He's taking $100M from the retiree health plan, moving it onto the pension, and decreasing the % contributed by the city from the 24% promised to 14%. That saves more than $7M but the transfer seems like a one time fix to me.

 

Also, cutting $3M from Focus52. I wonder what projects are getting cut.

^So much for him looking out for "the neighborhoods". 

I've heard $3 million is being shifted from the casino to Focus 52. I think we should try to stop speculating until we have read the actual proposal.

Page 1-4 of the budget proposal says they're using $3M in casino revenue for "balance purposes."

 

Page 1-9 says "this recommended FY2015 budget update includes the transfer of funding for some of the Focus52 projects to the general capital budget to provide the non-tax revenue in the general fund. The condition of the general fund simply does not allow for transferring resources to support capital projects..."

 

Edit: fixed a random superscript.

You can read the memo Cranley sent out here, the entire proposal here, and the motion here.

Cuts by department (p. 2-17 of the budget)

 

Police  -2.0%

Fire -1.6%

 

Public Safety Sub-Total  -1.8%

 

Health  -12.9%

Public Services  -12.5%

Recreation  -8.2%

City Manager's Office  -11.8%

Parks  0.7%

Finance  -11.4%

Trade & Development  10.1%

Law  -8.8%

Planning & Buildings  -7.7%

Enterprise Technology Solutions  -13.8%

Transportation & Engineering  -12.7%

City Council  2.7%

Human Resources  -10.3%

Citizen Complaint & Internal Audit  3.1%

Clerk of Council  3.5%

Office of the Mayor  -11.5%

 

Non-Public Safety Sub-Total  -8.9%

 

Total Departmental Budgets -4.4%

 

I would say that's not bad. Too many cuts to health & public services which could have come from safety, IMO. But, overall not bad. I'm not sure I'd say it's structurally balanced in my mind. In his opinion, it is, but relying on an unpredictable source (casino) and the economic rebound are just lucky situations that Cranley fell in to when he became Mayor... not some reflection of his leadership/decision-making abilities.

Building permits, inspection fees up

Special event permits up

some new fees (taxes)

stiffing CPS

He seems pretty optimistic in estimating costs will go down on sewer & water.

Cuts to snow removal are fairly optimistic, too.

And there's still the chance the courts might order the city to pay more into the pension fund annually.

Cuts by department (p. 2-17 of the budget)

 

Police  -2.0%

Fire -1.6%

 

Public Safety Sub-Total  -1.8%

 

Health  -12.9%

Public Services  -12.5%

Recreation  -8.2%

City Manager's Office  -11.8%

Parks  0.7%

Finance  -11.4%

Trade & Development  10.1%

Law  -8.8%

Planning & Buildings  -7.7%

Enterprise Technology Solutions  -13.8%

Transportation & Engineering  -12.7%

City Council  2.7%

Human Resources  -10.3%

Citizen Complaint & Internal Audit  3.1%

Clerk of Council  3.5%

Office of the Mayor  -11.5%

 

Non-Public Safety Sub-Total  -8.9%

 

Total Departmental Budgets -4.4%

 

 

Wait, I'm confused.  All of these negative "cuts" are meant to be read as additional funding going to those departments?  So, the total departmental budgets have a 4.4% increase?

^ Nah, you're reading too literally, though I agree it's written as a double-negative.  Health department's getting a 12.9 budget cut, parks get a 0.7% increase, etc.

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2014/05/15/cincinnati-city-council-might-boost-port-authority.html?page=2

 

It's interesting that he ran for office talking about wanting to help the "neighborhoods", but then cut the parking project, which was going to fund all of that help from the Port to the neighborhoods.  Now he is not making it a priority to help fund the Port in any way really.  How is that helping the neighborhoods?

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2014/05/15/cincinnati-city-council-might-boost-port-authority.html?page=2

 

It's interesting that he ran for office talking about wanting to help the "neighborhoods", but then cut the parking project, which was going to fund all of that help from the Port to the neighborhoods.  Now he is not making it a priority to help fund the Port in any way really.  How is that helping the neighborhoods?

