lorain City schools, almost $29 million.

Overall, the ten biggest districts going by enrollment in northeast Ohio.

That's $345 million in extra funding that they were expecting They're not going to get.

So across the state, that adds up to about $2.75 billion.

That's a lot of numbers.

But overall, that's that's money that they're not going to be getting.

And they were expecting in a lot of cases and care.

And that's, again, because of that second part of this, right about the capping.

I'm not sure about that.

I mean, school funding is so complicated.

And when you start adding property tax mix into this, then you really get two of the most difficult to understand things that are happening at the state House in the budget.

And adding to all this is the short timeline.

The House wants to vote on this budget on Wednesday.

And so this whole idea of this 25% cap is brand new.

It came out in the House version that was introduced this week.

And school districts are responding by saying this will cost an estimated $5.1 billion to school districts across the state because that money would have to be refunded to property taxpayers.

That's money the school districts are holding in their accounts for building construction because they're at a specific part in the cycle of levy collection.

They've got a lot of reasons why they hold carryover balances and they say if they have to refund anything other over 25% back to taxpayers, not only will it devastate those accounts, but it also potentially will create this rubber band effect where one year school taxpayer property taxpayers will get a refund, another year they'll be cuts, they'll be more levies.

It will completely change the way that levies are done and we'll see more levies.

We already see more levies in Ohio than any other state.

They're predicting more levies under this possibility.

So this is really, really quickly put in.

It's very complicated and there isn't a lot of time to sort it out.

Computers, you want to add to that?

I just wanted to add one metric, since this is complex, as Karen mentioned, 155 million, that's what CMS is expecting just under the Fair school funding plan.

To give you an example, if that goes away, they get 1% of that 1.56 million.

So every district is going to be affected.

CMS is huge if they're getting a 99% haircut over the next two years, that's really going to impact them.

And I want to talk about many other things in the budget here.

But one last quick question here, Karen.

So the governor's version of the budget didn't fully fund this school funding plan either.

So does that mean this plan is kaput and they're going to have to come up with a different plan?

I think that that may be where things are headed.

When I talk to House Finance Committee Chair Brian Stuart for our TV show the State of Ohio this week, he said that this bridge funding formula is what they're looking at now and that, you know, all things are kind of in discussion here.

And one of the things that I think is really important to talk about at this point is we're going to talk about the budget continuously in this segment is the financial projections for the state of Ohio, especially when you look at what's happening on the market and nationally and internationally, the Trump tariffs and everything that's happening here are going to affect what happens with the budget.

And so all of this is tied together and again, with a tight timeline where the House wants to vote on this on Wednesday, then the Senate's going to take it up and then conference committee has to work out the details.

It all has to be signed and in place by the end of June.

That's not a lot of time to exactly figure out all of these different inputs and make sure that things are covered when the economy is really in flux in a big way.

Now, the House budget did not restore funding to food banks as some had hoped.

Karen, why is this?

Well, that was a funding cut in.

I mean, it was essentially a funding cut.

But DeWine will say that he's a strong supporter of food banks, but that was money that had come from the federal government one time, money that they had given to food banks to do some stopgap measures, funding that was necessary at the time.

I mean, demand was really huge during COVID.

And so that's where that money went, that money's not available anymore.

And so that's why it's not there.

But of course, food banks say, hey, we need the money.

We're having historic demand at this point.

And right now, food banks are coming back by saying they're requesting about $5 million a year for a total of $30 million a year.

A little bit of last request.

But when I talked to Stuart, he said nobody's getting everything they want in this budget.

Nobody's getting full funding.

Schools aren't.

No one else is.

And so food banks aren't either.

He suggested that people who are part of that historic demand on food banks right now go find work.

He says there's a 4% unemployment rate and those people should go find work.

Most people who go to food banks are working, but that was his response.

Libraries in the state are also potentially going to see funding reduced under this proposed budget.

Could be what's the proposal for them?

Okay.

So we had a lot of numbers in the last segment.

I'm going to try and avoid having so many numbers, but essentially it's going to be 1.75% of the general revenue fund.

That's what DeWine was proposing.

I'm going to try and boil this down.

There is a public library fund and that would essentially go away if things go the way the House has proposed.

And even if they don't, there's a $100 million loss that's going to happen for public libraries.

And when you talk to the libraries, they're saying that July 1st they would start seeing cuts about.

