The Hill View Flyer [reposted]

The budget-busting sentence from Sect. 87 of City Charter. The same
language is used in Sect. 89 covering the Fire Dept.

The article below was originally posted on May 5, 2011. Because our new city manager was not around three years ago to read it, I am reposting it so that our un-elected city manager can continue his on-the-job training. He recently complained about the difficulties of trying to balance the budget when the number of employees of both the Fire and Police departments are dictated by the city charter, as if no one had read the city charter before.  A city manager has even less authority than the mayor under the previous system of city government had of changing that onerous provision of the charter. We are stuck with that provision and the city manager form of government, and for that we have the officious First Ward councilman Kevin Johnson to thank. R.F.

The Hill View Flyer: “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics!”

 The flyer (shown above ) appeared in the mailboxes of residents at the Hill View Retirement Center not long before they voted on May 3, 2011,  on a proposed  city income tax increase. The  purpose of the flyer, in my reading of it, was not so much to inform the residents on the proposed income tax increase as it was to scare the bejesus out of them. If it did not do that with what Mark Twain called “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” then it did it with at least some very misleading “talking points.”

  

Talking Point #1: The Title

The scare tactics begin with the typography of the title of the flyer, “Talking Points for the Police and Fire Levy.” The  flyer’s title is  not only in larger type, it is  bolded, italicized, and underlined. Typographically, the title  looks alarming. If you did it justice, when you read it aloud you would make it sound like a three-alarm fire. The title is designed to get the attention of the seniors at Hill View by all typographical means. In addition, the title is semantically misleading. Instead of calling a spade a spade, it calls it a heart. Instead of calling the proposed city income tax increase a tax increase, it calls it a  “Police and Fire levy.” “Levy” sounds so much less onerous than  “tax,” and mentioning  the  “Police and Fire” in  the title introduces the issue of the  Hill View residents’ safety. The purpose of the title  may have been to alarm  the  residents of Hill View  about crime and fire. The purpose of the flyer itself may have been to get the residents to vote for the levy as a way of protecting themselves against fire.

 Talking Point #2

“2.8 Million Dollars will be raised yearly by the levy and directly fund the Police and Fire 5.5 year Levy.” Instead of being a damned lie, this  talking point  is a statistic, a misleading statistic.  How much will be raised yearly by the increased income tax depends upon the economy, both nationally and locally. The worse the economy, the fewer the jobs, and the lower the revenue from the Portsmouth city income tax will be. Even when the national economy was booming, prior to the current Great Recession, Portsmouth remained in the same economic doldrums that it had been in for at least a quarter century.  Will the economy be better in the future? Probably  not.  In keeping with the aims of the backers of the city income tax increase,  the projected  2.8 million figure is probably inflated, or “Trented,” to coin a word, assuming City Auditor Trent Williams  had anything to do with  the projection.  In the five and one-half year life span of the 2 percent tax, the annual amount will vary, at best, and for the next couple of  years at least is  likely to fall below the $2.8 million projection. And will the tax really end in five and a half years? And will Peter Rabbit stay out of Mr. McGregor's garden?

Talking Point #3

“6/10 percent increase, 1.4 percent now, brings us to 2.0%, New Boston is at 2.5” 
Talking Point #3, like Talking Point #2, shows it is possible to mislead, if not lie, with statistics. What this  cryptic talking point is saying  is, “The  0.6 percent proposed Portsmouth income tax increase is small, and even when it is added to the city’s current 1.4 percent rate it only takes us up to 2 percent, which is still a lot less than the  2.5 percent income tax rate of neighboring New Boston.”  What this talking point does not say is that the 2.5% income tax rate was one of the money-raising responses the  village of New Boston  made in response to the fiscal crisis it faced when the steel and coke plants closed. But New Boston not only raised its income tax, it seriously cut the costs of its government.  New Boston laid off  public  employees, including police and firefighters, but Portsmouth has not.  If comparisons of income tax rates between Portsmouth and  other Ohio cities are relevant, then it is misleading to compare Portsmouth (pop. 20,000) to  New Boston (pop. 2000) as it would be to compare Portsmouth  to Columbus (pop. 787, 000), the state’s  largest city. Yes, both New Boston and Columbus  have 2.5% income tax rates, but it makes more sense to compare Portsmouth not with villages and metropolises but with mid-sized and small Ohio cities, most of which have  income tax rates below  2%, such as  Jackson (0%); Ironton (1%);  Piketon (1%); Waverly (1%); South Bloomfield (1%); Findlay (1.25%); Ashland (1.5%); Circleville  (1.5%);  Lima (1.5%); Chillicothe (1.6%); Marion (1.75%); and Delaware (1.85%).  As for a neighboring city in a neighboring state, Ashland, Kentucky, has close to the same population (22,000) and close to the same income tax rate (1.5%) as Portsmouth (1.4%).

