Max Miller

CLEVELAND, Ohio - U.S. Rep. Max Miller canceled a rally at Mapleside Farms, claiming security threats. But police say they know of zero threats.

We’re talking about Miller’s continued campaign decisions on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editorial board member Lisa Garvin, trends editor Courtney Astolfi 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:

Max Miller and his team have done it again, done something stupid to thrust the Congressman’s embattled status back into the news. This time, it’s the explanation they offered for canceling a campaign event. What happened?

Max Miller’s inexplicable work to keep his troubles in front of the voters has energized Democrats, who now feel confident they can flip his seat. What’s the biggest sign of that confidence?

Writer Michael Johnston made the case pretty simply. Why are the Ohio subsidies to data centers so unfair to taxpayers?

We’ve talked about the unfair laws in Ohio that let cities hold landlords responsible for tenants who are scofflaws on city utilities. A bill to change that has been hotly debated. Where does it stand now?

We have so many places in Ohio for addicts to recover that Gov. Mike DeWine wants to change how they are regulated. How, and why?

The national news Tuesday was that July set the all time US temperature record. Did Greater Cleveland contribute to it?

The water line replacement in Orange and Solon that resulted in three – count them three! – gas line ruptures is set to start again. Should people out that way be confident their neighborhood is not about to explode?

The City of Cleveland adopted a community benefits agreement years ago, to make sure that businesses that get city contracts invest some of the money back into the city. How is Cuyahoga County copying that?

A downtown Cleveland hotel worker has earned a prestigious designation in a field that is dwindling. What does he do, where does he do it, and why is the demand for his services waning?

More Today in Ohio

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Chris (00:00.768)

Is Max Miller ever going to figure out that he needs to pipe down and get his name out of the public sphere? Because things are not going well for him. The first two stories on our agenda today in Ohio, the news discussion podcast from Cleveland.com and The Plane Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here today with Laura Johnston, Lisa Garvin, and Courtney Astaffe. Laura, Max Miller and his team have done it again. Something so stupid that thrust the congressman’s in battle status.

Back into the news. This time it’s the explanation offered for canceling a campaign style event. What happened?

Laura (00:37.453)

Well, the campaign blames security threats with a rather overblown statement about them. But the police in charge of keeping those safe knew nothing about them. So he was scheduled to appear with fellow Republican Anna Paulina Luna of Florida at Mapleside Farms, which Clevelanders know is a apple picking pumpkin spot, very popular in the fall, and Vent venue in Brunswick. They were supposed to promote the Federal Save Act. That requires Americans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

And a photo ID when casting a ballot. There’s a lot of concern about what that would do with married women and their last names. But so this campaign put out the statement, said there were threats received that made the gathering untenable. And the quote is: let that sink in. The United States of America threats and intimidation have succeeded in shutting down a peaceful political gathering focused on the election t integrity and ensuring that only American citizens vote. But as far as Brunswick police and the sheriff,

No, from Medina County, there were no threats.

Chris (01:39.074)

Yeah, that that’s the preposterous part of this. Look, he’s persona non grata. Mapleside Farms probably doesn’t want his brand there because they appeal across the spectrum and he’s polarizing now. So just cancel the event. Don’t explain it. But to come out and make it sound like you’re some victim of of hate and threats when there’s nothing to show that, it’s it’s reprehensible. And if they claim, well, we got them, but we didn’t report them to police.

Then I’m not taking that seriously. If you get serious threats, you report it to police. So I’m calling this a flat out lie. And Miller has done it again. Something idiotic that has people all looking at him saying, What’s wrong with you? It gets back to judgment. You know, apart from the abuse, apart from his daughter, apart from everything else, this guy has the worst possible judgment I’ve ever heard of. I mean, everything he decides is bad.

Should he really be one of the people determining the fate of this country?

Laura (02:41.281)

Right. And it’s almost like they tried to turn these threats into a pump up Miller statement, right? That like he’s under attack for his pursuit of integrity for elections. Like what? I mean, it’s just complete fallacy. It’s just made up.

