Metal detectors could come back to City Hall, but local legislators can’t do much more regarding local gun control. Still, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls and other City Council members will begin pushing for more federal regulations on guns starting today. President Barack Obama is already beginning to drum up support for more regulations on guns, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. He also wants to close a loophole that allows people to buy firearms at gun shows without background checks. At the state level, a new bill loosening gun regulations in Ohio is facing criticism. The bill will make it easier to store firearms in cars and allows them for the first time in parking garages under the Ohio Statehouse and a nearby office tower. Gov. John Kasich said he will sign the bill.

The University of Cincinnati is launching a fundraising effort for the renovation of Nippert Stadium. The project could cost as much as $70 million. The university wants to offset as much of the cost as possible to build premium seating, with the possibility of 28 new luxury boxes and more than 1,400 premium seats being added. Goals could change based on demand and fundraising efforts.

A Cincinnati-based company and its top executive have pleaded guilty to circumventing Ohio’s competitive bid process. The actions cost Ohio taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, according to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. The company circumvented the competitive process by submitting multiple bids on road jobs under different names, creating the illusion of competition.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a possible candidate for the presidency in 2016, will headline a Hamilton County GOP event. He will be a featured speaker next month at the Northeast Hamilton County Republican Club's annual pancake breakfast.

The Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy failed to follow its own compensation policies, resulting in improper over-payments of $2,325, according to Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost.

Top state officials will begin pushing and outlining school safety efforts in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

State Impact Ohio has a fantastic infographic showing the growth of charter schools in Ohio. In the Cincinnati urban district, charter schools now host 6,642 students.

A new state policy will automatically refund businesses when they’ve overpaid their taxes. The first round of the policy will refund businesses in Ohio $13 million.

The animal takeover continues. Due to the effects of climate change, some animals are moving into cities.

On the bright side, animals can be pretty cute. Here is a dog flipping over its food, and here are cats locked in deadly combat against a printer.

In order to win the support of the largest city employees union for the leasing of Cincinnati’s parking facilities, the city administration has agreed to pay raises and no layoffs for three years.

There’s a catch — municipal employees only get the raises and job security if the city’s parking meters, garages and surface lots are leased to a private company for 30 years.

City Manager Milton Dohoney wants to lease the facilities for at least $40 million upfront and a share of parking profits for the next 30 years. He’d use $21 million of the upfront payment to patch a $34 million deficit in the city’s budget.

During recent budget hearings before City Council, Dohoney said extra revenue was needed to avoid the layoff of 344 city employees.

In a memo to the mayor and city council members, Dohoney outlined the agreement between the city and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Any municipal employees who will lose their jobs because of the deal would be placed in other city jobs with no loss of wages. No city employees covered by the union would be laid off between 2013 and 2016. City employees will receive a 1.5 percent cost of living raise for the 2013-2014 contract year and another 1 percent raise for the next contract year. AFSCME members will continue city vehicle maintenance work from 2013-2016. 

However, if City Council doesn’t approve of the plan to privatize parking, city employees get nothing. 

Public employees in Cincinnati have not been given raises in almost four years. Meanwhile, council voted last month to give Dohoney a 10 percent raise and a $35,000 bonus. Dohoney had not received a merit raise since 2007, but had collected cost of living adjustments and bonuses over the years.

The Ohio Republican Party has given an excuse for Franklin County Republican Party Chairman Doug Preisse’s racist comment: Preisse thought he was off the record. The defense solidifies that Preisse, who is also a top adviser to Gov. John Kasich, was being honest — just not public — when he wrote in an email to The Columbus Dispatch, “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine.” The comment was supposed to defend the Ohio Republican Party’s position against expanding in-person early voting, but it only revealed that racial politics play a pivotal role in the Republican Party’s opposition to expanded voting.

Cincinnati has revealed the first master plan for the city since 1980. The plan seeks to put back an emphasis on urban living with policies that are friendlier to the environment and non-automotive transportation.