Talking Point #4

“If [the levy] passes funds will establish the re-opening of Company 3.” 
This talking point says that passage of the income tax increase will enable the fire department to reopen the Company 3 Hilltop station. If the levy passes the station probably will reopen. But what this talking point does not say is that it was the Fire Department itself, after discussing the matter with Mayor-unelect David Malone, who made the decision to close the Hilltop station. “That is the decision myself and the Mayor (David Malone) agreed on in trying to comply with Council’s demand we cut 20 percent out of the budget,” Portsmouth Fire Chief Bill Raison told the Portsmouth Daily Times (3/11/11). The City Council had directed the mayor to cut the Fire Department budget by 20%, but such a sizeable cut would have required financial concessions by the fire fighters that they were not willing to make. Instead of layoffs, furloughs and other concessions, the Fire Department closed the Hilltop Station. The Fire Department had a choice: make financial concessions to ease the budgetary crisis or jeopardize the safety of those who live in the Hilltop area by closing the Hilltop station. They chose to jeopardize the safety of those in the Hilltop area by closing the Hilltop station. Is it possible, furthermore,  that the Hilltop station was closed by the Fire Department because it could then be raised as a safety  issue by firefighters in the door-to-door campaign they waged prior to the May 3rd primary? The flyer itself, assuming the Fire Department had something to do with its creation, is evidence of the department's dishonorable intentions. 

Talking Point #5

“If it [the levy] passes funds will increase manpower (2 currently retired and not filled, 1 projected).” 
To try to meet the  20% budget reduction set by the council, the Fire Department agreed that three retiring members would not be replaced. But Talking Point #5  promises to restore those three eliminated positions if  the levy is passed. If the residents vote for the levy and the positions are restored, the residents would get increased protection from fires and they would be getting it free, because they would not be paying any city income tax. The people who have jobs in  Portsmouth will be the ones  paying for the additional fire protection for the residents at  Hill View, who will be paying nothing.  (See Talking Point #7, below.)

Talking Point #6

“$50,000.00 yearly income                   $25,000 yearly income

            $300.00 increase yearly                         $150.00 increase yearly

              $23.00 increase monthly                       $11.50 increase monthly

                                $00.83 increase daily                            $00.42 increase daily”  

   

Talking Point #6 uses statistics to suggest that the income tax increase will cost wage earners relatively little, but it does so by calculating only the increase, without saying what the total city income tax for an individual wage earner would be. For someone in Portsmouth earning $25,000 a year, the total city income tax would be $500, not $150, and for someone earning $50,000, it would be $1,000 a year, not $300, which is not small change, even to someone earning $50,000 a year. But how many people working in Portsmouth, outside of the city government, make $50,000 a year? The estimated median income in Portsmouth in 2009 was not $50,000, and it was not even $25,000: it was $20,909. If the city was the only entity  that wage earners had to pay taxes to, that would be one thing, but they also have to pay state and federal income taxes as well as  property taxes to the county (of which the city gets a cut) if they are home owners.

Talking Point #7

 “Fixed income residents will not be affected (Social Security, Retirements, Disabled).” 
As an indication of its importance, Talking Point #7, like the flyer’s title,  is bolded, italicized, and  underlined. Why? Because it is a reminder to Hill View residents that if they vote for the levy and it passes they will not have to pay for it.  This talking point reassures Hill View residents that, though  raising the city income tax will benefit them in terms of increased fire protection,  that increased protection  will cost them nothing. This talking point is factually accurate but morally questionable. Should Hill View residents get the benefits of increased fire protection without having to pay for it? Should someone who has a job in Portsmouth that pays $25,000  but who lives out of the city have to pay $500 a year to reopen the Hilltop station to provide  increased protection for the residents of Hill View, a high end retirement community that people live in by choice? And it is not just those earning $25,000 who would have to pay 2% of their pay to provide additional protection for the residents of Hill View. So would those working at McDonald’s earning not much more than half that. A cashier at McDonald’s makes about $16,000 a year and a crew member even less.

