Dan Carroll talks to Citizen Watchdog Todd Zinser

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
That is a feeling of Marjorie Taylor Green on sixty
minutes I got.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Good you five KRC the talk Station.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Fifty five KARC the talk Station eight o six, Tuesday,
December ninth, Brian Thomas taking the day off.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
He is back tomorrow. I am told Joe Strecker's rolling
out the Van Hallen Music. Got a love every minute
of it.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm Dan Carroll and for Brian Thomas, and my great
pleasure to welcome into the studio a guy that I've
talked to on the phone. I've texted him and we've
exchanged some emails back and forth, but my first time
meeting him in person, and it is the Citizen Watchdog
Todd Zenzer and Todd is It's great.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
To see you this morning.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Great to see you, Dan.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
You got stuck in traffic on the way here. Yeah,
that's possible.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
I don't know a lot of chuck Ingram. I was
waiting to hear chuck Ingram. I didn't hear them what
you made it here? Nonetheless I did. Are you quickly
becoming one of the most hated men at city Hall?
I think there are probably a few that would rather
not have me around.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
I mean, what tell me for those who don't know,
and and I've never met you in person before, but
I know you what You were an inspector general?

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:26):
At which which government agency?

Speaker 4 (01:28):
Well? Two agencies. I was the Inspector General at Commerce
Department and that includes noah, the Census Bureau. You know,
I'm gapping right now, but a collection of agencies. Patent
and Trademark Office was a big one. And then before that,
I worked for the Transportation Inspector General for sixteen years.

(01:51):
I left there to go to Commerce. I was the
deputy IG when I left Transportation IG.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Okay, So within the federal government are inspector generals? Are
you sort of frowned upon by the people that work there?
Or do they welcome what you do too to audit
and oversee and and report on your finding?

Speaker 4 (02:14):
H I think the rank and file appreciate the IG.
I don't think the management does. You know? For example,
if I ever went into an office to meet you know,
the management or whatever, people would yell out IG in
the house. You know things like that.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, like like eternal affairs of the police Department.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Right exactly?

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Wait?

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Are you from Cincinnati? Originally?

Speaker 4 (02:39):
I am grew up, grew up in Price Hill.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
When okay, all right, so that's why that's why you're
you're back in or I guess have you lived in
Cincinnati the whole time?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (02:48):
No. I was transferred from Cincinnati to New Haven, Connecticut,
and then to New York City and then to Washington,
d C. And I finished up in Washington.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
But glad to be back in Cincinnati. Oh yeah, and
now you turn your attention to city hall.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
I have, yes.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Did that happen?

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Was that part of the plan to come back and
do that or did you just sort of fall into
that or someone said, hey, look at this is interesting,
take a look at this, or how did that happen?

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Well? When I came back, the big reason was to
spend some time with my mother and her final years.
And I wound up working for a inventor, helping him
with some litigation against the patent office. And it came
to be twenty twenty three, all of a sudden, and
I hear that the city wants to sell this railroad. Yes, yeah,

(03:39):
And that triggered me.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
So that I got a little red flag went up there.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Huh yes, And I started a political action committee called
Citizens for a Transparent Railroad vote and did whatever I
could to speak out against the sale. Unfortunately, we lost,
and so that really gave me a lot of insight
about how the city was operating. They were very very
dishonest about that deal, uh, and they sprung it on

(04:07):
the citizens uh that their first statements were that, well,
we can't really get involved in you know, politics here,
so we're not going to give you any information in
the in the trust or the board. The railroad board
said the same thing. And it's like, that's outrageous this.
The people need to know what's going on here before
we vote on anything. So that's that's what triggered me.

(04:29):
And part of me doing this is to try to
keep track of what they're doing with that money.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, the I mean I had known about the Cincinnati
owning that railroad for for a long time, and I
think most people in Cincinnati had no idea that the
city actually owned a railroad and derived a very nice
revenue stream from from that railroad. When when you look
at all the assurances that were made Charli I remember

(04:58):
Charlie Lucan doing multiple En interviews on this, talking about, hey,
all these guardrails are going to be up, but State
legislature got involved and all that. In the wake of
all that, are you satisfied with all the guardrails and
the you know that have been put in place to
make sure that this money is being used in the
right way or doled out in the right way. No, No,

(05:18):
you're shaking your head. None, not at all. Early on,
what's your major issue with the with the deal the
way it's it's structured.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
Well, after we lost the vote, I did propose four
or five different things that the city should do. For example,
they need to take what they spent on capital in
twenty twenty three and use that as the floor. We
do not go below that, all right, and then whatever
the railroad money is you put on top of that.

