CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County Council is wondering whether County Executive Armond Budish lied to them when he said there were no concerns with appointing labor leader Dave Wondolowski to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority Board, even though he holds a conflicting public office with the board of elections. Council members have requested an Inspector General’s investigation into the matter.
We’re talking about the latest in the story of Budish’s controversial selection of Wondolowski on Today in Ohio.
Listen here online. See the automated transcript at the bottom of the post.
Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editorial board member Lisa Garvin, reporter Courtney Astolfi and editor Leila Atassi.
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 for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.
Here are the questions we’re answering today:
What is the Cuyahoga County Council thinking, seeking a formal opinion about whether the County Executive lied to them? Them is fightin’ words.
Ohio political candidates are boasting about endorsements from pastors and other religious figures around the state. I thought the IRS prohibited non-profit leaders from getting involved in politics. No?
When will the now-convicted criminal Trevor Elkins be able to run for office again?
He managed to avoid it for more than two years, but COVID finally got the governor. Both Mike and Fran DeWine tested positive for COVID. How are they, and is this evidence that we’re all going to get it eventually?
What novel approach helped get an old, leaky natural gas well at a retirement village in Cleveland plugged? Might this be the solution to the many, many unplugged wells in the state?
Cuyahoga County officials celebrated last week what they called the successful installation of its long-delayed and way over-budget program to merge its computer systems. In what ways is it a success, and in what ways did it miss the mark?
When do the leaders of Ohio’s elections offices want to schedule a primary for the legislative races?
How many people employed by the state of Ohio make more money than the governor, the state’s highest-ranking public official?
Is it our imagination, or has April been an extension of winter for years now? What did Rich Exner find when he compared?
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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.
Chris: [00:00:00] Ohio governor Mike DeWine had to cancel his interview with our editorial endorsement board or editorial board of cleveland.com and the plain dealer today because of COVID. We hope he gets better quickly. We were looking forward to having a chat with him. It is today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer.
I’m Chris Quinn here with my colleagues. Courtney is Staffie Layla, a Tasi and Lisa Garvin. There is full coverage outside snow on the ground. Lisa, why did you leave Texas?
Lisa: Because of the
Chris: humidity? We have a lot of humidity here. It’s just frozen, but it will be 78 this weekend. They say, so we’re going straight into the summer months.
Let’s begin. What is the Cuyahoga county council thinking, seeking a formal opinion about whether the county executive allied to them, Layla them is fighting words.
Leila: This is such a [00:01:00] good story. So we know Cayuga county, executive RN, Buddhist is, uh, you know, he, he, uh, we know about this ill-advised decision to nominate labor leader, Dave one to Laskey to the port authority board, despite the great opposition.
Against that appointment for, for all of his controversial behavior during the mayoral campaign season. Well, Caitlin Durbin reports that Cayuga county council has now asked the county’s inspector General’s office to investigate whether Buddhists lied to them. When he said that there were no concerns with a pointing one, the Lasky to the port board, even though he holds a conflicting public office with the board of elections, when the Lasky had previously sat on the board for four years, while he also served on the governing board for the, for the board of elections, but recent opinions by the county’s top two legal authorities determined that those two appointments.
Incompatible with one another. They pointed to these founding documents from when the port authority [00:02:00] board was created in the sixties, which expressly prohibit board members from holding other public offices before when the Lasky could accept the port seat, he would have to resign the other. And he said that he would do that, but in light of the.
Contingency in that clashing timeline for when Buddhists may have become aware of that problem, council members are questioning why he didn’t bring this up when he told them in one April 1st nomination letter, that. There are no known conflicts of interest for which an advisory opinion has been requested.
Those were his words. And so now they’ve now asked in the interim inspector general Alexa Beeler to determine whether there has been any misfeasance, malfeasance or any other violation of the county’s code of ethics, uh, committed. Um, they’ve they’ve formally asked for her [00:03:00] to weigh in on that. There’s a little wrinkle here.