 

Oh, it gets better. There's also this gem in the Enquirer piece:

 

Cranley said the previous administration's capital-budget commitment to neighborhood projects put a squeeze on port authority money this year.

 

"The port is suffering because of it, and I'd like to see that change in the future," Cranley told The Enquirer reporters and editors Wednesday.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/15/tax-levy-support-port-authority/2140888/

 

So now the Mallory administration spent too much money on those neighborhoods he was so neglecting.

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2014/05/15/cincinnati-city-council-might-boost-port-authority.html?page=2

 

It's interesting that he ran for office talking about wanting to help the "neighborhoods", but then cut the parking project, which was going to fund all of that help from the Port to the neighborhoods.  Now he is not making it a priority to help fund the Port in any way really.  How is that helping the neighborhoods?

 

Oh, it gets better. There's also this gem in the Enquirer piece:

 

Cranley said the previous administration's capital-budget commitment to neighborhood projects put a squeeze on port authority money this year.

 

"The port is suffering because of it, and I'd like to see that change in the future," Cranley told The Enquirer reporters and editors Wednesday.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/15/tax-levy-support-port-authority/2140888/

 

So now the Mallory administration spent too much money on those neighborhoods he was so neglecting.

 

Posted this on twitter

He is explicitly saying he wants to take money from neighborhoods to give to the Port.

 

I don't know why the Enquirer didn't highlight that a bit more. It's a rather stark shift in rhetoric and goes against the ethos of his entire campaign.

He is explicitly saying he wants to take money from neighborhoods to give to the Port.

 

I don't know why the Enquirer didn't highlight that a bit more. It's a rather stark shift in rhetoric and goes against the ethos of his entire campaign.

 

Media is completely ignoring this.  I expected wcpo and 700wlw to ignore it. Not enquirer

Well they did report it, so they didn't exactly ignore it. But they could have pounced on it a little harder.

There's certainly an argument to be made against the Port, and the type of development it represents.  It's the same argument against the Banks, and you can agree with or not, but there it is.

 

My favorite thing is how this proposed budget is being reported as "the first structurally balanced budget since 2001."  And who became chairman of the Finance Committee after a riot started in a meeting of the Law Committee that he chaired?  One John Cranley.  How those comments pass without context in a news article is beyond me.

I would love to know how cutting the City's planned contribution to the pension plan by 10 percentage points makes it more sustainable.

There's certainly an argument to be made against the Port, and the type of development it represents.  It's the same argument against the Banks, and you can agree with or not, but there it is.

 

My favorite thing is how this proposed budget is being reported as "the first structurally balanced budget since 2001."  And who became chairman of the Finance Committee after a riot started in a meeting of the Law Committee that he chaired?  One John Cranley.  How those comments pass without context in a news article is beyond me.

 

Plus, this "structurally balanced" budget is everything but, and so just another Cranley budget.  It's full of gimmicks just like all of the Luken and second-term Mallory budgets. 

 

Why is it often the case that Cranley is "flanked" by police?    I dare say it makes him look like a little bully. 

^He's not screwing with their pensions.

Great to see the solidarity of the unions....

He doesn't trust the people. He's not trustworthy himself, so he doesn't trust others. Life as a DINO.

^He's not screwing with their pensions.

Great to see the solidarity of the unions....

 

He DID screw with their pensions back in 2003, when he blew $50 million.  The courts ruled that Anthem's stock issue did not have to be reinvested into the pension fund here or in the dozens of other cities that had been invested in Anthem.  The right thing to do of course was to reinvest it, instead he made it rain on all & sundry.  He didn't even *invest* most of it, more than $25 million went to one-time allocations to arts groups, community groups, and festivals. 

 

The courts have ruled that Cincinnati can't cut the pensions of current retirees but they can cut the health coverage.  And that's what's about to happen. 

I would love to know how cutting the City's planned contribution to the pension plan by 10 percentage points makes it more sustainable.

