Last Call For Lost Angels And Found Angles

Los Angeles's City Council is almost as corrupt as Cincinnati's these days. What's the country coming to?

Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price was charged with 10 counts of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest on Tuesday, becoming the latest in a years-long parade of elected city officials to face public corruption allegations from state or federal prosecutors.

Price, a 10-year veteran of the City Council, is accused of having a financial interest in development projects that he voted on, and receiving tens of thousands of dollars in medical benefits from the city for his now wife while he was still married to another woman, according to a news release from the L.A. County district attorney’s office.

He was charged with five counts of grand theft by embezzlement, three counts of perjury and two counts of conflict of interest, according to a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office.

The district attorney’s office alleges that Price’s wife, Del Richardson — founder of the consulting company Del Richardson & Associates — received “payments totaling more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before he voted to approve projects.” Price is also accused of failing to list income Richardson received on government financial disclosure forms, according to the release

“We have not seen the charges filed against Councilmember Curren Price. It’s highly unusual for charges like this to be brought up against a sitting City Council member without any prior notice or discussion,” Price spokesperson Angelina Valencia said Tuesday afternoon. “Curren Price is a long-standing public servant who has given his life to the city of Los Angeles. He looks forward to defending himself once he’s had an opportunity to address these charges.”

Price’s attorney, Dave Willingham, declined to comment, saying he had not seen the complaint. Price left the City Council chamber shortly after Tuesday’s meeting ended around 2 p.m.

The charges are the latest in a series of criminal allegations and scandals that have rocked City Hall. Last year, the leak of a conversation among City Council President Nury Martinez, Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo and L.A. County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera containing racist remarks ended Martinez’s council career and drove Herrera from his post.

Earlier this year, Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas was found guilty of conspiracy, bribery and fraud for extracting benefits for his son from USC while voting on issues that benefited the school.

Councilmembers Mitch Englander and Jose Huizar also pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in recent years following an FBI probe.

Price was one of several City Hall figures mentioned in the FBI probe that ensnared Huizar and Englander after he was named in a federal search warrant filed in November 2018. Federal prosecutors never brought charges against him.

A date has not been set for Price’s arraignment, and he is not going to be arrested, according to the district attorney’s office spokesperson. No information about the charges against him was available on the L.A. County Superior Court’s website as of Tuesday afternoon.

 

Seems pretty open and shut to me, and L.A.'s leadership has been a garbage fire now for several years, just like Cincinnati under Mayor Cranley. Here in Cincy though, the difference is Mayor Pureval and multiple new City Council members are in place.

We'll see if the City of Angels gets the hint.

A Pence-ive Response

Former VP and Trump chewing toy Mike Pence was in here in Cincy yesterday addressing a right-wing "Christian" advocacy group when news of Trump, sexual abuser broke and Pence immediately dismissed it as nothing that voters would care about.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence subtly defended former President Donald Trump in an interview Tuesday, hours after a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

“I would tell you, in my 4½ years serving alongside the president, I never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature,” he said.

Pence was in Cincinnati to speak at a gala for the Center for Christian Virtue.

The decision to avoid criticizing Trump was stark at a moment when Pence is weighing whether to challenge his former boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

But Pence sidestepped the question of whether the jury’s verdict affects his view of Trump’s fitness for the presidency.

“I think that’s a question for the American people,” Pence said. “I’m sure the president will defend himself in that matter.”

He added his prediction that those very voters would pay little attention to what he cast as a distraction from their daily lives.

“It’s just one more instance where — at a time when American families are struggling, when our economy is hurting, when the world seems to become a more dangerous place almost every day — [there's] just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think is where the American people are focused.”

 

Mike Pence supplicating himself to a man that tried to have him killed when he refused to help steal an election for him, a man now found liable for sexual assault, in front of a Christian virtue group and dismissing it as not "where the American people are focused" is the best example yet of the Republican party's absolute corruption and ownership of everyone in it by Donald Trump.

 

And remember, Mike Pence is supposedly deciding whether or not he's running against Trump in the GOP primaries still.

Not one of them will stand up and say "enough is enough".

All of them work for Trump.

 

Welcome To Gunmerica, Cincy Edition, Con't

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and the City Council are taking on Ohio Republicans with new gun safety ordnances for the city and a lawsuit to restore home rule for firearms regulations.

 

In an effort to curb gun violence, Cincinnati has two proposed ordinances for City Council to consider and has filed a lawsuit against the state.

The first ordinance addresses the safe storage of firearms to keep them away from children. The second ordinance would bar those convicted of domestic violence or subject to a protection order from processing firearms.

The ordinances are extensions or additions to existing laws. They give law enforcement and prosecutors a few more options when it comes to addressing gun violence in situations that might not rise to the level of a felony. As city ordinances, both of the new charges would be misdemeanors punishable by up to one year in prison.

However, cities in Ohio have largely been unsuccessful in passing gun legislation due to a 2006 law that has survived a challenge in the Ohio Supreme Court. Cincinnati's lawyers want to change that.

Often called the "preemption law," it bars political subdivisions (like cities and counties) from regulating firearms, their components, ammunition, and knives. Ohio's gun lobby has successfully sued Cincinnati and other cities in the past to block gun restrictions. In 2018, Cincinnati's ban on bump stocks was stopped in this way.

“Keeping residents safe is the top priority of our City government," Mayor Aftab Pureval said. "Gun safety measures save lives, and we will continue to do everything in our power to put an end to gun violence in Cincinnati.”

Last week, the city filed a lawsuit seeking that the "preemption law" be declared unconstitutional.

 

We'll see. Ohio's Supreme Court may choose to take this up and make a ruling, but I'm sure Ohio Republicans will find a way to block the law anyway by sending whatever legislation is needed to Gov. Mike DeWine's desk.

 

But at least Pureval is having this fight. Good on him.

Like A Troubled Bridge Over Waters, Con't

President Biden will be in town today to kick off the new year and to remind everyone why he was elected as he visits the Brent Spence Bridge, with work funded by his historic infrastructure bill beginning later this year to replace the nearly 70-year old structure. 

