Spats and Anthrax

a lethal anthrax molecule

Two events last week, and the way they were covered in the Portsmouth Daily Times, may be examples of the way in which that newspaper occasionally reverts to its previous practice of manipulating the news and controlling the way its readers perceive local events. The Daily Times was not quite the official organ of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce and the SOGP porkers, but it was close to it. Without their advertising revenue, the steadily shrinking newspaper could not survive. If a Daily Times reporter dared to try to do the kind of investigative reporting that led the Toledo Blade to expose the scheme by which a prominent political fundraiser and rare coin collector allegedly swindled the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation of millions,* that reporter would soon be looking for another job. Instead of uncovering corruption or incompetence in Scioto County, the Daily Times is more likely to gloss it over, if not cover it up.

Which gets me back to the Daily Times reporting on two events last week, at both of which I was present and therefore know something about firsthand. The first was the Portsmouth City Council meeting, last Monday evening. In recent weeks, councilman Marty Mohr has attempted to change the existing format of council meetings so that citizens cannot speak on items not on the agenda. Instead of focusing on this unusual and even extraordinary effort to restrict free speech, and on Mohr’s earlier dissing of citizens in the council chamber as “crap,” the Daily Times has focused on the protests that Mohr’s insult and his attempt to restrict free speech has prompted. In other words, the Daily Times has made the protests, and not what provoked them, the story.

The May 25th front-page story on the May 23rd council meeting was headlined, “Spats Disrupt Council.” The opening paragraph reads, “Even though it’s hard to find common ground for City Council members and some vocal citizens, they agree that recent disturbances during meetings are not conducive to business.” Jeff Barron closes his report by quoting Mohr and Baughman. Mohr said, “We have an extremely small group of people who enjoy bashing people at meetings, on the Internet and in their newspaper (Shawnee Sentinel).” Barron gives Baughman the last word in the story. “I think the atmosphere discourages outside investment,” Baughman said, “because there has to be an atmosphere of trust.”

Baughman repeats one of the favorite Chamber of Commerce myths of the last quarter of a century, which is that a few people “discourage outside investment [in Portsmouth],” to use his phrase. Twenty-five years ago, according to this myth, three malicious councilmen condemned Portsmouth to another quarter century of economic stagnation by opposing the building of a downtown mall. Two of those councilmen are no longer alive to defend themselves, but one of them, Harold Daub is, and not coincidentally Daub is being cast as the chief culprit of the city council disturbances that are allegedly discouraging outside investment. Daub is being cast as the Darth Vader of Spat Wars. Daub’s behavior at the May 23rd council meeting was not disruptive. I was there. I saw and heard. Daub spoke to the council at the appropriate time, and calmly, but he dared to mention a council member by name, which has become an ejectionable offense according to the imperious standards of deportment set by the dictatorial Baughman and Mohr. Daub was commanded to leave the Municipal Building, and I’ve heard of people who were not there circulating stories he was out of control. The Mauling of Harold Daub continues.

The other event that may have been slanted by the Daily Times occurred on March 24th, the night after the council meeting. It occurred on the Shawnee State campus.

SSU's Massie Hall: Scene of the "Anthrax" Evacuation

Unlike the “spat” at the council meeting, at which there were a Daily Times reporter and an editor, and about thirty-five citizens, there was no one from the newspaper at what I will call the "Anthrax" Evacuation, judging by the way the Daily Times reported the story. Having been part of it, I thought that the Anthrax Evacuation was the biggest local story of the day, if not the week, and maybe the month, but the Daily Times put the story on page 3 of the same May 25th paper that had the “Spats Disrupt Council” story on the front page. The small story on page 3 is an Associated Press, not a Daily Times story, and the unrevealing and possibly obfuscating headline for it was “White Substance Found at SSU.” White substance? Snow? Cocaine? Why the reluctance to mention in the headline the "A" word, which is what the whole panic was about?

Associated Press story on page 3 of Daily Times (5/25/05)

Well, of course, how can finding a white substance on campus possibly compete for front-page coverage with a spat at city council? That headline – “White Substance Found at SSU” – may speak volumes for what the Daily Times, and possibly SSU, did not want to publicize about the Anthrax Evacuation, which involved hundreds of students and faculty, as well as more police and police cruisers than I have ever seen at one Portsmouth scene. The potentially tragic Anthrax Evacuation has such possibly revealing and important elements, as well as curious and embarrassing sidelights, that most reporters at most newspapers (certainly those at the Toledo Blade) would love to be assigned to it. But I think no Daily Times reporter has yet written one word on the Anthrax Evacuation. Why not? Writing about council spats apparently has a higher priority.

But I don't think the Anthrax Evacuation story will be buried. Somebody, either because of negligence or misplaced public relations priorities, may have risked the lives of hundreds of people. However, rather than speculate further, I will wait until SSU or public authorities release more facts, facts that Daily Times reporters should be digging up. But in order to do that they need at least temporarily to devote less time to perpetuating the myth that a very small number of citizens, by speaking out at council meetings and writing in the Shawnee Sentinel, are maliciously preventing the economic revival of Portsmouth, and more time to exposing the incompetence and corruption that give Portsmouth a bad name and impede its economic recovery.

*For more on the Toledo Blade story, click on:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

Automaniac

Marty Mohr Mugging for Moe

City Council meetings are turning into the Marty Mohr Show. Is this how Jerry Springer, former mayor of Cincinnati, got his start in show business? Mohr’s mugging for the camera when "Moe" Ferguson caught him red-handed at the illegal pre-meeting meeting in the city clerk’s office shows how much contempt and defiance Mohr has for a free press and the public it serves.

Mohr is Ward 6 councilman and owner of Automania, the car radio business. If nothing else, last night’s May 23rd meeting of the Portsmouth City Council showed that there are some citizens who are not going to take any Mohr crap sitting down. Objecting to his attempts to stifle free speech at the council meetings, the same citizens whom the crapulous (i.e., intemperate) Mohr at an earlier meeting had called “crap” dared to stand up at last night’s meeting and say they objected to his motion to eliminate free speech, which got them ejected from the meeting.

Probably infuriated by the rumors of his adultery circulating on local chat rooms, Mohr seems determined to deny citizens the right to say anything at council meetings. If citizens attending last night’s meeting so much as mentioned the name of a councilman in their remarks to council, in any context, Mohr called them out of order and instructed police to eject them from the Municipal Building. His response seems as irrational as it is ineffective, because his attempt to change council rules and eliminate the part of the meeting allowing citizens to speak on items not on the agenda failed by a vote of 4 to 2.

Judging by how he conducted himself in the rest of last night’s meeting, Mohr must have been incensed by the 4 to 2 vote. He had succeeded in instigating a disorder that he could then use to justify stifling free speech, but four other councilmen did not buy his argument. Councilman Malone wisely declined to be defended by the undemocratic duo of Baughman and Mohr, saying he was quite capable of defending himself, and he did not need to stifle free speech to do it.

While citizens speak during the non-item segment of city council meetings, Mohr, unlike other council members, avoids looking at them, in a studied show of disrespect. As a political ally, the smarmy Baughman has indulged Mohr’s dictatorial tendencies, and excused his crapulousness, but Baughman is clearly eager to move on to other business. Mohr is out of order. By turning meetings into the Marty Mohr Show, he is interfering with the council’s normal business of mulcting the public. How does he expect the fraudulent Marting’s deal to be completed if he continues to incite disorder?

Little Reichstag Fires

Freedom of Speech (1943) by Norman Rockwell

“Lies.” That's the only word I can apply to the case that councilmen Howard Baughman and Marty Mohr have made to justify their attempt to deny citizens the opportunity to address the Portsmouth City Council on items not on the agenda, which citizens have been able to do for many years. Baughman and Mohr are trying their hardest to suppress the views of the informed citizens who attend council meetings and occasionally criticize council members, especially Baughman and Mohr themselves. Just how far the two councilmen are willing to go to suppress freedom of speech was evident at the May 9th council meeting, which I attended and which I have also viewed a tape of.

One of the well-informed citizens who addresses the council and occasionally criticizes them is Teresa Mollette. The specific justification that Baughman and Mohr gave for suppressing free speech was her criticism at the April 25th council meeting of councilman David Malone. In comments on the council's inability to handle budgets, Teresa Mollette pointed out that Malone, a councilman who was running for mayor, was not good with budgets. Councilman Malone has some admirable qualities as a public servant, but he is not good with budgets. That is no secret. Like everybody else, he is not perfect. But Mollette's criticism of Malone was not an attack on, or a harassment and an intimidation of, him, as Baughman charged. Nor did Mollette administer a "thrashing" to Malone, as Baughman also alleged.

