Colorado’s marijuana sales have plummeted. Is that a portent for Ohio? Today in Ohio (2024)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational marijuana sales. But now its sales are crashing, with dispensaries and cultivators shuttering.

We’re talking about whether the trend has any lessons for Ohio, 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.

You can now join the conversation. Call 833-648-6329 (833-OHTODAY) if you’d like to leave a message we can play on the podcast.

Here’s what else we’re asking about today:

We’re days or weeks away from recreational marijuana sales being legal in Ohio, with the promise of new tax revenue for the state’s shrinking coffers. Is a story about the sharp drop in marijuana sales in Colorado an portent of bad news for Ohio?

Cleveland still won’t say that the computer hacking that shut down City Hall Monday and Tuesday is ransomware, in which hackers demand cash to return access to city workers. But it sure looks like ransomware. What has happened with other cities his by ransomware attacks?

Is Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost really standing with some Democrats in a battle before the Ohio Supreme Court? What’s the case, and what’s his reasoning?

The U.S. Justice Department has responded to Jim Jordan’s absurd charged that the feds interfered with Donald Trump’s New York trial, the first to see a U.S. president convicted of felonies. What does it say?

First it was Ohio that saw its tax revenue drop in 2024. Now it’s Cuyahoga County. What has happened to its revenue predictions for the year, and why?

Laura, you’re heading up our newsroom effort in a collaboration with WKYC about youth sports. Your column about youth sports a couple of weeks ago was a talker. What’s the focus of our joint project, and how are you looking to mine our audience for some ideas?

Let’s talk about Mahoning County. We had a special election there Tuesday for a seat in Congress. Who won and who lost, and why was the seat open to begin with?

It’s a rare dark day for the revered and renowned Cuyahoga County Library system. What’s the bad news?

Former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar was fired from his announcing job with the team last year after betting on the team. A new Kosar lawsuit offers his take on how that bet went down, and he wants big bucks from a company that employed him and, he says, forced him to make that bet. What’s the story?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

Chris (00:03.053)

It’s a sad thing for Courtney Astoffi that even though City Hall was closed for two days this week, we didn’t give her the days off. And she’s with us today on Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland .com and the Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin, Laura Johnson, and Courtney, who was on the clock covering the failure of Cleveland City Hall to overcome its hacking.

We’re days or weeks away from the recreational marijuana sales being legal in Ohio with the promise of new tax revenue for the state’s now shrinking coffers. Lisa is a story about the sharp drop in marijuana sales in Colorado, a portent of bad news for Ohio.

Lisa (00:43.778)

I really don’t think so because it’s kind of apples to oranges. First of all, Colorado was the very first state to legalize recreational marijuana and they had no competition from neighboring states until just recently. So, but what happened and there was a story in Politico, excuse me, that the Colorado pot market is crashing. Cultivators and dispensaries are closing. Sales dropped by $700 million to $1 .5 billion in 2023.

tax revenues are down 30 % from 2022, but industry experts say that high tax rates in Colorado, because they have a 15 % tax plus a tax on cultivators at 15 % plus local taxes. And then there was a post pandemic oversupply. And then there are these sales of the Delta 8 THC products that seem to be eating into the marijuana sales. So this all resulted in a reduction in forests and closed shops in Colorado.

And also Colorado didn’t cap the number of licenses. Here in Ohio, we’re gonna have about 250 to 300 dispensary. There’s a cap there. There are caps on cultivation, processing and testing facilities. So again, an apples to oranges comparison. If we look at our neighbor where a lot of Ohioans are driving for marijuana, Michigan has no caps on dispensary licenses. They’ve awarded 770 since 2020.

and 150 of those have closed already. That’s about a 19 % fail rate. The reason they didn’t cap licenses, they said they wanted the free market to decide who wins and who loses.

