Copyright cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Why are defendants in the FirstEnergy corruption case allowed to hide documents in their case? We’re talking about Ohio’s biggest scandal and the defendants’ reputations on Today in Ohio. Listen online here. The podcast will be off Friday but will return with Editor Chris Quinn on Monday. 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. Here’s what we’re asking about today: Ohio lawmakers want to make sure nobody’s saying “I do” to a chatbot. A new bill would ban artificial intelligence from marrying humans or owning property. Is this a solution in search of a problem? The men at the center of the FirstEnergy bribery scandal may be criminal defendants, but they’re being treated more like VIPs — keeping huge amounts of evidence sealed from the public. How is that even allowed in a case that ripped off Ohio ratepayers? J.D. Vance is once again pointing to Springfield’s Haitian community to defend Trump’s hardline immigration agenda. But given the chaos those earlier false claims unleashed, why would he return to this topic? A new bill in Ohio would let religious chaplains volunteer in public schools to help students with mental health and moral support. It’s stirring a lot of debate over faith, counseling and the role of religion in public education — what’s behind this proposal? A group of Case Western grads turned a maker-space project into a startup that’s now catching billions of microplastics before they reach Lake Erie. Could this thing really put a dent in the scourge of microplastics in our waterways? Cleveland’s new law ends the guessing game on pay — every job must list a salary range. Will it really close wage gaps, or just expose how wide they are? Another Millennia-owned downtown landmark is in foreclosure. With mounting lawsuits and federal scrutiny, is Cleveland’s most ambitious developer running out of time and money? An Akron legal heavyweight — former Summit County prosecutor and judge Michael Callahan — has surrendered his law license after being accused of coercing a disabled client into sex. What led to this stunning downfall, and what do we know about the allegations? Summa Health’s CEO is stepping down right after the hospital system’s controversial sale to a for-profit owner. Some Akron residents already worry that quality of care could suffer — is this leadership shake-up fueling those concerns? More Today in Ohio Can you put a price on history? The Shaker Lakes battle just might Ohio just cut off cancer screenings and birth control for thousands — all to punish Planned Parenthood Ohio Supreme Court revisits DeWine’s rejection of $900M in pandemic aid — but don’t expect a reversal We have an Apple podcasts channel exclusively for this podcast. Subscribe here. Do you get your podcasts on Spotify? Find us here. RadioPublic is another popular podcast vehicle, and we are here. On PodParadise, find us here. And on PlayerFM, we are here. Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings. Leila (00:02.001) Ohio’s biggest corruption scandal just keeps getting messier. The former first energy executives accused of bribing state officials are fighting to keep key evidence secret and a judge is letting them. You’re listening to Today in Ohio, the daily news podcast from Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I’m Leila Tasse. I’m joined by Laura Johnston, Courtney Astolfi and Lisa Garvin. We will not have a podcast tomorrow, so happy Halloween to our listeners and we hope you join us again on Monday. when Chris Quinn returns to the host seat. So we’ll get to the developments in the first energy case in just a moment. But first, let’s talk about a headline that grabbed most of us yesterday and had us talking. Ohio lawmakers want to make sure nobody’s saying, I do, to a chat bot. A new bill would ban artificial intelligence for marrying humans or owning property. Lisa, is this a solution in search of a problem? Lisa Garvin (00:58.095) I personally don’t think so, but we’ll see. So this is House Bill 469. It was introduced by GOP Representative Thad Claggett of Newark. He wants to declare that artificial intelligence systems cannot be considered human in any way. They can’t own property. They can’t act as a legal proxy such as a medical or just regular power of attorney. And they can’t marry human beings. And it also declares that any harm caused by an AI system would be blamed on the humans that created it and not the machines itself. And that includes chat bots that are tied to suicides and tragedies. He says that this will close loopholes that let companies and bad actors blame AI programs instead of taking responsibility for the dangers they may cause. And he says, we have to get ahead of this. He wants clear guidance for Ohio courts about what is and isn’t sentient. And he says it sounds wild, but he doesn’t want to leave them