A plan that would have provided funding for human services agencies through the city via a ticket tax hike appears to be off the table.
Cincinnati City Council members P.G. Sittenfeld and David Mann, both Democrats, announced the proposal in June at a news conference at the West End’s Center for Addiction Treatment. The plan would have boosted a tax on tickets for sports, music and other events from three percent to five percent. That money, roughly $3.56 million a year, would have then been funneled into a city fund that provides resources for various social service agencies via a process overseen by United Way of Greater Cincinnati.
Under Sittenfeld and Mann’s proposed amendment, $3 million of the tax hike’s receipts would have gone to human services funding and the other $600,000 would go to fund community councils and community development corporations.
But that plan would have required a charter amendment needing voter approval in November, and no one has come forward to lead the campaign to pitch it to voters, Mann says. Meanwhile, the city’s professional sports teams and others likely to be adversely affected by the tax increase have floated the idea of running a well-funded campaign against the idea.
The plan came during the city’s budget process as Cincinnati once again struggled to scrape together enough money to approach a commitment it made in the 1980s to fund human services organizations at 1.5 percent of the city’s overall discretionary operating budget. The city hasn’t achieved that ratio in years.
A budget proposal from Acting Cincinnati City Manager Patrick Duhaney cut funding for human services down to .69 percent of the overall operating budget. Adjustments by Mayor John Cranley brought the amount to .93 percent. After adjusting for inflation, the $4 million the city spent last year on addiction services, anti-poverty efforts and violence prevention initiatives is down 39 percent from a high in 2004.
Council’s budget proposals face another challenge — a temporary restraining order a judge placed on a tax increase for billboard advertising that Democrats sought to use to generate roughly $700,000 in revenue. Norton Outdoor Advertising sued the city over that plan, saying it discriminates against its business. Without the revenue, the city faces a $700,000 shortfall.
Mayor John Cranley, who opposed the tax hikes, has proposed cutting funding to the Center for Closing the Health Gap to bridge some of the gap. The Health Gap, a nonprofit focused on eliminating health disparities Cincinnati’s minority populations experience, has drawn questions about its spending practices in recent years. The organization is run by former Cincinnati Mayor Dwight Tillery, a one-time ally of Cranley. The Health Gap is slated to receive $550,000 in council’s budget this year. Cranley has also suggested cutting roughly $180,000 in funding to tech business accelerators Cintrifuse, CincyTech and the Hillman Accelerator to bridge the gap.
This article appears in Aug 22-29, 2018.
