Speaker 1: Seven oh six if any five k c DE talk station,
Speaker 1: yay for Friday or woohoo for Friday is a case
Speaker 1: of day and a great hour of power coming up
Speaker 1: right now. And the citizens of the City of Cincinnati
Speaker 1: have a really I suppose a debt of gratitude to
Speaker 1: pay to what we call citizen watch Dog Todd Zenzer,
Speaker 1: host of the Citizen Watchdog podcast, which you should listen to.
Speaker 1: He is an inspector, former inspector General for the United
Speaker 1: States of America, and I just got done telling Todd
Speaker 1: off air that we should put him on the job
Speaker 1: of the medicaid problems we have here in the state
Speaker 1: of Ohio, which they're now just getting into. But using
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, it seems to be pretty easy to ferret
Speaker 1: out fraud, waste, and abuse, much in the same way
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, inspite of the challenges he's facing right right
Speaker 1: now with Trump and the childish war or on social media.
Speaker 1: Todd Zenzer, following the antics of the City of Cincinnati
Speaker 1: council members and the mayor, Welcome back, Todd Zinzer. It's
Speaker 1: always a pleasure having here man.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Brian. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: And I do appreciate the work you are doing, and
Speaker 1: you know every I mean every week and every time
Speaker 1: we talk. It's just it's almost just hard to believe
Speaker 1: what's going on behind the scenes, or as the case,
Speaker 1: maybe what's not going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, there is a lot going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the city's biggest problems.
Speaker 2: Is this whole transparency issue.
Speaker 1: Zero transparency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really amazing. And if they're not keeping things
Speaker 2: behind the curtain, they're just flooding you with all of
Speaker 2: this information that isn't organized, and you really don't understand
Speaker 2: what it's all about, and you really have to, you
Speaker 2: really have to look into it to find out what
Speaker 2: little nuggets of information is out there about what's really
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 1: Well, it takes a tenacious person like you, who so
Speaker 1: unpaid as you are, are willing. I guess it's kind
Speaker 1: of a hobby for you. You really like you be in
Speaker 1: the fly in the ointment for those clowns and you
Speaker 1: connect the dots.
Speaker 2: Well, it's what I did for a living for so
Speaker 2: many years.
Speaker 1: And it's in your blood.
Speaker 2: It is an interesting mine, to be sure.
Speaker 1: Well, it's one of the more bizarre hobbies in retirement
Speaker 1: that one can have, but we thank you for doing it.
Speaker 1: So let okay the topic number one, the missing audit
Speaker 1: has been found. Now you're gonna have to provide the
Speaker 1: background for this, because you and I have talked about
Speaker 1: this before, but you know, lay the groundwork for what
Speaker 1: you found and then we can talk about what it means,
Speaker 1: what the audit report that you found and the implications
Speaker 1: for that are.
Speaker 2: Well, several months ago, I started looking into this phenomena
Speaker 2: of a lobbyist lobbying the city. Yeah, so I was
Speaker 2: looking for the lobby the list of lobbyists, which isn't
Speaker 2: easy to find either, but there is a list out there.
Speaker 2: And I started to think about all the corruption cases
Speaker 2: that I'm aware of that involved lobbyists. One goes way
Speaker 2: back to the early two thousands of Washington where the
Speaker 2: Jack Abramov scandal.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, your BLAT's a blast from the past.
Speaker 2: Well, I was there when all that was going on,
Speaker 2: and it actually was uncovered by or investigated by the
Speaker 2: Inspector General for the Interior Department, and the Deputy Secretary
Speaker 2: of Interior wound up getting prosecuted. But it was a
Speaker 2: big scandal. It was it was all obvious. And then
Speaker 2: you have what happened here with the council member, And
Speaker 2: I got curious, was there anything that went on with
Speaker 2: all the gang the gang of five? Was there anything
Speaker 2: that went on with lobbyists? A gang of five?
Speaker 1: The scandal, Jeff Pastor scandal. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: You know, we had a we had a similar issue
Speaker 2: in Columbus with lobbyists that first energy that that involved lobbyists.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I didn't really find anythingolder was yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't find any lobbyist issues with the corruption scandal.
Speaker 2: But along the way, I found this article that Sherry
Speaker 2: Coolidge did about this. The headline read, a Cincinnati audit
Speaker 2: is mysteriously scaled back and then they quote they have
Speaker 2: a quote in here someone is protecting one or more people.