 

President Joe Biden is visiting northern Kentucky on Wednesday to tout spending more than $1 billion in federal grants to improve congestion on the aging Brent Spence Bridge.

The bridge links Covington and downtown Cincinnati over the Ohio River along Interstate 75, one of the busiest trucking routes in America.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced last week it would award $1.635 billion for the construction of a companion bridge to help unclog bridge traffic by separating truck traffic from local vehicles. This is from an infrastructure law Congress passed in late 2021 to help repair or rebuild 10 of the most economically significant bridges in the country.

“The grant to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet will fund improvements to the Brent Spence Bridge, which is currently the second worst truck bottleneck in the nation and carries more than $400 billion in freight per year over the Ohio River,” reads a news release Wednesday from DOT.

The project also will improve “delays in the movement of freight that currently raise costs for American families.”

President Biden is expected to fly into Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport around 11:25 a.m.

Expect traffic delays on I-275 and I-71/75, as well as streets around the Brent Spence Bridge in Covington.

The president will hold a news conference near the bridge around lunchtime, making a rare joint appearance with Senate Republican Majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Other elected officials plan to attend, adding to the bipartisan mix of the event: Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, former Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican.

I'll of course be following the project over the next couple of years. Remember, proposing that the companion bridge be built with toll money is what cost Matt Bevin reelection. Keeping the bridge toll-free might get Beshear another term.

Dean Scream, Cincy Edition

Howard Dean's Democracy For America PAC is shutting down this month due to lack of money, and nearly everyone involved with it is pointing the finger at former Cincy City Councilwoman Yvette Simpson as the main culprit in the organization's demise.

 

As the liberal group Democracy for America approached insolvency following the midterm elections, staffers faced a related problem: their CEO, Yvette Simpson, was on vacation at a vineyard in California.

Weeks earlier Simpson had told two members of the development team that $320,000 needed to be raised for DFA to make it through the year, according to two former employees. But as the group’s dire financial state started to become clear to staff, she attended a leadership training paid for by the organization and a personal multi-day sommelier education course in Napa Valley, according to five former employees.

“Is this heaven? No, but it’s pretty close!” Simpson posted on Instagram while there. Eventually, she held an all-staff Zoom call while in Napa, in which she announced that DFA was running out of cash, according to an audio recording.

“We didn’t get major donations as we expected last month so we ended up using $100,000 from our reserve just to cover expenses,” she said. “If I were you, I would be looking for another job. … I want every member of this team to go out into the marketplace to see if they can get another job just in case.”

Though DFA was in deep trouble before Simpson left for California, her lack of substantial outreach to donors and her personal time away at that critical juncture was the culmination of the organization’s demise, according to the five former employees and a staffer’s contemporaneous notes and documents from inside DFA. She resigned on Dec. 7 as CEO and all non-leadership staffers were laid off the same day without any severance.

And last week, POLITICO reported that DFA was about to shut down while its separate 501(c)4 nonprofit would stay afloat.

It was an ignoble sendoff of a group that was once a major arm of the progressive movement. DFA was started in the wake of Howard Dean’s unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign. The group harnessed his progressive supporters and the anti-Iraq War movement’s momentum to support like-minded candidates across the country. It leaned on small-dollar fundraising to aggressively back progressives in competitive primaries. And in recent years, it expanded its focus to include secretary of state and attorney general races, ranked choice voting, student debt relief and Medicare for All.

But in a progressive ecosystem where groups have become more narrowly focused on issue advocacy or specific electoral tasks — such as candidate recruitment or voter protection — DFA has struggled. Dean left the organization after he became chair of the DNC in 2005 but continued to occasionally advise DFA from 2009 until 2016. He called the demise of DFA “sad” in a brief interview but declined to elaborate.

“DFA left it all on the field this year to stop the red wave and win critical elections up and down the ballot across the country. As DFA heads into the next cycle in this difficult fundraising environment, the decision was made to wind down the PAC by the end of the year,” said DFA special adviser Charles Chamberlain. “The DFA Advocacy Fund will continue its work for the foreseeable future focused on election reforms like ranked choice voting and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.” Simpson is still on the board of that fund, according to a person familiar with the matter, but it’s unclear whether she will remain in that position in the longer term.

 

The Cincinnati Enquirer weighed in on the story as well, interviewing Jim Dean, Howard Dean's brother and the head of DFA until Simpson stepped in three years ago.

Jim Dean told The Enquirer he stepped down in part because Simpson was available. He also said the demise of Democracy for America was not Simpson's fault. The organization had gone through similar lean financial times before her tenure.

"We have never, in the 18 years of our existence, never were flush with cash," Jim Dean said. "There was never any huge cushion. I’m a little bit surprised that seemed to be lost on the staff, because some of these folks had been there for a while and been there when we had cash shortages. It wasn’t the first time that’s happened."

 

But, the fact remains that DFA is shutting down under Simpson, and that given the rampant success of the 2022 midterms and fundraising off of a myriad of issues, Simpson couldn't get the money needed to keep DFA afloat.

Needless to say, this is the person who lost to John Cranley in the mayoral primary five years ago. She left the City Council in 2018 and went national, but this is the result.

Like A House Afire, Con't

The latest Cook Political Report analysis of the House has Republicans at 212 and Dems at 192, with 31 tossups, 22 Dem seats and 9 GOP seats. Republicans only have to pick up 6 of those 22 Dem toss-ups to win the House back.

Every Dem win of those 9 GOP toss-ups will be critical, including Cincinnati's competitive district, OH-1. Dems can keep the House, but it's going to require some heavy lifting.

It's a far better picture than even last month or in June, when Republicans were expected to pick up 40+ seats as opposed to the 15-20 now.

Dems can win this, but they're going to have to get some very close wins in those toss-up districts.

Republicans are still favored, but nowhere near as much as they were. That's progress.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Local Edition

I am truly saddened to be right in my predictions of MAGA terrorist violence after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

A pursuit and ongoing police situation in Clinton County has shut down two highways and prompted an area lockdown Thursday. It all started after an armed suspect attempted to breach an FBI building in Cincinnati.

