Hello Cincy. Let’s get our news on.
If you were wondering why Amazon decided to bypass Cincinnati as a finalist for a second headquarters location while shortlisting peer cities like Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, well, wonder no more. In short, we don’t have enough tech workers and our transit infrastructure is lacking, according to local economic development officials who were part of a conference call the online retail giant held last week to provide feedback. Our above-mentioned peer cities and others did much better on those metrics, or at least had a plan to shore up their transit systems if they were lacking.
"What differentiated us from other mid-sized cities was they had a plan, budget and timeline to address the gaps,'' REDI’s Ed Loyd told the Cincinnati Enquirer. REDI helped put together Greater Cincinnati’s regional bid for Amazon’s HQ2. "We need to have a plan, budget and timeline together, too, so that we ensure that we're not going to be passed by as a region.''
• So, will transit become a higher priority in Cincinnati? Local activists want the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority to work on shoring up the region’s main bus system, Metro, and they want voters to fund it via a Hamilton County tax levy. But as we explore in this week’s news feature, there’s a lot of change happening at SORTA right now, including new financial scrutiny, tension between labor and management and incoming board members who could change the transit agency’s priorities.
• The Cincinnati Board of Education has released its survey regarding a potential land swap in the West End with FC Cincinnati so the team can build a soccer stadium on the site of Taft High School’s Stargel stadium. The CPS Board must approve agreeing to that swap — assuming FCC gets a Major League Soccer franchise next month. CPS also held a community input session last week on the topic.
The nonscientific study got about 1,700 responses. About 40 percent of those responding identified as taxpayers supporting Cincinnati Public Schools. Roughly a quarter of respondents were CPS parents, and about 13 percent were West End residents. Respondents could choose multiple categories, meaning it's likely that up to 60 percent of those responding aren't CPS taxpayers. CityBeat has reached out to CPS board members for more information about the survey's methodology.
The survey doesn’t ask whether respondents are for or against the stadium in the West End. Rather, it asked what respondents would like to know more about and what their concerns were. When asked about main concerns with the stadium, 55.83 percent of respondents said potential positive economic impact of the stadium in the West End, 42.53 percent said jobs and economic opportunities, 26.95 percent said gentrification of West End and 26.36 percent said they were concerned about a legally binding community benefits agreement. Other, similar questions got similar responses. You can read the results of the survey here.
• Speaking of FCC, the team will present the results of a traffic study it commissioned for the area around another potential stadium site in Oakley. The team will give those results to the Oakley Community Council during its public meeting next week. The team has said the site’s viability hinges in part on the results of the traffic study.
• Oh boy. As major outlets like the New York Times have learned, it can be tricky to profile fringe figures with hateful beliefs. How do you cover them fairly without normalizing their extreme — even dangerous — ideologies? Local outlets are starting to wade into that minefield. Case in point: You may have known that Deerfield Township attorney James E. Kolenich is one of the lawyers representing organizers of the deadly “Unite the Right” event that resulted in the death of anti-racist activist Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va. last summer. You may or may not know that he also is co-counsel representing Kyle Bristow in his lawsuit against the University of Cincinnati over security fees related to a potential appearance by white nationalist Richard Spencer there. You also may or may not be familiar with his beliefs, which are bluntly anti-Semitic, white nationalist and mirror those of his clients. But did you know he has nine kids? That he was born in Cleveland and has been married for 18 years? That he is sartorially daring, wearing pinstripe suits with horizontally striped ties? Or that he’s a devout Catholic? Well, if you read this Cincinnati Enquirer article, now you do. Though those details seem a little less important next to his skepticism about the Holocaust and beliefs that “some Jewish people are dead set on destroying America,” as well as quotes like this:
"My willingness to get involved is to oppose Jewish influence in society," Kolenich told The Enquirer about the court cases. "It's plain that white people are the chosen people in the New Testament. It's the job that we were given, to spread Christianity around the world. That doesn't involve hatred of other races, not even of ethnic Jews. But it does involve opposing their un-Christian influence in society."
Yikes.
• Newport’s City Commission last night voted to approve a needle exchange program in the city, a move that could sway other nearby municipalities to take similar measures. The program, designed to decrease instances of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis from intravenous drug use, will run from a mobile unit outside Saint Elizabeth Hospital.
• The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a case that could determine the fate of unions in Ohio and across the country. You can read about the details of the Janus vs. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in this article, but basically the question at hand is whether unions can compel employees at unionized companies to pay dues even if they don’t want to. Opponents, including the plaintiff in the case, say that’s a violation of their First Amendment right to stay out of political issues. Proponents say that union negotiations with employers benefit all employees, and that if dues weren’t mandatory, they would weaken unions significantly. Union membership has fallen over the past few decades in the United States. But here’s an interesting tidbit — it rose by about 3 percent in Ohio last year, though it's still down from its 2008 levels, when 14.2 percent of workers belonged to unions.