 

Because (according to the mayor) they'll be injecting the pension fund with $100M (from the retiree health trust) prior to lowering the annual pension contribution (from 22% of payroll to 14% of payroll).

 

The mayor and his team are ASSUMING this holds up in court and ASSUMING they will see declines in health costs and ASSUMING they'll see enough revenue increases from raising fees and adding parking meter attendants. A lot of assumptions for a so-called structurally balanced budget.

'Warp calls Cranley's budget impressive mostly

like, if it works...

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/editorials/2014/05/18/cranley-budget-impressive-mostly/9266409/

You could make a drinking game out of this article using the word 'interim'.

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2014/05/19/cranley-i-didn-t-tell-administration-not-to-fund.html?ed=2014-05-20&s=newsletter&ana=e_cinci_rdup&page=all

Enquirer says that this budget 'has Cranley's fingerprints all over it'

 

Cranley's PR is spinning like a DJ.

 

Notice the argument from Kevin Osborne is now 'Cranley didn't tell admin not to fund port authority' to take interest away from him/Kinkaid's earlier incorrect statements regarding the bike path 'policy' in the budget

Ha it is a side show, that is for sure.

City unions, retirees on board with Cranley’s pension rescue plan? Not so fast.

Chris Wetterich Staff reporter- Cincinnati Business Courier

 

 

Mayor John Cranley’s proposed budget assumes that the city of Cincinnati will be able to finally achieve structural balance because of a grand bargain over pension benefits he wants to make with unions representing city employees and retirees.

 

But there is no dried ink on that bargain yet, and lawyers representing one union and a group of retirees say their clients aren’t yet ready to sign off on the central feature of Cranley’s plan that would make a structurally balanced budget possible.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2014/05/20/city-unions-retirees-onboard-with-cranley-s.html

What's that old phrase?  "You can wish in one hand..."?

In the newest enquirer article about the budget there is this nugget:

 

On a 1.5 percent pay raise to the cities two largest unions: This year the money for the raises – $1.2 million – will come out of the city's rainy day fund. In future budgets the money would have to come out of department budgets, which "would result in an increase in the affected departmental budgets," the memo said.

 

How is this not considered a "one time appropriation?" This money isn't currently available for any year but this one and they would have to cut elsewhere or hope for increased revenue to continue to pay for it. Therefore, this budget is not structurally balanced.

In the newest enquirer article about the budget there is this nugget:

 

On a 1.5 percent pay raise to the cities two largest unions: This year the money for the raises $1.2 million will come out of the city's rainy day fund. In future budgets the money would have to come out of department budgets, which "would result in an increase in the affected departmental budgets," the memo said.

 

How is this not considered a "one time appropriation?" This money isn't currently available for any year but this one and they would have to cut elsewhere or hope for increased revenue to continue to pay for it. Therefore, this budget is not structurally balanced.

 

This budget is a total joke.  Cranley went out there weeks ago telling everyone the budget would be "structurally balanced", so everyone simply assumed it would be. 

 

^ Correct. Cranley is very smart.  There are a number of reasons why this budget isn't structurally balanced, but by not coming out right out of the gates and saying it's either layoffs or this unstructurally balanced budget (as dohoney/mallory would say) you are able to tailor the media's coverage of your budget.  They aren't gonna read it.  All they do is look for layoffs and pool closures.  Not other random $ movements to pass a budget.  Overall, it's not a bad budget.  It's a bland budget, but it's smart in how it hides its issues. Dohoney/Mallory could have learned from how Cranley is pitching this. It would have helped roxanne & the progressive dems.

Cranley isn't that smart.  The difference is that the "structurally balanced" line has always been something that the so-called conservative members of Council used to hit the supposedly liberal members with.  Now that the so-called conservative members are running it, they just say that it is "structurally balanced" and the other side, which never particularly cared whether the budget was "structurally" balanced so much as that it was balanced are going to make a couple comments but they simply aren't going to get fired up about this.

