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Today in Ohio
Today in Ohio - Sept. 24, 2024 The portents keep coming, so why won't an Ohio leader rise to resolve the higher ed cataclysm?
John Oliver offered his unique perspective on the Springfield case over the weekend, a hilarious take, but again, humiliating all of Ohio because of the behavior of our Senator JD Vance. How did we ever elect this guy? It's today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I'm Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin, Laura Johnston and Leila Tassie, and Lisa, we talk a lot about the coming cataclysm for Ohio colleges and universities as their costs rise and the number of potential students drop. What was the enrollment trend in the most recent year for which numbers are available? Well, it's a downward trend and this is tracking back to 2014. This is data from the Ohio Department of Higher Education. They say that enrollment continues to decline at the 14 public universities and the 23 community colleges in Ohio. So both community colleges and universities saw enrollment declines between 2014 and 2023 of 11.4 percent. Like the universities went from 509, 700,000 students in 2014 to 451,000 in 2023. Enrollment is also down at private schools by about 13,900 students. That's through 2021 and Northeast Ohio schools seem to have higher than the state average of enrollment declines over this 10 year span. So Cleveland State down 17.6 percent, University of Akron down 46 percent in enrollment, Kent down 18.3 and Cuyahoga community colleges down over 33 percent. I think I did see a story when I was out ill last week that Cleveland State, at least in the most recent class, exceeded its expectations, but there's no denying the long-term trend. One of the things you expect to happen is more and more colleges and universities might merge to get the efficiency. And we did have a story last week about a couple that are doing that. Yes, that's correct. Ursuline College, which is over in Pepper Pike, its president David King signed a letter of intent to merge with Ganon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, that will make a campus or rather a school of 6,000 students, 1,300 employees in three campuses in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. They hope this will play out over the next 12 to 18 months. Of course, Notre Dame, which is right here in South Euclid, they just closed. So yeah, we might see more of these small schools closing. This is one of those rare moments in history where some states lead and some states fall apart. It's an opportunity, right? This is happening. We're going to have schools get into trouble. They're going to close. But it's an opportunity to review the entire system and try and make it stronger if only somebody in Ohio would take the reins. There's a chance that you could, if you did a full study here, figure out a way to fortify our higher education system for the next 50 years, for the next decades, looking at population trends. And it feels like all we're doing is letting the will to be fall, right? They're all running down the way and the lions are on the side and the population trends are taking them out. And why don't we have a leader rise to say, okay, okay, okay, it's a crisis. But from a crisis, you can find opportunity. Let's fix this. And we just don't see it. We don't see a single person stand up to say, let's try that. Well, I think there are some schools that are talking amongst themselves in Northeast Ohio to try and not duplicate degrees so they're not cannibalizing each other. But you're right. It's not a state level organized push. Yeah, it's just such a wide opening for a true leader to take the reins. And instead, we're just letting them, letting them fall apart. You're listening to today in Ohio, how have Ohio lawmakers who have proven there is nothing they won't do for their big daddy gas companies stack the deck against property owners who don't want drilling on their land? Laura, this was a great story by Jake Zuckerman about what the ramifications are of decisions made 20 years ago by lawmakers. Yeah, absolutely. And I remember being a reporter and finding out some of this stuff 15 years ago and thinking, how is this possible? But of course, in this state, it just seems to keep going towards the drillers. We haven't seen a correction here. And the idea is you can't say no to drilling under your land if the majority of the land owners in a parcel say yes. So there's this study in the journal Nature Energy that examined what is called unitization laws in Ohio about 40 fracking wells in Ohio rely on unitization. Because when you're talking about fracking, remember, we're talking about a large swath of land digging down deep and then going sideways underground to spray a secret substance. They never have to tell you exactly what it is to get all of this gas out of the rock. So these are forced transactions as long as drillers show that they've reached the voluntary consent of 65% of the land at issue and it's tried with the other 35%. And then they have a hearing with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. These are pretty common. There's 18 of them scheduled in October already in Ohio. Think about that. That's