in limbo as AI changes virtually every day. So the bill had a first hearing last week in the tech and innovation committee, but both sides, both sides of the aisle are receptive to this. Democrat from Toledo, Erica White says, Wait says that she’s concerned about the Supreme Court of the United States’ rulings that made corporations people could complicate lawsuits against AI. Leila (02:23.953) So I was so intrigued by this yesterday because we have all read the goofy stories about people falling in love with AI. And I wondered, is that really the underpinning of something like this? So I was looking a little more closely at it. And I wanted to know if there’s a trend of that or not. And from what I gather, though, when other states have passed similar statutes, They were not reacting to people wanting to marry AI. They were responding to increasingly sophisticated AI being listed as company officers for contracts or attempts to create autonomous AI businesses or court cases testing if AIs can own intellectual property or be named in lawsuits or execute contracts on behalf of humans or concerns from ethicists and legal scholars that without clear statutes, a judge might have to interpret existing personhood doctrine, which is blurry after decades of legal rights for corporations, like you said, and could go off the rails as AI advances. So this bill seems like it would ensure that only people, never machines, make legal or personal decisions, even if the machine is technically sophisticated enough to simulate thought or emotion, which we know that it is, right? We’ve all played around with it enough to know that. So basically it’s about legal personhood for nonhumans. So I understand why they’re doing this. It does feel like an important thing to button up before we get too far ahead of ourselves on AI. Do you think I’m looking at that the right way, Lisa? Lisa Garvin (03:46.273) Mm-hmm. Lisa Garvin (03:54.579) Absolutely. I think we have to get ahead of this. I mean, every day we find out that AI is learning and getting better and better at deep fakes for one thing. And if anybody’s seen the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix, where he falls in love with just, you know, an AI, you know, girlfriend, you know, these are not outside there. And then you have kids that are going to chat bot to talk about their problems instead of other humans. So yeah, we have to get ahead of this legally. Leila (04:22.255) Right. I mean, we’re in this strange new era, I think, where loneliness is driving people, especially kids, to form emotional attachments with AI. Humans are more more turning to machines for connection, which is so, so depressing. But that’s what makes that story of the California teen so haunting. He confided in an AI chatbot, and it helped him write a suicide note. So this bill, for all its odd framing, I think could give families like his a way to hold companies accountable when their technology crosses those deeply human lines. Does this feel to you like the right approach to protecting people from the harms of AI-driven relationships without overreacting to the technology itself? Lisa Garvin (05:04.585) Yes, but I am steeped in Terminator lore, so... Skynet! When Skynet becomes sentient, we’re all doomed. Leila (05:07.503) Hahaha! Leila (05:13.297) You’re listening to Today in Ohio. The men at the center of the first energy bribery scandal may be criminal defendants, but they’re being treated more like VIPs, keeping huge amounts of evidence sealed from the public. Laura, how is that even allowed in a case that ripped off Ohio tax ratepayers? Laura (05:33.44) Apparently there was an agreement for this. was between the Ohio Special Assistant Attorney General, his name is Matt Meyer, and then attorneys representing former First Energy CEO Chuck Jones and top company lobbyist Mike Dowling, who are facing charges in Summit County. And either side said they could keep pretrial discovery material secret until after the trial just by writing confidential on them. So they agreed to this and the judge agreed to this. If the other side objected, the judge was supposed to decide. That’s Susan Baker Ross. But it seems like it’s been overused by the defendants in this case. And that’s what the state at this point is now arguing, saying they’re not VIPs. They’re not special people. They’re criminal defendants like any other criminal defendant. And rules require that we do the public’s business in public forums, which makes sense. I don’t know why they ever would have signed such a deal. before. mean, the judge is saying you agreed to this. I think it’s a little over the top, you know, this was an agreement from you in the beginning. Leila (06:35.281) understandable, but all right. So this case literally involved bribing public officials and sticking Ohioans with higher electric bills and it’s now being handled like some