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Today in Ohio
Today in Ohio - Sept. 4, 2024 Did Frank LaRose really just accuse the esteemed League of Women Voters of promoting voter fraud?
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That law made it harder for people with disabilities to vote, limited the number of relatives who could return the ballots to the quantity board of elections, and a judge struck that down and said that is against the law. LaRose is saying not, "Hey, sorry, we went a little far with that," but, hey, he wrote a letter to legislators, and he's what he said. Under the guise of assisting the disabled, the League seeks to make Ohio's elections less secure and more vulnerable to cheating, especially as it relates to the use of drop boxes. Okay. All right. Let's just stop right here. The League of Women Voters is about the most esteemed group in the land. There is nothing in the history of the League of Women Voters that was ever about cheating. It is astounding that a Secretary of State, an elected Secretary of State, would, with zero evidence, accuse a group like that of secretly plotting to create election fraud, he should be ashamed of himself. What kind of words can you use, deplorable, deceptive? I mean, this is the worst you can do is to accuse a group like that. What's he going to do next? To be totally clear, I completely agree with you here. The League of Women Voters was founded in 1920, so, yeah, long history here. Six months before women won the right to vote through the 19th Amendment, it was formed by the leaders of the Women's Suffrage Movement, and it wanted to help women embrace this new responsibility of being a voter after years of just being told, "You can't vote, your husband votes for you," so they've been a nonpartisan, activist, grassroots organization that believes voters should play a critical role in democracy, and that's the key here, because all of these things that LaRosa is doing, and we'll talk more about them later, are to stifle voting, not to make sure that everybody gets to exercise this right to vote, and that's why he's screwing off against the League of Women Voters. He's trying to help do Kristi Noem, right? She killed her dog. She's a cacking religion for the voters, and I just don't get it. That's the last group you want to attack. Their history is anything but underhanded. They have all sorts of rules. If you ever work with them on a debate or something, they have rigid rules to make sure it's all on the up and up and fair. The last thing they would ever do, and there's 100 years of proof, is try to undermine elections. He should be more ashamed of this than pretty much anything he's done, and that's saying a lot. I just couldn't believe it when I saw that line in his letter. He's actually using the League of Women Voters of promoting fraud. Wow. And that's what the League said back, that we are champions of election integrity and security, and it is shameful that he would suggest otherwise, because like all of these things, these are ideas, like laws in search, like solutions in search of a problem. What problem has there ever been with somebody's roommate delivering their ballot for them if they're disabled and unable to get to the ballot box themselves? I mean, it's absurd. If you're a voter going to the polls, when you're considering issue one, think about it. Here's Frank LaRose telling you it's bad that it's gerrymandering. This is the character of this man. He's accusing this group of fraud. On the other side is a group with more than a century of working to make elections as strong as they can be. You're listening to today in Ohio. LaRose's job is supposed to be safeguarding fair elections, as we say. So why does his letter to Ohio's Senate President Matt Huffman read like a plan to restrict voting? LaRose, there's more about this that's in the letter. Absolutely. Like I said, he wants to make it harder to vote, and he wants legislators to pass laws to make it harder to vote. He wants to give his office, the Secretary of State's office, the authority to acquire Ohioans to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. He says he's really worked hard to prevent non-citizens from voting. This happens incredibly infrequently. It's not a real problem. He said that the step wouldn't be infallible, but that you need to take incremental steps to adopt election integrity safeguards. And he wants to pass legislation that requires Ohioans to be allowed to cast a provisional ballot only, not a real regular ballot, if officials discover the data on their voter registration records differs from information on file with a BMV or Social Security Administration. So if you go to vote and your idea shows a different address, like he's saying you'd have to vote provisionally. Yeah, they already have a system that deals with reconciling that. If they detect that that doesn't reconcile, they get in touch with the voter. And they try to fix the problem rather than just tell you you're out of luck. No, he's working as hard as he can to reduce the number of people who vote. I guess he figures that Republicans are more responsible or something and that he can reduce the Democratic vote by doing it. But it is the complete opposite of his job. His job is supposed to make elections easier, secure and fair. And what this is, this is the little boy who didn't like the way he was losing in his game. So he's taking his board and going home. He was stopped. The Supreme Court came out and said, "No, Ohio, you can't do that. You're sticking it to disabled people." And rather than behave like a normal human being and say, "Okay, we made our case, but we lost." He's trying to undermine it this way. He was sitting to today in Ohio and here's part three. LaRose isn't waiting for the legislature to act. He's issued his own order to curtail the use of drop boxes. What does he order? And does he have the authority to do it, Laura? He does have the authority to do this. Or right now it's temporary, it doesn't last forever, but it will last through his