Good morning all. I hope your weekend was as long and fantastic as mine was. Let’s get to some news, shall we?
The retrial for former UCPD officer Ray Tensing was supposed to continue today with a process known as voir dire, where attorneys on both sides question a pool of 180 potential jurors, who filled out a 25-page questionnaire last week, to try and get to 12 final jurors. But that’s on hold. Hamilton County Judge Leslie Ghiz this morning dismissed potential jurors for the day following a ruling on restrictions to media access to the trial she issued at the start of the proceedings. Those restrictions included a limit of five media personnel in the courtroom, banning recording devices and electronics like laptops and cellphones and refusing release of the juror questionnaire until the trial is over. A federal appeals court overturned those restrictions, however, saying that a hearing on them is necessary before they can be implemented. That hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
• A local undocumented man married to a U.S. citizen was arrested last week after a scheduled meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. That meeting, part of Felix Yulian Motino’s quest to abide by U.S. immigration law after arriving here from Honduras as an undocumented immigrant in 2005, was voluntary and requested by Motino, his wife Alexis and their lawyer, Matthew Benson. After the meeting, Motino was seized by two ICE agents and taken to the Butler County Jail, which serves as a federal detention site. He’s currently in Morrow County Jail — often one of the last stops for Ohio immigrants before deportation. You can read more about Motino’s case here.
• You’ve probably heard about the controversy around stadium taxes here in Cincinnati. It’s only like, you know, one of the biggest political flashpoints in the county. And unlike other contentious issues like the streetcar, nearly everyone seems to agree the county’s deal to build two major league sports stadiums on the Ohio River was a bad one. So, uh, do you want to extend it? That’s a potential funding source for a new soccer stadium the owners of FC Cincinnati are mulling a push for, according to this Enquirer article. While the debt from the stadiums will be paid off in 2032, the tax that funds those payments could remain unless it’s specifically eliminated by Hamilton County commissioners. FC is looking for a dedicated venue — perhaps in the West End — as part of a bid to join Major League Soccer, and the team’s owners think the county’s $80 million-a-year stadium sales tax might be a great way to pay some of the debt associated with building one. That probably won’t be a very politically popular option, however, and the team hasn’t formally made that pitch just yet.
• Breweries, bars, restaurants and apartments — they’re all filling old, once-vacant buildings in neighborhoods from Northside to Over-the-Rhine and from Covington to College Hill. But what are the economics of preserving those old spaces and making them into neighborhood destinations? Here’s a pretty interesting article about how that’s happening in Greater Cincinnati.
• County coroners in Ohio are running out of resources to perform autopsies and toxicology reports on overdose victims here. Coroners across the state are experiencing big numbers of cases they need to investigate and simply don’t have the money or the staff to handle all of them. It’s another facet of the state’s ongoing opiate addiction crisis — one that doesn’t look to be easing soon.
• Finally, this is scary — the windows of Lexington’s daily newspaper, the Herald-Leader, were shattered yesterday by what are believed to be gunshots. Several first-, second- and third-floor windows were broken by vandals, and some wonder if it has anything to do with anti-press sentiment that’s been circulating around the country. Last week, GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte allegedly violently attacked a reporter attempting to ask him a question about health care. Gianforte apologized after winning his special election. Gianforte isn’t the only elected official with some disdain for the press. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin recently compared the press to cicadas, and last week Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a very controversial joke involving journalists and target shooting. What a world we live in.
This article appears in May 24-31, 2017.
