CLEVELAND, Ohio — Does a lack of term limits make for better government? While voters are big fans of term limits, there are plenty of arguments against them, including that when you don’t have longevity, lobbyists have more influence.

We’re talking about the pros and cons as part of our Civil Discourse series on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.

Here’s what we’re asking about today:

Some people thing term limits are the best way to get rid of entrenched politicians who block progress. But is there an argument to be made to getting rid of term limits, to improve political discourse?

We finally have a full answer as to why the FirstEnergy HB6 settlement is in gift cards instead of checks or credits on our electric bills. What is it?

A topic that always seems to rile up taxpayers is the public funding of sports stadiums and how teams blackmail cities into putting up the dollars or face losing a team. In Cleveland, this has resulted in some hefty taxpayer debt. What’s the history? And is there a solution?

Steve Litt, a former Shaker Heights resident, reviews the new book about Shaker’s history of trying to be a leader in race relations. It’s called Dreamtown. Who wrote it, and what does Steve say about it?

After seeing how quickly flames consumed the Hawaiian town of Lahaina, we wondered weather a fire buffeted by high winds could occur here. The answer offers some assurance to Northeast Ohio.

An airline passenger who posted a Kafka-esque story about his mission to buy an airline ticket at a counter in Cleveland Hopkins International Airport set us down an interesting path. It ended with some advice about how to make cheap flights even cheaper. What’s the story?

Emilia Sykes’ Republican opponent in the last Congressional election is not going to be her opponent next time around, even though she started a campaign. What changed her mind?

Ohio’s unemployment rate just keeps dropping. What’s the latest number?

It’s a wrap for a longstanding name in movies in Cleveland. Who is he, and what is his legacy?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

[00:00:00] Chris: We’re talking term limits and that wacky first energy gift card settlement on today in Ohio. It’s the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plane dealer. I’m Chris Quinn on a Monday here with Layla Tassi, Laura Johnston and Lisa Garvin. Hope y’all got to enjoy some of that great weather we had over the weekend.

Let’s talk some news. Some people think term limits are the best way to get rid of entrenched politicians who block progress, but is there an argument to be made that getting rid of term limits might improve political discourse? Lisa,

[00:00:37] Lisa: I think the argument is there, and I am definitely, I have always been against term limits, but it’s very popular with voters and a 1992 referendum, 68% of Ohio voters supported term limits for the legislature and also other statewide elected offices.

Um, here in Ohio, they can only serve a total of two, four-year terms, but then they can move to another legislative [00:01:00] body after that so they can continue their, and the governor’s been terminated limited since 1954. So, um, there’s an argument for term limits are actually a group called US Term Limits. Um, they feel that longtime politicians lose touch with their constituents.

Uh, Bernie Moreno is the Ohio chair of this group, and he says, people are just there way too long and we need fresh ideas and thinking. And American Policy Roundtable. President David Avi says, you know, to get legislation considered before 1992, you had to attend all three of House Speaker Verne R’s birthday parties to get any.

Any legislation done and he said the seniority culture is broken, but a study from the University of Akron, um, soon after we, uh, In, in, you know, put in term limits. They find that Ohio leaders actually disliked term limits. They felt that it increased partisanship. It was harder to pass bills. The process became more chaotic and confrontational.

And [00:02:00] also these freshmen, uh, legislators were less courteous. They were unwilling to compromise. And also interesting, I didn’t think of it, but it actually allowed lobbyists to gain influence. And also freshmen became dependent on the house speaker and the Senate president for guidance. So yeah, so they feel like, you know, term limits result in a pool of office holders with little institutional memory and expertise, and then that transfers power to the executive branch party operations and lobbyists.

So I thought that was a very interesting way. To

[00:02:31] Chris: look at it, although you have a hard time saying the executive branch in Ohio has any power right now. This came up because University Heights chart of Review Commission had actually proposed, uh, getting rid of the term limits they have there. They believe it is creating the, the polarized nature of our political discussions.