Chris (02:53.674)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, what a disaster. This is just proving to be one of the most disastrous collapses of a congressional campaign I’ve ever seen. It’s bizarre. They didn’t have to do it. Every step from suing his wife, ex-wife for defamation, which really launched this into the stratosphere, every step it’s a proactive decision on his part that dooms him. When does he just do the opposite? Whatever your instinct tells you, do the opposite, you’ll be way ahead.

You’re listening to today in Ohio. Miller’s inexplicable work to keep his troubles in front of the voters has energized Democrats who now feel confident they can flip his seat. Lisa, what’s the biggest sign of that confidence?

Lisa (03:41.542)

Yeah, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has and it added Miller’s opponent, Democrat Brian Poindexter, to its Red to Blue program. So they’re hoping to flip the seventh Ohio Congressional District seat. So this red to boot blue program provides organizational and financial support, staff resources, and candidate training.

Poindexter is a union or a rather an iron worker and he’s a Brooke Park councilman. He says that the DCCC support is proof of his campaign’s success. Now, the DCC chair, representative Susan Del Benny says Brian is a fighter that Ohio needs to lower costs, stand up for workers, and deliver real results. And she blasted Miller for lending himself

A hundred one million dollars for his campaign and pledging to lend another one million to his campaign, saying that he’s buying his way into power. Now, the National Republican Congressional Committee says Poindexter backs radical far left policies out of touch with his district, and he will be rejected by Ohioans this fall. Now we did contact the Miller campaign for comment. We’re still waiting to hear back. Now there was a survey done by a Republican-leaning group that of six hundred and fifteen voters.

it was done on the fifth and sixth of this month, found that Poindexter leads Miller forty-seven percent to thirty-three percent, and Miller’s unfavorable rating is up by sixteen points to fifty-seven percent.

Chris (05:07.918)

Like this is Poindexter’s to lose. And now he’s got basically three months to get it together and run a smart campaign. He’s been eclipsed by all of the publicity about Miller, which has now vaulted him forward as a possible winner. But it’s time to get out and get the voters to see why he’s a good guy, why he’d make a good candidate. I don’t think he’s had much chance to do that yet. The one thing that strikes me about this is

Ed Fitzgerald’s gotta be kicking himself because if he had won that primary over Poindexter, he would have probably sailed into Congress, but he didn’t run a good campaign and Poindexter clobbered him.

Lisa (05:44.71)

Ha ha ha.

And we liked Poindexter. I mean, you know, we did the endorsement interview. We did not endorse him. We actually endorsed Michael Eisner, but we were impressed by Poindexter.

Chris (05:56.546)

It’s the it’s a open road. Nobody expected this. The the odds were until Max Miller started melting down day by day by day that he would sail into a reelection. It might be closer than he would have liked. But now it’s Poindexter. So Poindexter has got to make his name known. What does he stand for? Who is he? I do think it helps that he’s a card carrying union member. I think that’ll help with some some voters to have swung red in recent years in Ohio. but we’ll have to see.

You’re listening to today in Ohio. Writer Michael Johnson made the case pretty simply. Why are the Ohio subsidies to data centers so unfair to taxpayers? Courtney.

Courtney (06:38.365)

Well, Ohio’s data center tax break can end up being huge, but the number of jobs those tax breaks correspond to can be really small. So to qualify for Ohio sales tax exemption, a data center generally has to invest at least a hundred million in the project and also maintain at least one point five million in annual payroll by the third year of the agreement with the state. But there is no minimum number of jobs written into law.

So Michael gives us what that payroll figure means in practical terms of actual jobs on the ground. We could just be looking at 10 to 30 positions here. If you’re looking at average salaries of, say, $50,000, that would pencil out to about 30 workers if you’re just hitting that state minimum of a million and a half in payroll. Say your folks earn a little less than 50,000. Maybe you bump the number of workers up a tad beyond 30.