election. You only, you can drop off your own ballot at a ballot box. These are only at the county boards of elections. They're in the parking lot, they're secure, there's video. You yourself can drop it off. No one else can. You can't drop off your husbands, you can't drop off your sisters at that ballot box. If you're dropping off of anyone else's, you have to go inside and sign this formal form. I feel like this is intimidation. It's just keeping people, I mean, who wants to have to park at the board of elections, which in Keiga County has not yet moved to a bigger, brighter former playing dealer and Cleveland.com space. So it's a little bit of a pain. And to go in and fill out a scary legal looking form with your name saying that you're allowed to drop off this ballot. Because I don't know, it seems absurd to me that you have to go drive yourself. During the pandemic, we talked about expanding ballot boxes and putting them at libraries so people wouldn't have to drive downtown to drop it off. Of course, you can put it in the mail, anybody can put it in the mail. But there are people that don't trust the mail system or are waiting too long. He's taking it into his own hands. He doesn't like the way things are going. He's trying to help ballot boxes. It is intimidation. I guarantee you, the signs on the ballot boxes will be intimidating and the statement you'll have to sign is going to be scary. You're committing felony crimes if you do X or Y because he's trying to dissuade people from actually voting. I completely agree here. And again, what is this problem that we're trying to solve? There is no problem. I've never heard of people stealing other people's ballots and filling them out and dropping them off without their permission. They're talking about ballot harvesting, which is not allowed where absentee ballots are collected and submitted and masked. Everybody can point to a specific example where that is happening. It just seems bizarre to me that we're trying to make it harder for people to vote. Look, the people of Ohio made clear that they don't approve of him. He ran for Senate, the only statewide candidate in the race, and he got almost no votes because he's reviled for what he's done with elections. People can't stand this guy. You would think he would look at those results and say, man, they hate me. I should change what I'm doing. Instead, he's doubling down and using an iron fist to try and stop elections while also accusing innocent groups of trying to commit crimes. He wasn't always like this. He wasn't always the farthest, reach, conservative iron fist that you just talked about. I don't understand the change in Franklin Rose. But his end goal is who he's working for, really, because he's not working for the people of Ohio. No, and he's done politically. I mean, he was the one statewide guy and nobody voted for him. They voted for everybody else. That's the sign. People are sick of this guy. You're listening to Today in Ohio, political debates have become endangered in Ohio. Lisa, is there any plan for Senator Sherrod Brown to debate his challenger Bernie Moreno in the nationally watched Senate race? Well, probably yes, but there are no confirmed commitments from either Sherrod Brown or his challenger, Bernie Moreno. But at a Cincinnati campaign stop recently, Brown said he absolutely plans to debate Moreno. He says he hopes that we schedule something. He's had multiple debates with his previous challengers, so he's not afraid to debate. We talked to Moreno's campaign. There was no comment, but at a July Columbus campaign stop, Moreno said, let's do it any time or any place. And then he accused Brown of refusing to debate because he can't defend his record. So debates are typically announced around this time, August or September, and debates are typically held in early October. And the debate over debates is pretty common. We are seeing it playing out in the presidential race. Better known candidates generally prefer fewer debates and lesser known or trailing candidates want as many debates as possible, possibly for more exposure or to get zingers on their opponent. And the Ohio GOP as a rule is moving away from debates and plaindealer cleveland.com endorsement interviews. I guess they figure any blowback they get won't hurt their chances for winning in this bright red super majority state. What's sad is we were part of the effort to create the Ohio debate commission four or five years ago. We're no longer affiliated with it, but we were part of the beginning of it. And the whole goal was to have nonpartisan debates, much like the presidential election commission on debates. But they're all collapsing. Those efforts are just going away. And so what you get is possibly a piecemeal debate, a TV station somewhere will host it, which sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's somebody else. And I don't understand why the formal debate commissions have not been more successful. You couldn't really assail them. They were trying to be like the League of Women Voters. Maybe that's what it is. There's a distaste for nonpartisan groups that are trying to stage debates. How dare they? But I'm just surprised that we're this deep into the political season. We haven't seen it. I wouldn't be surprised that Bernard Moreno tried to avoid it because I think Sherrod DeBroun will destroy him because Bernie is basically a cartoon character pretending to be a politician. He ended up while promising or working to appear before a tour board in the spring coming up with the technicality that took himself out of it. And I suspect we will not see him this time either. Well, and I think, you know, because the primaries tend to elect extreme people from both parties, these extremists have no plans. They have no policies. They just have dog whistles. They repeat over and over and over. Well, certainly that's what Bernie Moreno is. He doesn't stand for anything. He's been a terrible candidate. You're listening to Today in Ohio. Brown's owners, D.N. Jimmie Haslam, don't think much of Lakefront