Cincinnati has seen a chaotic few weeks as Mayor John Cranley, City Manager Harry Black and city council all wrangle over whether Black keeps his job and how much he should walk away with if he leaves.
The situation has led to multiple standoffs between the mayor and city council, ugly accusations between the mayor and city manager and promises from Cranley of more revelations about Black’s behavior to come.
The mood has been tense, to put it lightly.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” says Cincinnati City Councilman David Mann, who has served a cumulative 23 years in City Hall. Other long-term Cincinnati politics watchers agree: We’ve reached an unprecedented stalemate — one that, despite a vote by council approving a severance package for Black, was unresolved at press time.
But how did we get here? Various players in the drama, as well as outside observers, have different explanations for the mess.
Some pin it on the city’s charter. They say we need to change Cincinnati’s system of government, which has since 1999 run under a modified city council/city manager structure that some say effectively creates two chief executives for the city.
Others like Mann say the current trouble is relational, not structural, and has to do with the mayor and city manager’s strong personalities. Until one of them leaves, it will be impossible to go back to business as usual, they say.
Still others, however, say that racial tensions within the Cincinnati Police Department have sparked the tumult, and that CPD is where structural changes are needed.
Is there any one answer, or is Cincinnati’s current impasse the perfect storm of multiple issues coming to the fore at the same time? Let’s take a look at the factors.
It’s the Charter
Forty-seven of America’s 100 largest cities, including the five largest, have a so-called “strong mayor” system in which the mayor serves as the city’s chief executive. Another 46 function under a city manager/city council system, including major cities like Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, San Jose and Austin, Texas. In that system, the city manager carries most executive powers.
Cincinnati is one of six U.S. using some form of hybrid arrangement with elements of both city manager and strong mayor systems.
Cincinnati arrived at its current governmental structure via a winding path. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the political machine of Republican George “Boss” Cox dominated City Hall. Anyone who wanted to run for office or get anything done needed to go through the well-connected Cincinnati bar owner and political fixer and his cronies. Cox, using vote buying and political bullying, basically decided who would become mayor, giving him vast power over the city.
But his methods proved less effective with the middle-class residents of recently annexed suburbs, and his candidate for mayor lost in 1905. That empowered a reform movement in the city that, among other changes, created the position of a professional city manager appointed by council and sealed off from political considerations.
About 90 years after Cox left the stage, some in the city were unhappy with the slow pace and bickering of the city’s government. In the 1990s, a group named Build Cincinnati, led by Republican Chip Gerhardt, wanted to make City Hall more decisive by creating a stronger mayor.
Efforts to bring a strong mayor system to Cincinnati ended in a compromise that voters approved in 1999 — the city manager position stayed, but the mayor became a directly elected figure with power to veto council legislation and to set council’s agenda. The mayor also, pivotally, became the person responsible for hiring and firing the city manager — with council’s approval.
Those changes, some argue, have muddled Cincinnati’s political situation. In 2015, now-Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman floated the idea of putting a ballot initiative up for voters to switch the city to the strong mayor system. That’s an idea he’s returned to on occasion, including recently during the tumultuous battle between Black and Cranley.
“What’s confusing for the voter is that they don’t know who is running the city,” Smitherman said following a March 19 Cincinnati City Council meeting. “I think the voters have to decide.”
Others, including former Vice Mayor Tarbell, say the city manager position needs to stay, and that the mayor needs less power.
Talking with a reporter in council chambers following a surreal March 14 council meeting, Tarbell expressed concern and blamed the city’s unusual dual-executive governmental structure — not quite a strong mayor system, nor a city council/city manager system.
Tarbell was the hold out vote during the 1999 debate in council over giving Cincinnati a strong mayor. His issue? The fact that council wouldn’t have the power to do things like hire or fire a city manager.
“I look at this and I wonder what caliber of person would want to run for council, given the fact that council would be so powerless,” he said during debates at the time over the Build Cincinnati proposal.
Cincinnati’s Charter Committee says the city’s form of government doesn’t need radical changes, but does need tweaks.
“Cincinnati government has a workforce of over 5,000 employees and a total budget greater than $1.5 billion,” the committee says in a statement about the stalemate. “An organization this size — a conglomeration of many distinct lines of business (public works, parks, recreation, police, fire, transportation and engineering, public health) — should be managed by a professional, not a politician.”
The committee touts changes to the charter recommended in 2015 that would have given council the power to initiate the hiring and firing of the city manager, among other changes. Those recommendations, which emerged through a Charter Reform Task Force run by then-Councilman Kevin Flynn — never made it to a ballot for voters to approve after Cranley threatened to veto them.
It’s the Relationships
Others believe that the current problem has to do with the players, not the rules of the game.
Former Vice Mayor Mann has served under all three arrangements of the mayoral system Cincinnati has had in place — from the time prior to 1987 when councilmembers elected the mayor to the time when the top vote-getter on council became mayor to the current, directly elected mayor.
In all three systems, Mann says, problems pop up, stalemates happen and tempers flare.
“If the players are dysfunctional, it’s going to be dysfunctional,” he says.
Mann waves away concerns about the city’s charter. In reality, he says, the powers afforded the mayor aren’t that much more than what you’d have under any city council/city manager style of government. Mann opposes efforts to move the city to a strong mayor system, though.
“I do think, and this is something (the mayor) doesn’t agree with me on, that there is tremendous advantage to having a city manager,” he says. “They start without preexisting relationships that can get in the way of good governance.”
