Good morning, Cincinnati. Or, as we say in Trump’s America, “covfefe.”
It could get more expensive to park near the University of Cincinnati soon. A city budget proposal to raise about $640,000 next year would boost parking rates uptown around UC’s campus from 50 cents to one dollar an hour. The same plan would boost parking rates by between 25 and 75 cents downtown and 25 cents in other neighborhoods. Those increases represent specifics in City Manager Harry Black’s budget proposal revealed in City Council’s Neighborhoods Committee meeting yesterday. Mayor John Cranley has transmitted that spending plan to Council with some tweaks representing about $6 million. Cranley eliminated a planned parking ticket fee increase from $45 to $60, but left the meter rate increase in place.
• Last week, Hamilton County courts gave potential jurors in the retrial of former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing a 178 question, 23 page questionnaire to help better select the final 12 jurors who will hear the case. The questions give a clear picture of both the prosecution and defense’s focus in the case, asking about whether jurors believe cars can be used as weapons, whether police target black citizens, potential jurors’ feelings about body camera footage, groups like Black Lives Matter, crime prevention and other topics. Answers to the questions will inform both defense and prosecution’s selection of jury members over the next week or more.Tensing is facing retrial on murder and manslaughter charges related to the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist during a routine traffic stop in Mount Auburn in July 2015. His first trial resulted in a hung jury last November.
• Hamilton County’s first female commissioner in a quarter century will start a county group aimed at empowering women and girls to take leadership roles. Commissioner Denise Driehaus, who won a seat over interim Commissioner Dennis Deters last November, is launching the county’s Women and Girls Commission to work on issues like the region’s wage gender gap while also pushing to encourage more women to run for elected office. Driehaus says women are underrepresented among the region’s political leadership — only one top-level county head, Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco, is a woman, and only two women sit on Cincinnati City Council. Driehaus says she’d like to change that.
• The city of Cincinnati will again allow hunters using bows and arrows to hunt deer in 10 city parks in an effort to curb population increases among the animals. The program has been around for about a decade and has reduced deer population in Mount Airy Forest, the city’s largest park, by 70 percent. But even with the reduction, there are still about twice as many deer as ideal, experts say. The deer tend to overpopulate parks like Mount Airy, leading to a big loss of various native plant species that can be detrimental to the natural environment. In addition to Mount Airy, bow hunters will also be permitted to hunt deer in Alms Park, Ault Park, California Woods, Drake Park, Glenway Woods, Magrish Preserve, Miles Edward Park, Seymour Preserve and Stanbery Park.
• OK. Statewide stuff. When Ohio Gov. John Kasich first ran for the state’s highest job, he blasted then-Democrat Gov. Ted Strickland for what he called a “deficit” — an $8 billion gap between what the state would spend and what it would take in the next year. For years, critics have pushed back that the gap wasn’t technically a deficit — the money hadn’t been spent yet — and that it was due to the state’s brutal experience with the Great Recession. Now, with the recession gone and Kasich’s second term winding down, is the governor leaving the state in a similar position? Lagging tax receipts have put the state $800 million behind when it comes to revenues versus spending. Of course, Kasich and Republican lawmakers point out that the gap is much smaller and argue that it’s not a deficit but just a needed “adjustment.”
• U.S. Supreme Court justices yesterday agreed to hear a case involving Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s move purging inactive Ohio voters from voter registration rolls ahead of the 2016 election. A federal court sided with voting rights activists critical of Husted’s move, ruling that the purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, but attorneys for the state have appealed and now the nation’s highest court will decide on the question.
