Three times this week, Ohio’s Supreme Court rules for fat cat businesses over the little guy: Today in Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio – An Ohio Supreme Court ruling Tuesday all but cast a death knell over a $650 million judgement two Ohio counties won from chain pharmacy operators for their role in sparking an opioid epidemic.

We’re talking about how the state’s Supreme Court could intervene in a federal case on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

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

You can now join the conversation. Call 833-648-6329 (833-OHTODAY) if you’d like to leave a message we can play on the podcast.

Here‘s what we’re asking about today:

We talked yesterday how the Ohio Supreme Court, in its absurd boneless chicken ruling that brought national scorn to the state, was in the pocket of big business. They did it again Tuesday. What ruling could throw out the work of the courts in helping two Ohio Counties deal with the opioid crisis?

Ohio lawmakers look like they seek to take some discretion away from the Ohio Supreme Court clowns, by reducing nuisance lawsuits that target free speech. How would the SLAPP legislation work?

Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin finally, at the 11th hour, released his maps reducing the number of council wards from 17 to 15, and it looks like he removed all sorts of abusive mapmaking by his predecessor, Marty Sweeney. What are the apparent positive changes that Griffin is making here?

Back to the Legislature. Why are they trying to make it harder for people who have suffered asbestos poisoning because of their employers to get compensation for their shortened lives and their suffering?

Ohioans long have been frustrated by school districts that do a poor job educating kids. How is the Legislature looking to attack that problem?

We’ve got a bit more than a week left in the Legislature’s lame duck session, so it’s that time when lawmakers load up on what we call Christmas tree bills. What are they, and what’s going into them this time around?

The Ohio Supreme Court issued an interesting Stand Your Ground ruling Tuesday, which was not good news for a couple of Cuyahoga County killers. What was it?

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has a suspicious case of voting out of Gates Mills. What happened, to make it suspicious?

The Cleveland Browns released some more of their vision for a domed stadium and entertainment mecca in Brook Park, but always without a clue as to where they expect to get $1.2 billion in tax dollars to pay for half of it. What did they release?

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

Chris Quinn (00:01.102)

We’re not talking about boneless chicken wings with the Supreme Court of Ohio today, but we do have a couple of stories in which they’re weighing in. It’s Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here with Courtney Astoffi, Lisa Garvin, and Laura Johnston. Like I said, we talked yesterday about how the Ohio Supreme Court in its absurd boneless chicken ruling that brought national score into the state was in the pocket of big business.

Lisa, they did it again Tuesday. What ruling could throw out the work of the courts in helping two Ohio counties deal with the opioid crisis?

Lisa (00:38.607)

So on Monday, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled five to two that a 2007 tort reform law that disallows product liability cases from being declared a public nuisance come into play in these 2021 federal lawsuits that were filed by Lake and Trumbull counties over the opioid crisis. The jury in those trials found that the CVS Health, Walgreens Boot Alliance and Walmart fueled the opioid crisis and they were awarded

The counties were awarded $650.9 million in damages. The pharmacies appealed and asked the Ohio Supreme Court to settle this law. So the two dissenting justices, Melody Stewart and Mike Donnelly, both of whom are leaving the bench in January, said the plaintiffs didn’t seek compensatory damages, only reimbursement for costs of the opioid epidemic. So this law shouldn’t apply here.

They said they filed a public nuisance suit, not a product liability suit, and they were just seeking equitable relief, not compensatory damages. Cleveland attorney for the counties, Peter Weinberger, says it’s going to have a devastating impact on the community’s ability to police corporate conduct, and the ruling undermines the legal basis that resulted in over $60 billion in settlements from pharmacies across the nation.

They say that they can pursue other claims like racketeering, but that would require a new trial. Walmart spokesperson Hannah Henderson, Ohio is the latest court to correctly reject efforts to expand the public nuisance law to sue over legal already regulated products.