I was at the April 25th meeting and heard Teresa Mollette address the council. I have since viewed a tape of her comments. She did not attack, harass, intimidate, or thrash Malone, as Baughman claimed. To say that she did is so gross a misrepresentation of what she said and how she said it as to constitute a lie. She was speaking on the failures of the council as a whole in handling budgets. She made a passing reference to councilman Malone because the Daily Times had written that he claimed to be working on balancing the budget. She wasn't singling out Malone; she made it clear she was criticizing the council per se for being penny-wise and pound-foolish in refusing to pay claims by former long-time city employees against the city. She spoke about 3 minutes on the council's budgetary shortcomings; less than half a minute was on Malone.

Baughman and Mohr seem oblivious to the fact that not only is what they and others say at council meetings recorded in the minutes but they are also recorded on tape, by Joe Ferguson, for all to hear and see on his website, Moe's Forum, including body language and facial expressions.

John Welton wrote recently that, “It is becoming more apparent that Sixth Ward City Councilman Marty Mohr is trying his best to cause another political firestorm between the residents of Portsmouth and the City Council.” In a similar vein, Austin Leedom wrote that the Baughman-Mohr attempt to restrict free speech smacked of facism. Firestorm? Fascism? That may strike some as wildly exaggerated. But after sitting through the April 25th and May 9th meetings, as well as earlier ones, I can understand why Leedom and Welton would make these charges.

Let me remind you of a historical parallel. On Feb. 27, 1933, a fire of suspicious origin destroyed the Reichstag, or parliament building, in Berlin. Many historians believe the Reichstag fire was started by the Nazis, who used it as a justification for cracking down on their political opponents and seizing unlimited powers. Remember the city council meeting at which citizens were searched at the door for hidden weapons after a threat was allegedly made against Baughman by someone in a local bar? A reliable source told me that the alleged threat was relayed to authorities by the son of the city clerk. Jo Ann Aeh, the city clerk, has been associated with the Portsmouth City Council since 1980, not long after she and her husband were reportedly welcomed into the Ku Klux Klan by the white supremacist David Duke. The tactics used by supporters of city manager Barry Feldman in 1980 to remove from office three councilmen who were his political opponents resembled the infamous tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis to intimidate their opponents.

What we are currently witnessing in Portsmouth is a series of little Reichstag fires to justify a crackdown on free speech and free assembly. Baughman’s characterization of Teresa Mollette’s April 25th remarks to the city council as an attempt to “inflame the environment,” to quote him again, is an example of an effort to light a little Reichstag fire. It is Baughman and Mohr, not Teresa Mollette, who are trying to "inflame the environment."

For example, at one council meeting, Marty Mohr abused his authority as acting president of the city council to angrily denounce "People on the Internet - and I think you all know who you are -- " for spreading rumors in an online chatroom about his having an adulterous affair with a young woman whose name been mentioned in the chatroom. Mohr apparently thought he recognized some of these "People on the Internet" in the front row of the council chambers and he denounced these "gentlemen," as he sarcastically called them, as "crap"; and he said anybody who associated with them were also crap. Since some of these "gentlemen" had wives who were present, the wives naturally took strong exception to his remarks, and pandemonium followed.

No citizen had ever used a council meeting to accuse Mohr of adultery, so why should Mohr use a council meeting to raise such a personal issue and then denounce citizens in the front row as crap? To quote further from Mohr's outburst, he said "Anybody, ANYBODY who'll say anything detrimental to my family, my wife, I will not stand for it!" As I understand it, nobody in the online chatroom had said anything detrimental about Mohr's wife or his family. It was Mohr who was accused of adultery, not his wife or his family, and if he was going to defend anybody at a city council meeting it should not have been his wife or his family but himself. Perhaps it was just an oversight, but he did not deny the adultery charge. Following his outburst, Mohr was reportedly escorted to his car by police. (I listened to Mohr's outburst and the pandemonium that followed it on an audioclip.)

The meeting at which Mohr provoked pandemonium is now being cited as justification for suppressing the right of free speech in public meetings in Portsmouth. Daily Times reporter Jeff Barron recently referred to the disturbances at council meetings as “outbursts,” without pointing out who created the “outbursts.” What those who are attempting to suppress freedom of speech are doing is creating the outbursts that are then used to justify a crackdown on free speech. Baughman characterized Teresa Mollette's mild 26-second criticism of the only African-American council member as a "thrashing." The definition of "thrashing" is to beat with a stick or whip. But it is the erratic Mohr, not Teresa Mollette, who has the reputation of carrying a chip on his shoulder and whip in his hand.

Baughman and Mohr’s ostensible defense of councilman Malone from criticism should be seen for what it is: a cynical attempt to pose as his protectors when it is themselves they are trying to protect. Disappointed as he probably is in his fourth place showing in the mayoral primary, Malone may mistakenly believe Baughman and Mohr are acting on his behalf in making an issue of Teresa Mollette's comments. I believe they are using him for their own political purposes. Baughman and Mohr are the objects of the citizens’ wrath, not Malone, and Malone would be making a serious error if he allows them to use him as an excuse for suppressing free speech.

Baughman and Mohr are laboring under the same illusion those who wield the real power in Portsmouth are laboring under. They think this is twenty-five years ago when the elite had the city manager Barry Feldman in their pocket and controlled the media. They believe they are above criticism and they treat anyone who criticizes them as disturbers of the peace, if not anarchists. Greg Bauer, who was recalled from office last June, had predicted that if he was not retained as mayor Portsmouth would fall into anarchy. Baughman, Mohr and the SOGP crowd they represent are trying by lighting little Reichstag fires to create the impression that Bauer's prophecy is coming true. Because they controlled the news the citizens of Portsmouth got for so long, the elite and their pawns on the council cannot countenance public challenges to their authority. In particular, they cannot stand the freedom of expression and information that the Internet makes possible. They cannot control the Internet, but they continue to try to control public meetings in Portsmouth, setting the conditions and terms under which those meetings take place, in contravention of the spirit of Ohio's Sunshine laws. The attempt to eliminate the opportunity of citizens to address and, yes, to criticize the city council on issues not on the agenda is just part of a wider effort to stifle freedom of speech. Whether they succeed may be decided at the next council meeting, on May 23rd, when another vote is expected on Mohr's motion.

Write-in

In the weeks prior to the mayoral election, I spoke to acquaintances about the slate of candidates. And the prevailing opinion was there was no candidate on the slate worth voting for. “It’s very discouraging,” was one complaint. “I’m sitting this one out,” was another.

My circle of acquaintances is not large, but it is diverse, including some fairly conservative individuals. But liberal or conservative, they said they were disgusted by Portsmouth politics and frustrated by the slim mayoral pickings, so they decided to stay away from the polls on May 3.

What surprised me was not how many decided not to vote but how many expressed regret that Frank Gerlach was not a candidate. Even some Republicans expressed this view, and they said they knew other Republicans who felt the same way. They had not felt that way in the past, but after seven years of Bauer, Gerlach began to look petty good. I don’t claim to know if such feelings are widespread since I am reporting on a fairly small sample. I haven’t seen any “Bring Back Gerlach” bumper stickers.

But I know I felt most of the serious candidates were compromised by their involvement in the corruption of the Bauer years, in particular by the Marting scandal, and they have not done or said anything to lead me to believe they have turned over a new leaf. None of those on the ballot publicly stated they were against making the Marting building the new city hall, but Gerlach has. None of those on the ballot said publicly the current form of city government is inefficient and should be changed, but Gerlach has. None of those on the ballot has said the Municipal Building is worth saving, but Gerlach has. None of those on the ballot has served as the elected mayor of Portsmouth, but Gerlach has.

Unfortunately, Gerlach did not choose to run. Perhaps he believes he has paid his dues and can live without the hassles of public office. Still, I decided I would rather vote for somebody who was qualified but not on the ballot than for any of the unqualified who were. I decided it was a waste of time trying to figure out who was the lesser of several evils. Instead of staying away from the polls, I decided to go and vote for someone I wish had been a candidate.

I was warned that writing in a candidate is complicated. It isn’t. On the inside of the sleeve that holds ballot, there is column for writing in a candidate. All it takes is a pencil. I did my civic duty. I voted, even if it was for someone not on the ballot.

Scioto Cesspool

The now infamous Marting building

As infamous as it deservedly is, the city’s purchase of the Marting building was not unique. It is part of a pattern in which members of Portsmouth’s heavily abated privileged clique unload distressed property on the public. The public continues to pay long afterwards because the property the elite unloads typically is unsuited for public use because of its condition and its location. Like the Marting and the Kendrick buildings, such properties usually have to be extensively repaired or renovated. The hidden long-range costs of such repairs and renovations are rarely acknowledged at the time the property is unloaded because that would show the folly of purchasing old but architecturally insignificant structures when new ones, designed for the specific uses to which they would be put, would be cheaper and far more efficient in the long run. Count on it – the 100-year-old Marting building will end up costing the public an arm and a leg.