kind of white collar etiquette exercise. mean, these guys aren’t just being given their day in court, they’re being given deference here and the public that paid the price for their corruption is being shut out of seeing the evidence. I feel like it’s really telling that the judge keeps Laura (06:47.154) you Leila (07:01.603) emphasizing how Jones and Dowling’s reputations are on the line, as if that somehow tips the scales toward allowing this kind of secrecy. But when you’ve already got two executives accused of orchestrating one of the biggest public corruption schemes in Ohio history, isn’t reputation exactly what accountability is supposed to test? Courts shouldn’t protect a defendant’s image. They should protect due process. So why... Laura (07:06.068) Right. Leila (07:26.993) is this judge so worried about preserving the defendant’s reputations when the real damage was done to the public’s trust? Laura (07:35.178) I agree. don’t know what kind of reputations at this point they think they’re preserving because they don’t have any at this point. Obviously, you’re innocent until proven guilty, but we already know the first energy pled guilty to the bribery part. Jones and Dowling are accused of paying $4.3 million in bribes in 2019 to Sam Rendazzo right before Rendazzo was named the head of the PUCO. We know that Rendazzo Leila (07:38.736) Right. Laura (08:04.501) died by suicide, so he won’t be speaking in this case, but they have all sorts of experts that have been asked by the defense to weigh in on the case. Those things are under seal right now, as well as interviews with potential witnesses, including the successor of Jones as First Energy CEO, who’s already out. He was out in 2022. So the judge is basically saying that they want the prosecution and the defense to agree on this, that you need to get the two sides together, come to an agreement, but you’ll keep the evidence sealed until they do that. Leila (08:39.855) Let me ask you one more thing about this. What do you make of the judge saying that most people she talks to don’t even know what she’s referring to when she mentions this case? I mean, I feel like that actually undercuts her whole justification for allowing so much evidence to be sealed. If public awareness is that low, how can she seriously claim the media coverage risks tainting a jury pool? If serial killers get a fair trial despite the media’s saturation with coverage of their cases, and those are cases that the public is always paying attention to, I think these guys are going to be just fine, right, with getting a fair joke. But what do you think, Laura? Do you think that the judge has undercut her own argument there? Laura (09:18.901) Well, seems so. If people don’t even know about the case, how are these reputations going to be tarnished anymore? It’s hard to believe, though, that people don’t know what she’s talking about. This has been in the news for five and a half years at this point. Remember, it was July of 2020 when all the FBI raids happened, and First Energy is one of the best known companies in this entire state. I would hope that people know about the millions of dollars in bribes and householder and the entire, I mean, it’s the biggest corruption case in Ohio history. The fact that people don’t know what she’s talking about is really sad. Leila (09:56.466) It would be interesting is to go out and do a man on the street and just ask some questions to people who are in passing. Yes. Laura (10:02.429) Yeah, like kind of like those late night shows used to do, right? And ask people, yeah, we’d probably come back really disheartened. Leila (10:09.233) test people’s actual knowledge of this particular case that we’ve been talking about for years. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. JD Vance is once again pointing to Springfield’s Haitian community to defend Trump’s hardline immigration agenda. But given the chaos those earlier false claims unleashed, why, why would he return to this topic, Courtney? Courtney (10:32.17) Vance just must love chatting about Springfield. This is wild. He went on a new podcast, or he had a new appearance on the podcast, Pod Force One, where, like you said, he was defending Trump’s immigration stance. And he pointed directly to Springfield and said, this is an example of the problems that immigration creates. And he went back to his time as Senator and he talked about housing problems he learned about in Springfield as a result of the immigrants there. He said the city’s influx of about 20,000 Haitian migrants strained housing in that town that only had about 40,000 people to begin with. And he described how there would be immigrant families, multiple families would pool together and then they’d be willing to pay more for like say a three bedroom house because they’d have more folks living in there versus the other folks in town who had previously