one every other day more than. So the department must grant must grant an application from a driller if it's reasonably necessary to increase substantially the recovery of oil and gas. So there's really no protection here for landowners that don't want gas and oil well drilling on their land. The reason they passed these laws originally was because if you were drilling too many places, you wouldn't be able to get the gas or the oil out because there were too many of them. So they made you have a group of properties together, but then your own property rights got lost. Yeah, they wanted a minimum size lot for drilling. And if you had multiple small landowners who wanted it, they didn't have the right size and so they could get together. I remember when this law was passed, I felt then that there'd be a lawsuit that would go to the US Supreme Court because this is an unlawful seizure of property. It violates the Fourth Amendment. And I'm surprised that hasn't happened. This was entirely foreseeable. People predicted this would happen. I mean, think about it. You own land. It's been in your family for generations. You care about its pristine nature. And because of the way Ohio lawmakers are in the bag for drillers, you lose control over poor property. That is a fundamental violation of your constitutional rights. And yet it is the law in Ohio. Jake's story had some great detail about the harassment that these property owners feel from the drilling companies. They just come and come and come and treat them like dirt. And finally, they just go blow past them and start doing the drilling anyway. Right. The study looked at a random sample of 40 communication logs from 331 applications that were submitted by 18 different companies from January 2014 to April 2021. So I don't know if you can say, though, there's just a couple of bad apples when you're looking at this many. But these companies contacted a man undergoing radiation therapy, so obviously he has cancer at least five times over three weeks to try to get him to sign a lease. And there's another example where a land man, and that's what they're calling them, even if they're men or women, I asked about this and the term is land man, reported 19 contactors with 19 contacts with one landowner that kept rejecting the advances. And then they actually called this person belligerent on the 12th time. And then they proceeded to contact the neighbors of this person, the heirs and known family members. So no is not a no. Well, just keep going. And that is harassment. The opponent to Jerry Sereno and the state Senate race on the east side of Cleveland has a long history as an environmental activist, and her argument is the legislature needs somebody with this kind of focus. I would say, given what's happening here, she's exactly right, that somebody needs to stand up finally against the drillers, stand up for the landowners, stand up for the pristine nature of much of Ohio. This law needs to be revisited, or why hasn't it gone to the US Supreme Court? This clearly violates your constitutional property rights. And these companies have all the money in the power, right? Only 14% of people forced into a unitization deal are ever represented by an attorney. They don't have the money to hire someone to fight it off. So this is a total David and Goliath story. It's a great story, entirely foreseeable. People predicted it. Some true. It's time to fix it. You're listening to Today in Ohio. Yesterday, we talked about the Portage County sheriff using sleazy tactics to intimidate Democrats in his county. Now we have the Twinsburg mayor threatening his own constituents. Layla, great story by Hannah Drown. Why is the mayor threatening his residents? Oh, man. This hits all the outrage buttons I'm telling you. For months, so the back story here is that there was this group of concerned citizens that has been demanding public records that they believe could expose corruption and sexual harassment and records tampering within the city. And these are all claims that were brought to light by a lawsuit that was filed by three former police officers back in April. The controversy behind that lawsuit started when those officers accused the police chief and other officials of allowing this corruption and misconduct to thrive in the police department. And they claim that their efforts to expose the truth here were met with retaliation, including being placed on administrative leave and eventually being fired. And despite being fired, the officers continued requesting public records to back up their claims and the records that they say the city is either withholding or heavily redacting before turning over residents then rally behind these officers. They started putting release the records yard signs throughout Twinsburg to raise awareness and to demand transparency at city council meetings. But the city led by this mayor, Sam Scafidi, has pushed back, even calling the signs unsightly and accusing the group of violating local ordinances. And residents say that the city is just trying to suppress their message. But at this September 10th city council meeting, the mayor really, really crossed the line here. He held up a stack of papers and hinted that the records could contain personal