According to FBI Cincinnati, it started around 9 a.m. when a person showed up to the office in Kenwood and attempted to breach the visitor screening facility.

An alarm went off and FBI special agents responded when the man fired a nail gun at law enforcement personnel. The man then held up an AR-15 style rifle before fleeing in a vehicle north onto I-71 leading Ohio State Highway Patrol on a pursuit into Clinton County.

The FBI, Ohio State Highway Patrol and local law enforcement are now on scene near Wilmington where they say they are trying to resolve the critical incident. 

 

What did you expect the party of January 6th was going to do in response, folks? Republicans in Congress have been screaming for FBI blood since Monday.

Today the got a taste of it.

More will follow.

Sittenfeld This One Out, Con't

After his arrest on federal bribery and corruption charges in November 2020, former Cincinnati City Councilman and rising Democratic party star PG Sittenfeld was convicted last week on two of those charges and now faces prison time.

 

Former Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who at one point was widely considered to be the next mayor, was found guilty Friday of federal corruption charges.

Sittenfeld, 37, was convicted on felony charges of bribery and attempted extortion. But he was acquitted on four other counts, including honest services fraud.

Sittenfeld dipped his head and slumped forward in his seat after hearing the verdict. His wife, Sarah Coyne, and at least one other woman in the packed courtroom started to cry.

No sentencing date was set. Those are often set weeks after verdicts in federal cases.

Federal sentences are determined by calculating numerous factors. Chase College of Law professor Kenneth Katkin, who attended nearly every day of the trial, calculated a possible sentence range between 15 months and 3½ years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Douglas Cole could depart from that range, but he would have to have a specific reason for doing so.

Sittenfeld's attorney, Charles M. Rittgers, declined to comment after the verdict.

Mike Allen, a former prosecutor who practices in federal court, said he expects an appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"This isn’t over," said Allen, who is now a defense attorney. "The 6th Circuit will be looking at this closely."

U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker said in a statement: “Democracy requires politicians to uphold their oath with the highest standards of integrity and respect. In this case, we worked alongside the FBI to hold Mr. Sittenfeld accountable for abusing his oath and, ultimately, the trust that the citizens of Cincinnati placed in him.”

The jury convicted Sittenfeld of bribery and attempted extortion that took place between Sept. 21, 2018 and Dec. 17, 2018.

He was acquitted of alleged crimes that took place between July 8, 2019 and Feb. 5, 2020 – all of which involved interactions with undercover FBI agents.

Before the trial began, Sittenfeld turned down a plea deal that would have capped his possible prison term at two years and allowed him to argue for probation only.

 

The number of bad decisions made by Sittenfeld over the last few years almost guaranteed this outcome.  The Feds have been cleaning up Ohio corruption in both parties over the last few years, and Sittenfeld destroyed his career over a stupid bribery move.  He then refused a plea deal, and now he's stuck looking at two or three years in prison. If he had taken the deal in 2021, he'd probably have gotten away with probation.

Even if the guy gets out of the clink and makes another stab at Ohio politics, he's a convicted felon now. People tend to not vote for those.

This dumbass did it all to himself.

The House(s) That The Queen City Built

Mayor Aftab Pureval is getting things done in Cincinnati, finally. After being stalled out for almost four years under former Mayor John Cranley, the city's Affordable Housing Trust Fund is finally getting some attention, and millions in much needed cash.

The group of people putting together a comprehensive plan for housing in Cincinnati met for the first time Friday, nearly a year after Council established its mission.

The Housing Advisory Board will recommend criteria for how to spend the city's Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The fund was established in 2018 and has never been used for its intended purpose: to incentivize the preservation and production of affordable housing through loans and grants.

The fund itself will be managed by the nonprofit Cincinnati Development Fund; one of the board's first tasks will be to determine the parameters of that partnership.

"Our primary function in this relationship is to add back-office capacity, strength of our team who is engaged and embedded in the community, and to be able to maintain regulatory compliance and reporting requirements that the city needs," said CDF President Joe Huber. "This board was specifically chosen by the city because of their expertise and what they brought to affordable housing over the years."

The board will also consider wider issues of affordability, including advising the city manager's office on a review of zoning policy and recommended reforms.

The board consists of 13 people, including former Cincinnati Mayor Roxanne Qualls, who is serving as chair. Other members include representatives from CMHA, The Port, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, LISC Greater Cincinnati, and developers (see a full list of members at the end of this article).

Council Member and Board Member Reggie Harris says one of their first tasks is to define the goals.

"If the housing advisory board is successful, and the trust is working well, what does the city look like?" Harris said.

Recent efforts to bulk up the fund include Mayor Aftab Pureval's plan to add $5 million from federal stimulus and establish an annual revenue source using year-end carryover funds.

An outline provided by city staff Friday shows a breakdown of the $57 million available for distribution in the near future:

• Section 108 loan: $34 million (a revolving loan fund using federal HUD dollars)
• Fund 439 and related capital: $3 million
• Private investments: $12 million
• American Rescue Plan: $5 million
• CDF Leverage: $3 million

This $57 million does not include what was already in the fund (about $2 million). It also seemingly doesn't include the $6.4 million allocated from the American Rescue Plan last year, which is separate from the $5 million in ARP approved this month).

Several board members asked for clarification on how much money is in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (and related funds) and which parts of that money fall under the advisory board's jurisdiction.

The board will meet monthly. The Department of Community and Economic Development plans to publish meeting minutes on a forthcoming web page.

 

Again, Mayor Cranley had years to get this project going, and he did nothing. Pureval's been in office for a few months, and already affordable housing is a priority. 

I like the look, Cincy.

Hillbilly Elegy Energy Controversy

Here in Cincy, author-turned-racist JD Vance is holding an event with Marjorie Taylor Greene, or trying to, that is if they can find a venue.

 

The management at the Landing Event Center in suburban Cincinnati didn't know much about the event that was scheduled for Sunday, the general manager told The Enquirer.

Just that a client asked to rent the Loveland, Ohio space for an event that involved "Hillbilly Elegy" author and Senate candidate J.D. Vance.