(05:48):
So that's the only way to get ahead of the
spending that's required. But my big concern is that the
city doesn't have the capacity to spend all that extra
money in a timely way. And that's why they tell people, oh,
this is going to take ten years, and they actually
give money back or they have unspent money. And just

(06:12):
this Monday and the Budget Committee they went through what
they call the carryover. They have a carryover and they
have a capital sunset and these are moneys that the
city has not been able to spend the way they
told the public they would be spending it, and so
they have these carryover dollars and then they just go
to town and spend it.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
So I see, I figured there was going to be
a way that this money was gonna was going to
be able to get back into the general fund. But
we were assured that that there there was only certain
budget items that this could be spending. Largely it's it's infrastructure,
infrastructure projects, right right, right. And it seems on one hand,

(06:57):
it seems silly to limit yourself to that sort of thing.
On the other hand, it seems sort of silly to
let a third party have control over that money. And look,
I'm not that I am advocating that I trust city
council to be in charge of such a large sumb.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Right, because I never really thought that was a good idea. Right.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
So they set up this Rube Goldberg process about what
you can spend it on and how the money is
distributed and things like that. And when this first passed,
I was actually working with Jeff Kramerdine on extra safeguards,
and they actually put a motion forward and I just

(07:40):
remember and back and forth with mister Crammerdine. They proposed
this motion to get the administration to report back on
these guardrail proposals, and I says, well, you should put
a deadline on it, thirty days, sixty days, whatever it is.
They didn't do that, so it took them a year

(08:02):
to address that. And the way they addressed it is
they buried it in another motion or addressing another motion.
And what I think they should do is take They
had a list they claimed to have a list of
four hundred million dollars of deferred maintenance. It was four hundred,
it was five hundred. I only saw a list of
two hundred, and I saw a list of two hundred

(08:24):
and fifty million dollar estimate. Well, they should take that
list and go down the list one by one and
fix those things that they said had been deferred.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
It seems to me that would that would be a
sensible approach.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah, they're not doing that for crying out loud.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
I mean I could spend all day asking you questions
about the railroad project. I am told that subsequently that
in review of this deal, that the purchase price is
far less than what the value of that Railroad.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Is Yeah, they never put it out to bid, you know,
they just negotiated with Norfolk Southern. Yeah, so I mean
Norfolk Southern had first DIBs if they wanted to sell it.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
And what what was it? What was the final number?

Speaker 4 (09:10):
Six point one one point six.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Point six billion. Yeah, And and that money doesn't all
come at one time. It's that that money's paid out
over a period of time, is that right?

Speaker 4 (09:18):
Right? They get an annual they set an annual amount
that they're going to disperse to the city, and then
that is paid to the city and quarterly amounts. And
what I've what I've asked the Trust board to do
is track whether or not they've actually been able to
spend the money from quarter one before they give them
money for quarter two.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
But weren't we told that that the interest on that
money has already exceeded what their projection was going to
be in there for that's a wonderful thing, because now
we have even more money than we thought we were
going to have.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
Well, we it has the trust balance has gone up,
but so has inflation. And inflation is going to be
here for a long time. So you don't know what
the impact of inflation is on that balance, it probably
buys much much less than it did in twenty twenty three,
to be honest.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
So I've had so many people ask me how are
things going with the railroad money? And when people ask
you that question, what's your general response to that.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
Well, it's the first year that they are actually spending
the money. The biggest chunk that I've seen is five
million going to the Western Hills Viydoc. I think it
was five or five point seven or something like that
going to the Western Hills Viydoc. But the rest of
the spending is spread out to rec centers and parks

(10:39):
and things like that. That's really not the way I
would do it, but that's the way they're doing it.
And then you have members of city council proposing motions
to spend the money in different ways, Like they wanted
to set up a Rising fifteen railroad fund that would
take ten percent of the annual disbursement and put it