  

Talking Point #8

The statistics cited in Talking Point #8  may have been intended not just to inform but also to scare, as mentioned earlier in Talking Point #6.  Even if the statistics are  not misleading (and I would argue some of them are), they are tied to the closing of the Hilltop station, on 17th Street, which the Fire Department itself decided to do. If the firefighters had been willing to pay a higher percentage of their health benefits, pensions   and forgo cost of living increases, it probably would have been possible to the keep the Hilltop station open and the statistics shown above would not apply to Hill View residents. Am I being cynical in thinking the Fire Department may have closed the Hilltop station partly to provide statistics that  could be used to frighten  Hill View residents into voting for the city income tax increase?

Was the closing of the Hilltop Fire Station calculated to scare the hell out of Hill View residents? 

Talking Point #9

“Population: No Decrease since 1987. As per the 2009  Census, Portsmouth population was  20,354.” 
Talking Point #9 is not just misleading, it is dead wrong.  Census records show there has not been a decade since 1930 that the population of Portsmouth has increased or even held its own. Since 1930, Portsmouth has steadily lost more than half its population. The assertion that there has been no decline since 1987 is not true. Why does the Hill View flyer make a  false claim about Portsmouth’s population not decreasing?  The flyer is apparently  trying  dispel  the common sense notion that a city that has lost half its population in the last eighty years probably  needs less, not more, firefighters. It would be useful for purposes of comparison  to know how many firefighters there were in the Portsmouth Fire Department in 1930, when the population was  about 42,000,  or  how many there were in 1950, when the population was about  37,000.  Has  the Fire Department increased in number as the population has  decreased?  I don’t know, but I do know from census records that the population has shrunk drastically. As for the claim that there has been no decrease in population since 1987, census figures show there were 25,993 in 1980; 22,676 in 1990; 20,909 in 2000; and about 20,000 in 2010. That is a loss of about  6,000 people in the last four decades. 1987 was no exception to the rule that Portsmouth has been in a steady population decline for a long time. 

Insulation, Solicitation, Obfuscation

On May 4th, the day after the primary, I emailed John Prose, the CEO of Hill View, asking him about the flyers and about reports I heard  that two members of the Fire Department had spoken to Hill View residents on the eve of  the voting on the income tax increase. I suspected there might be some connection between the flyers and the appearance of the two firemen. Mr. Prose replied promptly to my email, but instead of  an explanation, he responded with an  obfuscation. To obfuscate is to be evasive, unclear, or intentionally confusing. Obfuscating  is something politicians routinely do in responding to questions they don’t want to answer. So it is still a mystery to me, and to some residents,  how the flyers got into  the Hill View mailboxes. Under U.S. Code for crimes and criminal procedure (Chapter 83, Title 18, Section 1725), it is unlawful for anything, including political flyers, to be put in mailboxes if it  lacks U.S. postage and has not gone through a U.S. post office. The law stipulates that nothing should be put in, on, taped, or tied to mailboxes. Fines may be as high as $5,000 for each violation for an individual and $10,000 for an organization.

I am told Hill View has a policy of not allowing  political solicitation or the circulation of petitions. But it appears that  policy is not being administered equitably. When he was councilman for Ward 3, Bob Mollette told me he more than once was denied permission to speak to Hill View residents, even though he was their elected representative. Why then would two members of the Fire Department be allowed to speak to Hill View residents on the eve of the primary in which the  so-called “Police and Fire Levy” was on the ballot? Prior to the recall election of Jane Murray, Mr. Prose distributed a letter to Hill View residents that seemed to me clearly political in nature. I wonder if those managing senior housing centers in Portsmouth have an obligation  to perform like those late nineteenth-century political ward heelers who influenced immigrants to vote for candidates approved by the party bosses. 

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” That’s what politics in America often boils down to, and nowhere more than in Portsmouth, as the Hill View flyer may illustrate.

City Council Appointees: Portsmouth’s Perennial Problem

Mark Twain showed river towns have more than their share of vices. RIVER VICES shows Portsmouth, located at the confluence of the Ohio and Scioto Rivers, is no exception.