But if you’re earning more substantial salaries on average at these places, say a hundred thousand, you’re just looking at fifteen measly jobs there. And if you’re looking at the higher, even higher paid end, say 150, you’re just talking 10 jobs. So that really puts that trade off in into a a sharp perspective here. You’re getting lots of money in tax breaks, and you’re only creating a couple dozen jobs.

Chris (08:01.132)

I was so struck by this. And Estaver has done terrific work on data centers for for months and months and months now. but and in reading this story by Michael, I just sat back and thought, what we haven’t done is collectively looked at the massive transfer of taxpayer wealth to the wealthy in Ohio. This has been a billion dollar plus gift to wealthy tech companies.

The the the school vouchers has been a billion dollar plus mostly gift to the wealthy. The income tax cuts that were worth more than a billion dollars have been a gift to the wealthy. We the the the Republican legislature, Mike DeWine, John Houston, have bent on a longstanding quest to take the public money and put it into the pockets of the wealthy, and we haven’t added it all up.

This is reprehensible betrayal of the public, what they did here. These tech companies are giving us nothing. They’re taking us to the to the brink of unaffordable electricity because our bills have gone up. And yet we’ve given them billions of dollars of our tax dollars secretly. Until Anastaver got the records, nobody knew just how much we had given to these wealthy companies. And you know in the background there’s gotta be corruption.

The federal government doesn’t investigate corruption now because Donald Trump’s in charge and there’s nobody more corrupt than him. But you know that that transfer of wealth carried kickbacks. There are people in Columbus that got wealthy off of this and we’ll eventually find out about it. We just need to calculate this because if you put that money back in the hands of taxpayers, they’d be much better off.

Courtney (09:46.291)

Chris, you know, talking about how much we’ve just doled out to to the data center folks in the last couple years, you know, on the flip side of that, we can’t even like perfectly discern how much we’re giving away in our tax dollars for every job created because the public still cannot see exactly how much money each company saves on taxes amidst these individual deals. We know the sum total. Last year it costs

one point six billion dollars in foregone state revenue. And that was triple over the year before. But if you can’t see those numbers for each deal, you you can’t quite see how poor of a value Ohio’s taxpayers are getting here, even if we have the outlines to know taxpayers are getting a really bad deal. Like one of the Microsoft projects in New Albany, Heath, and Hebr Hebron, that’s twenty jobs there.

We don’t know exactly the value of the state money on the tax breaks they’re getting, but twenty jobs we know that doesn’t pencil out to be a good deal for the tax break.

Chris (10:48.802)

And the people that live in the areas where these data centers are being built are the ones that keep voting for the Republican legislators that are sticking it to them every day. I I would hope that the anger we sense across Ohio that people go to the polls and just vote them out. It doesn’t matter what party you’re in, they are doing a disservice at at a staggering degree, staggering scale. Get rid of them. Just knock them out so that we can at least hit the reset button.

Because if they all get back in, they’ll continue this trend of taking our precious tax dollars and giving it to rich people.

Lisa (11:25.69)

But you know what I wonder? Are they committed to hiring local people from the surrounding community? Are those people even, you know, skilled enough for those jobs?

Chris (11:34.44)

I I don’t know. I I just this is mind boggling because we get nothing for it. So that’s why I think there have to be kickbacks and bribery. And eventually we’ll have a Justice Department that w knows what its job is again. It will no longer be carrying out a a lunatic president’s vendettas. They’ll get back to prosecuting criminals. And the people that have taken the kickbacks, I suspect we will get them caught.

Courtney (12:00.877)

You talk about accountability at the ballot box here, Chris. Lawmakers really could have a ru have a role here. They could raise that pay hole payroll threshold. They could require a minimum number of jobs. There are things that could be done in Columbus that just aren’t getting done.