Then on Thursday, General Manager Jodi Taylor logged on to her computer. A flood of messages on social media and emails greeted her from people angry about the event. And calls started coming in.

The event was a "meet-and-greet" with J.D. Vance and controversial Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who just endorsed Vance.

The event has been moved from the Landing Event Center in Loveland to the Marriott Cincinnati Northeast in Mason.

In an email, Vance's campaign said the event was moved due to a large number of RSVPs.

The change in venues highlights the difficult situation political events create for venue owners.

After discussing it with the owners, the management felt they weren't in a position to hold the event, Taylor said. She said they didn't know it was open to the public and would have an unknown number of people, she said.

"We just chose to respect it was a very emotional topic," Taylor said. "People are passionate about what they believe. We were wrapping our heads around what was going on. We didn't know there would be a guest."

They asked Vance's campaign to find another location.

Then management posted a notice on its Facebook page.

"Due to the tremendous interest in the JD Vance presentation that was scheduled to take place here this Sunday, it has been relocated to the Marriott NE located in Deerfield Twp. We appreciate everyone's interest and concerns."

The Landing Event Center didn't want to jump into the politics, Taylor said.

"It doesn’t matter what we do," Taylor said. "We have both sides upset."

Activists are now trying to stop Greene and Vance's appearance in Mason. The Mason-Deerfield Township Democratic Club and others have shared a link encouraging people to call the Marriott, reserve seats to take up space and ask the Mason mayor to take a stand.

As of Saturday morning, the event is still a go for Mason, according to Vance's campaign.

 

Both Vance and Greene should be either hawking horse dewormer on FOX or in jail. Neither one should be an elected anything, or running for a damn thing, but here we are. They especially shouldn't be doing political events in Cincy, but, ugh.

 

And yet there's a not-zero chance both of them are in leadership positions in Congress in 2023.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life

The ban on Biden's federal OSHA vaccine mandate rules will remain here in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee after the 6th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling blocking employer vaccine mandate rules.

A federal appeals court has declined to lift a ban in three states on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for workers who contract with the federal government.

The ruling comes after a nationwide ban on the mandate for federal contractors was imposed by a federal judge in Georgia last month.

A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, blocked the Biden rule in November for that state and two others: Tennessee and Ohio.

A panel of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld the injunction for the three states in a 2-1 ruling Wednesday.

“This ensures, while the case continues to proceed, that federal contractors in Kentucky aren’t subject to the Biden Administration’s unlawful mandate,” Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican who filed the suit challenging the mandate, said in an emailed statement Thursday. Cameron said in a release last year that federal contractors accounted for about one-fifth of the country’s labor force and $9 billion in contracts in 2021.

 

This was largely expected, as two Trump-appointed judges agreed with KY GOP AG Cameron that the mandates were unconstitutional. 

The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow on the OSHA vaccine mandate rules.

In the midst of the latest surge in omicron COVID-19 cases, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Friday on whether the Biden administration can force private-sector firms to vaccinate or test tens of millions of employees.

The court is expected to make a decision swiftly that could freeze the vax-or-test mandates on businesses with more than 100 workers — and the threat of fines — or let the Biden plan be implemented, legal experts say. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, which regulates workplace safety, has said it could begin fining businesses that fail to comply with the mandates on Jan. 10.

Employers “are waiting to see the outcome in the courts,” Wendell Young IV, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represents 35,000 Pennsylvania union members, said last week.

John S. Ho, co-chair of OSHA-Workplace Safety Practice at Cozen O’Connor, said that companies should be developing a “roster of vaccination status” of employees to show OSHA “good faith” in complying with the mandates.

“You should have that roster in place by Jan. 10,” he said. But Ho also is advising companies to take a “wait-and-see approach” on implementing the vaccination mandates that could lead some employees to quit.

A firm can be fined $13,600 per violation. OSHA is expected to mostly enforce the mandate through employee complaints. “It’s a politically charged issue. There is no way to avoid that,” Ho said.

The Biden administration says the emergency rules could save the lives of 6,500 workers and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations in the next six months as COVID-19 presents a “grave danger” to employees where they work. The Inquirer estimates that 1.8 million Philly-area workers fall under the mandates. Nationally, two out of three employers fall under it, representing about 80 million workers.

Firms, business trade associations, and 27 states say that the Biden administration has exceeded its authority at the workplace safety agency with the mandates that appear designed to boost vaccination rates and that many workers remain unpersuaded in vaccine benefits.

The case has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in lightning speed. OSHA announced the mandates in early November and they were immediately challenged in court. On Nov. 12, the appeals court in New Orleans stayed, or froze, the mandates, saying that they were “staggeringly overbroad.” The ruling added that they raised issues of the government’s “virtually unlimited power to control individual conduct under the guise of a workplace regulation.”

Meanwhile, mandate cases filed nationwide were consolidated in the appeals court in Cincinnati. A panel of judges there lifted the stay on Dec. 17. “COVID has continued to spread, mutate, kill and block the safe return of American workers to jobs. To protect workers, OSHA can and must be able to respond to dangers as they evolve,” the court said in its decision. 

So while the nationwide ban has been stayed, the 6th Circuit ban remains in place for Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. We'll see what the Roberts Court has to say, but my guess is that the vaccine mandate will not survive, and that a real danger remains that a broad ruling against executive branch regulatory agencies like OSHA could suddenly cripple the American workplace nationwide.

More tomorrow.

The Rent Is Too Damn High, Cincy Edition

Cincinnati is absolutely doing the right thing when it comes to trying to create affordable housing and increase homeownership and community stability: selling soon-to-be foreclosed properties to rental tenants already living there rather than to billion-dollar corporate landlords.

The Port of Greater Cincinnati is buying nearly 200 homes with the goal of selling each property to the family living there as renters. It's an unusual move aimed at preventing a large investor from swooping in to evict tenants and raise the rent.

"We didn't go looking for this, it came to us," said Laura Brunner, president and CEO of The Port.

Los Angeles-based Raineth Housing is foreclosing on the 194 properties, and The Port was one of about a dozen bids to buy the portfolio of homes.

