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In a shift that would have been almost unthinkable just a few years ago, a Democratic majority could emerge from this fall’s Hamilton County Commission race for the first time in more than 40 years.
The contest between County Commissioner Phil Heimlich, a conservative Republican, and challenger David Pepper, a moderate Democrat, is proving far more competitive than most political observers would’ve predicted.
Although the city of Cincinnati is staunchly Democratic, Hamilton County, which includes suburban and rural areas such as Blue Ash, Cheviot, Sharonville and all points in-between, has been a Republican stronghold throughout recent history. The GOP is so deeply ingrained in the political fabric that the party’s national leaders count on the area to help offset the Democratic influence of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County in statewide votes. President Bush frequently holds fund-raisers here, as he did Sept. 25.
Until Todd Portune won election in late 2000, part of a voter backlash against a Republican majority that cut financially lop-sided deals to build new Reds and Bengals stadiums, the last Democrat served on the Hamilton County Commission in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson was president and the Vietnam War raged. It was even earlier that Democrats last controlled the three-person commission.
If voters decide to make the change, however, it likely will owe more to the candidates’ personal judgment and managerial style and less to partisan politics.
Managing by the Bible
Heimlich, who has focused his political career on cutting taxes and reducing government spending, has made increasing the county sales tax to pay for a new jail the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
Also, when Heimlich pushed in June 2005 to have county officials unilaterally take control of riverfront development along the Ohio River to jump-start the long-stalled Banks project, it sputtered along unchanged for more than a year until Cincinnati officials became involved again this spring.
The risky gambits, along with Heimlich’s tendency to appoint political advisors and campaign contributors to task forces that help shape major policy decisions such as setting tax levy amounts, has alienated some of his voter base.
Heimlich, though, says he is unafraid to make tough, unpopular decisions. Describing himself as a maverick in the local Republican Party, he cites his record during his first four-year term of keeping the county’s spending and taxation rate at or below inflation after years of uncontrolled growth. The savings occurred because Heimlich got commissioners to lease operation of the county-owned Drake Center for physically disabled people to the Health Alliance, reduced the amount for the tax levy that pays for health-care services for the poor and curtailed increases in levies for children’s services and the zoo.
Overall, the decisions have saved taxpayers more than $100 million over five years, Heimlich says.
“I believe in the biblical principles of stewardship, and I apply those principles to government and politics,” he says. Referring to pledges by Pepper, Heimlich says, “When you stand up before people, don’t tell us what you’re going to do. Tell us what you’ve accomplished. I get things done.”
But some of those things aren’t in the best interests of residents, Pepper says. Heimlich’s plan to sell the Drake Center will cost taxpayers in the long run, Pepper says. Under a deal approved in May, the hospital will be leased to the Health Alliance and begin paying a yearly rental fee of $1 million to the county, up from $1 a year, for as long as 60 years. The Health Alliance may also buy the hospital for $31.5 million beginning anytime after 2009, when the levy expires. During that time the Health Alliance will receive the $10.7 million that Drake gets annually from the levy.
But the county’s own appraisal of Drake pegs its value at more than $100 million; county officials initially tried to block the appraisal’s release to the public, calling it a “trade secret.”
In fact, Heimlich originally wanted a sale price of about $18 million, but County Commissioner Pat DeWine, his fellow Republican, insisted on getting at least $31 million from the deal. Pepper contends that, if selling Drake were necessary, the process should’ve been open to all bidders.
“There certainly were management issues at Drake that needed to be addressed, but Phil declares wars on institutions and tries to destroy them instead of improving them,” Pepper says. “He works to undermine them, and it’s the worst kind of bullying politics.”
Leasing out the Drake Center stems from a concerted effort by Heimlich and attorney Christopher Finney, a political advisor whom Heimlich appointed to the county’s Tax Levy Review Committee, to abolish the tax levy for Drake, critics say. The effort was spearheaded by a political action committee funded by several private nursing home companies in the area, who are represented by lobbyist Dick Weiland. He, in turn, is among Heimlich’s steadiest campaign contributors. Those nursing homes stand to profit if some of Drake’s patients are diverted elsewhere.