Speaker 2: So after I read the article and found out that
Speaker 2: there was supposed to be some kind of audits a
Speaker 2: red flag. So I obtained a copy of the audit,
Speaker 2: went through it. And I'll tell you, after the three
Speaker 2: members of council and Wendell Young got indicted on these felonies,
Speaker 2: Mayor Cranley and Christopher Smithermany, they went to work, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they took actions to try to figure out how
Speaker 2: the city moves forward from here. And one of the
Speaker 2: things they did is they asked the government, the city government,
Speaker 2: to have this audit done of these existing of these
Speaker 2: other economic development projects.
Speaker 1: To hire an outside auditing firm, get the money to
Speaker 1: hire them, and to have them conduct the audit right.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, they established what they called
Speaker 2: the Economic Development Reform Panel, and that brought in I
Speaker 2: don't know, I think it was like a dozen community leaders, attorneys,
Speaker 2: former judges, people from the Ethics Commission, they were religious leaders,
Speaker 2: there are Democrats, Republicans, to look at what happened and
Speaker 2: to come up with a plan for the city to follow,
Speaker 2: to try to create a more ethical environment for the
Speaker 2: city council.
Speaker 1: So unscrupulous individuals can't basically pay to play or pay
Speaker 1: off or otherwise bribe council members or the mayor in
Speaker 1: order to advance their personal interest project, whatever that project
Speaker 1: may be, which of course is the fundamental basis of
Speaker 1: all these the felony complaints that were wel that's correct.
Speaker 2: Well, except for Wendell Young, he got prosecuted for obstructing
Speaker 2: justice in the Gang of Five investigation. The other three
Speaker 2: were corruption rights everywhere. So I looked at the Economic
Speaker 2: Development Review Panel. They started their work in February of
Speaker 2: twenty one. They issued a report in July of twenty
Speaker 2: one and had a number of recommendations, And one of
Speaker 2: their recommendations was, yes, do this forensic They were calling
Speaker 2: it a forensic audit at the time. Do this forensic audit, promptly,
Speaker 2: get it published, put it out to the public about
Speaker 2: what needs to be done. That was one of their
Speaker 2: big recommendations.
Speaker 1: Okay. And so the firm audited individual projects that were
Speaker 1: funded by the city or voted on by the city
Speaker 1: or otherwise like maybe tax abatement areas or any any
Speaker 1: kind of economic development project exactly. So they looked at
Speaker 1: the documents related to how that was approved and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because they focused they collected a lot of
Speaker 2: data on how the city council voted on the various
Speaker 2: tax abatements or credits or whatever that these two hundred
Speaker 2: projects received. So they were saying they were looking at
Speaker 2: looking for patterns, voting patterns, to see whether they whether
Speaker 2: those patterns indicated any unusual votes on the part of
Speaker 2: these council members, yes or no. Okay, And I think
Speaker 2: the bottom line is they didn't really find any issues.
Speaker 2: But their recommendations I think really didn't really weren't well
Speaker 2: received by the New City Council.
Speaker 1: Okay, so boiled down from what I'm hearing is the
Speaker 1: audit was conducted. They looked at all these projects, and
Speaker 1: they didn't find anything what I will loosely refer to
Speaker 1: as shenanigans, like, oh my god, this voting pattern reveals
Speaker 1: that someone's getting paid something like that. But because of
Speaker 1: what had happened before in connection with these scams, they
Speaker 1: created recommendations in order to improve the process, maybe bring
Speaker 1: more clarity to it, and perhaps shed a little more
Speaker 1: sunlight and transparency on the project, on the process, And
Speaker 1: that's the part that wasn't well received, is your conclusion.
Speaker 2: There were two recommendations in particular that I focused on
Speaker 2: that Crow was the name of the outfit from Chicago.
Speaker 1: Real quickly, when did when was the audit commission? And
Speaker 1: when did it come out? How much time were we
Speaker 1: talking about between today and when This conclusions and these
Speaker 1: recommendations were made to tell.
Speaker 2: You how slow the process worked. This was initially the
Speaker 2: result of a resolution entered or emotion entered by Christopher
Speaker 2: Smitherman when he was on council towards the end of
Speaker 2: their term, he put this motion out to have this done.
Speaker 2: So that was in twenty one, and they signed a
Speaker 2: that might have been that was in twenty one. They
Speaker 2: signed a contract in January of twenty two, and the
Speaker 2: audit firm issued their draft report in December of twenty two.
Speaker 2: So what should happen after the draft report is issued.