And I see that because if you come in and you’re gonna be gone in. In short order, you’re not gonna form those across [00:03:00] the hour. Relationships that can last for a long time. And the argument that it makes, the lobbyists, the experts in the legislature, I mean, that’s clearly happened here. The lobbyists run that place.

They get whatever they want, and then they throw some money at these guys. Uh, but it’s, but you, like you said, Lisa, it’s popular. And so politicians like Bernie Moreno, who’s quoted in this thing, They don’t wanna have the discussion, they just wanna pander. They know that people say, ah, throw the bums out.

And so you get away from a thoughtful debate about what is best for policymaking. Yeah, there’s a whole lot of voters that are against it. But what would happen if you had the kind of full throated discussion we had on issue one? Might people start to see there’s some nuance and maybe you expand the term limits instead of two terms, you make it three terms or, or something.

But this idea of throw the bums out, I mean, Sharon Brown has been a very effective senator. Yes, he has. I don’t think anybody can argue that he has not been a great senator for the state of Ohio. He’s [00:04:00] gotten a lot of things done. Would we be better off if he had gotten the boot after a couple of terms?

[00:04:05] Lisa: I don’t know that we would have.

And you know, in Texas and Houston, Sheila Jackson Lee has been a congresswoman there for like, 30 years and she gets stuff done, you know, and Mike Curtin, uh, Sabrina Eaton talked to Mike Curtin, who’s a former, uh, Columbus dispatch reporter and former lawmaker. And he says, you want people with policymaking chops, not a bunch of amateurs who don’t know anything.

And he feels like it’s contributed to this incredible tribalism that we see in today’s politics. And, you know, as a member of the editorial board, of course, we interview candidates to make endorsements in local and state races and, and national races. And I’ve been stunned at how. Many people don’t know the issues.

They don’t know how politics work, but yet they wanna go and and change things.

[00:04:48] Chris: The argument in favor of term limits is that Washington is polarized without them. I mean, we have the same kind of fighting going on in Washington that we have in [00:05:00] Ohio where you do have term limits. So I don’t know if term limits.

Play into polarization, but you can certainly argue that in the Columbus State House, the lobbyists are in charge down there. I also like the, um, the argument that brought up Larry Householder. You know, that, that Larry Householder could not get the kind of power his predecessors had without term limits.

And so there was a check because people know he’s going to be gone. He can’t be as powerful as house speaker as they were earlier. It’s a great discussion. I. I finished reading it and I thought, I don’t know what the answer is.

[00:05:35] Laura: The thing with Ohio though, is they just flip flop between the chambers, and I realize there’s not as many senators as there are representatives, but like these people go back and forth for years.

Mm-hmm.

[00:05:45] Chris: Well, but maybe, maybe that should be stopped and maybe that would end some of the polarity. I don’t know. Uh, if you haven’t read Sabrina’s story, it’s on cleveland.com and it’s a winner. It’s one of the best discussions I’ve seen of this, and we did it through the [00:06:00] prism of our civil discourse series.

We got a series where’re examining ways where we can elevate the conversation and get away from the binary. I’m right. You’re wrong. That seems to populate it. And I, and in this story, the only person that made that kind of ridiculous quote was Bernie Moreno. You know, he was describing Washington as a disaster.

You’re listening to Today in Ohio, we finally have a full answer as to why the first energy HB six settlement is in gift cards instead of checks or credits on our electric bills. Laura, what is it? Before we rip it to pieces?

[00:06:34] Laura: Well, according to the attorneys for this case, first Energy adamantly refused to issue credits ‘cause that would’ve required going through the P U C O one more time, another round of approvals that would’ve been easier to get through the P U C O than raising rates.

But they didn’t wanna try. That’s what they said anyway. And apparently cutting checks is really expensive. It costs a dollar 50 per check because you have to pay the bank, you have to [00:07:00] pay. Um, The post office to send them. So seeing is that people are getting between like one and $10. You would’ve lost a lot of money in cutting those checks.

Most people received around $8. But yeah, there’s a huge problem here because most vendors don’t allow you to split a bill over multiple forms of payment. And again, these are electronic gift cards. They’re not even something you can physically hold in your hand. So you can’t buy much more online than you know, a burrito.