(11:02):
in another fund to be spent by Rising fifteen neighborhoods,
and we commented on that. And then they also wanted
to use the railroad money to fix everybody sidewalks, which
would be great, but the sidewalks wasn't part of that
four hundred million dollar deferred maintenance. So what they would

(11:23):
be doing is taking on more deferred maintenance instead of
dealing with the ones that we had when we when
we made the deal.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
All right, well, Todds Zenser, we got to take a
break and we will continue with some more recent activities
okay that you've been looking at.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Okay, because it never ends, no, it.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Does, It does not end, So we'll continue with Todds Endser,
Citizen Watchdog on fifty five KRC, the talk station.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Zimmer Heating and Cooling has been ensuring Cincinnati homes.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
We five KRC the talk station.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
Fifty five krs C the talk station eight twenty one,
Dan Carroll for Brian Thomas. Todd Zinzer is here and
you know him as Citizen Watchdog. You do you do
a regular segment with Brian Thomas?

Speaker 4 (12:11):
Do you not? Not? Not regularly regularly?

Speaker 1 (12:15):
But I know you've been here, but this is not
your first trip here to.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
This day once a month probably.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Okay, that's cool. Well, I'm glad today is today, yes,
and I'm glad.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
I'm glad you here.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
We were texting and emailing a couple of days ago
when it was announced this settlement came out, and you
wanted to have a look at the at the original complaint,
the settlement agreement and all that, and we were able
to find that and have a look at it. And
as you review this complaint in the settlement agreement, what

(12:45):
sticks out to you? And then look, I went, Todd
is not a lawyer. We're not looking at this from
a legal sense. But I mean over your years of
being an inspector general and looking into things, there are
things that jump out to you that.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Did you find it?

Speaker 3 (13:00):
And so so that's the point of the question here,
what did you as you look at this settlement agreement
and then the related documents, what did you find interesting
about these things?

Speaker 4 (13:10):
Well, the first the first thing that that that I
thought was where has this case been and what has
the public been told about this case? Absolutely before this
came up. And this is typical of this of this
city administration, of the city compt.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
Because when the news broke on this literally I like
to think, look, probably one of the faults I have
as a radio show host is I tend to I
tend to focus more on the national political scene and
and you know, every you know, when a big story
breaks locally, I liked, I like to get on that.
But when when this story came out, the news of

(13:46):
this settlement came out, I think it was late Friday,
I was like, wow, what is this? Yeah, where is
this coming from?

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Right?

Speaker 3 (13:54):
And just like you said that, this is not something
that had been followed regularly by any of our local
news right.

Speaker 4 (14:01):
Well, if you go on the city's website, they they
do put memos online about the settlements that they've reached,
but they don't put online the pending litigation. As far
as they they may report it to the city council
at some point, but it's not well known what other
cases are out there right now. I don't know, So

(14:22):
that's kind of my first My first complaint. The problem
that I saw was there's nothing in the complaint or
the settlement that is really evidentiary value. There's nothing, there's
nothing that we see yet about the the efficacy of

(14:44):
these allegations. Complaints can make all kinds of allegations, but
what what is their evidence? And we're not the public
is not getting access to that.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Well, there's not there's not any evidence. I don't see
any any hard finding of facts that this is why
the city ought to settle this case. The city. I
guess my point on this is I don't see anything
that says, you know, these plainest uh state that that X, Y,
and Z happened to them, and because of these specific

(15:18):
complaints and the finding of facts that go along with this,
we feel it's best to settle this. I'm not finding
that level of specifics.

Speaker 4 (15:26):
That's right, and that's what should go on.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Maybe maybe that exists somewhere. I don't know if it
does well, but it's it's it's not evident in the
documents that I've seen.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
So you're right, and what should happen today is that
the city council should.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
Should demand that if if you want me to sign
off on this, I know if I was on that
committee that's going to look at this, that's exactly what
I would be.

