Citizen Watchdog Todd Zinser

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Seven oh six if any five k c DE talk station,
yay for Friday or woohoo for Friday is a case
of day and a great hour of power coming up
right now. And the citizens of the City of Cincinnati
have a really I suppose a debt of gratitude to
pay to what we call citizen watch Dog Todd Zenzer,
host of the Citizen Watchdog podcast, which you should listen to.

(00:37):
He is an inspector, former inspector General for the United
States of America, and I just got done telling Todd
off air that we should put him on the job
of the medicaid problems we have here in the state
of Ohio, which they're now just getting into. But using
artificial intelligence, it seems to be pretty easy to ferret
out fraud, waste, and abuse, much in the same way
Elon Musk, inspite of the challenges he's facing right right

(00:57):
now with Trump and the childish war or on social media.
Todd Zenzer, following the antics of the City of Cincinnati
council members and the mayor, Welcome back, Todd Zinzer. It's
always a pleasure having here man.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Thank you, Brian. It's good to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
And I do appreciate the work you are doing, and
you know every I mean every week and every time
we talk. It's just it's almost just hard to believe
what's going on behind the scenes, or as the case,
maybe what's not going on behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Right, Well, there is a lot going on behind the scenes.
And I think that's one of the city's biggest problems.
Is this whole transparency issue.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Zero transparency.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, it's really amazing. And if they're not keeping things
behind the curtain, they're just flooding you with all of
this information that isn't organized, and you really don't understand
what it's all about, and you really have to, you
really have to look into it to find out what
little nuggets of information is out there about what's really

(01:56):
going on.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Well, it takes a tenacious person like you, who so
unpaid as you are, are willing. I guess it's kind
of a hobby for you. You really like you be in
the fly in the ointment for those clowns and you
connect the dots.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, it's what I did for a living for so
many years.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
And it's in your blood.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
It is an interesting mine, to be sure.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Well, it's one of the more bizarre hobbies in retirement
that one can have, but we thank you for doing it.
So let okay the topic number one, the missing audit
has been found. Now you're gonna have to provide the
background for this, because you and I have talked about
this before, but you know, lay the groundwork for what
you found and then we can talk about what it means,

(02:40):
what the audit report that you found and the implications
for that are.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Well, several months ago, I started looking into this phenomena
of a lobbyist lobbying the city. Yeah, so I was
looking for the lobby the list of lobbyists, which isn't
easy to find either, but there is a list out there.
And I started to think about all the corruption cases
that I'm aware of that involved lobbyists. One goes way

(03:08):
back to the early two thousands of Washington where the
Jack Abramov scandal.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh yeah, man, your BLAT's a blast from the past.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, I was there when all that was going on,
and it actually was uncovered by or investigated by the
Inspector General for the Interior Department, and the Deputy Secretary
of Interior wound up getting prosecuted. But it was a
big scandal. It was it was all obvious. And then
you have what happened here with the council member, And

(03:39):
I got curious, was there anything that went on with
all the gang the gang of five? Was there anything
that went on with lobbyists? A gang of five?

Speaker 1 (03:47):
The scandal, Jeff Pastor scandal. Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
You know, we had a we had a similar issue
in Columbus with lobbyists that first energy that that involved lobbyists.
So anyway, I didn't really find anythingolder was yeah, yeah, yeah,
I didn't find any lobbyist issues with the corruption scandal.
But along the way, I found this article that Sherry

(04:15):
Coolidge did about this. The headline read, a Cincinnati audit
is mysteriously scaled back and then they quote they have
a quote in here someone is protecting one or more people.
So after I read the article and found out that
there was supposed to be some kind of audits a
red flag. So I obtained a copy of the audit,

(04:40):
went through it. And I'll tell you, after the three
members of council and Wendell Young got indicted on these felonies,
Mayor Cranley and Christopher Smithermany, they went to work, Yeah,
and they took actions to try to figure out how

(05:02):
the city moves forward from here. And one of the
things they did is they asked the government, the city government,
to have this audit done of these existing of these
other economic development projects.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
To hire an outside auditing firm, get the money to
hire them, and to have them conduct the audit right.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
And at the same time, they established what they called
the Economic Development Reform Panel, and that brought in I
don't know, I think it was like a dozen community leaders, attorneys,
former judges, people from the Ethics Commission, they were religious leaders,
there are Democrats, Republicans, to look at what happened and
to come up with a plan for the city to follow,

