How serious is all this news about the subpoenas handed to council?

 

Is this all a dog and pony show?

This is a fishing expedition. The more mud they can fling the better but the whole goal is to smear PG and the other council majority members enough to get their guy elected in 2021.

 

And if they can get a hold of those texts, it's more fodder for them. They can see what the majority was planning regarding Cranley and Black, and maybe then some. Any jokes, insults, name calling, etc, if it's in there and is released, the media will be whipped into a frenzy and the 700 wlw crowd will have plenty fodder to spin about for years to come.

With council members before a grand jury, what’s going on in City Hall text case?

 

 

Cincinnati City Council members began testifying Tuesday before a Hamilton County grand jury, a day after sheriff’s deputies delivered subpoenas to five of them seeking their testimony in an investigation of the destruction of two council members’ text messages.

 

The texts – individually and as a group – between P.G. Sittenfeld, Chris Seelbach, Greg Landsman, Wendell Young and Tamaya Dennard are being sought in two lawsuits filed by Mark Miller, the treasurer of the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes. 

 

The five Democrats texted about their opposition to Mayor John Cranley’s attempts in March and April 2018 to dismiss then-City Manager Harry Blackin group texts as well as individual ones among themselves. Miller and his attorney, Brian Shrive, want a judge to say that the texts among all five Democrats, where they decided the contents of a press release about their position on Black, were an illegal meeting. He also wants the courts to declare that text messages between two or more council members are public record and order them to be released. 

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/11/27/with-council-members-before-a-grand-jury-what-s.html

Smitherman keeps exploiting his wife's illness (is she actually still ill?  I wouldn't put it past him to massively outsize whatever illness she had for publicity).  Last year's Enquirer puff piece helped put him over the top in the election:

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/11/01/christopher-smitherman-activist-councilman-caregiver-too/816474001/

 

She was presented than as near-death in November 2017, but she apparently is still alive as of November 2018, leading me to question how sick she actually was at the time of the puff piece.  Plus, if you reread it, the writer talks about it being "summer", but then it was published on November 1.  Do the math. 

 

So Smitherman wants -- NEEDS -- drama with his wife to arouse the sympathies of voters.  Right now, the mere allegation that this heinous "gang of five" was making fun of his "sick" wife is winning him all sorts of attention.   

That is quite the accusation

Cranley selects next city manager

 

 

Mayor John Cranley named Patrick Duhaney as Cincinnati’s city manager Wednesday, nominating him for the job after eight months as acting city manager.

 

A City Council majority consisting of Democrats David Mann, Greg Landsman and P.G. Sittenfeld; Vice Mayor Chistopher Smitherman, an independent; and Republican Jeff Pastor stood behind the mayor as he made the nomination, indicating a council majority will support Duhaney when his nomination comes for a vote this coming Wednesday.

 

Duhaney has served as acting city manager since April 21, when outgoing City Manager Harry Black designated him as his temporary successor upon his forced resignation by Cranley and a majority of Cincinnati City Council. Cranley and council could have named an interim manager but never did.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/12/05/cranley-selects-next-city-manager.html

City of Cincinnati faces deficit for next fiscal year 

 

The city of Cincinnati faces a nearly $19 million deficit in fiscal year 2020, which begins July 1, according to current projections from the budget office.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/12/17/city-of-cincinnati-faces-deficit-for-next-fiscal.html

Meanwhile council wastes time enacting a new law raising the age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21. 

^A city can do two things at once. It doesn't mean they are effectively doing both, but they can, in fact, do two things at a time. I don't think the Tobacco 21 initiative is taking away that much time from them solving the budget gap.

S T R U C T U R A L L Y B A L A N C E D ?   

All the streetcar’s fault. I can hear Coa$t wringing their hands. 

Cranley opposes ordinance to give council control over legal settlements

 

Mayor John Cranley opposes a proposal by Councilman David Mann to give Cincinnati City Council more control over settlements made with city employees who are being terminated and contracts that provide for severance in the case of termination.

 

Mann’s ordinance would require that City Council approve:

*Any employment agreement between the city and a city employee that provides for a monetary severance in the case of termination

*Any employment settlement agreement in excess of $50,000.

