CLEVELAND, Ohio - Gov. Mike DeWine late Monday signed a two-year state budget that he says “builds upon my commitment to make Ohio the best place for everyone to live their version of the American Dream.”
But the budget chops a state law that guaranteed libraries a portion of state tax revenue, cuts taxes for the state’s wealthiest residents and lends $600 million to cover one-fourth of the Browns stadium’s anticipated cost. We’re talking about it all on Today in Ohio.
Listen online here.
Editor Chris 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:
I mentioned this yesterday, but let’s talk about it today. Why is Dave Yost, the Ohio attorney general, opposed to the Legislature’s plan for helping the Browns finance their covered stadium in Brook Park?
How does Norfolk Southern duck all the fines it should be paying for repeatedly closing off the Cuyahoga River with a bridge it controls?
Caitlin Clark played basketball in Cleveland during the women’s final four last year, and now we might get to see her regularly. How is that?
Mike DeWine lost another round in court in his cruel decision during the pandemic not to get the extra money from the feds for people who were unemployed. What was the decision
How are the culture warriors of Ohio once again trying to skirt the clear will of the voters and institute a ban on abortion?
Let’s talk about this next one because our neighborhoods already are hearing all the snaps and crackles. How many people were injured by fireworks in 2023?
Jim Jordan must be jealous of JD Vance and Bernie Moreno for getting all the headlines. What red herring issue is he chasing now, one that has pretty much nothing to do with the people in Ohio he represents, or is supposed to.
When is the I-X Center closing?
Why anyone would willingly subject themselves to this terror mystifies me, but the appropriately named new tilt roller coaster at Cedar Point opens to the public this weekend. What did the people who got an early preview tell travel writer Susan Glaser about the experience? And what was Josh Duke’s reaction, posted on social media for all to see?
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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.
Chris Quinn (00:01.388)
Mike DeWine kept reporters up to the wee hours as he decided what to do with the budget and issued 57 pages of vetoes. It’s Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here with Courtney Astolfi, Lisa Garvin, and Laura Johnston. And Mike DeWine did issue 57 pages of vetoes, which is proof that this is not.
a single subject bill the way the ohio constitution requires it i looked at the vetoes and a lot of them have nothing to do with the budget which means they should have been in this bill to begin with i was surprised laura i didn’t know this when the senate in the house reconciled their budget they put child care back in it just shows you how nobody really knows what’s going on but the ten million try care program which we’ve talked and talked and talked about
Laura (00:29.188)
Mmm.
Lisa (00:37.643)
I was surprised, Laura, I didn’t know this when the Senate and the House of filed their budget, they put child care back in.
Laura (00:45.699)
Yeah.
Chris Quinn (00:54.454)
was reinserted something i think they kind of had to do when they put in twenty million for a nebulous fatherhood program but that was a surprise in mike the wine didn’t be towed
Laura (01:04.78)
Well, I mean, Mike DeWine has said he believes in child care and he did have his own ideas in there for child care. So I’m glad he did. But it’s not a whole lot of good news, I feel like in the budget.
Chris Quinn (01:20.61)
well he did veto the venal gerry sereno newspaper tax gerry sereno was singling out newspapers for a sales tax which was so specific to us that it probably would have been a violation of the first amendment mike the wine said this would would hurt commerce in the state it was also interesting because the the legislature claims it’s against tax increases in this one hundred percent of tax increase
He did veto all of the property tax nonsense the legislature put in to divert attention from the fact that they are single-handedly the cause of our property tax crisis. DeWine said in his message that he will convene a task force to deal with this crisis, but they had done all sorts of things that were going to make life much harder for school districts and some communities and DeWine
killed it all saying that’s not the way forward to make life harder for schools. got to do this in a more macro way. Hopefully that’ll happen soon. And he did not veto any of the stuff the Browns wanted. So they got their 600 million. They’ve got the unclaimed funds as a funding source and they have the gutting of the Modell Law that Cleveland has been suing under to try and keep the team from leaving.
The idea that he didn’t veto the gutting of the Modell law was disappointing because that clearly violates the Constitution. Mike DeWine is complicit in the many, many, many violations of the Constitution that are in this budget. But that’s our transition, Lisa. I mentioned it yesterday, but let’s talk about it. Why is Dave Yost, the Ohio Attorney General, opposed to this plan to help the Browns finance their covered stadium in Brook Park?