(05:44):
to try to create a more ethical environment for the
city council.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
So unscrupulous individuals can't basically pay to play or pay
off or otherwise bribe council members or the mayor in
order to advance their personal interest project, whatever that project
may be, which of course is the fundamental basis of
all these the felony complaints that were wel that's correct.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Well, except for Wendell Young, he got prosecuted for obstructing
justice in the Gang of Five investigation. The other three
were corruption rights everywhere. So I looked at the Economic
Development Review Panel. They started their work in February of
twenty one. They issued a report in July of twenty
one and had a number of recommendations, And one of

(06:28):
their recommendations was, yes, do this forensic They were calling
it a forensic audit at the time. Do this forensic audit, promptly,
get it published, put it out to the public about
what needs to be done. That was one of their
big recommendations.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Okay. And so the firm audited individual projects that were
funded by the city or voted on by the city
or otherwise like maybe tax abatement areas or any any
kind of economic development project exactly. So they looked at
the documents related to how that was approved and that
kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
It's interesting because they focused they collected a lot of
data on how the city council voted on the various
tax abatements or credits or whatever that these two hundred
projects received. So they were saying they were looking at
looking for patterns, voting patterns, to see whether they whether

(07:21):
those patterns indicated any unusual votes on the part of
these council members, yes or no. Okay, And I think
the bottom line is they didn't really find any issues.
But their recommendations I think really didn't really weren't well
received by the New City Council.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Okay, so boiled down from what I'm hearing is the
audit was conducted. They looked at all these projects, and
they didn't find anything what I will loosely refer to
as shenanigans, like, oh my god, this voting pattern reveals
that someone's getting paid something like that. But because of
what had happened before in connection with these scams, they

(08:01):
created recommendations in order to improve the process, maybe bring
more clarity to it, and perhaps shed a little more
sunlight and transparency on the project, on the process, And
that's the part that wasn't well received, is your conclusion.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
There were two recommendations in particular that I focused on
that Crow was the name of the outfit from Chicago.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Real quickly, when did when was the audit commission? And
when did it come out? How much time were we
talking about between today and when This conclusions and these
recommendations were made to tell.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
You how slow the process worked. This was initially the
result of a resolution entered or emotion entered by Christopher
Smitherman when he was on council towards the end of
their term, he put this motion out to have this done.
So that was in twenty one, and they signed a
that might have been that was in twenty one. They

(08:54):
signed a contract in January of twenty two, and the
audit firm issued their draft report in December of twenty two.
So what should happen after the draft report is issued.
That wasn't done is that the audit the person who
is getting audited, they're supposed to look. They're supposed to

(09:14):
look at the draft audit see whether there's any factual
issues that they have heartburnover. They're supposed to respond to
the recommendations. Do they agree? Do they not agree?

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Sure? You know, it's kinds like reviewing a deposition and
say no, no, no, no, that's wrong. I did not
say that it's been improperly transcribed exactly. Your conclusion is
wrong for the following reasons. And here's all the reasons why.
So that's what you do after the draft audit is issued.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
And that that is part of the contract with the auditor.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
And so that wasn't done.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Cincinnati did not do that. The city did not respond
in any way to the draft report, which.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Means they agreed with it, that we can at least
make that a logical conclusion. If you remain silent in
the face of the draft audit, then you agree with
what's in there. Let's pause, because we're going to find
what Todd was able to conclude after reviewing the final audit,
which took him about a gazillion years to finally uncover
and jar your own conclusions as to why it wasn't
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Speaker 1 (12:00):
Seven's one of you. If you about ker City Talk
Station A very happy when or spitting the hell is
on my mind. It is Friday anyway. Citizen watch Dog
Todd's inswers in Sudio No moreen. He is not suicidal.
She thinks she have a death wish because you're speaking
so much truth to power. I don't think we have
any Clinton family member power on the City of Cincinnati.

(12:23):
So I'm not worried about you, Todd. You keep I'm
not worried. You keep raising the awareness of the City
of Cincinnati residence, and I just hope that continues, and
I hope more and more people check out your podcast,
Citizen Watchdog, because he's at this all week long. All right,
So we laid the foundation for this audit. Yes it
was a post corruption audit. What can we do to

(12:43):
right the ship, to make the process better, to make
the process less corrupt by way of for whatever projects
being proposed, whatever tax abatement, whatever building is going to
be built, whatever Hyde Park development, well connected developer project
is going to be you know, uh uh, get his
own change for We want to make sure it isn't
done or have any corruption associated with it. So outside