Speaker 4 (15:46):
That's right, you You the council needs to carry out
their due diligence on this settlement because you're talking eight
million dollars of city funds. They have a fiduciary responsibility
to make sure that that settlement is in the best
interests of the city. And what have they done, For example,

(16:06):
there's no executive Session on the agenda today for the
Public Safety Committee. They should be going in the executive
session and getting briefed by the Solicitor's office. We should
know exactly what went on in terms of making this decision.
My guess is that the mayor called in the solicitor,
called in the city manager, maybe a couple of lawyers,

(16:29):
and they set around the table and decided, no, we're
going to settle. So we should know exactly how they
reach their decision, and then we should know what due
diligence the city Council is going to be carrying out.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
You see, you know, you say you're speculating at the
mayor sat in on meetings on this. I have a
sense that Mayor Purvoll wasn't involved in this whatsoever. I
think he wants plausible deniability.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well they have anything to do.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
When this thing crosses his desk, he put his signature
on it, unfortunately. But other than that, I don't, I don't,
I don't see. I don't see Purvol's hand on in.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
This at all.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
Unfortunately. I think you might be right then.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
I just I just think that's the way he conducts business. Well,
which city Hall. I know if I was the mayor,
I would there's no way I would sign this. There's
no I would just me. I would say, we're going
I'm taking this to court.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Well, I would direct my law department to to bone
up on this and let's take it to court, because
I just think it sends a terrible message.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, will others who would engage in in subjectivity.

Speaker 4 (17:34):
I don't want to be overly critical, but I'm not
sure the law department is up to it.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (17:39):
You know, they've they've been involved in other cases where
you shake your head about settlements. They they folded on
a litigation that they made. They made a big deal
out of of suing Vinebrook Homes for the lousy h
property management that Vinebrook uh carried out. Uh, they made

(18:02):
a big deal about going after them and suing them,
and they folded like a cheap suit. And you have
to shake your head, like, what what's the deal? And
and what's worse is the settlement in that case. It
made it look like the city was at fault and
the city agreed to all these reforms and they're doing
the same thing. They're doing the same thing on this.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, it's that's what the the the Ordan says, there's
no you know, there's no finding or an admission of
guilt on the on the city's part. But yet they're
acquiescing to Oh, we're going to have additional training and
a new guidebook for for Cincinnati police about how to
how to handle such claims.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
Yeah, and you put more more constraints on the police,
more rules that they might not be able to follow.
And in the case of a arrival.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well, these new guidelines have to meet the approval of
Irish rolling.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Well, if you if you look, if you look at
her contracts, I would say I would say it probably
it probably would.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Well, let's get into that on the other side of
this as we take another quick break here twenty seven
little late for a break on fifty five KRC, the
talk station.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
The Simply Money Minute is sponsored by Sheerfax Christ fifty
five kr the talk station.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Fifty five k r C the talk station.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Continuing now with Todd Zinzer, also known as a Citizen Watchdog.
You're doing a podcast now with Joe Strucker. I am,
how's that one? How is it working with Joe on
on on the podcast?

Speaker 4 (19:26):
It's easy, It's very easy. He's a he's a great guy.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah, Yes, someone what had told you five or ten
years ago? You're going to be doing a podcast every
What are you doing? Like like every couple of weeks?

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Or I try to do one a week?

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah, one a week?

Speaker 4 (19:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Would you have believed them that you were going to
be no, you know, podcasting or doing a regular.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
It's actually Joe's fault. He's the one that suggested.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
He's very persuasive.

Speaker 4 (19:52):
Yes, those Joe.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
We we love Joe Strucker.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
I mean without him, I mean a lot of this
stuff would not be happening.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
All right.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
We I'm mentioned Iris Rolli before we went to the
last break, and you have I thought you did great
work talking about her contract when it was discovered that
I guess she had her son working down on Government
Square passing out some information, getting paid roughly fifty eight

(20:20):
dollars an hour, which is to my way of thinking,
is a pretty I know a lot of people that
would like to earn fifty eight dollars an hour, Yes,
passing out some leaflets down a down at Government Square. Yeah,
but you have some additional information regarding the contract that
she has with the city, right, Well, she's carved out
a pretty good gig.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
For herself.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
Has she not, Yeah, she has tell me about it
well before the election and all the controversies we had
this summer, and when the FOP filed a complain about
Miss Rolli allegedly interfering with police policemen on the street.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
I think we saw some video to that effected.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
We know, yeah, you saw a couple of clips videos,
And that's really what got me, uh paying attention to
to miss Rolli. Well, something they must have put her
on on the they must have benched her for a
period of time. And then the next thing you know,
the mayor is on with Lincoln ware A saying that