Lisa (03:08.643)
Yeah, unfortunately, his urging Governor DeWine to veto that $600 million from the unclaimed property fund fell on deaf ears. He says, I oppose the funding mechanism and its intent.
He says Ohio taxpayers can’t be left on the sidelines while the wealthiest score with public money using game puns as we see. And he says the taking of public funds without clear benefit is just poor policy. He says also we have some questions. He says, is this fun going to remain solvent when other professional teams seek their cut from that billions of dollars of funds? And he says, what happens if it runs dry? That funding mechanism disappears.
He says a handout to a single facility raises serious concerns about fiscal sustainability and fairness. He did say though that the taking of that money from the unclaimed property fund is not unconstitutional as some have claimed. There is precedent. There’s about 1.3 billion that’s been taken from the unclaimed property fund since it was established in 1967.
Chris Quinn (04:12.024)
Well, there’s precedent only because nobody challenged it. Nobody came back and said, you can’t use that money because it’s not yours. This time around, the former Attorney General Mark Dance says he plans to challenge it in the class action. So I’m not sure what he’s talking about. There’s precedent for them raiding this fund previously, but we do not have a court precedent saying it’s.
constitutional we should point out to it’s alone. It’s not that they’re taking 600 million out. It’s never coming back. It’s supposed to come back with I forget some amount of interest that that the stadium would generate in taxes. I was it’s surprising to see Yoast taking the stand because he’s been a pretty party line Republican and Republicans are all lining up behind this. His argument that there’s no public
purpose or public benefit there people in kayo county that support this that would argue the public benefit is it’s a gigantic economic development project i mean if they spend two point four billion dollars building it that’s a lot of jobs so i’m not sure about the the public benefit part his point is taken that there are a whole lot of people that are crushed by this budget they’re giving an enormous tax cut to the wealthy
Lisa (05:15.594)
Okay.
Chris Quinn (05:32.256)
while sticking it to people of lesser means. Medicaid is going to get cut for a lot of people in Ohio, both by this and the federal government. meanwhile, billionaires get 600 million in help. And that was his point that what are we doing here? Is that really what we should be focusing on in a state budget? And that’s an interesting point of view. Tom Suttis. What did Tom Suttis call the budget this time?
Lisa (05:58.124)
Yeah.
Chris Quinn (06:01.526)
the billionaire rescue act or the GD and Jimmy Haslam something fun. I mean, made a joke about how this budget is all about helping the Browns and nobody else. mean, this this really does give wealthy people a giant portion of the state money while taking money away from everybody else. And for Mike the Wine to say this is a great budget, it’s unprecedented. It is unprecedented. It’s unprecedented in how cruel it is.
Lisa (06:28.061)
Yes. Yeah. And Yoast even said he was sounding like a moderate. He says, honestly, that money could have been used to lower childcare costs, property tax relief, boosting workforce participation, subjects that we’ve hammered on repeatedly in this podcast. And he said, if DeWine had vetoed this, it would have given them time to discover better funding options. Like, Hey, maybe doubling the gambling tax on sports gambling.
Chris Quinn (06:55.66)
He’s right. mean, everything he says there is right. This should have been more thoroughly vetted. But of course, everything the legislature did, it did in secret. There wasn’t public discussion. It’s just we keep harping on it saying, what are they thinking? But the legislature has done everything they can to do this all behind closed doors, such that I heard from people who were voting on this didn’t know what was in it. They did not know some of the things that were shoved into this thing at the 11th hour.
And it’s no way to do legislating. But look, the legislature violated the Constitution repeatedly by putting legislation into this thing. Mike DeWine, by signing it, is complicit in violating the Constitution. And if anybody challenges it to the Supreme Court, which is in the bag for the Republican Party, they’ll be complicit in violating the Constitution. This is a very, very dark day for Ohio. This may be the most abusive budget ever passed in this state.
You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Courtney, how does Norfolk Southern duck all the fines it should be paying for repeatedly closing off the Cuyahoga River with the bridge it controls, or I guess fails to control?
Courtney (08:07.579)
Yeah, the best we can tell here is that Norfolk Southern seems to be wriggling out of these massive fines, you potentially based on a technicality a lot of times, but to some degree, it’s really kind of the federal government to blame here. So, so let’s zoom out a little bit. A reporter Pete Krause was out talking with sources on his environment beat when he learned about, you know, lots of anger potentially growing about this problem with Norfolk Southern’s lift bridge.
blocking the mouth of the Cuyahoga River to boat traffic. The lift bridge can go up and down like an elevator, but a lot of the time it shifted into that down position that allows trains to cross over the river. And when that happens, boat traffic can back up a ton until that bridge can be lifted again. You know, there’s about hundred Norfolk Southern trains that can cross the Cuyahoga River in a 24 hour period. That’s the high end. So that is a lot of train traffic.
