Following a long-running feud with Mayor John Cranley, Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black today released a memo which outlines ethics concerns he has had with the mayor and alleges that the mayor may have taken a campaign donation in exchange for promises about a development deal.
The memo provides a few more details about concerns Black has expressed previously around Cranley’s close involvement with the city’s economic development department as Cranley has sought to fire Black.
“During my tenure as city manager, I have grown increasingly concerned with the mayor’s intrusive role in the economic development process from an operational as well as ethical perspective,” Black wrote in the memo to Cincinnati City council today. “I believe the recent loss of Department of Community and Economic Development leadership staff , including the director and both assistant directors within the last five months represents a troubling signal.”
The mayor’s office strongly denies any ethical wrongdoing.
“The charter and the public expects that the mayor is involved with economic development,” Cranley said in a statement. “From GE to FCC to neighborhood investments, I am proud to have made a difference in bringing jobs to the City. Only I can refer legislation to Council on economic development. Therefore, I have to be involved and should be. I am fully ethical and transparent and reject any insinuation otherwise.”
The memo contains two examples Black says raise ethical questions about Cranley’s hands-on approach to the city’s Community and Economic Development Department. One involves a potential 2016 development deal called Project Reshore involving a company called Axcess Financial, which, according to the memo, was looking to land an economic incentives package in Cincinnati for a South American company via the help of government affairs consultancy Government Strategies Group.
According to Black, then-Community and Economic Development Director Oscar Bedolla was told by GSG representatives after a routine meeting that Cranley had promised development air rights above the CET garage on Central Parkway — a parcel long thought to be a potential redevelopment site — to the owner of that company during a fundraiser.
The second example involves a 2017 deal in which former Cranley chief of staff Jay Kincaid was lobbying the city for a memorandum of understanding on behalf of a developer interested in developing a parcel on Elm Street. Black scribbled notes on a memo about that deal, saying he found it troubling that Kincaid was involved in the project.
“I mentioned to the city solicitor that this concerned me in terms of both the ethical implications and the optics in that Mr. Kincaid is the former chief of staff to the mayor and the key person working on the mayor’s campaign,” Black wrote.
Black says he has approached the mayor about these concerns previously, and has experienced a “hostile and retaliatory work environment” as a result from the mayor as well as some union leaders, who Black says are colluding to remove him from his job.
Last month, Cranley asked Black to resign. Black refused, though he later agreed to a settlement worth $423,000. But a majority of Cincinnati City Council will not vote to award him that settlement. A proposed investigation into the rift between the two to be led by Council members David Mann and Tamaya Dennard has gotten bogged down in lawsuits and transparency concerns.
Under the plan, Mann and Dennard would have interviewed in private employees alleging harsh treatment by Black and then released transcripts of those interviews to the public. A court ruling yesterday on a lawsuit filed by The Cincinnati Enquirer ordered that investigation paused.
This article appears in Apr 18-25, 2018.