Chris (12:17.9)

No, ‘cause I think they’re all in the pocket of wealthy people who give them money. You’re listening to today in Ohio. We’ve talked about the unfair laws in Ohio that let cities hold landlords responsible for tenants who are scoff laws on water bills and other city utilities. A bill to change that has been hotly debated. Laura, where does it stand today?

Laura (12:40.939)

It has been winnowed down, but it is at the core, it still protects the landlords from the utility bills. And so this was passed by the House earlier this year and make it harder for those municipalities to hold the landlords responsible for any outstanding water and sewer charges. And it would protect new occupants from being denied the utility service because of the former residence debt who were lived in the same place. So these is this is still happening, but the

Critics of this say this is gonna pass on costs to customers through higher rates because nobody’s gonna be held responsible. Originally this law attempted to rewrite big portions of the mut municipal utility collection system. It doesn’t do that anymore.

Chris (13:26.124)

We’ve said all along that this is unfair, that the cities are taking the cheap way out by holding landlords responsible when they have nothing to do with it. Their the the relationship is with the person who signs up for water. So I’ve I’ve never thought this was fair and I’m glad that it’s being fixed. The city’s responses to this have been, this is gonna make it harder for us. It’s like

Laura (13:36.569)

Mm-hmm.

Laura (13:51.267)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (13:51.856)

well, that doesn’t mean you should stick it to innocent people who have nothing to do with it. It’s just been unfair from the start. And the the cities say, well, it’s home rule. It home rule doesn’t give you the right to be abusive. That this the right thing to do is set up a system where you go after the actual scoff law. They’re the ones that aren’t paying the bills.

Laura (14:11.876)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, people who support this law say you municipalities should pursue the customer responsible forever, you know, whichever way. There’s a lot of ways to get debt collected from people. Or c disconnect the service when you’re at a relatively small unpaid balance, not a four or five figure debt. Don’t just let this keep growing and growing into a massive problem that then somebody has a bill to pay that you can’t find to pay it.

Chris (14:38.786)

Th this would be like letting credit card companies go after Macy’s if I don’t pay my credit card bill after having bought something at Macy’s. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not right and th they should fix it and the city should stop this ‘cause what they’re trying to do is wrong. I’m I’m glad Karan is paying attention to this. He’s done a few stories on it. Hope

Laura (15:00.097)

Yeah. And I I feel like there’s probably a further back we could go with it, right? Like why are these people not paying their bills? Are they just scofflaws who are skipping town? Or are they people that cannot choose, you know, have a difficult time choosing between their electricity or putting food on the table, right? Like there’s a root cause of this that needs to be addressed rather than sticking it to anybody providing the service or just happen to house the people.

Chris (15:26.168)

Well, let’s face it, the landlords are probably in the lurch too. If you have a scuffle on your water bill, they probably stop paying their rent and they probably have not taken good care of the rental property to begin with. So they leave. The landlord probably has to invest cash in fixing the place back up and they’re out whatever they didn’t get paid. Piling onto that the unpaid utility bills just it’s wrong. And and I I I was really bothered by how vociferous the

Laura (15:30.116)

Yeah.

Laura (15:41.529)

Mm-hmm.

Laura (15:49.571)

Yeah, it’s certainly unfair.

Chris (15:54.594)

the municipalities were in trying to maintain this unfair status. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Apparently we have so many places in Ohio for addicts to recover now that Governor Mike DeWine wants to change how they are regulated. How, Lisa, and why?

Lisa (16:13.146)

Yeah, so Governor DeWine issued an executive order this week that creates emergency rules that puts the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health in charge of overseeing substance abuse recovery houses. This would include things like certification, home inspections, and investigating complaints and referring suspected fraud to the attorney general. DeWine says that there’s been a 400% increase in recovery homes in just the last four years.