And you have to figure out a way to let those trains to pass. But the problem is as it stands now, that bridge is staying down for sometimes up to two hours at a time and really coming up the river boat traffic. There’s federal guidelines around this. There are federal regulations here, but what we learned is when the local Cleveland Coast Guard office has tried to levy nearly, nearly $4 million in fines against Norfolk Southern back since 2019.
Almost all of those fines have not been ushered through when it’s gone to hearing officers in Washington, D.C.
Chris Quinn (09:44.566)
I don’t understand how the bridge can be controlled from Atlanta, which Pete’s story said. There ought to be a law that requires the bridge tender to be on site so they can see the boat traffic backing up and people have someone to appeal to. I was stunned at the number of fines they’ve weaseled out of. And it’s another example, going back to the big crash in East Palestine, that the railroads own us.
They get to do whatever they want and get away with it and our Congress doesn’t do anything about it. know, Bernie Moreno was on the floor recently saying, let’s get rid of Amtrak. Let’s get a beer and I’m check. Where is he on this? This is actually abusive of the citizenry. Where is he? Our our representative in arguing that Norfolk Southern should be paying big time fines for for sticking it to anybody that needs to on a river. And let’s remember.
Lisa (10:31.031)
I was going to get work on Sundays, but I need to speak on a fine. Or just sticking it. Anybody needs to go to work, and that’s what I’m doing.
Chris Quinn (10:38.7)
That’s a commerce river. have lots of steel going up and down that river and those delays cost the steel companies money.
Laura (10:46.596)
Can I add in here? So when I was covering Lake Erie in the river as part of Rock the Lake, our sister site, this was such a huge issue. And so we’ve been hearing about this for at least a decade. And there’s been all sorts of things proposed. Like there was a countdown clock that was added so that people know when the bridge is going to go up. In 2019, I wrote a story saying that Norfolk Southern pledged to keep the bridge up in the up position, at least on the weekend. I don’t know what happened to that in the last six years.
Lisa (10:52.791)
This was such a huge issue and so we’ve been hearing about this for at least a decade and there’s been all sorts of things proposed. Like there was a countdown clock that was added so that people know when the bridge is going to go up. In 2019 I wrote a story saying the North and Southern Sleds would the bridge up. In the up position, at least on a weekend, I don’t know what happened to that in the last six years. But they call us the Iron Curtain for a reason. Because it’s done. It’s done.
Laura (11:16.26)
They call it the iron curtain for a reason because it does stop people from going in and out. It makes people never want to go into the river because they don’t know if they’ll get out. And so that really does hurt commerce. And we talked about the boat parking. But if you’re if you don’t know when you can get out, are you really going to go into the river? So, yeah, this is huge.
You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Caitlin Clark played basketball in Cleveland during the women’s final four last year, and now we might get to see her regularly. How is that, Laura?
Laura (12:10.628)
because Cleveland is getting a WNBA team. This bid was spearheaded by Dan Gilbert’s Rock Entertainment Group that encompasses the Cavs, the G League affiliate, the Cleveland Charge, the Cleveland Monsters, and Rock Entertainment Sports Network. So this was one of the original eight cities when the league began in 1997. I was a senior in high school and I definitely remember how excited the city was over the Cleveland Rockers. If you’re wondering if we’re going to get the Rockers name back,
That is a possibility. haven’t decided on a name yet. But I don’t know how they’re going to decide. It was a pretty winning team. In their seven-year existence, they had four winning seasons, two losing ones, and one mid. And they made the playoffs four times. When you compare that to a team like the Browns, they seem great. They won a conference title in 98, but then they folded in 2003. After Gordon Gunn, the owner couldn’t find another owner to buy it.
Things have really changed since then. They’re talking about this confluence of interest in the WNBA. All of these teams have doubled in value over the last year. They’re valued at 3.5 billion collectively, and cities are clamoring to get franchises.
Chris Quinn (13:25.966)
I think the fan base for women’s sports has changed dramatically since they went away after their first round. We see it with women’s soccer. We see it with women’s basketball. There’s a lot more interest in women’s sports, professional sports finally. It was interesting that the Cavs said they were looking at different kinds of female teams, but that they really wanted basketball back. And so they were successful in getting it.