information about some of those same citizens and he said that if they continue to demand transparency, they might regret it because those embarrassing personal details might come out. His exact quote was, "If you're in a glass house, don't throw stones." What's amazing about this is he's the mayor, right? He's the guy that has asked people to give them their votes so that he can serve them and lead their city into prosperity. When that person issues threats against the people that voted, they're out of touch. It was like that Hudson mayor. Remember the Hudson mayor a few years ago, the one that was like ice fishing is about prostitution and he set all sorts of wacky stuff and soon he was no longer around. This guy's out of touch. You don't attack the residents. You don't have any power without the residents. And once you start attacking the people who invested you with that power, you're done. They're asking for basic public records and he's saying, "You asked for these records? I'm going to do everything I can to embarrass the hell out of you in front of your neighbors. Wrong answer, man. That guy needs to go and go now. He should resign immediately." And these three officers who are behind this request are blowing the whistle on some pretty serious allegations. We're talking about sexual harassment and tampering with records to keep the chiefs, kids, names out of police reports for things like underage drinking and stuff. And the city claimed that the video footage didn't exist of an officer potentially using unlawful force on a citizen. I am so glad to see the residents stand up and rally behind the push for the release of these records. That is an incredible act of bravery to stand up against threats like the one the mayor just made at this council meeting. I wrote a column a few weeks ago about the shift and the time I've been covering things as a journalist from elected officials who were of us, to elected officials who think they are of the words and masters over us. And this is a clear example of that. This is not somebody that's, "Hey, we're all in this together. I'm going to try and make sure I keep the tax burden light. I know what you're going through. I'm one of you," to somebody that's actually threatening the people who put him into office. Like he somehow got some superpower. I mean, they ought to go to the polls right away and oust him. If they have any kind of recall system or something, the minute a mayor threatens his own constituents, he's done. This guy's done. It's a story by Hannah Drem. You're listening to Today in Ohio. Why does U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown say CSX cutbacks planned for the Collinwood Yards are bad and potentially dangerous for greater Cleveland? Yeah, the Sherrod Brown sent a letter to the CSX Railroad executives. He wants them to reverse a recent decision to reduce the crew members and train stops at the Collinwood Rail Yard. He wants the CEO, Joseph Henrichs, to meet workers and him if they pursue the removal of CSX workers from Collinwood. So apparently, the letter states that these workers would be transferred to either Buffalo, New York, or Willard, Ohio, or possibly even laid off. The upshot of this Brown says would be causing a lot of delays and blocked railroad crossings and crew change issues. Clyde Whittaker is with the union that represents 1300 Ohio railroad workers, including the CSX ones that are affected. He says CSX plans will affect about 40 train operators in Cleveland at first, but he fears it's going to spread to mechanics and track maintenance staff in Collinwood. Collinwood is a big rail yard. It has 130 train operators and a large support staff. And Brown says stalled trains are a huge issue. They're stalled because they're awaiting mandated crew changes. They could be blocking road crossings for hours in Northeast Ohio. And he says that relief crews now will have to travel to Cleveland further to reach Northeast Ohio. It's a three and a half, four-hour ride from Buffalo to Cleveland. So if you need a crew to get a train out of a blocked area, that's too long to wait. When I'm surprised about here, we saw from the big train crash last year in the southern that they don't have enough staffing, that that's a huge problem. They have these enormous trains going through all of our cities and all of our rural areas. And they don't have enough people. Clearly, don't have enough people. Here we have crews that at least if something goes wrong, can get out and do what's needed. And I don't want to take them out of here. Sherrod, Brown is exactly right. You shouldn't be allowed. They should be regulating this to require some minimum level of staffing every so many miles because these trains wreak havoc on neighborhoods. In the Collinwood, I mean, I kind of looked at it like a rail map. The Collinwood yard is a pretty critical yard. I mean, a lot of rail lines come into there from all over Northeast Ohio, Pennsylvania and everything. So I'm kind of scratching my head at this. Yeah, me too. And I'm really glad that Brown has a beat on it because this is not good for anybody. And there is a danger. What if it's a train that has dangerous materials on it that suddenly is gone awry? We're going to wait for four hours for