Public Eye Staff Picks

Best Undercutting of Democracy: Todd Portune

Best Undercutting of Democracy:
Deciding that running a re-election campaign was too bothersome, Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune, a Democrat, cut a deal in January with Republican Greg Hartmann in which the two major political parties wouldn’t endorse candidates in their respective commission races, allowing the pair to essentially run unopposed. Confronted by public outrage, Portune tried to deflect criticism by stating he didn’t propose the deal. Asked by the media who crafted the plan, Portune feigned ignorance though he’d floated an earlier deal with striking similarities when he thought incumbent Commissioner Pat DeWine was going to seek re-election. Maybe Portune is spending too much time in Bob Bedinghaus’ old office.

Best Eye-Opening Experience at City Hall:
Sean Holbrook, a young, floppy-haired first-time Cincinnati City Council candidate, decided to show up at a council meeting in June dressed only in a green plaid bathrobe, socks and shoes to speak during a public forum. No one present was quite sure why Holbrook was dressed that way, but many people appreciated the flash of well-toned leg during the otherwise dreary proceedings. Sadly, Holbrook later dropped out of the race, leaving Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz and Councilman Chris Bortz as the group’s only eye candy.

Best Retro Candidate:
When time came for City Councilman Jim Tarbell to step aside due to term limits, the Charter Committee agreed to a last minute deal to give the seat to former Mayor Roxanne Qualls so she could run as an “incumbent.” She not only won election — she finished first.

Best Display of Political Hubris:
Ex-Cincinnati City Councilman Sam Malone ran a TV commercial during his council campaign last fall that featured his mom attesting that Sam is a great son as well as a great father to his own 16-year-old son. It was a ballsy move, considering Malone — a former boxer — was charged with a misdemeanor count of domestic violence in 2005 for beating his son with a leather belt; he later was acquitted. And, oh yeah, Malone was also charged with domestic violence in 1991 for physically fighting with his mother at her Bond Hill home. That charge was dismissed after Malone completed a court-ordered counseling program. Voters have long memories, and he didn’t make it back into office.

Best Dirty Campaign Trick:
During his campaign for Cincinnati City Council last fall, the Rev. Charlie Winburn altered a CityBeat photograph to remove Police Officer Keith Fangman, controversial Fraternal Order of Police figure, and placed the doctored photo on his campaign Web site. Winburn didn’t ask us for permission to use the photo, much less permission to Photoshop out Fangman.

Best Veiled Threat By a Mainstream Newspaper:
The Cincinnati Enquirer last fall decided to let candidates for city council use its editorial board blog to comment on issues and answer questions from readers. To make sure they took part, editors let the politicians know that participation in the online forum would be one factor when they considered endorsements. What editors didn’t tell candidates is that the Gannett Co., owner of The Enquirer, places a premium on Internet traffic and even bases the bonuses for some editors on how many user hits an article receives online.

Best Reminder That Politicians Require Close Scrutiny:
(Tie) Eve Bolton used the fax machine at Wyoming High School to send reporters campaign literature, while Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. decorated his tank with a sign backing the jail tax. As the new President of the Board of Education, Bolton needs continued scrutiny. Leis never left his spot under the microscope.

Best Use of Litigation to Check Big Egos:
Local activist Jeff Capell filed a federal lawsuit in October against Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis Jr., alleging ol’ Si broke state election laws when he included a letter in paychecks to his workers urging them to support a sales tax referendum on the Nov. 6 ballot. Leis settled the lawsuit and, while not admitting any wrongdoing, caved into every concession that Capell and an anti-tax group sought, including allowing them to hold a press conference on county property.

Best Disappearing Act:
In what’s becoming a disturbing pattern, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory avoided taking a public stance last fall on the controversial Issue 27, a proposed county sales tax increase that would have raised $736 million over a 15-year period to build a jail and fund treatment programs for offenders. Although Mallory said reducing crime was a priority, he refused to say if he endorsed the tax. Silence is golden. Voters eventually rejected the measure by 57-43 percent.

Best Way to Show Who’s Boss: Chief Thomas Streicher Jr. Photo By: Joe Lamb

Best Bucking of the Party Line:
Although many Cincinnati-style Republicans tend to be even more conservative than their national counterparts, two local GOPers deserve credit for taking a stand to promote tolerance. During their campaigns last fall, City Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz and candidate John Eby were endorsed by the Log Cabin Republicans for their support of inclusion and fairness for gay and lesbian Americans.

Best Use of People Power:
The NAACP, Cincinnati Progressive Action and the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes overcame their ideological differences to throw out the sales tax for a new county jail. All signs to the contrary, the greater good occasionally can win out over big money and corporate interests.

