All we can hope for is a Democratic winning the governors race to restore back the local contributions, and hopefully dramatically increase transit funds.  Does anyone know what Cordray's stance is on this, I haven't seen anything?

 

Also, I think if Metro is going to put something on the ballot, they need to have a clear and concise plan.  They need to have maps, drawings, etc., saying with this, we can build this out, etc.

 

I don't think as others have alluded to that just fixing the budget is going to be enough. They need to fix the budget PLUS add more options / better reliability / better routing / at least 2-3 BRT routes (Two N-S and one E-W), and then they need to come up with an economics report.

 

I think the best report could be something along the lines of: We are spending this much per year on crime / subsidized housing / etc., and with this new mobility opition, more can get to work, get them in better housing, better lives for their children. And then shorten it up with the biggest business heads pitching it that this is what Cincinnati NEEDS to move forward as a competitive, world class city.

 

That wont affect funding. The issue was that the estate tax was repealed when Kasich came to power. This was an issue he championed and the GOP legislature also strongly pushed. The estate tax was used to primarily fund local government and that is where the shortfalls stem. Even if Cordray wins, this funding is not coming back because the legislature is not going to turn over to Dem control. The GOP has too large of a majority for that to happen.

 

This local funding issue is not going away by just putting a Dem in the governors mansion.

The Cincinnati business community absolutely has to get behind a transit tax. Without them, COAST is going to control the narrative.

 

There was probably about a 5 year period that I was willing to debate COAST, but I finally gave up because no matter how much you shove the facts in their face, they will never admit they are wrong and will continue to repeat the same "alternative facts" that their supporters will buy into. They are still going ape$hit on Twitter claiming that SORTA "blew $200 million on the streetcar" despite the fact that SORTA didn't build the streetcar (the city did) and it didn't actually cost $200 million anyway (it cost $145 million). COAST is just going to keep trying to make everything about the streetcar even though SORTA had nothing to do with its construction and only plays a minor role in its operation. So I agree with you, the Chamber needs to get out there and promote the transit tax if they actually care about it as much as they say they do, because many of the people that were willing to volunteer our time to debate COAST in the past have moved on with our lives and aren't going to do it anymore.

 

Also, I totally agree with you about voting down a transit tax that just shifts the burden without improving service. Personally I would vote down any tax that's not at least 0.9%. Passing a 0.5% bus tax would simply shift the burden from the city to the county without improving service. And since the city would most likely increase its earning tax once the current SORTA earning tax is eliminated, the overall tax burden would go up for city residents without actually getting anything more in return.

Along with just shifting the tax burden, the board would probably shift so that the county appoints a majority of its members. People in the county are going to want better service, and they likely will not be willing to put up with the fare premiums outside Zone 1. Basically, there will be increased pressure to spread the same money thinner.

Implementing a 0.5% sales tax at the county level and eliminating the 0.3% city earning tax would produce a 33% increase in local funding (from $56.4m to around $75m) and at least a 18.4% increase in total operational (more local funding will also make the system eligible for more federal formula and match funding as well)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but with a sales tax, doesn't SORTA have to keep going back to the voters every so many years to re-approve the tax? So they would be giving up an income tax that never needs to be renewed for a sales tax that, while generating 33% more funding, would need to keep going back to the voters for re-approval? It seems like not a lot of benefit compared to the amount of risk that introduces.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but with a sales tax, doesn't SORTA have to keep going back to the voters every so many years to re-approve the tax? So they would be giving up an income tax that never needs to be renewed for a sales tax that, while generating 33% more funding, would need to keep going back to the voters for re-approval? It seems like not a lot of benefit compared to the amount of risk that introduces.

 

The transit agency can put either a permanent or a X year tax on the ballot.

COAST co-founder: Democrats’ tax increase has county voters ‘riled up’

 

Hamilton County Republicans and the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes vowed Thursday to put a permanent, 0.2 percentage point sales tax increase passed by Democratic commissioners Todd Portune and Denise Driehaus on the ballot in November.

 

At a news conference at GOP headquarters, COAST co-founder Tom Brinkman Jr., a Republican state representative from Mount Lookout, said the tax increase is the “perfect thing” to revive the anti-tax group, which largely has been quiet since the 2013 city election.