Chris Quinn (02:18.038)

I’m tripping over this though, because these were federal court verdicts, and yet the appeals court asked a state court for its thoughts. I haven’t seen the explanation yet of how this can work. Normally, if you’re in federal court, you’re dealing with federal statutes. And if you’re in the state courts, which the Ohio Supreme Court oversees, you’re dealing with state laws.

Lisa (02:39.033)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Quinn (02:46.22)

that this was a verdict in federal court. Dan Polster was the judge, but the appellate court for some reason asked the state for its thoughts. And nobody says anywhere that I can see that, we’re going to appeal this in the federal system because it should have never gone to the state court because it was a federal court verdict. I’m hoping a lawyer who’s listening to this will send me a note explaining it because I just don’t understand how this could happen.

Lisa (03:12.589)

Yeah, I thought it weird that a state law would apply in this case, but the Supreme Court obviously thought that it did. As you said, I think we need to dig into this a lot more. And it does jeopardize not only the suits for Lake and Trumbull counties, it really endangers all opioid lawsuits because the pharmacies could use the same argument. I don’t know, maybe not. It’s a very weird legal situation.

Chris Quinn (03:36.566)

Yeah, yeah, it confuses me to no end. And yet, it does not appear that the plaintiffs are thinking in terms of higher appeals. So hopefully, we’ll get some clarity on how this could happen because I’m in a fog. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Ohio lawmakers look like they seek to take some discretion away from the Ohio Supreme Court by reducing nuisance lawsuits that target free speech.

Laura, how would the so-called SLAP legislation work?

Laura (04:08.86)

This would protect free speech and freedom of the press from the threat of quote, meritless lawsuits. The goal is to block the use of the courts by plaintiffs who have a whole lot of money who want to silence their critics just because of the fear of expensive litigation. Not that they might win necessarily, but they’d put that person, that institution through a long legal set of obstacle courses that would cost a lot of money.

So SLAP is short for strategic lawsuit against public participation. That’s a type of lawsuit that makes claims such as defamation, invasion of privacy to intimidate the people exercising those rights of free speech. Republican Senator Teresa Gavarone of Bowling Green, who we’ve talked about on this podcast, as well as Nathan Manning of North Bridgeville sponsored the legislation. The Senate approved 32 to zero in June. It’s going to the House today.

and has a bunch of supporters, the Ohio News Media Association, the Ohio Association of Broadcasters, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the State Bar Association, the ACLU. So I would think if it passed this overwhelmingly and it’s got this much support, this will be something that slides through before the end of the session at the end of this month.

Chris Quinn (05:20.056)

Yeah. Yeah. And with Teresa Gavaron behind it, she is a rising star. It does give it credibility. This is important. This is actually good law because what big bullying companies do is try to cost the little guy a ton of money by harassing them with lawsuits that drag them in the court and cost them a bundle of cash. That’s wrong. It shouldn’t happen. You shouldn’t be bullying the little guy because you don’t like what they say. And this would

Laura (05:39.942)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Quinn (05:48.414)

and their ability to use that as a tactic.

Laura (05:52.112)

Right. So a judge would hold a hearing that could expedite dismissing these cases if they’re deemed to be meritless. So you wouldn’t have to go through all the rigmarole of all the hearings and all the cost of all the lawyers there. So it’s patterned after this Public Expression Protection Act created by the Uniform Law Commission, which is a nonprofit that develops model legislation. Seven states already have adopted this language. 33 have similar laws. So this is something that is taking the country.

Chris Quinn (06:21.614)

All right, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. We’ve been all over Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin for reducing the number of districts in the maps for council wards in secrecy. He has to do it because of population losses, but he hasn’t released them to the public until yesterday. But it does look like the maps removed all sorts of abusive map making by his predecessor, Marty Sweeney. Courtney, what are the apparent positive changes that Griffin is making here?