Not not quite if not quite half of the libraries immediately, July 1st, are going to start cutting something, whether it's summer program, senior programs or things like that.

And a lot of the people who are in favor of getting rid of the library fund have said, look, we are giving you more than you would have had, say, a year or two ago.

But if you go back to, let's say, the year 2000, they got pretty much the same amount adjusting for inflation, $491 million in the year $2,778 million today.

That's a lot more than they're going to be getting under any proposal.

And House Minority Leader Allison Russo, the leader of the Democrats in the House, she addressed this in a conversation with reporters earlier this week, saying this is a change of 100 year precedent that's been used to fund public libraries in Ohio.

And that concerns her a lot.

She says that this is being taken away and that there's a stability in that that will not be there anymore.

It's just one of the reasons that Democrats have said that there is that they completely oppose this budget, that there's no one in their caucus who will vote for it.

I'm a I have library cards in three different counties.

My email inbox lit up yesterday as soon as this was announced.

You know, library officials deeply concerned about this potential loss.

Karen, something else in the budget, it would prohibit libraries from making LGBTQ plus materials readily accessible.

Yeah, there is a provision in the budget that specifically addresses gender and sex.

The language comes straight from a federal order signed by President Trump on declaring two sexes, and that's the language that's used.

And my colleague Sarah Donaldson asked before Matt Huffman, Why is this something that's in a budget document?

And he said, well, this will simply end the conversation.

This will settle the debate here.

And at the same time, he also invited people who are concerned about this to come in and testify.

But, I mean, Sarah specifically asked him about intersex people because this essentially writes them out of the code entirely.

And he said this is it will end the debate.

It will stop weeks and weeks of arguments over this.

But it shows that budget documents quite often have things in them that are not financially related, but because budgets have to pass, there are things that are added that don't have anything to do with money but are important to the party and the people who added them The House budget, however, did include $600 million in bonds to go toward plans to build a new domed stadium for the Cleveland Browns in Brook Park.

Karen, House Republicans put the bonds in the budget, but also removed the governor's proposal to raise taxes on sports betting.

So where does it stand?

Well, that tax on sports betting, it would have double the tax on sports gambling operators from 24% to 40%.

And that money would have then gone toward the sports facilities fund, which DeWine said would solve the problem of teams repeatedly coming to the state asking for money to help finance stadium renovations and brand new stadium projects.

We're already hearing the Cincinnati Bengals at the NFL team owners meetings talking about, well, we could leave once our leases up, so who knows what's going to happen.

So this is the kind of thing that DeWine was talking about.

And he said this fund would solve that.

Well, the that is completely rejected.

Stewart and Huffman and other Republican leaders have said that there was no appetite for raising any taxes on Ohioans.

So they threw out that they threw out a tax on cigarets that would have funded $1,000 child tax credit for kids under six.

And also there was a doubling of the marijuana tax that funded a whole bunch of things like the 988 suicide hotline, which is funded in a different way in this budget grants to high schools to bring back driver's ed that's been eliminated.

But this bond package proposal, this would be $600, $600 million in state backed bonds over 30 years, would have cost the state about $1,000,000,000 to pay all that back.

And they say that the money that the tax revenue that will be raised by that development will more than cover that billion dollar cost, in fact, to be $1.3 billion over what the state is paying for those bonds.

Those are numbers that come from the Haslam sports group.

I've asked repeatedly for a breakdown of what that looks like and a state analysis of that from the Office of Budget and Management or the Legislative Service Commission or something, and haven't seen that yet.

But they feel confident that the numbers that the Housing Sports group have brought to them in terms of revenue being generated by this domed stadium in this big project, Ohio's first domed stadium will be enough to cover.

Now, there is language in this that would make sure that the state is made whole, but it's really kind of unclear how all this is going to work.

And if it's a mix of income taxes and sales taxes, what happens if income tax rates are lowered, which Republicans have talked about?

The two leading candidates for governor, Vic Ramaswamy and Dave Yost have talked about zero income tax.

How does that affect the project?

We're still finding out these details, but once again, the timeline is short.

And education leaders have questioned the optics of spending on stadiums versus schools.

What have the lawmakers said about that?

Well, Brian Stuart bristles a little bit at that, saying that's not fair.

It's apples and oranges.

But you're right, the optics don't look great.

The Republican leaders who want to go forward with this project, and I should say that Democrats don't like it.

And even COG County executive Chris Ronayne, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, they don't like the project in Brook Park.

