Sound of Ideas

Ohio Auditor Keith Faber this week formally requested the state attorney general begin legal proceedings to appoint a receiver to oversee the finances of East Cleveland. A new state law approved as part of the last budget, and which went into effect Tuesday, allowed the move. East Cleveland is pushing back, accusing the state of cutting off local government funds to the city and saying a state commission meant to guide finances failed. We will begin our discussion of the week’s news with East Cleveland’s finances and what happens next between the city and state.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in five children in America has obesity. One new solution might be GLP-1 weight loss drugs.

Last fall, the NuPoint Community Development Corporation (formerly the Union-Miles Development Corporation) launched a neighborhood history project called Southeast Side Stories. The idea is to document the stories of the Union-Miles, Mt. Pleasant and Lee-Harvard neighborhoods and those in between as well. Using a mix of first-person interviews and multimedia, including vintage photographs and film, the project chronicles the deep roots families have built in the area across generations. Also on the show, we begin with an interview with the president of Slovenia, Nataša Pirc Musar. She addressed the United Nations General Assembly last week in New York and then traveled to Cleveland. The city is home to the largest population of Slovenians outside of their country.

Shelters say that lives are at risk as overcrowding has persisted since the pandemic. They say they're out of space and out of time to help animals in their care, especially dogs.

The harm reduction approach aims to reduce the negative impact of substance use disorder. In Portage County, health officials and Kent State University community members are working toward shared goals by distributing tools such as Naloxone.

A clash erupted this week between Mayor Justin Bibb's administration and Cleveland City Council, led by its president, Blaine Griffin. A council aide downloaded thousands of unredacted documents from a public records database, one he was allowed to access. The administration says some of those documents contained sensitive information, such as addresses, Social Security numbers or medical information that is typically redacted before public release. According to Griffin, Bibb's people called for the council aide's firing, which he characterized as a strong-arm tactic. The aide did nothing wrong and is going nowhere, he said. The story begins our discussion of the week’s news of the Friday “Reporters Roundtable.”

The university's Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence will award Oscar Chacón with the 2025 Inamori Ethics Prize for his work in human rights and immigration justice.

An advisory committee for the Centers for Disease Control made changes to vaccine recommendations in a meeting last week that was described in media reports as tense and chaotic. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP changed advice on COVID vaccines to a "shared decision-making model." It also changed its recommendation regarding the combined childhood vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and varicella or chicken pox (MMRV). The committee recommended that children under 4 not be given the MMRV vaccine and instead recommended an MMR vaccine and a separate shot for varicella (chicken pox). The committee tabled a decision on whether to delay the birth dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. To begin Wednesday’s “Sound of Ideas,” we're going to talk about the recommendations coming out of the ACIP meeting and what those recommendations mean for those seeking COVID-19 or the MMRV vaccine. Later, Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute joins the program to talk about the Trump administration’s foreign policy in that region.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Zepbound for the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity. Local experts discuss other advances in treatment, including nerve stimulation devices placed under the skin.

Northeast Ohio Congressman Max Miller, a Republican from Bay Village said in an opinion piece in the "Washington Times" that his constituents are afraid to come into the city because of crime. He wants the National Guard to deploy to Cleveland as it has done in Washington, D.C. and is being considered for other cities such as Chicago. But Gov. Mike DeWine says state-agencies will be tasked with crime-related duties in Ohio cities not troops. We will begin the Friday “Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable” with the call by U.S. Rep. Miller and others for the Guard to come to Cleveland and where Mayor Justin Bibb stands. It's been over a week since the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while addressing an audience on the campus of Utah Valley University and since then, we've seen the limits of free speech put to the test. People across the country were punished for their reactions to Kirk's death, from the high profile canceling of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live show after pressure from the F.C.C. to local officials being suspended or resigning due to comments critical of Kirk that they made on social media. It's that time of year when schools are the ones getting graded. The state report cards measuring last year's academic performance for Ohio's more than 600 public school districts came out this week. Reading scores are down half a percentage point statewide, while math scores went up almost two points. In Northeast Ohio, Akron Public Schools jumped up an entire star in the state's 5-star rating system, from 2.5 to 3.5, meanwhile Cleveland went down from 3 to 2-and-a-half stars. Cleveland City Council publicly reprimanded one of its own this week. Members voted to formally censure Ward 1 Councilman Joe Jones for misconduct and unprofessional workplace behavior. It's the first censure in 50 years for council. Three unions representing educators in Ohio are suing over an element in the state budget that changes the makeup of the board overseeing teachers' pensions. The unions say the budget measure is unconstitutional and takes away the voice of teachers on the State Teachers Retirement System Board which oversees teachers' retirement money.

The shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has sparked a new debate over how employees are allowed to post on social media, and what repercussions should be.

Canton For All People, started its work in 2021 with a goal of improving the rental and home ownership landscape for the city's lower- and middle-income families. The group is getting both regional and national attention for its work. We will begin Wednesday’s “Sound of Ideas” with a conversation with the executive director of Canton For All People about its work on many fronts to get individuals and families in Canton into safe housing and highlight the latest "Sound of Us" series built around the organization's work. Later, we will talk about the fall migration of birds that is underway as hundreds of species head south for the winter. The annual natural spectacle is the focus of the Headlands Birding Festival at the Mentor Headlands Beach State Park. Naturalist, artist and writer Julie Zickefoose will discuss her writing and art that has focused on nature. She will be a keynote speaker at the festival. We will end the hour in conversation with author Claudia Rowe. She sat down with Ideastream’s Anna Huntsman to talk about her new book, “Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care.”

DigitalC, a Cleveland-based nonprofit is expanding its internet access services to 450 public housing households across the Forest Park, Brewster Homes and Diggs Homes neighborhoods in Detroit.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating the need to develop more energy systems, as new data centers that require a lot of electricity are being built in Ohio and the Midwest. We'll discuss whether nuclear power could be a viable alternative energy source.

A bipartisan committee of Ohio lawmakers will begin work on a new congressional map for the midterm elections, meeting on Sept. 22 with an end-of-October deadline for a map to pass with bipartisan support. But is bipartisanship even remotely possible? This week Democrats unveiled their own redrawn map, one that would give Republicans a slight advantage in eight districts with Democrats holding a slight advantage in seven. Ohio currently has 10 Republicans and five Democrats serving in the U.S. House. The speaker of the Ohio House, who presides over a supermajority of Republicans, immediately called the democratic effort a gerrymander, even as democrats say the republican gerrymander is what they're trying to solve. We will begin the Friday “Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable” with the beginning of the redistricting efforts and whether this time the two parties can work together on a map.

Global Cleveland, a local nonprofit organization, hosts its annual Welcoming Week beginning Sept. 12. This year's events include an International Job and Resource Fair and a panel conversation on Sub-National Diplomacy.

Voters in Cleveland Heights overwhelmingly approved a recall of Mayor Kahlil Seren--the first person directly elected to hold the job of mayor in that city. We'll talk about the recall vote as well as several other results from the September primary in Cuyahoga County. The primary winnows ward and mayoral races down to two candidates who advance to the November ballot. Later, we hear from All Things Considered Host Scott Detrow about the mission of NPR as public media faces a loss of federal funding.

A local professor from Case Western Reserve University is one of dozens of scientists who are pushing back against a Department of Energy report.

Relay Cleveland, a public history campaign, takes its name from Cleveland’s historic “relay” policy — a system that split school days into half-day sessions in overcrowded, predominantly Black schools.

Cleveland's director of airports talked to the media this week about his opposition to the Browns new stadium complex, which is planned for land near the city-owned Hopkins International Airport. Bryant Francis told reporters that he has not changed his mind about safety concerns he believes the new stadium, because its height encroaches 58 feet into protected airspace, would pose to the airport. He also didn't say specifically what those safety concerns are, while the Federal Aviation Administration issued a "no hazard" finding. We will discuss the airport director’s opposition to the current Browns stadium plan to begin Friday’s “Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable.”