Mike Mearan: the Most Notorious Appointee

The Portsmouth  Daily Times reported (18 May 2013) that a second candidate, Lance L. Richardson,  is going to throw his hat in the ring for the Third Ward council seat being vacated by Nick Basham. Does that mean he wants to be appointed by the council or that he wants to be a write-in candidate in the regular election? As far as I know, Richardson has previously shown no interest in becoming a member of city government the old-fashioned way, by running for office. That is often the case with appointees. They run for office the way Rosie Ruiz ran the 1980 Boston Marathon, by skipping the grueling race but showing up at the finish line. The “ring” Richardson threw his hat into consists not of Portsmouth voters but the remaining five Portsmouth city council members whom the city charter authorizes to appoint replacements to the city council. Back on 26 June 2006, Richard Noel, president of the Concerned Citizens Group, wrote a letter to the Portsmouth City Council requesting that a measure be placed on the ballot calling for the term for city council members be reduced from four to two years. Up until 1985, Portsmouth City Council members served two-year terms, but then that provision was changed in that year by charter amendment. The council rejected Noel's proposal and declined to allow the voters decide whether to go back to two-year terms. 

       City Council = House of Representatives

The Founding Fathers intended that the U.S. House of Representatives be “the people’s house,” the body of the federal government that would be directly elected by, and therefore most accountable to, the people. It was to be the most representative and the most held-accountable body of the federal government. In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton and Madison wrote, “As it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the branch of it under consideration [the House of Representatives] should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people.” The best way they could think of to insure that the House of Representatives would remain “the people’s house,” was frequent elections. “Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured” [emphasis added], they wrote in number 52 of the Federalist Papers. In regard to frequent elections, they quoted, in number 53, the proverb “that where annual elections end, tyranny begins.” But that proverb was an old one, and conditions had changed since ancient Greece. Elections every year were impractical when many voters were spread over large areas. Somewhat reluctantly, because they preferred annual elections, the Founding Fathers decided that the maximum term for a representative should be biennial, that is, two years.

                               Local Government in Ohio

When Ohio designed its state government, it closely followed the federal model, with a General Assembly that consisted of a House of Representatives and a Senate. Following the federal model, terms for the Ohio House, the “people’s house,” were two years. Most local governments in Ohio usually followed the state model. In local governments, the legislative body, the counterpart to a House of Representatives, is the city council. Following the example of the House of Representatives, two-year terms were the general rule for city councils. But a number of cities and towns have shifted to a mixture of two-year terms for ward representatives and four-year terms for at-large council members; other communities have shifted to a four-year term for all council members. The Columbus City Council has four-year terms, but the city councils of Cleveland and Cincinnati retain two-year terms. While there are exceptions, generally smaller communities are more likely to have four-year terms for city council, the larger ones two-year terms. Why the difference?

Possibly because larger urban areas with a history of municipal corruption and machine politics see two-year terms as a way of removing those council members who turn out to be bad apples before they spoil all the apples in the barrel. Cities and towns that have been plagued by corruption and that distrust politicians as a class want city councils to be on the short leash that two-year terms represent. A political machine or, in the case of Portsmouth, a clique, would more likely arise and persist in a city where members of city council had four rather than two years in which to scheme, collude, and corrupt. Communities that don’t have a history of crooked politics don’t want to go through the trouble and expense of having elections every two years. But large cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati may have learned that biennial elections are worth the trouble because they make the city council more accountable. They learned from experience, as we have bitterly in Portsmouth, that at least some politicians are not to be trusted. The same thing that makes four-year terms seem sensible in some communities makes them seem unwise in others. The Concerned Citizens believed four-year city council terms is asking for trouble, which is what Portsmouth got when it changed to four-year terms in  1985.

                                     Checks and Balances

The late Howard Baughman entering Marting Building
during an open-house for the public

The three branches of government that the Founding Fathers established—the legislative, the executive, and the judicial—were intended  to serve as checks and balances on each other. The counterparts of those three branches of government are discernible in local government in the mayor or city manager (executive), the city council (legislative), and the city solicitor and city courts (judiciary). Unfortunately, too often at the local level, the three branches of government, rather than checking and balancing each other, are in cahoots, forming a tyranny that, with the connivance of the local media, represses and exploits the public they are supposed to be serving. If you want to see a cornpone version of the kind of tyranny our Founding Fathers were concerned about, Portsmouth provides a textbook example.  The Portsmouth city council, the mayor, the city solicitor, the auditor, with the collusion of long-time city clerk Jo Ann Aeh,  would regularly meet illegally in her office just before council meetings like a gang of safe-crackers planning a job. It was at one of these illegal backroom meetings that Marty Mohr orchestrated the appointment of Jerrold Albrecht to the city council as Austin Leedom reported online  in The Sentinel, dated 6 May 2007 (click here).  (For other Mohr antics, clear here.) While attending one of these closed-door illegal meetings, then councilman Marty Mohr was photographed through the city clerk's open door Joe Ferguson. The mugging Mohr responded defiantly by clenching his teeth for the camera. 