Laura (13:52.612)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Quinn (13:54.944)
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t use the name Rockers. It’s pretty specific to Cleveland, but you know, the cabs generally do pretty cool things and so they might come up with a better name.
Laura (14:04.964)
We might. Right now, the league has 13 teams. The Golden State Valkyries is the expansion team that began playing this spring. Toronto and Portland are next. They play in 2026, and there are two more in 2029 in Philadelphia in 2030. So those are the ones that they round out and they’re going to see how they’re all doing. So this is this is good news for women’s sports. I agree that there is a lot of excitement there. And now these games are on TV. They’re getting more than a million viewers.
on average each. So it’ll be something fun to watch in Cleveland.
Chris Quinn (14:39.48)
You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Lisa, Mike DeWine lost another round in court in his cruel decision during the pandemic not to get extra money from the feds for people who were unemployed. Is this the end of it?
Lisa (14:54.199)
Well, the 10th District Court of Appeals sided with plaintiffs that are demanding Governor DeWine accept and distribute $900 million in COVID jobless benefits from 2021. So what happened was DeWine cut off the pandemic unemployment compensation in late June of 2021 where it
The program went through September. So he basically cut off three months of benefits. They figured that about 320,000 Ohioans were eligible for this money, up to $300 a week. DeWine’s reason for cutting it off early back then, he says, well, the money is not contributing to employees having, it’s contributing to employees having a hard time filling jobs during the pandemic. They figured people were getting jobless benefits. Why should they look for a job?
So the plaintiff’s attorney and former attorney general Mark Dan says Ohio law requires the administration to obtain benefits for as long as they’re available and it was wrong to reject that money.
Chris Quinn (15:55.264)
I just think back to when he did this, how cruel it was that the world was upside down, especially in 2021. That was one of the, one of the worst years of the pandemic and people were confused and they were having mental health issues and unemployment was a lifeline and the federal government contributed extra money to help people get through. But because there were employers in Ohio that couldn’t find people.
Mike DeWine decided to stick it to all these people by taking the money away. It was inexcusable treatment of the Ohioans by the governor, all in favor of the big dollar employers, which is how Ohio always works, right? It’s the deep pocketed people that get taken care of. Look at the big tax cut to the wealthy. So two courts have now said, you don’t have the choice, governor. You have to get that money.
but he can still go to the supreme court where his son is a justice in generally takes care of papa
Lisa (16:56.151)
Yeah. And back in 2022, the Ohio Supreme court upheld the 10th circuit court ruling that rejected a request for the court injunction to force DeWine to take that money. So the Ohio Supreme court has already kind of ruled against this. At that point, Yo said, well, the lawsuit’s over, but the 10th circuit disagreed. And so did the Franklin County common police court.
Chris Quinn (17:17.582)
All right. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. How are the culture warriors of Ohio once again, trying to skirt the clear will of the voters and institute a ban on abortion? Courtney, they just never give up. Even though it’s clear their fellow citizens want nothing to do with them.
Courtney (17:35.263)
There’s a new bill in the General Assembly that’s directly challenging that constitutional amendment Ohioans passed in 2023 to ensure abortion rights here on out. The General Assembly, you know, I guess is trying to be clever with its new method of attack on abortion rights in Ohio. This is the Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act. It’s called House Bill 370. And what it would do is it attempts to grant legal
personhood to embryos and fetuses. And that legal personhood status would apply right at the moment of fertilization. And lawmakers see this as a way of getting around those abortion rights that are in our constitution. What this would do is extend criminal and civil protections to unborn persons, which would effectively, you know, make abortion a criminal act like homicide here. And
You can just imagine all the ripple effects from this kind of thing gaining momentum. The interesting part here is also that IVF and contraceptive care are not explicitly addressed in this proposed bill, and that could threaten access to both for Ohioans.
Chris Quinn (18:49.964)
Yeah, but you can’t legislate around the constitutional amendment. They can try this, but the constitutional amendment is clear and I don’t see how they can be successful. They just keep trying and trying, even though it’s clear. The citizens of Ohio completely disagree with them. All the evidence you need that the lawmakers at the state house consider themselves lords and masters, not public servants. We see it every day. We see it in this budget that they passed.
with all their secrecy and they’re just bad people trying to harm the citizens of this state.