But that is nothing new. It goes on all the time. As an example, let’s review a couple of house purchases by Shawnee State U. On 9 April 2001 SSU agreed to purchase 3060 Camelot Drive, which now houses Shawnee State’s president. As was the case with the Marting building, the public paid far too much for 3060 Camelot ($412,000), which, because of its location and condition and lack of parking space, never should have been bought in the first place, at any price.

 

3060 Camelot. Note truck, materials, and crack in driveway

Since it was not his own but the public’s money he was spending, there was little motivation for George Clayton, the Shawnee State trustee who brokered the deal for 3060 Camelot, to bargain with the doctor who owned it. Clayton could afford to be generous to a neighbor on the Hill, and he was. In a flat real estate market and for a prematurely old house that the departing doctor was having trouble selling, Clayton agreed to pay a whopping purchase price. And that was just the beginning.

In 2001, the Portsmouth architectural firm of Tanner Stone made an inspection of 3060 Camelot for the trustees and declared it sound. The Tanner Stone report concluded, “it must be said this is a truly fine house. It appears that it was well built and, possibly more importantly, has been well maintained.” The Tanner Stone conclusion was, to put it mildly, misleading. But Clayton got what he wanted, an endorsement of his decision to purchase 3060 Camelot, just as the Marting Foundation got from Ken Rase the high appraisal it wanted to unload the Marting building at an inflated price.

From top to bottom and in between, 3060 Camelot was a lemon. Let’s start at the top, with the cedar-shingled roof. The contractor who had previously done sealing work on the roof claimed, according to the Tanner Stone report, that if the roof continued to be resealed every three years, it could last for ten or more years. At such time in the future when the roof might need to be replaced, it could be done for as little as $10,000 the same contractor claimed, according to the Tanner Stone report.

Let us now fast forward, not fifteen, not ten, but to just a couple of years, and what we discover is that the roof on 3060 Camelot had to be replaced. The cost was not $10,000, not $15,000, but $30,000! And there were additional costs connected with the roof. There were drains, which cost $2,618, and gutters:, which cost $466.

How about the middle of the house, the living area? According to the Tanner Stone report the house had been well maintained, but I was at a trustees’ meeting at which it was reported that newly appointed president Rita Rice Morris on her first tour of the house had found the main living area in sore need of repainting and re-papering. The cost was $7,590. And of course the house had to be furnished. The cost for the furniture was $15,000. The university had previously purchased furniture for a temporary presidential house, but that furniture was reportedly not the right style for 3060 Camelot. I will get back to that temporary president’s house later.

In SSU files that I viewed under Ohio’s open records law, I found a long list of items that needed to be repaired or replaced at 3060 Camelot. Just repairing the shower, for example, cost $1,659. There is a hot tub on the rear porch, and keeping that up is no small expense. Servicing it cost $803 and a new cover for it $463. There was $2,406 for leaks around fans, etc. There were thousands of dollars in other costs to add to the $412,000. The point is there are immediate expenses with an older house that would not have been the case with a new one.

Now let’s look at the foundation of 3060 Camelot, which is located on a hill. The ground on which 3060 Camelot is located has proved somewhat unstable. In building 3060 Camelot in 1980, the contractor had apparently used fill to provide an even foundation for the house, which was also the case in 1990, when another garage was added. What struck me when I first drove several miles up to 3060 Camelot about five years ago were the large cracks in the asphalt in front of the house. Those cracks may or may not have any relationship to a potential problem that Tanner Stone acknowledged in their report: the garage that had been added and an adjoining retaining wall needed to be shored up to prevent them sliding down the hill. The approximate cost for securing the garage and wall was $15,000 - $20,000, according to Tanner Stone. The doctor claimed that work could be done for a fraction of that figure, which he promised to do before the sale. But is it only the garage and wall that are unstable? Will 3060 ever settle down?

The most surprising thing I saw in the files I obtained were the costs connected with maintaining and improving the grounds around 3060. One item in the file revealed the cost of tree and stump removal: $9,250. And there are many thousands of dollars more listed, including $3,150 for (presumably) another tree removal and $1,645 for landscaping. Perhaps the house and grounds had been well maintained, as Tanner Stone reported. But if that is the case then even well-maintained houses only 20 years old can be money pits.

What makes this all the more hard to take is that the trustees had previously committed to building a new presidential house on or near the campus. The trustees had authorized the creation of a President’s House Committee, of which I was a member and of which George Clayton was chairman, to plan for that house. Two things that the committee agreed upon early on was that “the house must be in close proximity to SSU’s campus” (7 Jan. 1999), and that it should not be a “Shawnee brick” square box house. Susan Warsaw, a member of the committee, urged us to “think outside box.” Instead of hiring the usual architectural suspect, Tanner Stone, the committee selected a young Columbus architect, Michael Hasara, and the committee encouraged him to be creative. He came up with an original design that the committee approved, but George Clayton and William McKinley, another member of the committee, early on began criticizing the design and undermining the architect. (For a view of Hasara’s extraordinary work, in both traditional and modern styles, explore his website at www.hasara.com) And to see what might have been, look at the proposed design for SSU. It was to be built on the southeast corner of Waller and Second St., where a parking lot was built instead.

The SSU president's house that never was

After the committee had chosen a site on campus and was preparing for the groundbreaking, and the university had already paid Hasara about $10,000 of his fee, George Clayton picked a fight with the young architect and accused him of refusing to make changes in the design that he Clayton had asked for. I don’t know what these changes were, because Clayton was using the House Committee as a front and rubber stamp for himself and the trustees. Hasara told others at SSU via email that Clayton was misrepresenting the situation. When he learned about Hasara’s email, Clayton did his Don Corleone imitation. Loyalty is what Clayton expects above all from others, even though he seems congenitally incapable of it himself. I knew Hasara only slightly, but I got to know Clayton well enough to know whose word I would believe.

Hasara was fired and the commitment to build a house in close proximity to the SSU campus was scuttled. And what better place was there for a new president to live than on the Hill, not far from George Clayton and other trustees? And why waste money building a new house anywhere when there was a deserving doctor on the Hill with a house on his hands?

I now suspect that one of the reasons Hasara was terminated and the plans for the presidential house on campus were scuttled was that several influential trustees had concluded that in hiring James P. Chapman as president they had made a mistake. Chapman was too close to the faculty, among whom he had tremendous support – the most popular president the university had ever had, the Daily Times reported editorially. The trustees had never been able to get along with the faculty, and would be suspicious of any president who did. The trustees preferred a president like Clive Veri, however incompetent and unpopular with the faculty he may have been, because Veri knew how the game was played. For one thing, he lived in a home up on the Hill. The trustees decided to locate the president’s house and the new president that they would get to replace Chapman a good distance – physically and symbolically – from the campus, even though such a decision went in the face of what the trustees had publicly committed themselves to.

According to the minutes of t the trustees’ meeting at which they approved the purchase of former trustee Jo Ann Thatcher’s 1828 Franklin Boulevard house, the chairman of the trustees, Frank Waller “stated that this [Thatcher’s house] was an interim home and that sometime in the future, a presidential home would be built close to or on campus. Mr. [George L.] Davis voiced his approval of the resolution even though he had no vote at this meeting, stating that it shows a commitment to build a presidential home on campus.” Actually all that this palaver about building a presidential house on campus showed was how far some trustees would go to create a smokescreen to cover up the obvious conflict of interest they had in buying a former trustee’s house as an interim house at an inflated price of $230,000. When the university tried to sell the Thatcher house, it had no takers at this fraudulent figure. After being on the market for an embarrassingly long time, 1828 Franklin was sold not for $230,000 but for $180,000, the tax-payers taking a $50,000 loss, along with the thousands of dollars spent on it in the interim.

Taxpayers took $50,000 loss on Thatcher house

There is a possibility that in purchasing 1828 Franklin and 3060 Camelot SSU may have violated state law, which forbids the state paying more than 10% above the appraised value of property. I’ve been told the Thatcher house was appraised at $200,000 (and that may have been one of those suspiciously high appraisals that take place when a property of the clique goes on the market), so in paying 15% more for it, SSU appears to have gone over the 10% limit. The Thatchers reportedly got a twelfth hour offer that led trustee chairman Frank Waller to increase SSU’s offer. That incidentally, also is what happened at 3060 Camelot. At the twelfth hour the selling price was jacked up because the doctor claimed he had a higher offer from another party. Even if that offer was made, should it change the appraised value of a house? Does all this sound fishier than something cooked up in Johnson’s Restaurant? Surely, if there was anything illegal or unethical, SSU counsel Stephen P. Donohue, who is rumored to be an Ohio Assistant Attorney General and who has gone on to become a part-time judge, would have been on it like Gangbusters.