Chris (02:19.981)

I this was so predictable for Colorado, as you said, because they were first they owned the entire market. So people came from all over the place to get their weed there. And as more and more states started selling weed to get their piece of the pie, clearly Colorado was going to drop. It does seem like with what Ohio is doing to limit the number of dispensaries, it might avoid what you’re seeing in

places like Colorado with the openings and the closings and the changeover. It’ll be interesting to watch what happens in Michigan, which is Wild West. There’s no limit on dispensaries as Ohio comes online because a lot of Ohioans clearly are going to Michigan to get marijuana now. Will they have a retrenchment once they lose that Ohio market? But with Ohio limiting the number, we ought to be fairly healthy for the long term. And we were never going to get.

Lisa (02:54.722)

Mm -hmm.

Chris (03:16.109)

Colorado numbers, we just, the goal is to get our piece of the pie. So for Ohio users, the taxes they pay will stay in Ohio.

Lisa (03:17.602)

Right.

Lisa (03:25.378)

And we got a report from the Ohio State University Drug Enforcement and Policy Center, and they say it’s going to follow a typical gauntlet. So it’s going to, tax revenues will climb very fast when they start to open, then they’ll plateau, and then they will drop, similar to Colorado and Washington. And then the novelty factor of having recreational marijuana in Ohio will probably wear off in about a year. But supply by that time should be meeting demand, and then prices should drop.

Chris (03:55.341)

Yeah, it’s an interesting story and we did it because our readers cannot get enough news about marijuana. But I think the way Laura Hanco*ck laid this out, it’s not an alarm bell for Ohio. Ohio has gone about this in a pretty organized fashion. We should say, of course, that the reason it’s an organized fashion is because the voters did it, not the lawmakers. This was a ballot issue that legalized marijuana and the voters knew what they were doing.

Lisa (04:01.474)

Ha ha ha.

Chris (04:25.613)

You’re listening to Today in Ohio. All right, Courtney, Cleveland still won’t say that the computer hacking that shut down City Hall Monday and Tuesday is ransomware in which hackers demand cash to return access to city workers, usually in not in regular cash form. But it sure looks like ransomware. What has happened with other cities that have been hit by this kind of ransomware attack that we suspect here?

courtney (04:52.814)

Like you said, the mayor and city officials here aren’t saying what this is and whether it’s ransomware or not, but ransomware is happening in lots of cities, lots of businesses, lots of other public institutions, just at an increasing clip in recent years. And, you know, I talked to experts, I kind of wanted to look at the case studies of what we’ve seen happen in other cities when this occurs in case this is indeed what is happening in Cleveland.

And it’s really turned into a big problem. The costs associated with it have really just skyrocketed in recent years. And hackers know that they can get money out of it. They want a lucrative business. They’re not going to do these things if they don’t see a chance to walk away with a profit on their end. So that’s really kind of the motivation of those who are doing the hacking and doing these ransomware attacks on cities and other organizations.

And how it works is they’ll get into a system somehow, some kind of entry point, don’t know what or how that could have happened here if this is indeed the case in Cleveland. But they get in there and then they encrypt the whole system up or multiple systems. And then they want money in exchange for a key that they’d give so that the city could go in and unlock everything that had been taken away from them. And what we’re learning about these ransoms, like I said,

Again, the number has really shot up in recent years. Just a few years ago, the average ransom asks, it was just a very small sliver of these asks exceeded $5 million. Now in 2024, according to some research, I found that that $5 million floor, that’s the case in like a third of these hacking cases. So the dollar figure that these folks are asking is just really, really grown.

But the interesting dynamics at play with this is, you know, basically cities and other organizations who face ransomware attacks have a choice. They can either pay up and hopefully get their data back and everything’s good to go again. Or they can say, no, we’re not paying your ransom hackers. We’ve got clean backups. We’re going to go through and restore the system ourselves. But it’s worth noting that the cost to restore the system yourself.

courtney (07:15.438)

Those costs are extremely expensive. There’s one example, a big one from Baltimore back in 2019 and recovery costs there. That city refused to pay up to the hackers when they were asking for only 76 grand back at that time. But the recovery process in Baltimore ended up costing the city $18 million. So these are business decisions, money, if this is a ransomware attack in Cleveland.

taxpayers are probably going to be feeling the burn either direction this goes.