(21:24):
they've negotiated a new contract with with Iris Rolly. And
I thought that was going to be kind of They're
going to fix all those kind of fast and loose
provisions in the contract.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yes, yes, So when when I when I seen to
make sense.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
So when I heard that, I said, well, I'm going
to ask for a copy.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Of the new contract book document right right.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
It took me a little while to get it, but
it's very very unusual you have a you have a
Soul source contract that was issued in twenty twenty three
that I don't think is really justified. But then you
have three amendments since then. And the original value of

(22:10):
the of the twenty three contract was about two hundred
and ten thousand dollars. That was a total value of
the contract. Now fast forward to the third amendment, which
is what this new contract is called. The value of
the contract is now six hundred and forty one thousand dollars,
and that goes through when that goes through twenty seven through.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Twenty twenty seven. Yeah, and so that that's only that
that's only two years through through the end of twenty seven. Right, Well,
the the so six hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
Right, the value of the contract goes from now until
twenty seven, and it includes other things.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
That six hundred grand.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
Yeah, that's the total value.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Is what she's pulling down from the city.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
If if she completes all years of the.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Comment, I would say she's got a pretty good incentive
to do that. I think she'd us But for what
and what type of services is Misroly.

Speaker 4 (23:04):
Providing, Well, there's very important. There's two categories. I'd say
one is she was originally contracted to consult and it
has to do with the collaborative agreement and sustaining that.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
She's an expert in those.

Speaker 4 (23:23):
The management advisory group that she's involved in. But then
the second and third or the first, second and third
amendments have added what I view as program responsibilities. One
is called the Government Square Initiative, and that's where the
city is paying her a lump sum like seventy five

(23:46):
thousand dollars to carry out I don't know if you'd
call a community engagement or what the official term would be,
but they're down at these transit hubs to kind of
chaperone the kids when they exchange buses or get off
the buses.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
And they are providing too, which is very very important.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
They are they're providing snacks and things like that. So
that's called the Government Square Initiative. And what happened is
that the contract ended when the school year ended. The
Government Square Initiative ended when the school year ended, and
it wasn't going to start up until the fall, so
there was this summer period. There was a gap. Iris

(24:30):
Rowley didn't have authorization to spend any money during that period.
So the third Amendment fixed that. By all me so,
but the program wasn't the Government Square Initiative because the
kids aren't in school now it's called that period, it's
called summer in the city.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Some are in the city.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
So those programs have absolutely increased the contract value and
they should actually be bid out a separate contract.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Does the contract spell.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Out her her area of areas of expertise and her
background in the different areas, you know, consulting backgrounds, and
you know, maybe I don't know, miss if she's got
a legal background or a criminal justice background.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Or well the the background in you know, social work
or something like that.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
My main issue with what's going on is these non
competitive contracts. The city Procurement rules say very clearly non
competitive contracts, soul source contracts should be extremely rare and
they require a justification. So the justification for Ms Rowlies

(25:49):
it's at one page, basically one paragraph, and it cites
her a work in the civil rights movement, and it
cites her involvement with the original Collaborative Agreement and all
of those things. But my point, and I've made this
to the city, is that before COVID, they actually had

(26:09):
a city employee on staff doing the things that they've
contracted iris Roli to do. And my thing is my
thing is if if they were able to hire a
city employee to do the work. I don't think that
you can say that miss Rowley is uniquely qualified or

(26:30):
that her qualifications are the only ones that can do
the work.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
And she continues her role on the Citizens Complaining of
forty does she not?

Speaker 4 (26:37):
Yes, it's she's not. She's not on the authority, but well,
I'll have to check that. I think I think she
interacts with them based on her consulting role. Ah, but
I don't know if she's still on the on the
commission or committee itself.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
There's not very many that can carry out duties like that.

