Nick Castele

The monitor overseeing Cleveland’s police reform agreement says the city is at a “critical turning point,” and now must put new policies into practice.

The city, the monitoring team and the Justice Department provided an update on the consent decree to U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver on Tuesday afternoon.

“This is the point at which paper must be transformed into sustained, ongoing practice,” Monitor Matthew Barge wrote in his team’s latest semiannual report. He added that the city “still has a distance to travel” until it fully complies with the consent decree.

Advocates of lead paint legislation say they’ll go to the ballot if Cleveland City Council doesn’t adopt a measure requiring that rental properties be made safe from lead.

Leaders of Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing (CLASH) want the city to require landlords to make rental properties safe from lead paint by 2021. At a news conference Monday morning, group members said they plan to collect petition signatures to force council to address the issue.

The city of Akron says an attempted cyberattack sought to access city funds, but a city news release says investigators do not have evidence that personal information was compromised.

A news release from Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan’s office says the city noticed suspicious activity on its network on Tuesday afternoon.

The city’s IT office shut down its critical computer systems, including Akron’s online 311 service, as a precaution.

An artist is accusing Cleveland State University of censoring him by covering up a message criticizing President Trump that he added to his distinctive sculpture on campus.

Billie Lawless’ 40-foot-tall sculpture, The Politician: A Toy, depicts a head on a pair of wheels. On a fence surrounding the work are satirical messages, like “BORE THE PEOPLE” and “A THOUSAND POINTS OF SLIGHT.”

Cleveland will announce a goal on Tuesday to bring down the rate of childhood lead poisoning and make the city “lead safe” by 2028, Council President Kevin Kelley said in an interview Monday afternoon.

By 2028, Kelley said, the city aims for no children to register blood-lead levels above five micrograms per deciliter, which experts have considered a threshold for poisoning. He called the 10-year goal “aggressive but reasonable,” saying that the specific details of the city’s plan are still being worked out.

Judges in Cuyahoga County held another meeting on Monday to talk about reforming the bail system, their first gathering since a withering U.S. Marshals Service report on the county jail.

Local judges and other officials have been talking for years about changing the way bail is set, so that fewer defendants await trial from inside a jail cell.

The United Auto Workers labor union is suing General Motors over the use of temporary workers at a plant in Indiana, saying that laid-off members from Lordstown could do the jobs.

The UAW filed the suit this week in federal court in Youngstown. The suit accuses the company of violating a labor agreement that allows laid-off employees with seniority to seek to relocate to other GM facilities.

The complaint says the union agreed to GM’s hiring of temporary employees in Fort Wayne, Indiana, through August 2018 to help with the launch of a new pickup truck.

The federal government has been partially shut down for almost a week, but not all agencies and services in Ohio are equally affected.

Eligible households will still receive cash and food benefits for January, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services said. The department administers both federal programs, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Whether it’s an All-Star Game, a Final Four tournament or a pro-sports draft, hosting big events costs local organizers money. A bill signed by Gov. John Kasich this month will give cities, counties and local host committees more help hosting such events.

Starting in January, people caught in Euclid with small amounts of marijuana will no longer be looking at six months in jail—and they have the podcast Serial to thank.

The city is reclassifying low-level marijuana possession as a minor misdemeanor, which carries a maximum fine of $150.

A U.S. Marshals probe of the Cuyahoga County jail uncovered conditions so severe that they put the safety of staff and inmates at risk, according to a report released Wednesday morning.

Among the Marshals’ findings were that the jail used food as a form of punishment, that meals failed to meet nutritional standards, that inmates received inadequate medical care and that defendants awaiting court were placed in cells without working toilets or running water.