Courtney (19:26.813)
You know, an anti-abortion group that helped craft this legislation openly acknowledged that this conflicts with our constitution, but it seems like this is kind of setting up a potential future legal battle in court if it does move forward. Now, a lot of folks that we talked to told us this doesn’t stand a chance in court to your point, but proponents see it as potentially, you know, maybe setting up in a court argument around the 14th amendment that kind of
I guess they hope would be a back door into getting rid of abortion.
Chris Quinn (19:59.822)
Yeah, no, but it’s another statement. We don’t care what the majority says. We don’t care that democracy works based on the vote of the majority. They want to force their belief system down everybody’s throats and they’re going to cheat to do it. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Let’s talk about this next one because our neighborhoods already are hearing all the snaps and crackles. Laura, how many people were injured by fireworks in 2023, the last year for which numbers are available?
Laura (20:29.892)
10,000 about were treated for injuries related to fireworks accidents and eight people died in the United States. That’s from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Fireworks Report. There were 800 emergency department treated injuries associated with firecrackers, 700 with sparklers. And I always think of sparklers as being so safe, right? But they’re not. They burn at a temperature of about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. That could melt some metal and kids should never be allowed to hold those by themselves.
The estimated rate of emergency department treated injuries is 2.9 per 100,000 individuals. That’s actually down from 20-22, so that’s good, but a lot of burns, a lot of hands and fingers, there are head, face, and ear injuries, eye injuries, and 31 % of those injuries were to kids under 15. So if you’re going to have firecrackers, pardon?
Chris Quinn (21:19.234)
Are you hearing it in your neighborhood?
Are you hearing it in your neighborhood already?
Laura (21:25.472)
I have not, not yet. We’ll see. I don’t have a hugely active neighborhood when it comes to firecrackers.
Lisa (21:27.648)
I have.
Chris Quinn (21:34.286)
What are you hearing, Lisa?
Lisa (21:35.891)
yeah, there’s somebody just a few yards over for me that shoots off big things like M80s and they’re already at it.
Chris Quinn (21:44.031)
You Courtney.
Laura (21:44.258)
Bye.
Courtney (21:45.265)
yeah, I mean it’s going particularly on the weekends more so than the weeknights, but there’s a few one-offs during the week.
Laura (21:52.002)
I can’t imagine trying to set this off myself. That just to me is like, I do not need this kind of disaster in my
Chris Quinn (22:00.27)
You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Jim Jordan must be jealous of JD Vance and Bernie Moreno for getting all the headlines. What red herring issue is he chasing now? One that pretty much has nothing to do with the people in Ohio. He purports to represent Lisa.
Lisa (22:16.255)
Yeah, yeah. Jim Jordan has been kind of quiet lately, but he’s back. The House Judiciary Chair sent a subpoena to Harvard University president, Alan Garber last week. He’s seeking information on admissions, tuition, and financial aid, and also whether they coordinated with other Ivy league schools to raise tuition and offer selective aid packages to maximize their profits. This subpoena also seeks documents about the Harvard’s decision not
to not join the 568 Presidents Group, which is a consortium of elite schools that established a common financial aid formula and they’re accused of price fixing. So the letter says, you know, the committee gave them plenty of time to respond to document requests repeatedly. And they said that most of the documents provided so far were publicly available. Also, Jordan wants correspondence with anyone in the US executive branch.
on how it calculates indirect costs from awarded grants. And he also wants information about the US news about their college ranking criteria.
Chris Quinn (23:24.162)
I, it’s almost like he’s looking for something Trumpian to get his name back out there. The Trump administration is going hard after Harvard. They did something else yesterday, trying to take away all their money, claiming it they’re anti-Semitic. And it seems like he’s trying to piggyback on all this just so he can say, look, I’m still relevant on a national scene. You haven’t heard from me lately, but I’m relevant. I’m relevant because he’s being outperformed by the circus antics.
Lisa (23:42.647)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Quinn (23:54.387)
of JD Vance and Bernie Moreno.
Lisa (23:57.323)
Yeah, this is just, yeah, it’s a shame. And of course, Harvard is the escape-goat du jour, so as you said, he’s jumping on that train.
Chris Quinn (24:06.958)
You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Courtney, when is the IX Center closing?
Courtney (24:12.243)
Well, that is a very good question, Chris. And we have no idea really, because the city isn’t talking about it. At least we have some indication now that it’s not going to be immediately. That’s because we reached out to the Cleveland Auto Show, the Home and Garden Show, the Boat Show, and the RV Show to see what they’ve been hearing from the city. And they’ve all been allowed to book another round of events out. So it looks like the closing date for the IX Center isn’t going to be until 2026.