Speaker 4 (26:59):
Ye see. One of the things I thought was that
if she's going around telling people, you know, they should
be filing complaints against police officers they interact with. All
that does is they add to the backlog for the
Citizens Complaint Authority that's already through the roof.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
So she's out there drumming up work.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
That's the way it looked to me.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
All right, Joe, do I got to get to a
break here. I'm late for a break. I'm late for
a break. Let's go ahead and do that now, and
we'll continue with Todd Zinzer on fifty five K r
CV talk stays.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
This season, make the holiday an.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Unforgotten see the talk station.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
I'm late whatever Joe Strucker tells you. That's the voice
of Todd Zenzer, Citizen Watchdog. Great to have Men's studio
this morning, so much stuff to talk about.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
You showed me a.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Document a little while ago about that is a financial
disclosure from our mayor, and I mean he is he
is very well invested. He's got an extensive portfolio, so
that that is very nice to see. And when it
comes to the repossession of his vehicles, was was he

(28:09):
supposed to report that to the state of Ohio or
what's what's the deal on it?

Speaker 4 (28:14):
Well, if if you carry debt, if you have creditors
you have you have to report that on your financial disclosure. Unfortunately,
the forms that Ohio uses.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
You've had a look at those forms, have you not?

Speaker 2 (28:25):
I have?

Speaker 4 (28:26):
They don't.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
What did you find there?

Speaker 4 (28:28):
Well, they don't require really any information in terms of,
you know, the debt. They just make make the official
list his creditors. And he's done that for three creditors.
Uh And but there's no information about how far in
debt the mayor is, So that's not extremely useful. There's one, Uh,

(28:54):
there's three creditors, American Express, Lincoln National, which must be
a loan on an insurance policy or something, or Lincoln Financial.
I'm sorry, but the third one is an outfit called
ACS ACS and you don't know what ACS really stands for.
There's a lot of acs is, but I will say

(29:14):
that there are ACS's that are collection agencies. So it
would just take more information to know whether or not
that has anything to do with his repossession of his cars.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
For most people, dealing with the collection agency is a
one time thing. You know, you've you've missed a payment
for whatever reason, or you've got something that you overlooked
in you deal with that. You you get it squared away.
And I would not think to put a collection agency
on my list of creditors. If I had to fill

(29:50):
out such a financial disclosure. Well, his last night, I go,
I don't have to do that here at iHeart meeting.
You know, I might not be beyond his microphone very long.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
His last three disclosure reports twenty two, twenty three, twenty four,
twenty five is not doing until next year. They all
list the same three creditors. Yeah, so whatever the debts
are to those creditors they've been long standing. Yeah, okay,
so it's the financial statement reports weren't very helpful in

(30:23):
terms of figuring out what the truth is about his
repossessed vehicles or vehicle whatever, but it did show that
he doesn't seem to have a lot of financial problems.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Oh yeah, I mean, but the thing is, it's it
seems so silly that you just don't get in front
of this thing, come clean about it. It's going to
go Look, a car getting repossessed is not the worst
thing that can happen financially, but just own it.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Put it in the rear view mirror.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
But the if he continues the stonewall on this, the
truth is out there and eventually when that gets found out,
it's going to drag him down.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Just get it, get it, get it over with, man.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
I mean that to me, it seems that that would
be the prudent thing to do.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
That's right, get in front of it. Because what happens
is if if people think that you're not being forthcoming,
they're going to wonder, well, what else is going on?
Why why wouldn't he be forthcoming about this? Because he
doesn't want to be embarrassed well, he's already in that category.
But what else is going on that he would not
be forthcoming about this?

Speaker 3 (31:29):
I mean, you know, Kevin Aldrich from The Inquirer wrote
a you know, a little column on this, and you know,
talking about how trust is the most important currency at
city Hall and just come on, mister mayor, well af
in front of it.