Speaker 2: That wasn't done is that the audit the person who
Speaker 2: is getting audited, they're supposed to look. They're supposed to
Speaker 2: look at the draft audit see whether there's any factual
Speaker 2: issues that they have heartburnover. They're supposed to respond to
Speaker 2: the recommendations. Do they agree? Do they not agree?
Speaker 1: Sure? You know, it's kinds like reviewing a deposition and
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, no, that's wrong. I did not
Speaker 1: say that it's been improperly transcribed exactly. Your conclusion is
Speaker 1: wrong for the following reasons. And here's all the reasons why.
Speaker 1: So that's what you do after the draft audit is issued.
Speaker 2: And that that is part of the contract with the auditor.
Speaker 1: And so that wasn't done.
Speaker 2: Cincinnati did not do that. The city did not respond
Speaker 2: in any way to the draft report, which.
Speaker 1: Means they agreed with it, that we can at least
Speaker 1: make that a logical conclusion. If you remain silent in
Speaker 1: the face of the draft audit, then you agree with
Speaker 1: what's in there. Let's pause, because we're going to find
Speaker 1: what Todd was able to conclude after reviewing the final audit,
Speaker 1: which took him about a gazillion years to finally uncover
Speaker 1: and jar your own conclusions as to why it wasn't
Speaker 1: immediately published and released to the public first, though, John
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Speaker 1: on what the forecast s A couple of days worth anyway,
Speaker 1: clouds day's got a showers and storm played this afternoon,
Speaker 1: I have eighty we got rain likely overnight. Storms are
Speaker 1: expected to continue overnight as well with a low sixty seven.
Speaker 1: And we got some sun but mostly cloudy tomorrow and
Speaker 1: if tiny chance of rain eighty two for the high
Speaker 1: seventy three. Right now, let's get a traffick update from
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Speaker 3: But you got to go through some pretty thick fog
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Speaker 1: Seven's one of you. If you about ker City Talk
Speaker 1: Station A very happy when or spitting the hell is
Speaker 1: on my mind. It is Friday anyway. Citizen watch Dog
Speaker 1: Todd's inswers in Sudio No moreen. He is not suicidal.
Speaker 1: She thinks she have a death wish because you're speaking
Speaker 1: so much truth to power. I don't think we have
Speaker 1: any Clinton family member power on the City of Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: So I'm not worried about you, Todd. You keep I'm
Speaker 1: not worried. You keep raising the awareness of the City
Speaker 1: of Cincinnati residence, and I just hope that continues, and
Speaker 1: I hope more and more people check out your podcast,
Speaker 1: Citizen Watchdog, because he's at this all week long. All right,
Speaker 1: So we laid the foundation for this audit. Yes it
Speaker 1: was a post corruption audit. What can we do to
Speaker 1: right the ship, to make the process better, to make
Speaker 1: the process less corrupt by way of for whatever projects
Speaker 1: being proposed, whatever tax abatement, whatever building is going to
Speaker 1: be built, whatever Hyde Park development, well connected developer project
Speaker 1: is going to be you know, uh uh, get his
Speaker 1: own change for We want to make sure it isn't
Speaker 1: done or have any corruption associated with it. So outside
Speaker 1: entity from Chicago has spent a year or so looking
Speaker 1: at it. They're paid one hundred and fifty grand to
Speaker 1: do the report. The issue the primary report, opportunity for
Speaker 1: the council members and the mayor to comment on it,
Speaker 1: to identify any problems with the initial report. Nothing said,
Speaker 1: not a finger lifted, not a word spoken from counsel
Speaker 1: or the mayor. So they did a final report along
Speaker 1: with recommendations. So that leads us up to here.
Speaker 2: It got a little bit worse than that. Oh it did.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm shocked. Do tell so.
Speaker 2: Instead of providing comments about the recommendations and the findings
Speaker 2: and correcting any problems with the draft report, Cheryl Long
Speaker 2: rejected the report. She told the city Council and the
Speaker 2: mayor that the report was not satisfactory.
Speaker 1: For what specific reason.
Speaker 2: Well, she didn't say, but she promised to work with
Speaker 2: the auditor to get to do a better job. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was sent in January of twenty three.
Speaker 1: How would she know whether it's satisfactory or not.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question. But I'll tell you if
Speaker 2: there's been.
Speaker 1: A whole year looking at each of these individual projects
Speaker 1: and all the documents related to them, did Cheryl do that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, so thank you.