 

The ordinance could have affected at least two high-profile employment settlements this past year on which council did not get to vote. One was with the police department’s No. 2 official, David Bailey. Then-City Manager Harry Black gave Bailey an ultimatum of being fired or going on paid administrative leave pending retirement at a settlement cost Mann put at $600,000.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2018/12/19/cranley-opposes-ordinance-to-give-council-control.html

This is why we have a city manager - to handle personnel decisions like this. This is also [one reason] why Council should be allowed to initiate the firing of the city manager.

Does Amy Murray remember that she was the Chair of the Transportation Committee for 4 years?

 

 

One of the worst people on City Council. She has accomplished nothing.

Is anyone else getting cautiously optimistic about a potential Mayor Sittenfeld? I was never quite sure about his true stance on various issues, but he fought for the Liberty St. Road Diet, and now in this latest Enquirer article about pedestrians getting hit by cars (https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/01/08/pedestrian-crashes-cars-keep-hitting-people-cincinnati/2463813002/), he says this:

 

Quote

Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld thinks we might need to completely redesign our streets, slowing down drivers and giving pedestrians more space and comfort. Decades of urban planning have favored cars over people, and that’s why we’re in this situation, Sittenfeld said.

 

“I’ve said repeatedly, the one thing that should cause optimism is it’s not some intractable societal problem,” he said. “We know what the solutions are, it’s just about implementing them.”

 

It would be such a nice change from Cranley's lost decade. 

I think it would be great, but the election isn't until November 2021.  Wish it was sooner.

I don't know if Sittenfeld really gets all of the urban and transit issues that we discuss on this forum, but he would certainly be a huge improvement over our current mayor who is completely apathetic towards those issues.

38 minutes ago, taestell said:

I don't know if Sittenfeld really gets all of the urban and transit issues that we discuss on this forum, but he would certainly be a huge improvement over our current mayor who is completely apathetic towards those issues.

 

Having spoken with him, he gets it. I'm confident of that. Now, he's still a politician. He might not be willing to go as far as we all would on some of the issues for fear of backlash. But he understands where we need to be heading on urban and transit issues. 

Cranley understands all of this and of course lived it when his daddy paid for him to go to Harvard.  But auto-centric developers and car dealers put him in office in Cincinnati and so that's who is going to get free stuff.  Every time city resources are pointed to something "progressive", it's money that can't be given away to a big money donor. 

Cranley was seen carrying around a copy of Walkable City maybe a year ago. I'm not sure if it changed his mind about anything...so far he has been completely silent as several City Council members are now talking about implementing a complete streets and #VisionZero policy...

Ordinance barring salary history questions delayed

 

An ordinance that would bar employers located within the city of Cincinnati from asking potential employees about their salary history was held in a Cincinnati City Council committee on Tuesday after one member asked for more time to consider the ordinance.

 

Councilman David Mann, a Democrat, said the ordinance, sponsored by Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard, could get the city sued because of a similar law passed in Philadelphia that is undergoing a legal challenge.

 

Mann and City Solicitor Paula Boggs Muething say Dennard’s ordinance could be challenged on free speech grounds by businesses. In Philadelphia, a U.S. District Court judge struck down a similar ordinance because that city did not have research to back up the need for the ordinance, which Dennard and advocates like the Cincinnati Women’s Fund say would reduce pay disparities between men and women in the city, Muething said.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/02/12/ordinance-barring-salary-history-questions-delayed.html

Democrats, Republicans trade barbs over proposal to make Election Day a city holiday

 

Cincinnati City Council Democrats are proposing to make Election Day a city holiday in order to make voting easier, but Republicans say it’s already easy enough to vote without giving city employees a paid day off.

 

The proposals – one by council members P.G. Sittenfeld and Chris Seelbachand another expected to be filed by Tamaya Dennard and Greg Landsman – would potentially add a holiday to the city’s calendar. They’ve asked the city administration to prepare a report and draft an ordinance enacting the change. 

 

“Plain and simple, it’s the patriotic thing to do, and the right thing to do,” said Sittenfeld on Twitter. 