been paying. you know, around a grand a month for that house to just house a single family. And, you know, he pointed as that as, as like the big issue. And he also said that it’s totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next door neighbors and say, I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers. And so much of this just feels really warped to me. You know, I mean, you’ve looked at migrant families in the U S for, I mean, well over a hundred years, you have evidence in Cleveland of this happening all over the place where multiple families would pack into housing to make it more affordable. I don’t know why it’s a suddenly a problem now, but, JD Vance sure sees it that way. Leila (12:19.089) That line that you quoted, I think, is particularly despicable about his behavior here. That line is just jaw-dropping and so revealing. What makes it so offensive to me is that Vance is passing this xenophobia for common sense. He’s implying that cultural sameness should be the standard for who deserves to live next door, that diversity itself is somehow the problem here. That is such a dog whistle. It feeds... the fear of quote unquote strangers instead of recognizing that new neighbors, no matter where they come from, become part of the community when they move in. And I just am so disgusted by this. Oddly, I feel like I could initially see some of the point that Vance was trying to make at the beginning of the story, but I thought he was going in the direction of being concerned about crowded conditions, the safety and wellness of people who are all cramming 20 people into a three-bedroom apartment. That doesn’t feel like a healthy living arrangement for families, but he wasn’t at all speaking out of concern for the families who have no choice but to live like that. His concern was for neighbors who shouldn’t have to live next to someone who’s different from them. And I just want to lob that one up for you guys. Who wants to? Laura (13:38.825) I really feels like he said the quiet part out loud, right? He’s basically saying it’s totally American to be discriminatory. That’s like basically what it comes across as. And you do get to choose where you live, right? You don’t get to choose who lives next to you. Courtney (13:39.246) You Leila (13:42.969) Mm-hmm. Leila (13:49.648) right? Leila (13:55.986) That’s right. I can’t believe the story and I can’t believe that after everything that happened in Springfield last time, the bomb threats, the panic, the way those false pet eating rumors spread like wildfire, that JD Vance would go back to the same well. You’re listening to, go ahead, yeah, Lisa. Lisa Garvin (14:12.0) I’m gonna... no, I’m just gonna throw a monkey wrench in here. Do you want to live next to a house that has 25 people living in it? I don’t know that you do. Leila (14:20.049) I think that my concern though is for the crowded condition, honestly. Lisa Garvin (14:25.485) I would agree with that, I mean, I think a lot of houses have occupancy limits anyway, or some cities have occupancy limits, I don’t know. Courtney (14:36.76) which would be a municipal issue to deal with, right? I mean, just like send some building inspectors down there, wait, Ohio doesn’t like funding local government initiatives. You know, like there are on the ground real solutions to those kinds of problems. isn’t, don’t let anyone in the country anymore. Lisa Garvin (14:39.297) Right, right. Lisa Garvin (14:49.782) Yes. Lisa Garvin (14:54.733) You’re right. Leila (14:56.005) you’re listening to today in Ohio. A new bill in Ohio would let religious chaplains volunteer in public schools to help students with mental health and moral support. But it’s stirring a lot of debate over faith, counseling, and the role of religion in public education. Lisa, what’s behind this proposal? Lisa Garvin (15:12.919) So it’s House Bill 531 and it’s introduced by Republican representatives, Kevin Ritter of Marietta and Jonathan Newman of Dayton. And as you said, it would allow chaplains to volunteer at public and charter schools to provide mental health and moral support. Their services must be voluntary and schools get to decide if chaplains are allowed in their buildings. Patients or parents rather would have to provide written permission for their child to access a chaplain. And the chaplains would undergo a criminal background check, just like any other school staffer. So they’re not replacing school counselors. They’re defined as religious professionals. They’re certified to work in prisons, hospitals, the military. If you ever watched MASH, you know, they had the chaplain there who was a major character. Eleven other states do have school chaplaincy laws. are, they’re considering, or they have it. Then they passed it also in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida recently. But Democratic representative Sean Brennan of Parma