It, because she is also, uh, up for, you know, an official appointment. So she’s seeking a Buddha schiz official stamp of approval to, so if there’s a conflict here for her, she needs to pass this off to the law.
Chris: I I get, I think this is a sign of conflict among the council. You know, when he first nominated one, the Lasky, that was the outrage.
It’s a thumb in the eye of just a bib. And there’s a thought that he was involved in all that stuff that people said was racist. How do you not explain that? And some of the county council members pushed back, but then it was politicking. It kind of leaned on them to go ahead and move this along. And so we had the story last.
It said they were going to go ahead and move, move forward. And now all of a sudden they stopped it. They pulled the nomination off the table yesterday. I do question whether there was an intention originally for him to step down because nobody mentioned this [00:04:00] until we heard about it. And, and council heard about it and started saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, there’s rules about this.
You can’t serve on both boards. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think. That this was out there. I thought that I think Buddhists decided I’m going to stick my thumb in the eye of everybody and nominate Wanda Lasky. Let’s be as offensive as possible to all those people who oppose me and it’s not blowing up in his face.
This move tells me the county council does not want to confirm him. And they’re looking for a way out. Maybe pressuring Buddhists to withdraw the nomination. What do you think? Well,
Leila: I don’t know, because one, the law ski has said that when he told counsel that he was willing to step down from his board of elections appointment to take this appointment, he said that when Buddhists first approved approached him with this opportunity that he told him point blank from the beginning, you will likely find that you face a conflict here.
That shows that he knew from day [00:05:00] one, that there was a conflict when he was simultaneously telling council, there are no known conflicts, but he had
Chris: that conflict for four years. I mean, it’s like, he’s now saying, oh, by the way, it’s a conflict. That means he lived with knowing about the conflict for the four years.
He was on both words.
Leila: And that is another issue
Chris: I’m not buying it. I, I think they. Hastily put together. It’s the thumb in the eye arm, and Buddhists is doing all sorts of venal stuff in his last year. And, and it’s now blowing up big time in his, in his face. I mean, he, what, what does he do? You know, you also have Greg who’s the director for the county saying he should quit before.
I don’t accept that he’s promising to quit the elections board. If you confirm him, make him quit first. And that seems like it’s a smart move because there’s no guarantee he would do it.
Leila: Can you imagine if he didn’t let me come on? He says he’s going to quit the board of elections and the
Lisa: doesn’t [00:06:00]
Chris: agree.
Do you have imagined Armand Buddhists nominating him? You’ve got this new mayor elected with a big mandate, right to come in. And this is the guy who did kind of sleazy stuff to stop him. He, the mayor does not reappoint him to the board. And now Buddhists does. I wouldn’t have seen that coming. That seems like a really Bush league.
Don’t you want to work together? They want a relationship with the new mayor. You’re right.
Leila: This is like a weird telanovela. We hear it’s some weird, weird territory here. I don’t every day is a new chapter. I feel like we’re
Chris: if I ever think about how strange it is, the county council has voted to have an investigation to find out if they were lied to by the executives.
So dramatic. That’s a big move, so, okay. We’ll be talking about this again. I am sure you’re listening to today. Ohio political candidates are boasting about endorsements from pastors and other religious figures around the state. Lisa, I thought [00:07:00] the IRS prohibited nonprofit leaders from getting involved in politics.
Lisa: They do, and they don’t. There is a federal ban on partisan political activities in churches or other religious institutions if they do so they can lose their tax exempt status or get charged more federal. Tax the law does allow non-partisan political activities such as voter drives and producing voter guides.
But here’s the, here’s the legal, tight rope here. Churches can take positions on public policy, but they can’t mention specific candidates or take stances. So candidates can go speak at a church, but they cannot fundraise there. And you have to, the church has to grant equal opportunity for others in that.
To speak. So right in between there, there’s kind of a catch 22 because the IRS really doesn’t want to have the appearance of targeting religious groups. So they’re kind of hesitant to go after [00:08:00] situations where, you know, this band might’ve been violated and they don’t want to risk costly and lengthy lawsuits.