Best Reminder That Things Ain’t So Bad:
Every single incumbent on Cincinnati City Council was re-elected, raising the unsettling possibility that maybe change isn’t always the best thing in local politics.

Best Roadblock:
Former Cincinnati Mayor and current City Councilwoman Roxanne Qualls seems to have decided her new role on council is to be contrary regarding anything advocated by Mayor Mark Mallory. Is this a harbinger of an upcoming political campaign? Maybe the mayoral contest in 2009?

Best Modern Rock Improvement:
WVXU (91.7 FM) is now offering an HD simulcast of online radio station woxy.com. HD allows one station to broadcast more than one program stream and those with HD receivers can choose between WVXU and WOXY. The HD signal is decoded by the HD radio and broadcast in CD-quality sound, while normal stereos lose quality when analog signals are interrupted by hills and trees and buildings and stuff. Your car stereo probably can’t get high def now, but this will be the norm soon and WOXY will still be the future of Rock & Roll. Bam! www.wvxu.org/hdradio

Best Source of Optimism:
Take it from CityBeat as we assemble our Best of Cincinnati issue, there are tons of good things to be said about our town. So we’re glad to recognize a weekly dose of clean optimism, Soapbox, an e-mail newsletter bursting with positive coverage of neighborhoods, businesses and the arts. It’s especially aimed at the elusive “young professionals” who area employers want to lure to Cincinnati. www.soapboxmedia.com

Best Source of Micro-Local Media:
Cincinnati has a wealth of blog sites devoted to incredibly local topics, and many are quite good: Cincinnati Locavore, whose theme of “eat local, live local” inspired this Best of Cincinnati issue (cincinnatilocavore.blogspot.com); Building Cincinnati, which covers local community development (www.building-cincinnati.com); CityKin, which promotes urban living (www.citykin.com); Queen City Survey, which also promotes urban living and is having a cool NCAA-type bracket tournament to determine the area’s best architecture (queencitysurvey.blogspot.com); and the readers’ choice for Best Blog, Buy Cincy, which promotes one of our favorite causes: supporting locally owned independent businesses (www.buycincy.com).

Best Blog by an Ex-Daily Newspaper Journalist:
The Daily Bellwether features first-rate reporting and writing by ex-Cleveland Plain Dealer staffer Bill Sloat, who specializes in politics, economic development and media issues. He posts news stories daily, actually several times a day, and often beats or outhustles the city’s daily media. thebellwetherdaily.blogspot.com

Best Blog by a Current Enquirer Staffer:
Newsache offers scathing comments about the poor news judgment of Enquirer editors, nonsensical opinions from the paper’s editorial page and inside maneuvering by Enquirer bigwigs and their bosses at Gannett. He/she loves to point out journalism contests the paper didn’t win and how management’s job cutting has gutted morale and newsgathering ability at Cincinnati’s leading media outlet. Some readers think the blogger is a bitter ex-employee, but we tend to believe he/she remains employed at 312 Elm St. and is sad and frustrated to see his/her once-beloved paper sucked dry of meaning and influence. Judge for yourself. Bring tissues.
cincynewsache.blogspot.com

Best Literary Ambassador:
Brock Clarke is a one-man literary swami. Through his work as a writer (he’s written two novels and two short story collections), educator (he teaches creative writing at UC) and editor (he’s fiction editor of The Cincinnati Review), he has produced, nurtured and promoted the written word with uncommon frequency and passion.

Best Fender-Bender in Funkytown: Bob Herzog Photo Courtesy Channel 12

Best Crumby Story:
Local publishing house Clerisy Press had a lot of fun with the history of Busken Bakery, written by Enquirer reporter John Eckberg and released last fall as Have a Crumby Book. The book highlights the company’s pun-filled ad slogans and marketing campaigns and celebrates the bakery family’s 80 years of giving Cincinnati a sugar rush.

Best ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ Moment:
When Clifton resident James T. Vincent wrote to Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory this winter to complain about the city’s rules for paying parking tickets, he didn’t expect the level of indifference he’d face. Vincent said a provision that doubles fees for parking tickets if they’re not paid within seven days is unfair to poorer people who barely squeak by from paycheck to paycheck and allows more affluent people to pay less. Mark Manning, a Mallory aide, was unmoved. In an e-mail to Vincent, he wrote, “I do not see how any level of income prevents timely payment of a parking ticket. Seven days should provide more than adequate time to pay violations through mail, in person, by phone, or online.” Yet another example that many City Hall workers are out of touch with reality.

Best Reversal to Save Public Face:
Mason city officials did a U-turn in October and decided to pay for Metro bus service that already had been provided. Two months earlier, Mason had notified Metro that it wouldn’t fund its share of 2007 bus service to Warren County, which totaled about $33,000. Metro officials said the news was especially troubling because the city hadn’t informed the agency earlier in the year — and essentially got service provided free of charge for more than eight months. Once their action became public, city officials had second thoughts.