 

“Unfortunately, Todd is up to his old tricks again,” Brinkman said, referring to Portune. Portune and then-Commissioner David Pepper imposed a 2007 sales tax to build a new jail, only to see voters defeat it in a landslide that fall.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/06/21/coast-co-founder-democrats-tax-increase-has-county.html

As a Franklin County resident this whole thread is so strange to read... Up here our commissioners just took a 5-year "temporary" .25% sales tax increase imposed in 2013 (solely by them, not voters) which was originally for a new jail and morgue, and made it permanent to fund as-of-now vague and undefined "county operations." There was maybe one or two cursory articles in the Dispatch about this, but otherwise not a peep from anyone. Total silence. The Franklin County GOP I suppose still exists, in theory, but the last time I even remember them putting out as much as a press release about something was probably circa 2002

 

And we are actually pretty heavily taxed I'd say, plus this issue in particular you would think might have gained attention because it was directly reneging on a still-recent commitment to the public, but absolutely no one is either aware of or even interested in discussing, let alone fighting it. Comparing that to what you guys are constantly battling down in Cincinnati is astounding to me

Because Franklin County is already heavily taxed, has few budget hawks and has local political apathy you don't hear about these things the way you do in Cincinnati. 610 sure isn't WLW -- and that's a good thing most of the time.

The Hamilton County GOP's opposition to this tax increase has very little to do with the modest 0.2% tax increase itself. It's mostly a way to drive Republicans to show up at the polls in November.

Also Hamilton County is just now finally turning blue but still has strong pockets on Republican voters especially in the western half of the county and then again in Indian Hill.

The Mayor of Elmwood Place was arrested after his involvement in a knock-down, drag-out brawl with his husband.

 

So many questions. Starting with: who knew Elmwood Place had a gay mayor?

 

 

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/crime/crime-and-courts/2018/06/24/police-elmwood-place-mayor-husband-arrested-after-drunken-fight/729487002/

Does anyone know if there is a map that shows how the various communities in Hamilton County voted in the 2016 election? I think it would be endlessly fascinating to see how different neighborhoods voted in the red/blue/purple map that they use for counties and states. The New York Times has a map of Ohio that shows how each county voted, but I can't seem to find anything more detailed.

http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/OH/Hamilton/64172/184023/Web01/en/summary.html

 

click "map"

^Amazing! Ask and ye shall receive for real!

 

Looking at the map now. Wow, the entire West side is completely red outside of Cincinnati city limits, 1 district from Green Twp., and 2 in Colerain. The core blue area is the city and the diverse northern central burbs, as one would expect. But Blue Ash, much of Montgomery, Mariemont, part of Symmes Twp. are also blue, which aligns with my perception of these areas, but appear to be outliers given the rest of the county map. It's also interesting that both Norwood and St. Bernard went red despite being totally surrounded by city neighborhoods that went heavily blue, again aligning with my perceptions of those areas.

^Amazing! Ask and ye shall receive for real!

 

St. Bernard, Norwood and Elmwood Place really stand out

Another version of this, which includes a base map and has every single precinct in the country:

 

https://decisiondeskhq.com/data-dives/creating-a-national-precinct-map/

In a surprising move, Hamilton County commissioners voted 3-0 to rescind the property tax increase that they had previously passed. This comes after (1.) the Hamilton County GOP gathered enough signatures to force a public vote on the issue this November, and (2.) others accused the commissioners of not following the proper process to pass the increase in the first place, leaving the county open to a lawsuit, even if it survived the vote in November.

I think the amount of signatures was more threatening to them than the lawsuit

On the flip side, a number of Hamilton County conservatives seem to be angry that the county simply backed down rather than allowing it to go to a public vote. The reason, of course, is that the local GOP wanted the issue on the ballot in order to drive more conservatives to the polls and help Chabot's chances.

On the flip side, a number of Hamilton County conservatives seem to be angry that the county simply backed down rather than allowing it to go to a public vote. The reason, of course, is that the local GOP wanted the issue on the ballot in order to drive more conservatives to the polls and help Chabot's chances.

 

Yep. 

And probably the whole reason Portune forced the Hamilton County representatives on SORTA to go against a sales tax increase is because they were going to have one of their own on the November ballot for the county budget.

 

What a mess. Now he'll probably try to convince them to not go for a May ballot either because they'll have to go back and redo a vote and that will go to the ballot box in May, too.

^ No Portune forced SORTA to push the sales tax initiative back because he did not want it to compete with his sales tax for the county and he knew if SORTA had one on the ballot at the same time they would both go down in flames.