Chris: Well, you know, in the history of Cleveland, is, is that the ministers particular on the east side have had a lot of sway. The thinking is that they had a lot of sway in the election of Justin bib. So is it just that the IRS is not watching very closely or is everybody being so careful walking the razor thin line that they don’t.
Lisa: Well, and here’s another wrinkle that I didn’t mention it, pastors of churches or church leaders can personally endorse candidates so they can do it as a person. So not as the, you know, the church is endorsing this person, but it might as well be quite honestly. So a JC church who is the founder of the victory and truth ministries and be Cyrus, Ohio says he’s at Jim RNAC and, uh, Josh Mendell and the.
The Senate race. So it’s important for pastors. He [00:09:00] says to speak for values that they preach and believe. But then we also talked to Bishop Eugene Ward. Who’s the pastor at the greater love Baptist church in the Mount pleasant neighborhood of Cleveland. He said black churches. And we know this black churches have long been involved in political activity.
Their support means a lot, you know, for candidates and they. Play a role in vetting candidates, but Eugene Ward says he knows of some black pastors who have profited from endorsing candidates.
Chris: Okay. Speaking of candidates, our departed retired colleague, Jen Coon has sent a note saying I misspoke yesterday saying Peter Thiel was backing Josh Mandel.
When we all know he’s backing JD Vance, I must’ve had a tongue twist there. Thank you, Jane. You’re listening to today. When will the now convicted criminal Trevor Elkins be able to run for office again, Courtney, it’s amazing that he’s getting off as lightly as he is because there were shenanigans going on in that campaign.
Courtney: Yeah. Yesterday, [00:10:00] the now former mayor of Newburgh Heights was convicted of, of three misdemeanors related to campaign finance violations. And, you know, by prosecutors not pursuing any felony charges against him, it means he can run for office in the future. But as part of the plea agreement, he agreed not to run until 2020.
Chris: Yeah, I I’m, I’m a little bit surprised that that’s part of it. I, but I guess he’d have to get the votes. He, the money that he was spending out of that account, he said, look, I was putting my personal money into the count and I never spent more than that. But the record seemed to show that he spent a lot more money than he put in on personal expenses.
Right?
Courtney: Yeah. He tried to make that argument to you, Ohio elections commission didn’t fly resulted in these charges. Um, you know, apparently he. Dipped into his campaign account 651 times since, since 2011. And you know that total about 134 grand.
Chris: Yeah. So he’s done as mayor, uh, [00:11:00] and maybe done as a democratic party force.
Although people do seem to return. You’re listening to today in Ohio. He managed to avoid it for more than two years, but COVID finally got the governor, both Mike and Fran DeWine tested positive for the Corona virus, Layla, how are they? And is this evidence that we’re all going to get this eventually?
And there’s nothing we can do about it now.
Leila: And I hope not yet. Yes. In three days after the governor tested positive, the first lady has also tested positive for COVID. A spokesman is describing their symptoms as mild governor DeWine symptoms haven’t gotten any worse since he was first diagnosed, they were described as having.
Yeah. Um, uh, he was described as having a runny nose, headache, body aches, and a sore throat last week. And he’s well enough to continue working from home taking calls and having virtual meetings, both he and the first lady have been double vaccinated and have had a booster and they both received the monoclonal antibody treatments.
That will hopefully lead to a speedy and complete recovery for both of them. Um, you know, [00:12:00] Macron is a lot milder than, than earlier forms of COVID, but it’s still scary. And Chris, you mentioned that, uh, he has, uh, backed out of our, our, uh, meeting with him with the editorial board. And, um, so I hope that doesn’t mean that he’s taken a turn.
Um, I hope that it’s just that he needs a little extra.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, if you think about what his symptoms are, I don’t know that I’d want to face off with our editorial board feeling that bad. Hopefully, no, I don’t know. I want to beat your best. You’re trying to put your best foot forward. Hopefully he’ll be able to do it next week.