Best Empowerment of the Local Rabble:
Kenton County Judge Exec Ralph Drees dared the residents of Independence to find a new jail site that would work, and they did. Despite his bull-in-the-china-shop approach, the judge agreed to listen once the voters toned down their rhetoric and did the due diligence necessary to prove their case. Both sides came away happy in the end.

Best Equivocating While Trying to Sound Smart:
The usually eloquent Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune got tongue-tied in September when WCPO-TV’s I-Team asked him if Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. broke state law by lobbying his employees to support a sales tax increase to build a new jail. “Yes, he’s probably maybe overly aggressive about getting it done. I don’t really fault him for that,” Portune told WCPO. We think Portune should probably maybe get a copy of the Ohio Revised Code and read it.

Best Unaired TV Show of the Season:
Speaking of the I-Team, WCPO’s Laure Quinlivan taped interviews last fall with several current and former Cincinnati Police officers who talked about how the attitudes and favoritism on the part of Police Chief Thomas Streicher Jr. and his inner circle had damaged department morale, which were set to air during November “sweeps.” Once Quinlivan learned she was being let go as part of budget cuts, though, the piece sat unfinished on a shelf. Like good sitcom pilots, we hope this video appears onscreen some time in the future.

Best Sudden Recall:
Cincinnati Police Chief Thomas Streicher Jr. assigned 10 police officers and several horses and motorcycles to add to the pomp and circumstance for his aunt’s funeral, a woman who was never affiliated with the department other than by genetics. When Streicher was confronted by The Cincinnati Enquirer, the chief initially denied Dec. 14 that any officers worked the events. After meeting with the city manager, though, Streicher had a sudden memory flash and sent the city a personal check Dec. 18 to cover the $1,767 cost for the perks; it was dated one day after the newspaper’s inquiry. We’re still trying to find out the department’s procedures that members of the public can use if they want a color guard at a funeral.

Best Oral Contract:
Lamenting the failure of a proposed Hamilton County sales tax increase to build a new jail, Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. told radio talk show host Bill Cunningham in January that the election outcome meant that constructing a new county lockup was probably 10 years away. “I’ll be gone by then,” the sheriff told an enraptured Willie. That sounds like Leis probably won’t run for another term after his current campaign for re-election is done. Please keep your word and don’t toy with our emotions, sir.

Best Free Advertising:
It seems the news has been reporting — way too excitedly — about the new IKEA store for two or three years now. Many of us don’t really “get” IKEA, but whenever we mention it to women their eyes glaze over like ours do when we see a jelly doughnut.

Best Way to Improve Worker Salaries:
Unionize and threaten to strike. It worked for the 11,000 Kroger workers who belong to the United Food and Commercial Workers. What a concept: Standing up for your legal rights and expecting employers to treat employees like human beings, not cogs in a machine.

Best Way to Punish Kindness:
A proposal in the Ohio House of Representatives would make it a crime to “conceal an alien.” Pretty soon we ought to be able to haul away priests, nun, monks and any of those other misguided do-gooders who get in the way of purifying the Buckeye state.

Best Revelation of a State Secret:
The state of Ohio was forced to tell how it goes about the business of killing people, thanks to a ruling Loraine County Common Pleas Judge James M. Burge. The state’s 632 pages of drug protocols, execution procedures, the last hours of the lives of executed prisoners and a whole lot more is now available (thanks to a tenacious ACLU) so the public can know how Ohio kills in its name.

Best Proof that Lethal Injection Is Cruel and Unusual Punishment:
The execution of Christopher Newton took one hour and 53 minutes. Inexcusable as an anomaly — the 2006 execution of Joseph Clark took 90 minutes with witnesses listening to Clark say, “It don’t work. It don’t work.” Gov. Ted Strickland still hasn’t followed the lead of his counterpart in Florida and suspended executions, so the torture continues.

Best Way to Exploit a Captive Market:
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections contracted with the Keefe Group, a mail-order business that’s now state prisoners’ only way to get snacks, toiletries and other small pleasures that families used to be able to provide.

Best Proof that Cincinnatians Have a Bigger Heart Than the Politicians:
A poll funded by the Greater Cincinnati Foundation showed that a majority of Cincinnatians residents support using taxpayer money to fund human services. Maybe some day elected officials will actually listen to their constituents instead of telling them what they ought to think.