^ No Portune forced SORTA to push the sales tax initiative back because he did not want it to compete with his sales tax for the county and he knew if SORTA had one on the ballot at the same time they would both go down in flames.

 

I think that's what ryanlammi[/member] was saying.

Portune has been around long enough and is pretty entrenched in the local political scene that he really does not need to play the party games anymore. He pretty much can run his office how he wants and the party can be damned if they don't agree with him. He is like Dusty  Rhodes in that regard.

Well, almost every person I know that works or has worked at SORTA has been saying for months that the Metro tax wasn't going to happen. As much as the board has been saying they want to stabilize and improve Metro and holding public input sessions, their heart wasn't in it. It was never going to be on the November ballot, regardless of what happened with his Hamilton County sales tax increase.

Hamilton County’s red ink could increase by millions

 

Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune warned other county officials on Monday that their budget requests are increasing the county’s potential deficit from $29 million to $42 million.

 

The county commissioners write the budget for all county departments, including independent elected officials. But often, those officials spend more than what the county budgets for.

 

“It suggests there is a level of disconnect,” Portune said. “This is not going to end up in a way that anybody will be happy with.

 

“This is real. We can’t go in a direction where the requests we’re getting are increasing the gap."

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/09/10/hamilton-county-s-red-ink-could-increase-by.html

Chris Monzel is OUT of local politics for the first time in 15+ years.  Dumas wins commission seat; first time all three seats have been D's in over 100 years. 

 

Dumas hardly raised any money and hardly campaigned.  She walked into this like how Brad Wenstrup walked into Ohio's Second District seat. 

 

 

All Aboard the D-Train!

 

 

 

 

It looks like Hamilton County has taken the jump to become solidly blue. Montgomery County has gone the opposite way, becoming pink. I guess the big question is how permanent the Trumpist realignment of party coalitions is. One thing is certain, Hamilton has lost its use as a bellwether for the state.

 

Dumas is a good example of this. She won because she had a D next to her name.

I'm somewhat up to speed on local politics, but I'll admit today that prior to today, I didn't even realize this was going to be a competitive race between Monzel and Dumas.  I had heard a handful of radio commercials over the past few weeks for Monzel, but I had heard zero coverage for Dumas.  I had kind of assumed Monzel was a lock to win yesterday and that the results would be similar to what we saw in 2014 (when an unknown from North College Hill ran against Monzel and lost fairly handily).

 

I did happen listen to 550 on my way into work this morning and heard Brian Thomas interviewing Chris Monzel.  You would have thought the end of the world was coming with how much doom and gloom they were saying would become of these results.

Dumas won because of the Aftab effect. Aftab really never had a chance to flip the OH-1, but it was a GOP +9 and he lost by 5 points. That is overperforming, and it happened in Hamilton County. If Aftab was not on the ballot generating the excitement in Hamilton County Dumas loses.

To be honest I really dislike Monzel and lately the Republican party in general so I voted for Dumas.  I can't say I know anything about her.  She shouldn't be worse than Monzel.

She somehow won the primary against the mayor of North College Hill Mt. Healthy this spring, too. He was well organized and well funded for a County Commissioner election. No one was expecting her to win the primary, let alone the actual Commissioner seat.

Election Analysis: Red state, blue county 

 

Hamilton County was a disaster for Republicans. In addition to the statewide Democratic candidates easily winning the county, the GOP lost its only representative on the Hamilton County Commission when Stephanie Summerow Dumas, a former Forest Park mayor, beat incumbent GOP Commissioner Chris Monzel, 51 percent to 49 percent.

 

Just as important were the apparent Democratic victories in five of the eight judicial seats in Hamilton County, a major priority for a political party whose influence at the courthouse has been minimal. Democrats made a major effort to get their voters to complete their ballots, where the judicial races don’t identify the candidates by party.

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/11/07/election-analysis-red-state-blue-county.html

1 hour ago, ryanlammi said:

She somehow won the primary against the mayor of North College Hill this spring, too. He was well organized and well funded for a County Commissioner election. No one was expecting her to win the primary, let alone the actual Commissioner seat.

 

No, he's mayor of Mt. Healthy.  I went to high school with him and recently saw him at the Northside Yacht Club.  I ate lunch for 3 years in high school with the future mayor of North College Hill, Jason Fulmer.  He abdicated that throne around 2012 when he and his wife bought her parents' house in Northern Kentucky. 