Yeah, I’m

[00:07:26] Chris: throwing the flag. Th this is ridiculous. The argument that to give it back in the way that they took it in the first place requires another P U C O review. Who cares? They didn’t do it. Because there are people like me that are probably not gonna claim the money ‘cause it’s just too much of a nuisance for $7 and 82 cents.

And that’s what they’re counting on. They’re counting on people to say, oh, for Christ’s sakes, I’m not gonna do this for that small amount of money. You know, who knows if they will? And then they get to keep it, screw up your personal information and then they’ll leak it and you’ll have credit. Locks and things.

I mean, it’s just not worth it. It should have been in the bill. [00:08:00] It’s, it’s ridiculous. I did hear from a reader who said that his reading of our story was that you couldn’t get a check, but he did. He, he rejected the gift card and is getting a check, and I guess they take, oh, Something out of it to pay for that.

I don’t know. But he, he said, you guys should make that clear. We should, if it’s not clear. I didn’t, I didn’t know that, but he

[00:08:20] Laura: said, I don’t feel like, I didn’t realize that either. He’s there

[00:08:23] Chris: are, he said he’s getting a check. He did, he did do whatever it took on the form to rebuff the

[00:08:29] Laura: card and it is coming from a.

Spammy sounding right. Email, so people might not, might have automatically deleted it, right? It’s like, I don’t remember what it is, but they said they’re thinking about changing the email provider so it doesn’t sound so spammy. Apparently if you scroll to the very bottom of this email, you can add your funds to a prepaid card on Amazon or use as.

Apple pay. So there is a step that you could put into some kind of account that you could actually use it for something. So I hope people take the time to do that. ‘cause you’re right, if we don’t claim these [00:09:00] fees, if we say, you know what? It’s just not worth it to me, that means first energy wins. First.

Energy gets to keep

[00:09:05] Chris: that money. But this is scummy because the attorneys are getting paid millions. Yeah, this was $13

[00:09:10] Laura: million for the attorneys. So the

[00:09:12] Chris: attorneys go in claiming to represent us when they’re only representing themselves. They make this stupid deal that. That keeps first energy much more whole than it should be while they get paid.

And we all get the spammy email. It’s re it shouldn’t be allowed. This is not acceptable, uh, the way it, and a

[00:09:31] Laura: reminder that this is a payout because of HB six, because of the millions of dollars in bribes. So this isn’t just like, Oh, well, they messed up. You know, whatever. This is due to HB six people. This is the Scummiest bribery that has ever taken

place

[00:09:44] Chris: in a while.

Yeah, and this whole case continues to be scummy. This is wrong. You’re listening to today in Ohio. A topic that always seems to rile up taxpayers is the public funding of sports stadiums and how teams blackmail cities into putting up the dollars or. [00:10:00] Face losing a beloved team in Cleveland. This has resulted in some hefty taxpayer debt.

Lela, what’s the history and is there a solution?

[00:10:09] Leila: Well, for starters, most people know this, but will we’ll cover the, these bases here. Gateway Economic Development Corporation owns the baseball and basketball facility, so that’s progressive field and. Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, they fund improvements to those facilities plus improvements at Brown Stadium using money collected from the syntax on alcohol and cigarettes.

That was approved by voters back in the nineties, and then it was extended in 2014 for another couple decades. Basically, each of the three teams gets about 92 million from those collections for stadium improvements and the contracts. The current contracts call for, for gateway to pay for any capital improvements that exceed $500,000.

Well, the calves have, have burned through their allowance faster than the other teams and, and some say it’s because their arena is indoors, which carry some expenses you don’t have with an open air [00:11:00] stadium like air conditioning and. Roof repair, stuff like that. At the moment, the cabs only have about $10 million left in their allotment.

But in recent weeks, gateway had agreed to to fund more than $24 million for escalators, elevators and broadcast equipment at Rock and Mortgage Field House, despite the fact that they don’t have enough money for, for these improvements to that facility. So the calves are going to front the money, and Gateway will presumably, Pay them back eventually.