 

Anyone who actually cared about this issue as policy, rather than as a political talking point (likely 0 people fall into that category) would never have been convinced that John Cranley would "structurally balance" the budget when he, as finance chair, was the guy who started the trend of submitting structurally unbalanced budgets to council in the first place.

Per the Business Courier, Cranley will host fundraiser for Hillary’s PAC August 11 at a time and location to be determined.

Cranley comes out on the attack against yvette simpson

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/06/12/john-cranley-cincinnati-budget-puts-house-order/10378533/

He said something rude at the meeting when they voted on the budget. He didn't call her out directly but it was pretty obvious from the conversation.

She should take him out back...

InDepth Article on John Cranley.  http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/features/2014/7/17/why-isnt-this-man-smiling/print

There's some great quotes in here:

 

“During the campaign he had asked me to support him, and [said] that if he were to be elected, I would be his vice mayor,” says Young. “He supported me when I ran, which made it very difficult to say no to him when he wanted my support. But I didn’t like the people around him. It was never a case of not liking him. It was what I could see that he was going to owe—and who he was going to owe favors to—that was a problem for me.” Among the folks Young is alluding to is the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), the anti-tax, anti-development, anti-gay, anti-public projects, and anti-tax break (usually) group that reliably despises and belittles Democrats but made a point of giving Cranley an endorsement (which he ultimately rejected) in the middle of a campaign that he eventually won by peeling off votes from COAST-friendly demographics.

 

“I think, at center, he’s a decent guy,” says Young of the mayor. “I think he cares about the city—I really do mean that. It’s just that I’m not really able to talk about the new John Cranley because he’s a guy I don’t know.”

 

Cranley was calling department heads “incompetent” and badmouthing city staff before he was sworn in (see the banishment of Milton Dohoney). Once he arrived at city hall, he seemed to go out of his way to kick veterans as he tossed them overboard. And efforts to undo previous agreements have unsettled some of those who do business with Cincinnati. “If you have business with the city and every agreement is subject to renegotiation midstream, why the hell do business with the city?” says one local lawyer. “I’ve heard that many times.”

 

“With John there are winners and losers. And he wants to get his way. So he’s willing to throw anybody under the bus if it works to his ultimate position,” says one former city hall insider. “He spins things a lot of ways, and if you try to unwrap the layers of his spin, there’s going to be truths, half-truths, half-lies, and complete lies.”

 

Councilman Chris Seelbach also campaigned for Qualls last year. Last summer, his name appeared in a news story about a shouting match that boiled up when Cranley’s campaign manager, Jay Kincaid, encountered Seelbach outside a church festival packed with political hopefuls and berated him in front of onlookers. According to Seelbach, the shouting hasn’t stopped since Cranley won the election. For a while, he says, the mayor practically had him on speed dial. “He was calling me at 10 o’clock at night, once a week, yelling and screaming about something,” says Seelbach. Finally, “I had to hang up on him one night.”

 

Seelbach, who is 34, is active on social media, and says that the mayor will emphatically point out when he disagrees with something that’s been posted mentioning him. “If I post something on Facebook, he will, I guess, read every single comment [beneath the post]. He personally is calling me about this.” Seelbach says he and Cranley had a conversation about how they could have a better relationship, and one of the things it came down to was for the councilman to not, in the mayor’s words, “attack him on social media.”

 

Seelbach sees what he calls “bully-like qualities” in the mayor. “I can tell you that so many leaders of this city have come to me and said: ‘I don’t know what to do.’ ‘He has made me cry in meetings.’ ‘I don’t know how to work with him.’ ‘We just seem to not be able to get on the same page.’ Now, he would probably think that his style is a style that works, and that he is getting done what he wants to get done. Does it piss everyone off, and does it make people scared of him, and does it make people not happy in their own job? Yeah.”

 

By Cranley’s own definition, he is somebody who is getting back to basics. And yet his definition of “basics” is not the same as Simpson’s.

