CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Republican candidates in Ohio have adopted a common attack in their appeals to GOP primary voters: painting their opponents as too sympathetic toward gay and transgender people.
We’re talking about why candidates like Bernie Moreno, Frank LaRose and Matt Dolan are fighting over past support rather about current issues on Today in Ohio.
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.
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More Today in Ohio
- Guilty until proven innocent? Ohio’s upside down approach to justice in its anti-texting law: Today in Ohio
- Monday was a big step forward for Ohioans taking back their government from leaders who have stolen it: Today in Ohio
- A gas company asks Ohio regulators to increase rates, and the regulators say how about a decrease instead: Today in Ohio
Here’s what else we’re asking about today:
Ohio has a lot of issues that need fixing. Education. Job training. Childcare. Yet one of the biggest issues for Republicans this campaign season has been LGBTQ+ issues that people really are not talking about. Reporters Andrew Tobias and Jeremy Pelzer went in search of why. What did they learn?
Some of the candidates we just talked about are spending their personal fortunes to get out their messages. We are talking about Matt Dolan and Bernie Moreno. How hard are they trying to buy this election, according to the latest finance reports?
Matt Dolan received a boost from the last even-tempered, measured Republican to be a senator from Ohio. What was it?
Culture warrior and Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan says the federal government is tracking the bank accounts and movements of Americans. Any truth to that claim?
Here’s an idea so good that you wonder why it didn’t happen years ago. What is the Cuyahoga County library doing to help out working parents?
With Cleveland schools approaching a financial cliff, having increased spending to use its American Rescue Plan Dollars and now running out of those dollars, we wondered whether other school districts were more measured in their approach. What did reporter Lucas Daprile find out?
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has warned Ohio colleges to be mindful of a ramification of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year that college admissions cannot be based on race. But the ramification Yost is warning about is not in the ruling. What’s going on here?
Riding a bike or walking across a road has become a life-risking practice in America, with nearly 9,000 bicyclists and pedestrians getting killed by cars across the nation in 2022. Cleveland has seen its share of deaths, too. So why are bike and pedestrian advocates in Cleveland feeling good about where we stand?
A guy with almost no courtroom experience, no real management experience and little in the way of an understanding of the job is challenging incumbent Cuyahoga County Proesutor Mike O’Malley in the primary election. What do we know about Matthew Ahn?
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has opened an exhibit called Revolutionary Women in Music. Who is the museum honoring?
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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.
Chris (00:01.878)
We’re a little foggy on this first workday of Daylight Savings Time on Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn, I’m here with Lisa Garvin, Leila Tassi and Laura Johnston, and Lisa, I have become a convert to Standard Time because the Washington Post put together one of the most incredible demonstrations of why Daylight Savings Time is bad for you I’ve ever seen. And the thing that I learned that I never knew, duh.
Lisa (00:02.85)
on this first work day of Daylight Savings Time on Ohio.
Lisa (00:17.351)
Thank you.
Chris (00:31.462)
is standard time is based on having noon at the highest point of the sun, which makes all the sense in the world, but I never knew that. I guess I was not in step with the rest of society. It’s a tremendous piece. If you have access to the Washington Post, the graphics and everything show just how badly this messes with your body and how disastrous it would be if we had daylight savings time year round, our brains would never catch up. Highly recommend it. Anyway, Lisa, I’m now with you, and I wasn’t a week ago.
Lisa (00:35.686)
Yep.
Lisa (00:59.339)
Hallelujah.
Chris (01:01.458)
Let’s begin. Ohio has a lot of issues that need fixing, education, job training, childcare. Yet one of the biggest issues for Republicans this campaign season has been LGBTQ plus issues that people really are not talking about. Reporters, Andrew Tobias and Jory Mappelzer went in search of why. Lisa, what did they learn?
Lisa (01:22.81)
Yeah, this seems to be a kind of a recent shift as well. And candidates are accusing their opponents of being too sympathetic towards gay and transgender people. And the public debate is shifting from really gay rights to gender identity. And there’s a big backlash among Republican voters. Baldwin Wallace, the university did a survey in 2022 that showed that 59% of Ohio voters support the gay marriage law, but 56% of Republicans oppose it.