We’ll reschedule. We wish him a speedy recovery it’s today in Ohio. What novel approach helped get an old leaky natural gas? Well at a retirement village in Cleveland plugged in. Might this be the solution to the many, many unplugged Wells in the state? Lisa, this was my favorite story yesterday, just for being in.
Lisa: Yeah, the, uh, Cleveland Franciscan village, senior complex and cam corners. They’ve been Cam’s corners. They’ve complained for years about smelling [00:13:00] strong gas, smell sporadically in the courtyard area. And earlier this year in February contractors building a new atrium in that courtyard found a century old, natural gas.
Plugged back in the 1950s. So, you know, the Franciscan village management talk to the department of natural resources and the Cleveland fire department, but they, what they’re going to do is they found a Montana based company, a nonprofit called done foundation. They used money from contributors that want carbon credits, they’re buying carbon credits for their emissions for that.
Companies and, uh, they will use that money to seal orphan Wells. So kind of awesome. I mean, so this is a way that they can have a longstanding problem fixed, you know, but the nonprofit comes in and uses these carbon credits. So, which is a great use of carbon credits. They figure that, uh, this Franciscan village plugging this well would re result in [00:14:00] 6,800 carbon offset credits over the next 10 years.
Chris: The scary thing was that it was, you know, it was plugged decades ago with some kind of clay, the cracks, and then that’s a leaking, I mean, how many times did they plug a well with that kind of clay? So that it’s all leaking. It’s kind of shocking that we haven’t had some massive explosion from one of these.
Right. It’s
Lisa: called fire clay. And of course what’s down, there is 60 years old. It’s cracked and shrank over the years. So that caused the leak to, to occur in this well is like 2,700 feet down. So it’s not like it’s near the surface at all. So yeah. And there are apparently. Hundreds of thousands of orphan Wells across the country.
And, uh, he was state funds, Ohio. We’ll get up to 634 million, including some money from the Biden infrastructure deal to seal orphan Wells. So no taxpayer money would be involved in sealing off this well, really
Chris: interesting story by reporter Pete cross. [00:15:00] Check it out on cleveland.com. You’re listening to today in Ohio.
Cuyahoga county officials celebrated last week. What they called be successful. Get that successful installation of it’s long, delayed, and way over budget to merge its computer systems. Courtney, you wrote 9,450 stories on all the ways this went wrong. So in what ways are they saying it’s a success and in what ways do we know that it did miss them all?
Courtney: Well, can I just say on behalf of Kiowa county tax payers, hallelujah, that this is over, but yes, that question about, um, successfulness, you know, that’s got some asterix there, so, um, you know, the county did need new computer systems. This, this, this overhaul of all of its software systems that handle basic county functions was recommended way back in 2010 as part of the change in, in, in government.
There was a definite need to swap out [00:16:00] and modernize computer systems. Just imagine the changes that have occurred over the last decade, 12 years, but it did not go at all as we planned. And we were told how we were told it was going to unfold way back in 2016, this project was supposed to wrap up in 2018 per folks, way back then.
And four years after that, you know, it’s taken three times longer than its original timeframe. Right. And part of those Dylan’s. You know, that’s led to millions and millions in cost overruns. This was originally pitched as like a 21 ish million dollar project with a few mil leftover as his backup funds.
The final price tag has grown to 35 million. You know, part of the goal of this project was to save money, to streamline some, some county functions to offload maintenance of old computer systems. You know, we missed four years of. We, we, we didn’t get to offload those contracts for maintenance of the old systems for four additional years.
So it [00:17:00] it’s fair to say it didn’t result in, in quite the level of cost savings that we were hoping going in.
Chris: Also, where are we supposed to get a lot more from it? I mean, it was originally announced 21 million and you get the Taj Mahal, a computer systems. It costs 50% more than that. And we got a shit.