Speaker 2: Here's what I think got to them when Sherry Coolidge
Speaker 2: wrote this article with the headline about the audit being
Speaker 2: scaled back, I think they got very defensive over that.
Speaker 2: There was a footnote in the draft report that basically
Speaker 2: said that Crow had been asked by the city to
Speaker 2: change the standards that they're going to use when they
Speaker 2: do their audit. It went from a performance audit to
Speaker 2: an assessment. And it wasn't following gagas or they generally
Speaker 2: accepted government auditing standards. It was going to follow the AICPA,
Speaker 2: which is the American Institute of CPAs, who is going
Speaker 2: to follow their standards, which they're basically saying that the
Speaker 2: city changed the standards that they wanted us to use
Speaker 2: and looking at.
Speaker 1: This they made that change after the Crow firm had
Speaker 1: been working on it and up to the point where
Speaker 1: they could release a draft form.
Speaker 2: Right at some point in time, and we don't know when,
Speaker 2: there was a conversation between Crow and the city where
Speaker 2: it says that after discussion with the city, Crow's performance
Speaker 2: under this ordinance is an assessment under a CPA's consulting
Speaker 2: standards and is not a forensic audit. So they changed
Speaker 2: the rules that they wanted the auditor to follow in
Speaker 2: doing their work.
Speaker 1: Well, wasn't there an RFP at the outset for Crow
Speaker 1: to look into and say, hey, I got my hand up,
Speaker 1: I would I this is what I would charge for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where the standards were initially included. Yeah, So they
Speaker 1: did it in accordance with what they were told to
Speaker 1: do with the outset, and then sometime along the process,
Speaker 1: probably most of the way, if not all the way through,
Speaker 1: that's when the city manager says, no, you want to
Speaker 1: do it to a different standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want the hell Todd, Well, that's what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, Brian, because I either there was a
Speaker 2: total disconnect in the city manager's office, or they didn't
Speaker 2: like what was in the audit, were worried they didn't
Speaker 2: like what was in the audit.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, well we still haven't gotten to the conclusions
Speaker 1: in the audit that they have apparently not followed through
Speaker 1: with or followed in spite of the fact that it
Speaker 1: was the purpose of the audit to provide conclusions and
Speaker 1: recommendations to follow. It's seven twenty five. We're gonna finish.
Speaker 1: We'll figure this out. Every time we talk it keeps
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Speaker 1: The talk station Hey seven thirty fifty five Krcity talk Station.
Speaker 1: Happy Friday. Todd's ends or citizen watchdog in city, get
Speaker 1: a citizen watchdog podcast and find out what's going on
Speaker 1: in the city. Boy, it's taken us a long time
Speaker 1: to get there, but we've walked through all of the
Speaker 1: shenanigans going on leading up to the final report which
Speaker 1: was issued. Again, the report related to a review and analysis,
Speaker 1: forensic of the process of getting contracts approved and abatements
Speaker 1: approved by the City of Cincinnia Cincinnati, of course on
Speaker 1: the heels of the scandals involving PG Sitting Fell, Jeff
Speaker 1: Pasture and others. So the firm releases the draft, then
Speaker 1: the city says, oh, oh, oh, by the way, No, no,
Speaker 1: we don't want it done that way. We want it
Speaker 1: done a completely different way. At some point into a
Speaker 1: what amounted to a year long process for the review.
Speaker 1: So what is the What was the final report issued
Speaker 1: and what standards did it used? Did it used the
Speaker 1: ones that the city manager changed last minute or did
Speaker 1: it stick with it the parameters of the original negotiated
Speaker 1: agreement with the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did put in their final report that they
Speaker 2: followed the government auditing standards for a performance audit.
Speaker 1: That was what they were supposed to with the outset yes, okay.
Speaker 2: Good before apparently somebody from the city spoke spoke to them.
Speaker 2: But there were several findings. A lot of them had
Speaker 2: to do with recusal by members on certain issues, which
Speaker 2: is still a problem.
Speaker 1: But they like, if you have some personal relationship with
Speaker 1: a developer, like it's your brother in law coming in,
Speaker 1: it's your council member and your brother, your brother in law,
Speaker 1: your family member comes in and says, hey, I need
Speaker 1: you to approve this project I want done right that
Speaker 1: that that's obviously, on its face, appearance of impropriety, I
Speaker 1: think is what we call it in the law. Right.
