Ohio lawmakers give a big smooch to commercial property owners, at the expense of

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Ohio General Assembly passed a bill that could shift the burden of school funding more toward homeowners by limiting how school districts challenge commercial property values.

We’re talking about how the change hurts school districts on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here. See the automated transcript at the bottom of the post.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin 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 for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions we’re answering today:

Why were the Social Security numbers of people accused of crimes in Cleveland publicly accessible on Thursday?

Are Northeast Ohio zoos taking a page from other zoos in the nation to protect their birds from the avian flu outbreak that is ravaging parts of bird population?

The last few years have seen a lot of turnover in the Cleveland power structure, and Thursday brought a surprise announcement of yet another major figure stepping away. Who was it?

We’ve talked repeatedly on this podcast on a move in the legislature to save commercial property owners millions at the expense of Ohio homeowners – helping, we hope, to gum up the bill for a while – but it has now been amended a bit and passed. Is it still a gift from Ohio’s lawmakers to commercial property owners?

What would it mean to Clevelanders if JetBlue beat out Frontier airlines in the battle to merge with Spirit airlines?

Ohio is getting $259 million in federal transit money, with the bulk of it going to Cleveland, so what will the Regional Transit Authority do with it?

Who is Sonya Pryor-Jones, and what is Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb looking for her to do?

What’s at stake in a class-action lawsuit that got the greenlight this week against an Akron-based personal injury law firm, Kisling, Nestico and Redick?

What is going on in the Rock Hall’s big Beatles weekend that kicked off Thursday night?

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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] We close out another week on today in Ohio without knowing what the legislative districts are in the state for this year’s elections, kind of amazing how bollixed up that has been, hopefully we’ll get some resolution next week. It is today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer.

I’m Chris Quinn here with a cheerful group of regulars. Cause it’s Friday. Layla autopsy and the Laura Johnston happy Friday.

Lisa: It doesn’t mean much to a retiree, but yay.

Leila: So envious of you 20 more years, it’ll be you. I know

Chris: by the time they get there, 30, more years easy.

Laura: I got all my mulch yesterday. So even if it’s going to snow, I am spreading mulch from.

Chris: Okay, well, good segue. Speaking of retirement, why were the social security numbers of people accused of crimes in [00:01:00] Cleveland, publicly accessible on Thursday, Layla, this is not supposed to have.

Leila: No, this is, this was a pretty serious snafu with the Cleveland municipal courts, new public website for, for nearly an hour, between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM. When the court site went live Thursday, it provided. Personal identification information, including social security numbers for defendants. And the glitch was in a section of the new website that at, at the time allowed members of the public to download filings and criminal or traffic cases, it appears that this came to light when a reporter.

Uh, at cleveland.com reporter, I’m assuming it was at Adams.

Chris: It was Adam. Yeah. They call me, so what do we do if we write about this? Are we, are we giving away data, but they had fixed it and I said, no, nobody can get them anymore. Let’s go ahead and write the story. But yeah, Adam public service save lots of people from possible identities.

It’s amazing.

Leila: Yeah, he was looking at a case and he [00:02:00] spotted a social security number that shouldn’t have been there. And according to his story, he was on the phone with the court spokesperson, Obie Sheldon at the time, and notified him immediately. And Shelton said that during, during that time, that window.

Those numbers were available. 484 attempts were made to access the website, but it’s unclear if any documents were downloaded, containing that personal information. So the court is still trying to figure out what went wrong with their rollout of this new technology. Sheldon said that the courts, it employees immediately.

From public access, the problematic section of the website, but that’s a pretty serious data breach. They better iron that out. And if

Chris: not for Adam, who knows how many hours this would have gone on, I mean, good for Adam for noticing it, notifying the court. And then we didn’t write the story until people couldn’t go on and get those anymore.

They moved very, very quickly. I am a little bit surprised, not a little bit, a lot surprise that they didn’t do testing. That would have been. [00:03:00] The revealing of this kind of personal confidential data. And we all know whenever you go to a new computer system, bad things can happen. But privacy in the court system is kind of an important details to be on top of so way to go at them and getting it and give credit to the court for moving quickly to fix it.

I wonder if the county has yet fixed its pay it’s software for paying people much about it. Okay. Stay tuned. You’re listening today in Ohio. Our Northeast Ohio zoos taking a page from other zoos in the nation to protect their birds from the avian flu outbreak. That is ravaging parts of our bird populations.

Lisa, we saw a story that other zoos were doing this, and we set out to find answers here. Of course, the Metropark zoo refused to tell us anything for about day and a half. They’re so helpful, but what’s the deal. The

Lisa: Akron zoo has moved all of its birds to indoor enclosures [00:04:00] to prevent an avian flu outbreak amongst that population, the avian collection manager there, Joel gold, Gosky says they have to do that because what happens during feeding times because of the way the enclosures are wild birds mix in with the zoo birds during feeding times and spring, right.

Gration is going on. He says, that’s a concern. There are two major. Flyways through Northeast Ohio. He says he don’t, he doesn’t know when these boot birds will be moved outside again. The Cleveland zoo did issue a statement. They said certain bird species were moved indoors, but they offered no other details on that.

So,

Chris: and it was kind of hilarious, right? Because this is people who care about birds are worried about this. We call simple question. Hey guys, what are you doing to protect your birds? And for a day and a half, they refuse to answer. Y, I don’t know. And then they give us the bears details that they want people to care about the zoo.

I just don’t get how the zoo does public relations under Brian Zimmerman [00:05:00]

Laura: to clarify, they only gave us a statement after Evan put up the story of a McDonald’s that said Akron zoo and what they’re doing and said, Cleveland Metroparks. And then they’re like, oh wait, I guess we look stupid.

Chris: Yeah. And so they, they put out a statement that keeps them looking stupid.

You know, Akron immediately gives us all the details. We’re doing this, we’re doing this, the penguins, blah, blah, blah. And the Cleveland zoo doing what it typically does, such a

Lisa: hassle. And this is, this is, this is serious. I mean, 23 million birds in America have died either from the flu itself or from calling flocks, which is mostly chickens and turkeys.

So yeah, this is a serious issue.

Chris: I know that people care about. And so they want to know, Hey, wait, you know, what’s going on with our zoo? What are you doing to protect the Eagles and all that? And you know, and other zoos, they, they built roofs over the outdoor enclosures to keep the birds from swooping in.

Are we doing that? What are we doing? So anyway, maybe they’ll give more detail now. It’s today. [00:06:00] The last few years have seen a lot of turnover in the Cleveland power structure. And Thursday brought a surprise announcement of yet another major figure, stepping away, Laura, who.

Laura: So this is Len Komorowski the CEO of the calves.

He joined the calves as president in 2003. That was two years before Dan Gilbert bought the team in…