somebody to drive here from Buffalo? That's not a great ride, Laura. You've done that ride plenty of times. That's not, it's not quick. Well, no, especially if you have an emergency, like, no, it's not a bad drive to visit your in-laws for a weekend. I just can't believe we're doing this a little more than a year out from the worst rail disaster in Ohio in years. You would think that they would understand the optics of this. I hope Sherrod, Brown gets somewhere so far in Congress, the railroads keep winning. Something that Congress proposes to rein them in is sticking and they keep doing stupid stuff and endangers us all. You're listening to today in Ohio. Why are a whole lot of Cuyahoga County employees unhappy with county executive Chris Ronaine these days, Laura? Because he wants them to be in the office more. He wants this policy that says employees can work from home two days a week and that would be codified in their official record. And that's supposed to make this option official for flexibility because right now a lot of people are working from home under temporary ideas that this isn't part of their plan. But the county employees that are represented by the unions are saying, nope, this isn't good. We don't need to be coming into the office. It's very expensive to drive, to pay for the parking. Parking can be $100 a month. They're saying they sometimes have to choose between eating lunch or parking that day. They say childcare is incredibly expensive, which it is. And some people who have part-time childcare if they had to up it to the full time to go two days from two days of childcare a week to three days, they'd be paying a whole lot more money. So I get the idea that he wants to make this official policy and put everybody on the same page because right now some people, only the health and human services officially offer these remote work options. But honestly, if it's not causing a problem, I don't know why you're making a problem about it. Hold on though, you're not supposed to take care of kids while you're working. No, you're not. You're not supposed to take care of kids. It tells me they're not working. If they're saying, oh my, now I'll have to get childcare. It's like, what are you doing? I'm going to push back on that because I think that, I mean, a lot of people have older kids who you just need to be present, you're not caring for them. They kind of do their own thing and they're around, but you don't want them to be just at loose ends. Yeah. So I understand that. I mean, when we work from home, my kids are kind of some, I mean, I have a four-year-old so my mom is here at that during those hours. But you know, if it were just my older kids, they'd bomb around in the house and go play with their friends, but I'm at least around. If I had to go into the office every day, I would absolutely need someone to come and make sure that, you know, there's not around the town do it, you know, totally in the wind. I can get, I understand that. And of course, yeah, you shouldn't be taking care of a baby while you're on the clock, but I mean, that's a very intensive, you know, you need to pay complete attention to that. But I don't know. You know what I'm talking about? I don't know the age of the children we're talking about. I know that my kids went to aftercare every single day of their lives until COVID happened and I could work from home and then they started coming home and I've never used childcare again. So they talked about how COVID was this, obviously it caused huge problems, but it was this blessing in this area where you could work from home in your sweatpants and not pay for parking and not pay for gas. And if you have older kids, yeah, they can be home. If they're third grade, they can be home and you don't need to watch them, but you're not going to have them home alone all day by themselves. So I think that's what we're talking about. The pandemic causes sea change in the employee-employer relationship. People work from home and employers learn that in many cases they could work from home and be efficient. The county's a little bit different because it provides a lot of services that people go to the county for. And so those folks have got to be there to provide services like a grocery worker. You've got to be there. Well, but they're not talking about those ones. They said that one of the examples they gave is somebody who, even when they work from the office, is only interacting by phone and email with their clients. So yeah, you can't have somebody working in the auditor's office who's supposed to take payments and they're just not there. That's not going to work. I agree with that. The other problem they face is that there are other employers out there that will let people work from home. Right. And if you're competing for workers the way the county often is, they're going to lose out because the workers for now are in charge. Right. And that's going to mean that, too, if you're going to force this policy, you're going to end up paying more for those workers to attract them away from the employers who are more flexible about work from home policies. Because often government jobs don't pay as much, but they have great benefits. But if you're not going to pay as much and