SOGP: IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!

The birth of the SOGP, 1991

The SOGP has been in the news lately. An article appeared in the Portsmouth Daily Times (21 April 2007), in which chairman C.B. Hermann said SOGP members must work “behind the scenes” and “must maintain secrecy at times because of the nature of business they conduct.” Hermann added, the SOGP “worked behind the scenes [emphasis added] to foster the premise that if we could bring jobs to the area, it would help the local economy.” Andy Glockner of Glockner Motors put it less elegantly, “We [SOGP] just want to be recognized as the back office that’s here for economic development to support the chamber, the murals and any other entity in a way to create the financing or be the front person.” Not a lawyer or a PR person, Glockner unintentionally spilled the beans. “Back office” and “front person” says all that needs to be said about how the SOGP operates – in secret and as a front. It is a private corporation, yet from its back room offices in the publicly funded Welcome Center, just one of its pork projects, the SOGP meets in secret and makes decisions that determine what happens in Portsmouth, economically and politically.

The kind of jobs the SOGP are after are not industrial jobs. Herrmann said, “it’s doubtful a Honda or Toyota plant will come to the area. Therefore, SOGP concentrates on attracting smaller businesses.” In response to Hermann’s comment, Robert Madison wrote a letter-to-the-editor, saying, “In reviewing the history of the organization [SOGP], it looks like it started with the best of intentions. But maybe through the years it has lost its mission. Instead of selling water, maybe it’s time to think bigger and go for the Honda or Toyota plant and bring real jobs to Scioto County.” Madison’s letter asks an extremely important question about the Portsmouth area, maybe the single most important question: Why has Portsmouth been in the economic doldrums for so long?

Whatever may have been the case with its predecessor, the Portsmouth Area Community Improvement Corporation, the SGOP did not start with the best, but with the worst of intentions. Considering who was behind it, how could it have been otherwise? What Johnson and his crowd created in the SOGP is not just a glorified Chamber of Commerce, it is a transmogrified Chamber of Commerce, a monster that rules Scioto County the way Frankenstein did Transylvania. The SOGP has, working “behind the scenes,” in Hermann’s phrase, debased local government by making a mockery of competition between the two main political parties. You can’t tell the Democratic whores from the Republican whores. Local government has become the preserve of the incompetent, the criminally inclined, the near comatose, and the unemployables (it is the wives of the unemployables who hold down the jobs, in the public sector).

Those in control of the SOGP, like Clayton Johnson and his buddy Neil Hatcher, have made fortunes in Portsmouth not in spite but because of the economic doldrums the city has been in for the last half century. The worse things are in Portsmouth, the better it is for the SOGP, because they control most of the pork that comes into our economically depressed area in the form of government grants and loans. They not only control the pork, they also control local government and are able, with the collusion of politicians who can be bought for the price of a John Street whore, to monopolize and manipulate whatever local business opportunities there are. Because there is no real competition for the Johnsons and the Hatchers, they can’t lose. Imagine a team that has no opponents. They can really rack up the points. Neil Hatcher should have lost his shirt in his dumb plan to build a huge shopping mall on the site of the demolished Selby factory, and he would have lost his shirt if the game he was playing in was not only not just fixed but in which there was no opposing team. The city will bail Hatcher out by buying his virtually worthless mall property at his price, to build a sport’s complex, just as the city bought the worthless Marting’s building, at Clayton Johnson’s price, to convert to a city hall.

There are Community Improvement Corporations (CICs) all over Ohio. That other CICs may have turned into the Frankenstein monster that the SOGP has is quite possible. But the few that I have looked into, such as the one in Chillicothe, do not appear to be scam operations. To quote from earlier River Vices postings, “It has happened gradually and unobtrusively, without most people being aware of it, but over the last half century, important functions of Portsmouth local government have been privatized. The result is that we now have a powerful shadow government, the origin of which can be traced back to 1964. In March 1964, the Portsmouth City Council made a momentous decision. In a resolution, numbered unlucky #13, the council turned much of the economic control of the city over to a private ‘non-profit’ corporation named the Portsmouth Area Community Improvement Corporation (PACIC). In Resolution #13, the Portsmouth City Council granted PACIC an extraordinarily broad mandate. The extraordinary mandate of this private corporation, consisting mainly of businessmen, bankers, and lawyers, was no less than ‘To promote the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the inhabitants of the community . . .’ In the following year, 1965, the Ohio state legislature passed a law allowing municipalities to designate community improvement corporations, such as PACIC, as their agent. As if PACIC hadn’t already been granted extraordinary power in Resolution #13, the Portsmouth City Council passed another resolution (#30), designating PACIC as the city’s official agent, or legal representative. PACIC eventually morphed into the SOGP.”

They are trying to stifle and intimidate critics, but over the years a handful of courageous souls have stood up to the SOGP and its predecessor. There was the “Unbribed Trio” of Clausing, Price, and Daub, back in 1980. Prof. Larry Essman told me he first got involved in the reform movement as early as 1974 when he was Asst. Auditor and realized the PACIC was not interested in having Toyota or anyone else build in the Portsmouth area. I have heard the same story from others, such as Rich Noel, who discovered as a result of involvement in area development discussions that the PACIC and SOGP were always more interested in excluding than attracting new businesses. New businesses and industries were the last thing they wanted because that meant competition. Glockner did not want competitors in vehicles, Marting’s did not want competition in retail sales. Councilman Bob Mollette, the only city official in the present government truly representing the citizens, wrote in a letter to city council that this is an unacceptable situation. “I believe the relationship with the SOGP, if considered an authorized agency that represents our city, must be accountable and transparent.”

Through their political puppets, the SOGP is trying its damnedest to drive Mollette from city council as the PACIC drove out Clausing, Price, and Daub back in 1980. Through their political puppets, the SOGP is trying to stop citizens from speaking at city council meetings, labeling them as Domestic Terrorists. As for transparency and accountability, sunshine and democracy, those are not on the bipartisan Frankenstein SOGP’s agenda.

Imus, Anus, and Janus

Anus in the Morning

In New York, at WFAN, they had Imus in the Morning. In Portsmouth, at WNXT, we’ve got Anus in the Morning. Imus, the aging wannabe rapper, is now paying for his potty mouth. Anus in the Morning, the aging wannabe rock star, continues to defecate through his. I’ve heard and read over the years about him, and how controversial he is, but I’ve actually only listened to him once. Somebody who had been in the business told me shock jocks have to be megalomaniacs. A shock jock, according to one online source, is “a slang term used to describe a type of radio broadcaster (sometimes a disk jockey) who attracts attention using humor that a significant portion of the listening audience may find offensive.” Imus used “nappy-headed hos” to describe the Rutgers ladies basketball team, and a significant number of Americans heard about it, were offended by it, and Imus is history.