When provisions of Drake’s lease prevented an upfront sale, Heimlich helped negotiate the deal with the Health Alliance to assume its operation and buy the property later. He says Drake is now serving more patients than before.
“We have managed to streamline services to better the care while reducing costs,” he says. “I’d say that’s a pretty good deal.”
‘Backroom deals’
Other examples of Heimlich advocating fiscally imprudent deals, Pepper says, include hiring A.T. Hudson & Co. for $2.2 million to review the operations of county departments and recommend methods for cutting costs and improving efficiency. The firm identified up to $11.6 million in potential savings, based on changes to items such as the county’s central purchasing system.
Among the reviews that A.T. Hudson conducted were the county’s Job and Family Services Department (JFS), which resulted in changes that saved $946,000 annually. A “draft final report” was submitted to the county in 2004. But the report never caught $1.7 billion in spending by JFS later questioned by state auditors.
Last week Ohio officials demanded that Hamilton County devise a plan for repaying $224 million in federal money misspent by JFS, mostly by co-mingling accounts and double-counting local money to get matching federal grants.
The problem was created, in part, because an audit of JFS hadn’t been done in about a decade, Pepper says. That should have raised red flags with the commission when it approved JFS’s yearly budgets.
“That’s called oversight,” Pepper says. “That’s what they get paid to do, and they didn’t do it.”
Heimlich called Pepper’s comments “reckless accusations.”
“The policies we’re talking about here were put in place before any of the county commissioners or the county administrator were here,” Heimlich says. “It’s very important that we not engage in finger-pointing.”
Heimlich’s record is rife with missteps since he took office in 2002, Pepper says. Heimlich took control of The Banks away from the Port Authority in 2005 and tried to cut a deal with the Corporex Cos. and Vandercar Holdings Inc. That deal fell apart, and Heimlich formed a county task force that later recommended Western & Southern Financial Group build the project.
After it was revealed that executives connected to Western & Southern contributed money to Heimlich’s campaign, the county reversed course again and worked with city officials to jointly appoint an advisory panel of business people to recommend a developer. Two weeks ago the panel recommended AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp. of Atlanta, the third proposed developer in the past year.
The main hurdle for building The Banks — creating a plan to pay for $81 million in parking garages to lift the project site out of the flood plain — hasn’t been settled.
“Phil paints himself as a champion of competition, but he never applies that to his own decision-making,” Pepper says. “There are too many backroom deals. He’s in a rush to get these deals done for political reasons, and it ends in high costs and bad results.”
In recent weeks Heimlich and Pepper have sparred about the best method for building a new county jail.
In June, Heimlich unveiled a plan that called for increasing the county sales tax by a quarter-cent for 20 years. The plan would’ve raised $650 million to build a $224 million jail, with about $200 million in debt financing and the remainder used to pay for a property tax rollback.
Heimlich’s plan was attacked from various quarters, including DeWine and Pepper, as too expensive. After weeks of negotiation, county commissioners eventually approved letting voters decide on a quarter-cent tax hike for 10 years, with a rollback in effect for the first three years. It would raise $325 million over a decade, with $291 million used to build and finance the jail and the remainder to reduce property taxes.
Heimlich says he’s the only politician who’s been willing to tackle the sensitive issue of paying for a new jail.
“Jail overcrowding isn’t a new problem,” he says. “It’s a 20-year-old problem. Someone had to say, ‘Let’s step up to the plate and get this done.’ ”
Pepper notes that the final plan is a hybrid of ideas from him and DeWine.
“The fact that it’s a 20-year problem raises the question of why did it take him four years in office to do anything about it,” Pepper says.
Heimlich and Pepper are both attorneys. Heimlich, 53, lives in Symmes Township with his wife and two children. Pepper, 35, is single and lives in Mount Adams. ©
This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2006.