Courtney (06:52.218)

Yeah, I mean, Griffin did straight up said he was trying to under do what’s been dubbed the Sweeney Mandarin of a decade ago. So some of the examples of where this appears to be undone is notably on the city’s northeast side. A decade ago, north and south Collingwood were split off into two different wards. It resulted in some weird shapes in that far northeast corner of the city. And what we see under these new maps is a neighborhood in Collingwood that’s been reunited.

all under one new newly proposed ward. We also saw some undoing of some shenanigans on the West Side. Former Councilwoman Donna Brady, who’s never on the body, you know, she was drawn into a ward that wasn’t really connected to her home a decade ago that created a weird shape called the scorpion’s tail on the West Side. That’s been undone around West Boulevard.

We’ve also seen some other far reaching effects of these map changes. In the past decade, we’ve seen population continue to decline on the East side. We’ve seen lots of folks move into the near West side. And these maps do seem to kind of reflect those population trends. Notably, some of the near West side wards have been moved from kind of horizontal shaped wards into more vertical wards.

that split up those near West Side communities among more council people than they previously had been distributed to.

Chris Quinn (08:29.037)

And it doesn’t look like he did a whole lot of politicking with this. If you look at it in total, it looks like he tried to draw reasonable maps, again, removing all the nonsense that Sweeney did to reward his supporters and take out his opponents. It looks like he tried to do the right thing. So even though he should have never done it all in secret, ultimately, these maps look pretty good. Every council member who’s still there has a shot at

keeping the position on council. They might have to move around a little bit, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything venal about this,

Courtney (09:04.53)

Well, know, end result of going from 17 wards to 15, as the charter requires, is that some people are gonna be set up for competitive races against their colleagues. That’s just how it works. know, looking at the maps, it doesn’t appear to be as screamingly politically influenced as that map from a decade ago. So I say writ large, that’s a good thing for Cleveland. Now, of course, you’re going to have little spots and areas.

that some council members are not happy with. And we saw that here with the Slavic Villages councilwoman, Rebecca Moore. She’s not satisfied. She feels like Slavic Village was diced up in a unique way. The final maps, you know, I don’t, they look reasonable, but we don’t have all like the political kind of infighting knowledge to know exactly what may have been toyed with or not. It’s hard to discern.

those little issues when you’re looking at the big maps, but generally, like you said, they are more compact. And I think that’s a good thing for Cleveland. One thing that is notable here is who’s being set up to run against each other in these newly drawn wards. What it’s looking like is that Richard Starr, who currently represents the central neighborhood and Rebecca Moore will have to face off. Someone will get that seat. Also running against each other, potentially here are

Anthony Hairston in South Collinwood currently and Mike Polanzek who’s long represented North Collinwood. But council rules do let people run in wards they don’t live in so that could lead to some different results.

Chris Quinn (10:43.79)

We’ll see. the end, it’s tough job, right? You are reducing the number of seats and there’s always going to be somebody somewhat unhappy. This is, it seems to be a much better result than the shenanigans that Marty Sweeney pulled when he did it. You’re listening. Go ahead.

Courtney (11:00.134)

Yeah, and the council members, a lot of them do say the process was better this time around.

Chris Quinn (11:07.8)

You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Back to the legislature, Lisa, why are they trying to make it harder for people who have suffered as best as poisoning because of their employers get compensation for their shortened lives and their suffering?

Lisa (11:21.519)

The Senate Bill 63 requires plaintiffs in asbestos lawsuits to specify the specific products that harm them, where they were exposed, and the witnesses to this exposure within 60 days of filing their lawsuit. This bill passed through the Ohio House Tuesday, 69 to 15. It was a bipartisan vote, but all the no votes were Democrats. If they don’t provide this required information within 60 days,

the defendants can file a motion to dismiss the suit. Cleveland attorney Sean Acton says he’s tried over 150 of these cases. He says this bill nips legitimate cases in the bud. And he points out rightly that asbestos related diseases like mesothelioma and asbestosis take decades to even show symptoms. He said exposure often comes from many different sources. And he points out that the pre-trial discovery process typically occurs

after 60 days so even if you know so they would have to provide this information basically before discovery. This bill is supported by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the insurance lobby and big businesses they say it protects from overzealous attorneys who want to over name multiple defendants which runs up costs for innocent companies.