Chris (07:48.653)

The idea that it costs many millions of dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars in Baltimore is a shocker. And I do think that this is a case where some cities decide the ends justify the means, that even though we on principle don’t want to pay ransom seeking bad guys, that it’s not fair to taxpayers to spend millions and millions. I know the feds...

argue to the cities that they shouldn’t pay. But my feeling on that is if the feds were telling Baltimore not to pay and it went from 60 some thousand dollars to 18 million, the feds should pay him the 18 million because that’s a lot of money to pay for a principal. And you do see corporations and others looking at the end and saying, look, paying just makes more sense.

courtney (08:42.126)

Yeah, paying the hackers has increased in frequency as these attacks have grown over the last five or six years. People do see fit to pay in certain circ*mstances here. And like you said, the FBI advises places not to pay, but we’re going to have to see what happens. There’s another money factor at play here in that some cities have cybersecurity insurance and that’ll cover some of their losses here. In Baltimore,

their tab for recovery without paying the hackers, like I said, $18 million. They didn’t have a cybersecurity policy to offset any of that. So that 18 mil came directly from taxpayers there. So, you know, other places like New Orleans had cybersecurity insurance that that would hopefully cover some of their $5 million recovery tab. And that happened back in 2019. So as I was looking through this, I reached out to City Hall, it’s like,

Okay, does Cleveland have cybersecurity insurance? And, you know, the short answer is no. Cleveland self insurers for its healthcare costs, most of its insurance costs. And so if we do have to pay to recover here, if that is what’s happening, it’s going to be borne by the general fund and taxpayers is the bottom line.

Chris (09:57.005)

Yeah, but that’s always the problem with Cleveland. They’re self -insured. They don’t spend money on insurance figuring that it’s easier to weather the storm. I wonder how much money they’ve saved over the years doing that.

courtney (10:07.278)

Yeah, that’s a good question and we know they’ve got money in reserves for you know rainy day. We’re gonna have to see what the final price tag is here if it is any kind of situation like this there’s going to be money in one direction or another.

Chris (10:20.909)

Yeah, they won’t be able to keep it secret. That’s the public records law in Ohio and in Cleveland. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Is Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost really standing with some Democrats in a battle before the Ohio Supreme Court? Laura, what’s this case and what is his reasoning?

laura (10:38.215)

Yep, strange bedfellows here. So Yost is trying to get involved in a case with the Supreme Court that could have these wide ranging implications for how courts handle the future challenges to new state laws. Basically, Yost wants this to get settled faster. And he’s arguing with the Democrats on this side in a friend of the court brief because he thinks you should be able to challenge a judge’s temporary order immediately rather than letting this drag out for months or more than a year.

So he’s talking about the Columbus gun control ordinance, which has been blocked for more than a year. And he says it’s similar to how the Democratic judge in Cincinnati blocked the state’s six -week heartbeat abortion ban from taking effect indefinitely after that Roe versus Wade case in 2022. So he doesn’t think we should be in limbo for months or years. He says we should be able to appeal decisions immediately, take them to a higher court, and get them settled so that we’re not waiting for the entire court case to play out.

and stuck with not knowing what the end result, the law, taking effect.

Chris (11:41.933)

Yeah, I wonder what his ulterior motive is. He seems to be saying he’s standing on principle, but what does he gain if he’s successful in this venture?

laura (11:54.919)

That’s a good question because I feel like we talk a lot about Yoast wanting to run for governor and a lot of dog whistle things he’s done lately to try to court future voters. So I don’t know if he is standing on principle and just saying, I think this is ridiculous that we have to wait and see for a law to go into effect or if he thinks there’s some kind of political prize to be won here.

Chris (12:21.133)

All right. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Lisa, the U .S. Justice Department has responded to Jim Jordan’s absurd charge that the feds interfered with Donald Trump’s New York trial, the first to see a U .S. president convicted of felonies. What does it say?

