Lawmakers in the Ohio House restored cuts to libraries and their version of the state budget, but scrapped a decades old formula for guaranteeing library funding.

Mayor Justin Bibb wants nonprofits to dial back spending due to uncertainty about federal funding.

And the governor wants a total ban on cell phones in the classroom.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

This week, more details on the evolving state budget.

The House passed its version.

Now the Senate takes a crack and the whole process will be finalized by the end of June.

In the House Budget Library saw funding cuts restored, though they'll get far less than Governor Mike DeWine proposed.

And the mechanism for guaranteeing library funding in the future was scrapped.

A scathing report by the Akron Beacon Journal laid out new details about the actions of Superintendent Michael Robinson, who is under investigation for allegations of bullying and retaliation against members of his staff.

The governor urged lawmakers to pass a statewide ban on cell phones in schools.

And Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has asked local housing nonprofits to pause spending because of uncertainty about federal funding.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more from Ideastream Public Media, associate producer of Newscast Josh Boose, and environment reporter Zaria Johnson from the Statehouse News bureau in Columbus, bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

After intense backlash over proposed library funding cuts, lawmakers restored funding for the next two years in the House budget.

Still, it's $90 million less than the governor proposed.

And there's big worry about future budgets because lawmakers refuse to restore the method of providing guaranteed funding for libraries that's been in place since the last administration.

Karen Looking at the numbers, libraries are getting more money than originally proposed in the House budget, but way less than DeWine had proposed.

In fact, he wanted to keep that funding formula and add to it from 1.7% to 1.75.

Yeah, and his budget would have been about $90 million more than the House budget put toward libraries.

And that kind of sparked a little bit of a debate over whether this was actually a cut.

And what a cut is, is a cut when money that is not expected is not delivered or when, you know, when the budget the DeWine budget had $90 million more for libraries if the House didn't provide that.

Is that a cut?

Because it's not necessarily a change in funding from current levels.

I mean, we're getting kind of into an area where there was a defense of allowing for lower spending on libraries, but whether that was dramatically a cut, that that was really kind of some of the discussion on the House floor.

This is this is how House budget debates go on for a little while.

So but you got about a $90 million difference between what the House budget has approved for public libraries and what DeWine's budget would have given them.

There's a lot of support for libraries across communities.

You see it at the polls because people support their local library levies.

But in addition, when the funding issue was being discussed here, you had a lot of people coming out in support and I was interested to read in a lot of the coverage that many of the lawmakers were also saying.

I supported Jerry Serino saying, hey, we think libraries are important.

You hear DeWine saying that they're really the bedrock of community.

So it seems like this discussion about first, this particular budget, but how funding will happen in the future isn't over.

Right?

I mean, when you start changing the formula from making it a percentage of the state's general revenue fund to a set line item, or that gives lawmakers the option to decide whatever they want because they're not held to this percentage, which is how libraries had been funded for quite a long time.

And so that's the concern for libraries, is not to that they can't rely on that percentage anymore.

It really is at the at the whim of the legislature on what kind of money they're going to give them.

Now, libraries were incredibly well-organized and they were prepared for this.

I mean, you saw libraries had printed up fliers with some points about how these changes would affect them.

And they were really pushing out the message to people, go, contact your legislators.

Even DeWine was saying contact legislators.

So there was definitely an effort to try to move this forward and make these changes.

We have been reporting about schools being accused of being bastions of wokeness college campuses, in some cases museums and other places like that.

Does this comport with that in any way?

That is, are there some who just look at this and say, well, libraries are also places where books are offered that give history that people might not want others to read?

Is there some drive here that maybe touched on tying the funding is because of that?

Well, there is another provision in the budget that would require libraries to remove material related to sexual orientation and gender identity from the children's section.

So there is that in there.

I think libraries have been occasionally a flashpoint when there's concern about spending.

I mean, I can remember under Republican former Governor John Kasich, there was an effort to try to cut back funding to libraries and the same kind of thing happened.

People really responded because libraries do offer so many things at no cost.

I mean, the Internet, computer usage, not only books and all sorts of other materials, but all of these other things that libraries offer that people say they really need.