But that, Mann says, requires a good relationship between the mayor and city manager. Both Cranley and Black have reputations as strong-willed, hard-headed operators.
At a former job as chief financial officer of Richmond, Va., Black was known as “the mayor’s pitbull” for his aggressive style of management.
Black grew up in Park Heights, Baltimore, a rough neighborhood that he says bred toughness and tenacity.
“I believe my life experiences have been what they have been to prepare me for this moment,” Black said at the most recent city council meeting, referring to his upbringing.
Critics say he’s taken that focus too far, however. Black is the subject of multiple federal lawsuits against the city alleging he engaged in intimidation and aggressive behavior toward city employees. Cranley says there are roughly a dozen employees who have complained about Black’s behavior.
The mayor, of course, is not known to be a pushover either. He’s gone over Black’s head to negotiate pay raises for some city employees, including political allies with the police and firefighter’s unions. He negotiated severance packages with Black before consulting council about the city manager’s departure. And he’s been heavily involved in economic development deals handed out by the city — turf usually reserved for a city executive.
Does the charter afford the mayor those executive powers? They’re gray areas, and ones that Cranley has used successfully to get big wins.
Cranley’s aggressiveness has certainly rubbed some the wrong way, and other tensions have come to the fore during the battle over the city manager.
Councilman Wendell Young — one of council’s holdouts when it comes to Black — last week announced that he had lodged a complaint with the U.S. attorney’s office after a phone call with Cranley. Young claims the mayor asked him “what he wanted” to vote for Black’s removal. Young says he then approached the Ohio Ethics Commission, who he says advised him to go to law enforcement over possible bribery charges.
Cranley’s office has called the accusations “frivolous,” and Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters says that, going off the statement Young released announcing his complaint, “no crime” was committed. It’s unclear if there was more to that conversation that made Young and the Ethics Commission think bribery charges might be applicable — Young isn’t talking until he speaks again with the U.S. attorney’s office.
Crime or no, the incident has revealed the level of tension the Black-Cranley rift has created in City Hall. Put two tenacious and driven officials on the same turf, and eventually, you get a fight. That battle won’t end, Mann says, until Cranley or Black leaves — and since Cranley was recently reelected by popular vote, he thinks Black is the one who needs to go.
It’s Race
Some councilmembers and community activists suggest the root of the current problem isn’t in City Hall at all, but instead involves racial tensions and the city’s police department.
Cranley denies that his move to oust Black has anything to do with recent controversies at CPD. But his request for the city manager’s resignation came just after Black fired Assistant Police Chief David Bailey. Bailey, according to reports from Police Chief Eliot Isaac, had been insubordinate and unwilling to go along with elements of the city’s historic police reforms aimed at erasing race-based disparities.
The former assistant chief is also named in a gender discrimination complaint filed by CPD Lt. Bridget Bardua, which alleges that Bailey and others have racial animus toward Chief Isaac, who is black.
Just before he was asked to resign, Black said publicly that a “rogue element” within CPD was working to undermine Isaac.
That’s far from the only point of tension. Black has feuded with the Fraternal Order of Police, including during a late-night phone call to President Dan Hils last year over the latter’s move to delay testimony before a police accountability board from two officers accused of racial profiling and use of excessive force. Black accused Hils of trying to undermine the city’s Collaborative Agreement.
Cranley says that Black’s behavior, as evidenced by the lawsuits against the city, is the reason for his dismissal — not his differences with some in CPD. But others are skeptical.
African-American leaders, including former Mayor Dwight Tillery, the Cincinnati NAACP and other groups have rallied behind Black and against Cranley.
Those groups and their supporters have crowded into council chambers during meetings to criticize Cranley, something the mayor has shrugged off as “political games.”
But some council members take the situation more seriously.
“People have to understand this situation is bigger than City Manager Harry Black,” Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard says. “This is also about the culture of the Cincinnati Police Department that treats black officers different than white officers and an unwillingness by our city government to address it. There are also people within our police department who don’t want to be a part of the Collaborative Agreement.”
Others Cranley critics agree, saying that Black is just another example of a black official getting bad treatment in City Hall. Those opposed to Black’s dismissal have brought up former CPD Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, whose 2015 firing caused similar controversy.
“I have seen black leaders taken down one after the other,” Councilmember Chris Seelbach said at a March 28 council meeting. “The issue of race is a big one in this equation. If we ignore that, we ignore a big part of it.”
Fixing the problem
On March 29, council voted to approve a measure that would award Black an eight-month severance package worth roughly $174,000 in pay and benefits. That’s the amount stipulated in Black’s contract. Five Democrats on council opposed an earlier, higher severance package of $423,000 worked out between Black and Cranley.
Black seems unlikely to accept the latest deal, but he has until April 30 to decide. In a March 30 statement, Cranley called for an independent investigation into Black’s behavior.
Previously, the five council Democrats called for an independent counsel to investigate the rift between Black and Cranley, as well as a probe into racial friction within CPD.
“The way forward will involve fact finding… but it must also include each of us — Council members, the Mayor, and the City Manager — working with black leaders, community representatives, and residents not just to deescalate tensions but to really listen and to work on the issues they raise,” Councilman Greg Landsman said in a statement posted on Facebook.
Others, however, say it’s time to move on, and that rooting through all the allegations and accusations flying won’t heal the relationship between the mayor and city manager.
‘If we do that, we’re going to spend a lot of money,” Mann says of an investigation. “Once we do all that, what do we have? The mayor and city manager will still have a poor relationship.”
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 4, 2018.