Courtney: You know, we, we got, we got the bulk of the functionality, but you’re right. We didn’t get many modules that were part of the original scope. Those have been, some of those have been deferred indefinitely, so less of a product than we were promised much more money than, than we were supposed to pay for it.
There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of drawbacks here and I will say it is noteworthy to my knowledge. I’m like 99% sure that there’s never been a real cost benefit analysis. So the benefits that we did get, we’ll never really know, like by how much it was quote, unquote, worth it to do that system because we’ve never seen numbers of savings.
Chris: It just seems odd to me [00:18:00] that they’re celebrating this because I look at this as second to the jail is the biggest failing of the county administration. And I’m not sure it’s working as well as they say. I don’t know if you heard, but yesterday the person that runs the. For the Cuyahoga county, public safety division sent a note out to everybody saying, Hey, the credit card you use to buy gas, aren’t working because of a problem with our account.
So if you need gas, you got to come to our yard. That seems like they’re not paying their bills. Right. I mean, we already know they didn’t pay the nexus bill that the legal people use for research. Now they’re not paying their credit card bills. Is that a problem with the computer or is it just general incompetence?
We’ll have to figure.
Lisa: You know,
Courtney: Yeah. And you just, it’s, it’s worth noting that, you know, when they rolled out prior pieces of this, there were problems with purchasing and procurement for months. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this latest piece they rolled out has some hiccups. Yeah. And I
Chris: think they had to write paper checks and [00:19:00] the first week, because people weren’t getting their direct deposit or something label, wasn’t that the story?
Leila: Yes. Yes. And, but, but it sounded like it was a smaller group of people who were impacted by that than we initially had heard. You know, what I want to know though is, is, um, since we are so many years late with this, how many years before this system is obsolete, it needs to be,
Courtney: oh, that’s a real conversation.
They’ve already talked about potential home, man.
Chris: Wow. Wow. What a disaster. Okay. You’re listening to today. When do the leaders of Ohio’s election offices want to schedule a primary for the legislative races? Layla, this was unilateral bipartisan, which kind of surprised me because it flies in the face of something the Supreme court said in its opinion.
Yeah. They wanted
Leila: to be August 2nd, which like you said, is contrary to the Supreme court’s suggestion of, of late September, uh, Ohio. [00:20:00] Is holding primary elections for most races on May 3rd, but this never ending redistricting saga means the state has to hold a second primary election for Ohio house races and more than half of Ohio Senate seats.
But when a panel of three federal judges has said that if state lawmakers don’t move the legislative primary date by this Wednesday, April 20th, they may act on their own to set a date. Secretary of state Franklin rose, who is. The hook Republicans of the redistricting commission who voted for those rejected maps, argued to the Supreme court.
That August 2nd is the latest elections. Officials can hold a primary to be ready for the November 8th general election. And the Ohio association of election officials agreed with him because of all these complicated deadlines that they have to meet involving when early voting can begin. When overseas and military ballots can be sent and when ballots have to be tested and proofed and so forth.[00:21:00]
Plus once a new legislative map is finally approved, boards of elections will need to need up to two weeks to incorporate the map into their computer systems. So August 2nd seems to be that sweet spot where all of that can happen in time is.
Chris: But we all know that that’s nonsense as Cleveland proves every four years when it holds a primary for the mayor and city council in September six weeks before the general election.
And if the city of Cleveland can pull that off, you got to think that anybody can
Leila: well. I don’t know enough about how, how all these moving parts, uh, operate to comment on that. But
Chris: the Supreme court did say they did in their opinion, point out that there are states elsewhere that are doing it later. It seems like this is a false move, but it was bi-partisan and it was every election’s chief in the states saying this.
So, uh, you [00:22:00] got to think that they they’re worried about being able to stage the general election, right? Well, it would be easy to do, right? If Franklin rose and Mike DeWine and company just did what they were supposed to do and put together non gerrymandered maps quickly, we’d be fine. It’s just, they keep delaying it because they’re trying to keep power disproportionate to what the state is in a repeated.