So readers probably felt like they were experiencing deja vu here for a couple reasons. First, we’ve been in this situation before with Gateway going into debt with a calf so they can overspend their budget. When that happened the last time, it ended up resulting in a total renegotiation of the lease, but also because.

Not four years ago when the Cavs completed a $180 million renovation of the arena, which was initially supposed to be 140 million split 50 50 with taxpayers, and the Cavs agreed to pay the overage. So why weren’t these upgrades [00:12:00] included in that project back when the Cavs would’ve had to pay for those cost overruns?

Because now we’re back to funding capital improvements the way the contract requires. And in a nutshell, that means. Anything over $500,000 gets paid by Gateway and there is no cap on those expenses. If Gateway doesn’t have the money, they have to come with it, come up with it eventually, and as I said, you know, at the moment, caps only have about 10 million left in their, in their pot.

So Gateway is, is going to be indebted to the team again, and on and on it goes with no in sight. There was

[00:12:31] Chris: a a period where the debt got so big that it couldn’t be paid. And they renegotiated the lease. Exactly. And the calves ate it. But what, what’s disappointing here, and I’m kicking myself a little bit, we wrote a lot about that Cavs project and I don’t think any of us ever thought, Hey, we should look at the list of future expenses just to make sure that there’s not something coming ahead.

We weren’t suspicious enough, but, you know, well

[00:12:53] Leila: also, I wanna say we tried to get. The current future expected list, you know, and they said it’s [00:13:00] not a public record. It’s, you know, there’s, it’s proprietary, there’s, you know, you know that it’s completely private. So,

[00:13:07] Chris: but back then, if we had raised it, the councils that were approving it could have demanded, you know, in exchange for the $70 million of taxpayer larges, that they would show what the future bills are.

And let’s face it, the government. Had a duty to do that before they spend the 70 million of taxpayer dollars locking up that that much needed cash, they should have said, Hey, what’s ahead that we can pull into this project now and cut some bells and whistles? Mm-hmm. So there’s a failure of. The watchdogs on this, including us.

I hate to say, uh, it’s just a bad situation. Uh, but there is no money. Gateway does not have a taxing authority. The county has no money and the city has no money. So this debt’s gonna ride for a while. And ultimately I don’t know how it gets paid.

[00:13:56] Leila: That’s right. Right. And, and frankly, I don’t know. I, I was [00:14:00] thinking about this is, is a time that we don’t.

Reapprove. The syntax when it comes up again is should we not be, I mean, what happens if we vote that down? Does it finally force the pro teams to, to cough up the money for

[00:14:14] Chris: these, these stadiums? No. We’ll lose, we’ll lose a team. Mm-hmm. I mean, there, there’s no end of Oklahoma cities out there that would sell their souls to get a professional, another professional sports team.

So if we ever did that right now, we’d get blackmailed. That’s what Ken Solomon seemed to say. Mm-hmm. The head of gateway, longtime city officials said in the story, th this needs a federal fix. The right, the states can’t fix it. The, the federal government could basically prohibit the use of public money on stadiums or something, but until there’s something that levels that playing field, we continue to get blackmailed.

I think Cleveland may reach a point where it says we can’t have all three teams where the, the smallest city in America that has three professional sports teams, [00:15:00] and I don’t know that we can continue to afford it with all the expenses that we have here. Which one do

we

[00:15:05] Leila: wanna dump?

[00:15:07] Chris: Well, it won’t be, I can tell you it won’t be the Browns or Browns or the guardians.

Yeah, I, I, yeah. I just don’t see it. You’re listening to today in Ohio. Steve Lip A, our, our critic, our architecture and art critic, and a former Shaker Heights resident reviews the new book about Shaker Heights’ history of trying to be a leader in race relations. It’s called Dream Town, Lisa, who wrote it and what does Steve say about it?

Yeah.

[00:15:34] Lisa: Um, and I’m a Shaker Heights native as well, and my family was front and center in the integration wars in the sixties. But yeah, the book is called Dream Town Shaker Heights, and the Quest for Racial Equality by Laura Meckler, who is a Shaker Heights native and a Washington. Post reporter and she, she basically started in the 19th century, you know, with the development of Shaker Heights.