Speaker 2: So they set out recommendations on how to manage recusals
Speaker 2: by council members, what you know when they should who
Speaker 2: they should recuse themselves to, and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But there were two recommendations that several of us have
Speaker 2: been interested in for a long time, and one has
Speaker 2: to do with the three reading rules for enacting and ordinance.
Speaker 2: Under the Charter, the city council is supposed to read
Speaker 2: an ordinance three times before they vote on it. And
Speaker 2: what this city.
Speaker 1: Councils three separate council meeting exactly. They can't just read
Speaker 1: it three times in a row in one council meeting. Right,
Speaker 1: they seem to do that.
Speaker 2: Oh, I could see that too. They have to give
Speaker 2: the public time to understand what is happening and provide
Speaker 2: any input.
Speaker 1: So but what input that they will then ignore Hyde Park?
Speaker 2: But what the city council? This city council does it.
Speaker 2: The previous city councils do it. They either vote to
Speaker 2: waive the three readings or they designate the ordinance an emergency.
Speaker 2: And so one of the findings that CROW had in
Speaker 2: their final report is they did a sample of these
Speaker 2: votes on these ordinances and I had estimated on one
Speaker 2: of my podcasts that it was probably up in the
Speaker 2: ninety percentile that they would pass something under an emergency.
Speaker 2: The sam that that CROW took and analyzed, one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of the ordinances that they sampled were passed under
Speaker 2: an emergency. And the problem is that they come up
Speaker 2: with these lame excuses as an emergency. For example, on
Speaker 2: connected communities that was passed under an emergency. You know
Speaker 2: what their reason was, we need more housing. That was
Speaker 2: the reason that Reggie Harris gave to why this thing
Speaker 2: was passed under an emergency. So CROW actually pointed out
Speaker 2: these they had an he had an example, or they
Speaker 2: had an example of one of these lame excuses, but
Speaker 2: they're all over the place. So that that was very
Speaker 2: a very good finding, and they had recommendations about how
Speaker 2: to get around that, or not get around it, but
Speaker 2: to implement that. But the second one is one I'm
Speaker 2: particularly interested in. It was when the council was able
Speaker 2: to provide input online budget line items. They need to
Speaker 2: explain their increases or their decreases to budget line items.
Speaker 2: So the city they just went through a three hour
Speaker 2: hearing budget hearing the other night where they had seventy
Speaker 2: six witnesses come forward basically asking for money from the city.
Speaker 2: And they represented something like forty different groups.
Speaker 1: Non governmental organization, not their hand of the cookie drug. Yes,
Speaker 1: and these are the ones the mayor decides who gets
Speaker 1: the money.
Speaker 2: Well, what they do is they apply for it. The
Speaker 2: city manager comes up with her recommendations on which of
Speaker 2: these applicants should get money and how much. And then
Speaker 2: and that was what was reported the other night. Now
Speaker 2: what happens is it goes through some kind of process
Speaker 2: where the mayor gets to ad and the city council
Speaker 2: gets to add and that process is not transparent whatsoever.
Speaker 2: They have it on their schedule, their budget schedule. But
Speaker 2: in terms of why does why does the manager go
Speaker 2: through this rigorous, supposedly rigorous merit based process and coming
Speaker 2: up with her recommendations and then the city council and
Speaker 2: the mayor just comes in and you know, changes it,
Speaker 2: it increases it. Last year, the city manager's recommendation for
Speaker 2: what they call leverage support was like five million dollars.
Speaker 2: Well after the mayor and the city council got through
Speaker 2: with it, it was up to they increased at one
Speaker 2: point three million dollars just with the stroke of a pen.
Speaker 2: And so anyway Crow with no explanation or one of
Speaker 2: these lame excuses, and Crow pointed this out that this
Speaker 2: is a problem. You need to provide a more transparent
Speaker 2: process and you know, you have to justify these changes
Speaker 2: to these line items. So I think those those were
Speaker 2: two issues that were particularly problematic for the city that
Speaker 2: they didn't like those. The other thing that the A
Speaker 2: Final report included they talked about a they have a
Speaker 2: conflict of interest survey. So this is something I did
Speaker 2: not know existed until I read the AUTO report. But
Speaker 2: apparently when the new council members are sworn in, they
Speaker 2: go through, they fill out a conflict of interest survey. Sure,
Speaker 2: and I guess somebody in the legal department looks at
Speaker 2: it and helps them. So I asked I put a
Speaker 2: records request in for them, and I did get a
Speaker 2: clean copy of the form. And that has issues. I think,
Speaker 2: for example, they don't even have to sign that. They
Speaker 2: forget about certifying it. They don't even have to sign
Speaker 2: all their disclosures on this survey. But they're denying me
Speaker 2: access to any of the surveys that were completed by
Speaker 2: any of the council members or the mayor.
