Hello Cincy! Let’s talk news really quick.
You’ve certainly seen them when you’re out walking or driving through Cincinnati: Houses with full-on jungle vegetation snaking out of windows, waist-high grass in the yard and trees just going wild through the roof. It might surprise you to know that at least a few of those plots are owned by a Hamilton County entity whose job it is to mitigate blighted properties. That’s made Councilman Kevin Flynn pretty angry at the Hamilton County Land Reutilization Corporation, sometimes simply called the Landbank — he’s suggested freezing the city’s $700,000 contribution to the landbank’s budget until it cleans up the properties. To be fair, the landbank has a number of properties it has improved, and has made big changes of late: a new vice president, new software to track properties and increased contracting of maintenance crews — moves Flynn and other critics say are good steps. But neighbors of some neglected properties have been frustrated, especially in light of the fact that the city has aggressively pursued code violation complaints against residents and small-time property owners.
• Members of Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church found themselves overwhelmed by counter-protesters as they picketed Oak Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati and the Duke Energy Convention Center yesterday. The half-dozen representatives from the church, bearing their signature provocative signs with homophobic and sexist slogans, were met by hundreds of protesters at each location. The Westboro picketers said they were protesting a gay-straight alliance student group at the high school, LGBT-friendly policies at UC and, at the convention center, the National Baptist Convention’s articles of faith that express tolerance for other religions such as Judaism and Islam.
• Walnut Hills will lose a major employer as health insurance company Humana, Inc. absconds for the suburbs. At one point, Humana’s location on Eden Park Drive in southern Walnut Hills employed about 1,000 people, but it’s now down to a few hundred. Soon, however, it’ll be zero, as the company leaves its 250,000 square feet of office space at the Humana Center for Springdale. Humana says it’s not laying anyone off, but that the space in the city isn’t needed now that more of its employees work remotely. Corporex, which built the building for Humana in 2008, says it’s already had some interest in the building from other corporate tenants.
• More business news: Activist investor Nelson Peltz is seeking to fortify his bid for a spot on the board of Procter & Gamble by releasing a 94-page plan for shaking up the consumer goods giant. Peltz is CEO Of Trian Fund Management, through which he’s acquired a good deal of P&G stock. Trian would like to see a better return on its investments, Peltz says, and as such, P&G should split its consumer offerings up into three separate businesses, with P&G remaining as a holdings company. He also thinks the company needs to rethink, and reduce, how much it spends on research and development and digital advertising, claiming that P&G lags well behind smaller companies when it comes to online sales and innovative new products. P&G’s board, which opposes Peltz’s bid, says the company has made many adjustments over the past few years that have improved its innovation and profitability, and that many of Peltz’s suggestions have already been considered or executed. Shareholders will vote ahead of P&G’s annual shareholder meeting Oct. 10.
• OK, so U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, who represents Northern Kentucky, was one of just three votes in the House against sending aid to victims of Hurricane Harvey. Not exactly a move that engenders good will. But would you characterize him as, say, “a piece of shit?” The Twitter account of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce posted a tweet to that effect yesterday afternoon while retweeting a news story about Massie’s vote. The tweet was quickly deleted and Chamber President Brent Cooper apologized, saying that only he and one other person have access to the account. Cooper says he didn’t send the tweet, and, while declining to name the other person, says it’s unlikely they did either because they were traveling at the time. He says he’s changed the login information on the account so that a similar errant message doesn’t pop up in the future. Ah, the old “I got hacked” defense. Massie has explained his controversial vote by saying that the legislation for hurricane relief did not include any spending cuts to offset the $7.85 billion aid package.
Update: Scooter Media, a marketing firm hired by the Chamber, has taken responsibility for the tweet.
“The Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce was in no way responsible for the Wednesday evening Twitter comment that referenced Congressman Massie,” a representative for the company said in a statement.
“The post was from a team member of Scooter Media, a marketing firm that works on behalf of the Chamber. The comment, a response to the congressman’s no vote to support those impacted by Hurricane Harvey, was intended to be posted to the employee’s personal Twitter account. This personal comment in no way reflects the views of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce or that of Scooter Media broadly.
We have taken immediate action to ensure this type of error will not happen again and the employee involved was immediately suspended pending a more detailed inquiry.
Scooter Media wouldn’t condone this type of personal statement from our own twitter account, let alone from a client’s account, and we sincerely apologize to everyone who has been negatively impacted by this unfortunate incident.”
• Finally, body camera footage has been released from the Monday shooting of a news photographer by a sheriff’s deputy in Clark County, north of Dayton. New Carlisle News photographer Andy Grimm was preparing to take photos of a traffic stop when deputy Jake Shaw fired two shots at him, grazing his arm and hitting him in the side. Shaw’s body camera captured the exchange between the two, with both Shaw and Grimm apologizing. Grimm asks the deputy to call his wife. The photographer is expected to recover from his injuries. Shaw is on leave while the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation looks into the incident.
This article appears in Sep 6-13, 2017.