Lisa (12:29.762)

Thank you.

Lisa (12:38.754)

Yeah, Jim Jordan has been repeating these claims that the government is weaponizing the justice system against Donald Trump, including at last week’s contentious House Judiciary Committee meeting that he chairs with, and then, you know, they went after Attorney General Merrick Garland. Assistant U .S. Attorney General Carlos Uriarte sent a letter to Jordan and said the Department of Justice did a search of all their emails and found no communication between them and the New York City District Attorney’s Office.

They searched emails from the date of Biden’s inauguration all the way up to Trump’s conviction last week and 34 counts in that hush money case. A former DOJ official, Michael Colangelo, who worked the case with prosecutors, there was no communication with the DA’s office while he was at the Department of Justice. And in the letter, Uriarte says the department doesn’t usually make extensive efforts to rebut what they call conspiratorial.

conspiratorial speculation, but the attorney general’s office took the steps to confirm that there is no basis for these false claims, as Garland said at last week’s meeting.

Chris (13:46.317)

This one was preposterous from the start, but the news is out today that once Donald Trump’s sentencing is over, the prosecutor in the case will be before Jim Jordan and his committee to answer questions. I don’t think that’s going to go quite the way Jordan expects. I’m sure he’ll say all sorts of ridiculous things, but the prosecutor is not some wilting violet. I think he’s going to come right back in Jordan’s face and talk to him about interfering with

the judicial branch. This is a separation of powers issue. There’s the executive, the legislative, the judicial. This is the judicial. Jim Jordan has no business trying to interfere with the criminal prosecution. It’s completely uncalled for. It’ll be fascinating to see the fireworks that develop there.

Lisa (14:33.154)

It all kind of smacks of desperation, doesn’t it?

Chris (14:36.557)

Yeah, he’s a cartoon character and people across the country look at Ohio as a laughing stock because he’s our guy. I mean, we constantly are in the national news because of people like him and JD Vance. And it used to be we were in the national news for John Glenn and George Voynovich. What a sorry state of affairs that that’s where we ended up. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. First, it was Ohio that saw its tax revenue drop.

in 2024. Now it is Cuyahoga County. Courtney, what has happened to reverse the revenue predictions for this year and why?

courtney (15:12.462)

Yeah, these these sales tax revenues are just they’re down and it’s helping to throw this year’s budget out of whack. The county’s projecting a $16 million deficit at year’s end. And two big pieces of that puzzle is underperforming sales tax receipts, as you said, and overspending in the sheriff’s office and elsewhere in the county. So on the sales tax side, it looks like we’re going to be about $10 million short at year’s end from what they were expecting. And

Part of this is potentially on the county side. They usually anticipate a 2 % increase in sales tax collections every year, but this year they plan for a 4 % increase. So you know, maybe they were a little too rosy, you know, rose colored glasses on what they were expecting to bring in, but their spending plan is premised on those higher numbers. So, you know, and then at the same time, we also have a Sheriff’s Department that’s over budget on its spending.

Lisa (16:01.794)

their spending plan is friends’ spending, not your numbers. So, you know, and then at the same time, we also have a sheriff’s department that’s over budget on spending. A big piece of that is overtime in the jail, which we know continues to deal with staffing issues, so they need overtime to cover that gap. It’s looking like that’s gonna run over budget by 13 million, so right there you kind of have the plus and minus. But, you know, council members told us.

courtney (16:11.182)

A big piece of that is overtime in the jail, which we know continues to deal with staffing issues. So they need overtime to cover that gap. It’s looking like that’s going to run over budget by 13 million. So right there, you kind of have the plus and minus, but you know, council members told us that they’re kind of looking at some roads from some of the spending from County executive Chris Ronane is potentially some of the problem here. They’ve noticed that his spending.

Lisa (16:29.89)

They’re kind of looking at some room from.