To thwart the constitution and the orders of the court. We are still waiting for the Supreme. Court’s next, move on, holding them in contempt for failing to do it. I guess they have a little bit of time to respond, uh, have some filings to do, but we still have this and that today
Lisa: or no tomorrow. No, it’s the 20th.
Yeah. Yeah,
Chris: yeah. And so I still have my fantasy of them all in orange jumpsuits in a jail cell. We’ll see it’s today in Ohio. How many people employed by the state of Ohio make more money than the governor? This state’s highest ranking public official. We said, this is one of those stories we put together based on [00:23:00] data that has interesting anecdotes in it.
And it is a lot of people that are paid more than Mike.
Lisa: Yeah, governor DeWine is number 331. And the rank of pay for 51,594 state employees. He makes $45,000 a year, 45,000 1 24 to be exact. And that’s about $80 an hour. Um, Some of the elected officials that make more of him around the Ohio Supreme court and the judicial branch, including his son, pat DeWine.
So his son makes about, uh, $2,000 more a year than his, than his father. He makes 47,343 on the Supreme court.
Chris: We y’all want our children to do better than me,
Lisa: but the, the top seven salaries. Are all psychiatrists. When the, with the department of mental health and addiction services, they are all making more than a hundred thousand dollars. In the first three months of this year, [00:24:00] 58 psychiatrists make more than governor DeWine. Also 30 nurses, seven transportation engineers, three environmental specialists, two bridge specialists, and one meat inspection supervisor makes more money than governor DeWine.
Chris: I guess it all comes down to the market. I mean, it’s the supply and demand. And if the jobs are in short supply and you’ve got to hire them, you got to pay what the market is, but, uh, it’s just, it’s just kind of a slap. When you think that the governor is paid less than hundreds of people.
Leila: These are first quarter salaries, right?
Correct. First quarter
Lisa: salaries. And the highest paid elected official is Supreme court justice. Michael Donnelly. He made $51,132 in the first quarter of 2022.
Chris: Hm. Okay. Check out the story on cleveland.com. Is it our imagination or is April, but an extension of winter for years now. Courtney. We asked rich Exner to look into the data because [00:25:00] we’ve been theorizing that the climate change has pushed, pushed the cold season further up, that it stays warmer in October and November.
And then it always has, but it seems like it’s taken forever to come out of winter. We haven’t really checked the fall part yet, but we do have some interesting findings for the recent years of.
Courtney: Yeah. So based on what rich found, it looks like it has been cold or the past couple of years than we’re used to in mid April 15 16th, you know, around now, um, in, um, let’s see.
Last year the highs were in the, the, you know, high forties year before that mid forties dipping down into 39 around this stretch this year, we’re in the forties. It hasn’t been since, you know, three or four years now where we’re getting close to the average. 61. So we are below we, I think it’s fair to say we are below what the average is.
Bed, the
Chris: bar graph, he put together had April, uh, [00:26:00] for, for a series of decades and, you know, it bounces around and all sorts of way. When you get to this year, once you hit the T or once you get to the 2020s, even though it’s only been three years, that line goes straight to hell, man. It goes right down and we got to end this because there’s snow outside right now.
I’ll tell you. I
Leila: have definitely been the reporter in me when I was in my twenties, who you guys sent out to interview. People shoveling snow on Easter Sunday. So I know that we have seen this before.
Chris: Yes, we have. We’ve had some fix no, on some Easter Sundays. Uh, it’s just the past three years we keep waiting to come into spring and we, we don’t do it.
But as Lisa notes, what, what’s the temperature supposed to be this weekend? Lisa,
Lisa: it’s supposed to be in the upper seventies for Saturday and Sunday.
Chris: Okay, well, it’s going to be hot, right? We’re going from winter to hot, but we’ll [00:27:00] take it. It’s better than what we have right now. Okay. You’re listening to today in Ohio and that does it will give you a three minutes back on your day.
Thanks Courtney. Thanks Layla. Thanks Lisa. And thank you for listening to today in Ohio.
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