Speaker 1: I'm not denial predicated on.
Speaker 2: Attorney client privilege. If you can believe.
Speaker 1: That, No, I cannot believe that.
Speaker 2: Now, whether they use that a lot, they use that
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: But that's that's it's a conflict of interest piece of
Speaker 1: paper survey that is handed over to the city manager
Speaker 1: or somebody else within the bureaucracy that's not a lawyer. Well,
Speaker 1: there's no connection with with attorney client privilege in that.
Speaker 2: Well, I've always wondered who their client really is. I
Speaker 2: thought their client was, yes, exactly, But if I had
Speaker 2: unlimited resources I'd probably try to look into that, but
Speaker 2: uh and take them to court. But that that's that's
Speaker 2: their game. They do a lot of blocking and tackling
Speaker 2: when it comes to records requests, don't.
Speaker 1: We have some local attorneys who do that just as
Speaker 1: I mean, who's they do?
Speaker 2: But they you know, they they cost money too.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody could do some pro bono work just
Speaker 1: to have fun. Somebody wants to prod and poke the
Speaker 1: city of Cincinnati and and and and help ferret out fraud,
Speaker 1: waste and abuse. Maybe maybe so that we can refer
Speaker 1: some of this information over to the FBI for them
Speaker 1: to investigate, because well, you know, the less transparent government is,
Speaker 1: the more likely something going on behind the scenes that
Speaker 1: they don't want acknowledged or revealed, the more likely it
Speaker 1: is that could be criminal. Yeah.
Speaker 2: What at the national level we have, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of organizations like that. I guess Judicial Watch is
Speaker 2: one of the big ones. Amen, And I think Cincinnati
Speaker 2: could use something like that, or Hamilton County and Cincinnati
Speaker 2: could use something like that.
Speaker 1: See it's a call to arms. Someone's out there that
Speaker 1: can handle that. Don't go away. We have more todds
Speaker 1: in or including the great Cincinnati train robbery. If we
Speaker 1: can even get that in, that sounds like a topic
Speaker 1: that could also take up three or four segments at
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Speaker 1: Seven forty two fifty five ker City Talk Station, our
Speaker 1: citizen watchdog, todds Enzer. All right, well, we put to
Speaker 1: bed the issue of the audit that nobody's paying attention to.
Speaker 1: But you got further work to do on that in
Speaker 1: ferreting out the maybe the conflict of interest statements that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give you for reasons unknown other than the
Speaker 1: attorney clam privilege which doesn't apply. But what about the
Speaker 1: great train robbery I see on my list, the great
Speaker 1: Cincinna train robbery. Obviously this really to the sale of
Speaker 1: the train of the railway system. Yes, so what's the
Speaker 1: story on that if they say it's generating a whole
Speaker 1: lot more money than the lease payment. We got fifty
Speaker 1: point fifty six million dollars this year.
Speaker 2: Right, so the city is really trying to do a
Speaker 2: jiu jitsu. On one hand, they say we've got all
Speaker 2: this extra money, and then apparently the mayor came out
Speaker 2: I don't know, yesterday or the day before, trying to
Speaker 2: lower expectations of what that money can buy because of
Speaker 2: the increased cost of building materials.
Speaker 1: They allocated thirty million dollars for roads out of the
Speaker 1: total pile of money fifty six million, and that only
Speaker 1: paves fifty miles worth of roads. And they were already
Speaker 1: way way years behind in resurfacing roads exactly.
Speaker 2: And my point and this issue about the cost of
Speaker 2: the material, Yeah, Adam Kayler was on that during the campaign,
Speaker 2: and he is correct. The inflation, the inflationary costs of
Speaker 2: the material is going to make build or repairing these
Speaker 2: roads so expensive. And people say, well, that's gonna happen
Speaker 2: whether you use railroad money or not. That's right. But
Speaker 2: what it's gonna do is going to deplete the one
Speaker 2: point six billion, and when that's all used up, we
Speaker 2: don't have an asset any longer.
Speaker 1: Well can they can they dip into principle without approval
Speaker 1: from the the authorities that that's independent board that's supposed
Speaker 1: to ride her and preside over the management of that money.