"We know for a fact that some of the potential buyers had already told tenants 'Hey, get prepared to move as of January 1, because we're going to start evictions and raise the rents,' " Brunner says.

The Port will keep rent at the same level while partnering with local nonprofits to get residents ready to purchase each property.

"Some of them probably already have the capability of buying, they just haven't had an opportunity because there's so few homes available in that price range," Brunner says. "Others will need to go through homeownership training and perhaps work on their credit score [or] identify sources for down payment assistance."

Nonprofit partners include Working in Neighborhoods, Price Hill Will, Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority, Talbert House, Legal Aid and more.

The Port is taking on about $14.5 million in debt for the project. Brunner says that's part of what makes this "unprecedented" — most affordable housing projects require significant public subsidy, but The Port can take on these properties on their own financial strength.

Brunner says "institutional investors" are becoming more common: 1 in 6 home sales in Hamilton County in the second quarter of this year were by large investors.

"We see these investors take an affordable home ownership opportunity and convert it into a higher price rental unit," Brunner says. "That's bad all the way around — bad for the neighbors, bad for the renters that don't have somebody that's attentive to their needs, that lives out of town."

 

That 1 in 6 number is almost certainly much higher now. Corporations are turning to the oldest, most valuable asset in the books: land. And they realize that if they can buy and flip every home on the area, then they control the entire political, economic, financial, and cultural landscape. No politician is going to mess with a corporation that literally owns a double-digit percentage of the county's residential real estate.

It's the return of the company town.

It's a tiny drop in the bucket to fight back, but at least Cincinnati is doing something about it.

Sadly, in the years ahead I expect this to only get far worse, and for most Americans to be priced out of living much of anywhere. When the only landlord in town is a faceless corporation

Last Call For The New Mayor In The Queen City

Across the river in Cincy, Aftab Pureval has become the city's first Asian mayor, succeeding John Cranley in a relatively easy win over Republican David Mann.

 

Aftab Pureval is Cincinnati's next mayor, nabbing a whopping 66% of the vote.

He defeated longtime Cincinnati politician David Mann, who conceded the race at 10 p.m.

"We made history in Cincinnati," Pureval said to supporters who gathered to celebrate his win.

He'll be the first Asian-American mayor in the city's history and the only one in the Midwest.

Pureval's mother and brother were with him during his victory speech at Lucius Q in Pendleton.

Pureval told the crowd of their journey "to a place called Ohio" from New Delhi for a better life.

"What on earth were they thinking?" He said to laughter. "They came to this country to provide a better life for their sons. Because of that incredible decision, our family went from being refugees to mayor of Cincinnati."

Mann was gracious, tweeting: "Congratulations to Aftab on his well-deserved victory. I have spoken with him and wish him nothing but the best, and it has been the honor of my lifetime to serve this community as a councilman, mayor, and member of congress throughout my career. Thank you, Cincinnati!"

 

In City Council elections, after an ugly bribery scandal left no fewer than four council members facing criminal charges over bribery and misconduct over the past two years, voters cleaned house and elected 8 Democrats and one Republican, Liz Keating, who squeaked in at 9th place. Only Democrat Greg Landsman remains from 2019.

We'll see what Pureval and the new City Council can do. They have a lot of problems ahead.

School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Cincy Edition

Ohio perennial losing Senate candidate Josh Mandel got himself tossed from a Boehner Country school board meeting in Butler County after attacking school board members and refusing to wear a mask.

U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel was escorted out of a Butler County school board meeting Monday evening after school officials said he staged an event to "disrupt a public meeting."

A video of the meeting is available on the Lakota Local Schools' YouTube channel. At nearly an hour and a half into the recording, school board candidate Darbi Boddy said she would like to have Mandel speak on her behalf.

Mandel walked up to the microphone and began by criticizing the district for not publicizing its finances on the Ohio Checkbook, a website created during his tenure as state treasurer that details spending by public institutions. Board president Kelley Casper interrupted Mandel and asked him to stop speaking.

As Mandel continued, Casper announced that the board would take a recess and the video cuts out.

"I'm just trying to stand up for kids," Mandel said in a video he posted on Twitter.

Public hearing participants must be residents of the Lakota Local School District, according to the board's bylaws, or "be the resident's designee and be introduced as such, and have a legitimate interest in the action of the Board."

Mandel, a Republican from the Cleveland area, is running in a crowded primary to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Rob Portman. He paints himself as a fighter who isn't afraid to disrupt the status quo and often uses social media as a platform for misinformation and controversial statements that attract attention.

"Forcing kids to wear masks in schools is a total trampling of the freedom and liberty of the kids and the parents," he said in an interview on Tuesday. "It is not the role of a school official or politician to tell moms and dads how to raise their kids."

In another video of the incident, provided by Mandel's campaign, Mandel spoke about the district's mask requirement and gender politics. Casper told the crowd that the board's bylaws allow Boddy to designate someone to speak on her behalf, but instead she had stated she "wanted to yield her time."

Mandel is then escorted out of the meeting by two Butler County Sheriff's officers. According to the board's bylaws, the board's presiding officer may request the assistance of law enforcement officers to remove "a disorderly person when that person's conduct interferes with the orderly progress of the meeting."

Mandel did this knowing he'd get thrown out, and knowing he'd be able to get it on video. He's in a race to see which white male asshole can be the biggest, most hateful, most Trumpy moron in the race so that red Ohio will elect him in 2022. He's up against equally awful bigot and antisemite JD Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy" and the soon to be upcoming tale, "How I sold my soul to Donald Trump and lost an election."

It's free publicity when Mandel pulls stunts like this. Expect a lot more of this as the race heats up over the next six months and change as we get closer to the primary in early May. Using a school board meeting as a prop is going to be the least of their sins.

The Vax Of Life, Cincy Edition Con't

The Cincinnati area man hospitalized for COVID-19 whose family went to court to force doctors to administer horse dewormer treatments to "save" him has now died of COVID-19.

An Ohio man diagnosed with COVID-19 whose wife sued to force a hospital to give him the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin has died, his attorney said.