If 1828 Franklin and 3060 Camelot were money pits, Martings could turn out to be Scioto's great cesspool. Estimates for Marting’s renovation have ranged from 2 to 10 million dollars. Most tax-payers in Portsmouth could tell you which of those two figures will be closer to the eventual cost. Through public feeding tubes and other means, public monies will pour into the hundred year-old building for the next quarter of a century. “I know every stinking inch of that building,” a former employee of Marting’s said recently at a public meeting. What is the source of that stink? If the physical foundation of 3060 Camelot is somewhat mushy, the moral foundation of the Marting building is even more so. Located as it is in the heart of Portsmouth’s downtown red light district, the illegitimate offspring of a phony Foundation and a corrupt city council, Marting’s is just up the street and around the corner from the law offices of George Clayton’s cousin.

SSU Turmoil

In the 1990s, when Shawnee State University was warned by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools that it had to improve its governance problems or risk its accreditation, the administration gave the appearance of allowing the faculty a voice in governance. But once the accreditation was granted, the administration resorted to its familiar underhanded methods, methods that have alienated many faculty in the past and continue to create turmoil today.

Shawnee State is one of the 217 small liberal arts colleges that US News ranked for 2005. The 217 colleges are divided, by quality, into four tiers, the best in the top tier, the worst at the bottom. Shawnee State is one of 53 colleges in Tier 4, the bottom group. Not only that, it is near the bottom of the bottom group, and it has been ranked near the bottom of the bottom for at least a decade. By reputation (on a scale of 1 to 5) SSU is currently ranked at 1.6. There are only 4 colleges among the 217 that have a worse reputation. Here is US News' bottom tier: Note the arrow next to SSU, near the bottom:

SSU near the bottom of US News bottom tier

From the time it was founded in 1986, SSU has been the beneficiary of many extra millions of dollars in state aid. While Speaker of the House Vern Riffe was alive, SSU occupied a privileged position among Ohio’s state universities. As a result of its most-favored-university status, SSU increased in campus size and in academic quality, though not so much in quality as in size. But in spite of these improvements, SSU has one of the worst reputations not only among the small colleges in Ohio but among all the small colleges in the nation. Why?

Why does SSU continue to have such a terrible reputation? Why does it continue to be ranked by US News near the bottom of the bottom? One of the reasons is that the business and professional clique that controls Portsmouth also controls SSU. They control Portsmouth through the mayor and the city council, and, though none of them are educators, they control SSU through the university lawyer and the board of trustees. While they are willing to pay lip service to the idea, most trustees have never really accepted, indeed some are not even aware of, the principle of shared governance that is supposed to be in place at every accredited institution of higher education.

The special role of the university in modern American society is different from the business model. To accomplish its unique mission, to succeed as an institution of higher learning, a university requires unusually close cooperation between administration and faculty. But the trustees and the administration at SSU, acting on behalf of those who control Portsmouth, have traditionally treated the faculty like spoiled children, or at best as ungrateful employees who do not do what they are told. In the past, a North Central Association accrediting team acknowledged the faculty’s feeling that a politicized board of trustees exerted undue influence over the university.

SSU is currently experiencing turmoil over the trustees’ decision to switch from a quarter to a semester calendar. Even some of those who prefer semesters are protesting the way in which the trustees and the administration went about making and implementing the decision. SSU cannot possibly make the difficult transition to a new calendar without the faculty’s cooperation, because it requires an enormous effort by the faculty, apart from their heavy teaching responsibilities, to change to semesters. The trustees have the statutory authority to declare a change from quarters to semesters, but there is nothing in the faculty’s contract that says they must serve on the many committees that are necessary to do the thousands of things required to make the change. Faculty are a volunteer army, but before they fight a war declared by the trustees they need to be convinced the war is worth fighting. The administration has never convinced enough faculty that the semester war is worth fighting. The administration’s line now is that no matter what some faculty might feel about semesters, the decision to switch has been made and, to quote the administration's line, “the train has left the station.” The train may have left the station, but are there any passengers on it?

Just as Portsmouth has been controlled by a privileged clique of business and professional people who have more dollars than sense, SSU has been controlled by the same privileged group through the board of trustees and through the privileged clique's point man, university lawyer Stephen P. Donohue.

No matter how corrupt or incompetent a mayor may be, the privileged clique will try to keep him in office just as long as he serves the interests of that clique. That was the case with Mayor Bauer, who was recalled last year, in spite of the clique's campaign to keep him in office, and that was the case with Clive Veri, who resigned in 1998 under pressure and rumors of scandal after serving as the controversial president for nine years. Unequal to the challenges of the present, let alone the future, the desperate Veri came up with a nostalgic 1950s solution for SSU in the 1990s – football, fraternities, and semesters. Even though he had been unable to convince the faculty in nine years of lobbying and even though the major state universities in the area – Ohio State, Ohio University, and the University of Cincinnati – remain on the quarter system, Veri in his final months as president convinced the trustees to mandate conversion to semesters.

See "Veri's Revenge" in the archives

James P. Chapman, Veri’s successor, was denied reappointment in large part because he had concluded switching to semesters did not make sense. Chapman was replaced by Provost Michael Field, who was appointed Interim President by the trustees, in spite of the documented views of the faculty that Field was a failure as provost. However, with support from some trustees, Field threw his hat in the ring for the presidency, but the presidential search committee kicked his hat out. Even though influential trustees wanted the obliging Field as president and would have appointed him over faculty objections, the presidential search committee wisely withheld that opportunity from them by declining to include Field among the finalists the trustees would select from. Rejected by the search committee, Field resumed his job as provost, in spite of the highly critical evaluations he had earlier received from the faculty. What does someone who had failed as provost and then failed in his bid for the presidency do? Elsewhere he might have to find a job at another university. At SSU he resumed being provost and was appointed to oversee the most momentous and controversial change in the history of the university – the conversion to semesters.

2002 article in student alternative newspaper

Field is the engineer of the train that left the station without the passengers. Is this any way to run a railroad? Is this any way to end the turmoil? Are semesters a way to help improve SSU’s terrible reputation? I don’t think so and neither did any of the accrediting teams who have visited it in the last twenty years. SSU has some very serious problems, but being a quarter institution is not one of them.

Feeding Tubes

How are downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo alike? Both downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo are in a “persistent vegetative state.” Both downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo have been kept alive for a long time by feeding tubes that provide expensive sustenance for the comatose patient, sustenance paid for by tax-payer dollars. Finally, both downtown Portsmouth and Terri Schiavo have been exploited by cynical politicians and lawyers for political and financial gain.

Downtown Portsmouth has been kept on feeding tubes for so long by lawyers and politicians that the kind of initiative and vision that would be required to revive the patient has been bred out of most local politicians and business people. What a prophet Jesse Stuart turned out to be! (See my Jan. 29, 2004 blog.) The elite of Portsmouth have been on federal, state, and city feeding tubes so long that they have come to think of them not as an artificial temporary support but as the aorta of the local economy. Many local business and professional people have been abated so much they are a bit batty. They have been subsidized so long they are intoxicated by their own dependency, and perhaps nobody more than Neal Hatcher.

To continue the Terri Schiavo analogy, Clayton Johnson is the Bill Frist of Portsmouth. He claims that the downtown can be revived if only we don’t remove the feeding tubes, as long as we don’t cut ourselves off from public funding, as long as we don’t stop the city government from moving in to the empty Marting department store and the empty former Adelphia Cable building.

Marting's: sustained by feeding tubes

How do Johnson and his cohorts explain the current dire state of downtown Portsmouth? According to the grim fairy tale he and others began spinning in 1980, and continue spinning twenty-five years later, downtown Portsmouth was about to be restored to its previous robust condition when three malicious councilmen prevented tubes from being hooked up to the area. Why did they do that? What did the councilmen have to gain by allowing downtown Portsmouth to continue in a comatose state? Were there any financial and political gains for them? Their accusers never claimed there were. The councilmen were supposedly just malicious men out to kill downtown Portsmouth.

The councilmen, in turn, claimed that the mall was never a realistic possibility. It was a fantasy, a scheme, a smokescreen, a scam. It was a crooked land grab deal worked out between then city manager Barry Feldman and the local elite. Johnson was an architect of the 1980 mall deal, just as he was of the Marting scam. A front-page story in the Daily Times back on January 23, 1980, described him as “an attorney who was instrumental in helping prepare the shopping center agreement . . . .”

The best evidence that the councilmen were right about the mall being a smokescreen was that the mall never materialized, even though the councilmen were recalled from office within the year and replaced by pro-mall supporters, while Barry Feldman was kept on as city manager. Neither in 1980 or in the twenty-five years since then has a mall ever been built in downtown Portsmouth. We are supposed to believe there was a brief alignment of the planets, back in 1980, and having failed to tap into the public and private monies that were available at that magic moment, the mall could never be built. As recalled City Council member Ann Sydnor explained this alignment of the planets to me, “The recall [of the three councilmen] was successful. They were removed from office. Three people that supported the revitalization of the downtown were appointed to their seats, but by the time this process took place the money had dried up.” If Portsmouth were a realistic site for a mall, why would public and private funds dry up and dry up forever? There will always be public funds as long as there are feeding tubes.