Best Cancellation:
Neo-Nazis backed down from threat to march in Over-the-Rhine last spring. Nothing like wimping out at the last minute because your event organizer, a white guy, was wanted on domestic violence charges and the party wanted to avoid having one of their own embarrassed by being arrested in such a public way. Hmmmmm…

Best Legislative Failure:
Green license plates to identify the cars of former sex offenders didn’t make it into law because law enforcement officials had the guts to tell uneducated and willfully ignorant legislators that the plates would do nothing to further public safety.

Best Waste of Anti-Terrorism Money:
The Cincinnati Police Department decided to create a new marine unit to patrol the Ohio River last spring after it received a $141,000 Homeland Security grant to buy a speedboat. The city’s marine unit joins at least four other agencies that already patrol the river: the U.S. Coast Guard, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Boone County Water Rescue. We hope all those boats don’t run into each other while tracking down the new al-Qaeda cell in Kentucky.

Best Ruling to Prevent a Police State:
A state appeals court sided with voters in the long-simmering legal dispute about whether Cincinnati’s police chief and assistant chiefs can be hired from outside current ranks. In a 2-1 ruling issued in October, the First District Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s ruling that a charter amendment passed by voters in November 2001 violated terms of the local police union’s contract. Civilian control of the police and military are what distinguish the United States from banana republics. It’s nice to see someone remembers that.

Best Things to Do By Yourself on a Saturday:
WNKU (89.7 FM) offers two of the best programs outside of satellite radio on Saturdays: the syndicated Little Steven’s Underground Garage at 2-4 p.m. and their own Mr. Rhythm Man at 6-9 p.m. Steve Van Zandt, guitarist in the E Street Band and Silvio on the dearly departed Sopranos, spans 40 years of Garage Rock from “Louie Louie” to the Ramones to current bands like Foxboro Hot Tubs; his recent show celebrating Ringo Starr’s new CD, including an extended interview with Ringo, was awesome. Mr. Rhythm Man, meanwhile, spins his stacks o’ shellacks from groovy Highland Heights, featuring a mishmash of hep cats like James Brown, the Yardbirds and Chuck Berry up through KT Tunstall and North Mississippi All-Stars. Throw in Brian O’D, American Routes and the evening’s Dead/Jam shows, and WNKU would be the city’s best radio station even if it broadcast only on Saturdays.

Best Evidence the Media Matters: The Cincinnati Post Photo By: Jon Hughes/photopresse

Best Evidence the Media Matters:
Some Cincinnatians paused before going out to party on New Year’s Eve to pay their respects to The Cincinnati Post, which published its final edition that day after more than 125 years in business. Its fate had essentially been sealed since 1977, when its owners and Gannett, parent company of The Enquirer, signed a 30-year joint operating agreement (JOA) to share printing, subscription and ad sales duties. With most major cities supporting only one daily newspaper these days, The Post has known for a while that the JOA wouldn’t be renewed. Many media watchers, including CityBeat in a February 2007 cover story, had hoped The Post would go out with a bang — but its quiet final year doesn’t diminish its amazing contributions in providing light to local citizens.

Best ‘Do as We Say, Not as We Do’ Policy:
The Charter Committee, Cincinnati’s venerable third political party that pushes for openness in government, sent mixed signals in September about whether it allows media activists and journalists to join the organization. It allowed Justin Jeffre — a two-time candidate for city council and co-publisher of Cincinnati Beacon — to renew his membership but rejected the application of Jason Haap, the blogger known as “the Dean of Cincinnati” and Beacon co-publisher. Charterites said members of the media couldn’t join. Apparently the group forgot that it endorsed blogger Nick Spencer for council a few years ago, that its 2001 mayor candidate, Courtis Fuller, was a WLWT-TV anchorman and that the group endorsed an editor at The Cincinnati Times-Star as a mayoral candidate in the 1930s.

Best Use of Public Pressure:
Thanks to the efforts of the NAACP’s local branch and the AMOS Project, Cincinnati and Hamilton County officials were forced to do a turnabout and allow two African Americans to join an advisory panel negotiating a contract to build The Banks, the housing and shopping district planned along the riverfront. Given the history of past public projects, both groups worried that the nearly $1 billion Banks project wouldn’t have provisions for minority inclusion in contracting, hiring and job training. Those provisions later were added into the developer’s contract.

Best Kowtowing to Wealthy Contributors:
Despite skimpy evidence that it actually caused any problems, a public hillside stairway used by school children and senior citizens was closed by Cincinnati officials because folks who lived at the top of the stairs complained. Residents of Keys Crescent said petty criminals used the stairs that connects East Walnut Hills (above) to the East End (below) to make quick getaways. Even more residents said they used the stairs as a shortcut when walking up the hillside to get to a school on Madison Road and shops in O’Bryonville, adding that any problems were exaggerated. City council listened to Keys Crescent residents, many of whom give cash to their campaigns, and shut the stairs that had been open for decades.