And so I think that there is a concern about what libraries do offer in terms of information that maybe some folks have concerns about.

But and that is reflected in that other provision in the budget or drag story hour, those types of things where that word had become that just made me think.

I wonder if there's some political reason for this beyond the budgetary well, and I think too, that, you know, this is an area where as lawmakers start looking at the budget for places to cut, because we keep being told that this is not the kind of budget that we've seen the last couple of years, the federal funding for COVID and that sort of stuff is gone.

And so we have to go back to a more slimmed down budget.

And so this was an area that lawmakers said they wanted to look at.

And in the end, the funding is about $5 million more than what is current funding.

But it's certainly not what libraries were hoping for.

All right.

And I did note that local communities support their libraries with levies, but not all of them.

Most of the 251 public library systems of state do get local support.

48 of them, though, only rely on the state support.

Yeah, and when you start having to go to voters for levies, I mean, school districts are about that.

They say that they're about to find that out and in a bad way.

You know, you're asking people to support their libraries.

And sometimes when people are suffering financially, that's a choice that they don't necessarily want to make.

All right.

Before we get back to the budget, because there's a whole lot more to talk about, we've got the perfect person here to help us with that.

The subject of libraries, two local systems were in the news this week for all the wrong reasons.

Josh, let's start and we'll just touch on these.

In Shaker Heights.

The effort this week was trying to return to normalcy after a deadly shooting inside the library earlier this month.

You talked to the staff there, two young people, one a victim, the other accused.

What's the what's going on in the library now?

Yeah, well, I talked to the library director, Amy Sweitzer.

She was pretty candid, actually.

She said, look, it's been a rough week.

Some background.

As you mentioned, Mike, last Tuesday, an 18 year old was shot at the library.

He later died.

A 15 year old now is in custody.

That 15 year old is charged with murder.

And the community is really shaken up.

The big takeaway I got from Twitter is this look, first of all, we are so overwhelmed, she said, by the community support.

People were bringing in coffee.

People were bringing in food and just coming to the library, showing up saying, look, we support you.

We know this is a tough time.

I asked her specifically, though, is this one of those things that you're getting from people that this couldn't happen here type of thing?

You know, is this a shock?

Surprisingly, she said no.

We know we live in a world today that this stuff happens every single day, but still shaken up considerably.

So they'll see more security there.

But their goal is to increase security, but still have that same kind of welcoming feeling that the library always attacks.

Yeah, And Twitter says it's all about balance, really.

I mean, when it comes down to it there, there's an increased police presence there now that will continue a conversation will really continue going on about that balance between people feeling welcome, all ages feeling welcome and then being secure.

Moved to Stark County library branches There were closed for several days this week after what police called a swatting attack by an 11 year old.

Sara, what happened?

Yeah.

Police aren't naming the boy because of his age, but he is suspected of calling in threats to the Stark Library downtown in downtown Canton.

And they say that anonymous calls came in to the crisis Hotline one at 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, where the caller reported shooting someone inside the library.

And then a second call about 30 minutes later where a caller reported a bomb threat inside the library.

And this comes a day after a similar incident, incident on Monday where the library had to be evacuated after reports that a man with a gun may have been inside the library.

So all of the Stark County or the Stark Library locations were closed after these incidents, but they did reopen on Thursday and resumed operations.

And none of that was true.

When we say swatting, that's basically when you call to try to get a SWAT response, police response to a place.

But there wasn't someone shot.

There was someone seen with a gun.

This was all just hoax calls.

Yeah.

And the the boy the suspect is facing felony charges for inciting panic.

And that way, when there's nothing, no emergency going on.

And he was transported to the Multi-county juvenile detention system.

But police say the investigation is still under way at this point.

And, Karen, it's a pretty severe charge.

And in fact, in Ohio that it was recently made a felony.

These these kinds of phone calls.

Yeah.

In April of 2023, it became a felony.

And yeah, that's that's serious, especially for someone of that age.

I mean, serious in any age.

But an 11 year old, that's that's a serious crime to be facing at that age The House budget includes the $600 million in 30 year state backed bonds requested by the Haslem Sports Group help fund a new domed stadium complex for the Browns and Brook Park.