And there have been several reports of unsafe conditions at some of them, potential fraud, and uncertified operators. So currently, Ohio keeps a registry of recovery homes, but the accreditation is left up to two nonprofits: the Ohio Recovery Housing and Oxford House International. he as the number of homes grew, it became clear, he said, that we needed to take liability in-house. So the the

Behavioral Department Director Tia Moretti says they’re already working to double their staff to oversee these homes. They say they can do that within their existing budget. So these substance abuse recovery houses have proliferated a lot in Southeast Ohio, which was the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. this emergency rule will last 120 days. There’s a bill called House Bill 58 that would make these rules state law.

Chris (17:35.244)

I feel like there’s an unsaid part of this story. And it could be a couple of things. One, that these places are abusing their clients. This is a vulnerable population. People recovering from addiction are very vulnerable and they’re somehow being scammed. They’re not being taken care of. They’re not getting what they need. And so the state wants to make sure that they do. But they didn’t say that. They didn’t say they have examples of abuse. Or it could be that the nonprofits said to the state,

We can’t handle it. It’s too much. When we started this, there was this many and now we have six times as many or whatever it is. We can’t get to them all and we feel it’s falling through the cracks. What can we do about it? But they didn’t say that either. I wish they would have said something more than, Well, there’s a lot more now, so we’re going to watch. W w why? There there’s gotta be some need they see to get on top of it. And they didn’t articulate it.

Lisa (18:30.898)

Yeah, but a four hundred percent increase in just four years, that’s crazy. And I’m thinking that a lot of these are probably fly by night people.

Chris (18:39.276)

Yeah, I that’s what I suspect. I think a bunch of people saw a way to scam insurance companies to get money and mistreat these folks because who’s gonna believe them? They’re addicts, they’re recovering addicts, they’re they’re they’re suffering, they’re a vulnerable population. I suspect that’s what’s happening, but I wish he would have said that then. That we have had cases of abuse. We’re seeing more and more of it, and it’s hard to monitor, so we think it’s a state function. I guess we’re gonna have to push a little harder to see.

Lisa (18:44.657)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (19:08.93)

And like you said, this is a much bigger problem in southern Ohio, where opioids ran rampant when when they took off probably fifteen years ago now. You’re listening to today in Ohio. The national news Tuesday was that July set the all-time US temperature record. Courtney, did Greater Cleveland contribute to that?

Courtney (19:29.903)

Not so much, Chris. So even though July was the hottest month ever recorded across the contiguous US, here in Northeast Ohio it was only just a little warmer than normal. So nationally, that average temp across the lower 48 hit just shy of 77 degrees. And that barely edged out the previous record from 1936 during the Dust Bowl. And the national average for July finished more than three degrees above the 20th century average.

For July. But here in Cleveland and in Northeast Ohio, we were just nowhere close to hitting or breaking our local records. Cleveland averaged 74.9 degrees over the course of the month, and that was a little less than half a degree above normal. Down in Akron Canton, they averaged about 74 degrees, and that was only point one degrees above normal. So pretty, pretty normal summer for us here. The heat did come in bursts. July hit.

You know, we hit ninety seven degrees at the beginning of July and some hot days there several days in a row. But that cool stretch later in the month really kind of helped balance things out for our average. On one day on July twenty second, our high was sixty-nine degrees and overnight lows dipped into the low to mid fifties. So all told, we weren’t we weren’t like the national picture here in Cleveland.

Chris (20:52.398)

Yeah, that was a lovely day. The one thing that was odd about July is it was very dry. The whole area turned completely brown because we were not getting much rain. We we’ve been getting some more recently, but it was a long period where lawns were drying up and poor Lisa, who has all these new trees in her yard, was out watering them by hand day after day, to make sure that the their roots took.

Lisa (21:16.732)

That’s right, I’m bring on the rain.

Courtney (21:16.947)

Have an

Cleveland got two point six five inches of rain and that was an inch below normal. And Akron and Canton was was worse off than we were even. They got nearly two inches below normal.