You know, that used to be the Northeast Union Shakers [00:16:00] community, and it became a garden suburb, but it was whites only. Back then, they actually required home buyers to sign private covenants that would keep out what they called undesirables. And then she talks about the 1950s and the 1960s when activists actually worked to avert panic selling by whites.

When middle class blacks started moving in, they provided financial incentives for whites to buy homes in areas that were adjacent to the city of Cleveland. They also banned for sale signs on front yards and white residents did proxy purchases for black buyers, which is exactly how my family got into Shaker.

We had a Jewish man buy the house for us by proxy. We were actually. The first black children in Mercer Elementary, which was the eastern most elementary school in Cleveland and back then. Really? Mm-hmm.

[00:16:46] Chris: You were the first black children in that

[00:16:47] Lisa: school in 1962. Yes, we were. Wow. And um, uh, back then they weren’t selling to blacks east of Lee Road.

Um, and then in the 1970s they started [00:17:00] busing among the nine elementary schools to solve racial imbalances because the further west you go, the more. Racially diverse it was. But as school started closing, uh, west Side, Ludlow and Morland, kids were bused to Mercer, but they felt that there were inequalities in that.

She also talked about tracking and leveling, which divided students in middle school and onward based on perceived academic abilities. They found that students, black students were tracked in less. Challenging classes while white kids were encouraged to take AP classes. And she goes all the way through, right about 2020 when the pandemic, they tried to dismantle this tracking process

[00:17:41] Chris: also, as I recall.

Yeah. After you got the house, there was some follow up to that, that that caused problems for your family, right? Like. Was there a fire or

[00:17:53] Lisa: was there something Oh, no, that was my grandfather. Yeah. Oh, that was your grandfather. My grandfather, yeah. My grandfather was the first black, you know, that was the first black [00:18:00] family in Cleveland, in Wade Park.

But you know, in Shaker. Yeah. I mean, but, uh, it was the Jewish neighbors that reached out to us. They, they wanted to make. US feel welcome when we arrived in 1962.

[00:18:14] Chris: Wow. Fascinating. Check out Steve’s review and check out the book you’re listening to today in Ohio. After seeing how quickly flames consumed the Hawaiian town of Lahaina, we wondered whether a fire buffeted by high winds could occur here, Laura, the answer offers some assurance to northeast Ohio.

[00:18:33] Laura: Yeah, the answer is no. Thank goodness. Kaga County has a low risk of wildfire, lower than 94% of the counties in the country, and that main reason is probably the wind because to, to get this kind of fire spreading, you need huge amounts of wind. And then speeds of 72 to 95 miles an hour is a. Is a level, the lowest level of hurricane a category one.

And you know, Cleveland, if we’re gonna get winds that high, we’re gonna have rain [00:19:00] with it and it comes very humid air before it storms. And also we’ve got. Um, we don’t have the same number of trees even though we think we have a lot of trees. It’s not like, you know, upper Canada or, you know, like yellow knife that’s being destroyed right now by wildfires.

We just don’t have that same kind of proximity to forest and the winds needed to, to really kick up to get that movement. Yeah, I

[00:19:25] Chris: mean, LA. It didn’t have a lot of trees in the town. It was that thing. The fuel was the wood, the wooden houses, which we have a lot of, but it, the assurance is that we, if we get wind like that, it’s, it’s coming with a lot of rain and we’ll keep the fires from going.

Um, I guess that’s one of the benefits of having powerful storms in Cleveland. We don’t get those dry winds that. Uh, that can be so devastating.

[00:19:51] Laura: It is really scary though. ‘cause you never would’ve thought Maui was able, I guess they knew, right? They’d have reports and, but like, as an outsider, I just thought of it as [00:20:00] very like a lush rainforest kind of, you know, like, and water everywhere.

You wouldn’t have thought. That could have just jumped that fast. And it’s a reminder to, to be aware. Yeah. I

[00:20:10] Chris: didn’t realize how fast the fire could move from house to house. Just sweeping up the whole town. It was, uh, staggering in its speed. But we wanted to assure people that it’s unlikely here you’re listening to today in Ohio.