And then up to 81% of Republicans oppose allowing minors to get gender-affirming care and allow them to play, you know, trans women to play on girls sports teams. In the Senate campaign, this has become an issue. Frank LaRose and Bernie Moreno both supported the 2014 gay games in Cleveland. And LaRose also supported LGBTQ rights at a 2016 RNC conference.
DeWine’s veto on trans legislation. And then there are TV attack ads. They’re accusing each other of being too friendly to the gay and trans community. Moreno’s PAC accused LaRose of, you know, voting on a non-discrimination bill, the Ohio Fairness Act. And then Dolan accused Moreno of supporting the gay games. So here you go. Baldwin Wallace University’s Tom Sutton says, this is really a purity test. This is what it is. Conservatives have long used gay rights as a political tactic.
And these attacks are really meant to suggest that their opponents are just Republicans in name only or RINOs who secretly support liberal values.
Chris (03:00.118)
But when people go to the ballot box, is this on their minds? Or are they thinking about the economy and jobs? And I just, this doesn’t feel like it’s something that is present on the minds of the voters as much as the candidates want it to be.
Lisa (03:16.874)
Yeah, it seems like people are accepting. I mean, in Ohio though, 66% of Ohio voters in total oppose allowing minors gender affirming care. So there is still a bias, but see when you have your candidate leaning on those biases, then it becomes an issue. I don’t think it is an issue with the Joe Q public.
Chris (03:36.382)
Right. If you ask people should you have gender affirming care for minors, surgery for minors, you’ll get an opinion. But when they’re thinking about all of the things that affect their lives, how high up on the priority list of candidate issues is that? It’s one of those where these three candidates are so similar in their approaches that they are being exaggerated in trying to identify the issues that differentiate them. And God, if I were a...
gay or trans person in Ohio, I’d be mortified because these candidates are just attacking me left and right and for what?
Lisa (04:14.578)
And it shows that they actually do at some point, at least Moreno and LaRose, at some point they did support non-discrimination of LGBTQ people. So they’re flip-flopping to appease that Trumpist base.
Chris (04:28.914)
Well, one of the reasons Moreno lost so much of his support in Northeast Ohio is he used to be a valiant champion of LGBTQ plus rights. He even got an award for it. And the people that provided that to him are mortified at how he’s turned it around. It’s more evidence that Bernie Moreno stands for nothing. He’ll say whatever it takes to try and get elected. So his past positions don’t mean anything. And he’s basically said he’s going to be a puppet for Trump. I should point out, I started.
Friday’s podcast by saying I saw the debate and it didn’t look like his forehead moved. He texted me, thanks for noticing. No Botox. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Some of the candidates we just talked about are spending their personal fortunes to get out their messages. We’re talking about Mac Dolan and Bernie Moreno. Laura, how hard are they trying to buy this election according to the latest finance reports?
laura (05:21.36)
Well, millions of dollars worth. So State Senator Matt Dolan from Chagrin Falls and businessman Bernie Moreno both have about $2.4 million in their campaign bank accounts. Dolan lent his campaign $2 million in February. Moreno lent his campaign $1.2 million. So Dolan’s up to a total of $9 million total that he gave to his campaign. Moreno’s at $4.2 million. And Frank LaRose, who would like to portray himself
regular guy is the odd man out financially speaking, although he has this affiliated super PAC that’s making up some of the difference. There’s no limits on how much a super PAC can raise from individual donors. His campaign has $591,000 in cash. They raised about $362,000 this year. Larose Align PAC is affiliated with Richard Oline, the GOP mega donor from Illinois, who bankrolled.
the August issue one election last year to try to change the constitution to make it harder to change the constitution.