Speaker 2: No, it's gonna be. It's gonna be. The board has
Speaker 2: strict rules about how much it can give to the city,
Speaker 2: and if the balance of the one point six goes
Speaker 2: below a certain amount, they can't send money to the
Speaker 2: city anymore. They've got to wait for that to build
Speaker 2: back up. Right, So you have all this Rube Goldberg
Speaker 2: type of procedures and you know, controls and things like that,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna they're gonna go through this money like water.
Speaker 2: And you know, people say, well, why are you still
Speaker 2: harping on a railroad because it was not a good deal.
Speaker 2: That wasn't And in terms of the Great Train Robbery,
Speaker 2: the thing that really is a problem is the fact
Speaker 2: that you had this public asset, probably Cincinnati's most valuable
Speaker 2: with the public asset, and the city leaders, if you
Speaker 2: want to call them leaders, let this railroad come in
Speaker 2: and basically buy the election. They knew when they agreed
Speaker 2: to this that under the current state law ballot issue
Speaker 2: campaigns there is no limit on corporate contributions for ballot
Speaker 2: issue campaigns, and so Norfolk Southern could spend as much
Speaker 2: money as it wanted. And then what it did. It
Speaker 2: spent six million dollars and.
Speaker 1: There was no organized, well funded campaign against the sale
Speaker 1: of the railroad.
Speaker 2: No, we didn't have any money, you know, we I
Speaker 2: think Adam put money in. I think the total amount
Speaker 2: we calculate it was like eight thousand dollars or something
Speaker 2: like that. But it was also a matter of time.
Speaker 2: They put this thing on a rocket docket, and we
Speaker 2: didn't have a whole lot of time to organize.
Speaker 1: But the.
Speaker 2: Problem is that if this was just a campaign where
Speaker 2: the mayor was running, no problem. But the mayor wasn't running.
Speaker 2: This was for the sale of a public asset, and
Speaker 2: so much greater transparency should be required and it's not.
Speaker 2: But what happened is Norfolk Southern six million went to
Speaker 2: this political action committee, and the political action committee sent
Speaker 2: ninety percent of that to a political consultant in Washington,
Speaker 2: DC who has no public disclosure requirement on how that
Speaker 2: money is spent.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it went there?
Speaker 2: And this particular political action or, this political consultant is
Speaker 2: the same one that the mayor used when he ran
Speaker 2: for mayor in twenty twenty one one. And so I
Speaker 2: sent a letter to the mayor and to the council,
Speaker 2: and I thought the council should take these recommendations from
Speaker 2: these reports, list them out, and do a report on
Speaker 2: what they did with these recommendations. You know, did you
Speaker 2: adopt it, If so, how did you not adopt it?
Speaker 2: If not, why? And then for the mayor, he did
Speaker 2: these TV commercials for the railway. Yeah, well, we filed
Speaker 2: a complaint with the Election Commission because his campaign treasurer
Speaker 2: for his personal campaign was the same treasurer for the
Speaker 2: political action committee that Norfolk Southern set up, and we
Speaker 2: thought there should be additional disclosures about the decision making
Speaker 2: on how they were spending money. Well, we took that
Speaker 2: complaint to the election committee, but we didn't. We didn't succeed,
Speaker 2: but we got an affidavit out of the campaign treasurer
Speaker 2: who said, oh, it wasn't me that made all the decisions,
Speaker 2: it was a steering committee. So who's on the steering committee?
Speaker 2: Who is it that called the mayor and said, hey, Mayor,
Speaker 2: we think it'd be a good idea if you went
Speaker 2: on TV for us. Who was that and who's on
Speaker 2: the steering committee? Those are legitimate questions, and so I
Speaker 2: put that in my letter. You ought to tell us
Speaker 2: who is on the steering committee. And secondly, you ought
Speaker 2: to demand greater accountability from SKDK, the political consultant in Washington,
Speaker 2: about what he's what they did with this money? Did
Speaker 2: they really spend six million dollars on that campaign? I mean,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of stuff going into the mailboxes,
Speaker 2: and there were some commercials, but they really spent six
Speaker 2: million dollars. That is three times what anybody has ever
Speaker 2: spent on a campaign in Cincinnati. I'm told that mister
Speaker 2: Cranleigh's the second campaign may have cost like two million,
Speaker 2: but this was six million dollars. And there's no way
Speaker 2: in my view that they could have spent six million dollars.