Jeffrey Smith, 51, died on Sept. 25, his attorney, Jonathan Davidson, of Hamilton, told WXIX-TV in Cincinnati.

In August, an Ohio judge ordered West Chester Hospital to treat Mr. Smith with ivermectin after his wife sued, alleging that the facility refused to give her husband the drug, despite him having a doctor’s prescription.

Since mid-July, Mr. Smith had been the intensive care unit, battling a severe case of COVID-19, according to court records. His wife and guardian, Julie Smith, argued that ivermectin — a deworming drug that some people are using to prevent or treat COVID-19, despite several public health agencies advising against it — was her husband’s last shot at survival.

But then last month, a different judge reversed that order after Mrs. Smith and the doctor who prescribed her husband the ivermectin failed to provide “convincing evidence” at a court hearing to show that the drug could significantly improve his condition.

Butler County Judge Michael A. Oster Jr. ordered the hospital to cease administering the unproven treatment, arguing that “judges are not doctors or nurses.”

Judge Oster wrote in his order that several public health organizations, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, do not recommend the drug be used to treat COVID-19. At the moment, no studies or data analysis support said treatment for the virus, Judge Oster wrote.

“While this court is sympathetic to the Plaintiff and understands the idea of wanting to do anything to help her loved one, public policy should not and does not support allowing a physician to try ‘any’ type of treatment on human beings,” the judge wrote.

“Based on the current evidence, ivermectin is not effective as a treatment for COVID-19. ... Even Plaintiff’s own doctor could not say [that] continued use of ivermectin would benefit Smith,” Judge Oster wrote in his order.

Judge Oster added: “After considering all of the evidence presented in this case, there can be no doubt that the medical and scientific communities do not support the use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.”

The FDA even issued a strong and unusual warning on Aug. 21 on social media: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

 

It's a tragedy, but one of Smith's own making.

Get the vaccine.

Last Call For The Rent Is Too Damn High, Con't

As the national moratorium on evictions was thrown out by the Supreme Court last month, evictions are happening, but not the flood of millions being made homeless that we feared. But that doesn't mean that the problem is resolved, not in the least.

When the Supreme Court decided to strike down a federal ban on evictions in August, lawmakers and housing experts mentioned a slew of devastating metaphors — cliff, tsunami, tidal wave — to describe the national eviction crisis they saw coming. One month later, however, many of those same authorities find themselves wondering: Where is the cliff?

In major metropolitan areas, the number of eviction filings has dropped or remained flat since the Supreme Court struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moratorium on Aug. 26, according to experts and data collected by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In cities around the country, including Cleveland, Memphis, Charleston and Indianapolis, eviction filings are well below their pre-pandemic levels.

Housing and eviction experts offered a mix of guesses about why an expected onslaught of evictions has not yet materialized, including that the wave could still be coming. The pace at which courts handle cases varies widely across the country, and some courts may be severely backlogged. In some regions of the country, the federal eviction moratorium did little to slow filings amid the pandemic and, in other areas, protections are in place. Some tenants may have also moved on their own to avoid an eviction.

Housing experts don’t believe the country has solved its eviction issues, and there are still places where evictions have risen since the ban ended. Filings have surpassed their pre-pandemic levels in Gainesville, Fla., and have come close in Cincinnati and Jacksonville, Fla.

Still, the overall picture has confused experts who had grim warnings for the looming crisis once the federal ban was no longer in place. Those same experts are hesitant to say the wave won’t come. After all, recent Pulse Survey data by the Census Bureau suggests that some 3 million households have reported concerns of imminent eviction.

“I think it’s too early to declare decisively that this isn’t happening,” said Peter Hepburn, a research fellow at the Eviction Lab, which tracks cases in 31 cities and six states around the country. “This may not take the form of a sudden spike in eviction cases all at once. It may be something that’s much more delayed and diffuse.”

 

I think that the theory where the courts can't handle the backlog of eviction cases is most likely correct. We're not seeing evictions hit massive numbers because the courts are stuck processing them, and in some cases, are working with landlords and tenants.

Rental assistance programs are there, they just have to be accessed, and I think courts are turning to these systems to get landlords their money and tenants their help.

For now, the dam is holding. How long, well, we'll see.

MAGA Runs Out Of Gas In Cincy

A threatened "Patriot shutdown"of some of America's busiest interstates and bridges today has yet to materialize after Ohio cops and prosecutors got word of it on social media and vowed publicly to start throwing MAGA assholes in prison on felony terrorism charges over the weekend.

 

There's no sign Monday morning that truckers are staging protests of COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates by causing disruptions on local highways.

Ohio officials are monitoring after reports of calls on social media for truck drivers to participate in a "Patriot Shutdown" on Monday.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol is keeping an eye on the situation, but saw no sign of a demonstration in the Cincinnati area or elsewhere in the state this morning.

“We continue to monitor the situation closely and there are no known issues at this time,” Lt. Nathan Dennis, a spokesman with the Ohio State Highway Patrol in Columbus, said.

Both the Cincinnati Police Department and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office are on alert, officials said Monday morning.

"We are actively monitoring the situation and have been for days," said Emily Szink, spokewoman for the Cincinnati Police Department.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters warned over the weekend that any demonstrators participating in a nationwide call on social media such as Facebook and TikTok for truck drivers to participate in a "Patriot Shutdown" on Monday would be put behind bars.

"I want to be perfectly clear," Deters said in a news release. "Anyone who attempts to shut down the highways in Hamilton County will be removed from their vehicles, charged with felony disrupting public services, and they will go to jail.

"To those who claim to be supportive of law enforcement - law enforcement is not with you. This would pose a serious danger for our first responders and the community at large.

"I have always been supportive of a citizen’s First Amendment right to protest. But, this is not lawful and it is reckless. It will not be tolerated," he said.

 

A miserable failure, even in deep red Ohio. 

 

Blocking the Brent Spence Bridge carrying I-71 and I-75 traffic definitely would have caused chaos across the region, especially if they had blocked the supporting bridges on the I-471 spur into NKY and the I-475 loop.

But nobody showed up.Vaccine mandates continue to be rolled out. We're muddling through it all.