Chris (06:27.746)
Can you imagine spending $9 million and losing? I mean, $9 million and losing. It’d be like spending $9 million on lottery tickets and coming away empty-handed. It’s a staggering sum of money to spend on something that is not very likely.
laura (06:30.652)
I can’t imagine having nine million dollars.
laura (06:47.352)
Yeah, and we’ve said all along, you know, that Dolan has the most bona fides going into this. He’s put in the time. He’s been a relatively steady presence in politics in Ohio. I mean, he ran against Ed Fitzgerald. That was my first time really interacting with him for the county executive when we first switched our government. And he doesn’t have the same kind of extreme views that Marino and LaRose have.
But when you are competing in a primary, that’s not helping you. And just like we talked about, that’s why we’re getting down to, well, you supported this a decade ago and you did this because they’re all trying to be the most conservative.
Chris (07:30.822)
Imagine how much better we would have been off if he had won that county executive race because you would have had a sane conservative fiscal conservative set the mold for that instead of the guy we had who two years in melted down because he didn’t have a driver’s license and
Lisa (07:39.49)
Thank you.
laura (07:47.532)
I was gonna say, I think Matt Dolan has a driver’s license, and as far as I know, he’s never been caught with a woman who was not his wife in a Westlake parking lot.
Chris (07:50.5)
Yeah, I just...
Yeah, we would have been better off. He would have set a tone that we would have appreciated. Now we’ve got this disaster of a county government that just doesn’t work. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Speaking of Matt Dolan, he received a boost from the last even-tempered measured Republican to be a Senator from Ohio, and I am not talking about JD Vance, obviously. Laila, what was the boost?
Leila (08:16.748)
Dolan received the endorsement of former Senator Rob Portman and his wife, Jane. And in a statement Friday, Portman said that they believe Dolan’s deep understanding of the issues facing the state combined with his ability to build consensus and drive meaningful change made him the best choice. And yeah, that’s more than can be said about his competition, Frank LaRose and Bernie Moreno, who are both self-professed Trumpsters. Moreno has Trump’s endorsement, of course.
Lisa (08:34.286)
that can be said about his competition, Frank LaRose and Bernie Moreno. Both of them have Trump’s support. Moreno has Trump’s support as well. the next speaker.
Leila (08:42.65)
So Andrew Tobias points out that Dolan is running a campaign in the style of a traditional Republican Rob Portman campaign. So for example, he’s calling for continued US financial support for Ukraine, its war against Russia because it’s in the United States’ best interest. By comparison, Moreno is calling for an immediate end to that funding. Now how meaningful is a Rob Portman endorsement for today’s voters? Andrew points out that Portman endorsed Jane Timken.
Lisa (09:10.954)
change to replace him with the entirety of 2022. And so it’s going to be a shift in that way. Yeah, I don’t, I agree. It doesn’t matter.
Leila (09:11.146)
replace him when he retired in 2022 and Timken finished fifth in that primary.
Chris (09:17.45)
Yeah, I don’t, I agree. It doesn’t probably mean much, but it is nice that the even tempered Rob Portman is not endorsing one of the circus clowns that are running for Senate in Ohio and stuck with the guy who was Laura said earlier has the bona fides.
Leila (09:32.222)
Yeah, it’s just kind of, you know, this is a state that elected JD Vance after he got the Trump endorsement. I think it’s sadly clear where Ohio’s heart and mind is. So, you know, and with the exception of Rob Portman, Dolan doesn’t seem to have a lot of star power on his list of endorsements. He’s got a lot of mayors and county commissioners and things like that. I’m just very dismayed at the state of things in that race.
Chris (09:42.506)
I look, eh.
Chris (09:58.158)
will have gone from the likes of John Glenn and Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman to the likes of JD Vance who would support the coup of the government and possibly Bernie Moreno. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Culture Warrior and Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan says the federal government is tracking the banking counts and movements of Americans. Lisa, any truth to that claim?