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/02/19/democrats-republicans-trade-barbs-over-proposal-to.html

City reaches settlement in Council texting case

 

 

The city of Cincinnati and an attorney seeking City Council members’ text messages have reached a settlement.

 

Details on the settlement of the case, which is before Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman, will be released March 7.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/02/19/city-reaches-settlement-in-council-texting-case.html

Settlement: Only five council members' texts will be released

 

The settlement in a Cincinnati City Council text message case will not make future one-on-one texts between city elected officials a public record despite their release in this case, according to a draft copy of the agreement.

 

In the settlement, attorney Brian Shrive and his client, Mark Miller – the conservative activist who sought texts between Democratic council members Chris Seelbach, P.G. Sittenfeld, Tamaya Dennard, Wendell Youngand Greg Landsman – agreed to dismiss a pending open records lawsuit in the Hamilton County Appellate Court. That suit sought one-on-one texts between the council members under the state’s public records law. 

 

Instead of going to trial on that issue, Shrive and the city have agreed that the council members will release their one-on-one texts to Shrive and Miller within 10 days of the date the settlement is entered into the court record. 

 

“The production of these emails and text messages does not constitute an admission that they are all records” under Ohio’s open records law, the settlement says. The council members are expected in court on Thursday for the official release of the settlement.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/03/04/settlement-wont-make-all-city-council-text.html

 

Ridiculous political grandstanding from Judge Ruehlman.

 

 

The Enquirer is of course having a field day with this story. Very few voters will remember or care about this come 2021 but it's just another way for local right wing media to shit on the city for suburban clicks. Don't get me wrong, the council members messed up but it doesn't deserve the kangaroo court and media circus. 

Seelbach as usual has been pathetic with his response, casting himself as the victim and lambasting the judge and Cranley for the fact Seelbach acted inappropriately. Typical Seelbach.

Always quick to get on the bully pulpit but once someone fires back at him, he is quick to hide behind his LGBT wall and cry victim.

Are these texts supposed to be some kind of smoking gun? Council members don't like Cranley! They were concerned about the effects of the stadium on the West End! They criticize WLW! Greg Landsman wants to pay his share of the settlement! Wow, these are some really revealing text messages. I'm sure it'll sink their political careers. 

 

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/03/07/city-council-texts-heres-what-they-say/3082165002/

43 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Seelbach as usual has been pathetic with his response, casting himself as the victim and lambasting the judge and Cranley for the fact Seelbach acted inappropriately. Typical Seelbach.

Always quick to get on the bully pulpit but once someone fires back at him, he is quick to hide behind his LGBT wall and cry victim.

 

 

His comment re: mental illnesses is spot-on.  Cranley and Smitherman are absolutely nuts.  Like psycho. 

 

And they have the media wrapped around their finger.  When Cranley got Kevin Osbourne the $80k job it was a signal: align yourself with Cranley and get rich.  Everyone in journalism is nervous about their jobs.  Cranley is their lifeline. 

 

^ I think the more damaging thing is not necessarily the text messages but the fact that they are on record admitting to breaking the law. Notice how Sittenfeld and Dennard are silent on the issue because they have another election to run.

I believe Seelbach is term limited. Same with Wendell Young. I can see why they would speak more freely in this regard

If Seelback and Sittenfeld were already friends before they were elected officials, and can prove that they had already begun texting each other before they were both elected, then was a law broken, or is it the subject of the texts (Cranley, other Council Members etc.) that makes it illegal? 

I think any time they discuss politics, city business, etc, it would be considered public documents. If they are texting each other about their families or something, they may have to send the texts to the city's law department, but they wouldn't necessarily be subjected to public records requests. But I don't know for sure.

2 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

^ I think the more damaging thing is not necessarily the text messages but the fact that they are on record admitting to breaking the law. Notice how Sittenfeld and Dennard are silent on the issue because they have another election to run.

I believe Seelbach is term limited. Same with Wendell Young. I can see why they would speak more freely in this regard

 

It's difficult to go into a meeting knowing that you have a majority because you can never be in the same room or communicate by telephone or digitally in a group.  So the decisive vote can lead the others into thinking he's on their team when really he's setting them up for embarrassment. 