Chris Quinn (12:37.708)

Yeah, it’s another example of the legislature being bought and paid for by moneyed interests. The people that suffer from this, they suffer a lot. And often their employers knew what they were doing and they do have damages as a result. And the legislature, because they get lobbied and paid for by all these guys that don’t want to pay, are going to make it harder for the little guy to prevail. It’s yet another in a long line of examples of how this legislature

sticks it to the residents they’re supposed to be supporting to take care of big business.

Lisa (13:11.991)

And as Acton points out, he says this would work if you worked in the same company for 20 years breathing in asbestos at your job. But he says it doesn’t work for the veteran who is exposed or firefighters who are constantly exposed through multiple exposure sites. so, and this is opposed by firefighters groups and trial lawyers, associations and veterans. cause they feel like they won’t be able to bring a suit under this bill.

Chris Quinn (13:37.59)

Yeah, it’s a terrible thing to do. They’re making these lawsuits almost impossible to file to take care of the people that fill their pockets. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Ohioans long have been frustrated by school districts that do a poor job educating kids. Laura, how’s the legislature looking to attack that problem?

Laura (13:57.808)

They want to let charter school operators, public or private colleges, state approved education management organizations, or regional educational service centers take over these poor performing schools. A school would be rated as poor performing if it had a performance index score in the bottom 5 % of the state in addition to the value added progress score in the bottom 10%. That is on the school report cards.

And it would apply to any district operated charter or STEM schools serving fourth grade or above. So the idea is that some schools would be dubbed poor performing every year because of the way that this definition is, even if they’re meeting state standards. And that’s the issue that the Ohio Federation of Teachers took up when she testified on Wednesday. She said that there’ll be always schools that meet this criteria and that doesn’t

makes sense and saying that it’s an arbitrary cutoff. So this is kind of, I guess, unique in that the bill was originally filed in June with general boilerplate language that said it wanted to revise school closure requirements. And then it created this 106 page substitute bill that was introduced December 3rd to replace the boilerplate with specifics. But that’s not a lot of time. And that’s what happens in lame duck where you shove these things through without a

a lot of scrutiny.

Chris Quinn (15:23.5)

My problem with something like this is we’ve had the schools be taken over on occasion in the past and it hasn’t done anything. The state doesn’t really have an apparatus to make it better. The only way you’re going to take an East Cleveland school industry can make it better is if you put a lot of money into it. They need resources to teach the kids and this doesn’t do that. I’m not other than if they’re just trying to give it away to charter schools because they’re trying to privatize education and make everybody a Christian.

Laura (15:31.324)

Mm-hmm, right.

Chris Quinn (15:52.81)

I’m not sure how this will change anything. Okay, so you can have the state go after the district more easily. What do they do to make it better? They don’t have any track record of showing that progress.

Laura (16:05.83)

And that doesn’t seem to be spelled out in this bill at all. And that’s what the president of the Ohio Education Association said that this was a top-down approach. It hasn’t worked in the past. And that the issues in these schools are much larger than teachers and classrooms, that the students need other services. Because when you’re talking about these schools, they are in really poor areas. This is not just a school that’s not educating kids. These are students that have a lot of trouble. And, you know,

They probably need a lot of services. Youngstown, East Cleveland, and Lorraine were run for years by these academic distress commissions and CEOs, but their test scores did not improve. The schools worsened and teachers left. The enrollment went down. So they actually kind of abandoned this. In 2021, the General Assembly gave each district an opportunity to get out if they came up with a three-year plan that’s to monitor by the Ohio Department of Education.

and Lorraine has been removed from that probationary period and state control altogether. But I agree if you look, it is admirable to try to improve schools, but you need a plan to improve them, not just say we’re going to take this bunch at the bottom every year and give them to somebody else to run.