(13:05):
entity from Chicago has spent a year or so looking
at it. They're paid one hundred and fifty grand to
do the report. The issue the primary report, opportunity for
the council members and the mayor to comment on it,
to identify any problems with the initial report. Nothing said,
not a finger lifted, not a word spoken from counsel
or the mayor. So they did a final report along

(13:27):
with recommendations. So that leads us up to here.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
It got a little bit worse than that. Oh it did.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Oh I'm shocked. Do tell so.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Instead of providing comments about the recommendations and the findings
and correcting any problems with the draft report, Cheryl Long
rejected the report. She told the city Council and the
mayor that the report was not satisfactory.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
For what specific reason.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Well, she didn't say, but she promised to work with
the auditor to get to do a better job. Yeah,
that was sent in January of twenty three.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
How would she know whether it's satisfactory or not.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Well, that's a good question. But I'll tell you if
there's been.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
A whole year looking at each of these individual projects
and all the documents related to them, did Cheryl do that?

Speaker 2 (14:12):
No?

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Okay, so thank you.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Here's what I think got to them when Sherry Coolidge
wrote this article with the headline about the audit being
scaled back, I think they got very defensive over that.
There was a footnote in the draft report that basically
said that Crow had been asked by the city to

(14:36):
change the standards that they're going to use when they
do their audit. It went from a performance audit to
an assessment. And it wasn't following gagas or they generally
accepted government auditing standards. It was going to follow the AICPA,
which is the American Institute of CPAs, who is going
to follow their standards, which they're basically saying that the

(15:00):
city changed the standards that they wanted us to use
and looking at.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
This they made that change after the Crow firm had
been working on it and up to the point where
they could release a draft form.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Right at some point in time, and we don't know when,
there was a conversation between Crow and the city where
it says that after discussion with the city, Crow's performance
under this ordinance is an assessment under a CPA's consulting
standards and is not a forensic audit. So they changed
the rules that they wanted the auditor to follow in

(15:35):
doing their work.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
Well, wasn't there an RFP at the outset for Crow
to look into and say, hey, I got my hand up,
I would I this is what I would charge for it. Yeah,
that's where the standards were initially included. Yeah, So they
did it in accordance with what they were told to
do with the outset, and then sometime along the process,
probably most of the way, if not all the way through,
that's when the city manager says, no, you want to

(15:56):
do it to a different standard.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, I don't want the hell Todd, Well, that's what
I'm talking about, Brian, because I either there was a
total disconnect in the city manager's office, or they didn't
like what was in the audit, were worried they didn't
like what was in the audit.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Oh wow, well we still haven't gotten to the conclusions
in the audit that they have apparently not followed through
with or followed in spite of the fact that it
was the purpose of the audit to provide conclusions and
recommendations to follow. It's seven twenty five. We're gonna finish.
We'll figure this out. Every time we talk it keeps
getting worse taught. I mean, this is good. Why I
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Speaker 1 (18:49):
The talk station Hey seven thirty fifty five Krcity talk Station.
Happy Friday. Todd's ends or citizen watchdog in city, get
a citizen watchdog podcast and find out what's going on
in the city. Boy, it's taken us a long time
to get there, but we've walked through all of the
shenanigans going on leading up to the final report which
was issued. Again, the report related to a review and analysis,

(19:11):
forensic of the process of getting contracts approved and abatements
approved by the City of Cincinnia Cincinnati, of course on
the heels of the scandals involving PG Sitting Fell, Jeff
Pasture and others. So the firm releases the draft, then
the city says, oh, oh, oh, by the way, No, no,
we don't want it done that way. We want it

(19:33):
done a completely different way. At some point into a
what amounted to a year long process for the review.
So what is the What was the final report issued
and what standards did it used? Did it used the
ones that the city manager changed last minute or did
it stick with it the parameters of the original negotiated
agreement with the city.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, they did put in their final report that they
followed the government auditing standards for a performance audit.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
That was what they were supposed to with the outset yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Good before apparently somebody from the city spoke spoke to them.
But there were several findings. A lot of them had
to do with recusal by members on certain issues, which
is still a problem.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
But they like, if you have some personal relationship with
a developer, like it's your brother in law coming in,
it's your council member and your brother, your brother in law,
your family member comes in and says, hey, I need
you to approve this project I want done right that
that that's obviously, on its face, appearance of impropriety, I

(20:37):
think is what we call it in the law. Right.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
So they set out recommendations on how to manage recusals
by council members, what you know when they should who
they should recuse themselves to, and et cetera, et cetera.
But there were two recommendations that several of us have
been interested in for a long time, and one has
to do with the three reading rules for enacting and ordinance.

