LincolnKennedy

My recollection of these plans are that the development is not nearly dense and tall enough, particularly when the Streetcar is supposed to connect to it. Unless you are trying to keep a certain historic feel to an area (like OTR, but it would be easy to keep the historic feel while at the same time greatly increasing density) on the Streetcar route the City really needs to encourage taller buildings in the vicinity.

Given that the removal of the right to collective bargaining has been presented as a means to deal with present state budget crises, and that there is no correlation with present state budget crises and collective bargaining rights, it's pretty obvious that this is an attempt to defund political opponents (particularly in the case of Walker, since the two public sector unions who supported him during this last election are not subject to the loss of collective bargaining rights in the bill). Also, these bills don't actually do anything about those previously made "unsustainable commitments". So if the states want to default on those commitments they'll still have to do it. These bills don't address that issue at all. It's also taken from the members of the public unions, since they contribute the same percentage of their incomes to state taxes as the rest of us. Additionally, it is highly unlikely that more than a bare minimum of the public sector workers income is spent out of state, so the majority of that money likely churns back into the state economy anyway.

The info I got was from the City's website, which was the first hit that came up with "cincinnati police officer salary" in a Google search: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/pages/-11520-/ From the article: "In 2007, a police officer’s base salary will start at $46,104.28 with annual step pay increases over the next five years topping at $55,799.38." Obviously it says In 2007; nevertheless there is a limit to how much research I will do for an internet debate. Without any dog in the fight whatsoever, and purely as devils advocate, it is still debatable whether the loss of three decent jobs for a park that has never existed and sits next to three other similar parks is efficient, or even humane, particularly when you would obviously get even more money freed up when the next three officers retire rather than laying off the last three hired. This is true.

Starting salary for a police officer is $46,104.28. The savings has to come from the lowest paid cops if you cut them because of LIFO. Riverfront Park maintenance, according to that budget, is $300,000 (a number that seems suspiciously round). That ends up being about 6.5 police officers. I'm not quite sure what the person per square foot expectation is for these parks, but I find it hard to believe that current riverfront parks are anything but underutilized. As nice as a project as the new park is (and it, coupled with the Banks, is a great project. When you contrast the careful and painfully slow but well planned Banks project with Newport or Covington's developer led riverfront improvements, I think Cincinnati's project looks far better) it is a bit of a stretch to argue that limited dollars are better spent on a third (or fourth, depending on how you count them) underutilized downtown riverfront park than underutilized cops who can at least theoretically be flexed to every part of the City. The real issue for the City isn't cops v. other services (that fight is so 00's) but whether we can maximize the Streetcar to its full potential. That means increasing density in the CBD and OTR as well as eliminating and increasing the cost of parking, so that folks will elect to take a 5 minute street car ride down to four great parks that are just sitting there by the river waiting to be used.

If you can't explain why an analogy is misplaced, or why an argument is mistaken, there's no point in simply asserting that it makes little sense. It makes little sense when you show that it makes little sense. Because the purpose of the union is to increase the individual's bargaining power as a worker by binding him together with other workers. It's not simply to be in a club. Allowing the individual to opt out clearly changes the nature of that bargaining power. Similarly, if the state allowed each shareholder to unilaterally to whatever they wanted with their percentage of the accumulated capital, than the corporation's ability to allocate capital would be significantly reduced. If four people desire a certain outcome, and two people desire the opposite outcome, and there can be only one outcome, then some group will end up imposing their will (the desired outcome) on the other group.