There was a last minute push by Republicans to cut the funding, but it fell short.

An amendment forced the Browns to sweeten their insurance against failure by putting up $50 million.

But apparently carrying that amendment then prevented an amendment that would have removed the funding altogether because a bill can't be amended twice in the same day.

Who says?

Yeah, well, that's that's the law.

It's this was a little bit of strategy on the part of House finance chair Brian Stuart.

And it was kind of unusual because typically the House finance chair, the Senate finance chair will get up and introduce the budget, some of the highlights and then move to debate.

But he amended the budget or attempted to by saying the Browns should put up $50 million instead of 38 and a half million.

Then there was a vote on that.

And like you said, that just completely scuttled two other amendments that were out there that would have sought to remove the package entirely from the budget, one from Democrat John Brennan of Parma and then one from Republican Ron Ferguson from Jefferson County.

So a Republican was pushing to have this happen.

And when he got a chance to speak later on, he said that he wanted to propose a different amendment because he wanted to get it out there.

But he and he says other Republicans are very concerned about this.

So the $50 million that originally said 30, I think was 38.

But basically the team says it'll put up $50 million.

This is not a payment.

This is basically parking money as an insurance plan.

It would grow and over the 30 years and purportedly be 250 million by that point.

But if somehow the revenues didn't come through, that's some money that could go back to the state.

Right.

This is and the Browns, the handsome sports group, has described this as a very unusual move to put up this kind of upfront cash.

But it's interesting because there were several references to the Browns numbers and all the numbers, all the estimates on the tax revenue that this project, the Dome stadium and the surrounding retail and housing, all the numbers that come out on the tax revenue that will generate come from the House and sports group.

I have not yet seen anything from the Office of Budget Management, the Legislative Service Commission, any state affiliated group or individual who has looked at those numbers and verified them from an independent perspective.

Now, Governor Mike DeWine has said that there is this kind of document from the budget director.

He's seen it.

He hopes it will be released.

But that would be really important to see is to see what actually the state has looked at in terms of those numbers and whether the state has confidence.

Republicans who voted for this say they have confidence in those numbers, but they did ask for the Browns to put up a little extra money.

You mentioned Governor DeWine.

He still does not believe this is the greatest idea He was on with Bob Frantz this week saying that he still thinks that bond issues are not the way to go to fund these types of things.

Yeah, and, you know, it's been reported all morning, you've got the Cincinnati Bengals who have said, hey, hey, how about a little bit of money for us?

350 million is not a little bit, but.

Yes.

Right.

And so DeWine has said when he first proposed his budget, which would have doubled the tax on sports gambling operators to create a sports facilities fund that he says would have dealt with this.

He said this is not going to go away, that facilities teams are going to come to the state and ask for money to help with their renovations and their projects.

This tax increase would help create a fund that would do that and the legislature wouldn't have to do it.

Well, that was something that the legislature completely cut out initially.

All the tax increases that DeWine imposed, they cut all those, and DeWine still pushing his idea.

But it just it really has no shot.

I mean, there's no appetite among Republicans to do any sort of tax increases.

after a detailed report in the Akron Beacon Journal where numerous anonymous staffers accused school Superintendent Michael Robinson of bullying oppressive and inappropriate management tactics, a member of the Akron Board of Education said he's seen enough to call for the superintendent to be put on administrative leave.

Zaria, where is the administrative leave motion coming from?

What prompted that?

Yeah, so it was really this report from the APJ that prompted the push for a leave at this point.

Reverend Greg Harrison serves on the Akron Public Schools Board and he says with that reporting in mind, that's enough information he needs to advocate for a leave for Robinson at this point.

And this would be the first time the board is actually voting on whether or not he should be put on administrative leave.

And Harrison is saying he's not sure where his fellow board members will fall in the decision.

But he feels that he's certain based on that reporting that it's time and he has to do what's right in his mind.

And it was an unusual story by the Beacon, talked to, I think, a dozen people that are on the staff in the schools anonymously and generally in media circles.

You you have people stand behind what they're saying.

There are circumstances and we have the same policies here where you might grant that anonymity.

This is one because there's a pattern of retaliation.

They don't want to be retaliated against, but they they have something to say.

