Morning News and Stuff

The city administration yesterday

disputed the findings of a June 20 memo

that suggested the city is getting a bad deal from its parking lease agreement with the Greater Cincinnati Port Authority, but controversy remains about why the city administration withheld the memo from City Council and the Port Authority for three-plus weeks. Opponents of the parking plan are now attempting to use the memo to convince the Port Authority to reject the lease with Xerox, but the Port Authority insists that the memo is laced with inaccuracies and technical errors. The city is pursuing the lease to obtain a $92 million lump sum and at least $3 million in annual payments, according to city estimates. The money will be used to pay for future budget gaps and development projects, including the I-71/MLK Interchange.

City Manager Milton Dohoney

defended the city administration’s decision to withhold the June 20 memo

, but several council members are angered by what they call a “lack of transparency.” Still, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls argued the administration’s decision to keep the memo from City Council was understandable because the memo was based on faulty information.

The Cincinnati streetcar got an opening date yesterday:

Sept. 15, 2016

. The grand opening comes after years of political controversy, pulled funding and two referendum efforts nearly killed the project. Ever since it was first proposed, the streetcar project has been engulfed in misrepresentations, which CityBeat covered

here

.

A federal judge made permanent his earlier decision that Ohio

must count provisional ballots

if they’re submitted in the right polling place but wrong precinct. The ruling is being taken as a victory by voting-rights advocates.

Cincinnati is

negotiating to claw back

its incentive with Kendle International Inc., which agreed in 2008 to keep its headquarters and create jobs at the city’s Carew Tower. The agreement gave Kendle $200,000 over 10 years on the condition it steadily grew jobs. The failure may add further doubt to the value of job deals, which were criticized earlier in the year by a report CityBeat covered

here

.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Christ Hospital and Bethesda North Hospital are among the best hospitals in the nation, according to

U.S. News’s “Best Hospitals” feature

.

Here

are some of the odd things that made it into the two-year state budget.

Gov. John Kasich

signed a Columbus school plan

that will allow levy money to be shared with charter schools that partner with the Columbus school district.

The Senate is the best place in the country to eat hot dogs, according to

Food & Wine

.

More U.S. hospitals now

treat gay parents equally

.

Dogs

apparently can watch television

, which is good news for an Israeli channel explicitly aimed at dogs.