Speaker 2: So where's that Where where did that money go?
Speaker 1: Well, if aftab's doing commercials to sell the railroad, I
Speaker 1: mean he's got to get paid for his time.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he got paid, all right, he got one
Speaker 2: point six billion dollars.
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Speaker 1: six fifty five KRC dot com Friday I request, I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta work song two in there because it's Friday. Uh,
Speaker 1: this has been a really interesting, enlightening and thought provoking
Speaker 1: hour with Todd's enzers. Sit as in a watchdog and
Speaker 1: make sure you pay attention to what Todd's doing. And
Speaker 1: since we don't have a whole lot of time to
Speaker 1: break down even more shenanigans, which I know you know
Speaker 1: more about. There's a lot more going on in the
Speaker 1: city of Sincinnati behind the scenes than we know about.
Speaker 1: But since I have a few minutes or a couple minutes,
Speaker 1: you have the podcast that is a watchdog and you're
Speaker 1: always doing what you talked about. You've done today in
Speaker 1: connection with the audit. You are apparently going to have
Speaker 1: your own web page now to put all this information
Speaker 1: up in an easily usable findable format, since the City
Speaker 1: of Cincinnati, if it is up there somewhere in their
Speaker 1: online materials, quite often difficult to ferret out.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so I just think that people are like me,
Speaker 2: and they want to see the they want to see
Speaker 2: the evidence, they want to see the documents, and you
Speaker 2: really can't do that unless you have some kind of
Speaker 2: repository online like that, so.
Speaker 1: Well as someone who's looking at it from your standpoint,
Speaker 1: I mean, your goal is transparency, that's hence, you know,
Speaker 1: the watchdog, because clearly our elected officials, council members and
Speaker 1: mayor like and the city manager are not at all
Speaker 1: interested in being transparent about what's going on.
Speaker 2: I do agree with you on that they this idea
Speaker 2: of oversight and transparency. They talk a good game, but
Speaker 2: they've got a lot of challenges there, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: You're so delicate with your language. There's such challenging. They
Speaker 1: have challenges. Fundamental problem with being honest, I think is
Speaker 1: I'm going to at least that's conclusion you draw. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm so angry about it. And I've been on
Speaker 1: a rail rant quite over a lot of lack of
Speaker 1: transparency issues of late, you know, like, for example, real
Speaker 1: quick here that whole idea, Elon Musk comes out, well,
Speaker 1: Trump's in the Epstein files, and so all these politicians
Speaker 1: are coming out, well, well if he was in there,
Speaker 1: If he was in there, then why wouldn't have Biden
Speaker 1: released it? And so wait a second, that statement if
Speaker 1: he was in there indicates that our representatives don't even
Speaker 1: know what's in there. Why don't we know this's been
Speaker 1: going on for years? Todd? You know, it's that kind
Speaker 1: of thing that just really really irks me. Why don't
Speaker 1: they allow us to have the information. It's only a
Speaker 1: handful of people in the entire city that will be
Speaker 1: interested in looking at it. You're one of them. But
Speaker 1: even if one person wants to look at it. They
Speaker 1: work for us. The information is not confidential, and so
Speaker 1: if you ask for it, they should hand it over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they should provide an explanation. For example, in the
Speaker 1: conclusion of that report you talked about, which makes recommendations
Speaker 1: on honest, decent, going forward conduct, transparent conduct, they should
Speaker 1: at least answer the question why they aren't following what
Speaker 1: they were told to do when they hired this outside
Speaker 1: auditing firm. Ye, silence, deafening silence.
Speaker 2: I agree with you one percent.
Speaker 1: Well, Tom, we'll have you on again. Keep up the
Speaker 1: great work. I thank you for what you're doing and
Speaker 1: allowing me to just scream about it and let my
Speaker 1: listeners know as well. We need more people like you
Speaker 1: out there and more interested parties holding them accountable. They
Speaker 1: work for us. Coming up in sevent fifty six, Donna
Speaker 1: Schwaben is in the house. It's Schwabinfest this weekend. Let's
Speaker 1: get our German garb on, let us get our drink
Speaker 1: and our food, food feedback on. They're going to be
Speaker 1: in studio after the news. News happens fast, stay up
Speaker 1: to date at the top of the hour. Not gonna
Speaker 1: be complicated.
Speaker 2: It's going to go very fast.
Speaker 1: Fifty five KRC the talk station.
Speaker 2: This report is sponsored by Tree Health started to