An airline passenger who posted a Kafkaesque story about his mission to buy an airline ticket at a counter in Cleveland Hopkins International Airport set us down an interesting path. It ended with some really good advice about how to make cheap flights at the airport even cheaper. Layla, what is the story?

It

[00:20:43] Leila: turns out that for some ultra low cost airlines, namely Spirit and Frontier, which operate out of Cleveland Hopkins, and Allegiant and Breeze, which fly from the Akron Canton Airport, if you buy your tickets at the airport instead of. Online you can [00:21:00] save even more money on your flight, and these are already notoriously cheap flights, but you can still shave off 150, 200 bucks on a pair of round trip tickets.

Susan Glaser writes that, that those four carriers I mentioned make most of their revenue from extra charges for baggage seat assignments and other things. The in-person savings is actually an unintended consequence of another fee, which is essentially an online reservation fee that these ultra low cost airline airlines also assess, although most customers probably don’t even know that this exists.

The airlines call it by different names. Spirit calls it a passenger usage charge. Frontier uses the term carrier interface charge, and so on. One of the benefits to the airlines of all these optional fees is that they keep the carrier’s tax burden pretty low. Airlines only pay taxes on airfares, not these optional fees, so that incentivizes some airlines to keep fares low and just add more and more fees to boost their revenue.

Pretty tricky. But to make the fee truly [00:22:00] optional, you have to give travelers a way to avoid it. And when it comes to the online reservation fee, you can avoid it by buying your ticket at the counter.

[00:22:08] Chris: Yeah. But that guy who wrote about it on Reddit, they kept sending him hither and yawn. ‘cause they didn’t want him to waive that fee.

I mean, it was, it was a nightmare. They, he was upstairs, then he goes downstairs, then they send it back upstairs and he was fit to be tied and it was a great little account of his determination to get that fee free ticket. Uh, so it’s not the easiest thing to do. No. But if you write about it on Reddit, it brings a lot of attention to Frontier.

[00:22:36] Lisa: Yeah.

[00:22:37] Leila: They do not make it easy for travelers to avail themselves of this option. Some carriers only let you buy tickets at the counter during limited windows. Of opportunity. The lines get really long, the staff get really grouchy, and sometimes they send you like this guy experience on this goose chase from counter to counter.

So it sounds like a real pain. And sometimes it could take hours out of your day. So it’s a [00:23:00] question of how much your time is worth to

[00:23:01] Chris: you. Well, he just wasn’t going to for an answer. He would wait in the line, get to the front of the line, and they would jerk ‘em around. It shouldn’t be allowed, but at least people know now that if they wanna save a.

Few bucks, they can do it. I’m a little bit surprised that Sean McDonald did not come up with this person.

[00:23:18] Laura: I, the Breeze one was, I think it was Breeze. It was like 10 to noon on Tuesdays. Sleep was the only time they sold the flights. So I’m surprised they gave us that information if they’re really trying to keep you away.

But read Susan’s story if you’re interested in doing it because she has the tips on when, when and where. You’re

[00:23:33] Chris: listening to today in Ohio. Amelia Sykes, Republican opponent in the last congressional election is not going to be her opponent next time around, even though she had already started a campaign.

Lisa, what changed her

[00:23:45] Lisa: mind? Yeah. Attorney Madison, Jesse Otto Gilbert is moving on up. She has dropped her 2024 candidacy for the 13th Congressional District. She has accepted a job as national spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. [00:24:00] Uh, she ran against Sykes last November and actually got, 47% of the vote.

She was endorsed by Trump in that election. Her campaign website for now is still active. She filed as a candidate back in February, but on the website, online donations have been disabled, so I’m sure the site will come down pretty soon. But Jesse Otto Gilbert, uh, operated the Seven Hills Golf Club in Hartville, which is now for sale with her husband, Marcus Gilbert, who’s a former N F L Offensive tackle.

She was a press secretary for Trump’s 2016 inauguration. She was the co-chair for women for. Her Trump reelection campaign, she was also a TV political commentator and an op-ed writer.