But Anus in the Morning, a minor-league more muted Imus, is still with us, because advertisers on his show, like SOMC, unlike the advertisers on Imus in the Morning, do not have to worry about a backlash. This after all is Portsmouth. What advertiser is going to raise hell if Anus is occasionally offensive or spouting political opinions in the morning? He is doing his job, which is to see that things don’t change in Portsmouth, that the same old crowd gets away with the same old shit, and that Portsmouth politics remain the same-old sham. Covering for those who run Portsmouth and criticizing “domestic terrorists” in the local reform movement are among Anus’s responsibilities, which is why he periodically attacks the most serious threat to the political status quo, Ward Three councilman Bob Mollette. Just as there are franchise players on sports teams, somebody you can build an organization around, Mollette is a franchise player in local politics: he is someone you could build an honest government around, so naturally Anus in the Morning is going to try to discredit him. One way he tries to discredit Mollette is by criticizing his public service blog. Compare Mollette’s blog with Anus in the Morning’s narcissistic MySpace site and you will get an idea of the totally different universes they live in. In contrast to Mollette, who is truly community oriented, Anus in the Morning – with his hobbies and his music and his online friends and his dogs – is so into himself, so wrapped up in himself, so, like, totally in touch with himself, that he is in constant danger of disappearing up his own you know what.

I mentioned earlier that I listened only once to Anus in the Morning. That was the morning of October 16, 2006, which was the opening of the U.S. Grant Bridge, a bridge that cost many millions more than it was supposed to and because of delays took longer to build than the Golden Gate Bridge. Not wanting to miss the historic opening of the bridge, but figuring that it too might have fallen behind schedule, I tuned in to WNXT on the morning of October 16 to see if I could get an update. Maybe the newsman at WNXT would be providing coverage. What I got instead was Anus in the Morning. If memory serves me, he was broadcasting from the Ramada Inn with his female sidekick – is Misty her name? She was broadcasting from inside while Anus was outside, close to the inaction. Then Anus returned inside, bursting with so much joie de vivre that he was about as much fun as a one-man River Day Parade. Misty asked what was going on outside, and Anus replied, as best I can recall, that “Bob Huff was outside giving people the finger.” Misty was at a loss for words. Or was Misty just confused and not sure what she had just heard? I know I wasn’t sure I heard it right.

Huff, waving or giving the finger?

Without knowing exactly who Bob Huff was, I knew he was part of the Establishment. Somebody took a picture of Huff that morning, a white-haired gent smiling like a politician and waving his left hand at whoever was passing by. He wasn’t giving anyone the finger in the photo, but it would have been so easy for him to just turn his hand over and lift that finger. I learned later Huff was the head of the Chamber of Commerce. So there was Anus on this momentous day of Portsmouth’s history, the day when some hoped Portsmouth’s economic revival was about to begin, a day when schoolchildren and almost every dignitary in town was preparing to walk across the bridge, and there was Anus telling Misty and WNXT’s listeners that the head of the Chamber of Commerce was outside giving people the finger.

An obscene pagan gesture

Those listeners familiar with Anus’s repartee may have understood right away that he was just kidding. Huff wasn’t really giving citizens the bird. It was just Anus’s way of adding a little irreverent levity to the proceedings. You never know what Anus would say next. Goosing up the program, so to speak. “It was the reason many listeners tuned in,” Weston Kosova wrote about Don Imus in Newsweek. “What was he going to say next?” How are you going to keep your listeners tuned in, especially in the morning, for god’s sake, if some of those listeners are cool cats, like Anus, if you don’t keep the wisecracks coming, if you don’t keep them wondering what he's going to say next? Hell, the last thing Anus wants anyone to think when they tune in to WNXT is that they were listening to Zeke Mullins. Zeke had never played with “an old time rock and roll band called The TroubleMakers.” Zeke had never lived “in a secluded and most beautiful area of the Wayne National Forest in Southern Ohio.” I am quoting from Anus’s MySpace website. Zeke Mullins wouldn’t have a MySpace website in a million years.

Maybe Huff was not giving people the finger and maybe Anus never said he was. Maybe . . . But wait a second. If you have any consciousness you can still call your own, or if your unconscious is not totally brain dead, there’s probably more in this finger business than meets the eye. Holding up the middle finger is an ancient obscene gesture, substituting for the erect penis, and was used widely as an insult in pagan cultures. Wikipedia says giving the finger is shorthand for “Fuck you!” It is especially insulting to a male, because there is only one way for a male to be fucked – unnaturally – so it is the ultimate insult, the ultimate degradation, for a male, to be given the finger because a fucked male is no better than a female. Males who have never been in combat, or played football, need to find ways to prove their manhood, and giving the finger makes them feel like one of the guys. Witness the callow George W. Bush giving the finger in the following YouTube clip. Even though he loves to dress in camouflage fatigues, rub elbows with fighting men, and go quail hunting, Vice President Cheney is not willing or able to go as far as Dubya and give the finger. Never having served in the military, not even in the National Guard, as Dubya has, Cheney, the father of an artificially inseminated lesbian daughter, has to settle for telling Senator Leahy of Vermont, on the Senate floor, “Go fuck yourself!” That’s not quite the same thing, is it, as “Fuck you!”? No, “Go fuck yourself” is more like artificial insemination.

But isn’t that what the “Fuck you!” crew in Washington is doing, like their two-bit counterparts in Portsmouth? Aren’t they always giving the citizens the finger? Aren’t our local Castrati giving the people the finger and saying “Fuck you” when they filch $2 million from the city for an empty department store and then won’t give the money back when the sale is ruled illegal? Aren’t our local Castrati giving the people the finger and saying “Fuck you” when they appoint to the City Council a local lawyer with a reputation for involvement with prostitutes and drugs? Aren’t the Castrati making that finger even more obscene whey they get that same councilman appointed chair of a committee that is going to decide where the new city building will be, in spite of the fact that that same councilman was and remained the lawyer for the absentee landlord whose property the Building Committee ending up recommending as the site for the new city building? Aren’t our local Castrati giving the people the finger and saying “Fuck you” when they appoint the wife of a former disgraced mayor to run that inglorious Porksmouth pork project known as the Welcome Center, a job for which she is about as qualified as her husband had been to be mayor, before he was recalled from office by a 2 to 1 margin? I could give other examples, but I need to move on to my final point.