Lisa (10:22.466)
It’s kind of hard to discern, but we’ll see. Jim Jordan held a hearing last week of the select subcommittee on the weaponization of federal government. This hearing was one day after the House Judiciary Committee that he chairs released a report that claims that federal law enforcement agencies are using financial institutions to spy on Americans. He says, quote, the government is building profiles based on political beliefs. If you have the wrong beliefs, you’re potentially a domestic violent extremist.
So law enforcement agencies and private banking institutions began sharing data after the January 6th attack on the Capitol using a web portal of the Domestic Security Alliance Council. That council facilitates exchange of security and intelligence information between the government and the private sector. Jordan’s report claims that some of the largest U.S. banks have participated. They used keywords like Trump and MAGA.
and targeted purchases of religious texts, books, firearms-related items, and purchases at stores like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. And they said that these went beyond just criminal suspicion.
Chris (11:34.142)
Yeah, it did. This seems a bit skeezy. If you read what the government is admitting to, they’re saying, yes, we were worried about who might be coming to Washington. So we use these methods to do the tracking, which is not an appropriate way for government to act. It does seem like an unreasonable search of your, your background. I’ll be interested to see where this one goes. I was surprised that the government pretty much conceded. Yeah, yeah, we did do some of that.
Lisa (11:36.627)
it does.
Chris (12:01.354)
then the question is, well, what’s your probable cause? If somebody who’s done nothing wrong goes to Cabela’s before going to Washington, how is that a sign that they’re a terrorist?
Lisa (12:12.854)
Well, the top Democrat on the committee, Stacey Plaskett, the Democrat from the Virgin Islands, says they were really trying to prevent a reprise of the January 6th incident by seeking financial records from people in three very specific categories. Those who were in the D.C. area on January 6th, those who bought a firearm in the last six months, and evidence that they were returning to D.C. for the inauguration.
And she said, when it’s people who fit your political agenda, they’re not criminals anymore, but patriots are victims. They’re not, they’re criminals. But yeah, this is kind of a little shaky ground here, I think.
Chris (12:46.17)
Yeah. I mean, look, you’re trying to say that the January Six people were trying to destroy the Constitution. Donald Trump wanted to overthrow the government so he could be ruler for life. You can’t protect the Constitution by violating the Constitution, which it sounds like is what they did. That’s not a good enough excuse. We wanted to know who was coming to Washington, so we looked into your private affairs. That sounds very, very questionable. I’ll be interested
He’s been throwing darts in every direction. He might’ve actually hit the bullseye for once. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Here’s an idea so good, you wonder why it didn’t happen years ago. Laura, what is the Cuyahoga County Library doing to help out working parents?
laura (13:33.488)
They have a childcare center in their Maple Heights branch, and they are building another one in Parma Heights. It’s been so successful. And you’re right, I didn’t know about this. They actually started it six years ago in Maple Heights when the center’s building had to close and they said, wait, we have extra space. Why did no one think of this before? And why is this the only one in Ohio? Because it makes so much sense. Because libraries have become gathering.
points for the entire community. If you look at what a library offers, it’s way more than books and magazines and movies. It is classes and all sorts of things and programming, and they’ve already got great children’s library spaces and staff that can help out all the time. So they work with the centers for this child care center and they have adjoining spaces. They get...
Books are recommended, they have story time and library visits, they have special education programming all part of their curriculum. There’s a librarian who uses a mobile card to do hands-on cooking demonstrations, and they get to know the kids so they know what their interests are because they do offer these services in other child care centers. I know when my kids were in child care, they got a visit from the library every once in a while, but transportation makes that a lot less frequent than when you’re in the same building. So...
Yeah, hats off to the Cuyahoga County Public Library for being innovative here. And I’m so excited to see what they can do in Parma Heights. That’s going to be a full service child care center from babies all the way up to pre-K, which if you have a baby right now, anything six weeks to 18 months is really hard to find.
Chris (15:12.618)
The other thing that was impressive is they’re using this service to train the next generation of day care providers.
laura (15:16.516)
Yes, exactly. So the new one is a partnership with actually Cuyahoga Community College. So they’re going to combine child care center with this early childhood education center and the training, a kind of learning lab for adults who want to go into early childhood education. So they want to expand this pool of qualified child care workers because there are not enough. And they’ll get trained. They’ll have a degree. And now we’ve just got to up the amount
wages that we can offer them so that people want this job.