you're going to make them drive to the office, I don't think you're going to win that. And that would be the union thing. I wish Ronan would explain a little more in detail why he feels this is necessary. Have they done efficiency studies that have shown that the people working from home are doing less? And what is causing every employer deals with this? We deal with this all the time. We constantly have conversations about this because you want your employees to be happy. You want them to be efficient. And it's a balancing act. But to make this kind of an order, you would think he'd have some data behind it that says, "I need to do this because of X." And I didn't really see that in any of the important-- You have so much faith in the county administration because everything they do is always so well ordered and scientific. I'd still like to see what caused him to do this because he's making a lot of people unhappy. You're listening to Today in Ohio. So Layla, were Kayoga County elected officials ever serious about rolling back taxes for besieged residents? Or did they just give the illusion of action to placate all those angry taxpayers that we keep hearing from? Yeah, I think that's-- I think we can just sum it up that way. I mean, okay, it looks like there was a glimmer of hope that this might happen. But it was quickly evaporated. I mean, county council's budget and finance committee briefly entertained a proposal for a tax rollback at last week's meeting. But the county chief, fiscal officer Michael Chambers told them that it would be totally unadvisable. He said the county's finances are in really rough shape. They're starting the year-- would they be starting with the year with an $11 million budget deficit and expecting the same out of next year? And in short, the county needs the money to avoid falling behind on bills. So Chambers pointed out that reducing taxes by around $12 million could jeopardize the county's bonds, which are partly backed by property tax revenue. And in the end, the county unanimously agreed to keep taxes as they are. Not only that, but to fast-track the decision to meet a September deadline, which is the 30th, to certify the tax rate. So while some residents might be disappointed, committee chair Dale Miller explained that the county just has too many expenses. They have new union contracts with pay raises for employees, for example. And they just can't voluntarily give up revenue. Instead, he said he's looking at other ways to help like a state-level proposal to offer an income tax rebate for homeowners whose property taxes exceed 5% of their income. There's also a new $5 million pilot program in the works that could assist seniors 70 years and older with their property tax bill. So for now, county is not offering a break on property taxes. There's a couple of things. I'm speaking for the taxpayers because I keep hearing from them and they're furious. This is not money they expected. Let's just say it upfront. When they talk about their budget, this was not money they knew was coming because they didn't realize the assessments were going to go up as high as they did. And even though Ohio largely freezes taxes against assessments, there's a big part of the bill that's not and that's where people are getting sucked. So the other fallacy is to say that they're slaves to their budget. They're not. They're the masters of the budget. When you get your budget, you don't say, "Oh my God, it's out of balance." You go back and you work the budget. We all do this in our own lives, but they're giving taxpayers a bunch of smoke to make them go away. They're not going away. They're furious. And the danger the county faces is the next time they put in healthy human services levy or some other tax on the ballot for renewal, people are going to say no because at this one moment where the county could have done the right thing and said taxpayers, "We get it. You're overdone by this. We're going to provide you relief." They blew smoke and didn't do it. And the other argument that keeps coming is it's not really that much money. When you look at it as a percentage of the budget, it's only 5%. Well, one, 5% is a lot. That's not a small amount of money. And it's not just this. It's everything. They unilaterally raised the sales tax for the next 40 years. It's the nickel and diming and it adds up and adds up and adds up. And what you're hearing from taxpayers is enough. I keep waiting for our own version of Howard Jarvis to rise and put a local thing on the ballot that just completely reigns in taxes because our elected officials have never met a tax dollar. They won't burn. Well, so one thing, one point I want to pick up on that you said is you mentioned that they didn't anticipate this money. But a smart government should have because the data is all available. They should have seen this appraisal coming, right? You can look at it at any time. We could have Rich Exner do it and we could have seen that a year ago we were headed for this kind of surge in property value. I mean, I don't know, I think that's absurd. I think the legislature, when they passed House Bill 920, or did we vote for that, however that came about, they should have capped the inside millage increase. You know, whatever