Stadium where they play. They've made clear, but that didn't stop them for signing up a new company for the naming rights. Courtney, it's kind of bizarre. This place is a toilet, but hey, somebody wants to put their name on it. What is the former Brown Stadium now going to be called? It is now going to be known as Huntington Bank Field. So for the last year, it's been Cleveland Brown Stadium, kind of the generic name. And that came after it was First Energy Stadium for a really long time, and we know the Haslams ended that agreement. And you know, I guess this is the next chapter for the stadium. We'll see how long that stadium exists and what the deal with Cleveland does or doesn't look like. But you know, in the meantime, for however long this negotiation plays out with Cleveland and for however long it takes to arrive at a new lease, the Haslams will be earning money from this naming rights deal. So I suppose that's a fair motivation on their end here. There was a bunch of fanfare yesterday down at the stadium. Jimmie and D. Haslam and Huntington leadership were in the house and they rolled out this, you know, big announcement with this big name change. So here's the fun little twist, at least in my mind, you know, with all this stadium talk, little bit of intrigue here, the Haslams and Huntington Bank say this name will carry wherever the Browns play in the future, be it downtown on the lakefront or, you know, if another stadium deal materializes somehow beyond downtown. So apparently the Haslams and Huntington Bank are in this partnership for the long term. It's a 20 year agreement that doesn't just include naming rights, but it sounds like the team will also be banking with Huntington Bank and there's other business partnership aspects there. In the past, like with First Energy, we knew what the price was, but they didn't say it. Do you think City Council in a special meeting that I think is today is going to be demand to know how much the Browns are making on the city on stadium before they adopt the name change in time for the first games? Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a question that's thrown out there, right? Whether the Browns answer that question, I guess we'll see. I don't know if there's anything that requires them to say how much money they're making off of this. But evidently, they can't change the name unless City Council approves. So City Council has leverage they could say, look, we don't have to pass this. We call the special meeting just for you, but it's our stadium. How much are you making for the naming rights? The people with Cleveland deserve to know that, especially when you're asking the public for $1.2 billion for a new stadium. I was kind of surprised they didn't see that coming and just lay it out there and stop the stuff. Let's hope City Council stands up to them and says, no, we're not going to rename it unless we know what you're getting from this. For what it's worth, as I read through the lease between the city and the Browns that kind of awards the Browns this naming rights ability. So this is the old lease from a million years ago. They still have that capability under that standing agreement and City Council, according to the lease, doesn't really have much of a say to okay or deny the name change. According to the lease, Council "shall not withhold its approval from the name change unless the name change A, violates the law or B, would reasonably cause embarrassment to Cleveland." And that's defined a little bit, but it sounds like Council really doesn't have a choice here. Although they don't have to have a special meeting and there's nothing that says what the timing is, so yeah, they can't withhold the name change, but it doesn't say they have to do it in an emergency vote, that the council has tools they could use to say, come on, D and Jimmy Haslam, what are you getting for the naming rights on this facility that taxpayers built for you? This is also interesting because of Huntington Bank. Anybody watching these games from across the nation is going to now here of Huntington Bank, which they probably aren't even aware of, and it makes you wonder whether Huntington Bank has its eyes set on key bank and PNC to try and build up some market share. You don't make an investment like this without a strategy, and I wonder if they're planning a big expansion. And correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not up to date on the latest numbers, but in recent years over time, when you compare banks working in the Cleveland market, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Huntington gets better marks or has in recent years of community lending. I'm curious what the conversation is going to be around that compared to more the hometown banks. Yeah, it never made sense to me that first energy did it because they're not building markets here. They have their areas, and they spend a lot of our money, rate payer money, to put their name on something, and you never quite understood why, you know, meanwhile they were creating the biggest bribery scandal in the history of Ohio, but it makes sense for something like Huntington if they're looking to boost their brand across a bigger geography. You're listening to today in Ohio. Ah, such a clutch off-season pickup, Dave. I was worried we'd be bringing back the same team. I meant those blackout motorized shades. Lines.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install. No, it was easy. I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and installed. Hall of Fame Sun. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Lines.com is the goat. Shop Lines.com's prime time kick off event save up to 50% off select styles plus door busters. Rules and restrictions may apply. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. October is Cyber Security Awareness Month. So Lifelock wants to remind you to update your passwords. Using the same password across multiple accounts makes you vulnerable to cyber criminals. For comprehensive identity theft protection, let Lifelock alert you to anything suspicious and fix any issues. Start protecting your identity today with a 30-day free trial at Lifelock.com/podcast. Terms apply. Cleveland has hosted the woman's Final Four, the NFL draft a whole bunch of all-star games, the senior games, and way more than that. But the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission is aiming bigger with its latest bid. Who is it trying to bring here, Lisa? They have put in a bid for the 2030 Special Olympics. The deadline for that bid is October 1st. And Greater Cleveland Sports Commission CEO David Gilbert said, you know, they're working with a lot of groups to get this going. Destination Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, the city of Cleveland, Special Olympics, Ohio, universities, corporate leadership, and they're all working on this. But he's also asking for statewide support. They're going to need 10,000 volunteers to pull off the Special Olympics. It's eight days of games, it attracts 5,500 athletes and coaches. There are 16 sports, 100,000 people attend this thing. This is usually in the last week of June, in the first week of July, and the hub will be the Huntington Convention Center. They haven't, you know, chosen any of the venues yet. So the Special Olympic Games began in 2006 in Ames, Iowa. It's held every four years. It'll be in Minnesota in 2026. The estimated economic impact to the Cleveland area will be about $70 million. Also Gilbert says there's enormous impact otherwise. And they've been working on this bid for two years. They usually don't announce it until they're ready to put it in. But they really want to get the state of Ohio behind this bid. I'd have to think that we are a top competitor based on the history. I mean, we've staged event after event to rave reviews. There hasn't been a hiccup in any of them, not the RNC, not any of them. Every time we do something, people leave here going, Cleveland is great. And because they've so well fine-tuned their approach and they do get the volunteers, how could you not put us up in the finalists for that because of the success? Plus, we've had good weather. So there you go. Yeah, and Cleveland, let's not forget American Ninja Warriors actually shot in Cleveland too. I mean, so we're getting all kinds of events and we really are shining in all of them. Yeah, it'd be great to bring it here. It's a long way off. We are only in 2024, but it would be a big feather in the cap even though it's six years down the road. You know, it's unique to today in Ohio. How are two Case Western Reserve University professors exploring how AI can help people find jobs, Courtney? Yeah, the goal here from CWRU professors, Young Gen U and Ermin A Day is really around, you know, what can AI do for the labor market? Is there a smarter way to go about the, you know, job search process, which I don't think anybody has any fun doing? And the goal here is to use AI to kind of scan files on the job seeker's computer and see if you can match that to skills that are being sought in open positions. So part of the idea here is kind of toss out what you know about the job search process, the resume cover letters, pile of paperwork that you send in for every job post. These two professors who are partnering with the University of Pittsburgh and MIT, they're looking to use AI to comb through a workers college transcript. They're syllabi from their college coursework to comb through their work history, see what skills are there, and then, you know, ideally spit out a match for jobs that are posted, say, you know, the AI can say this person is a 50% match for this job. This applicant is a 95% match for this job. And the professors who talk to us, you know, they say this can also aid other problems in the job hiring process like bias. If you remove, you know, Joe Schmo from Cleveland, these are the demographics, and just focus more on the skill set, they see this as a tool to remove bias from the hiring process. And they also see some benefits here on security on your personal paperwork, because you wouldn't necessarily be sending in all those documents to third-party websites and a bunch of employers. You'd be keeping those files safe and on your own computer. This is one of those things you'd really want to see time testing it. Do the people that get chosen, work out as employees. We all know hiring is almost random. You have very limited experience with a candidate before you offer them a job. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Anything that would raise the chances of success would be wonderful, but you'd want to see this over time before you relied too heavily on it, I suspect. Well, it doesn't measure soft skills, like communication skills or temperament or any of that. I don't see how AI can, and that has a lot to do with how people fit into a workplace. Yeah, I agree. But it is, hiring is just, sometimes I feel like it's just a roll of the dice. So anything that helps would be good, but you're right, Lisa. There's a whole lot that AI couldn't handle. Especially too, if some of this is looking through a worker's college syllabani, I don't know if that tells you accurately what they know. Yeah, it wouldn't have been good in my case. You're listening to today in Ohio. It's the most read story on our site this week so far. Lara, what's the latest on Holly Strano, the longtime weather forecaster on WKYC Channel 3? She is off the air. Holly Strano posted a Facebook post on Monday morning that said WKYC and its parent company, Tegna, decided to terminate her employment after 22 years. And she said this happened after she shared her journey publicly about her recovery from alcohol addiction. We haven't heard anything from the station, but she said in a quote, "I believe the actions of WKYC and Tegna demonstrate the stigma surrounding addiction that so many in our community experience every day." So it was Thanksgiving night when Strano crashed her vehicle into a utility pole in the kayak about -- I believe it was in the valley near kayak of falls and she was arrested