On April 14, Anus in the Morning attempted to cover his ass when he, as the front page of the Daily Times put it, “weighed in on Imus firing.” Weighed in? That such an intellectual lightweight could weigh in on anything would be news. “I think it will be like the Janet Jackson incident was for television,” Anus told the reporter interviewing him, referring to the Imus mess. No, Anus, you don’t want to go there, you cluck, because by using Janet Jackson, who is a breast baring black woman as your example, you are implying that what Imus said is true: black women are “hos.” But Anus was only just beginning to show what a ninny he is. Because he then goes on to predict in the interview that Imus would not be fired. Waxing indignant, he gets in even deeper, saying Imus “should have been fired a long time ago,” but he does not fail to point out, name-dropper that he is, that he had once met Imus way back when. What an ass-kissing encounter that must have been. Some of the hundreds of politicians, authors, and entertainers who appeared on Imus's show to further their career, were quick to criticize or denounce him once he was fired by CBS and NBC.

Janus

The highlight of the Daily Times interview is this quote by Anus in the Morning: “Imus didn’t attack political figures. He attacked a whole team of children actually.” Having hung around MySpace for as long as he has, Anus appears to have trouble distinguishing children from young adults. These are not children. They are young women. They are in college, not grade school. They are old enough to vote and to serve in the military. But Anus of course wants to hold himself up as a defender of helpless children, as he holds himself up as the St. Francis of abandoned dogs on his MySpace website. Children are sometimes stalked on MySpace by sexual predators. If Anus wants to defend anyone, defend those children, get outraged about them, not 18 to 21 year-old young women who can handle themselves without his patronizing assistance. Anus closes the interview by admitting he sometimes makes “comments” about political figures, including Portsmouth City Council. Oh, really? “But I don’t do it to be mean-spirited as a way to take somebody out, " he says. "I’ve never meant to harm anyone.” No, of course not. Anus is not like Imus, you see. Anus is not now nor ever has been a shock jock. Anus is like the Roman god Janus. He is two-faced.

If you should happen to hear a newscaster on WNXT say at noon, “It has been three hours since Anus in the Morning was last seen. He was sitting right here at WNXT, doing his show, when he disappeared, without a trace. It is a complete mystery and even Misty, who was sitting right next to him, is mystified. Where did he go to? What is going to happen to those dogs at his forest retreat? Chief Horner has not ruled out the possibility that domestic terrorists had something to do with his disappearance.” If you should happened to hear that newscast, do not exclude the possibility that what actually happened was that Anus fucked himself and disappeared up you know where.

The Castrati

City Solicitor sitting on his ass, as usual

H. L. Mencken was an acerbic newspaper reporter (he wrote for the Baltimore Sun); a lexicographer (he created a dictionary); and a neologist (he made up words, as I just did with neologist). Baltimore not being too far from Washington, D.C., Mencken occasionally turned his wit and wisdom on the boobs in Washington.

Recent posts by John Welton on David “I get no respect” Malone and on Mike “I’m addicted to pussy” Mearan reminded me what a collection of characters we have in the Portsmouth city government and how much like a Mencken Welton has been in exposing not only the corruption but also the comic opera quality of local politics. Imagine, if you will, that one of the television networks creates a new series called The Castrati, now that The Sopranos is about call it quits, and imagine it being stocked with the kind of boobs we are all too familiar with in Portsmouth.

The big cheese on The Castrati would be an unelected official, the Chief of Police, whose War on Drugs would be such a flop that his own son would be dealing drugs in a restaurant directly across the street from the police station. And a chop-shop about a half mile away from the police station would be dealing oxycontin on the side without the Chief having a clue. Since the Chief’s War on Drugs is not going well, the Chief, following the lead from higher ups in the federal government, would declare war on domestic terrorists, by which he means local citizen activists, many of them elderly, who wage successful campaigns to recall incompetent and corrupt city officials, and who write blogs critical of those incompetent and corrupt city officials.

The City Solicitor

Giving the city a black eye

Abetting the Chief, and anyone else in city government who wants to pull a fast one, is the City Solicitor, the city slicker on The Castrati. If some ex-felon or unemployed dummy wants to run for city council, even though he doesn’t live in the ward he wants to run in, and even though he wants to run as a write-in and skip the bother of running a campaign, the City Solicitor will be there to offer one of his off-the-wall interpretations of the city charter. The motto that sits on his desk, which he is seldom behind, is not “The Buck Stops Here” but rather “Anything is Possible.” When the city faces legal action, the City Solicitor hires a real lawyer from Cincinnati or Columbus, because being city solicitor is only a part-time job, paying only $50,000 a year, and he has other more important things to attend to, like his digs in sacred Indian burial sites, or like his sitting on his ass in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Sitting on his ass is something he gets a lot of practice at the other 364 days of the year. In fact, there is no other character on The Castrati who is better at sitting on his ass than the City Solicitor, though there are those who would argue that the City Auditor is not far behind when it comes to sitting on his behind.

The Philandering Preacher

The City Clerk

The City Clerk is a lifer, having found employment in city government as a young virgin, and has been at it ever since, doing everything she can to frustrate those citizens looking for answers to questions and mutilating petitions that would put people and issues on the ballot that her employers don’t approve of. It is like she practices the clitoral circumcision of democracy. Her aversion to the Sunshine Laws is so strong that she often sits in her office in the dark, except when the city council gets together before city council meetings to conduct important business. She is all work and no play, except on Halloween when she puts on a white hood and goes trick or treating.

The Good Samaritan

Of those characters on The Castrati, perhaps the most colorful is the lawyer who represents the First Ward and who is known as The Good Samaritan. Among drug-addicted prostitutes in Portsmouth, The Good Samaritan is viewed as a saint. He is always there to give a gal a lift in his stretch limousine and find them a place to sleep or rent them a sub-compact in a family emergency. If the mother of a drug-addicted prostitute gets ill, you can be sure the Good Samaritan will be there with a rented Aveo with unlimited mileage and enough oxycontin to see her through her ordeal. But his good works for addicted prostitutes don’t stop there. On Thanksgiving he distributes Papa John Street Pizza, with all the toppings, to all the poor prostitutes in Portsmouth.

President of City Council

Council President entering 2300-year-old dept. store

The President of the city council on The Castrati, who, when he is not committing campaign violations, warns unwelcome visitors to council meetings that they must not criticize any city official by name or they will be ejected from the chambers by the Chief of Police. Having flunked out of college, the President of the City Council has more education than anyone else on the council and he is determined to maintain draconian decorum and parliamentary order, being unaware (because he watches American Idol, not PBS) that members of the British House of Commons call each other names and boo and hiss loudly when they don’t like what someone who has the floor might be saying. “A little learning is a dangerous thing” is what needs to remembered where the President of Council is concerned. He is like the future El Presidente in some banana republic, a furniture salesman who dreams of being the Top Banana some day.