Chris Quinn (17:20.14)

Well, unless you add resources, if you say, okay, you’re completely incompetent in educating your children, we’re going to take it over and we’re going to provide the resources we think are necessary to help these kids. If this was really about educating the kids now, then spend the money, do it right. But this won’t do that. This will just say there’s a different boss in charge. And like we’ve pointed out, that has failed in the past. it’s not…

This is not a fully considered measure that they’re rushing through. It’s a bad idea. I would hope that it would get blocked. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. We’ve got a bit more than a week left in the legislature’s lame duck session, so that’s the time when lawmakers load up on what we call Christmas tree bills. Courtney, what is a Christmas tree bill and what’s going into them this time around?

Courtney (18:10.862)

Yeah, we call them Christmas tree bills because these proposals are just like adorned with a variety of legislation that’s long been on the wish list of state lawmakers and they see that time around Christmas, the lame duck opportunity to just shuttle those wish list items right on through and hopefully, you know, get these priorities passed. We’re seeing a lot of this action this week in committees in both the House and Senate.

There’s just been a flurry of action as we were expecting. We don’t know which of these are going to ultimately pass, right? But we do know what’s now kind of on the table. That’s a potential thing that could move through. And one of the big items we saw get some movement yesterday was an expansion of fracking in state parks. Everyone’s favorite state proposal on this podcast, I know. So one of these proposals would actually extend the default lease term.

for state park fracking from the current limit of three years up to five years. And when you’re looking at how long these fracking permits can last in total, it would move it from today’s six years to a maximum of eight years. This was tacked onto that bill that would seek to designate nuclear power as green energy. And we’re gonna have to see where it goes from here. It’s also worth noting about another one that was pushed through.

in committee regarding changes to election law. So one of these changes that were tacked on to kind of an innocuous bill related to the state’s IT policy, one of these changes here would give the attorney general power to reject a petitioner’s proposed constitutional amendment on the grounds that the title of that amendment isn’t fair and truthful. And this is basically seeking to address what we saw happen in recent months

when current attorney general Dave Yost was said by the courts to have unfairly shot down proposed amendments related to qualified immunity for police officers and the establishment of a so-called Ohio voter bill of rights. So this would let the AG do what he sought to do earlier this year, but was stopped from doing thanks to the courts. Other committee added language around the election process. We give secretary of state,

Courtney (20:35.302)

kind of broad power to set standards for the security and integrity of ballots. We know the current Secretary of State says, we’ve got a really secure system here, but this would really open up a rose’s power and it would also give him some new powers over the voter registration systems used by county boards of elections.

Chris Quinn (20:56.224)

I’m a little bit surprised that they’re changing the law on the constitutional amendment because we have a constitutional amendment that says how you go about changing constitutional amendments. So I wouldn’t know that a state law could give that power to the attorney general. But maybe the way the, I meant to look it up, but I didn’t have time. Maybe the way the constitution is written, it does give the legislature some power to set some rules about how this thing goes down.

I, and maybe it’s, they just figured the Ohio Supreme Court is so in the bag for anything they want to do that they would get approved. But it does raise a question. If the constitution is what defines how the people can alter the constitution, how can lawmakers pass a bill that would give Dave Yoast some extra power? I’d like to see some more on that.

Courtney (21:49.436)

That’s a fantastic question. I will not to dangle a shiny object to distract from that, but I was kind of heartened to see that there were some other voter changes in that bill that it seems like they’d be a good thing for the state. There was also some measures included in there that would make it easier for Ohioans to register to vote, and it would also let their registration update electronically at the BMV. So interesting that we saw that tucked in there as well.