Edited November 7, 20186 yr by jmecklenborg

Commissioners vote to reduce 1996 property tax rollback:

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/hamilton-county-raises-property-taxes-to-pay-for-bengals-reds-stadiums

 

Property taxes will increase roughly $4 per month per $100,000. 

 

So all of this drama over the past 20 years by Republican-led commissions over $1 per week. 

I didn't realize that they simultaneously reduced property taxes when the stadium tax passed.  That pisses me off even more. Middle income and rich people don't have to pay for the stadiums, poor people do!  I can't wait until this crap comes up in 2026 so I can vote it down.  It would behoove Hamilton County to put a metro levy (BRT and Rail funding with plan well drawn and presented) up against it and ask people what they'd rather vote for. Hopefully the Bengals still suck when it comes up, and hopefully the May Metro levy passes too so Hamilton Co pays for Metro instead of the city of Cincinnati.

Yep. The property tax rollback never made any real sense and should have been eliminated years ago as the county started having financial troubles. Also, only owner-occupied units are supposed to receive a credit from the rollback, but I would bet that there are a lot of homeowners who are renting out their home or condo and still receiving the credit because they never contacted the county and told them to stop giving it to them.

It was always an irrelevant property tax savings but they milked the drama for 20 years.  If you explained how little the savings was to people, they thought you were lying. 

 

Basically nobody knows that you can get on the auditor's website and there is a pie chart break-down of where your property taxes go.  Their eyes flick away when you bring up their pie chart.  People double-down on myths even when they're proven wrong. 

50 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

Basically nobody knows that you can get on the auditor's website and there is a pie chart break-down of where your property taxes go

Can you provide a direct link?

^ When you look up a property, you use the "Tax Distributions" link on the right:

 

https://wedge1.hcauditor.org/view/re/2170053011100/2017/tax_distributions

Great choice of property for your example. ?

To  your point Jake. The County has wide leeway to adjust the millage on property taxes despite the property value. They do this every day where they adjust the millage year by year to meet their numbers (they have limitations of course), so even in times with declining property values, the amounts collected do not always fall proportionally either. So for the 20% stadium tax break people have received, we probably are really getting nothing because the millage creeps up on the back end anyway. 

^Correct.  Some property taxes have a fixed millage, others are adjusted annually to raise, collectively, a set amount. 

 

The rollback did not apply to Richie's, I don't think, since it is a commercial property.  A more typical property is Mark Miller's of COAST:

https://wedge1.hcauditor.org/view/re/0410005007500/2017/tax_distributions

 

He could of course move to a smaller house in a cheap part of town if he actually cared about paying less property tax, but anti-tax groups don't actually care about taxes. 

Hamilton County commissioners will back this tax

 

Hamilton County commissioners say they are willing to back a 0.7% countywide sales tax to expand bus service, a significant move for the three Democrats after months of questioning a proposal by leaders with the city of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber to send a 1% sales tax to voters in 2020.

 

“We agree the county should play a significant role in supporting public transit in our community and would be willing to support an increase to the county sales tax for this purpose,” said the letter signed by commissioners Denise Driehaus, Todd Portune and Stephanie Dumas.

 

The county’s proposal would lop off 0.3 percentage points of the sales tax expected to be proposed by the city and the chamber. It would be used mainly for repaving roads that buses travel upon. The city and business leaders hope to use the road money to persuade suburban voters who don’t and won’t use the bus system that the tax increase would benefit them anyway. The commissioners said they are open to discussing how to improve infrastructure in the county but offered no specific ideas.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/07/11/hamilton-county-commissioners-will-back-this-tax.html

 

Outside the Trump rally:

Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune announces retirement

 

Quote

 

Todd Portune, a major figure in local politics as a Hamilton County commissioner for nearly 19 years and before that a member of Cincinnati City Council for eight years, said today he intends to retire from elected office. 

 

Portune, 61, a lawyer who in 2000 became the first Democrat elected to the county commission in more than 35 years, said he wouldn’t run for re-election in 2020.

 

The cancer he previously battled has returned and spread, he said. 

 

While Portune said he won't step down immediately, he added that it's likely he will before his term as commissioner ends.

 

 

I'm not sure why Portune doesn't just step down now and focus on beating cancer and spending time with his family.

^I can understand waiting a couple months to finish things you're passionate about.

5 hours ago, taestell said:

Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune announces retirement

 

 

I'm not sure why Portune doesn't just step down now and focus on beating cancer and spending time with his family.

 

 

He could resign and hand the seat over to his presumed successor.  I say Laketa "Sassy" Cole.