Thank you.

courtney (16:39.822)

amongst his executive staff, the communication staff, sustainability office and the regional collaboration office, that those have gone up. And so they’re kind of eyeing that as part of the problem here overspending by the new ish executive. So we’re going to have to see what the county does. They may have to dip in their savings account to balance this year’s budget. You know, we’re going to have to see. We did hear that from the county spokeswoman that they’re considering.

potentially identifying opportunities for savings in personnel and capital expenditures. And we know the county has a giant capital tab that’s coming. So we’re going to have to see how they get out of this, but not, not a huge amount of money I’d say yet at this point.

Chris (17:24.845)

Make no mistake, they’re responsible for squandering more than $100 million. They put $50 million into the old Med Mart to make it part of the convention center, a complete luxury, not necessary. And they spent $66 million on slush funds so they could go back to their voters and say, look what I gave you, little pieces of candy. That’s more than $100 million that they flushed down the toilet when this was clearly going to be on the horizon.

Pointing the fingers at Chris Ronane’s cabinet is a complete red herring here. They are the ones that squandered the money. What about the million dollar contract at the jail that we talked about too? I mean, we’ve seen the county be hugely irresponsible with the taxpayers’ money and now everybody’s pointing fingers. They need to point them at themselves. It’s a failed government. This whole new form of government is just a failure in every way you can count.

You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Laurie, you’re heading up our newsroom effort in a collaboration with WKYC about youth sports. Your recent column about youth sports a couple weeks ago was a talker. What’s the focus of this joint project and how are you looking to mine our audience for some ideas?

laura (18:42.279)

So this project is called How to Win at Youth Sports Without Going Broke or Breaking Down, because we want to answer parents’ questions and give you the best information you can for your family. So we want this to be very user -friendly and kind of a how -to guide, guided by what our readers want to know. So we want to know your questions so we can answer them from the experts. A tip of the hat to sports editor Dave Campbell for coming up with the name. And basically, we want to help you navigate. This is...

aimed at mid -August after the Olympics before high school sports, so it’ll be a very sporty end of summer for us. We’re going to coordinate coverage with WKYC. So we won’t have the same stories, but we’re going to focus on the same issues, namely physical health, the emotional toll, and money, because this is a $38 billion annual business. And I think that’s where a lot of the problems come in when you’re talking about kids that are overextended. You have

crazy amounts of time being spent on this travel tournaments just every weekend. And that’s where it started for me. This column I was complaining in the newsroom about Memorial Day and Mother’s Day and why my kids had tournaments that took precedence for that. I mean, they’re 11 and 13. They’re not all stars. They’re great players. I love watching them compete. But it just seemed very silly to me that in this prime of our family life, we were devoting so much time, energy.

gas money, whatever, to sports. And I’ve gotten a huge response from people. I actually have not yet gotten one of those emails that tells me to go home and cry in my soup or whatever, because people have been saying, yes, we need to address this. We’ve gotten professional sports executives, trainers from schools, all sorts of parents and grandparents saying, this is a good thing to be looking at.

Chris (20:35.725)

And how do you want people to contact you if they have ideas?

laura (20:38.851)

Yeah, you can email me at ljonston at cleveland .com. There’s a T in that. So L -J -O -H -N -S -T -O -N at cleveland .com. And I’m flagging those messages and sharing them with our team and with the WKYC team so we can hopefully get you the information you want. I mean, I know I still have questions about from injuries to does my kid need to play club in order to make a high school team. So lots of interest.

Chris (21:06.509)

Lots to look forward to there. WKYC plans to propone this during its coverage of the Olympics, so there’ll be a lot of talk about it.

laura (21:13.767)

Yeah, I was on the 5 o ‘clock newscast last night, which was a little nerve wracking, but they were very nice and they’re very excited.

Chris (21:21.165)

Yeah, because you’re such a shrinking violet. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Let’s talk about Mahoning County, where we actually have a fairly strong audience and they’re always grateful that we spent some time on what’s going on there. We had a special election Tuesday for a seat in Congress where Republicans hold a razor thin majority. Lisa, who won, who lost, and why was the seat open to begin with?

Lisa (21:23.426)

I know, that was the first time I’ve ever...

laura (21:23.559)

I’ve not been, that was the first time I’ve ever done live network TV.