But I also wanted to point out another big one that we saw move on Tuesday. You know, this flicks at the so-called parental rights bill that we’ve been hearing about. And it would really open the door for more religious instruction in schools in Ohio. So what this change would do is it would require schools to notify parents of, to let parents know about sexual content,

of any mental or physical healthcare changes. It would let parents opt their kids out of receiving such healthcare. But tacked onto this bill, a new version that was passed in committee on Tuesday would also require school districts to add a policy by next summer, which would allow kids to be released for religious instruction outside schools.

Chris Quinn (23:11.706)

Okay, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. The Ohio Supreme Court issued an interesting Stand Your Ground ruling Tuesday, and it wasn’t good news for a couple of Cuyahoga County killers. Lisa, what was it?

Lisa (23:24.175)

Yeah, in a five to two ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the Stand Your Ground law is not retroactive and it doesn’t apply to these two Cleveland men who were charged in a 2019 murder. The law was passed in 2021, two years later. Desmond Duncan and JD Marie were convicted for killing Ramses Hurley in the Buckeye Shaker neighborhood. They are both serving 15 years to life in prison.

but they claimed self-defense. said they, first of all, they admitted that they were trying to rob Ramses Hurley, but Hurley pulled a gun, shots were fired, Hurley was thrown from a moving car, he hit his head and then he died. But the two men claimed self-defense, but the trial was held after the law was in place. Their trial was in 2021. So they say, well, we were being tried that year, it should apply.

But the Ohio Supreme Court disagreed. say you just can’t apply it to cases before the law was passed. The two dissenters, Melody Stewart and Patrick Fisher said the jury in the case should have been told to ignore the possibility that the men could retreat, which is the part of the Stand Your Ground law. Stand Your Ground law says you have no duty to retreat before using force against someone who’s a threat to you.

Chris Quinn (24:38.254)

Yeah, it’s an interesting one, but I do think that it follows with precedent that generally when a law changes, it only applies to cases that follow, not previous cases.

Lisa (24:50.287)

I was surprised there was a descent actually.

Chris Quinn (24:52.63)

Yeah, me too. I was thrown by that because it seems like this is pretty much an automatic ruling. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has a suspicious case of voting out of Gates Mills. What happened to make it suspicious, Laura?

Laura (25:10.29)

So the signature of this voter was before the absentee ballots were mailed out by the board of elections. remember, can correct the date of that. Because remember, you can request your ballot as soon as you want, but they don’t send them until the early voting opens. So you can’t get a hold of it. It’s not something you can print off online. You can only print off the request.

Chris Quinn (25:21.112)

the date of it.

Laura (25:39.866)

So this is an 83 year old executive of a textile company who lived in Gates Mills. He applied for his vote by mail ballot in September and he dated it October 4th. That was four days before that beginning of the mailing, which was October 8th and he died on October 6th. So there’s the issue of that and it was sent to Ohio’s Secretary of State.

Franklin Rose’s Public Integrity Unit to investigate the case.

Chris Quinn (26:10.86)

Yeah, he died before they mailed the ballots out. So there’s a problem here because if you get your ballot legally and mail it in and then you die, I think that that’s all legitimate. But something odd is happening here. The signature is dated before they went out. He died before they went out and then it was mailed weeks later, weeks after he died. So this isn’t this isn’t a question of did somebody’s ballot get counted because

Laura (26:14.289)

Right.

Chris Quinn (26:39.816)

voted after they died, it’s voter fraud. mean, it looks like somebody took a ballot, artificially signed it after he died, predated it, and mailed it in. So it’s highly suspicious. It didn’t get counted though, right? Because the board of elections flagged it.

Laura (26:55.442)

It did not get counted because I had wondered about this, how this works. They got the ballot at the Board of Elections on October 21st. The board on October 16th, they get a monthly report from the Ohio Department of Health with the names and information of every person who died and they compare it to the voter rolls. They looked at it, they did not count it, but it was something that they discussed at their meeting on Tuesday, I believe it was, yesterday.