 

Landsman kind-of did this when he flipped on the whole Harry Black situation.  He held Cranley's political future in the balance, so no doubt he was paid handsomely in some way we'll never know.   

 

 

 

 

The issue was the number of people involved in the group text. They had enough members of council on the chat to count as a quorum, thus meaning the text chain should have been a public meeting. Anytime you have enough members of the same elected body to constitute a quorum, the work related conversation is subject to public meeting laws. Sittenfeld and Seelbach could text all day every day about policy and other work stuff, and it wouldn't be a violation of the law. The issue only comes in when the number is expanded to constitute a quorum. In California, I believe it's even more restrictive, and 3 or more members of the same governing body are subject to the "Brown Act", regardless of how many members would be required to have a quorum. 

^Then why are personal messages between just Sittenfeld and Seelbach being released?

EDIT: I'm pretty sure Seelbach/Sittenfeld texts were released. I know for a fact that a group of 4 councilmembers' messages were released (without Landsman)

3 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Well....... didnt see that anywhere else. I guess there will be collateral damage to friendly party members when you push so intently to even have conversations between two friends released. I cant stand all the usual twitter/facebots selecting the same quotes right now to "prove' their points. All calling for the members to repay the fines when the attorney and plaintiff could easily do the same. They were not damaged in this in any way. Mistakes were made, lessons on how tech can be used were taught case closed. The powers that be are grasping at straws to make sure their people stay in power and keep the gravy train flowing their way with their annointed candidates. Sad that so many seem to be joining the piling-on with dumb retweets & copy-pasted posts. 

 

 

Edited March 8, 20196 yr by SleepyLeroy
Me spelt badly

^I don't like or trust anybody on council right now.  

 

But it's amazing how the 700WLW listeners think whatever their masters tell them to think.  There is simply no question that the 1-2 combo of Cranley + Smitherman is responsible for 97% of the crap that has gone on in this city going back to Cranley's riot-inducing actions in 2001. 

Of course the local conservative media pushes this "textgate" issue so hard, and uses it to embarrass the Democrats on council, but buries the accusation that an anti-LGTBQ Republican woman on council cheated on her husband and had an affair with a woman.

What was the final result of the settlement with Harry Black? I know he was essentially given the opportunity to resign and collect a severance, but I don't recall what that severance was, or if it was above the severance he was guaranteed in his contract if he was fired.

 

It's amazing how everyone is freaking out about this $101,000 but doesn't care that we gave Harry Black a severance to essentially not sue the city and expose the dirty secrets.

BTW, if this was going on with the Columbus Council everything would have remained totally covered up and nobody except a few people in town would know. At least Cincinnati has "open secrets".

Reminds me of Chiquitagate when everyone completely ignored that the Enquirer's acusations against Lindner were true because of the method they obtained their intel. The Cincinnati elite are very skilled at controlling their narrative. 

3 hours ago, taestell said:

Of course the local conservative media pushes this "textgate" issue so hard, and uses it to embarrass the Democrats on council, but buries the accusation that an anti-LGTBQ Republican woman on council cheated on her husband and had an affair with a woman.

 

This is an interesting example of a woman posing to be anti-gay who is actually out there doing that stuff.  Usually, it's the bible-thumping male politicians who are picked up in a city park police sting. 

17 minutes ago, BigDipper 80 said:

Reminds me of Chiquitagate when everyone completely ignored that the Enquirer's acusations against Lindner were true because of the method they obtained their intel. The Cincinnati elite are very skilled at controlling their narrative. 

 

Nobody in Cincinnati knows why Dieters was kicked out of state office under Taft.  The other state newspapers covered it extensively. 

13 hours ago, SleepyLeroy said:

 I cant stand all the usual twitter/facebots selecting the same quotes right now to "prove' their points. All calling for the members to repay the fines when the attorney and plaintiff could easily do the same. They were not damaged in this in any way. Mistakes were made, lessons on how tech can be used were taught case closed.