Speaker 4 (31:44):
After the railroad vote, both he and Reggie Harris were
on TV saying, yeah, we need to rebuild the trust
of the people in city Hall. And then they turn
around and within a year they do connected communities, right,
which majority, if not all, the neighborhood councils opposed. And

(32:05):
then they did they did these zoning laws for development
that the citizens opposed. Well, they haven't done anything to
build trust back.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
I'm looking at your website right now and your podcast
from November twenty fifth talks about the city's lead pipe scandal.
I want to touch on that before we before we
call it a morning. So we've got one more break
to get in here, and then we'll continue on with
todds In's or Citizen Watchdog on fifty five KRC, the
talk station.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Hey, Gary Salvan here, oder exits a.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
LI eight fifty Tuesday Morning, Dan Carrol and Brian Thomas
todd Zen's or the Citizen Watchdog is here. And you
did a podcast back on November twenty fifth. I have
not listened to it, but you talk about the city's
lead pipe scandal. Yes, and give me a thumbnail of that.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Well, the city wound up this water works, I should say,
wound up conducting an investigation based on an audit, an
internal audit that was conducted that found that there were
members of the lead crew, or at least one member
of the lead crew, that was stealing the scrap lead

(33:16):
and instead of processing it for recycling, was selling it
on the street to these scrappers.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
And there was they probably sold it for recycling.

Speaker 4 (33:26):
Well, you hope, so, but there's no you know, the
trail goes cold. Nobody is, which is my big problem.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
So there's a bunch of missing lead.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
Well, the program, the program's been going on five or
six years and the recycler never got any scrap lead.
So what happened to it? And the issue for me
is whether that whether the city did what they call
a hazardous waste determination to see whether those lead pipes
constituted hazardous waste. So I do have a request in
for that documentation. I haven't gotten it yet, But if

(33:57):
they didn't do it hazardous waste determination, they could they
could run into trouble with the state EPA and the
federally FEDERALPA.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Yeah, and I would imagine that if in that part
of the contract, if you don't follow certain regulations that
are laid on and I'm sure there's got to be
a lung when it comes to dealing with lead pipes
and things like that. There's got to be a long
list of environmental regulations, even under the Trump administration. Yeah,
if you do not adhere to those, you could be

(34:26):
in line for some significant finds, could you not.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
Right, there's a federal there's a federal law called the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act RICRA, and it has civil
and criminal provisions. But the civil provisions are some of
these finds can go up to like tens of thousands
of dollars a day, and it's a very serious statute.
And I just have to believe that the waterworks did

(34:50):
their due diligence, did the hazardous waste determination, and we
don't have to be concerned about lead pipe scrap, lead
pipe leaking into our waterworks or water system.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
But I mean it's got to be that's I mean
the lead pipes that were in and around Cincinnati, which
by the way, has a great reputation as having one
of the absolute best water filtration systems right the entire country.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
Right, and the Cincinnati Futures Commission recommends get we sell
it or regionalize it and lose control of it.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
Oh, for God's sake, all right, Well, let's let's let's
recap because we only got about a minute and a
half left here. So Iris Rolli's getting has a contract
that's worth about six hundred grand.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yes, so that that that's great for her.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
The settlement that's going to pay eight point one million
dollars to these rioters and people that were engaging in
misbehavior in downtown Cincinnati is very light on specificity, right.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
We we really don't know whether it was a good case,
a bad case in between, or why they're settling.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
And your recommendation to the members of the committee that
are going to look at this today would be.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
To what I'd call a well I'd call an executive
session and bring make sure that we look at what
the Solicitor's office has come up with there should be
an absolute risk assessment written provided to the city Council
that at least they could deliberate. But the way it's
going to work is they're going to propose the ordinance

(36:19):
that the chairman of the committee is going to say,
we got this ordinance, and then they'll go around to
each member and each member will pontificate about why this
is such a great deal.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
I wonder if they're going to take public comment at
this at this committee meeting.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
They will at the beginning of every committee meeting and
the council full council they give people two minutes.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Could be entertaining.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
It could be there.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
And the mayor is very well invested and should not
let this repossession thing drag him down.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
Well, yeah, I think he needs to tell the truth
about what was going on with these repossessions.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Todd, Zen's a great meeting in person, man, Thank you
so much for coming in. And I know you've got
a high level meeting that you have to go to
with Joe Strecker, so you don't that's going to be
the highlight of your day right there. Todd's ins are
all the best to you, man, all right, all right,
we'll see you down the road and that's it for me.
Glenn Beck is coming up next. Thanks for listening.