(21:01):
Under the Charter, the city council is supposed to read
an ordinance three times before they vote on it. And
what this city.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Councils three separate council meeting exactly. They can't just read
it three times in a row in one council meeting. Right,
they seem to do that.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Oh, I could see that too. They have to give
the public time to understand what is happening and provide
any input.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
So but what input that they will then ignore Hyde Park?

Speaker 2 (21:28):
But what the city council? This city council does it.
The previous city councils do it. They either vote to
waive the three readings or they designate the ordinance an emergency.
And so one of the findings that CROW had in
their final report is they did a sample of these
votes on these ordinances and I had estimated on one

(21:52):
of my podcasts that it was probably up in the
ninety percentile that they would pass something under an emergency.
The sam that that CROW took and analyzed, one hundred
percent of the ordinances that they sampled were passed under
an emergency. And the problem is that they come up

(22:12):
with these lame excuses as an emergency. For example, on
connected communities that was passed under an emergency. You know
what their reason was, we need more housing. That was
the reason that Reggie Harris gave to why this thing
was passed under an emergency. So CROW actually pointed out
these they had an he had an example, or they

(22:35):
had an example of one of these lame excuses, but
they're all over the place. So that that was very
a very good finding, and they had recommendations about how
to get around that, or not get around it, but
to implement that. But the second one is one I'm
particularly interested in. It was when the council was able

(22:55):
to provide input online budget line items. They need to
explain their increases or their decreases to budget line items.
So the city they just went through a three hour
hearing budget hearing the other night where they had seventy
six witnesses come forward basically asking for money from the city.

(23:19):
And they represented something like forty different groups.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Non governmental organization, not their hand of the cookie drug. Yes,
and these are the ones the mayor decides who gets
the money.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Well, what they do is they apply for it. The
city manager comes up with her recommendations on which of
these applicants should get money and how much. And then
and that was what was reported the other night. Now
what happens is it goes through some kind of process
where the mayor gets to ad and the city council

(23:48):
gets to add and that process is not transparent whatsoever.
They have it on their schedule, their budget schedule. But
in terms of why does why does the manager go
through this rigorous, supposedly rigorous merit based process and coming
up with her recommendations and then the city council and

(24:09):
the mayor just comes in and you know, changes it,
it increases it. Last year, the city manager's recommendation for
what they call leverage support was like five million dollars.
Well after the mayor and the city council got through
with it, it was up to they increased at one
point three million dollars just with the stroke of a pen.

(24:32):
And so anyway Crow with no explanation or one of
these lame excuses, and Crow pointed this out that this
is a problem. You need to provide a more transparent
process and you know, you have to justify these changes
to these line items. So I think those those were

(24:53):
two issues that were particularly problematic for the city that
they didn't like those. The other thing that the A
Final report included they talked about a they have a
conflict of interest survey. So this is something I did
not know existed until I read the AUTO report. But
apparently when the new council members are sworn in, they

(25:17):
go through, they fill out a conflict of interest survey. Sure,
and I guess somebody in the legal department looks at
it and helps them. So I asked I put a
records request in for them, and I did get a
clean copy of the form. And that has issues. I think,
for example, they don't even have to sign that. They

(25:38):
forget about certifying it. They don't even have to sign
all their disclosures on this survey. But they're denying me
access to any of the surveys that were completed by
any of the council members or the mayor.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
I'm not denial predicated on.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Attorney client privilege. If you can believe.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
That, No, I cannot believe that.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Now, whether they use that a lot, they use that
a lot.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
But that's that's it's a conflict of interest piece of
paper survey that is handed over to the city manager
or somebody else within the bureaucracy that's not a lawyer. Well,
there's no connection with with attorney client privilege in that.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Well, I've always wondered who their client really is. I
thought their client was, yes, exactly, But if I had
unlimited resources I'd probably try to look into that, but
uh and take them to court. But that that's that's
their game. They do a lot of blocking and tackling
when it comes to records requests, don't.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
We have some local attorneys who do that just as
I mean, who's they do?