You're welcome. It's important to know the details of the subjects one is purporting to debate. There are plenty of instances where people are subject to their wishes being superseeded because they are outvoted. For example, I wish the stock shares I have for P&G would pay higher dividends rather than just have P&G sit on cash reserves. P&G is able to get financing easier and at better rates than I can as an individual, so more cash from my investment would be better for me at this time. Yet I am outvoted, because the value I bring to the enterprise is not enough to influence the management. While I could rid myself of this asset, I choose to hold it because I derive value from it, though clearly I wish I could get more value from it than I do presently. The union works similarly, except the that value each member brings is a factor of one- themselves as a worker. Consequently they get one vote. This is, probably not coincidentally, the same way things play out in political elections in the U.S. Certain states allow people to be represented by a union for the sake of collective bargaining without paying the union for this service. Others don't. These are simply political choices. In those open shop states, minority voters are allowed to impose their will on a majority of voters. In union shop states, majority voters are able to impose their will on a minority of voters. I'm not sure whether one can speak arithematically of freedom and make any sense- nevertheless, if a volitional act is the manifestation of freedom, then it is hardly more free when a minority is able to impose its will on a majority, since the end result would be from the sum of fewer volitional acts. When the union vote occurs, the question that all members subject to the vote being decided is, "Do I wish to be represented by X?" This strikes me as being extraordinarily similar to the question presented to voters when they choose elected officials.

No connection between public sector collective bargaining and state budget deficits: http://www.themonkeycage.org/2011/02/the_relationship_between_union.html States by income per capita: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income States by union membership: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882960.html Not clear whether there is much connection between the two.

The Trash Collection Fee is something the City can collect directly through the Water Works, rather than through the County (HamCo Treasurer gets property taxes and disburses those taxes) or payroll taxes (which are often collected through employer withholding). In addition, it is an assessment that can theoretically be made that would be above and beyond the limits set by the State that a municipal corporation can charge for property taxes and for payroll taxes. This is what gives the Trash Collection Fee it's value; it doesn't really have anything in particular to do with trash.

I would hardly consider it a contract between "two private persons". A contract between an individual and a corporation is a contract between two private persons. Unions are corporations and corporations are artificial persons for legal purposes. Either way, every private contract that one party desires to enforce on the other requires the government to enforce it. That's not exactly how the situation works. If 30% of employees state their wish for union representation, a separate secret ballot will be held to confirm that the majority of employees want union representation. This only happens when there "a question of employee representation", or in other words, the result is contested (for instance, because the employer objects). Undisputed petitions, when all employees and the employer agree, require no further election. However, in practice, the results of the card check usually are not presented to the employer until 50 or 60% of bargaining-unit employees have signed the cards. Moreover, even if every employee has signed cards indicating their preference to be represented by the union, an employer may demand a secret ballot, and refuse to bargain until one is held. But of course they had that same option when the vote to join the union was held. You can just as easily argue that folks in this situation get the benefit of collective bargaining without paying for that benefit.

Greater Los Angeles could probably handle 5 different NBA teams. Frankly I'd love to see the team move back to Rochester, New York. But only if they had some governing structure like the Packers do. Since the Maloof Family has extensive businesses in Las Vegas, I wouldn't be surprised if that city is still in the mix as well.

Well, what about all the people with the right to vote who don't choose to exercise it? Are they holding hostage the authority to govern? If an elected official derives his authority from the people, and only 30% of the people actually vote for the official who wins (20% for the other guy, and 50% of eligible voters choose not to cast a ballot out of apathy and indifference), does he hold authority? If he does, then he does so by the rules and regulations that count that vote as the same as one where he would win 80% of the vote. And if this is true, then the rules that govern a vote in a certain Statehouse that require a quorum are simply the rules that the polity has chosen to determine whether who holds legitimate authority.

All that information is available at the Hamilton County Board of Elections. My understanding is that since Phil Heimlich was first elected, that type of money is more common and that generally two to three candidates per cycle will raise in the &200+ range.

^I'm looking out for you, pal, not taking things personally. It's not going to bother me if you ever end up getting sued for defamation. But between this forum, your web page, and your blog, you clearly are publishing things on a regular basis, so you might want consider not using words so lightly, particularly when they can easily be traced back to you.