That’s just kind of us piecing it together based on context clues here. And of course, all this is precipitated by the city, apparently looking to use that space in a totally different way. They said they found a Fortune 100 company that wants to locate 250 new jobs there. Beyond that, we don’t know who it is or what the timeline is.
Chris Quinn (25:04.322)
Yeah, I’m surprised we’re this far down the road from when the announcement first came out and we still don’t know who it is or what they want to do there. Seems like that should come out, but I wonder if it’s something scary or has some kind of bad element to it that they’re trying to keep under wraps. We’ll have to dig a little harder and find out who it is.
Courtney (25:23.999)
For what it’s worth, know, the boat show, the RV show, a lot of the prime tenants in that event space were caught off guard by this announcement and some of them expressed to us a little, you know, confusion by the lack of information come in their way.
Chris Quinn (25:40.344)
Well, they’ll have a covered stadium nearby that they can start staging in outside of football season. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Why anyone would willingly subject themselves to this terror mystifies me, but the appropriately named sirens curse new tilt roller coaster at Cedar point has opened to the public. Laura, what did people who got the early preview tell travel writer Susan Glaser about the experience? What was Josh?
Duke’s hilarious reaction posted on social media for all to see and what terrifying thing happened over the weekend on the ride.
Laura (26:18.276)
Right. So this is where a 61 foot long piece of steel track slowly rotates from horizontal to vertical and holds you hanging 160 feet above pavement. It does this for 10 seconds. But what people told Susan was it feels much longer. And you know what feels really long? When you’re stuck there for 10 minutes on opening day, which is what happened to a bunch of riders on Saturday. So this track breaks up, it tilts forward and reconnects to another piece of track.
And what people told Susan on Friday is really ironic because they were saying, if there’s any error, the train will not be released and we’ll go back to the horizontal position. This did not happen on Saturday. Thank God no one was injured. This was created in the Netherlands, put up there. was actually slated for a Six Flags Park in Mexico, but
Cedar Point got it. It has an underground section too, and it’s called Sirens Curse because the idea of the lure of the sirens. But yeah, after seeing this happen on Saturday, I don’t know that I would ever ride it, especially knowing what happened with Top Thrill a couple of years ago when a woman was injured when something fell off the ride. Like, I have no desire to go on this, but Josh Duke is a trooper. He obviously was terrified. There’s a video of him the entire time on the ride. He’s basically trying to recite facts about it as he goes up.
the hill and then once he’s dipping he starts singing Katy Perry’s Firework like it’s going to give him strength and he sings that the rest of the ride other than dropping a couple of his obscenities but like he gets to the end and the best part he says that wasn’t so bad
Chris Quinn (27:57.326)
Yeah, I when I didn’t The when it was called the tilt roller coaster I really didn’t know what they were talking about and when I saw the video I thought my Who would willingly do this? You’re counting on when it flips up for the track to align the way it needs to before it releases you and you are hanging way up there this would be terrifying beyond words, I cannot imagine subjecting myself to it, but
that the people in the video seem to be having a great time.
Laura (28:30.5)
Well, can you imagine being one of those people stuck there on Saturday? I mean, what happens if it doesn’t work?
Chris Quinn (28:36.246)
No.
Chris Quinn (28:41.868)
No, I can’t. can’t imagine. when Josh, when it first tilts, Josh, as he leans forward into the bar that holds you in, he describes how he feels like he’s going to fall out of the thing. And those people were in that position for 10 minutes. Yeah, it wasn’t an inauspicious opening day, but even forget the 10 minutes. The 10 seconds is too long. I couldn’t, I couldn’t imagine it. Courtney, you’re a Sandusky native. Would you do it?
Laura (28:54.488)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (29:10.985)
I can’t wait to try it. I saw it running over the weekend from a distance. I can’t wait to get up there.
Chris Quinn (29:12.302)
the
Laura (29:17.193)
So the fact that it got stuck does not terrify you.
Courtney (29:20.467)
I mean, things happen with coasters. There’s maintenance, they gotta check things, they’ll get the kinks out. I trust Osha, I guess, when Plush comes to shove.
Chris Quinn (29:22.19)
the
Laura (29:29.203)
my god.
Chris Quinn (29:30.542)
All right, we’ll leave it there. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Thanks Courtney. Thanks Lisa. Thanks Laura. Thank you for listening. We’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll be talking some more about the budget once we understand more about what the governor vetoed.