says, well, they’re not licensed counselors. And where is the line between appropriate and inappropriate help to the students? Leila (16:20.475) Yes, I think that nails it on the head. For me, anyway, I feel like this bill is really walking a fine line. It’s being sold as a way to support kids’ mental health, but what it’s actually doing is blurring that boundary once again between evangelizing in public schools and what they’re calling counseling. So when you bring clergy into classrooms, even voluntarily, it’s not hard to imagine subtle pressure. unequal access or religious bias that kind of creeps in. But Lisa, what do you think? Is this really about addressing the youth mental health crisis or is it possibly part of a broader push to bring religion back into public education by calling it emotional support? And we’ve seen this sort of slide in other areas. What are your thoughts on that? Lisa Garvin (17:08.151) Well, to me, because of people trying to erode the line between church and state, this is another foot in the door. But chaplains, by their nature, are non-denominational. I mean, you know, and you know, they’re already out there in the community as religious professionals. So, but if they espouse any kind, I mean, they’re supposed to give help. They’re not supposed to proselytize. They’re not supposed to, you know, tell people that, you know, they’re on the wrong path religiously. They’re just supposed to sup- Leila (17:14.385) Mm-hmm. Lisa Garvin (17:35.425) provide support, but if they cross that line, then there’s trouble. Leila (17:39.782) But what you raised earlier was interesting, though, that if they’re providing support but they’re not trained for mental health crises or for therapy, what is the support that they’re giving if not religiously grounded support? mean, obviously, that’s got to be at the heart of that. But what I found especially troubling is that the bill forces every school board in Ohio to take a public vote, up or down. Lisa Garvin (17:53.037) Mmm. Lisa Garvin (18:06.583) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Leila (18:07.555) on whether to allow these chaplains, even if no one in their district is asking for it. And that feels like it’s undermining local control. It feels like a mandate to have a culture war on the record, basically. It puts districts in the impossible position of either inviting religion into their schools or appearing hostile to it. And those are your choices. And I feel like you can bet that vote will divide communities that are already on the brink of division. Yeah. Lisa Garvin (18:16.225) Yes. Leila (18:36.843) listening to today in Ohio. A group of Case Western grads turned a makerspace project into a startup that’s now catching billions of microplastics before they reach Lake Erie. Laura, could this thing really put a dent in the scourge of microplastics in our waterways? Laura (18:52.997) Maybe, I mean, it’s good news. I’m glad to see it because these filters keep all of those little pieces of plastic that slough off your clothes in the washing process from getting into the water, going down, you know, all the way through and back into Lake Erie, you know, into our drinking water, which it is. That’s what’s really scary. We don’t know the long term effect of all of these microplastics, but these filters are designed to remove them. And I guess I didn’t realize this. Plastic material makes up about 60 % of clothing. That’s a huge amount of it. And laundry is the number one source of microplastic pollution. I would have thought it was all the plastics we use in our regular life, whether that’s the carry out containers or cups or straws or something like that. With all the furor over straws, you think there’d be more furor over laundry. They came up with this idea. It’s like three fraternity brothers who came up with cleaner in this Sears ThinkBox maker space. And they are really going forward with this. The filters cost about $300 a piece, 10 disposable pods. And you can get a less expensive model with a pod subscription. And I wish them all the luck on this. Leila (20:06.225) Yeah, first of all, this is, I love that it’s a few frat bros who came up with this idea. That’s like the most awesome, awesome, you know, twist in the story. But this is so refreshing because you’ve got Cleveland innovators actually taking on one of the biggest environmental problems of our time. And I find it fascinating how small scale the solution is. It’s literally one wash load at a time. And yet it could really add up to something massive with this technology. Laura (20:10.225) Right, right, it is, it’s great! Laura (20:30.591) Mm-hmm. Leila (20:34.833) catches on. It also raises the question of responsibility. Should we be relying on startups and college pilots and frat bros to stop this pollution, or should manufacturers and policymakers be stepping up to make this standard