Lisa (21:27.618)

I’m going to go ahead and close the video.

Lisa (21:50.434)

Yeah, the sixth congressional district seat was vacant after Bill Johnson left to become president of Youngstown State University. And so this district goes from Youngstown south along the Pennsylvania -West Virginia border all the way down to Marietta. It kind of follows the Ohio River. So state Senator Michael Ruley, the Republican from Hone and County, won handily in this election. It’s a

very heavily Republican district. Trump won that district by 29 points back in 2020. Michael Ruley is, he owns a Youngstown area grocery business. He’s an executive there. His Democratic challenger is Michael Kripchak. He’s a first time candidate. He’s a U .S. Air Force vet. His most recent job was as a prep cook in a Youngstown restaurant.

So this is only until November. There will be another election in November to fill the seat for the next two -year term. So Rulie and Kryptchak will be facing off again in this election. And this win by Rulie gives the Republicans 219 seats in the House to the Democrats 213. So they just increased their razor thin majority by one and there are still three vacant seats in the House.

Chris (23:09.741)

Nobody expected this would go a different way, even though as Laura remembers, there’s some controversy about Mr. Ruley.

laura (23:18.983)

Yes. So if you remember, we talked about this at length. It was a Jake Duckerman story about how Rooley, who is currently a Republican state senator, spotted two teenagers he thought were on his Columbiana County property before dawn, grabbed his pistol and fired. And so they came back that evening, the 16 -year -old with three family members, to retrieve their tree stands because they were hunting. They said they weren’t safe.

And then at that point, the senator’s wife started shooting and no one was hurt, thankfully, but there was this bitter dispute about it. And the idea was, is this a reasonable action? And a prosecutor declined to bring charges, said that the actions were reasonable.

Chris (24:02.381)

It’s also a heavily gerrymandered district, so there really was no way he wasn’t going to win the seat. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. It’s a rare dark day for the revered and renowned Cuyahoga County Library System. Courtney, what’s the bad news?

courtney (24:17.902)

Yeah, well, it seems like a strike could be coming and it seems that the library and the union that represents librarians, clerks and a total of 485 library workers, they haven’t been able to arrive at a deal that the workers think is fair. So they’re considering a strike now and an impasse has been declared, a mediation team has been brought in and we’ll see what’s going on. This is SEIU 1199 and their contract expired in March.

Negotiations started two months before that, and there’s still several sticking points here, mostly around wages. The workers will get to vote on whether they go on a strike next weekend, the weekend of June 20th. And if they vote yes, the soonest a strike could happen would be in July. The library’s already planning for a potential strike, and while some locations could remain open, most of the 27 branches, or at least many of them, would close down.

Chris (25:12.237)

This is so discordant. You think of the library as your happy place. It’s always a source of good news. It wins all sorts of national awards because it’s so groundbreaking in the way it goes. And now you have this conflict. It would, I think, infuriate people if the libraries are closed because of this, partly because we’ve in large numbers approved taxes for the libraries in our area. And...

I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see whether the fury is directed at the library management or at the library workers. We haven’t really taken a close look at whether they’re paid well or not.

courtney (25:52.622)

Yeah, I’m curious here also. I mean, of course you got to remember the pandemic when libraries were our lifeline and our heroes for those first months, you know, and it was the workers that were doing that. So I wonder how that’s impacting things, but at least on the union side of things here, they’re looking at more, they want more money, you know, inflation’s gone up. They say that their wages have not kept pace and they need to be fairly and competent compensated. The union wants to get.

a 7 .25 % raise the first year, followed by a 4 % raise the second year and a 3 .75 % raise in their third year. But the library, they seem way apart here. The library is offering a 4 % in the first year followed by two, three percents. So there’s a lot of daylight between how much money they want to pay them and how much the workers think they’re worth. I’m curious to see how this gets resolved. It seems like there’s a big gap between which each side is advocating for.