it was six years ago during the last six year reassessment, whatever our tax rate, whatever our bill went up by, whatever percent, it was reasonable. It wasn't like this where we had an overarching 32% increase in assessments. There should have been a cap. Yeah. Okay. The county should get a little bit of extra money. This is a windfall on the backs of the voters. It's an unvoted tax increase. And they're just not listening. I think this was pure placating. Oh, oh, we should talk about this. We should talk about this. Oh, but you know, our budget, our budget is tough. We'll fix the budget. Go through your budget. Have you done any kind of efficiency study on this budget? This is a county council that squandered $66 million on the slush funds. One of the county council people used his slush fund to build golf course stuff for his city. And then the city turned around and gave him a high paying job. I mean, this, these are first, I just want to correct. He got voted into that job, voted into the job, but they're squandering money left and right. And then saying, oh, oh, our budget so strained, they'd have shown zero ability to rain in a budget. It's another sign of the failure of this government. And I really, the reason I've been pushing this is because I think next year there's going to be a push to just abandon this government and go back to what we had. This will be a nail in the coffin of this government. Your refusal to consider the hardship they are placing on taxpayers across this county and their cavalier attitude about, well, we need the money more than you do, is exactly what this is about. And, you know, another elephant in the room here is, is, you know, if indeed they didn't know that this, they were going to get this windfall, what was their plan to deal with this $11 million budget deficit? How do you start the year that way and, you know, you're okay with the squandering that you just described, Gris, like that's, that's not. I know. But that's what you do. What was the end game? You go and you go through the budget and you talk to each department and you look at for efficiencies and of things. I mean, Chris Ron Ains busy creating new departments that are part of the government, that whole Lake Institute and things like that, instead of focusing on the stuff that's broken, that is very much part of the county's mission. You want to look for their money. Look there. You're listening to Today in Ohio. Lisa, are fewer people driving drunk these days? What's to explain the steep drop in drinking driving arrests in Cleveland so far this year? Well, a lot of people attribute it to the officer shortages facing Cleveland PD and other PDs and that forces them to focus on higher priority calls, leaving a lack of resources to get risky drivers off the street. So in Cleveland, a CPD arrest for impaired driving are down 35% through September 17th of this year compared to the same period in 2021 and 2023 arrests were down 37% from 2021. So also speeding and driving under suspension tickets are down. Speeding is down 28% and driving under suspension down 25%. So we did get some help from Ohio State troopers. We've been getting help from them in Cleveland since 2022 with DUIs. So they arrested 193 in 2022, 235 in 2023 and 239 so far this year. So they're going to set a record there. I do a fair amount of driving and I'm sure they'll get some disagreement on this, but I have not noticed in the recent years a great lawlessness on the highway, greater than when they were issuing more tickets. It seems like most people drive safely, except when they're texting, which is nothing you can do about. So I'm not sure that this great drop in ticket writing is having a safety issue. I've always felt driving around on a Friday night. You're taking your life in your hands because it seems like everybody on the road is surfing all over the place and I've always been amazed that there's not more drunken driving arrests on Friday evenings. But I did want to say Jeff Scott, who's a former Mothers Against Drunk Driving Board member, we talked to him. He said there really aren't a lot of solutions to this, but he says maybe police departments found a former countywide task force or they could hire retired law enforcement officers to work just traffic issues. So those sound like pretty good ideas. They had. There was a recent, I forget which city it was, which suburb. They had a DUI checkpoint that they ran for some number of hours. They didn't catch a single person. Which you know, is that mean people know there's a checkpoint and they avoid it or that people are not driving drunk? Maybe everybody's just driving stoned and they can't figure it out. I was just going to say that marijuana has changed the whole game of the road. I don't know. It's kind of a good news story, but maybe it's not. Maybe a lot of DUI people, but we haven't seen like a corresponding increase in DUI fatalities. No, we haven't. It's not clear to me that this is a bad thing that's going on. You're listening to today in Ohio, we're not going to get to all our stories today. We'll pick them up tomorrow. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Layla. Thank you for listening. We'll be back on Wednesday talking about the news. (upbeat music)