Hello. Don’t look out your window, but there are snow flurries falling on downtown right now. Just ignore them and maybe they’ll go away.
You probably saw the incessant news coverage about Cincinnati City Council’s vote to spend roughly $37 million on infrastructure for a proposed FC Cincinnati stadium. But which council members did FCC GM Jeff Berding and other team leaders lobby the most to get that vote passed? The team focused in on then-mayoral opponents Councilwoman Yvette Simpson and Mayor John Cranley, meeting with the former three times and the latter four in the past few months. Councilman Charlie Winburn met with or talked via phone with the team five times, and other council members met with the team at least once. FCC bypassed meeting with Councilman Chris Seelbach, who opposed the deal from the start, and didn’t get a chance to meet with Councilman Wendell Young, who is recovering from heart surgery. You can read more here.
• Councilwoman Amy Murray could soon announce a new gig, according to this column. She may be U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci’s running mate as he contends in Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Renacci is taking on Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and his running mate, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, as well as Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor. Murray, a prominent Hamilton County Republican, would be vying for the lieutenant governor spot if the rumors are true. It would be something of a risky move for Murray — she’d be going against the state’s establishment GOP to side with Renacci, who has run an outsider campaign that he’s aimed at Trump supporters. The Akron resident doesn’t have a lot of statewide clout and likely needs someone from another part of the state to run a strong campaign across Ohio.
• A transgender teen says he wants gender transition treatment at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. But his parents want the 16-year-old to go to Christian conversion therapy. Now, Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Sylvia Hendon must decide. Hamilton County Job and Family Services removed the boy from his family into the care of his grandparents after he reported that one of his parents told him to kill himself and refused therapy outside of a Christian approach.
• The Greater Cincinnati area’s poverty rates are still stubbornly high, new Census data suggests. Almost 100,000 children in the region live in poverty, according to estimates from the American Community Survey, and roughly 45 percent of children in the city are in poverty. That’s down slightly from last year, but still much higher than it was six years ago — when the region and the nation were rebounding from the Great Recession. Race plays a big role: 34 percent of black residents of Hamilton County live in poverty, while just 11 percent of whites do.
• Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune says he’d like the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County to hold another public hearing on the sale of the library’s downtown north building. That comes after this week’s public hearing in which library board members were present but didn’t address the crowd of more than 100 people and used a moderator to run the meeting. Portune says the meeting didn’t meet the county’s standards for a public meeting and might have made things worse instead of better. He’d like the board to come back and speak directly to attendees concerned about the library’s new facilities plan, which would move operations out of the north building of the downtown campus and explore the sale of that building to private developers.
• Oops. It looks like the state of Ohio hired a guy with a past drug conviction to help decide who should get marijuana cultivation licenses. Now Ohio Auditor David Yost wants to halt the award of those licenses to businesses looking to start up medicinal marijuana production until the situation is sorted out. Trevor Bozeman of iCann Consulting LLC was one of three contractors the state hired to help score applications for marijuana cultivation licenses. He also has a 2005 drug conviction in Pennsylvania for intent to manufacture a controlled substance, for which he received three years probation. Bozeman was paid as much as $150,000 for his work scoring the applications. A company that was not selected to receive one of the state’s 12 large-scale cultivation licenses, CannAscend Ohio, discovered the conviction and is filing a lawsuit against the state.
“The only proper course of action is to freeze the process, and independently review the evaluation and scoring from the ground up,” Yost wrote in a statement released after Bozeman’s drug conviction was revealed.
• Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill — he of the “50 very attractive women” boast — will resign from his position on the court in order to run for governor. In an email he sent to the Ohio Young Democrats yesterday, O’Neill announced the… uh… announcement he says he’ll be making Friday. O’Neill, the sole Democrat on the court, will have to leave next year due to term limits. Ohio Gov. John Kasich will likely replace him with a Republican. Earlier this year, O’Neill said he would step aside if former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head Rich Cordray entered the race. Cordray officially jumped in the Democratic primary race this week. But O’Neill is now doubling down on his bid, despite widespread derision for a Facebook post he made defending U.S. Sen. Al Franken against sexual harassment charges by boasting about his own sexual exploits.
• Perhaps you remember Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing such unions across the country. Now, one of the men to whom she refused to issue a license is running against her for her job in the 2018 elections. Davis denied David Ermold and his partner four times in 2015, despite guidance from the Supreme Court ordering all clerks to issue the licenses. Davis eventually spent time in jail for her actions, and Ermold and his partner were issued a license by a deputy clerk. He announced his bid to unseat Davis this week.
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2017.