Chris (21:30.318)

Course we dodged a bullet last night. There was a a full fledged derecho that went from Iowa all the way to North Carolina that apparently did a lot of damage in Columbus, but it ran south of us. Good to good to hear it. Again, Cleveland seems like the garden spot of the country. Not too hot, not too cold, not too dry. Much of the rest of the country suffers, but we have some pretty ideal weather. Not last winter though. Last winter was the worst ever in anybody’s lifetime.

You’re listening to today in Ohio. The water line replacement in Orange and Solon that resulted in three count them three gas line ruptures is set to start again. Laura, should people out that way be confident that their neighborhoods are not going to explode?

Laura (22:14.955)

I would be a little nervous, but they’re promising new safety features. So Enbridge Gas has completed an effort to locate and mark all known gas lines in the area east of Brainerd Road, and they believe this is going to protect that from happening again. The project began July 6th. It’s a joint project between the cities. It calls calls for two, sorry, new 12-inch water mains along Miles Road, and it’s going to serve both community. They while they paused this because of all of the

gas line hits. They did continue the construction on the western part of Brainerd Road. And the gas leaks are being blamed on an excavate excavator who damaged the underground pipeline. That’s according to Enbridge. And they’ve got an on-site response team to coordinate with the company Terrace Construction that’s doing some work, helping sure proper precautions are taken. I know you guys have talked about this, but it’s like, shouldn’t you make sure the proper precautions are taken before you hit a gas line?

Chris (23:11.97)

Well, when you consider this and the Twinsburg explosion and the gigantic increase in the number of incidents, it it’s put a spotlight on the idea that there is serious danger here. It’s one like I said this last week, it’s one thing if you break a water line or an electric line or a cable line. But when you break a gas line, you can blow things up and we just seem like it the state and the

Laura (23:15.597)

Mm-hmm.

Laura (23:24.783)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (23:38.326)

The excavators and the utilities have been just too cavalier about this. If I call to say I’m going to dig, the utility needs to get out there and market in the allotted time. And if you’re going to dig, you’ve got to call. and it seems like we’ve discovered there are many breakdowns in this system.

Laura (23:59.096)

Right, ‘cause it relies on people doing the right thing.

Chris (24:03.252)

Yeah, let’s let’s let’s hope the fear of exploding neighborhoods has got people thinking a little more conservatively about this now. You’re listening to today in Ohio. The city of Cleveland adopted a community benefits agreement years ago to make sure that businesses that get city contracts invest some of the money back into the city. How is Cuyoga County trying to copy that, Courtney?

Courtney (24:27.453)

They’re rolling out a pretty similar program here. County Council has now approved a new community benefits requirement. And this applies to development projects receiving more than one million dollars in county loans, grants, or bonding assistance. And those developers are going to have to submit a plan now explaining how the project is going to create broader public value in some way. So that could mean things like job training, apprenticeships, hiring local contractors, educational partnerships.

Or even things like that you can you know, appreciate on the ground in the neighborhood, like public amenities or neighborhood improvements that neighboring residents can enjoy on development projects. We heard from Councilman Michael Hauser who pushed the legislation and he said public dollars should be invested back into the community this way. He argues that developers are getting taxpayer backed help, so the community should get something in return.

There’s going to be a committee set up at the county to review these projects and make recommendations, also kind of similar to the way Cleveland does this community benefits thing. But county council and the county executive are gonna have the final say. These agreements will be kind of baked in to what they approve when they’re approving the incentives on the county level. Developers importantly are going to have to report back on whether they actually delivered what they promised. And I think that’s where rubber’s gonna meet the road here.

At the city, you know, they don’t always do that. so we’ll have to keep an eye on if this is actually achieving the results we want.

Chris (26:02.914)

This story though took me back to a time when things happened that we have lost. When Frank Jackson was working on the original community benefits agreement, university hospitals is very much involved. Joe Roman of the Greater Cleveland Partnership was very much involved. All all sorts of construction trades were very much involved. They were all at the table trying to hash out something that would benefit the poverty stricken residents of Cleveland.