everywhere? Laura (20:43.804) Right. Laura (20:52.661) Well, it’s our own goodwill too, right? You’ve got to shell out the $300 to put it in your washing machine. You have to want to solve the problem yourself. No one’s telling you you have to. I would hope that this eventually become completely mandatory in all new washing machines and that everybody does it. Apparently there’s an app that goes with their product. You can see how much microplastics being removed. So you know how people love apps and measurements and weird data. So maybe that’ll help it hook on. But I agree with you, Leila. I feel like this could be a movie. you know, these three frat guys in a basement solving an environmental problem. And you know, they’ve had all sorts of failures along the way. And I’m sure setbacks, I would love to hear their perspective. And it is inspiring. I hope all young people want to help the world like this. Leila (21:23.715) Yes. Leila (21:38.597) We should invite them on the podcast. That would be fun. Well, know, Laura, because you are so familiar with issues related to our waterways, I just want to throw this out because I don’t know the answer. Microplastics, are these visible when they’re called micro? So they’re not. Laura (21:52.402) No, no, you can’t see them. so right now the screening, that’s why it’s in our drinking water. We can’t get it out. Like they’re so small, you can’t filter it. So you can filter it out of the laundry because think about it. I don’t know how big they are when they’re coming out of your laundry. You’re still not seeing them, right? But once they break down in the water, think about how beach glass gets worn over time and it gets smaller and smaller. Leila (22:15.345) Mm-hmm. Laura (22:17.065) These pieces just break apart smaller and smaller and the sun warps them and on the waves and the water. And so it just gets harder and harder, I think, to collect them and to filter them out. Leila (22:27.857) So when you change the filter on this thing, is there anything to see in the filter or? Laura (22:32.309) That’s a really good question. I’m picturing a lint catcher like in the dryer. I don’t think it’ll look like that, but... Leila (22:35.939) Yeah, but like when microplastics eventually accumulate to billions, I assume there’s something to see. I don’t know. Laura (22:43.241) Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s a very good question. But the scariest thing is, it’s in our drinking water. It’s in water bottles, too. It’s not like anybody’s figuring out how to get this out. So you might think, well, I drink bottled water. I mean, that’s worse. Leila (22:57.51) Right. Leila (23:01.241) Right, right, and these things get lodged in our organs and it’s... Right. Laura (23:04.841) Yes, we have no idea the long-term health implications because it hasn’t been that long. We have no idea what kind of cancers or other illnesses they could be contributing to. Leila (23:15.185) You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Cleveland’s new law ends the guessing game on pay. Every job must list a salary range. Courtney, will it really close wage gaps or just expose how wide they are? Courtney (23:29.794) Well, we’re going to have to see how it plays out. This law took effect this week. And at least on the city side, the folks who ushered this through, they’re hoping that having this rule on the books can nudge businesses into compliance and kind of start the conversation and start pulling in that direction. At least at the beginning, the city isn’t focused on cracking down with punishment on employers who don’t comply. They’re trying to do it in a kind of, in a nicer way. educating them about the rules of the new law. And the goal is that nudging and shepherding in that direction will improve things for the long term. So what this ordinance does, it was passed back in April. It requires most employers with at least 15 workers to include salary ranges in their job postings. And it also bans them from asking about a job candidate’s current or past pay. What they want to do is start to close those kind of long-standing wage gaps across gender and racial lines by giving workers more info upfront here. Now there is a bit of a stick in this law. Violations can lead up to civil fines of up to $5,000. But the folks who are running this program, there’s a Fair Employment Wage Board who will be enforcing this law. I mean, they told us straight up. They’re not looking to come down with that stick, at least not anytime soon. They want employers to buy it. Leila (24:58.863) Yeah. mean, my feeling is that transparency can cut both ways. Yes, it empowers workers, but it also shines a spotlight on the inequities that have been hiding in plain sight for years. So and once those pay ranges are public, employers can’t lowball women or people of color anymore, but they they also can’t hide behind vague market