Terrorism doesn't work if it's not allowed to work.

The Vax Of Life, Cincy Edition

A new Cincinnati Enquirer poll finds only 56% of Cincinnati-area residents are vaccinated, with 50% fully vaccinated, but nearly 20% saying they will never get the jab.

 

Almost 1 in 5 Cincinnati-area residents who aren't vaccinated against COVID-19 say they will not get inoculated, and about 1 in 4 say they either want it or haven't decided yet.

The responses come from a newly released Interact for Health poll, called the COVID-19 Health Issues Survey. The Kenwood-based nonprofit, which advocates for health initiatives in 20 counties in the region, held a webinar about the survey Thursday with the community and its health partners.

"The survey is a snapshot in time," Interact for Health spokeswoman Emily Gresham-Wherle said.

The Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati conducted the online poll, to which 502 people in the region responded, from July 7-16.

"There's a good number of people who want to get vaccinated or are haven't decided yet," said Colleen Desmond, an Interact for Health research associate who provided the survey results online with her team. The reason for stalling, according to this survey, seem to be largely access and trust.

Those who took part in the survey were asked whether they were vaccinated, and if not, why not? Is it easy to find a convenient location to get the vaccine? (Yes, most said.) And more questions.

Interact's data show 56% said they had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine – with 89% of these respondents fully vaccinated – and 44% had not. Among those who hadn't, 18% said they had not decided whether they'll get vaccinated, 19% said they "definitely will not" and 7% said they "definitely will."

The survey results also explored why there is vaccine hesitancy here.

Most who didn't plan to get vaccinated – 72% – shared this reason: "I want to confirm it is safe," the survey shows.

And when asked whom they'd trust for such information, respondents said they most trusted their physician or a health care provider; next, a pharmacist; and after that, their local public health department.

 

So again, the disinformation by the GOP is working extremely well. More than a third of Cincy-area residents are going to remain unvaccinated. We will never reach herd immunity at that level, and we'll be fighting the disease for years at this rate. 

Meanwhile across the river in Kentucky, the health care system is now completely collapsing. Kentucky has few ICU beds, and Beshear has no power to issue mandates as the legislature is currently in special session making them illegal.

Governor Andy Beshear held another Team Kentucky Update Thursday.

This week’s update came amid a special session of the General Assembly the governor called for over the weekened to address COVID-related issues. Thursday is the special session’s third day.

Gov. Beshear began his Team Kentucky update Thursday on a grim note. He said 60 of the state’s 96 hospitals are operating under critical staffing shortages.

“Our hospital situation has never been more dire in my lifetime than it is right now,” Beshear said. “We cannot handle more sick individuals.”

The governor also said Thursday the state currently has fewer ICU beds available than it has at any other point during the pandemic, now 18 months in.

Beshear said he has called the Kentucky National Guard in to 21 more hospitals around the state to offer logistical and administrative support. The Kentucky National Guard already has been assisting at hospitals in Morehead, Hazard, Bowling Green and Pikeville, but will now help at a total of 24 hospitals across Kentucky.

 

Soon, people will be dying in triage in hospital corridors, but you sure showed those libs how fucking smart you are, Kentucky.

 

The Vax Of Life, Con't

The big COVID story here in Cincy right now is that a judge in suburban Butler County (a.k.a Boehner Country) ordered West Chester Hospital to treat a COVID patient with Ivermectin, a horse dewormer with no known real benefits to treating COVID patients, but the judge ordered it anyway because...freedom or something.

A Butler County judge ruled in favor of a woman last week who sought to force a hospital to administer Ivermectin — an animal dewormer that federal regulators have warned against using in COVID-19 patients — to her husband after several weeks in the ICU with the disease.

Butler County Common Pleas Judge Gregory Howard ordered West Chester Hospital, part of the University of Cincinnati network, to treat Jeffrey Smith, 51, with Ivermectin. The order, filed Aug. 23, compels the hospital to provide Smith with 30mg of Ivermectin daily for three weeks.

The drug was originally developed to deworm livestock animals before doctors began using it against parasitic diseases among humans. Several researchers won a Nobel Prize in 2015 for establishing its efficacy in humans. It’s used to treat head lice, onchocerciasis (river blindness) and others.

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned Americans against the use of Ivermectin to treat COVID-19, a viral disease. It’s unproven as a treatment, they say, and large doses of it can be dangerous and cause serious harm. A review of available literature conducted earlier this month by the journal Nature found there’s no certainty in the available data on potential benefits of Ivermectin.

The drug has grown in popularity among conservatives, fueled by endorsements from allies of former President Donald Trump like U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc. or Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. The CDC warned reports of poisoning related to use of Ivermectin have increased threefold this year, spiking in July.

Julie Smith filed the lawsuit on behalf of her husband of 24 years. He tested positive for COVID-19 July 9, was hospitalized and admitted to the ICU July 15, and was sedated and intubated and placed on a ventilator Aug. 1. He later developed a secondary infection he’s still wrestling with as of Aug. 23, court records say.

The lawsuit doesn’t mention whether Jeffrey Smith is vaccinated against COVID-19. However, overwhelming majorities of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated — data from the Ohio Department of Health shows of roughly 21,000 Ohioans hospitalized with COVID-19 since Jan. 1, only about 500 were vaccinated.

Julie Smith found Ivermectin on her own and connected with Dr. Fred Wagshul, an Ohio physician who her lawsuit identifies as “one of the foremost experts on using Ivermectin in treating COVID-19.” He prescribed the drug, and the hospital refused to administer it.

A hospital spokeswoman said she can’t comment on litigation and federal patient privacy laws prevent her from commenting on any specifics of patient care.

Smith is represented by New York attorney Ralph Lorigo, the chairman of New York’s Erie County Conservative Party, who has successfully filed one similar case against a Chicago area hospital and two more in Buffalo. He did not respond to an email or phone call.