with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. She pleaded guilty to operating a vehicle under the influence with sentenced to six-day driver intervention program instead of jail and was fined. And she was very public about her experience and her journey and her addiction. She was off the air until February. She was prioritizing her health as she returned to KYC. But instead of the usual sod on the morning show, she was appearing on Saturday and Sunday morning, newscast and Monday and Tuesday evenings. And we don't know what happened here. Channel 3 is not talking, nor would they. It's an employment matter and employers don't talk about this kind of thing. But this case really does exemplify society's challenge in dealing with addiction. On the one side, it's a health issue, a mental health issue. It's something that people grapple with, but so many people still see behavioral issues involved in this. There was a story that came out this morning saying that doctors who had long said it's all brain stuff are swinging over saying, "Well, there is some behavioral." And the balance of that. So, if you're Channel 3 trying to figure out what to do, there's all sorts of odd issues here. The public has, we've seen it, half the public is very sympathetic to Ali's channel, half the public thinks she should be punished and never appear on television again. And it's just a great example of how difficult this issue is. Clearly, she's struggling with addiction issues. But what does that mean for the long-term future? It's sad that it's come to pass this way. It is. And she's in such a public role. She's posting on a public Facebook page because she is a public figure, because she appeared in people's living rooms on their TV sets and people feel probably very connected to her viscerally. And that's why they have such a big reaction. And that's why when the story is on our site, it gets such high traffic because they feel like they know her after 22 years of them telling them if they need an umbrella in the morning. Like, that's a connection. And she doesn't have the privilege of going through this privately because of her job. And that's tough. People keep asking us to why we use the photo of her when she's on video. And it's because it's the only photo of her we have a license for. The other photos are owned by others and we can't use them without permission. The permission for photos is something we have to pay very close attention to. So it's what we've got. You're listening to today in Ohio. Birders have long celebrated Northeast Ohio being on the path of migrations, largely by keeping watch. But now the state of Ohio is celebrating to Lisa, you're the birder. How is this coming together? Yeah. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources is hosting its first ever Headlands Birding Festival, September 20th and 22nd at Headlands Beach State Park. They'll have presentations on bird identification, migration patterns and all kinds of stuff. They're keynote speeches by two renowned birding experts. One is Jim McCormick, who's an author and a nature photographer and Greg Miller, who is the inspiration for my very favorite movie, The Big Year, which was starred Owen Wilson, Jack Black, and I'm blanking on the third one, showing birders competing to spot the most species in one year, which Greg Miller did. He spotted over 700 species in one year in the North American continent. At Headlands, they've seen 352 species in Lake County alone. There will also be expert-led field trips and special boat tours to view the birds that spend the most time on the lake. Steve Martin was the third one. Yeah, I never heard of that movie, but it sounds cool. I guess you've seen it. Oh, yeah. Many times. Predilection. I can't believe that this hasn't happened before. This seems like such an obvious thing to do. We are really high on the migration list. We see all sorts of species coming through, and only now it's, "Hey, we ought to have a festival and spread the word and get people to understand the ecology." It's great that we're doing it. I just, when I read it, I thought, "Huh, why didn't that start 25 years ago?" It was the name today in Ohio. In other park news, it's the 50th anniversary of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which was known as Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. When I moved here, Courtney, how can people celebrate? Yeah, there's going to be a lot going on between now and the end of next year to celebrate this milestone. So CVNP's birthday is technically December 27th. Not the best time to be in the park, but still stuff to do, I'm sure. But around this date, so starting just in a few days from now, all the way to the end of 2025, there's going to be speakers who are talking about park history, there's going to be concerts and other events that are hosted along the trails, along the rail line, and along the Cuyahoga River in the park. And two upcoming events are pretty cute. The first is coming Sunday, and there's going to be a speaker in who's talking about the park's history and how it stands out as an urban park. CVNP is unique in some ways in that it's plopped down right in the middle of this heavily populated area. And there is something special about that in our National Park Service right here in Northeast Ohio. And then on October 22nd, there's going to be another talk, which this looked fascinating to me too, there's going to be a historian there, William Bryan, who's going to be talking about suburban sprawl, which again, kind of plays into CVNP's location right here in Northeast Ohio. Yeah, it's very cool. It's just an unusual National Park in that it is so heavily used for daily recreation, unlike the big parks out West, where there are trips that we make for special viewing. Yeah, pretty lucky to have it here. You're listening to "Todano Ohio," that's it for Wednesday. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Courtney. Thank you for listening. Come back Thursday. We'll be talking about the news. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)