Republican leaders have said this is an idea that will generate money.

It's it's money that will come back.

This will be a brand new stadium that will bring in events from around the country.

Brian Stewart talked about multiple Super Bowls, which got a little bit of a giggle in the press conference.

I mean, he said hopefully some Ohio teams will be playing there.

But when you start looking at the breakdown of cold weather, Super Bowls in dome stadiums, there aren't that many.

And so there are a lot of questions about this.

Democrats have said, let's break this out into a separate bill, talk about this separately, not put it in the budget.

But once again, the budget is a document that has to pass.

And the Haslam's have even said they really need this funding in line so they can go ahead with their plans.

They wanted to break ground next year.

So this is a this is an important project for them.

And Republicans sound like they are on board.

Speaking about the Browns could be are the Browns ownership actually acknowledged this week that the organization erred in signing quarterback Deshaun Watson.

He said, Let's address the elephant in the room, which I'm sure people thought, which elephant.

He said, You know, it wasn't a great we took a big swing and a miss.

I wanted to get the exact quote.

We thought we had a quarterback and we didn't.

Now they gave up a lot of draft picks for him and everyone asked, is he going to continue here?

He's been posting, you know, he's been injury plagued for the last 15 months and he's But Watson has been posting a number of videos showing him working out, getting ready to come back.

Is that going to be in Cleveland or not?

He was asked that.

Haslam was asked that repeatedly, and he would just say, Let's wait till he's better.

We're concentrating on his health.

Let's see what happens.

So no comment really from him on the future.

But he is acknowledging that the last three years, the buck stops with him and it was not a great idea.

I want to add one thing about Buck's now that you brought up that words that I'm quoting here, one of the things that's in the Haslam Sports Group's presentation about their revenue projections is, according to Chris Ronayne, that there would be the expectation that tickets would go to $800 a ticket within that 30 year period and that all home games would be sold out, which home games are typically sold out.

So all home games will be sold out and all parking would be sold as part of this project.

And when I asked Brian Stewart about that, he said that's not his understanding of how they're calculating the math.

But he brought up that, you know, people complain that there's nothing to do in Ohio.

Kids complain that there's nothing to do, that it's not an exciting state.

He said this would be exciting, but if that is indeed the issue of that, maybe tickets would go to $800 a ticket.

Is that a reasonable idea?

Well, Stewart and other Republicans say this is a reasonable, reasonable plan and they're on board with it.

So quickly, Karen, there will be more changes to the budget right?

Oh, what's what's what can you tell us?

What are the next steps?

Well, the next step is there's there are hearings that continue.

There's a vote on the House floor expected on Wednesday.

And that's a really short timeline, especially for school leaders and others who are very concerned about what they're seeing in the budget.

But then it goes over to the Senate.

The Senate can make changes as well.

I should say that House Speaker Matt Hoffman and Senate President Rob McCauley both used to work together in the Senate last year.

They are aligned on a lot of issues, not saying they're completely aligned on everything, but I don't know how much change.

McCauley in the Senate Republicans want to make.

But the conference committee could be really, really key here, because by then when we get in May and June, we'll know what the economic impact has been on tariffs and all this other stuff.

And it could be a huge change going into conference committee.

Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin is apparently testing the waters for a potential mayoral run.

Abbey Griffin conducted a citywide poll getting potential voter feedback.

What Were the results of that survey.

So we won't actually get the results of that survey.

He commissioned a survey company to kind of go through and ask a couple of questions.

It's not just about who you would vote for for mayor, but he did ask who would you vote for for Mayor Bibb himself or former state Senator Nina Turner.

And so this is apparently him saying that he hasn't quite made up his mind yet about what he's going to do this fall.

But there are other questions included as well about approval ratings for Bibb, for Griffin as council president, responsiveness of council people.

So those will not be likely shared with us.

But he said he will share at least the council questions with his fellow council members as they gear up as well for this fall's election.

So he, he himself put this survey together.

So it was done.

It's conducted by a survey company, a polling company.

So they're they're kind of taking care of that.

But he says he you know, he'll frequently put out kind of feelers into the water with the public.

And he said every four years when I spoke to him, he said, every four years, you know, when I decide what I'm going to do, I, I pray, I ask my family, I talk to the public, and I feel like that's the best thing I can do for myself, but also for the public to make sure I'm still useful in my role or if there's other, you know, avenues I should be pursuing or if it's time to step aside.