The President’s right-hand man, the Vice President of City Council, is the Hired Goon of City Government. His role is to try to create a riot at council meetings so the Chief of Police can declare a state of emergency and arrest everybody who comes to council meetings as domestic terrorists.

His Honor the Clueless Mayor

The clueless Mayor in Kentucky

The Top Banana on The Castrati is the clueless Mayor. Like the Philandering Preacher from Ward Two, the Mayor is concerned above all that he is not shown proper respect. He spends much of his time brooding over not driving the kind of prestigious city vehicle and not being paid the kind of salary a man in his position should be rewarded with. The Mayor suffered from this same lack of respect for years when he worked as a clerk at a local supermarket. Restocking shelves and punching a cash register was as much responsibility as the supermarket ever dared entrust him with. The supermarket, of course, being in the private sector, is prejudiced against employees of limited intelligence and ability. Since those same prejudices do not exist in city government, the Mayor is understandably miffed about being discrminated against.

The 2300-Year-Old Department Store

The ongoing plot line of The Castrati is to get the city government to move its offices to an empty department store that is estimated to be 2300 years old and that has been empty for about 130 years. The City Solicitor, an expert on pre-Columbian civilizations, believes the department store was originally a temple where young virgins were sacrificed to the God of Lotteries, a god the Mayor reportedly worships in Kentucky. The City Solicitor speculates that the ancient civilization disappeared after it ran out of virgins. The City Solicitor assures critics of the building that neither menstrual blood nor asbestos is any longer a problem in the building.

The two men who run Portsmouth and control the City Council, The Lawyer and The Developer, sold the ancient structure to the city for 2$ million. When that sale was declared illegal by the courts, The Lawyer refused to give the $2 million he had cheated the city out of, saying he would not give the money back because he didn’t trust the city government do the right thing with it. The only right thing to do with the money, The Laywer said, was use it to convert the 2300-year-old department store to a city hall. The Sopranos is about to go off the air, but The Castrati has a long run ahead of it, if only we can get the city government to allow it to be televised so we can see what is going to happen to The 2300-Year-Old Department Store.

The Goon and the Good Samaritan

The Goon

Last night’s City Council meeting was one for the books. A resident of the Sixth Ward reportedly told councilman Marty Mohr afterwards that he was an embarrassment to the ward. Mohr is not only an embarrassment to the Sixth Ward, he is an embarrassment to the city. He is not only an embarrassment to the Sixth Ward and the city, he is an embarrassment, or should be, to his family. He is not only an embarrassment to the Sixth Ward, to the city, and to his family, he is an embarrassment to our species. He is downright pre-hominid. He is a goon. The primary meaning of goon is “a stupid person.” But it is the secondary meaning of goon that particularly applies: “a man hired to terrorize or intimidate opponents.” That is Mohr’s role on the city council: to intimidate opponents by accusing them of being terrorists, to snarl and sneer at them, to call them crap. At the close of last night’s meeting, he tried his best to insult, intimidate, and humiliate Bob Mollette, who represents a higher form of hominid, a civilized, respectful male who doesn’t need to prove his manhood by snarling and gnashing his teeth or having sex with some woman other than his wife. In terms of evolution, Mollette is about 250,000 years beyond Mohr. When the minutes of last night’s meeting are printed, Mollette’s report to the council – informed, respectful, and conciliatory – should be compared with Mohr’s attempt to provoke Mollette and the citizens in attendance into getting down to his grunt level and exchanging insults and provoking physical violence. He might have succeeded in inciting the audience, which was furious at his provocative performance, but fortunately Mollette set an example of civilized behavior. Had Mollette blown his top, I think some citizens might have too. And then chief Horner would have been like a pig in shit, dealing with these “domestic terrorists.” He would like nothing better than throw some of them in the hoosegow.

Up until Mohr’s failed effort to start a riot, the meeting had been unusually peaceful and collegial. It seemed people were determined to avoid the animosity of the previous meeting. Compliments and sweetness flowed like sugar at John Simon’s Sorghum Festival. The most touching moment was when an elderly gentleman addressed the council and said that in the forty-six years he and his wife had lived in the Third Ward he had never known a councilman as helpful, decent, and considerate as Bob Mollette. But it was not only Bob Mollette who was praised. Praise was heaped by others on Kevin Johnson, on the Portsmouth Daily Times, and especially on First Ward councilman Mike Mearan, who has earned a reputation as Portsmouth’s Good Samaritan. When there are some underprivileged kids in need of the price of admission or some attractive young ladies needing a sub-compact to visit their sick mothers, know that Mike is there to lend a helping hand. A rumor is circulating about Mearan being pulled over by police in Knoxville, who found drugs in his car. Mike handled that rumor well at the meeting by pointing out, if I heard him correctly, without his ever mentioning drugs, that he had not been in Tennessee since the state fair last year. Instead of wrapping himself in the flag, as those cornered politicians in Washington are doing, Mike wore a bright red Ohio State tee shirt to the meeting. Go Bucks!

Mike Mearan: Good Samaritan

Unfortunately for Mearan, Marty Mohr came to his defense in his tirade at the end of the meeting, and if anybody in the council chamber or listening on the radio hadn’t known that it was Mearan who was the councilman rumored to have been found with drugs in Tennessee, then they sure did after Mohr got through defending him. By publicly defending, or fingering, Mearan as the councilman who is subject of the drug rumors, Mohr was raising the stakes. Prove it! That was Mohr’s sneering challenge to those who are spreading the rumor about Mearan being stopped for drugs. Now there are those who may take up Mohr’s challenge and prove Mearan was found in possession of drugs, all because Mohr had publicized the rumor. But to revise Claude Raines’ famous line in the movie Casablanca, “I am shocked, shocked to hear Mike Mearan’s name associated with drugs!” Recall that this is the same Mike Mearan who hired Heather Hren to be the stenographer for the Building Committee, the same Mike Mearan who rented a subcompact in which Heather Wren was arrested for transporting Oxycontin from Columbus to Portsmouth, the same Mike Mearan who said he was sure Heather Wren did not take drugs after she had been busted for possession of drugs, the same Mike Mearan who was photographed with Heather Wren at their outing to the Fair in Lucasville after she had been busted, the same Mike Mearan who acted shocked shocked after Heather Hren was arrested for purse snatching and admitted that she was a drug addict. To hear the Good Samaritan Mearan’s side of the story, Heather Hren was just another one of the many young women he has helped out over the years, but one who proved unworthy of his trust and kindness.