President Barack Obama’s campaign will host an open house at the campaign’s new offices at Over-the-Rhine tomorrow. John Legend will be there.

Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank is facing a class action lawsuit for what the plaintiff calls “payday loans.” The plaintiff alleges that the bank was charging illegally high interest rates.

University of Cincinnati President Greg Williams is stepping down, citing personal reasons. Santa Onos, who previously served as provost, will take over temporarily as interim president.

Greater Cincinnati’s unemployment rate, which is not adjusted for seasonal factors, remained at 7.2 percent in July. The number is lower than the state’s unadjusted rate of 7.4 percent and the federal unadjusted rate of 8.6 percent. Governments typically give numbers that are seasonally adjusted, which is why in July a 7.2 percent unemployment rate was reported for Ohio and an 8.3 percent unemployment rate was reported for the United States.

The Ohio Hospital Association is backing the Medicaid expansion. The expansion is an optional part of Obamacare. The Dispatch blog calls the expansion “costly,” but Medicaid expansions can actually save the state money by eliminating uncompensated hospital visits — on top of possibly saving lives.

The Ohio Board of Education will hold an emergency meeting tomorrow. The meeting will set the “process and criteria” for the Board’s search for a new superintendent of public instruction.

The Horseshoe Casino will begin hiring today. The casino is looking to fill more than 750 positions.

Forty-one Greater Cincinnati companies made it on the latest Inc. 5000 list.

Obama was in Columbus yesterday. During the trip, the president talked mostly about young people and education in an attempt to rally the youth vote.

U.S. spending on health care is set to rise by 50 percent by 2020, a new report says. As part of Obamacare and other programs, the federal government is trying to bring health-care costs down, which have risen faster than the rate of inflation in recent history.

Scientists have caught a glimpse of a red giant — an expanding star in its final stages — devouring one of its own planets. The same will happen to our galaxy someday, painting a fairly grim future for Earth. Fortunately, humanity has a few billion years to find a solution.

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 decision that stopped the presidential election recount in Florida and handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

It's difficult to believe that was already 10 years ago. And it's amazing still that A) the Supreme Court acted in such a blatantly political manner to step in and resolve a state election issue, halting a legal recount, and B) that Americans didn't take to the streets to revolt against the power grab by Bush and his Republican cronies.

Read More

For the fifth year in a row, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory is giving citizens an opportunity to talk with him one-on-one.

Mallory announced the 2010 schedule today for the Mayor’s Night In program. The biweekly event allows people to have a five-minute individual meeting with Mallory to discuss any topic.

Read More

News junkies probably heard about the warnings issued by Cincinnati City Hall this week, reminding citizens of its “ticket amnesty” program: Anyone with unpaid parking tickets should pay now or possibly have their vehicles impounded by police.

What City Hall didn't announce was that as of last month, 429 of the nearly 62,000 unpaid parking tickets were issued to municipal employees — including some cops and firefighters.

Read More

Local residents have a unique opportunity to participate in a candidate forum featuring people running for Cincinnati City Council that will occur this Saturday.

As it has done for the past few election cycles, The Greenwich nightclub in Walnut Hills will host the forum, which currently is scheduled to include all 23 candidates vying for the nine council seats. This year, the forum's theme is “Cincinnati 2012: Diary of a City in Transition,” and it will be held from 7:30-11 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public, although seating is limited.

Read More

In hopes of quashing rumors, City Council on Wednesday passed a resolution promising not to use Metro bus money on the streetcar.

The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit authority had voted Tuesday on an agreement with the city that contained a provision saying money from the $42 million transit fund that pays for bus operation can’t be used on the streetcar.

The agreement needs to be signed by the city as well in order to release millions of dollars in federal grants to help fund the streetcar. The city has pledged to match those grants with local funds. SORTA wants to make sure the transit fund isn’t used for that purpose, but the city wants to have the freedom to use that money on any transportation project.

At least one council member questioned the necessity of passing the resolution.