So he has not committed yet.

He has filed to run in his ward, Ward six.

He's the incumbent there, but he cannot run for both.

The filing deadline is June 11th.

So it is kind of time here soon for him to make that decision.

It doesn't appear that any of the other challengers against Bibb are really serious contenders at this point.

So he would be the most notable, I guess, up against Bibb.

But as he said, he doesn't consider this to be like I'm anti Bibb or I'm against Bibb or anything like that.

It's just he's just testing the waters.

I mean, it seems like he kind of wants to be mayor, but is just trying to figure out if it's the right time.

Sure.

I mean, it's it's hard to say.

But I also think that, you know, Bibb only has one term under his belt.

I feel like, you know, and he does also, when you look at campaign financing, he also does have significantly more resources right now.

He has about $600,000 in the bank as compared to Blaine's 200,000.

And that does come into play, especially when you're looking at there's a lot of things that are changing this year in Cleveland politics as well.

We had our once a decade redistricting process.

We're going down from 17 wards to 15 new wards.

So council members will be kind of duking it out there.

Some incumbents maybe up against each other, some newcomers, some entirely new wards.

So I think that there's just a lot of flux, a lot of change.

So it will definitely be an interesting year for Cleveland politics regardless of what happens.

A survey of Clevelanders and their health released this week showed outcomes are worse for those living in the city compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the state.

The survey, conducted by Case Western Reserve University, found Clevelanders had higher rates of depression, were more likely to forgo medical care even if insured and have unmet basic needs such as food or job security.

I mean, these factors, experts say they point to health disparities.

Yeah, and it's worth noting this.

This survey indicates that Cleveland residents are 2 to 3 times more likely to have those basic unmet needs, like you mentioned, job and food security, which is like huge compared to the rest of Ohio.

And they say that what they're finding is that this lines up almost identically with where their rate of poverty is in Cleveland.

And I already mentioned on the show, but Cleveland is pointed to as like the second most impoverished city in the country.

So this is obviously quite concerning when you're when you're comparing to the rest of the state.

There were some improvements, though, maybe some silver linings in the report.

Yeah.

Health director Dr. Dave Margolis noted that there is a dramatic reduction in the smoking rate and down from down to 19.6% from 35%.

And there's also lower rates of obesity and chronic disease and in past years.

So he notes that kind of as a silver lining, it's unclear how much of the decrease from the smoking rate is for vaping.

Nicotine, which is something that he has kind of been beating the drum on to try to get Cleveland City Council to address.

And they have coming legislation in the next few months that they'll be taking a look at smoke shops and vape shops and all that sort of thing to hopefully address some of those health disparities.

How is this information that we gained the survey, how is that going to be used?

Yeah, so it will help policymakers, health care providers and community organizations kind of develop their what how they want to address this.

But I think that this will kind of give some ammunition to someone like Dr. Dave Margolis that has really been raising the alarm about health disparities in Cleveland, too, to go to legislators in Cleveland and say, hey, this is something that we need addressed now.

Akron is celebrating its 200th birthday this year.

Among the many ways it's marking the milestone is with the opening of the Akron History Center.

So can be.

Are you actually reported on this museum when it was in the beginning stages?

Now it's the vision is coming to life.

So tell me a little bit about it.

You did a great article about the opening, so people should check out both of those on Instagram reel.

Oh, did you plug it in?

I'll check that out.

Yeah.

The the museum is right there downtown near Lock three, near the old O'Neal's building, the Akron Civic.

It's on that block, The Bowery Project.

There's a restaurant at the corner, and, yeah, it occupies three floors.

They've actually been discussing this Dave Lieber, who has been like Mr. Akron for decades.

He's been discussing this since the early eighties.

And they finally they raised the money, $2.2 million, a bunch of other stuff from private sources, public sources.

And now they've got this great museum.

It covers everything from, you know, Akron's founding 200 years right up through the Oscar win by Paul Tazewell for Wicked for costuming Buchtel grad who got who was presented his Oscar by Why Am I Drawing a blank here?

John Lithgow, another book deal.

Greg So they're they're both in there, I'm sure, along with a lot of other cool people.

Yes.

The museum opens tomorrow at one and again, it's free.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven WKSU, we'll hear from some of the young writers who took part in this year's Stop the Hate essay contest sponsored by the Moltz Museum.

I'm Anna Huntsman in for Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for watching.