Speaker 2 (26:43):
But they you know, they they cost money too.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
I mean, somebody could do some pro bono work just
to have fun. Somebody wants to prod and poke the
city of Cincinnati and and and and help ferret out fraud,
waste and abuse. Maybe maybe so that we can refer
some of this information over to the FBI for them
to investigate, because well, you know, the less transparent government is,
the more likely something going on behind the scenes that

(27:07):
they don't want acknowledged or revealed, the more likely it
is that could be criminal. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
What at the national level we have, we have a
lot of organizations like that. I guess Judicial Watch is
one of the big ones. Amen, And I think Cincinnati
could use something like that, or Hamilton County and Cincinnati
could use something like that.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
See it's a call to arms. Someone's out there that
can handle that. Don't go away. We have more todds
in or including the great Cincinnati train robbery. If we
can even get that in, that sounds like a topic
that could also take up three or four segments at
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Speaker 3 (29:02):
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(29:26):
Ingram on fifty five KROC the talk station.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Seven forty two fifty five ker City Talk Station, our
citizen watchdog, todds Enzer. All right, well, we put to
bed the issue of the audit that nobody's paying attention to.
But you got further work to do on that in
ferreting out the maybe the conflict of interest statements that
they wouldn't give you for reasons unknown other than the
attorney clam privilege which doesn't apply. But what about the

(29:54):
great train robbery I see on my list, the great
Cincinna train robbery. Obviously this really to the sale of
the train of the railway system. Yes, so what's the
story on that if they say it's generating a whole
lot more money than the lease payment. We got fifty
point fifty six million dollars this year.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Right, so the city is really trying to do a
jiu jitsu. On one hand, they say we've got all
this extra money, and then apparently the mayor came out
I don't know, yesterday or the day before, trying to
lower expectations of what that money can buy because of
the increased cost of building materials.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
They allocated thirty million dollars for roads out of the
total pile of money fifty six million, and that only
paves fifty miles worth of roads. And they were already
way way years behind in resurfacing roads exactly.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
And my point and this issue about the cost of
the material, Yeah, Adam Kayler was on that during the campaign,
and he is correct. The inflation, the inflationary costs of
the material is going to make build or repairing these
roads so expensive. And people say, well, that's gonna happen

(31:10):
whether you use railroad money or not. That's right. But
what it's gonna do is going to deplete the one
point six billion, and when that's all used up, we
don't have an asset any longer.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Well can they can they dip into principle without approval
from the the authorities that that's independent board that's supposed
to ride her and preside over the management of that money.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
No, it's gonna be. It's gonna be. The board has
strict rules about how much it can give to the city,
and if the balance of the one point six goes
below a certain amount, they can't send money to the
city anymore. They've got to wait for that to build
back up. Right, So you have all this Rube Goldberg

(31:50):
type of procedures and you know, controls and things like that,
and they're gonna they're gonna go through this money like water.
And you know, people say, well, why are you still
harping on a railroad because it was not a good deal.
That wasn't And in terms of the Great Train Robbery,
the thing that really is a problem is the fact

(32:12):
that you had this public asset, probably Cincinnati's most valuable
with the public asset, and the city leaders, if you
want to call them leaders, let this railroad come in
and basically buy the election. They knew when they agreed
to this that under the current state law ballot issue

(32:35):
campaigns there is no limit on corporate contributions for ballot
issue campaigns, and so Norfolk Southern could spend as much
money as it wanted. And then what it did. It
spent six million dollars and.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
There was no organized, well funded campaign against the sale
of the railroad.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
No, we didn't have any money, you know, we I
think Adam put money in. I think the total amount
we calculate it was like eight thousand dollars or something
like that. But it was also a matter of time.
They put this thing on a rocket docket, and we
didn't have a whole lot of time to organize.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
But the.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Problem is that if this was just a campaign where
the mayor was running, no problem. But the mayor wasn't running.
This was for the sale of a public asset, and
so much greater transparency should be required and it's not.
But what happened is Norfolk Southern six million went to
this political action committee, and the political action committee sent

(33:39):
ninety percent of that to a political consultant in Washington,
DC who has no public disclosure requirement on how that
money is spent.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Why do you think it went there?