The Goon and the Good Samaritan are just two of the cast of characters who make up our incredibly colorful city government. If only we had a Damon Runyon or Meredith Wilson to create a Portsmouth version of Guys and Dolls or The Music Man, if only someone would write a play or musical featuring our Keystone Cop, our Doofus Mayor, our Smarmy Council President, our Sleazy City Solicitor, our Ku Klux City Clerk. The only other city that could possibly compete with us for crooked and incompetent politicians is Washington D.C. How is the Bush Administration ever going to make it through another year and a half? Hell, how is the City Council going to make it through to next November? If somebody doesn’t muzzle the goon, or put a damper on the Good Samaritan, there’s going to be a lot more trouble in our drug-ridden River City.

"I am shocked, shocked to hear Mearan’s name associated with drugs."

Monday Night Fights

Painting by George Bellows

“It may have been Monday,” Jeff Barron wrote in the Daily Times (3-13-07), “but Portsmouth City Council staged its version of Friday Night Fights last night.” For those of you who might not be fight fans, ESPN2 televises Tuesday Night, Wednesday Night, and Friday Night Fights. In Portsmouth, it’s a little different: the Fights, billed as City Council meetings, take place the second and fourth Monday of each month, and they don’t get televised. In addressing the council members about their unprofessional behavior at the 3-12-07 meeting, Eileen Perry told them an unpleasant truth, which is that the reason council meetings are not on television is that the council probably does not want them on television.

Why doesn’t the Portsmouth city government want the council meetings on television? Why does the city government continue to drag its feet when many cities in Ohio, some much smaller than Portsmouth, have been uninterruptedly televising city council meetings for years? Waverly, with a population of only 4,433, has been televising their council meetings for so long that somebody I spoke to in the Waverly mayor’s office said she had lost track of the years. Ironton, with half of Portsmouth’s population, televises their council meetings. Chillicothe, a city with a population about the same as Portsmouth’s, televises their council meetings on two channels. Two to Portsmouth’s none!

So how come Portsmouth does not televise its council meetings? Older citizens claim they were televised way back when. But why no longer? How come Waverly, Ironton, Chillicothe and hundreds of other Ohio communities can televise their council meetings but Portsmouth can’t? A Time-Warner official in northern Ohio told me it’s not hard to televise meetings and it’s done all the time. There is an exception – Portsmouth.

Eileen Perry’s explanation of why they are not televised is one I would agree with: the meetings are probably not televised because the city government does not want them televised. The Portsmouth city government prefers to operate in the dark, out of the public’s eye. The council meetings are broadcast on a local radio station, but listeners know how difficult it sometime is to hear on that transmission. For example, during the 3-12-07 meeting, I am told, technical difficulties rendered the first part of the broadcast unintelligible.

One of the things the Portsmouth city government does not want the public to hear or see is how five or six members of city government gang up on the one city council member who has no strings attached to him, the one city council member who is not a puppet: I refer, of course, to Bob Mollette, who represents the Third Ward. Mollette is ganged up on because, among other reasons, he has waged a tireless campaign for openness in government. As part of that campaign, he has called more than once for televised council meetings. In a letter to the City Council (2-27-06), Mollette urged the city to televise council meetings to citizens on a tape-delay. The Council Minutes (1-10-05) state that Councilman Mollette had “reported having spoken with Mr. Gangly with Adelphia and was told by him that as far as getting Council meetings on cable that could be done if he is supplied with a VHS tape and would play it as many times Council deems. He said he felt this to be an idea for consideration in order to reach more people.”

I talked recently to Mollette, who told me Adelphia Cable had been ready and willing to participate in this exercise of open government, at no cost to the city, but the city found ways to make it not happen. On one occasion, Adelphia was fifteen minutes away from broadcasting a taped meeting when it was canceled. Mollette suspected Adelphia got a call from the powers-that-be to cancel the telecast. Time-Warner has since replaced Adelphia, and Time-Warner is willing and able to televise the meetings, but Time-Warner will discover, if it hasn’t already, that Portsmouth is not like other Ohio cities. Portsmouth discourages, not facilitates, televised council meetings. Mollette told me a modest sum was appropriated for television taping in last year’s budget, but that nothing has been done about it.

The city must televise the council hearings so that the citizens of Portsmouth can see for themselves who the temperate, hardworking, and honest people in city government are, and who the foul-mouthed, devious, and lazy ones are, who the watchdogs are and who the lapdawgs are. They will also see who the citizens are who faithfully attend these meetings, and who avail themselves of the right to speak to the council, a right that was nearly abridged last year at the urging of Councilman Marty Mohr. If council meetings are really Monday Night Fights, the public has a right to watch them in the safety of their own living rooms, instead of being insulted live by the mayor and others, or being frisked by police before entering.

In a recent letter to council president Howard Baughman, dated March 20, 2007, Mollette called again for transparency in local government, saying, “I still believe the best opportunity to inform the public exists with replaying City Council meetings on Time Warner Cable Television.” If the Monday Night Fights are going to continue at city council meetings, they should be telecast. The public has a right to see one man who is fighting for good government and who is taking on a tag-team of palookas who know the fight is fixed and want to keep it that way.

A Comedy of Terrors

Drug Busters in Action

Back in 1992, the Daily Times ran a story on a botched drug bust at the home of an elderly couple, Mary and Joe Warren, 68 and 73 years old, of 1805 Harrisonville Ave., in Portsmouth. Reporter Jennifer Moorhead did so good a job of reporting telling details that we can relive the experience fifteen years later. Perhaps that’s because the more things change in Portsmouth, the more they stay the same. What happened fifteen years ago, could have happened yesterday or could happen tomorrow. Austin Leedom has done a public service by reproducing that story in the online Shawnee Sentinel.

If Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife, Inspector Clouzot, Inspector Lastrade, and Maxwell Smart had been involved in the botched bust, it could not have been more half-assed. First of all, the Warrens were not only elderly, they were god-fearing, patriotic Americans living in a small neat house behind a white picket fence. They had just returned from a meeting at their church – there were and still are two churches almost directly across the street. Mrs. Warren was perhaps a little apprehensive when she locked the front door when they came home from church, because earlier that evening, around 8 PM, she had noticed a man in a car across the street looking through binoculars. Who was that in the car? Barney Fife, Inspector Clouzot, or perhaps Sergeant Horner himself?

Mrs. Warren later learned that Horner and others had been staking out the house for several days. Which house? Hers or the real drug house a couple of doors down? Who knows? I’m not even sure the Emergency Response Team knew. I don’t know if there were miniature American flags flying on the fence in front of the Warrens’ neat, small house, but there are now. It is not likely flags would have stopped the Emergency Response Team from mistaking the Warrens’ house for a drug house anyway. Horner and his team had already obtained a search warrant for 1721 Harrisonville Ave., but the address of the Warrens’ house is 1805. Those numbers, 1805, are displayed prominently above the mail box, just next to the front door of the Warrens’ house. If Horner and his men had a warrant for 1721 Harrisonville Ave., and the prominently displayed 1805 numbers on the Warrens’ house did not stop them from breaking in the door, it is not likely flags on the fence would have given them pause.