^That's a really insulting thing to say. I understand that this is the internet and that regularly insulting strangers is part of the fun, but there's something to be said for not spreading a rumor that people whom you've never interacted with are corrupt. There are plenty of candidates who have raised $250/$300K first time around. The fact that this guy got started earlier than other folks speaks more to foresight about the requirements for success than anything else. Same with the other two guys.

Has the City sold the municipal bonds yet? If they haven't, can't they get some language in the bonds themselves that is controlling saying that the funds can only go toward building a streetcar line? I'm not sure if that would effect the ability to sell the bonds, but it seems to me that you want to make some sort of controlling legal agreement that rests on state or federal authority before this petition drive goes into effect, since any municipal law that violates state or federal law I presume would be invalid.

Good article from Edward Glaeser: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/behind-the-population-shift/?hp One of the most interesting parts: "If economic productivity – created by low regulations or anything else – was causing the growth of Texas and Arizona and Georgia, then these places should have high per capita productivity and wages. Yet per capita state product in Arizona in 2009 was $35,300, 16 percent less than the national average. Per capita state products were $36,700 and $42,500 in Georgia and Texas, respectively. These figures are far below per capita state products in slow-growing places like Connecticut ($58,500), Massachusetts ($50,600) and New York ($50,200). According to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey, median family incomes were $56,200, $60,800 and $56,600 in Georgia, Nevada and Texas, but $83,000, $81,000 and $66,900 in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York." His point about the ability to build housing cheaply in these Sun Belt states is quite interesting. The fact that he doesn't touch on immigration or changing patterns of world trade seems like he's forgetting a big part of the picture. Nevertheless it is interesting.

I think that there was still a "fear of the city" in the sense that areas of the city were considered dangerous and places where vice naturally grows (in the sense that people think crime occurs in OTR or the West End naturally, rather than the fact that people often go to these places to conduct criminal activity and law is simply not enforced as often there); the big difference is that after 1950 you could begin to have the advantages of the city in places that were politically distinct from the City, as the state began to spend money on stuff that you once needed to incorporate in order to have the money to build. There was also more of them. The progressive era typically had either an outright reduction of the number of office holders (like for Cincinnati- they got rid of the independently elected mayor and reduced the number of council seats) or they simply stopped adding people to the legislature, like they did with Congress after 1920 or something around then.

That law probably existed when cops were doing foot patrols.

^Being Governor means never having to answer a pointed question.

Kasich's not even governor yet, and he's already pretty unpopular: "Ohio voters don't really like their new Governor...and a plurality of them don't have any opinion about their new Senator. 40% have an unfavorable opinion of John Kasich to just 36% with a favorable one. If voters in the state don't like him, how did he get elected, you might wonder. Simple answer: 2010 electorate not reflective of state's voters as a whole." The whole article: http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/

^I'd be curious to hear what actual legal changes to the way the state (and local communities) deal with public sector unions are that people want/expect to see Kasich change. I personally would like to see more control or sanctioning power over how these unions (particularly police and fire) operate and conduct their duties (ex. more foot patrols for cops). My suspicion is that he will talk a lot and implement no significant changes.

I considered this statement to be the sentiment that was animating the discussion.

Why don't we eliminate certification for doctors and lawyers and real estate agents and tradesmen? Shit, why companies fire a bunch of MBAs and hire people who don't have those degrees and pay them less? Nobody yet has explained why exactly a $20 an hour janitor or a $100,000 a year Facilities Director is overpaid except to imply that the nature of their work means that they are overpaid. Someone who works with trash is close to trash, therefore they must be like trash. I am better than trash. Any quantitative factor (like a salary) that offends that notion must be wrong and inequitable, since if I know one thing, it is that I have value.

^For once, I actually agree with DanB. Why should we take it on faith that janitors must be paid less than teachers? Bartenders and servers routinely make more money than someone working a job that requires a college degree. Should we trash them as well?

^The best part of this whole discussion is the assumption that it is impossible for janitorial services to be valuable simply because of the nature of the job. Janitors or Facilities Directors or whatever deal with icky stuff, therefore it is impossible that they should be paid a high wage.