Chris (26:51.469)

I wonder if there’s a way they’d be able to keep their online services running while the buildings themselves might be closed like they did during the pandemic. Hopefully they’ll avoid the strike altogether and keep all of their happy patrons happy. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar was fired from his announcing job with the team last year after betting on the team. That’s a huge no -no in the NFL.

A new CoSAR lawsuit though offers his take on how that bet went down and he wants big bucks from a company that employed him and he says forced him to make the bet. Laura, what’s the story?

laura (27:32.679)

Well, obviously, Kozar is a beloved figure in Cleveland. So this is a big story. And the podcast company that he’s suing is Big Play Media. He’s asking for $850 ‚000 in actual damages, at least $25 ,000 in attorneys fee, and an unspecified amount of punitive damage. And what he says is that the CEO of that company, Kendall Miles, violated his podcasting contract and verbally threatened him.

during a recording session at Berk Lakefront Airport in September. So he said that Kozar reached out to Big Play multiple times to schedule public appearances during the off season. No one got back to him. And then they tried to force him to attend at events during the NFL season, which he says is against their agreement. And Kozar refused in part because he’s this analyst on the Browns pregame radio show. The lawsuit said the CEO threatened to hit him.

that he screamed, I own you, and he spit on his face. But what we’re really talking about is this bet. So I guess his contract included placing a bet using sports betting platform that partnered with Big Play at this event at the cusp of it turning legal on New Year’s Eve into 2023. So the agreement said he wouldn’t be liable or responsible for the wager or anything about it. But then they were tell he

telling Kozar he had to personally place a wager of $19 ‚000 on the Browns to beat the Steelers in the final game of the regular season the following weekend. And Kozar was number 19. Kozar said he did the bet and a show of goodwill. But obviously, that is a huge problem in sports gambling. There are rules there for a reason. And so that ended his job with the Browns.

Chris (29:20.269)

Yeah, I don’t really have sympathy for him here. All the other stuff he talked about being mistreated. Okay, fine. Sue him over that. But when they said make the bet and he makes the bet, he knows he’s breaking the rules. I mean, it’d be like having a no drug policy, right? And somebody says, take the drugs. You don’t take the drugs. You’re going to lose your job. It’s pretty clear that the minute he makes that bet, the Browns have no choice but to part ways with him.

And to say, well, they made me do it, that’s just not going to carry much water. He had a choice in the end. He could have said, no, I work for the Browns. I can’t do that. And he didn’t.

laura (29:57.895)

I wonder if he didn’t understand what he was being asked to do. Not that that’s an excuse, but I can’t imagine that you’re like, yes, and I understand all the implications of my decision here and I’m going to do it anyway.

Lisa (29:59.586)

I agree with that, yeah. I think he was railroaded.

Chris (30:00.909)

Chris (30:12.397)

on it’s $19 ‚000 of his own money that he bets. If you’re not paying attention to the little voices in your ear saying, whoa, stop, stop, you got a problem. We have to be accountable for our actions. And he crossed the line that you don’t cross, not if you want to be employed by an NFL team. It’s sad because

laura (30:14.247)

Yeah.

Lisa (30:31.81)

But they’re not blameless here though. I mean, you know, they said, hey, make this bet. I mean, so, you know, they shouldn’t have even brought it up knowing it was illegal.

laura (30:32.231)

Well.

Chris (30:41.901)

They shouldn’t have, but he did it in the end and he’s the guy that had everything to lose. I mean, look, we’ve all, we’ve all been employed. If somebody told you to do something that you knew would cost you your job, you wouldn’t do it. You’d say, well, no, no, I’m not doing that. I, you know, that, that goes against the rules of my employment. Interesting lawsuit. I, you know, probably get settled is what I expect and we’ll never know any more details, but it was interesting to get a view into that controversial move.

that deprived Browns fans of like Laura said a beloved figure broadcasting the games. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. That’s it for Wednesday. Thanks Lisa. Thanks Courtney. Thanks Laura. Thanks everybody who listens each day to this podcast. We’ll be back on Thursday.