If Johnson had been willing to admit in the beginning that Marting’s was a commercially worthless white elephant, and had arranged to give it to the city in return for the Foundation’s tax relief, he and the Foundation would have some right to a claim of philanthropy, although giving away something that is not only not worth anything to you but is costing you money in the form of taxes, does not make you a Mother Teresa. Johnson was “instrumental,” to use the word used to describe his role in the 1980 mall shenanigans, in subverting Ohio’s Sunshine laws to arrange the outrageous sale of the Marting building to the city for $2,000,000. Having a corrupt mayor and complaisant city council to work with, Johnson got greedy and overreached, and he and the city have been dealing with the political and economic consequences of his poor judgment ever since. The scuttlebutt is that when former mayor Bauer is down in his cups he blames Johnson for the miserable mess that led to the mayor’s recall. So do a lot of other people in Portsmouth.

Clayton Johnson exploits Portsmouth’s romanticized memories of its putatively prosperous past, when Chillicothe Street teemed with shoppers who had real jobs and when Marting’s was the downtown anchor store. Marting’s is the anchor to a past that people want to remember and want to believe can be revived. Playing on people’s nostalgia, exploiting their fond memories and their unrealistic hopes, the Marting Foundation is wrapping their gift to the city in the dearest of downtown memories. “Do not give up on downtown! Do not tear down the Marting building! Do not desecrate the past!” That is the Foundation’s public relations propaganda. Who growing up in Portsmouth in the 1900s did not have some fond experience of buying a Marting’s Christmas or birthday present? I’ve even been told people who might not be able to afford the prices at Marting’s still managed to share in its prestigious name by using a Marting’s box to wrap their gift in. Johnson is now wrapping the past in the Marting building, that undistinguished architectural box, and more recently, since Judge Marshall ruled the sale illegal, is willing to let the empty box go for only the $400,000 he did not return to the city.

And then there is the other Clayton, Johnson's cousin George. It is a shame that somebody did not make living wills for Marting’s and Kenrick’s. Think of how much the taxpayers would have benefited if they did not have to pay for the feeding tubes that are being attached to these private buildings when historic and architecturally important buildings like the N&W terminal and the Municipal Building don’t have a prayer of surviving.

Kenrick's: sustained by feeding tubes

I have made a living will, and if the Marting Building was endowed with consciousness I think it would too. The Marting’s building would be content to survive in the memories of the people who had happy experiences there, and not allow itself to be hooked up to a life-support system that would enable it to survive as a shell of itself when the millions to renovate it could have been spent on a new municipal building.

Terri Schiavo’s parents naturally and understandably cannot give up the hope that she might miraculously recover. They have the pictures of their healthy daughter and their memories to sustain them in their faith, just as we have the floodwall murals as memories of Portsmouth’s mythicized past.

Floodwall Murals, Inc.: sustained by feeding tubes

The floodwall murals could not have come into existence and could not continue to exist without the feeding tubes through which it receives public monies. From the start, one of the chief justifications for the floodwall murals was the tourists it would attract. George Clayton’s white elephant properties in Boneyfiddle were purchased to handle the flood of tourists that have not yet come but are still anticipated. The murals have been on the floodwall for about a decade, and the flood of tourists has not materialized. There is at best a steady trickle, but hardly enough to justify the millions of public monies that have already been, and will subsequently be, spent on the project, monies a good part of which will find a way into the pockets of Portsmouth’s over-privileged. “If you build it, they will come,” seems to be the message the Wall supporters spread. Who will be surprised if more historic buildings are torn down and new ones built with the abatements and other perquisites that will flow through the feeding tubes, all to accommodate the anticipated crowds of tourists who will come to see the murals?

Adelphia building: to be sustained by feeding tubes

Speaking of feeding tubes, 209 Chillicothe Street (pictured below), which is in the next block down from Marting's, offers food for reflection. A pet store struggled to make a go of it at this location before it was vacated to rejoin the number of forlorn empty downtown storefronts. Then a fly-by-night flea market occupied the premises, the hand lettered name of which can still be seen on the wall outside the entrance. The seedy characters who lingered about the flea market added a certain down-and-out authenticity to lower Chillicothe, and we could find some consolation in the fact that if pets could not make a go of it at that downtown location, at least fleas could. But then the flea market flew the coop, leaving a smashed front left door pane, which you can see in the photo below. Parts of Chillicothe St. is beginning to look like John St.

409 Chillicothe St.: connected to feeding tubes?

What about feeding tubes? This unprepossessing piece of commercial property was purchased for $45,000 in 1996. In 2005, less than ten years later, in spite of the failed businesses that have occupied it, 409 Chillicothe Street is assessed for $166,390, with improvements of course. And since assessment figures are usually lower than market value, the property is possibly worth appreciably more, on paper at least. How can that be? I suspect there is a feeding tube connected to it somewhere, somehow, because 409 Chillicothe is owned by a Hatcher. If there is any family in Portsmouth who knows about feeding tubes, it is the Hatchers.

Quotes from RECALL

Ex-Mayor Bauer at his final Council meeting


Next Wednesday evening, March 16, at 7PM in Flohr Hall of the SSU library, there will be a showing of Recall, a 60 minute video on the recall of Mayor Bauer. The showing will be followed by an open forum on the recall and on the issues that prompted it, including the sale of the Marting's building.

What follows are a some quotations from the video.

Asked if he had ever seen a more intense division in the city than the one developing during the recall campaign, Jeff Barron replied, “No, I haven’t. For years there were maybe four of five people in City Council meetings. Now, there are maybe sixty to seventy people.”

Jeff Barron, Portsmouth Daily Times


“The guy at the top [Mayor Bauer] is actually a bottom dweller.”

Lee Scott, Recall organizer


“The most significant thing about a recall is if that person is recalled . . . they cannot run for that office for a period of time.”

Frank Gerlach, former mayor of Portsmouth.


“We were recalled [in 1980] not because we were opposed to a downtown mall but because we were opposed to the actions of the City Manager [Barry Feldman].”

Harold Daub, former City Council member


“Lawyer C. Clayton Johnson, a foundation trustee involved in the sale [of the Marting building] could not be reached for comment and did not return calls.”

Reporter for the Columbus Dispatch


“He [Mayor Bauer] misled council on the value and condition of the [Marting] building. It ain’t worth anything.”

Marty Mohr, current City Council member


“If people were upset and concerned about the Marting building, one would think that when it was being discussed in council meetings that citizens would have come forward then. So to give you a valid reason why it’s become a factor now, I don’t know.”

Ann Sydnor, former City Council member.


“I’m writing a letter to the editor right now trying to figure out why in the world a man would pay three times the amount for the [Marting] building. When we could’ve got it for $800,000, we paid $2,000,000. It don’t make sense.”

Tim Loper, current City Council member


“My council person Mr. Baughman and I have not seen eye to eye on a lot of things, and I refuse to go to him when I have a problem. I call somebody else.”

Dee Penix


“The city lost out on that stretch of land [15th St. Viaduct] because it was reported that the property had been contaminated, but when it was sold there was nothing on the deed that said it was contaminated. The buyer started selling the property off in sections . . . and we’re finding out the city sold it to him for $60,000 and he has already sold one parcel for about $150,000 and another parcel for roughly $150,000 and another for a few hundred thousand . . . The city lost out on a lot of dollars that were going into someone else’s pocket.”

Bob Mollette, current City Council member


“He [Mayor Bauer] has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar . . . He’s kind of stealing and just turning around and laughing about it. . . . So we’re recalling him.”

Joe Ferguson, Ward 1 resident


“I’ve even had people come to me and tell me they’re his [Bauer’s] drug-dealer – that he came to them to score cocaine and his wife buys marijuana from them. But they’ve never come to me. I’ve never seen them do anything. . . . But, yes, it’s very well known in the city.”

Lee Scott


“I think the recall movement is a divisive way of tearing down the community. But I do feel our prayers have somewhat given a positive side to the entire situation.”

David Malone, minister and current City Council member


“A lot of people are angry here, and I think the angry people will be out and vote. They have a reason to go to the polls this time.”

Austin Leedom, editor Shawnee Sentinel


POST-RECALL COMMENTS


“People have computers. Twenty years ago they may have gotten away with it. But today computers will tell on them. . . . David just slew Goliath.

Bob Mollette


“I think the city, the community, has spoken, and right now Bauer does not have control. His people, who have had him as their puppet these many years, do not have control right now.”

Teresa Mollette


“This is probably the turning point in this town. These men threw everything they could at us. They tried to change the attention away from the issues to our past records. I think it speaks volumes that the people of this town decided to come to us, people they knew they could trust, to find out what the truth was.”

John Welton, “Doug Deepe”


“Mayor Bauer was recalled last night. Voters decided to give him the boot by quite a large margin.”