And so it does raise that question. I didn’t ever think about what happened if you died after you voted, but it does seem pretty clear. No one could have had those ballots to fill out October 4th. So it does not seem possible that he legally voted.

Chris Quinn (27:41.038)

All right, listening to today in Ohio, Cleveland Browns released some more of their vision for a dome stadium and entertainment Mecca in Brook Park, but always without a clue as to where they expect to get $1.2 billion in tax money to pay for it. Courtney, what did they release this time?

Courtney (28:00.114)

Yeah, so we saw some new details or some new details yesterday about what this, you know, mixed use development would look like in Brook Park if the Browns someday figure out a way to pay for it and build it. So if this if this imagined complex does arise, the Haslums see it as, you know, they laid out the mix of buildings and amenities they want there. Basically, they they’re saying that they build two upscale hotels with at least 450 rooms.

They’re saying they would do 300,000 square feet of retail out at this development. And that would be inclusive of the team shop, like where you buy the football gear. And then they’re also eyeing 1100 apartments for this development. And I will say that that 1100 apartment figure did catch my eye because when the city put out their own analysis of this project a few weeks back, the city was aware of, or said that they were aware of

about half that number of apartments and the city in that report concluded there wasn’t enough demand for half the number that the Haslums are now pitching. So 1,100 apartments is what the Browns say and you know they’re talking about different phases so some of this stuff would be built first some of it would come later. The Haslums also announced they’ve picked a developer for this idea, Lincoln Property Company, which helped build similar mixed-use developments.

around the Dallas Cowboys and the Carolina Panthers stadiums.

Chris Quinn (29:34.582)

The, my favorite line though, was when they’re talking about the retail, they said part of it would be set aside for experimental retail, which just sounds like made up nonsense, right? What is experimental retail? The problem for retail anywhere is that many people are shopping online. They, that’s where they do most of their retail. And so there’s not, not a lot of demand for more retail in Cuyahoga County. If they build something here and it is popular and being in Brook Park next to the airport, that’s a question.

It’ll just take it from somewhere else. So some other publicly subsidized shopping center would fade if this were successful, but this very likely would not be successful. They just keep marching down this road of delusion of look, look what we’re going to do. Look what we’re going to do. And there’s no money for it. And I think they just hope that by showing throwing out their bright Chinese, that the people will forget that there’s no money for it and it’ll build momentum.

There is no momentum. I hear from taxpayers all the time. They remain absolutely livid that these billionaire owners of the sports teams are trying to jack taxpayers for that much money.

Laura (30:44.122)

I would love to hear what everybody else is hearing from the people they run into in their regular lives who might think this is a done deal or really like the idea and aren’t thinking about the public subsidy because Courtney and I were talking in the office yesterday, this idea that they’re going to come up with $1.2 billion in public money just based on extra taxes for this development, which is ludicrous. How many times would Taylor Swift have to play in a row there and fill up every hotel room and fill all the restaurants and

charge admission with taxes on top of that to come up with $1.2 billion. I agree with you, Chris. They are just keep marching down the road, throwing out these absurd ideas. I’m just afraid people think it’s possible.

Lisa (31:15.471)

I’m just afraid people think that…

Chris Quinn (31:29.004)

And it’s not and and nor it it it shouldn’t happen if we have one point two billion dollars in this community. This is not how we should spend it as we’ve talked about. We have lead paint. We have infant mortality and we have a million other things that would serve a great number of people in this community, not the sixty five thousand people that would go to a football game. It’s preposterous for them to even ask for the money for a purpose like this. And yet.

They keep marching down the road.

You’re listening to Today in Ohio. That’s it for the Wednesday episode. Thanks Courtney. Thanks Lisa. Thanks Laura. Thank you for being here. We’ll return Thursday with another discussion of the news.