The Beacon Journal also said in all the incidences or incidents that it reported, they had those incidents corroborated by more than one source.

So he did say things like, I should fire you all.

And he did use a term referring to female reporters in a derogatory, sexist way.

And there's kind of there's that way of of of dealing with people, which was basically, I'm in charge, you do what I say or there are going to be consequences.

Yeah.

And I think it was smart the way the beacon even reading to the story.

I was curious about how they maybe address the the anomaly and anonymity they granted their sources, but mentioning that the information that these sources highlighted was sort of backed up by other people on staff either currently or former staffers was important.

And reading through the story and hearing all these allegations sort of add up and add up, it was very shocking.

Hard to read at some point in time.

So I understand why they went that route and Josh, the Beacon Journal investigation really wasn't a ton of new ground, but it was it was sort of literally coloring in the picture that we've heard about this hostile work environment that staff and administrators say that they feel, including principals and people in the actual schools.

Sure.

And, you know, it all goes back according to the reporting, it stems from that very first meeting back in 2023 when the new superintendent was hired.

And he's saying to them, allegedly, I'm bringing in New staff or I should you know, I should do that.

I could fire you all.

I could fire you all.

I may reinterview may re-interview you all for the current positions that you hold.

So that was the big, you know, the start of everything.

It was more the tone.

And then that reporting goes into obviously, as you mentioned, the allegations of name calling and speaking against the union reprimanding people in public was a big one.

And right now, the problem is, according to this reporting, morale is low.

People are offended, they're frustrated.

And that's on top of all the budget cutbacks, all the uneasiness in the district as well.

And he's a man of Christian faith.

And one of the things that this story pointed out is that he often essentially says he has got on his side that essentially if you go against him, something like God will will punish you for it, that he's got that on his side as well, which I think makes a lot of people there feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting in that story, too, though, that the people said a lot of his ideas are good ideas.

We need to have these done.

If you could if you could just deliver that in a way that wasn't so oppressive, then maybe we'd make some progress.

Yeah, it's not about necessarily what he's saying, it's how he's saying it, how he's presenting it.

And I think that's really what got people on the wrong foot from the very beginning is they the ideas may be good, but the way he's displaying them or giving them to the to the community is is the problem.

State law says school districts must develop policies around cell phone use by students.

And many districts already have banned them.

Governor Mike DeWine wants lawmakers to cross the next bridge by passing a blanket ban on cell phones in all schools during the school day.

Karen, isn't it unconventional for the state to mandate this policy across all schools?

Originally it was.

This is what we want you to do, but you guys are going to have to make your own decisions as a district policy.

Now he's saying, listen, let's let's just get it done.

No cell phones during the school day.

Yeah.

And it's because DeWine says he feels that this is very serious.

He feels it's interfering with kids lives.

So he wants this to happen.

I think there's going to be some pushback here, though, because you do have teachers who say this should be up to teachers to decide whether kids have cell phones in their classrooms, parents who might want their kids to have phones because they want to be able to reach in throughout the day.

And of course, kids who are using the phones, who do not want to part with them for the whole day.

So I know that there is an attitude, though, among the legislature that cell phones are a problem, they're distracting kids from learning.

And so this is something I mean, this was a bill that was already out there that was being proposed.

And DeWine is just calling on lawmakers to take action on it and pass it.

Yeah, the sponsor of that bill, Senator Jane Timken, had noted that students in the classroom are getting something like 11 notifications per hour.

I would think that would be distracting because you're kind of look, every time it pings.

Well, sure.

And obviously, the algorithms that are involved in social media and social media in general is really designed to pull you in design, you just to to make you want to check what your phone is, is doing.

And that is distracting.

That takes you off task.

And so that's part of the reason why lawmakers have even proposed this.

But again, there are folks who want those kids to have those phones, at least in some capacity.

You know, for once you're done with your work, you can look at your phone or something.

But you the the the real push has been to ban them entirely.

That that's a a policy that takes it completely out of discussion.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb wants housing nonprofits to pause spending due to uncertainty over federal housing grants.

We know that we're in right now a big national review of funding.

And there's concern zorya that the community development block grant funds might be reduced.