The Ohio lawsuit makes reference to the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, a nonprofit of which Wagshul is listed as a founding physician. The organization touts Ivermectin as both a preventative and treatment for COVID-19. Its “How To Get Ivermectin” section includes prices and locations of pharmacies that will supply it, from Afghanistan to Fort Lauderdale to Pennsylvania to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

 

Rather than take the vaccine, now approved by the FDA, these pathetic losers are turning to a livestock dewormer to treat a virus because hey it's "like" a parasite and it should work, right, only people are ending up in the ER with poisoning issues, ER's filled with COVID patients by the way.

On top of that there's now an international network of ambulance chasers getting judges to force doctors to treat COVID patients with quackery.

This should be of national concern, but apparently there's literally so much garbage out there going on that we don't have time to address this nationally, and frankly doing so would set off multiple armed bloody insurrections across the United States because millions are willing to literally die in order to avoid the vaccine.

You can't reason with anyone willing to give their own life for a cause as ludicrous as this. It's well past the time we cut these assholes free and let brutal Darwinian consequences scour the playing field.

But here across the river in Kentucky, Sen. Rand Paul is gleefully blaming Democrats for COVID victims, saying that "Trump hatred" is preventing the FDA from taking Ivermectin "seriously" as a treatment.

Hatred of former President Donald Trump has kept researchers from looking into the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin and other drugs to treat COVID-19, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told constituents on Friday.

The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control have warned people using ivermectin, a drug used to treat parasitic worm infections in humans and livestock, is dangerous. The FDA went as far as tweeting out a reminder on August 21, "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it."

But Paul encouraged more research.

"The hatred for Trump deranged these people so much, that they're unwilling to objectively study it," Paul said to the 60 people squeezed into the Cold Spring City Council chambers in this Northern Kentucky suburb just south of Cincinnati. "So someone like me that's in the middle on it, I can't tell you because they will not study ivermectin. They will not study hydroxychloroquine without the taint of their hatred for Donald Trump."

It's also why they don't research hydroxychloroquine, he said, an anti-malarial drug touted by Trump as a treatment.

The World Health Organization in April found based on six clinical trials that hydroxychloroquine "had little or no effect on preventing illness, hospitalization or death from COVID-19."

A woman in the audience had asked Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist, why ivermectin wasn't more available. The woman said she had some ivermectin stashed away "just in case."

Paul told her he didn't know if it works because there isn't enough research. When asked by The Enquirer after the meetings about the FDA and CDC warnings on ivermectin, Paul reiterated what he said in the town hall

"I don't know if it works, but I keep an open mind," Paul said.

 

There isn't enough research on whether or not wearing a necklace of geodes prevents COVID-19 infections either, and it's because it's ludicrous to waste time doing it. Even if there was a million pages of research, Rand Paul and his ilk would dismiss it anyway and just boot the goalposts into space.

The entire point here is for more people to die from COVID under Biden's term than under Trump's, so that the GOP "wins" the "competence argument", so Republicans are going to just continue to disinform the public until enough die from it.

So they can "win", thanks to a corrupt judicial that orders what doctors have to prescribe now, based on disinformation. That's frightening.

 

That's what matters to them. Winning, and you're the one who loses.

The Next Housing Crisis, Con't

Republicans got their federal judge to overturn the CDC's moratorium on evictions as a public health measure, this time in the DC Circuit, which almost certainly means this will be fast tracked to the Supreme Court.

Federal Judge Dabney Friedrich struck down on Wednesday the national eviction moratorium, potentially leaving millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes two months earlier than expected.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has banned most evictions across the country since September. The protection was slated to expire at the end of January, but President Joe Biden has extended it, first until April, and later through June.

Some 1 in 5 renters across the U.S. are struggling to keep up with their payments amid the coronavirus pandemic, and states are scrambling to disburse more than $45 billion in rental assistance allocated by Congress.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said it planned to appeal the ruling. It also seeks a stay of the decision, meaning the ban would remain in effect throughout the court battle.

Speaking at her daily briefing, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the Biden administration recognized the importance of the eviction moratorium for Americans who’ve fallen behind on rent during the pandemic.

“A recent study estimates that there were 1.55 million fewer evictions filed during 2020 than would be expected due to the eviction moratorium, so it clearly has had a huge benefit,” Psaki said.

Housing advocates have said that the national ban is necessary to stave off an unprecedented displacement of Americans, which could worsen the pandemic just as the country is turning a corner.

Researchers have found that allowing evictions to continue in certain states caused as many as 433,700 excess cases of Covid-19 and 10,700 additional deaths in the U.S. between March and September, before the CDC ban went into effect nationwide.

At least two other federal judges have questioned the CDC’s power to ban evictions. And landlords have criticized the policy, saying they can’t afford to continue housing people for free.

 

Here in Cincinnati, the vote for more affordable housing failed spectacularly this week.

The city of Cincinnati will not have to find $50 million to fund a new affordable housing trust fund.

Voters on Tuesday rejected Issue 3, a charter amendment designed to force city leaders to provide additional housing for Cincinnati’s low-income residents, according to unofficial results from the Hamilton County Board of Elections.

With all precincts reporting, 73% of voters had said no, while only 27% approved of the measure.

“We knew that the voters would come through for us,” said Matt Alter, president of the Cincinnati Firefighters Union Local 48. “We knew that they would see through this.”

The union leaders and politicians who fought against Issue 3 agree the city needs more affordable housing, he said, and now must work to find other, better ways to create that.

“I know the Cincinnati Labor Council and some of the other stakeholders, including some of the political parties, are interested in also sitting down and being a part of that,” Alter said. “The voters voted ‘no’ on this. But how do we make sure that this doesn’t just fall to the back burner, and we continue on this pace to ensure that we can bring affordable housing to Cincinnati in a responsible manner that doesn’t damage and doesn’t hurt current services?”

 

City police and firefighter unions made sure the vote died screaming, warning that they would all but go on strike if Issue 3 passed, and they got what they wanted. Aftab Pureval, the Hamilton County Clerk running for Mayor, also opposed the bill. Issue 3 essentially had no chance.

Pureval is the favorite for replacing outgoing Mayor John Cranley, which is all you need to know about where Cincy's affordable housing situation is going.

It's worse here on the Kentucky side of the river, believe me.