[00:24:40] Chris: Yeah, it’s interesting that she’s not going to to run ‘cause she didn’t lose by a, a horrible margin. No, she didn’t. Yeah, so it, it, it’s a district that actually could be won and she would’ve been the strongest person to do that.

But I guess they think that she’s more valuable on the party working up at the high level you’re [00:25:00] listening to today in Ohio. Ohio’s unemployment rate just keeps dropping. Laura, what’s the latest number?

[00:25:06] Laura: Sorry, um, you think that it can’t get any lower, but it’s 3.3% and the reasons they keep readjusting the numbers from June and then it keeps going down and down and down.

But we don’t have as many people working as we did before the pandemic, and so that’s one reason. It’s a little bit lower, so I guess it’s easier to have it on a lower

[00:25:27] Chris: unemployment. Yeah, it’s, it’s amazing that the economy has stayed pretty, pretty healthy, uh, even though a lot of people have predicted we’d be in a recession by the end of this year, things are still steaming ahead.

Inflation is high and mortgage rates are above 7%. Man, I can’t believe how high they have gotten. They

[00:25:47] Laura: added 12,000 jobs in July, so total employment is up to 5,639,000. Okay,

[00:25:54] Chris: you’re listening to today in Ohio. It’s a wrap for a longstanding name in movies in [00:26:00] Cleveland, Leia, Layla, who is he and what is his legacy?

For

[00:26:05] Leila: nearly four decades, John Ewing has been the driving force behind the Cleveland Institute of Arts Cinema Tech, but he’s retiring after this final year as the director there. He’s 72 years old, and he said he’s ready to just spend some time taking care of his health and enjoying his grandchildren.

The cinema tech is, is finally at a post pandemic recovery point, he said, and he feels like it’s, it’s, uh, Time to walk away from it. It’s stable enough and he can, he can do that comfortably. He said it’s really hard though. It’s, it’s like he raised a child into adulthood, but it’s time to, to let it walk on its own is how he phrased it.

So the cinema tech began back in the mid 1980s. There were really very few art house and classic movie theaters in the region at the time. We had the Cedar Lee Theater and the Coventry, both in Cleveland Heights and the new Mayfield Repertory Cinema in Little Italy. But there were no theaters that hosted the kind of touring film.

[00:27:00] Exhibitions that had become popular in big cities like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. So Ewing was running the Canton Film Society, which was a weekly international film series in his hometown when he moved to Cleveland in 1983 to pursue a full-time job in the film exhibition industry. And one night at a downtown movie theater, he bumped into Ron Holloway, a film journalist for a variety who also did some work for George Gun third.

He was a businessman and sports team owner, and he had a passion for foreign films and was particularly interested in distributing Eastern European films in the United States. And Holloway mentioned that George Gunn had always wanted a cinema tech in Cleveland. And when Holloway learned about, um, about, you know, Ewing’s background, Next thing you know, he’s the guy who’s leading up this, this cinema tech.

So the rest is history, and you can read it all in in our story on

[00:27:50] Chris: cleveland.com. You really have to have respect for somebody that stays in the spot that long. That is a huge investment in [00:28:00] of your life in a single cause to make it what it is. That’s, that’s a very valued institution in Cleveland. I don’t think it would be if it were not for his long standing efforts.

[00:28:12] Leila: Yes. Uh, yeah, I really do salute that, that kind of commitment. Um,

[00:28:16] Chris: and, uh, it’s the same commitment you’re making to the plane dealer in cleveland.com, right?

[00:28:22] Lisa: One day I will have, uh, probably

[00:28:24] Leila: that many years under my belt at this

[00:28:27] Chris: institution. You’re listening to today in Ohio. That does it for Monday. Later today though, the editorial board is talking with Maureen O’Connor, who is trying to save Ohio government by getting rid of gerrymandering.

I imagine we will be talking about that conversation on the Tuesday episode, so please be sure to join us then. Thanks, Layla. Thanks Laura. Thanks Lisa. Thank you for listening to today in Ohio.