Sergeant Horner didn't sleep here

The arthritic Joe Warren, who walked with a cane, was in the bedroom. His wife Mary had come out to get his medication. It was while she was in the living room that she heard someone on the other side of the door shout, “We’re coming in!” Whoever he was, he began breaking the door in. Mary rushed to the phone. She knew she would not have time to call the seven numbers of the police department, never dreaming that it was the police who were breaking in her door. She dialed the operator instead, but before she could complete the call, the three members of the ERT were inside and demanding that she drop the phone. They were in plain clothes, or so it was reported, so she had no way of knowing who they were. The ERT team continued to act as if they were dealing with some low-life drug-dealing couple when what they were doing was frightening to death a couple who had a combined age of 141 years. In an effort to protect his wife from the intruders, Joe Warren came out of the bedroom swinging his cane. One of the men twisted Joe’s arm behind his back and forced him face down on the living room sofa. According to the Daily Times story, Mrs. Warren “begged them not to hurt her husband and kept telling them they had the wrong house.” Finally, it dawned on them. It was the wrong house! Maybe somebody went out and looked at the number 1805 next to the door. Mrs. Warren said the commotion ceased only when “they finally realized they had the wrong house.”

Sergeant Horner was supposed to be in charge of this bust. Where was he? His explanation of the mix-up only adds to the Keystone Cops character of the caper. Apologetically, he later explained to Mrs. Warren how the thing got botched. “They were told to go one house past Little Nick’s,” a small eatery on the other side of the street. The Daily Times reported that “Horner had been part of the stake out, which lasted more than two days, and while doing this he was to the north of the house.” Ah, Horner was to the north of the house. Now, we’re getting somewhere. But when the drug raid took place, “they came from the opposite direction,” Sergeant Horner explained. You see, “They” were at fault. They came from the opposite direction. Who told them to come from the opposite direction? Who told them to go one house past Little Nick’s? Who gave them such hare-brained directions in the first place? Was it Maxwell Smart, Inspector Clouzot, or was it the guy in the car, the one with the binoculars? Was it Sergeant Horner?

Obviously worried that the couple would sue the city’s ass off, and that he might lose his job, Sergeant Horner was practically on his knees. As the Daily Times reporter put it, “apologies flooded their household.” The old couple almost drowned in Sergeant Horner’s solicitude. He stayed for at least an hour, sweeping the floor and nailing back the door frame, as if he were auditioning for a spot on This Old House. He even offered to stay the night, as if he were a Rent-A-Cop or a live-in-maid. “What would you like for breakfast, Mrs. Warren? Eggs? Oatmeal? How about breakfast in bed, Joe?” Where would Sergeant Horner have slept if he did stay over? On the floor? Or on the couch they had pinned Mr. Warren down on. Imagine Sergeant Horner’s call to his own house if he did stay over. “Hello, Dear. I won’t be home tonight. I’ll be staying over at the Warrens. Who are they? Well, we just broke into their house by mistake. I just thought I’d sleep over to comfort them.” Mrs. Warren politely declined Sergeant Horner’s kind offer. “No, Sergeant, thank you. It’s been rather a hectic day and Joe and I would like to hit the hay. It’s way past our bedtime.”

As it was, Mrs. Warren didn’t get to sleep until 3 AM “because she kept hearing the sound of the glass and men breaking into her home,” to quote the Daily Times. Would it have comforted Mrs. Warren to know that the man responsible for this trauma was sleeping out on her couch? I don’t think so. However little sleep Horner may have gotten, he was back in the morning. Mrs. Warren told the Daily Times, he “returned again Thursday morning to ask forgiveness.” The Warrens were good Christians, but they were also human. They explained to the Daily Times that they could forgive, but they could never forget.

Horner told the Daily Times that he took “sole responsibility” for the mix-up, but he took responsibility the way Attorney General Gonzales is taking sole responsibility in Washington for firing those regional attorney generals, by implying it was somebody else’s fault. Yes, mistakes were made, but Sergeant Horner implied it was somebody else who made the mistakes, somebody who couldn’t follow directions. “One house past Little Nick’s!” What could be simpler than that, even if Little Nick’s is on the other side of the street and even if he failed to point out which direction on the other side of Little Nick’s the drug house was. Those were the days before MapQuest, so Sergeant Horner and the Emergency Response Team were operating under the technological limitations of the time. Sure, anyone now can easily print out directions so clear that even present Mayor Kalb would be able to get from the Portsmouth Police Station, or wherever the team started out from, to 1721 Harrisonville Ave. With MapQuest, Sergeant Horner would not have had to use Little Nick’s as a landmark, or to be concerned about which way was north and which south.

MapQuest to the Rescue

Sergeant Horner defended himself by saying it was the result of “plain human error.” Plain human error? A cynic might protest, “Nay, nay, Sergeant Horner! This was no plain human error. These were errors worthy of a Shakespeare comedy, like The Comedy of Errors.”If one of the Warrens had died of a heart attack, it would have been a tragedy. As it was, they suffered from post-traumatic stress for a time but they got relief from the crack staff at Scioto Memorial Hospital.

The story, as is true of comedies generally, has a happy ending. I’ve been told that the Warrens got more than just $350 to replace their door, and while Sergeant Horner got a letter of reprimand placed in his file, he went on the become Chief of Police and Mayor Kalb’s brain. There was a trying period before that, however, when it was rumored that Mayor Bauer was about to fire Chief Horner for incompetence, but the Chief blew the whistle on Bauer’s alleged violations of the law in the Marting’s deal and Bauer was history.

With all the high tech equipment and expensive fleet of high powered vehicles acquired by the police department in the wake of 9/11, Chief Horner is focusing on a group of “domestic terrorists,” posing as senior citizens with poor vision and hearing, carrying canes and portable oxygen supplies, and who are resorting to a weapon of mass distraction, the computer, to write blogs that are slandering the upright leaders of the community. “They are trying to pull a Warren on me,” the Chief is rumored to have said, meaning these alleged senior citizens are trying to act as if they are the victims of his incompetence and crazy ambition, as the Warrens of Harrisonville Ave. were on that December night in 1992. Chief Horner has already blown the whistle on the one member of the city council who stands in his way, Bob Mollette, aiming to get rid of him as he got rid of Mayor Bauer.