Speaker 2 (33:50):
And this particular political action or, this political consultant is
the same one that the mayor used when he ran
for mayor in twenty twenty one one. And so I
sent a letter to the mayor and to the council,
and I thought the council should take these recommendations from
these reports, list them out, and do a report on

(34:14):
what they did with these recommendations. You know, did you
adopt it, If so, how did you not adopt it?
If not, why? And then for the mayor, he did
these TV commercials for the railway. Yeah, well, we filed
a complaint with the Election Commission because his campaign treasurer
for his personal campaign was the same treasurer for the

(34:36):
political action committee that Norfolk Southern set up, and we
thought there should be additional disclosures about the decision making
on how they were spending money. Well, we took that
complaint to the election committee, but we didn't. We didn't succeed,
but we got an affidavit out of the campaign treasurer
who said, oh, it wasn't me that made all the decisions,

(34:58):
it was a steering committee. So who's on the steering committee?
Who is it that called the mayor and said, hey, Mayor,
we think it'd be a good idea if you went
on TV for us. Who was that and who's on
the steering committee? Those are legitimate questions, and so I
put that in my letter. You ought to tell us
who is on the steering committee. And secondly, you ought
to demand greater accountability from SKDK, the political consultant in Washington,

(35:23):
about what he's what they did with this money? Did
they really spend six million dollars on that campaign? I mean,
there was a lot of stuff going into the mailboxes,
and there were some commercials, but they really spent six
million dollars. That is three times what anybody has ever
spent on a campaign in Cincinnati. I'm told that mister
Cranleigh's the second campaign may have cost like two million,

(35:46):
but this was six million dollars. And there's no way
in my view that they could have spent six million dollars.
So where's that Where where did that money go?

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Well, if aftab's doing commercials to sell the railroad, I
mean he's got to get paid for his time.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Well, yeah, he got paid, all right, he got one
point six billion dollars.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Dodds in there. We'll get a couple more minutes with
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(37:14):
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six fifty five KRC dot com Friday I request, I said, yeah,

(37:36):
you gotta work song two in there because it's Friday. Uh,
this has been a really interesting, enlightening and thought provoking
hour with Todd's enzers. Sit as in a watchdog and
make sure you pay attention to what Todd's doing. And
since we don't have a whole lot of time to
break down even more shenanigans, which I know you know
more about. There's a lot more going on in the
city of Sincinnati behind the scenes than we know about.

(37:57):
But since I have a few minutes or a couple minutes,
you have the podcast that is a watchdog and you're
always doing what you talked about. You've done today in
connection with the audit. You are apparently going to have
your own web page now to put all this information
up in an easily usable findable format, since the City

(38:19):
of Cincinnati, if it is up there somewhere in their
online materials, quite often difficult to ferret out.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yes, And so I just think that people are like me,
and they want to see the they want to see
the evidence, they want to see the documents, and you
really can't do that unless you have some kind of
repository online like that, so.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Well as someone who's looking at it from your standpoint,
I mean, your goal is transparency, that's hence, you know,
the watchdog, because clearly our elected officials, council members and
mayor like and the city manager are not at all
interested in being transparent about what's going on.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
I do agree with you on that they this idea
of oversight and transparency. They talk a good game, but
they've got a lot of challenges there, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
You're so delicate with your language. There's such challenging. They
have challenges. Fundamental problem with being honest, I think is
I'm going to at least that's conclusion you draw. That's
what I'm so angry about it. And I've been on
a rail rant quite over a lot of lack of
transparency issues of late, you know, like, for example, real

(39:34):
quick here that whole idea, Elon Musk comes out, well,
Trump's in the Epstein files, and so all these politicians
are coming out, well, well if he was in there,
If he was in there, then why wouldn't have Biden
released it? And so wait a second, that statement if
he was in there indicates that our representatives don't even
know what's in there. Why don't we know this's been

(39:54):
going on for years? Todd? You know, it's that kind
of thing that just really really irks me. Why don't
they allow us to have the information. It's only a
handful of people in the entire city that will be
interested in looking at it. You're one of them. But
even if one person wants to look at it. They
work for us. The information is not confidential, and so

(40:14):
if you ask for it, they should hand it over. Yeah,
and they should provide an explanation. For example, in the
conclusion of that report you talked about, which makes recommendations
on honest, decent, going forward conduct, transparent conduct, they should
at least answer the question why they aren't following what
they were told to do when they hired this outside
auditing firm. Ye, silence, deafening silence.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
I agree with you one percent.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Well, Tom, we'll have you on again. Keep up the
great work. I thank you for what you're doing and
allowing me to just scream about it and let my
listeners know as well. We need more people like you
out there and more interested parties holding them accountable. They
work for us. Coming up in sevent fifty six, Donna
Schwaben is in the house. It's Schwabinfest this weekend. Let's
get our German garb on, let us get our drink

(41:01):
and our food, food feedback on. They're going to be
in studio after the news. News happens fast, stay up
to date at the top of the hour. Not gonna
be complicated.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
It's going to go very fast.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
Fifty five KRC the talk station.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
This report is sponsored by Tree Health started to