Hello all! Let’s talk about news today.
Let’s play a rousing game of “would you rather” shall we? As in, would you rather take the upcoming Over-the-Rhine/downtown streetcar late at night when you’ve got your swerve on from your sixth OTR-brewed high-ABV craft beer, or early the next morning when you’re hungover and on the way to work? The good news: You might be able to do both. Cincinnati City Council’s transportation committee yesterday asked the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority to study whether it would be feasible to run the streetcar later than the initially proposed 10 p.m. weekday and 12 a.m. weekend cutoffs. Some businesses in OTR, as well as Mayor John Cranley, would like to see the cars run later Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to capture the weekend bar crowd. But Cranley also suggested the cars start running at 7:30 a.m., a time many streetcar supporters say is too late to capture early-morning commuters. Other plans put forth by SORTA would start operations at 7 or even 6:30 a.m., which streetcar boosters like more. A 7:30 a.m. start time would make Cincy’s system the latest-starting of all the modern streetcar systems around the U.S., supporters of earlier times say.
• A lot happened in Cincinnati’s startup scene over the past year, including big successes by minority entrepreneur support program Mortar, lots of activity from individual grant-giving philanthropy People’s Liberty, a big expansion by startup incubator The Brandery and more. All told, a ton of things happened in Cincy’s entrepreneur-centered startup economy, and you can check out a whole year-in-review piece here.
• Amid rate hikes and investigations into possible mismanagement, will Hamilton County take over operations of the Metropolitan Sewer District, which is currently run by the city of Cincinnati? Not so fast, city officials say. Mayor Cranley and members of Cincinnati City Council have warned the county that they’re not ready to hand over the reigns just yet, and while they’re open to discussions about challenges MSD is facing, they’re in no mood to cede control of the enormous operation. Last month, county commissioners sent a letter to city officials proposing a new arrangement in which the county would take over management of MSD, citing price increases for ratepayers and allegations that the sewer district is being mismanaged. But the city says those allegations are baseless. Currently, the county owns much of MSD and the city runs the sewer system, per a 1968 agreement. Much of the current strife over the MSD stems from a federal court-ordered $1 billion overhaul of the sewer system.
• It’s a rough week to be into sweets, right? First, Kroger recalled some of its brownies yesterday on the worst possible day of the year, National Brownie Day (yes that’s apparently a thing). The retailer is pulling the brownies because they might contain walnuts, even though that isn’t mentioned in any allergy warning labels. And this morning, the OTR location of Holtman’s Donuts had a kitchen fire that will shutter the location for an indeterminate amount of time. This is the most upset I’ve been about baked goods since that truck ran into Servatti last year.
• Ohio lawmakers are considering a bill that would ban charter schools from using public money to advertise themselves. Democrats in the Ohio Senate are pushing the legislation because they say public schools aren’t allowed to use taxpayer funds to promote themselves to parents of potential students or to take political stands on issues, but that privately run but publicly funded charter schools do so all the time. The bill wouldn’t prohibit those schools from using donated money or other non-public funds to advertise.
• The Butler County GOP failed to settle on an endorsement for any of the candidates vying to replace former House Speaker John Boehner in Congress. Boehner is retiring after a two-decade run in the House, mostly due to strife within the GOP between tea party conservatives and more establishment-allied Republicans. Butler County makes up a big part of Boehner’s former 8th Congressional District, and an endorsement from the county GOP could have been a big win for a candidate looking to take the party’s nomination in the upcoming special primary election. The district, which encompasses many suburban areas north of Cincinnati, is heavily Republican, meaning that Boehner’s successor will almost certainly be decided in the GOP primary. Who that will be, however — and whether they will be allied with the more establishment wing of the GOP or a tea party insurgent — is still very much up in the air.
• Speaking of the GOP, the fight for the party’s presidential nomination has been a non-stop circus lately, and it’s mostly thanks to one man. Yes, yes, this is another blurb about Donald Trump. The real estate mogul’s comments earlier this week suggesting the U.S. prohibit any Muslims from entering the country caused a huge outcry, drawing condemnation even from many staunch conservatives.
Despite that, however, bigwigs in the Ohio Republican party say they would stand behind Trump should he win the nomination. At least one big local party name has diverged from that trend, however: Outgoing Hamilton County Commissioner Greg Hartmann, who has said that the party needs to distance itself from Trump’s rhetoric. Presumably, other party leaders are still under the assumption that there is no way Trump, who has been the GOP frontrunner for months now, can actually win the nomination and that an establishment candidate like Marco Rubio will start surging in the polls any day now. Trump has been surpassed in some polls in the GOP’s first primary state, Iowa. Unfortunately for the GOP establishment, he’s been passed up by a candidate many hate just as much: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has continually helped goad tea party Republican representatives into defiance of party leadership in the House.
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2015.