 

“John, by his nature when it comes to certain things, tends to move slower,” she says. “He likes to slow down, which is why you’re seeing a lot of reversal of a lot of innovative things.... For instance, incentivizing corporations over small businesses. We cut $3 million in small business funding from this budget, yet we just approved millions of dollars of incentives for big organizations. So I would say no, he’s not progressive.

 

Cranley may have just turned 40, but he’s hardly slowing down in his political life. There are those who suggest he could go on to higher office. Councilman Christopher Smitherman suggests a multitude of possibilities for the mayor he says is doing a great job. “I think John has the political mind to run a statewide race,” Smitherman says. “It takes a toll, on your family, on your body and your mind, but I see him going toward congress or senate. I see him as lieutenant governor, running on a ticket…or even a possible governor. And if he ever ended up as governor, then it would put him in line to be president. I think we have a rising star with John.”

Wow. An entire article about how Cranley is a complete f%*#ing disaster, and then a quote to prove that Smitherman is living in his own alternate reality fantasyland.

President John Cranley?  I think we have the official proof that Chris Smitherman is certifiably insane.

 

 

The thing that stood out the most to me in that article was the episode about bike legislation. It showed Cranley's slimy dirty style, and that there's a council majority who will be complicit in the sliminess -- even when it explicitly involves tricking them.

The thing that stood out the most to me in that article was the episode about bike legislation. It showed Cranley's slimy dirty style, and that there's a council majority who will be complicit in the sliminess -- even when it explicitly involves tricking them.

I don't think it shows that Cranley's style is dirty, rather that it is designed to to trick people simply for the love of tricking them.  The "trick" there was to attempt to de-fund previous bike projects in favor of his new bike projects.  That didn't actually work, and would have been found out soon enough.  What's funny to me about it is how it once again shows how Cranley explicitly relies on the naivete of Mann and Flynn to enable his silly tricks.

 

Also, how pathetic was the Mallory quote?  Wasn't the last time this guy was quoted regarding Cranley back during the December Streetcar fight, when he said he came from the hood and was ready for a fight or something?  And now he doesn't even have the guts to call out Cranley for trying to dismantle literally every single thing done during his last term, simply because it was done during that time?  Truly said for Cincinnati.

 

Wow. An entire article about how Cranley is a complete f%*#ing disaster, and then a quote to prove that Smitherman is living in his own alternate reality fantasyland.

Well, Smitherman did mention to the Enquirer after his initial Council will in 2003 that he had his eyes on the Presidency, so his detachment from reality has been known for awhile.

"Take a break, reader. Get up and wiggle your arms, get a Popsicle, we’ll wait…are you back?"

Cranley's pick for city manager - Harry Black

oh yay

Harry Black, who was the center of political brawling between then-Mayor L. Douglas Wilder and Richmond City Council five years ago

One of his nicknames was 'Baby Wilder'

 

http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/ex-richmond-official-harry-black-now-finance-director-for-baltimore/article_fe948752-3d68-576e-be8e-07bed02ac576.html

 

http://www.richmondmagazine.com/articles/the-mayors-man-11-09-2008.html

He's black, he comes from a liberal east coast city, he worked for NYC's transit agency...

 

I see some reasons to be optimistic.

 

At least we won't have an interim manager anymore. It's been too long having the supposedly independent position occupied by someone the mayor has a good deal of power over.

I am not sure if this is impossible or just rendundant: "Baby Cranley"...that is all. 

So now that Smitherman is proposing a strong mayor form of government.. how would that take effect?

 

Does council need to approve it or would it need to be a vote?

 

No way Cranleys pick for City Manager and Smitherman proposing this at the same time is "coincidence" ... If Cranley can run this city exactly how he wants then what even is the point of council anymore?

We voted on setting up what we have now

Hardly anybody voted, tho.

What's so crazy is that Smitherman started out as a Charterrite -- now he wants to completely destroy the city manager form of government. 

The City should go for Nathan Kennedy from Springfield, Clark County.

John Shirey went up to Springfield after he got the axe in Cincinnati

maybe they have compared notes...