WSAZ Channel 3


“I still stand behind our record. We’ve done a good job. We’ve been very successful in preparing the city for future industrial expansion. I think we’ve done a good job. . . . I will survive in one form or another. I had a business in Portsmouth before I became mayor, an advertising and design business, a background in printing also. And we have opportunities out there that we’ll follow up on. We will survive.”

Mayor Bauer, speaking to a reporter after he was recalled.


“FIRED”

Headline in the Daily Times the morning after the recall of Mayor Bauer.




Bauer Graphics, still closed as of March 2005

Hatcherville

Neal Hatcher's Campus View, known as Hatcherville

While the Marting’s rip-off has gotten most of the attention in the last couple of years, another real estate shenanigan has taken place over in the 3rd St. area, which residents of that neighborhood have cynically nicknamed “Hatcherville.” The shenanigans in Hatcherville make the $2 million Marting’s deal on Chillicothe St. look like small potatoes. When it comes to the properties in Hatcherville, the relationship between the city of Portsmouth, the developer Neal Hatcher, and Shawnee State University is as shadowy as a midnight drug deal in an alley on John Street. 

A student housing contract Neal Hatcher has with SSU stipulates a value of $2.5 million on the first two of his 3rd St. Campus View buildings (Campus View I) and $3 million on his third and fourth buildings (Campus View II), with those figures increasing by 3% each year, plus abatements that stretch from ten to fifteen years. So $5.5 million, which increases 3% each year, is what SSU would have to pay Hatcher if it wanted to buy Campus View I and II from him. Hatcher has since built two more buildings (Campus View III) and he has plans and approval for constructing three more buildings in the area for a total of nine. Using the prices established for Campus View I and II in the contract as a guide, I estimate that the value of the nine units could be at least $13.5 million. If the inflationary increase of Campus View II over Campus View I in the contract with SSU is applied, his nine buildings might be worth about $15 million.

Hatcher would not have been able to pull off this land grab, including the sweetheart abatements, without the collusion of the City Council and of ex-mayor Greg Bauer in particular. City Council ordinances passed in 2002 gave Bauer the authority to act on his own in acquiring and disposing of properties on 3rd St., properties that the 2002 ordinances treat as “blighted” and “deteriorated.” Ordinance 2002-79 authorized the mayor to enter into an agreement with Campus View Associates (Neal Hatcher) to obtain private property for the purpose of erecting student housing. Far longer and murkier, Ordinance 2002-36 repealed Chapter 151 of the codified city ordinances and enacted a new one, called simply “Urban Renewal.” The new ordinance begins, “It is hereby found and determined that there exists within the City blighted, deteriorated and deteriorating areas of the nature defined in this chapter which substantially impair and arrest the sound growth of the community . . .”

Treating the 3rd St. area as “blighted” was part of the scam, because the blighted tag on the neighborhood may have put the deal in compliance with legal guidelines for abatements and it may also have enabled Hatcher, working closely with Bauer, to hold the threat of eminent domain over the heads of any property owners who resisted his scheme. The City Council was the Cosa Nostra and Mayor Bauer the godfather of Campus View. Bauer was empowered by the ordinances to acquire and transfer property without any accountability. For example, properties on the northwest corner of 3rd and Waller Street, which the City had acquired from Todd and Julia Ramey and Julian Mohr, were transferred by Bauer, acting for the City, to Hatcher. Normally, I was told, an ordinance by City Council is required for the City to acquire property. The 2002 ordinances, if I understand their murky language, authorized the Mayor to acquire property without an ordinance from the City Council.

I tried to find out from city officials at the Municipal Building why and how Bauer, acting on behalf of the City, had become the intermediary in this transfer of private property from the Rameys and Julian Mohr to Hatcher. I asked first City Clerk Aeh and next Mayor Kalb and then City Auditor Trent Williams if they could tell me why. They could not. The City Auditor did say he knew that the City was not involved financially in the transfer, that it paid out no money, because if it had his office would have known about it. This only further mystified the transfer of the property from the Rameys and Julian Mohr to the City and from the City to Hatcher. The City Auditor suggested I ask City Solicitor Kuhn if he could clarify the City’s role in the transfer of the property. So I emailed the Solicitor and requested under Ohio’s open records law if he had any documents that might explain why the City acted as intermediary. In his response to me, he wrote, “ Your 2/11/05 communication recited that it is ‘a request under Ohio's sunshine laws on public documents.’ Please be advised that the City Solicitor's office has no documents relating to the transaction described in your message. As City Solicitor, it [is] not my responsibility to determine ‘why’ the City does things. Rather, it is my responsibility to render legal advice to the City, and that advice is privileged and confidential between attorney and client.”

I was struck by how little city officials apparently knew about city business. Their responses reminded me of the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, and speak-no-evil monkeys, although since we are talking about Porksmouth we might substitute three pigs (pictured below) for the three monkeys.

Below is the front page of the warranty deed recording the transfer of the property from the City of Portsmouth to Campus View Associates.

The second page of the deed below shows that the only City official whose signature is on it, authorizing the transfer, is Mayor Bauer. The only other signature is that of Stephen L. Oliver, Clayton Johnson’s partner, who prepared the document.

What the rigmarole of the 2002 ordinances did was lay the groundwork for Neal Hatcher to acquire property on 3rd Street that was not only not blighted or deteriorated but that should have increased in value because of its proximity to the university. Because 3rd Street between Bond and Waller was treated as a blighted neighborhood, Hatcher was able, with the connivance of the City Council and Mayor Bauer, to acquire potentially valuable property for much less than he would have otherwise have had to pay for it. This is another instance in which the so-called free market is replaced in Portsmouth by the pork market, in which those at the top are able to exploit those below them and squeeze some public dollars from the government in the bargain. "This little piggy went to market . . ."

Because Hatcher’s Campus View properties on 3rd St. are abated, he pays no taxes on them, and because he pays no taxes on them the records at the County Courthouse list no sale price. When a property is abated and off the tax-rolls, the County has no interest in what it sold for or what its value is. County records do show that the City acted as the intermediary in the transfer of the property on the northwest corner of 3rd and Waller to Hatcher. Julian Mohr transferred one parcel to the City and Todd Ramey transferred the other. The City then transferred those properties to Hatcher and Campus View. I have been told that some of the property owners on 3rd Street were surprised to find out that they had sold their property to Hatcher, because they had thought they were dealing with the City. So they were curious why the City did what it did. I continue to be curious as well, and it is not just idle curiosity.

I can think of one possibility why the City acted as intermediary. Possibly the City had to be involved in the transfer of the property from private citizens to private developer, even if just nominally, to provide Hatcher with the legal cover he needed to back up his eminent domain threats and to justify the abatements and other financial advantages he might qualify for under the ordinances. Just as money can be laundered so, apparently, can property. We don’t know what Neal Hatcher paid the Rameys and Julian Mohr in particular, because the financial figures for those transactions are not matters of public record. We don’t know whether Hatcher in this instance used the threat of eminent domain to deprive them of a fair price, or whether he may have had reason to reward one or more of them with a high price as a reward for political favors rendered. We don’t know because we all live in Hatcherville, not just the people on 3rd St., and where real estate deals involving Hatcher are concerned we are all in the dark.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Andrew O. Clausing, circa 1980

Andrew O. Clausing (1922-2002) was a controversial political figure in Portsmouth, but on the basis of research I have done, I believe he was an honest man who was mauled by the Portsmouth media and the monied class back in 1980. But unlike Harold Daub, the subject of my previous blog, Clausing did not live to see his vindication. He did live long enough, however, to see that the huge corporate computers by which he had once made his living as a programmer and about which he had mixed feelings, become small and cheap enough to be, literally, in the hands of ordinary people, who have created a revolution in communications. Although he passed away as recently as 2002, Clausing probably could not have imagined that just three years later he would be resurrected in online newspapers and forums, and in blogs (short for weblogs), which reach thousands of readers through cyberspace in the rapidly evolving phenomenon called the internet. (See my archived 29 July 2004 blog, “Digital Revolution.”)

If you controlled the Portsmouth media back in 1980, you could control the minds, emotions, and perceptions of many people, as the demonizing of Clausing, Daub, and Mark Price that took place illustrates. Back then the Portsmouth Daily Times and the radio stations WPAY and WNXT could get people to believe almost anything, such as the lie that Clausing, Daub, and Price were anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. In a WPAY editorial (broadcast 3 February 1980), the general manager Tom Reeder asked whether Clausing, Daub, and Price “HAVE THE GUTS TO GIVE THE REASON [WHY THEY FIRED CITY MANAGER BARRY FELDMAN], WILL THEY OPENLY SAY THEY ARE AGAINST JEWS AND CATHOLICS?” Not only were they accused of being against Jews and Catholics, they were also accused of being enemies of all the residents of Portsmouth, where they supposedly pursued their goal of ruining the city.