Chris (15:48.914)
Yeah, that’s one of the big problems is they’re not paid enough, but there is an effort being made everywhere except in the Ohio Senate to change that. Matt Huffman stands in the way.
laura (15:56.876)
Right. I really hope that this story gets shared among libraries and child care professionals across the country to see how well it’s worked. I mean, this isn’t just a pilot program. Six years later, they say this is a roaring success. And so I hope we see it replicated.
Chris (16:12.194)
All right, you are listening to Today in Ohio. With Cleveland schools approaching a financial cliff, having increased spending to use its American Rescue Plan dollars and now running out of those dollars, we wondered whether other school districts were more measured in their approach. Lela, what did Lucas Deprile find out?
Leila (16:30.846)
Well, it turns out that CMSD is, what they’re going through is not unique at all among school districts. That’s particularly true among large urban districts that serve poor communities because, I mean, basically they received more ARPA dollars to begin with. So their budgets, which were temporarily inflated for a few years by this huge cash infusion, now have to be cut down to size. And in Cleveland’s case, that’s really an onerous task.
Cleveland received $295 million in COVID relief from the federal government. That’s more than most of its peer districts across the nation, in fact, probably because of the high percentage of children in poverty that the district serves. And right now, the district is staring down a $168 million deficit on account of the loss of that money. They plan on cutting administrative staff and eliminating annual increases to school operating budgets and cutting summer learning and reducing the use of technology that they acquired during the pandemic.
So Lucas took a look at a couple other urban districts in the state to see how they’re coping in light of the end of ARPA. Dayton received $90 million from the feds. Like Cleveland, they spent their money on a whole bunch of stuff to bridge the learning gap that the pandemic created. They spent it on salaries for school employees, school resource officers, student counselors, behavioral therapists, bus drivers, custodians, student counseling services, technology, stuff like that.
But a great deal of that is those are ongoing expenses that either have to be maintained or cut. That’s the predicament that Cleveland also faces. Dayton will try to avoid a budget crisis by freezing open positions and reducing their staff through attrition and trying to improve efficiency in administrative positions or trying to avoid layoffs. They also are focusing on student recruitment. They’re an open enrollment district and they’ve done a pretty decent job of recruiting new students.
and that of course boosts their funding from the state. In Columbus, another example, that’s the state’s obviously largest school district, they received about 300 million from the federal government and thankfully they were able to get a levy passed in November that replaces about a third of that, but still they will have to cut more than 350 positions that had been funded by COVID relief money. So Cleveland is certainly not alone in dealing with the loss of all that cash.
Chris (18:57.298)
And you can’t fault any of these districts for what they did. This was a crisis in education. They got a bounty of money to try to deal with it. And they did try to deal with it. Interesting, though, we asked people who get my text a week or so ago with the four year anniversary of COVID upon us, it’s this week, what did we learn? That we would do differently next time? And the comments about
Leila (19:03.404)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (19:23.594)
whether or not it was appropriate to close the schools are mixed. There are a whole bunch of people think it was a bad idea, they should have never done it. It’s been horrible for the kids. And the other side is, yeah, but if the kids went and got sick and got the teacher sick and then brought it home and gave it to their parents or grandparents with the complications, more people could have died. And what’s sad is we’re four years beyond this and we still have no clue what the right path is.
Leila (19:49.89)
Right. I mean, I think it’s impossible to prove a negative. It’s impossible to prove that keeping kids home saved lives because we don’t know if they had continued to go to school, whether that would have been, you know, promoting the transmission of COVID in a way that would have taken more lives. So I think it’s easy for us now to look back and say, yeah, there was harm done to the kids. That’s absolutely true. But we don’t know what it would have been like had we not taken that course of action.
