Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is putting forward legislation that would break up the big banks to avoid what has been colloquially dubbed “too big to fail.” The liberal senator is teaming up with Sen. David Vitter, a very conservative Republican from Louisiana, to put together the bill, which Brown says will make the economy safer, secure taxpayer money and help create jobs. In his push, Brown has compared the big banks to Standard Oil, which was broken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911 after the oil giant breached antitrust laws.

Indiana Gov. Mike Spence fired back at Ohio Gov. John Kasich for insulting Indiana in recent remarks: “Indiana is the best state in the Midwest to start a business, grow a business and get a job. … With the Hoosier state consistently winning the competition for fiscal responsibility and reform, somebody should remind the governor of Ohio that trash talk usually comes before the game.” In a speech Monday, Kasich said, “This is not Indiana where you go to Indianapolis … and then say, ‘Where else are we going to go? Gary?’ ”

Ohio is a leader in reducing prison re-entry, and that’s translating to millions of dollars for the state’s taxpayers. Ohio’s recidivism rate, which measures how many prison convicts are returning to prison after being released, dropped to 28.7 percent in 2009, from 39.5 percent in 2003. The latest data is from 2009, so it’s before Gov. John Kasich took office and passed measures to further reduce prison recidivism, which provide new ways for criminals to get records expunged, allow released criminals to obtain a certificate of qualification from courts for employment and offer sentence-reduction incentives for prisoners to get job training and education programs while in prison.

The Ohio House approved a bill that would effectively shut down Internet sweepstakes cafes, which state officials claim are havens for gambling and other criminal activity, by limiting their prize payouts to $10. The bill received support from law-enforcement groups, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, some charity organizations and the state’s casino operators.

Mayoral candidate John Cranley says the city should redirect funding meant for the streetcar to the MLK/I-71 Interchange project, but the funding is set up through federal grants that are highly competitive and allocated specifically to the streetcar project.

Opponents of the city’s parking plan briefly celebrated yesterday when they assumed Graeter’s had joined their efforts, but the ice cream company says it was all a misunderstanding. Graeter’s is allowing opponents to gather petition signatures in front of its stores because the sidewalks are public property, but the company says it didn’t give permission to gather signatures within the stores.

Cincinnati’s Findlay Market earned a glowing review in The Boston Globe, sparking a wave of celebration on social media.

The Smale Riverfront Park is forging ahead largely thanks to the help of private funders, who have made up for an unexpected drop in state and federal funds.

The Ohio Senate paved ahead with legislation that will raise the speed limit on some highways, particularly in rural areas, to 70 miles per hour. The bill contains obvious time benefits for drivers, but environmental groups say higher speed limits mean worse fuel efficiency and insurance groups say it will make roads more dangerous.

A West Chester trucking company is cutting 250 jobs.

Popular Science has nine reasons to avoid sugar to save your life.

The MLK/I-71 Interchange project is supposed to be funded through the city’s parking plan, but mayoral candidate John Cranley, who opposes the parking plan and streetcar, says the city should instead use federal funding that was originally intended for the streetcar project.

Between 2010 and 2011, the streetcar project was awarded about $40 million in federal grants — nearly $25 million through the Urban Circulator Grant, $4 million through the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Grant and nearly $11 million through TIGER 3.

The grants are highly competitive and allocated to certain projects. In the case of Cincinnati, the grants were specifically awarded to the streetcar after it was thoroughly vetted as a transit, not highway, project.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) website explains why the Urban Circulator Grant is only meant for transit projects like the streetcar: “Urban circulator systems such as streetcars and rubber-tire trolley lines provide a transportation option that connects urban destinations and foster the redevelopment of urban spaces into walkable mixed-use, high-density environments.”

The CMAQ Grant’s main goal is to fund projects that curtail congestion and pollution, with an emphasis on transit projects, according to the Federal Highway Administration. The website explains, “Eligible activities include transit improvements, travel demand management strategies, traffic flow improvements and public fleet conversions to cleaner fuels, among others.”

The DOT website says TIGER 3 money could go to a highway project, but one of the program’s goals is promoting “livability,” which is defined as, “Fostering livable communities through place-based policies and investments that increase transportation choices and access to transportation services for people in communities across the United States.” TIGER 3 is also described as highly competitive by the DOT, so only a few programs get a chance at the money.

The parking plan would lease Cincinnati’s parking assets to the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority and allocate a portion of the raised funds — $20 million — to the MLK/I-71 Interchange project, but the plan is currently being held up by a lawsuit seeking to enable a referendum.

The streetcar is one of the few issues in which Cranley and Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, a streetcar supporter who is also running for mayor, are in stark contrast (“Back on the Ballot,” issue of Jan. 23).

