Speaker 1: By Billy cunning into Great America. That's the story last
Speaker 1: week that Irish Rolly what came out with me about
Speaker 1: a month ago. And by the way, I do not
Speaker 1: blame Iris ROLEI that the city wants to give you
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand dollars plus plus plus, most Americans would
Speaker 1: say thank you, Sir. May have another absolutely about her
Speaker 1: getting that kind of money from the city having solved
Speaker 1: criminal problems. And secondly, the cities also agreed to eight
Speaker 1: point one million dollars to the misdemeanor criminals who committed
Speaker 1: offenses of public trespassing. More that were given ten to
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars each. And I'm gonna ask Steve good
Speaker 1: In the attorney about whether citizens like him can object
Speaker 1: to the city spending his money in this way. Is
Speaker 1: Steve Gooden, Attorney, Welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show.
Speaker 1: And Steve, first of all, let's deal with Irish roly.
Speaker 1: I watched this public affair situation over the weekend with
Speaker 1: Curtis Fuller of Channel five. His guests were Adam Interim
Speaker 1: Chief Adam Henny and Irish Rowley and some assistant city manager.
Speaker 1: I tried to see what they were saying, but they
Speaker 1: were words untethered to reality. I'm not sure what they
Speaker 1: were saying, other than, man, we're working hard and the
Speaker 1: city's so much safer than it's spend in a long time.
Speaker 1: Life is good. And then I read about all the
Speaker 1: shootings and things of that character. So give me your
Speaker 1: sense of paying Iris rolly six hundred thousand dollars plus
Speaker 1: and whether that's money well spent, well.
Speaker 2: It's definitely not money well spent.
Speaker 3: It's just this is how this city hall does patronage, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, back in the old days, in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 3: the Boss Cock stage, you would hire your buddies to
Speaker 3: jobs at the city.
Speaker 2: Now you know that's been outlawed by.
Speaker 3: The charter, so now you'd hire independent contractors and nonprofits.
Speaker 3: And that's how you funnel your money to your political supporters.
Speaker 2: Iris was the number one.
Speaker 3: Political activist for the mayor over the last several years.
Speaker 3: She personally went after his opponents, went after a city
Speaker 3: council candidate she didn't like. She is exempt from all
Speaker 3: the ethics laws because she's not an actual city employee.
Speaker 3: So then two days after the election or three days
Speaker 3: after the election, they give her six hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: allegedly for our anti violence efforts. It looks to all
Speaker 3: the world to me to be for her political advocacy.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you, as a guy who has an
Speaker 3: office right by Government Square. Remember she was being paid
Speaker 3: to clean up and reduce violence on Fountain Square and
Speaker 3: Government Square, in part by passing out sandwiches and food
Speaker 3: packets to the kids who hang around that bus stop.
Speaker 2: It was a total failure.
Speaker 3: The city still had to lean on Sorta and Metro
Speaker 3: to move and re route half those bus lines.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing that moved it.
Speaker 3: We still ended up with two shootings either on or
Speaker 3: near Fountain Square in business hours and still ended up
Speaker 3: with SWAT teams to have to secure it. So whatever
Speaker 3: she did there was a failure. But she's still getting paid.
Speaker 3: And if you ask me, it's clearly because of all
Speaker 3: the politics the stuff that she did during during this
Speaker 3: time period. It's just patron It's plain and simple, but
Speaker 3: it's kind of masked and looking like it's something else.
Speaker 3: But you know, right now, the citizens, you know, there's
Speaker 3: no one on there to complain, and the fact that
Speaker 3: if it was so legitimate, why did they wait till
Speaker 3: two days after the election.
Speaker 2: To jam it through.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, obviously, in the good old days, patronage
Speaker 1: was you hire, like in the Sopranos, your buddies and
Speaker 1: friends for no show jobs, making lots of money. So
Speaker 1: you can't do that. She's coined as an independent contractor.
Speaker 1: In reality, she's an employee. But if you're an employee,
Speaker 1: you can't our friends and family members on no show jobs.
