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