Marty Mohr mugging for camera

Just as Mayor Bauer predicted chaos would reign if he was recalled from office, and just as council president Carol Caudill said, “God help the city of Portsmouth” after she was recalled, the president of the city council in 2006, Howard Baughman, who was facing a recall, warned of the consequences if the  city council returned to two-year terms. Baughman remarked at the 25 June 2006  city council meeting, “There’s a learning curve when you become a city councilman.”  He did not think council members could possibly come to understand budgets in only two years. The real reason Baughman and others opposed two-year terms was not learning curves. Two-year terms were unacceptable because they might have  helped loosen the grip of the clique of lawyers and developers who controlled  the city through their puppets on the city council.  

The only other defense beside “learning curves” Baughman offered against two-year terms was that, “It would just be constant turmoil and turnover every two years.” Though all council members would run for election at the same time, it is unlikely that they would all be defeated. And if they were, that might be the best thing for the city. If biennial elections bring constant turmoil, how have the U.S. House of Representatives, the Ohio House of Representatives, and the city councils of many cities in Ohio managed to survive for as long as they have with two-year terms? Where is the turmoil in the following two-year term Ohio cities: Alliance, Amherst, Athens, Blue Ash, Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Cuyahoga Falls, Lorrain, North Royalton, Norwood, Parma, Silverton, Warren, Wilmington, Wyoming, etc? There has been a lot of turmoil in the Portsmouth City Council since 1985  and much of it has been the result, directly and indirectly, of four-year terms and the recalls that would not likely have taken place if council members had faced the electorate every two years.     

Honest capable people in public office have no reason to object to two-year terms, because they can be assured of reelection if they do a good job. It’s the dishonest council members, and especially those who began their careers by being appointed rather than elected, who want the four-year terms to continue. Four-year terms for city council members helped perpetuate the political clique that controlled Portsmouth on behalf of the now discredited Southern Ohio Growth Partnership (SOGP).  I don’t know whether  Lance  Richardson  would turn out to be a good or bad councilman, but why did  he throw his hat in the ring only now, as a potential appointee, rather than run in a regular election, as I would think anyone not trying to cut corners  and short-change democracy would prefer to do? Let us hope Richardson, a self-proclaimed tax expert, is not another of those shipwrecked characters who save themselves from drowning in a sea of insignificance by clambering aboard the raft of city government that is already crowded with other failures, dreaming no doubt that the game of musical chairs might result someday in their becoming mayor, as Malone did when he won the booby prize as a result of Mayor Murray’s recall.

When you consider the council members who began their careers as appointees, the list is not encouraging.  Baughman was originally an appointee, when his friend and his next-door neighbor John Thatcher, conveniently resigned as Fifth Ward councilman. And then Baughman himself resigned before he could be recalled, making the appointment of John Haas possible in the endless appointee game of musical chairs that is orchestrated by Portsmouth’s powerful, unelected clique. Jerrold Albrecht first got on the council by appointment, and so did the notorious shyster Mike Mearan. James R. Saddler is the most recent appointment. Saddler had not shown any interest in city government previously, except when he had to appear in court for numerous speeding violations, including a DUI for which his license was suspended. For all those who prefer to begin their political careers by applying to the council for a vacated position rather than run in an election, we should have buttons that say not “I Voted,” but rather “I Applied.” But in any campaign to reduce the terms on city council to two years, Mearan should be the poster boy and he should be proudly wearing an “I Applied” button. 

Current First Ward councilman Kevin W. Johnson tried to begin his political career in Portsmouth when he applied to council to replace Tim Loper after Loper was forced to resign his seat when it was proved he was not living in the First Ward, the ward he represented, in violation of the city charter. To replace Loper, the city council appointed Mearan, arguably the most scandalous appointee in the history of the city,  rather than Kevin W. Johnson. 

I find the political jockeying to become council president that takes place among those council members, some of  whom were originally appointees, unseemly. When Jane Murray was recalled, David Malone, as president of the council, replaced her in spite of the fact he had finished fourth behind her in the previous mayoral election. Malone had been elected to the presidency and next in line to be mayor, by appointees such as the lawyer John Haas, his fellow bankrupt, who is yet another council member who was appointed  after  failing to succeed in his chosen field. It is almost as if there is an unwritten requirement that candidates must be failures, if not bankrupts,  before they will be considered as appointees. Who with any self respect would want to owe their presence on the council to an appointment by such a council? To revise the famous quote by Groucho Marx, “I don't want to belong to any city council  that would accept me as a member.”