Writing of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, a critic pointed out that before the comic resolution of the end can occur, “violence and disorder . . . rise to a pitch that is both funny and frightening.” The sound of breaking glass and police breaking into homes. Both funny and frightening. That is something to keep in mind as our local comedy of terrors continues to unfold.

Long Live the Blogosphere!

By working for responsible, open government, by being the public’s watchdog, Third Ward councilman Bob Mollette has made himself a target for some city officials. He is as about as welcome in city government as a nun would be in a whorehouse. The campaign against Mollette was ratcheted up at the 3-12-07 council meeting when our imperious chief of police Charles Horner urged the City Council to “investigate Mollette’s conduct in and out of office,” according to the Daily Times. The source of Horner’s anger are the websites that the Mollettes, yours truly, and other local citizens maintain. Displaying the growing dictatorial tendencies that should give everyone cause for concern, Horner has in the past denounced websites as destructive and called those involved in the reform movement, “domestic terrorists.” The alleged “terrorists” are supposedly concentrated in the Concerned Citizens Group, a non-partisan group of mostly older citizens devoted to improving government in Portsmouth. The CCG has a website and a forum. Those sites too are on Horner’s hit list. And Moe’s Forum is probably near the top of Horner’s list.

Horner is trying to smear bloggers like the Mollettes and the CCG as a menace to the community. Like certain unscrupulous politicians in Washington, Horner is playing the terrorist card for everything it’s worth. Just as the Chinese government wants to crack down on dissent by controlling the blogosphere, Horner wants local courts to investigate and prosecute local bloggers. In an informative report by Jeff Barron in the Portsmouth Daily Times (3-14-07), Horner is quoted as saying “it’s up to the municipal court or the Scioto County Common Pleas Court to bring charges against anyone affiliated with the [web]sites.” If Horner was half as determined to shut down drug dealers as he is to shut down bloggers, Portsmouth would be a lot better off.

Bob Mollette’s website for the Third Ward could serve as a model for city and town council members throughout the state. The $50 a month the city pays Mollette for serving on city council has got to be one of the best bargains in Ohio. His wife Teresa’s website is an extraordinarily thorough and revealing repository of documents, reports and letters. When it comes to making local government transparent and opening up city council meetings to citizen scrutiny, as provided for under the provisions of Ohio’s Sunshine laws, the Mollettes are the Mr. and Mrs. Sunshine of Scioto County. One of the risks of living in a corrupt political environment like Portsmouth is losing faith in democracy. The Mollettes help me to maintain that faith.

I have before on River Vices expressed my opinion on why Horner is enraged and now appears to have a screw loose on the subject of local websites. It is because Doug Deepe (John Welton) revealed on his website a few years back that Horner’s son was arrested for drug activities and that any trace of that arrest was later expunged from court records. Horner has complained about his family being “crucified” by local websites, which I assume is a reference to Welton’s outing of his son’s drug history. In addition to that, Horner is infuriated by local websites criticizing him for exploiting the legitimate concern over crime and terrorism for his own political purposes.

Has he gone over the edge on Websites?

Even when one website links to another one, Horner takes this as proof of unethical, if not terrorist, activity. Of course our computer savvy chief of police and our MySpace disk jockey Steve Hayes know that anyone can put a link to another website, but they claim this is unethical internet behavior. What they are basically after, what all this website brouhaha is about can be stated simply: it is to remove Bob Mollette from the city council and replace him with a lapdawg, as is the custom in Portsmouth. Three council members were removed back in 1980, when the press and the local radio stations tightly controlled local news. Those days are over. Bloggers have broken up that monopoly. As long as the government doesn’t control the blogosphere, it can not control the news. As long as there are blogging watchdogs, the lapdawgs will whine. As long as there are websites that don't follow the SOGP party line, the sunshine can get through those clouds of lies. Long live the blogosphere!

Remembering Scooter

Scooter, Germ Man, forgetful fellow, fall guy—
You are on my mind, always and always.
Try to remember, Scooter, try to remember
The things a veep’s creep contemplates
At 3 AM in the dark night of the jail.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, Shock and Awe,
Flowers blooming in the hands of children.
You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now,
And the aspen leaves are turning, turning.
You have lies to disseminate, asses to cover for,
More novels to write, of bestiality and pedophilia,
Of children choking on genitalia.
You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now,
And the aspen leaves are turning, turning.
In Najaf, where pilgrims congregate, the cluster bombs
Bursting in air, gave proof to the night
That WMDs still were not there.
They gather in clusters, the children of Iraq,
Their thin stems disconnected from the tree of life.
You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now,
And the aspen leaves are turning, turning.
You still have stories to cover, cover stories to create,
The Iranian nuclear threat to authenticate –
Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats –
And the aspen leaves will be turning, turning.
Remember always those leaves that are turning.
Try to remember them when you
Get up in the middle of the night to defecate,
Straining to remember what it was you ate,
Remember that we have not forgotten you.
You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now,
And the aspen leaves are turning, turning.
Try to remember the kind of September
When Libby was a likable fellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was, oh, so yellow-cake mellow.
Come back to work, Scooter, and to life.
Until then, and please don’t forget,
You will remain in our thoughts and prayers.
You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now,
And the aspen leaves are turning, turning,
And holy cities are burning, burning, burning.

Robert Forrey (3-9-07)

Born to Rise

Christine Jennings

As reported in national news media last November, a female candidate came within less than 400 votes of winning the contest for the 13^th Congressional seat vacated by disgraced pedophile congressman Mark Foley. The candidate who nearly won was Christine Jennings, a native of New Boston. Jennings is not just a local girl who made good. She is an all-American success story. She went to work as a bank teller in Portsmouth immediately after graduating from high school. She spent fourteen years with Ohio’s Huntington National Bank, and in 1984 she became vice president of commercial real estate for Southeast Bank of Sarasota. In 1987, she was chief lending officer at the Liberty National Bank, in Bradenton, a bank she helped charter. Then she was a key figure in the founding of Sarasota Bank, where she made a concerted effort to attract women customers. Knowing that women did not feel comfortable at many banks, she made sure they felt at home at Sarasota Bank. “They just need to feel they are wanted, and welcomed, and appreciated,” she told a reporter. As President, CEO, Chairwoman of the Board, and Director of the Sarasota Bank, she made her mark in Florida banking. “Her determination built Sarasota into a success that sold for $40.5 million in 2003 and made Jennings a millionaire,” the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported in a feature story on her.

How many millionaire bankers are Democrats? Very few, and yet Christine Jennings, though she may have flirted with Republicanism, is a New Boston-born-and-bred Democrat. She has not forgotten her New Boston roots or her parents, who were deeply involved in the Democratic Party of New Boston. Her father was a steel worker and union leader and her mother was president of the New Boston Democratic Club. “I think you have to pattern the traits and qualities, the things that you see in people you admire,” she once said. Presumably, her parents were her first role models.