Speaker 1: So what you do then is make her an independent
Speaker 1: contractor and she gets paid, she submits time sheets. We're
Speaker 1: talking serious money here, six hundred thousand. Is there an
Speaker 1: effort by you and others to maybe sue on that
Speaker 1: behalf saying the misuse of city funds is she's not
Speaker 1: an independent contractor, she's an employee, and maybe you're saying
Speaker 1: you can't do that. Is that possible?
Speaker 2: You know, we've been looking.
Speaker 3: At that for some time, and that was really one
Speaker 3: of the big things we were out talking about during
Speaker 3: the election, you know, with the Charter Committee, and I
Speaker 3: know some of the Republican candidates were talking about it too.
Speaker 2: City council could stop this with a single vote.
Speaker 3: I mean they could just basically say, hey, our contractors
Speaker 3: are now subject to the state ethics laws which ban
Speaker 3: all this stuff, and also the separate laws and requirements
Speaker 3: we have in ordinances we have here in the city.
Speaker 3: They could shut it down in a heartbeat. Breaking a
Speaker 3: lawsuit's going to be tough. We have looked at that.
Speaker 3: We've particularly been looking at this issue with this eight
Speaker 3: point one million dollars and then we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about in the moment. But it is really really hard
Speaker 3: to kind of legislate through litigation on these sorts of things.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a tough thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, a taxpayer lawsuit you know, could be brought
Speaker 3: where it goes in our local courts is very tough
Speaker 3: because we're dealing with individual contracts. I would these you know,
Speaker 3: five city council members could shut this down for all
Speaker 3: time by simply saying we're going to apply to state
Speaker 3: laws and the other laws that exists to our in
Speaker 3: the country, then we'll do well.
Speaker 2: Of course, not of course.
Speaker 4: Not because in ours rolling once. I can't blame her.
Speaker 1: If somebody said to you, I'm gonna give you six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars on a note show up job to
Speaker 1: act as if handout sandwiches on Fountain Square, I think
Speaker 1: most people would say, hey, yea, all take it. But
Speaker 1: she also attacked the mayor's political opponents. Now on the mayor,
Speaker 1: of course, he didn't make his car payments. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a note you have to pay the note you
Speaker 1: got to It's a notes I gotta be paid. Uh
Speaker 1: Tamay Dinard got in trouble for this. She didn't put
Speaker 1: on our financial forms, the fact that she had a
Speaker 1: car repossessed and had a deficiency. Is anyone looking at
Speaker 1: the financial forms, and by the way, that's a crime.
Speaker 1: Is anyone looking to have to have peer of all
Speaker 1: his financial forms. Whether he put down the numerous car repossessions,
Speaker 1: he said.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Actually, one of my fellow board members over at the Turnita,
Speaker 3: Queen todd Sendsers, who's a former Inspector General up at
Speaker 3: the Department of Transportation, is all over this, you know,
Speaker 3: multiple public records requests. Then we're trying to to get
Speaker 3: to the bottom of all that.
Speaker 2: And you know, for me, the big issue it's.
Speaker 3: Not thought whether or not the mayor had financial problems.
Speaker 3: I guess people have issues, it's part of life. But
Speaker 3: the story he told makes zero sense. And if there's
Speaker 3: a problem with disclosure there. I mean, you're absolutely right,
Speaker 3: that's something that has to be fleshed out. He's compromised.
Speaker 3: We know how things ended with council Member Dinard. I
Speaker 3: mean she was compromised because of financial issues and it
Speaker 3: ended up soliciting a bribe and pleading guilty to it.
Speaker 3: I know she kind of wants to take the plea back,
Speaker 3: I understand from her public statements, but she ended up
Speaker 3: doing I think eleven months in federal prison for it. So,
Speaker 3: and this was one that she solicited. This was not
Speaker 3: part of the sit and felled sting operation. She actually
Speaker 3: went out and solicited that from a developer's lawyer who
Speaker 3: was involved with the banks, mister Gableman. So really a
Speaker 3: bad thing, and it looks bad on city Hall, and
Speaker 3: it compromises these people and it makes them subject to
Speaker 3: improper influence, and it's something that we are very much
Speaker 3: still fleshing out.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: One of the elements of one of the cars repossessed
Speaker 1: from after pureval is a co signer. Doesn't that if
Speaker 1: you have a mayor that needs a co signer in
Speaker 1: order to get a car, that's kind of a compromising,
Speaker 1: bad situation. But areween titled to know who co signed,
Speaker 1: so you could have a car that was repossessed.