So that they could develop some wealth out of these big expensive projects. and it and it was a smart plan. It took a lot of work, a lot of cooperation, people compromised to come up with what Cleveland has. And it not nothing’s perfect, but this one has kind of stood the test of time, and you saw good corporate and and nonprofit participation. That’s gone today. You don’t see that happening at all. GCP is a ghost of itself.

You don’t see people at the table collaborating to make this a stronger place. It all kind of went away in the pandemic. All of the momentum that had been building stopped in the pandemic and it never really picked up again. And so I read this story with a sense of melancholy, like, yeah, I remember those days.

Courtney (27:23.567)

I I feel the same, Chris. This is a program that ought to be delivering, you know, good things, whether we’re talking about the existing program in Cleveland or what the county’s, you know, rightfully trying to encourage here. It’s a good move that they want to encourage this. But like I said, when rubber meets the road, you know, you put good faith efforts into finding local contractors and then you fall short. I’m skeptical that the city or county isn’t going to not help you out for the next project as well.

That’s some to some degree how this has played out a lot of times. So I hope they’re more successful, but I’m with you. I’m kind of sad that this has never really been what i it could be.

Chris (28:04.526)

All right, you’re listening to today in Ohio. Lisa, this next guy could be a great reporter. A downtown Cleveland hotel worker has earned a prestigious designation in a field that is dwindling. What does he do? Where does he do it? And why is the demand for his services waning?

Lisa (28:21.126)

So his name is David Vinci. He’s 37 years old. He is the senior concierge at the Intercontinental Cleveland Hotel downtown. Now, Vinci was recently awarded Les Clefs d’Or USA for his excellence on the job. That translates to the Golden Keys. This was established in France in 1929. There are 4,000 members in 80 countries, and awardees like Vinci get to wear a cross gold keys lapel pin for their excellence.

So this process takes several years. They have a month-long mentorship, they’ve got a two-week test, and then they have a test with an anonymous guest at the end. Now, in Ohio, there are a few concierges left. Several upscale Cleveland hotels no longer offer concierge services. Vinci has been at the Intercontinental for 12 years, so he started as a young man. And when he was hired, he was one of three concierges. He’s now the only one left.

But he is a wealth of information. Of course, concierges ask, you know, they answer guest questions. They point you to services like salons and restaurants and events. He puts out a monthly newsletter and a quarterly event sheet. And he gets his information from news, social media, and destination Cleveland, and also talking with local experts. And he says the most common requests are restaurants. People want to know about transportation options and makeup and salons.

So yeah, it’s pretty cool. I don’t know really why it’s declining because a good hotel concierge is a wonderful resource.

Chris (29:53.784)

Although if you go back thirty, forty years to traveling before the internet was was anything, you were lost. You you could use the guidebooks, the blue moon and the travel guidebooks to try and identify quality places to go, but there wasn’t widespread information. And if you went to your concierge, they had all the information. In the days of the internet, though, when you travel, there is so much information available. I mean Laura just did a trip through

Cape Coddenantucket and Martha’s Vineyard that was packed with stuff to do. And she found it all not with a concierge, just by searching the internet, I’m betting. And so I I can see why the the need for it is dwindling because people do their own research. Or Laura, am I wrong? Did you use a concierge?

Laura (30:41.153)

I did not use a concierge.

Lisa (30:43.388)

Well and that you know, it’s a shame because they’re intensely local. They know the local happenings that I don’t think any guidebook could cover, you know, w you know, well. But

Chris (30:51.213)

Right.

Yeah, no, he’s an expert, and I bet he’s super resourceful, and we love resourceful in our business. So if the concierge just got out of business, they might have a future as being great reporters. You’re listening to today in Ohio. That’s it for the Wednesday episode. Thanks, Laura, thanks, Lisa, thanks, Courtney, thank you for being with us. We’ll return Thursday to talk about the news.

Lisa (30:58.128)

Mm-hmm.