Chris (20:18.898)
Although the data is coming in now. There was a great piece in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago about countries that did things differently. And we all had a very similar rate of infection in the end. And so it’s not clear.
Lisa (20:31.274)
It’s not.
Leila (20:31.386)
But does that also take into effect the difference in vaccination rates?
Chris (20:35.698)
Yeah, it looked at it and pretty, I mean, if you look at it in the macro, the virus is going to do what the virus does. I don’t know. I wish we would as a society come to some conclusions so that the next time, and there will be a next time, and it probably won’t take a hundred years to get to the next time. We’re smart about it. Instead, we, and this was across the board, we let political rancor destroy our approach to this for reasons that no one quite understands this thing became politicized.
So right and left, we’re fighting each other instead of everybody getting together to fight the virus. But we’re no better off. I mean, if it happened tomorrow, do you think we would have a clue as to what to do and what the schools would do?
Leila (21:21.838)
Well, I think the next, who knows what the next virus would be and whether, you know, the perhaps the vulnerable population then would be children. So I guess it’s hard to say. But if COVID happened again.
laura (21:37.072)
I feel like at the beginning we were all very united, right? This had never happened. People were watching Wine with the Wine. I mean, from the beginning it felt like we were all of this together. People were chalking and doing those stained glass hearts on their windows. And now I think, I don’t think we’d have the kind of pull it all together solidarity we had at the very beginning of this. We’d start from very different perspectives.
Chris (21:37.242)
I just...
Chris (22:01.302)
I think you’re not remembering correctly. It didn’t take long. We’re talking months before protesters were outside Amy Acton’s house and she left. This...
Lisa (22:04.298)
it didn’t take long. No, it didn’t take long. You’re talking months before protests and protests at the M.E. Atkins House. I agree. But they really did it. I got it.
laura (22:04.612)
No, it didn’t take long. Oh, I agree. But we did the very beginning, I felt like, but I don’t think we’d have that very beginning solidarity now.
Leila (22:16.234)
I think that the rancor came from the fact that it started to become clear that Donald Trump had bumbled the early response. And once that happened and fingers were being pointed at him, then we saw the divisions begin because then it became, you know, those who were downplaying the significance of the virus in general versus the others who were taking it very serious and protecting the medically vulnerable. So
Lisa (22:29.858)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (22:46.166)
You got it. One thing you have to say, he did bumble it. He messed it up badly, but he did fast track the vaccine, which his supporters now hold against them. The fast tracking of that vaccine, I think probably you could argue save millions of lives. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has warned Ohio colleges to be mindful of a ramification of the US Supreme Court’s ruling last year that college admissions cannot be based on race. But the ramification Yost is warning about
Lisa (22:48.163)
The thing you have to say, if you did buy more, you would not put up with a pretty good fast-tracking vaccine, which is important to know all the cancer. Fast-tracking is about vaccine. I really don’t have any idea.
laura (22:51.568)
Mm-hmm.
laura (22:58.884)
agreed.
Chris (23:15.706)
is not in that ruling. Lisa, what’s going on here?
Lisa (23:19.21)
No, it isn’t. And we’re talking about the Supreme Court of the United States ruling back in June of last year that ruled that race-based admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful. But in a January 26 call to Ohio College leaders, Attorney General Dave Yost said that ruling also applies to race-based scholarships.
Although it’s not specifically addressed in the Supreme Court ruling, Yost indicated that, you know, that he said in the ruling, they indicated that eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. Following in his tracks, or maybe he’s following in this guy’s tracks, but Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, also told schools in that state to end their race-based scholarships.
But Case Western Reserve University constitutional law professor Jonathan Enten thinks that Yost might be wrong on this one. He says while the Supreme Court may decide that some of these scholarship programs are unconstitutional, it’s not clear if this would cover outside or private donor scholarship programs, which a lot of them are. And surprisingly, Senator Matt Huffman agrees. He says some money is not subjected to a specific set of conditions.
There are only three Ohio schools that consider race and admissions right now, Ohio State University, Bowling Green State, and the University of Cincinnati, but they all say it’s not the most important fact.