Speaker 3: I believe under the ethics flaws, we are entitled to
Speaker 3: know that.
Speaker 2: And I mean, look, if he was, if.
Speaker 3: It was a co signer, was something the co signer
Speaker 3: with someone who has business before the city, or could
Speaker 3: have business before the city, or is affiliated with the
Speaker 3: company that has business before the city. That is absolutely
Speaker 3: something that we need to know and should know. I
Speaker 3: mean again, that person, you know, he is beholden to
Speaker 3: whoever the co signer is in one way or another.
Speaker 3: And absolutely we're trying to get to the bottom of
Speaker 3: all that.
Speaker 1: Imagine this, Steve Go. We have a mayor doesn't make
Speaker 1: car payments repossessions. We have a city manager who's filed
Speaker 1: bankruptcy with tax lienes, the president of council and according
Speaker 1: to media, outs at a one million dollar tax line
Speaker 1: against her and her husband. And those are the leaders
Speaker 1: financially of the city. You must master yourself before you
Speaker 1: seek to master others. So the city is run by
Speaker 1: individuals who've had profound financial difficulties and can't manage their
Speaker 1: own money. One might ask, why should they manage our money?
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, city council voted unanimously eight point one
Speaker 1: million dollars to Alfonsko Hartstein and Louis Serkin, etc. Because
Speaker 1: of what happened on the George Floyd protest. There were
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty times the city passed the law on
Speaker 1: a curfew, which we have an effect for some people
Speaker 1: right now. You have to get off the streets. You
Speaker 1: have to quit breaking into cars and fire bombing storefronts.
Speaker 1: You have to quit doing that. And they passed a
Speaker 1: curfew violation, and that the police notified the so called
Speaker 1: individuals marching around city streets, which is a crime, by
Speaker 1: the way, breaking curfew a dozen or so times.
Speaker 4: Get off, we're going to rest you. Get off.
Speaker 1: They wanted to get arrested, hoping to sue down the road.
Speaker 1: Here we are five years later and it's happened. Number one,
Speaker 1: did it appear on the surface, These four hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy nine individuals are going to get all this money
Speaker 1: that they were breaking the law by walking around public
Speaker 1: streets shutting down things. Not the ones who are fire
Speaker 1: bombing the stores and breaking into cars. That's a different category.
Speaker 1: But the four seventy nine were just individuals who were arrested,
Speaker 1: was zip tized because they wouldn't pay attention to what
Speaker 1: they're told to do. Repeatedly, the last thing the cops
Speaker 1: want to do is arrest somebody takes them off the street.
Speaker 1: But how valid is this eight point one million dollars
Speaker 1: from the city to the criminals.
Speaker 3: Well, this to me is one of the most, if
Speaker 3: not the most disgusting thing to come out of this
Speaker 3: administration so far. Again, note that they waited till after
Speaker 3: the election to we're in this sort of dead period
Speaker 3: in the holidays to try to do it and hopefully
Speaker 3: hopefully no one would notice.
Speaker 2: But this is the worst of the worst.
Speaker 3: I mean, most of these folks are going to get
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars each for basically waiting around for a
Speaker 3: few hours and the early morning hours to in the
Speaker 3: sally Port over outside the Justice Center to try to
Speaker 3: get them themselves processed and released on our bonds. I
Speaker 3: would have happily gone over for ten grand cash, non
Speaker 3: taxable and stood around at the Justice Center for a
Speaker 3: few hours. I do it all the time for free
Speaker 3: at my job, so I would have happily done this.