 

 

What an asinine statement. Why should the attorney forgo his fees? He spent considerable amount of time on the case which is worth something. He could have been doing something else with his time. Fact is, these 5 members did wrong. THEY should be the ones paying. THEY broke the law, THEY misused taxpayer money. THEY should have the stain of this on their record. Say what you want about COAST, but in this case, they are not to blame. COAST did not break the law, Finney did not break the law. Just because his firm exposed wrong doing does not mean he should not be paid.

 

The amount of partisan politics in a non-partisan body is getting absolutely disgusting here. The head of the Dem Party should be ashamed of herself. Her tweet about it was disgusting and wrong criticizing Judge Reuhlmann the way she did. 1) Judicial races in Ohio are non-partisan, so the fact he is a Republican is not relevant, 2) Especially in judicial matters, the parties work together to create fair and reasonable justice and standards that can be applied across the board. To say that this is tainted because the judge happened to be a Republican is flat out wrong and should not be tolerated. She should be the one to resign in this case.

 

Tim Burke would never stoop so low to criticize the sitting judge like that. Remember who the people are that broke the law. Don't pull a Chris Seelbach and accept no blame and completely blame others for your problems.

17 hours ago, ryanlammi said:

^Then why are personal messages between just Sittenfeld and Seelbach being released?

EDIT: I'm pretty sure Seelbach/Sittenfeld texts were released. I know for a fact that a group of 4 councilmembers' messages were released (without Landsman)

 

Because the judge ordered all messages between any of the five to be handed over to the plaintiff as a part of discovery. At that point they became public record. 

 

But those text messages – as well as others pulled into the case during court proceedings – also reveal discussions about city contracts, board appointments and a litany of gripes and personal attacks on fellow city officials.

 

Thousands of additional texts between individual council members were released Thursday after the court hearing. Those texts became part of the case because Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman wanted to get more information about the secret group conversations.

 

Ruehlman’s decision to release all the texts publicly stunned the council members because the texts they sent to one another outside the group did not violate Ohio open meetings law.

 

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/07/cincinnati-texting-case-council-members-admit-breaking-law/3089766002/

FWIW, in my professional life, I have come into contact with open meeting laws a lot (not in Ohio). In those cases, I was regulary a party to email exchanges with elected officials in lots of different municipalities. Both myself, and the municipal solicitors, found ourselves constantly reminding the elected officials not to email each other as a group. They often forgot, or simply didn't know they weren't allowed to. We tried our best to make sure it didn't happen. This was also the case with after-meeting conversations in the parking lots. In most cases the governing board consisted of five or seven members, but in some cases it was three. In those cases, it's really hard to keep reminding two individuals that they are not allowed to discuss municipal business ever outside of a public meeting, because they constitute a quorum. 

Edited March 8, 20196 yr by DEPACincy

^ certainly there is a natural tendency to mix with people you like. Sittenfeld and Seelbach certainly demonstrated that. Certainly, if not for the group of 5 texting issues, they would not have had any scrutiny into their texts, and I doubt they have to modify their behavior in that area in the future (just do not do group texting).

 

The biggest lesson from this is never put anything in writing or written form that you would not risk getting out in the open. The other problem is that you cannot see tone in emails and text messages so what could have been a joking and innocuous conversation that a third party reads into it something that was not really there from the beginning. 

 

We are always encouraging our interns on how to properly send emails and to make sure what is in there is meant to be said. Same with texts. If you want to speak off the cuff, have that conversation over the phone or in person.

24 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

The biggest lesson from this is never put anything in writing or written form that you would not risk getting out in the open. The other problem is that you cannot see tone in emails and text messages so what could have been a joking and innocuous conversation that a third party reads into it something that was not really there from the beginning. 

 

 

I had personal emails read aloud in court a few years ago.  I didn't have to show up and didn't even know that my emails were read.  Luckily there wasn't anything "bad" in them (and I definitely have enough sense to not write anything "bad" in emails), but it's definitely odd having personal messages made public. 

^ Just because you did not think they had anything bad in them does not mean that whomever read them in Court could not have inflicted a tone that made them seem much more nefarious