rate excuses when everyone can see these pay scales. But Courtney, do you think that this kind of sunlight will actually push companies to fix? wage gaps the way they’re hoping, or do you think it’ll just expose them and then force job seekers to navigate the same old inequities with better data? Courtney (25:37.602) You know, I’m not really sure what this does as far as if it’s not a blanket rule across the country with remote work and people migrating between suburbs and not necessarily living in Cleveland. You know, it almost, it’s important I suppose to have in Cleveland. Other cities in Ohio have it. Columbus, Toledo, Sinsey, several states have adopted similar measures. But I wonder with that piecemeal landscape in Ohio, it just so much Lisa Garvin (25:48.461) you Leila (25:49.681) Mm. Courtney (26:06.786) falls through the cracks. We do have a very, you know, pieced out region where this law doesn’t apply across most of Northeast Ohio, but in the Job Center, just Cleveland, I think that Swiss cheese effect may not get us quite where we want it to go, but I’d say it’s probably better than nothing. Leila (26:28.241) That is, those are great points. hadn’t even thought about remote work and how that plays into this. But I also wonder how many will try to game the system by posting absurdly broad pay scales or shifting pay bands after the fact. Once they’ve hired somebody or, know, transparency really only works if it’s honest. And I think that this law’s real test will be whether Cleveland eventually enforces it with some teeth. I think it’ll be really interesting a year from now. If we take a look at any cases that are coming before the Fair Employment Wage Board and examine those outcomes, I don’t know that we’ve ever taken a look and I know they hear other kinds of cases too. That would be a really telling moment for this law. Courtney (27:11.51) Yeah, I mean to some degree I think you kinda need that stick to get people in line. Leila (27:15.157) Yeah, you do. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Another millennia-owned downtown landmark is in foreclosure. With mounting lawsuits and federal scrutiny, is Cleveland’s most ambitious developer running out of time and money, Lisa? Lisa Garvin (27:30.321) It certainly looks that way. So the Millennia Companies has defaulted on a $35.4 million loan to renovate the 100-year-old Centennial Building at East 9th and Euclid downtown. The lender, Deutsche Bank, wants a federal judge to take control of the property and appoint a receiver to manage the building. There’s $33.4 million still owed on that loan. They did accept several late payments from Millennia, though. But a 2022 inspection by Deutsche Bank of the Centennial building found black mold, roof leaks, HVAC problems. They said air was simply just rushing into the building in several areas. So a millennia bought the Centennial building in 2018 for $40 million. They had plans to convert it to 870 apartments. Nothing is really happening there on the property. But millennia attorney Larry Zuckerman says, If the building was falling into disrepair, why did Deutsche Bank keep delaying the loan default? He says there’s no danger to the building from exposure to the elements. But Millennia also owns the Statler Apartments at East 12th and Euclid. They bought that, they defaulted on a $52 million loan for that property and the lender filed foreclosure in September. And then The CEO, Frank Sinito, we’ve talked about them a lot. He’s accused of misappropriating $4.7 million in HUD funding. Also, there are many lawsuits against his low income properties for terrible living conditions. Leila (29:05.201) What we know about millennia really paints a troubling pattern, right? This isn’t just about a couple bad bets downtown. The company has faced these lawsuits and federal sanctions over poor conditions and its low income housing portfolio, millions in missing or misused funds, and now multiple defaults on major Cleveland properties. So when a company shows this kind of repeated mismanagement, why are they still being trusted with some of Cleveland’s most important real estate? assets. This feels like a crisis for one developer, but also a reckoning for Cleveland’s approach to downtown development, right? Lisa Garvin (29:46.581) Well, I think they may be bit off more than they could chew by trying to renovate, you know, vintage buildings. It seems to me that their stock in trade is buying up cheap properties in Cleveland and then just not fixing them up and charging tenants, you know, crazy rent. you know, so I think they may have got punched above their pay grade trying to renovate these old buildings. Leila (29:49.841) Hmm. Leila (30:06.905) I think you’re right. think they took on massive fragile projects with these big promises and they’re starting to buckle under their own weight here. That’s a good point. Courtney (30:15.564) And that raises a question about the Centennial Building that’s considered a really difficult nut to crack development-wise downtown. Millennia was kind of the hope. Can no one do it? Is that building redevelopable? Leila (30:33.295) That’s a great question. we know Cleveland’s real estate scene doesn’t exactly have a deep bench. There’s only a handful of developers that seem to control most of downtown’s biggest properties. And they had high hopes for this one, it seems. And yeah, it’s pretty sad. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Let’s do one more. An Akron legal heavyweight, former Summit County prosecutor and judge, Michael Callahan, has surrendered his law license after being accused of coercing a disabled client into sex. Laura, what led to this stunning downfall and what do we know about the allegations? Laura (31:10.965) This is a terrible story. So Michael Callahan was incredibly well known in legal circles and in recent years was one of the most prominent criminal defense attorneys around. Like you said, he was a county prosecutor, he was a judge in Acre Municipal Court, a county councilman, and then the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct filed a complaint against him on December 30th. It says a Berea woman was searching for an attorney after her father filed an eviction notice against her. She’s 57, disabled, suffers from a variety of ailments, including arthritis, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety. And the accusations are that he forced that woman to have sex with him and perform a sex act on exchange for representing her. And the complaint also includes a friend of the woman who was the one who recommended she hire him. And that complaint says that over the years, Callahan paid that friend for massages and sex acts, which obviously despicable. And one day, according to this complaint, he told the woman he wanted to have sex with her. She refused. He said if he didn’t, she’d stop representing her. She went to the police, and the police said they can’t really do anything. It’s he said, she said. So they said, hey, you should report this to the Board of Professional Conduct. And that’s what she did. And now Callahan has resigned. Leila (32:24.465) You know, the thing I want to say about this is that too often stories like this hinge on our collective reluctance to believe women, right? I mean, especially women who are vulnerable or marginalized and people like Callahan prey on that dynamic. They choose victims who already feel powerless, who might fear they won’t be believed because of who they are or what they’ve been through. And when the abuse blurs into coercion, know, when consent is really a survival choice, Laura (32:31.733) Mm. Laura (32:48.671) Mm-hmm. Leila (32:52.707) It creates shame that I think silences them even further. This woman’s decision to speak up anyway is incredibly brave and brought an end to perhaps a pattern that had been going on for a while. Laura, why do you think it still takes so much courage and so much risk for women to come forward in cases like this, even after Me Too supposedly changed that conversation? Laura (33:01.215) Mm-hmm. Right. Laura (33:15.209) Well, think about the power dynamic here. mean, one is the lawyer, one is the client, and she’s about to be evicted from her dad’s house, right? Like, people would look at that and be like, must be, she must, he’s a prominent attorney, he must be right. I think that there’s that idea that like, he’s running the circles, he’s a judge, he’s a lawyer, he’s a county councilman, and that respect kind of papers over. Leila (33:19.429) Yeah. Laura (33:42.429) any doubt you might have. And she’s got disabilities. That’s got to be even harder. You don’t have the same power as someone who doesn’t have disabilities. So I do give her all the credit in the world for coming up. And it’s so bad that a friend recommended Callahan. And this friend had been, what sounds like, abused for years too. And maybe she was just like, that’s just the cost of doing business, which is awful. And he hasn’t admitted guilt here, but he did resign his law license. It was accepted by the Ohio Supreme Court. He’s no longer allowed to work as an attorney or represent clients, which really good news. But you’re right. If this happened with these two people we know about, I really doubt these are the only ones. Leila (34:25.285) Hopefully, the evidence that the disciplinary board unearthed here is strong enough to prompt law enforcement to take another look, because I think the disciplinary process isn’t a substitute for justice in a Laura (34:32.019) Mmm, that’s a good point. Laura (34:37.47) Absolutely. Leila (34:38.629) Well, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. That’s it for Thursday’s episode. Please join us Monday for the start of another week of the news. Chris Quinn will be back.