Still going strong after all these years, Richard Noel, a candidate for Portsmouth City Council, worked with Jennings’ father and uncle in the steel mill, and knew them well. Noel told me he thinks Christine would have taken after her mother and father no matter where she was. Her father, who is listed as the Rev. Kenneth Jennings on his death certificate, was a man of conviction and her mother, who is still living, was deeply involved in activities to better the community. No daughter of the Jennings would have sold out, Noel claims.

Jennings homestead in New Boston

The New Boston house where she grew up still stands, humbly but proudly, on Gallia St. I talked to relatives and neighbors, who are proud of her success. Instead of retiring and counting her money, as we expect some of our Portsmouth millionaires to do when they retire to Hilton Head, Jennings jumped into politics, running in 2004 for the 13^th House seat and again in 2006. Sarasota has not had a Democrat in Congress for thirty years, so it was something for her to have come as close to winning the disputed contest as she did. Her opponent outspent her by a three to one margin in the campaign but won by less than 400 votes. In yet another botched-up Florida election, 18,000 ballots in the 13 District were not counted. Jennings charged the voting machines were at fault, but they were never examined.

I suppose those votes would not have mattered if Jennings had outspent her opponent by three to one, instead of the other way around. Ironically, Jennings attributed her success in business in part to being very frugal. “Through it all,” the Herald Tribune reported, “Jennings followed a penny-pinching, conservative style that has been her trademark since starting as a teller four decades ago in Ohio.” She told a reporter, “If my staff wanted Post-it notes, they had to buy them. . . . If a napkin was under a glass or cup of coffee, we collected those, turned them over and used them again.”

How times have changed! I recall going into a recently renovated Portsmouth bank about ten years ago to open an account. Which bank? Who can keep straight which bank is which anymore, or what its name was ten years ago? Anyway, I looked at the lavish interior and the preening personnel, who were obviously proud to be working in such a plush place, especially since the rest of downtown Chillicothe St. was so grungy. I asked myself, “Why should I subsidize such airs?” I suppose all the fancy appointments were supposed to overawe the locals into thinking they were lucky to have their money in such an imposing bank, just as some locals will probably drink coffee in the new Starbucks even if they can’t afford to. Was it the same bank that not too long ago was reportedly trying to get out of Portsmouth, providing it could unload the building off on the public as a new city hall? Who knows?

I doubt any of them are reusing napkins. Republicans were once the frugal ones. Now they run up budgets as high as the Aspen mountains they go skiing on and with ethics as low as the Hilton Head sea-bottom they scuba-dive down to. What would have happened to Jennings if she had not ventured out into the competitive world beyond our pork-fed, government-subsidized, abatement-batty, eminent-domained-to-death Portsmouth, engaging not just in the customary back-scratching but in the kind of financial mutual grooming our non-competitive local primate plutocrats engage in? Would she have maintained her frugal values? Would she have risen higher than a bank teller? If she had become the president of one of Portsmouth’s banks, would she have become one of the corrupt crowd who play an important role in helping the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership keeping the pork in Porksmouth and keeping real competition out? Would she have become skilled at the art of sponging off local, state, and federal treasuries, and profitably unloading worthless properties off on the public? These are not people who recycle napkins; these are people who recycle useless department stores as city halls and visitor centers, at great profit to themselves, and who unload at scandalously high prices white elephant residences like the Thatcher house on Franklin Boulevard and Dr. Rooney’s house on Camelot Drive as houses for the president of SSU, however unsuited and poorly located they may be for the purpose. What does that matter, as long as the over-privileged of Portsmouth are bailed out at public expense?

http://www.christinejenningsforcongress.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Jennings

Letter to the Auditor (2)

Auditor Trent Williams asks for another raise

Mr. Williams:

Because I did not receive an answer to my previous email of 2/21/07, I visited your office yesterday and you assured me a reply would be coming soon, which I am sure it will. But a story in the Daily Times today about your request for a $994 raise, in addition to the $10,000 you received recently, prompts me to add questions to those I posed in my last email.

1. Is it true that you do not have any education beyond high school, and specifically you have no degree, 2-year or 4-year, in accounting?
2. Since graduating from high school, have you had any job experience outside of employment in local government, on the public payroll?

I ask these questions because I find it hard to understand why you believe you deserve more than the $50,700 salary I am told you now receive. To say that other department heads in the city building earn more than you hardly seems enough justification for giving you another raise.

The two candidates you will face in the upcoming election both have college degrees. Russ Doyle, an ordained minister, has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Cincinnati, and Crystal Gifford, the mother of two children, has a B.A. from Shawnee State in accounting, has a Master’s degree in the same area from Ohio U., and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in accounting while she is also teaching accounting part-time at Shawnee State. In spite of being a parent, she has found time to get an extensive education in the field of accounting.

I have to wonder whether someone with a solid education and background in accounting would not be able to run the auditor’s office more efficiently and economically than you have. The award the city recently won for accounting actually cost the city at least $25,000, which was the fee you paid to an outside firm to help you with the annual audit that won the award. Who gave you that award? Another outside trade group to which you belong and the membership fees for which I requested in my last email. I now suspect those awards, which are widely distributed to members of the awarding organization, are useful to members to post on their office wall and to publicize during election campaigns, but I wonder if they are really reliable measures of the quality of work that is being done in-house, by the recipients of the awards.

That you would ask for another raise during an election year suggests you may not be able to run a political campaign any more effectively than you are running the auditor’s office. Are you so confident of being reelected that you think you can ask for another raise without the voters strongly objecting? Enough voters may decide that they want someone as auditor who does not have to rely as much on highly paid outside accounting firms. One way to reduce the projected $300,000 to $600,000 deficit is for the auditor’s office to do more of the accounting work in-house. I can believe that it is the mayor who is primarily responsible for the large city budget deficit, as you told me yesterday, but even without a degree in accounting I think I can figure out that the deficit would be less if the auditor's office was not spending as much money as it is on outside accountants.

Thank you.

Robert Forrey, Ph.D.

[On 2-23-07, I received a prompt three-page reply in a pdf format to my Letter I (see my previous post) from auditor Williams. I have tried to transfer his reply to River Vices, but I have had trouble making a readable copy. So I asked Teresa Mollette to post the auditor's reply on her excellent website, Portsmouthcitizens.info, which deserves an award for excellence. I urge readers to read the auditor's clearly written and well organized reply. I will respond to it in my next posting. For the auditor's reply, click here.