Speaker 3: It's a total joke. I mean, look, Mayor Cranley was
Speaker 3: right to impose the curfew. I lived downtown during this
Speaker 3: time period, and I'm very tired of people rewriting history.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you I heard the windows break. I knew
Speaker 3: one of the officers who was shot at during this.
Speaker 3: People forget that there were gun for these peaceful protesters.
Speaker 3: Some of them were armed, throwing rocks, harassing police officers.
Speaker 3: It is absolutely constitutional to put what they call time,
Speaker 3: place and manner restrictions on protests. All the mayor said was, look,
Speaker 3: if you guys are going to protest, protest, but you
Speaker 3: got to break it up by eleven o'clock and you
Speaker 3: can't go breaking into breaking windows and damaging.
Speaker 2: Other people's properties. Et. No matter howard.
Speaker 3: Grieved someone is or how bad they felt about George
Speaker 3: Floyd going and smashing out windows here and in Cincinnati, Ohio,
Speaker 3: wasn't going to bring anyone back.
Speaker 2: To life over in Minneapolis. It was just insane.
Speaker 3: And those property owners have rights, and the people who
Speaker 3: lived downtown and were trying to conduct a business downtown
Speaker 3: had rights too. And it was a disgusting time. There's
Speaker 3: a total rewrite of history. It was a total waste
Speaker 3: of taxpayer dollars. And we have no idea even how
Speaker 3: these damages were arrived at, so it's ten grand each
Speaker 3: for most of them. There's about eleven of them that
Speaker 3: claimed that they had special damages who were going to
Speaker 3: get more. So there's like a three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: pot for the eleven named plaintiffs, and then the lawyers,
Speaker 3: of course get two million. It's sick. It's sick, and
Speaker 3: it's our dollars. I mean, I live in the city.
Speaker 3: It's our money, and it's just insane. And those who
Speaker 3: are people who don't live in the city but pay
Speaker 3: income tax issue because they work here and have their
Speaker 3: jobs or have their offices or other jobs here, you
Speaker 3: know they're paying for it as well. The whole region's
Speaker 3: paying for it, and people should be very very upset.
Speaker 1: The other issue is this, I heard the assistant city
Speaker 1: manager say, well, we're going to pay the eight point
Speaker 1: one million dollars, so that it could be a lot
Speaker 1: higher than that if we go to trial. Well, sometimes
Speaker 1: in life you go to trial. I've tried cases in
Speaker 1: federal court with jurys with Judge Ruben and Judge Porter,
Speaker 1: and one should know that the jurors in federal court
Speaker 1: in the Southern District are not only drawn from Hamilton County.
Speaker 1: In fact, the majority of jurors come from the other
Speaker 1: sixty counties south of Columbus who have a different view
Speaker 1: about these criminal protests. And maybe somebody living in the
Speaker 1: city of Cincinnati is a liberal Democrat and so sometimes
Speaker 1: in life you got to tee it up. These jurors
Speaker 1: would have come from Claremont County, Warren County, Brown County,
Speaker 1: Adams County, Highland County. How would they have viewed with
Speaker 1: all the video of these protesters and what they did.
Speaker 1: Do you think they would have handed out tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars of these protesters.
Speaker 3: I would love to try this case. I mean, they're
Speaker 3: going back. I mean, look, you know all. I would
Speaker 3: love to get a good juror from Ironton, Ohio on
Speaker 3: there looking at the at the video of this and
Speaker 3: hearing how these police officers were being treated, and to
Speaker 3: hear from some of the shop owners who had their
Speaker 3: windows smashed out and who had items stolen from their stores.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean this, the curfew was perfectly legal
Speaker 3: and constitutional. This is a political settlement. I have no
Speaker 3: idea and nor has it ever been explained how they
Speaker 3: came up with this ten thousand dollars per person figure
Speaker 3: he felt like they were missing work or anything. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's not you two in the morning when they got
Speaker 3: picked up, nor did they you know or is there
Speaker 3: any indication that these folks would have had, you know,
Speaker 3: jobs to.
Speaker 2: Go to it normally. Anyway, Probably a lot of them.
Speaker 3: I think there were a fair number of quote unquote
Speaker 3: professional protesters.
