Hello all. Let’s talk news.
City of Cincinnati officials are pushing back against a lawsuit by a Cincinnati Police captain alleging improper use of federal and state funds for the city’s 911 center and cronyism in the way city contracts are vetted by a third-party company. City Solicitor Paula Boggs Muething says the suit by Capt. Jeff Butler “lacks merit completely” and that Butler is simply bitter because he didn’t get a promotion to assistant chief. City officials also say that any spending of federal Homeland Security funds — which Butler said were applied to things outside the emergency call center for which they were earmarked — has to go through a rigorous auditing process that would have found any improprieties. Butler’s lawsuit comes as the city’s emergency response system has seen scrutiny over failures during which 911 calls weren’t getting through. City Manager Harry Black says the city is working on the issue and that the problems are related to a software vendor.
• If you park downtown or in a bunch of other business districts around Cincinnati, throw a few more quarters in your cupholder — parking rates are going up tomorrow. Downtown and much of Over-the-Rhine will have variable rates, while meters in places like Clifton, Northside, Walnut Hills, Pleasant Ridge and others will see a bump from 50 cents to 75 cents an hour. It’ll be the first increase in those neighborhoods since 2010, a move the city says it needs to close revenue gaps from less-than-expected tax receipts. Downtown and OTR saw parking rate boosts in 2015 to help fund the streetcar.
• The University of Cincinnati wants to rethink its flagship campus uptown, it says, and is searching for a planning firm to help it put together its first master plan since 2000. The previous plan led to more than $1.2 billion in various projects on the campus, including some by internationally known architects. Since that time, enrollment has exploded — from 33,000 to 45,000 students — and faculty say they need more flexible spaces to keep up with the ways in which college instruction has changed. One big potential focus of the effort: UC’s College of Law. The university recently mulled relocating the school to The Banks, but decided against it. It may opt for a change-up as part of the upcoming ten-year plan, however. The school issued a request for proposals last month and has narrowed down potential planning firms to four: Ayers Saint Gross LLC, Land Collective LLC, Reed Hildebrand Landscape Architecture LLC and Sasaki Associates Inc. The school will pick one by early November and expects to wrap up the plan by 2019.
• While we’re on UC’s campus, here’s a question. Do you even brutalist, bro? A University of Cincinnati building constructed in that short-lived 1960s austere style landed on an Architecture Digest list of the nation’s eight ugliest college campus buildings last week. The magazine says UC’s Crosley Tower (trust me, you’ve seen it before) “looks more like a Disney villain’s lair than a part of University of Cincinnati’s campus.” Ouch. But hey, it is the largest building ever constructed with a single pour of concrete, so it at least has that going for it.
• One more UC-related story. A bit back we told you about Michael Dourson, the UC professor who President Donald Trump tapped for a big regulatory role at the Environmental Protection Agency. But there are some potential conflicts of interest for Dourson, whose nonprofit has taken money from a Circleville, Ohio company called PPG Industries that makes an industrial solvent called 1,4 dioxane. Dourson’s Cincinnati-based Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment then issued two reports recommending that regulatory levels for that solvent — a known carcinogen — be raised 1,000 times higher than they currently stand. That’s enraged environmental and chemical safety groups, who point out that Dourson would be directly responsible for regulating 1,4 dioxane and other industrial chemicals in his new perch as head of the EPA’s chemical and pesticide safety office.
• Ohio GOP gubernatorial hopeful Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor made a surprising promise Monday, saying she would dismantle the state’s Medicaid expansion if she becomes governor. Taylor is Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s second in command, and Kasich has fought his party to gain and keep the expansion. Taylor has been a quiet critic of the expansion for some time, but her stance on the expansion is telling of how far right the Republican field for governor will likely end up — none of the other three candidates, including Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine — look likely to defend the expansion, which covers 700,000 Ohioans.
• Finally, Republicans in the U.S. Senate are working once again on a last-ditch effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act by keeping in place many of the taxes associated with the ACA but allowing states to decide what to do with the money. That would allow wide leverage for states to strip away protections for people with pre-existing conditions and other hallmarks of Obamacare. Gov. Kasich, a vocal opponent of many efforts to outright repeal the ACA, has criticized the plan sponsored by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy. But another powerful Ohio politician who wasn’t a fan of the last GOP effort to get rid of the ACA says he’s interested in the new, harsher Graham-Cassidy version. U.S. Sen. Rob Portman hasn’t said he’ll vote on the measure yet, but has said he’s looking into it.
“Giving the states more flexibility is something I generally have been supportive of,” Portman told reporters in a telephone news conference yesterday. “It’s very different than the other bills.”
Portman balked at past efforts to repeal and replace the ACA because they did not have provisions for addressing the opiate addiction crisis. The Graham-Cassidy version doesn’t have those either. Portman’s vote could be pivotal — the GOP is scrambling to come up with enough votes to pass the last-ditch legislation before a deadline at the end of September.