The media campaign against the three councilmen was so effective that Clausing found people he had known all his life believing what they were reading in the newspaper and hearing on the radio about him. He was even compared to Hitler. Twenty-five years later there are still people on the Hill who believe he was a petty dictator. Having been a young Marine who fought in the South Pacific in the Second World War, Clausing knew what it was like to be under attack by the enemies of freedom, but he hardly could have anticipated being attacked as an enemy of the people whose freedom he had once risked his life defending. But would Vietnam veteran and triple amputee Max Cleland have ever thought he would lose his congressional seat because he would be accused of being unpatriotic?

As an example of the kind of media attacks against Clausing I am referring to, days before the election in 1980 in which Clausing would be recalled from office, a vitriolic editorial in the Portsmouth Daily Times (31 Oct. 1980) claimed that “the government of Portsmouth practically has been held hostage” by three councilmen whose malicious willfulness threatened the “survival of the city itself.” The councilmen were not only against the mall, the editorial claimed, they were threatening the city itself, a charge as vague as it was preposterous. The editorial was unsigned but may have been written by Don Smith, the editor, or possibly Paul Penix, the publisher. But whoever wrote the editorial may have consulted a thesaurus for additional terms of abuse to heap upon the three councilmen. The editorial called the actions of Clausing, Daub, and Price illegal, hateful, shameful, disgraceful, and contemptible. The editorial called on voters “to end this reign of arrogance, cowardice, incompetence and neglect.”


Clausing criticizing publisher Penix in Daily Times, Jan. 23, 1980

If you accept the editorial’s argument that Clausing, Daub, and Price were determined that a mall would never come to Portsmouth, what were their motives supposed to be? In any crime, that is the first thing a detective looks for – a motive. Neither the Daily Times editorial or anything else I have read about the 1980 events ever attempts to explain what the motives of Clausing, Daub, and Price were in their alleged opposition to the mall. Were there financial and political advantages they could gain by opposing the mall? Hardly. Did they harbor implacable grudges or were they victims of their own blind political partisanship? Not that anybody knew of. Instead, the editorial settles for characterizing them as “willful” and “obstructionist” and implying that they were bad people. The councilmen were demonized. If they were demons, then the editorialist didn’t need to attribute specific motives. The councilmen were simply bad men who were simply out to ruin the city. “Councilmen Clausing, Daub and Price have used their time in office,” the Daily Times editorial claimed, “not to construct the future of Portsmouth but to attempt to ruin much of what has already been built. The voters cannot afford to stand by and let this malice go unchecked.” Malice? Was that the only motive the Daily Times could come up with for Clausing’s alleged opposition to the mall? Malice is not a political or an economic but a theological explanation.

To understand the bitterness and viciousness associated with the 1980 mall controversy, to understand the crosses and the casket and the purported bed-sheeted figures, we need to understand that the editorial spokesmen in the pay of the overprivileged of Portsmouth had adopted a strategy of harnessing the religious fundamentalism that is so strong in southern Ohio and turning it against the three councilmen, who never knew what hit them. My dictionary defines malice as a “deep-seated often unexplainable desire to see another suffer.” But the word also has religious connotations. Malice is a word with biblical, New Testament lineage. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul says followers of Christ must throw out the old teachings, which he says is the “old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil” and replace it with “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Whoever wrote the Daily Times editorial was attributing the leaven of malice and evil to Clausing, Daub, and Price, casting them as unchristian miscreants, thereby bringing the wrath of righteous but misled Christians down upon them.

Thirty-one local ministers and priests signed a public letter protesting “actions of certain councilmen which have been damaging to the life of our community.” The thirty-one called on Clausing, Daub, and Price, by name, to apologize to City Manager Mark Feldman (for having tried to fire him), and to city employees and to “the citizens of Portsmouth for their recent actions.” The Ohio Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the City Council had the right to fire the City Manager, but the clergy like most of the rest of the citizens had been persuaded by Feldman’s supporters and by the media that the City Council did not have that authority. The minister of the First Churh of the Nazarene later sent a letter to Clausing apologizing for signing the petition. “I think some of us," he wrote, “were misled.” The sheet of signatures is separate from the letter itself, so some clergymen may have signed up on the basis of what they were told the letter would say.

The demonizing of the three councilmen took place in the context of Portsmouth’s chronically depressed economy and steadily shrinking population. From 1920 to the 1930, Portsmouth was the fastest growing municipality in Ohio, increasing from 33,011 to 60,080 in population. [I have since seen statistics that indicate it was Scioto County, not Portsmouth, that had about 60,000 in population. R.F. 24-2-05.] But it shrank steadily after that, and it is now down to about 20,000. Somebody had to be held responsible for a depressed economy and dwindling population. The putative opponents of the mall were convenient scapegoats to explain why the city was in such bad shape, why it was a pathetic panhandling city that always had its hand out for government money. Portsmouth was in pathetic shape, the Daily Times was implying, not because of the failure of the business and professional classes, but because malevolent people like Clausing were spitefully preventing economic development.

Clausing, who was 58 in 1980, and who also happened to be president of the City Council, was viewed as the ringleader of the ungodly trio. Daub was only 29 and Price even younger. They were all from working class backgrounds, without the connections and the influence that the monied class of Portsmouth enjoyed. They didn’t know how the game was played. They hadn’t gone to the schools or moved in the circles where one learns how to play the game. Above all, they didn’t have control of the media. They were set up like ducks in a shooting gallery. In fact, Clausing said he was being followed and even speculated that he or one of the others might be murdered. His view was that since the 1960s many millions of public relief dollars had being siphoned off by the overprivileged of Portsmouth, and anyone who tried to bring this misuse of public monies to light was in danger of being eliminated. But the monied classes did not have to kill Clausing; they merely had to kill him politically, which they did in 1980 when they put him in the cross-hairs of the media they controlled.

One passage from the Oct. 31 Daily Times editorial deserves to live in infamy for its hypocrisy, written as it was by someone in the pocket of the overprivileged of Portsmouth. “We urge the citizens of the First, Third and Fifth Wards not only to recall Andrew Clausing, Harald [sic] Daub and Mark Price, but to do so with such a massive outpouring of votes that never again will any elected official so brazenly seek to steal the government of this city away from the people it is to serve.”

This outrageously insincere rhetoric on behalf of the people and on behalf of honesty in government is from the same newspaper that has historically winked at white collar crime and corruption and more recently editorialized against the recall of Mayor Bauer, who was the front man for one of the most corrupt administrations in the history of the city. The media’s support of Bauer and of the Bauer campaign’s characterization of the recall movement as a criminally led enterprise did not work in 2004. It was Bauer who was turned out of office, by a two-to-one margin. The days when the Daily Times could get away with its editorials going unanswered are over. Websites, online forums, and blogs have helped knit an angry community of citizens together. As a result of the electronic revolution, the people of Portsmouth can recover their hidden heritage, of which honest men like Clausing are part. The Chamber of Commerce would never find a place for his likeness on the porkish Floodwall murals, but his portrait on a blog like this can be easily pulled up on any connected computer in the city or around the world.

Clausing’s widow still lives in the house on Ruhtman Ave. where, twenty-five years ago, about 70 to 80 people, according to her estimate, some dressed in bed sheets, according to Daub, demonstrated at about ten o’clock at night. She still lives with the newspaper clippings, the memories and the scars from the past. Unfortunately for those who would like us to forget the past or who want us to believe the Daily Times version of the past, she has kept the files of material on the events of 1980, when her husband, along with Daub and Price, were vilified as city wreckers. Her files document a shameful chapter of Portsmouth’s history. Like the infamous Black Friday, in 1830, when most of Portsmouth’s African-Americans were expelled from the city, the funeral march down Chillocothe Street and the late night demonstrations in front of the homes of Clausing and Daub will not be depicted on the Floodwall murals, not as long as the Chamber of Commerce has anything to say about it.


One night in 1980, Mallers demonstrated in front of Clausing home

The good men do is oft interred with their bones, Shakespeare wrote. But as we recover the past, the good that one person did, or tried to do, can serve as a model and an inspiration for those who might feel that the corruption in Portsmouth has run so deep for so long that there is no use fighting city hall. But the good fight is always worth fighting, even against overwhelming odds, and especially against big money, for the love of money, as the Bible says, is the root of all evil. Money, incidentally, is the only motive you need to explain why the monied class demonized Clausing, Daub, and Price. Those three lost in 1980, but out of yesterday’s defeats come tomorrow’s triumphs, provided we learn from the defeats. Twenty-five years after he was recalled and three years after his death, Clausing’s spirit lives on. What ever his limitation as a politician, or what ever his flaws as a person might have been, he was a good man and a good man is hard to find, especially in Portsmouth politics.