Speaker 2: Down there shipped in. So it's really disgusting. It is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you take this hold of it, and they want
Speaker 1: to pay the money, and I can only imagine it,
Speaker 1: by the way, the other shoe to drop with Elwood Jones,
Speaker 1: the other shoe. Here we come with a lawsuit for
Speaker 1: millions of dollar against Hamley County for locking him up
Speaker 1: for about thirty years for a murder he committed. And
Speaker 1: that's coming also. And then you also have the settlement
Speaker 1: of Chief Thiji her hands out for about a million bucks,
Speaker 1: and then Chief Washington, the fire chief, his hands out
Speaker 1: for an assistant chief. The city's going to settle all
Speaker 1: these cases from millions of dollars with your money.
Speaker 4: I don't live in the.
Speaker 1: City, but you do, and you live where f Ted
Speaker 1: Pirival may not have paid his hoa fees. He's got
Speaker 1: serious financial problems and had the city handled this money
Speaker 1: as if it's justified.
Speaker 4: It's got as sick in a city resident.
Speaker 2: Correct, it's really it's just disgusting.
Speaker 3: I mean, meanwhile, you know, we're sitting here in a
Speaker 3: deep freeze, which means we're going to have a really
Speaker 3: bad pothole season. You know, most bottles are caused by
Speaker 3: early freezes that get into cracks and then blow up
Speaker 3: into potholes.
Speaker 2: So we already know we're.
Speaker 3: Going to have a rough time on the streets, you know,
Speaker 3: and we know that they're always behind on street repair,
Speaker 3: so the city has already begin to, you know, into
Speaker 3: a situation where it looks dilapidated and the roads are terrible,
Speaker 3: and it feels like, I say, you're you know, like
Speaker 3: a lunar landing sometimes just driving around the city streets.
Speaker 3: It's just a it's a mess. But yet we don't
Speaker 3: have money to fix the streets. But we got eight
Speaker 3: point one million for some people who felt aggrieved and
Speaker 3: had their cell phones taken. I guess that's part of
Speaker 3: the damages. I was just I just saw, you know,
Speaker 3: for for protesting in the in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: Five years ago. But we have money for them that
Speaker 3: not for this, and they're making these horrific financial or
Speaker 3: personnel decisions which are going to cost him. I mean,
Speaker 3: like Chief Washington, I'm very familiar with that case, and
Speaker 3: they've talked to him many times. He's getting money. Okay,
Speaker 3: like in my judgment, my legal judgment, putting all politics aside,
Speaker 3: they owe him. Okay, he's got a fantastic case. And
Speaker 3: I think Chief the G they're gonna end up having
Speaker 3: to pay her too, as you've talked about. I mean,
Speaker 3: these are millions of dollars and just these you know,
Speaker 3: efeckless personnel decisions that are purely politically driven and are
Speaker 3: I mean, they got rid of THEG because I thought
Speaker 3: it was going to help the mayor and city council
Speaker 3: before the city, before the election, and it probably it.
Speaker 3: So I mean, you know, she became a sacrificial lamb,
Speaker 3: no matter what you think of her performance. So this
Speaker 3: is politics, but people like me end up paying.
Speaker 1: Well, Steve Gooden tell the mayor it's no joke. You
Speaker 1: got to pay your note. So let's see what happens
Speaker 1: down the road.
Speaker 4: It's no joke. You got to pay your note. We
Speaker 4: got a mayor. That's fine.
Speaker 1: Well, Steve, we got to run, but thanks for laying
Speaker 1: it out. We've become like many other liberal cities, in
Speaker 1: which case they're poorly run, very expensive to be in,
Speaker 1: and of course the Bengal ownership kind of doesn't have
Speaker 1: money to buy a snowshovel. That's another issue. But Steve Gooden,
Speaker 1: you're a great American. And thanks for coming on the
Speaker 1: Bill Cunningham Show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Steve, you two, thank you any timeless Let's continue.
Speaker 1: The truth will set you free. It's no joke. You
Speaker 1: got to pay your note. On news Radio seven hundreds
Speaker 1: WLW