With elected officials putting self-interest ahead of duty, Ohio government is broken:

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Republicans ignored an Ohio Supreme Court order to approve a new state legislative district map Friday, making it clear they plan to ignore the court’s attempts to enforce voter-approved redistricting reforms.

We’re talking about the ramifications of letting Republicans defy a court order on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact 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:

Is the Ohio Supreme Court powerless to enforce its orders involving gerrymandering? What’s the latest evidence that the Supreme Court has been all but neutered by the battle over redistricting?

How many people are now suing Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, claiming he has used illegal maneuvering to prevent Democrats from appearing on the ballot in districts where that party is favored to win seats?

With Cuyahoga County government ready to waste $46 million in money they don’t even have on the failed Medical Mart, we added up all of the amounts taxpayers already have put behind tourism in downtown Cleveland. What’s the bill so far?

Can the search for a new state superintendent of schools get any more strange? We talked and talked about how the guy who ultimately got the job had a conflict because he was leading the seach until the last minute and then applied. Less than a month after getting appointed, he quit. Why?

How close did a police officer come to being executed because of a drug case he was investigating?

Cleveland City Council proposes to spend $15 million of its stimulus cash on demolition. Let’s talk about the wisdom of using one-time money on one-time projects.

It’s been over a decade since the school shootings that happened in Chardon, and we wondered how students in the school back then react when they see school shootings today. One of the Chardon students from back then agreed to talk about it. What did he say?

What are some of the reasons that Cleveland continues to lead the nation in dog bites of postal carriers?

How is Cleveland experimenting with slowing down speeders in city neighborhoods?

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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 have a very strange story to talk about today. The abrupt resignation of the state school board superintendent. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s not the first story we’ll be talking about on today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin.

Layla Tassie a reminder that tomorrow we’ll be recording a special live audience episode, noon to talk about abortion. And the people that have responded should have gotten an email from Laura. And I explaining how that will all work. We’ll send out the final draft today. Let’s start is the Ohio Supreme.

Powerless to enforce its orders involving gerrymandering. What’s the latest evidence that the Supreme court has all been all been all, but neutered by the battle over redistricting Lara. Well, when

Laura: we talked about this story on Friday, you and I believe the term you used was unit, which I don’t believe I’d ever heard talking about.

Stories before. So props to [00:01:00] you on that one, but this is an incredibly blatant move by the Republicans on the redistricting commission I’ve said over and over on this podcast, but the Republicans have made it clear that they think they can do whatever they want. And the courts inability to stop them.

Makes it pretty clear that. It’s depressing as a citizen, the court seemed to have no check of power over the legislative branch of government. The Republicans had gotten the Republican judges on the federal court to lock in a set of maps. The Supreme court had already rejected more than once, so they don’t really care that the Supreme court rejected them again.

And that the court set new deadlines. One of which was Friday morning, it came and went without any kind of meeting of the redistricting commission. And they pretty much said, we’re gonna, we’re gonna wait this out. This is not the time that we should be working on.

Chris: You know that, that the government only works.

If people do it in good faith, Woodward and Bernstein had a really interesting story over the weekend in the Washington post that Laura you’ll love. It starts with Washington’s farewell address, which, [00:02:00] you know, you know, from Hamilton in which he says that bad people can wreck this. And it’s a long story comparing Nixon and Trump to really bad.

There’s that we’re working against the interest to maintain their power. And then our government isn’t protected from that. Well, that’s, what’s happening in Ohio, Mike DeWine, Keith Faber and Franklin rose. Bob cup, Matt Huffman are not working in good. The Supreme court is supposed to be an equal branch of government and they’re supposed to follow its rulings.

And they’re just not, which turns the government upside down. We don’t have protections against this. The Supreme court seems incapable of going through with the contempt of court. Not sure why, but we are completely unprotected when the worst kind of people like the people in state government right now.

Don’t follow the rules, right?

Laura: It’s not, and it’s, it’s not just the worst kind of people. It’s also the lack of a balance of [00:03:00] power between Democrats and Republicans. We have a super majority of Republicans. We have a Republican governor who kowtows to the Republican legislature. And so there’s nobody really holding each other accountable.

It makes you think. We really, maybe need a parliamentary system where nobody can have a super majority and you have to compromise with other people because the Republicans are saying, Hey, we’ll fix our maps, but we’re going to do it on our own timeline. And that basically means after they kick up Maureen, O’Connor out of office, not kicked, but she’s, she’s reached judicial age limits and they want Sharon Kennedy.

Instead, she’s already adjusted. She’s already, um, said over and over in this redistricting commission that she believes. That they could do what they want. That there’s no problem with the maps that they created, even when they were completely gerrymandered from the beginning. Right. And they’re just running out the clock here.

I still think

Chris: though, you getting away from the point that they’re, they’re not following the rules, I’ve wrote a column over the weekend because we keep getting asked by people to champion a reform, a county [00:04:00] government. And my point in the column is it’s not the structure. It’s the people there, they’re doing a bad job.

Well,

Laura: we elect those people and that’s, what’s really, you know, that people are putting party ahead of.

Chris: But you don’t have a choice, right? I mean, in the end, the party system puts up some people in Cuyahoga county it’s heavily democratic. So whoever the democratic party chooses is going to win, it’s not really a choice.

There’s no runoff in November from the top to democratic vote getters. With who’s there. So, so in Cuyahoga county, it’s the Democrats who are not doing their job in representing this, but, but in the state level, they’re literally, they’re not following the will of the voters that changed the constitution.

So they’re violating the constitution and have repeatedly. And they’re refusing to follow the orders of the Supreme court. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. They should all be thrown out of office for not doing their job. But I guess nobody has the means to really Mount that

Laura: campaign. [00:05:00] I mean, the, the, the real check should be the voters, right?

The voters should stand up and say, we won’t stand for this. You’re not doing what we asked you to. You’re not following our referendum, but they care more about party than the government. I. We’ll

Chris: see, I don’t know. I do think Nan Whaley has a chance here and, and Jennifer Bruner is running against Sharon Kennedy for that Supreme court chief justice seat.

And she just won an election beating a Republican of course, parties weren’t listed on the ballot. Then it was name recognition. This time they’ve made sure parties…