The Mauling of Harold Daub

A 1980 photo of Daub before the "mauling"

I recently had a long talk with Harold Daub, who once was and has recently become again, at least temporarily, a central figure in Portsmouth’s political history. A nearly forgotten victim of a “mauling” by the Chamber of Commerce crowd twenty-five years ago, in which the Ku Klux Klan may have played an important role, he and two other former councilmen, now deceased, have reemerged as political heroes who stood up to those who were then – and some of whom still are – running and ruining the city.

Twenty-five years ago, in 1980, the Chamber of Commerce crowd portrayed Daub as one of the three villains who had aborted “the Portsmouth Mall” before it had even been born. The three councilmen – Daub, Mark Price, and Andrew Clausing – were accused of having killed Portsmouth’s prospects for prosperity. The Chamber of Horrors crowd claimed there was just this one window of opportunity for a mall and the three councilmen had closed it. Yes, we are supposed to believe that chance could never come again, even though the three councilmen were recalled after only six months in office and replaced by pro-mall members and a pro-mall city manager, Richard Roberts. A casket with Daub, Price and Clausing’s blown-up photographs on it was carried down Chillicothe Street. Mark Price charged that the photographs of the councilmen had been supplied to the demonstrators by the Portsmouth Daily Times, where JoAnn Aeh, according to several sources, was employed. Whether she was or not, she was active in the movement to recall the three councilmen. Her husband Roy Aeh was active in the Ku Klux Klan, which may have something to do with the casket being adorned with crosses, a favorite KKK symbol, with the word ”Murderers” scrawled on one of them. Later, a group of figures with bed sheets over their heads appeared outside the homes of Daub and Clausing at night, Ku Klux Klan style, to deliver a message of hate.

Mark Price wrote a letter-to-the-editor of the Portsmouth Times in 1987, when Feldman’s successor as City Manager, Richard Roberts, was forced out of office. Price wrote, “The uproar over Barry Feldman resulted from the chase of an elusive dream. Feldman and his supporters led everyone to believe that he was going to deliver a $50-million downtown mall. The truth is that no mall was ever going to be built. There is proof of that now. The whole idea was just a scheme to keep Feldman in office and possibly to enrich some landowners at the expense of taxpayers.”

I asked Daub if in the last quarter of a century he had ever thought of moving away from Portsmouth. He said he had, many times. One of those times may have been when his son was discriminated against in school. An unforgiving mother allegedly baked cupcakes for everyone in his class except him. He was denied a cupcake because he was the child of the notorious Mall-Killer. Even though Daub never got over the sense that he was a marked man, and that there were still people in the city who had never forgotten or forgiven him or his family, he remained in Portsmouth, because that’s where his roots are.

Harold Daub in 2005 with his wife Darlene

Daub told me the Mall was only “a smokescreen.” (Several well-informed conservative senior citizens I know who still remember the 1980 events share that view.) What they were really after, Daub told me, was not a mall but a public university. The crooked crowd who controlled the city would have preferred both a mall and a university, but there was not enough room in downtown Portsmouth for both, and a mall would require private capital, which Portsmouth with its shrinking population and depressed economy would have a hard time raising. Federal money would be available, of course, but it alone would not be enough to build a mall. Persuading a major department store chain to provide an anchor store for a Portsmouth mall would have been almost as hard as persuading the Detroit Lions, who had started out in Portsmouth in the 1930s, to move back and play in Spartan Stadium.

Daub told me he traveled to Cleveland to talk to the developer of the proposed mall, and he came away from that meeting convinced that this particular mall was not going to be built, that what Riffe and the Chamber of Commerce crowd were really doing was laying the groundwork, literally, for a public university, which would be a more effective engine for urban renewal than a mall because the state government would pay for almost all of it. What with abatements and an ordinance that authorized the taking of property by eminent domain to make way for the university, a lot of money could and eventually was made by those dealing in real estate in the downtown area. Why enter a fiercely competitive market like retail merchandising when the Speaker could deliver a pork project for Portsmouth?

Daub insists he, Price, and Clausing were not opposed to a mall, per se. They were opposed to the phony mall that was being used as a smoke screen. But the city manager, Barry Feldman, didn’t see it that way because he was, in Daub’s view, a tool of the Chamber of Commerce. In his letter-to-the-editor, Mark Price characterized Feldman as someone who had a “gift for glib gab, [but] had no idea how to conduct Portsmouth municipal government.” Under the city manager form of government, which was then in place, the City Council had the power to fire the City Manager, and that’s what the City Council did, voting 4-2 against Feldman. But Feldman remained in office. The Citizens for Good Government, whom Price called “political gangsters,” saw to that. The City Manager form of government is as corruptible by the Chamber of Commerce crowd as the mayoral system.

Because Feldman was Jewish, one of the charges made against Daub, Price, and Clausing was that they were anti-Semitic. Two Portsmouth radio stations aired editorials that strongly implied that the councilmen opposed Feldman because he was Jewish. Mark Price told a Portsmouth Times reporter that his opposition to Feldman had nothing to do with his being Jewish but everything to do with his failed policies and incompetent style of management. Daub’s ancestors had been in Portsmouth for hundreds of years, but because they were part of Portsmouth’s German-American community, Daub was especially vulnerable to the charge of anti-Semitism, particularly when some of those making the charge included prominent Jewish members of the community. Daub claims he had no idea that Feldman was Jewish until he was accused of anti-Semitism.

One of the great ironies of the anti-Semitism charge (and the charges of being anti-Catholic and anti-Black) was that JoAnn Aeh, one of those active in the campaign to recall Daub, was married to a Ku Klux Klan member, Roy Aeh, according to a copy of a letter from the KKK to Aeh that Daub has had in his possession for a quarter of a century.

The Ku Klux Klan had swept across the country in two waves. In the first wave, from shortly after the Civil War to about the late 1890s, the KKK was a tightly controlled, hierarchal, extremely influential and secretive organization operating largely in the South. The first wave of the KKK was determined to stop Catholics, Jews, and above all Negroes, from polluting white Protestant America. The second wave of the KKK, which arose in the early 1900s, was loosely organized, fragmented, less influential, and increasingly focused on Jews as the main threat to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, known as WASPS.

One of the most notorious leaders of the second wave of the KKK was a Southerner, from Louisiana, David Duke, but the states which the second wave of the KKK washed over were in the Midwest. Indiana was one of those states and Ohio another. The KKK was apparently active in Ohio in the late 1970s. Daub and others I have talk to recall the KKK demonstrating in downtown Portsmouth around 1978. Whether JoAnn Aeh’s husband was a demonstrator, or whether he was one of those recruited by the KKK demonstrators, perhaps only she and her husband can say. In any event, David Duke sent a letter to Roy Aeh (29 April 1978) congratulating him on his induction into the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke wrote, “I know you share our fear that our beloved nation is slowly being brought within the grasp of the Niggers, Jews, Catholics and Puerto Ricans.” In closing his letter, the Grand Dragon extended an invitation to the Aehs. “You and your wife JoAnn are cordially invited to be with us in this great crusade,” the Crusade for White Supremacy.

David Duke campaigning for Congress and for White Supremacy

I recently twice visited JoAnn Aeh at the City Clerk’s office trying to clear up the murky real estate collaboration between the city and Neal Hatcher on the Campus View housing units. On my first visit she said the City at no time had title to any of the land on which Campus View housing had been built, even though I told her records at the County Courthouse showed that the City had. She made a quick search of her records and said she found no evidence of such a connection. I then went back to the Courthouse and obtained photocopies of deeds that showed the City had acquired property on the northwest corner of 3rd and Waller on December 2, 2002, and transferred it immediately to Hatcher. She acknowledged that the county records proved my point, but she confessed to feeling somewhat mystified since she could find no ordinance that showed the City had ever acquired the property. She quipped as I left her office, “Please let me know if I can not help you again.” She was kidding, of course, but John Welton has said that getting information from JoAnn Aeh about anything is very difficult, if not impossible. However, her and her husband’s connection with the Ku Klux Klan is no joking matter. And she should make a public explanation. Not only Harold Daub and his family but many others in Portsmouth deserve an explanation. African-American and Jewish citizens in particular deserve to know.

What was JoAnn Aeh’s role in the past? What did she and the Ku Klux Klan have to do with the mauling of Harold Daub, Mark Price, and Andrew Clausing, and, more importantly, what is her role now? In most communities outside of the deep South, a letter like the one the Grand Dragon David Duke sent to the Aehs would kill anyone’s chances of a political career or even government employment. But she was appointed to the City Council, in 1983, representing the 2nd Ward, and continued in that position in 1984 and 1985, and she was subsequently hired as City Clerk, a position that was changed from part-time to full-time and which she has held for many years. Instead of being held accountable for her association with the KKK, she has possibly been rewarded for her valuable services to the Chamber of Commerce crowd, one of which services may be stonewalling those looking for information about city real estate shenanigans and another of which may have been the 1980 mauling of Harold Daub.