Other kinds of funding that would come in for housing, it would affect not only the 80 plus members of the Cleveland Housing Department, but all kinds of other organizations and nonprofits that work in the housing sector.

Yeah, And these these grants are meant for low to moderate income neighborhoods in Cleveland, and they help pay for things like home repairs and senior transportation and services for the unhoused members of the city as well.

And the city contracts with these nonprofits to do all of that work.

And so right now there's between 28 to $30 million of federal funding that's at risk at this point in time.

And the city is saying that a majority of the funding is for these community block grants and it's uncertain.

But this funding could be reduced, it could be restricted, it could be delayed, and that could either be delayed for a short term period of time or for the long term.

So it's just uncertain at this point.

So the recommendation from the mayor is to pause until we know we get the money.

But in the meanwhile, the need is still there.

So these nonprofits are in a catch 22.

Yeah.

So they're able to move forward and spend money that's already been sort of committed and outlined in contracts with the city at this point in time.

But for anything that the city is basically saying, don't make any new long term financial commitments because we don't know what this fund funding will come through.

They usually get an update from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on where the funding stands, but the city hasn't gotten it yet.

And so it sounds like the city just wants to be safe rather than sorry and make sure that no promises are made, no new promises are made on the financial, financial side until they have a better sense of where this money is coming from.

It's not just the mayor.

The council, President Blaine Griffin was also noting, I mentioned 81 people that are in the community Development department.

He said it's as severe as they may wake up one day and have to lay off the entire department.

Yeah, and I'm sure that that's pretty scary.

He's I think he's just trying to be realistic with how uncertain the funding is and how essential this funding is to this department being able to do what it does every day and tournament with a Cleveland neighborhood.

Progress says that without this funding, 12 of 18 of these nonprofits would have to be temporarily shut down by the end of the year.

So I think they're just trying to be realistic with the staffers that are working in these jobs, that this funding is essential, and without it, we can't move forward.

Yeah, uncertainty is, I think, the word of the day as relates to all of that kind of funding.

So we'll see how that all shakes out and perhaps levels out.

The historical significance of LGBTQ plus Ohioans and locations will be less visible after $250,000 in federal grants for historical markers was cut, according to the Ohio History Connection.

Josh The cuts are part of the work being done by Dodge, the Department of Government Efficiency.

But essentially this money would have come to put up historical markers that mention in Akron's case, a lot of the LGBTQ history there.

But the idea is the money is going toward DTI type efforts, and they don't want that to happen.

Exactly right.

The department, specifically, the federal Department, calling this the project funding, quote, wasteful DEA grants.

They posted that on social media.

And right now throughout the state of Ohio, there is only there are only two LGBT plus plaques around talking about the the history.

All of this funding was supposed to come from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

We're talking when we're talking about Akron, about $250,000 in grants for these future historic markers.

Jay Nungesser did a really great some reporting on here earlier this week.

And yeah, has a lot of people up in arms because, again, this is something that goes back with the diversity, equity and inclusion.

I will say this, though, on social media, when we posted this story, there was a lot of people that surprised me saying, yeah, we don't we don't want to pay for that.

We don't want to pay.

You know, this is exactly what we do not want our tax dollars to go for.

And I don't think in a lot of cases when you looked at the conversations back and forth, it wasn't necessarily anti LGBTQ, It was more about the just the funding from the taxpayers.

Right.

When you look at the numbers federally throughout the nation, the program awarded $266 million in grant making research and policy development to advance support and empower America's museums, libraries and related organizations.

Part of that then going to this type of thing, it's not a small amount of money, seems like a small amount in Akron.

But but folks are saying maybe we don't want to buy plaques.

Yeah, or maybe something else, you know, And same thing, you know, when you compare that with what's going on in the state government, a lot of people this week saying instead of, you know, the Brown money, even though it's bonds, I know it's different, but either or, you know, why is this going to this instead of what's really needed here?

Same thing with food banks.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven.

KSU Jenny Hammel leads a conversation on the rules for minors and the job market in Ohio.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe.

We got a thought here from Nancy who's listening, said, how can they in all good conscience throw money at billionaires while still cutting funds to public schools?