Chris Seelbach said that nobody on council or in the city administration had proposed or would propose using transit money on the streetcar.

“I don’t understand why we would need a provision in any contract that would make us not be able to, when nobody’s proposing that we do it,” he said.

The resolution has no legal standing preventing council from later coming back and using transit funds for the streetcar, but Qualls said she hoped it put citizens’ minds at rest regarding their intentions.

Mayor Mark Mallory on Monday published an editorial in The Enquirer promising that the transit money wouldn’t be used for the streetcar.

He went further on Wednesday and said during council’s meeting that he as mayor would never approve the use of transit money for the operation of the streetcar.

Council also passed a one-month budget for SORTA, requiring that they come back next month to pass another one.

Councilman Chris Smitherman accused Mallory of trying to flex political muscle in the budget to strong-arm SORTA into taking out the provision disallowing the use of transit funds for the streetcar. He questioned the timing of passing a SORTA budget the day after the transit authority voted to prevent transit funds being used for the streetcar.

Councilman Charlie Winburn — council's sole Republican — walked out of a Budget Committee meeting in advance of the vote.

However Councilwoman Yvette Simpson said it made sense to pass the one-month budget because it forbid SORTA from using taxpayer money to sue the city.

City Solicitor John Curp said it was SORTA’s position in the lawsuit that it should be the one deciding how transit funds are used, not the city.

A state legislator from Cincinnati wants the U.S. Justice Department to monitor the 2012 election in Ohio to ensure fairness.

Rep. Alicia Reece, D-Cincinnati, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday asking him to send federal elections monitors to watch over polling in Ohio this November.

Reece’s letter points to what she calls potential voter confusion resulting from two federal court decisions over provisional ballots and in-person early voting — decisions that have been appealed by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.

“We need to ensure that Ohio has a smooth and fair election this November,” Reece wrote in an emailed statement.

“These two federal court decisions are a step in the right direction for voters in Ohio, but the appeals processes are confusing for voters. The presence of federal elections monitors will help restore the integrity of the voting process. The entire country is looking at Ohio.”

The first court decision ruled that county boards of elections must count certain defective ballots if the mistakes were caused by poll worker error. U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered Husted to issue provisional ballot envelopes with a checklist for poll workers to follow. 

Husted has argued that allowing those ballots to be counted conflicts with existing Ohio law that does not allow defective provisional ballots to be counted.

The second court decision required Husted to allow in-person early voting for the three days leading up to the Nov. 6 election.

Husted had issued a directive to all 88 Ohio counties to not allow voting on those days, and then ordered county boards to suspend in-person early voting while he appealed the court’s ruling. He rescinded that order after the judge ordered him to appear in court in regards to the directive.

Reece was joined by area clergy and community leaders to announce the letter in a Wednesday morning news conference.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced today that there is a new way for registered voters to change their voting address: the Internet.

If the state had done this in 2008, about 130,000 provisional ballots could have been cast as regular ballots, according to Husted. Provisional ballots are ballots used to record a vote when there are questions surrounding a voter's eligibility. Provisional ballots are sometimes discounted if a person fails to prove his/her eligibility to vote.

“This added convenience for voters is also a powerful tool against voter fraud as current and accurate voter rolls leave less room for abuse,” Husted said in a press release.

Husted said the new system will also save tax dollars. For each registration done online instead of by mail or in-person, the state saves money.

The website requires four identification keys: a last name, an Ohio driver's license number, the last four digits of a Social Security number and a date of birth. Registered voters that supply this information will be able to submit an application for an address change.

Applications will be reviewed by county election boards. If the address change is accepted, the election board will send an acceptance letter by mail to the new address.

The state is working heavily with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles to share voter data. At this time, more than 6 million of Ohio's registered voters will be able to change their addresses online.

To change an address online, voters can visit the Ohio Secretary of State page at MyOhioVote.com. Anyone who registers between now and October will also be put in a line to receive an application to vote by mail for the November elections.