Smitherman, Qualls and Seelbach oppose Mahogany's Funding

Mahogany's Restaurant, whose owners owe more than $49,000 in federal tax delinquencies, today received a nearly $1 million grant and loan package from the City to build out their restaurant improvements at the Banks on a 6-3 vote from the Batshit Crazy Council.  Read the Enquirer's report of the funding here.

Only Council members Smitherman, Qualls and Seelbach opposed the deal.

Smitherman reports that the City administration refused to share the details of the loan application with the members of Council before they voted on the loan proposal.

A tip of our cap to those Council members who appear to think like businessmen in this matter.  We are not quite sure what the other six were thinking.

Smitherman proposes ethics training for Council and staff

In 2003, City voters adoped Article XIII, Section 3 of the City Charter outlawing the use of City monies to aid campaigns for candidates and issues on the ballot. 

It seems like a pretty simple concept to COAST, yet year after year, w find our tax monies being diverted to aid campaigns.

COAST has sued over this over and over.  In 2008, we caught City bureaucrats using the lobby and front stairs of the City to support a school levy.  In 2011, we caught Laure Quinlivan red-handed using her staff and computers to run her City Council campaign.

So, this week Council member Christopher Smitherman proposed ethics training for members of Council and their staffs, presumably including training regarding the restrictions of Article XIII, Section 3.

COAST thinks that Smitherman fellow has a good idea! 

COAST endorses Christopher Smitherman

Cincinnati NAACP President has been transcendent figure in fighting taxes and spending in southwest Ohio

Christopher Smitherman is at his very best fighting taxes and spending

We are not overstating matters at all when we say that the City of Cincinnati is facing its biggest challenges ever in the coming two-year term of City Council. Under the failed leadership of Mayor Mark Mallory, the City has failed to address pronounced structural budget deficits that are now becoming both undeniable and unavoidable.

The reality is that the City must urgently cut spending, or its citizens face a massive earnings tax increase. Cincinnati faces an operating deficit of more than $34 million annually, a pension fund deficit of more than $1 billion, crumbling infrastructure and a dwindling population.

Who better to address these challenges head-on? COAST endorses Christopher Smitherman.

The same media in Cincinnati that has attempted to paint a one-dimensional caricature of Smitherman as a bomb-throwing 60s-style black-power radical, has been fascinated by the coalition built between COAST and the Cincinnati NAACP and the personal friendships that have resulted therefrom.

However, those who understand Smitherman as a whole person see him as a bold leader, a loving father and husband,and a successful entrepreneur who has built his own financial planning practice, using for his business and his clients careful fiscal prudence that Cincinnati so desperately needs.

These characteristics make entirely logical his multiple initiatives to bring responsible tax and spending policies to the region. And they are many:

- Smitherman personally gave life to the fight against the 2007 Super-Sized Jail Tax pushed by liberal democrat commissioners Todd Portune and David Pepper, along with our power-hungry Sheriff. He initiated the historic petition drive that motivated 336 volunteers to gather 56,000 signatures in 43 days. He helped build the www.WeDemandaVote.com coalition that won the Sam Adams Alliance national award for coalition-building. That coalition won against a million dollar campaign for the jail tax -- 56% to 44%.

- The following year, Smitherman launched the successful drive to rid Cincinnati of Red Light Cameras. That initiative has resulted in similar drives in seven Ohio cities.

- The same coalition has implemented a ban on a sale of the WaterWorks -- to ourselves -- for nearly $475 million.

- That same coalition twice has placed on the ballot a Charter Amendment to stop Mayor Mallory's foolish Streetcar project. This year, Smitherman enticed the Police, Firefighters, CODE Labor Union, Baptist Ministers, Westwood Concern and others to join the fight.

- This year, that same coalition placed on the ballot a ban on a Cincinnati trash tax.

Smitherman was the first politician to blow the whistle on the insolvency of Cincinnati's pension system. He has spoken out against other wasteful spending in the City.

Smitherman's critics say that he is simply following COAST's lead on these issues, but that simply is not so. Each of these initiatives originated with Smitherman and his hard-working volunteers at the Cincinnati NAACP.

COAST is not naive enough to think it will always agree with Smitherman -- and it intends to hold him accountable as our newest Council member just like everyone else we back and those we oppose.

However, we know he has (i) the proper fiscal values with which to approach the challenges facing Cincinnati, (ii) the open mind to hear others' points of view and (iii) the tough-minded leadership to boldly take Cincinnati in a new direction. And we know he will not kowtow to the Mallory/Qualls agenda that promises to bankrupt the City in short order.

NAACP and Smitherman do it again!

Proud civil rights organization

leads in stopping Streetcar

As Mayor Mallory, and Council members Qualls, Quinlivan, Thomas and Young, foolishly are thrusting Cincinnati headlong into a $135 million streetcar project, the Cincinnati NAACP led by Christopher Smitherman has worked tirelessly to place a second charter amendment before the voters that will stop the project and its attendant operating deficit.

The issue will appear on the November ballot in Cincinnati as Issue 48. Voters must vote yes to stop the streetcar project.

Thanks go to all coalition partners that joined together to gather the signatures to empower the voters on this topic: NAACP, the SW Ohio Green Party, the Ohio Libertarian Party, COAST, the Baptist Ministers Conference, the Fraternal Order of Police, the Firefighters Union, the CODE labor union, Westwood Concern, C.A.S.S. and the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition. However, make no mistake that the heavy lifting on the petition drive was led week in and week out by the volunteers of the NAACP.

Our thanks go out to them.

Now it is up to the Cincinnati voters to put a stop to this project -- a misdirection for the City -- once and for all. VOTE YES on Issue 48 for Fiscal Sanity.