Chris (24:44.69)
I think Yost is overstepping, but ultimately with what the Supreme Court ruled and the efforts being made across the nation, he’s probably ultimately going to be right. There was a ruling out of a federal court in Texas last week that said the federal government’s minority business agency that helps minority enterprises succeed has to accept white people because to not is discriminatory, which flies in the whole...
purpose, flies in the face of the purpose of this agency. And experts across the country see this as a trend that all of this will be viewed as discrimination. But right now it seems like Yost is way out ahead of his skis.
Lisa (25:25.342)
Yeah, and you know, honestly, if you’re giving a private endowment for a scholarship, you’re, you know, a rich person, who’s to say that you can’t do that? You know, that would really be overstepping.
Chris (25:38.122)
Yeah, I think the next five, 10 years are going to see pretty much a wiping out a lot of these programs. It’s I think it’s going to go quickly because people are looking for friendly courts everywhere to file their cases. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Riding a bike or walking across a road has become a life risking practice in America, with nearly 9000 bicyclists and pedestrians getting killed by cars across the nation in 2022.
Cleveland has seen its share of deaths as well. So why are bike and pedestrian advocates in Cleveland feeling good about where we stand, Laura?
laura (26:13.392)
because it’s getting better, at least when we’re talking about policy in Cleveland. They’ve really cheered Justin Bibb, mayor of Cleveland, for the changes he’s brought about in his short time. And they say we’re on an improving trend after decades in which streets were designed primarily for traffic flow. And they’re too wide and they are scary if you’re trying to ride a bike on this, especially when people are driving these giant SUVs and trucks where it’s a lot harder to see a bicyclist.
In 2023, 550 bicyclists and pedestrians were hit by cars in Cleveland. Nine of them died. That is still a whole lot of people. Just this past fall, I saw a third grader get hit by an SUV as he biked home from school. And this is in Rocky River where kids are biking to school all the time. And we use the sidewalks here where as a lot of places you need to use the roads. And that’s the issue because
Even though people have put in these bike lanes, that does not make it super safe for bikers. And they call these sharos because they’re narrows that are shared. And that is not considered the way to go anymore. Even though cities have put that in and it’s better than nothing, they’re looking for separated bike paths now where you can stay safe from traffic.
Chris (27:34.434)
Yeah, I don’t. I’m one of those that would say I don’t feel safe biking anywhere around here anymore. Too many people are texting. They veer all over the road and you see it in the statistics. The roads have become a nightmare for people who are walking around bikes. And let’s face it, in any accident like that, the walker, the biker is the one that gets hurt. The person in the car doesn’t.
laura (27:53.484)
Right, right. When I was in the Netherlands, there were bike paths on both sides of the road. You better not use, you have to use the right bike path for your direction. And they connect all of these towns and it would be so nice to see that kind of thing here. But the issue obviously is where are you gonna find the space for a lot of these things, especially when you’re talking about the city of Cleveland, which...
I mean, on Superior Avenue, they’re going to put this $25 million project in the Midway. That’s a raised 10-foot wide, two and a half mile bikeway that extends from Public Square to East 55th Street. So that’ll be interesting to see how that happens and how that works. A lot of the issues they brought forward is there are these bike paths, but they don’t all connect. And if you don’t have connections, then what’s the point? I mean, you got to build them in pieces. I understand that. But there’s still a lot of barriers from being able to use bikes to commute, which would be really great for...
recreation, for exercise, for our environment. So it’s nice that we are seeing an emphasis on it. It just is not an immediate change.
Chris (28:54.05)
Kudos to the City Club for putting together the forum upon which Steve Lit based his story about this. It was an illuminating conversation. Steve also did another story the next day about Nowakka’s big vision for building on some of these plans for bikeways and walkways. You can find both of those stories on Cleveland.com. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. We’re not going to get to our last two stories. We’ll save them for tomorrow. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Leila. Thank you, Laura. And thanks, everybody who listens.
today in Ohio.