Cranley’s opponents recently accused him of originally supporting the streetcar when he was a council member through two 2008 City Council motions, but Cranley says those motions, which he co-sponsored, only asked the city administration to study the merits of a streetcar plan, not approve of it. Cranley voted no on the first streetcar resolution in October 2007 and the motion to actually build the streetcar in April 2008.

“I’ve never said that I’m against the (streetcar) concept in all circumstances,” Cranley says. “I wanted to know if there was a way that they could pay for it in a way that wouldn’t take away from what I thought were more important priorities.”

The Ohio Board of Education named Richard Ross, one of Gov. John Kasich’s top education advisers, to the state school superintendent position. Ross’ appointment links the Ohio Department of Education more closely with Kasich, according to StateImpact Ohio. Ross is replacing Stan Heffner, who resigned in August after an ethics investigation found he had misused state resources for personal matters and testified in favor of legislation that could have benefited a company he planned to work for.

In a study that should be out next month, Ohio and Kentucky officials are reviewing the Brent Spence Bridge project to make it more affordable. Many officials want to use tolling to help pay for the bridge, but northern Kentucky residents and elected officials have pushed back because they’re concerned tolls will divert traffic to other bridges in Ohio and hurt the local economy.

In a press conference in front of the Ohio Statehouse yesterday, more than 100 educators and members of the Coalition of Rural and Appalachian Schools (CORAS) asked Kasich to rework his education reform proposal in a way that would raise per-pupil funding, fully fund transportation, career technical and special education programs and pay for new initiatives like the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. Under Kasich’s current proposal, the state is reducing aid from $5,700 for each student to $5,000, but CORAS says funding should be increased to $6,270. CityBeat covered Kasich’s budget proposal, which includes his education reform plan, here.

While funding in Kasich’s plan is mixed for traditional public schools, charter schools will get 4.5 percent more funding, according to the Legislative Service Commission. Conservatives typically tout charter schools for providing more “school choice,” but in a previous report, Policy Matters Ohio, a left-leaning policy research group, found more choices may bring down results from teachers and students.

Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan and friends and family of fire victims are pushing for a review of Cincinnati’s fire ordinance codes to avert fire deaths. The proposed changes include more required fire exits, annual inspections, a mandatory fire drill at the beginning of each school semester, the removal of all exceptions in the code and a measure that would prevent air conditioning units from being placed on windows that are supposed to act as exits. Quinlivan is also encouraging the University of Cincinnati to restart a certified list of preferred rental locations around campus, which would only include housing properties that pass fire safety inspections.

The first public hearings on Kasich’s budget proposal to expand Medicaid contained mixed testimony, with supporters touting greater accessibility to health care and improved health results and opponents claiming that Medicaid leads to worse outcomes and will discourage people from improving their economic situation. Previous studies, which CityBeat covered along with the rest of Kasich’s budget proposal here, found Medicaid expansions led to lower mortality rates and better health outcomes in certain states. The Health Policy Institute of Ohio says the Medicaid expansion will save the state money in the next decade and provide health insurance to 456,000 Ohioans by 2022.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has posted the full lawsuit filed against the city’s parking plan, which is set to have a hearing in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on Friday. CityBeat wrote more about the lawsuit here.

Judge Robert Ruehlman ruled that Elmwood Place can’t collect on tickets from speed cameras that he recently deemed a violation of motorists’ due process. The city and police are filing an appeal to the initial ruling, which halted the use of the cameras.

Eighteen percent of Greater Cincinnati’s chief financial officers plan to hire for new professional-level positions in the second quarter, while 66 percent say they will only fill jobs that open in the next three months.

Ohio joined 37 states and the District of Columbia in a $7 million settlement with Google yesterday that is expected to net $162,000 for the state. The case centered around Google collecting data from unsecured wireless networks nationwide and taking photographs for its Street View service between 2008 and March 2010.

The effort to effectively ban Internet sweepstakes cafes passed an Ohio House committee.

The federal government may not need to balance its budget at all, according to Bloomberg.

Trained Soviet attack dolphins with head-mounted guns are on the loose.

On New Year’s Day, a fire broke out in a residential home near the University of Cincinnati that led to the deaths of UC students Chad Kohls and Ellen Garner, and their friends and family say the deaths could have been prevented by a better fire ordinance code. Now, Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan is heeding their call.

Speaking in front of the Livable Communities Committee today, friends and family of Kohls and Garner asked City Council to pass changes to the fire ordinance, including more required fire exits, annual inspections, a mandatory fire drill at the beginning of each school semester and the removal of all exceptions in the code. They’re also asking the new ordinance be named in honor of Kohls and Garner.

Quinlivan says her office will work with the city administration to find possible changes that would help avert fire deaths, including a measure that would prevent air conditioning units from being placed on windows that are supposed to act as exits.

Quinlivan is also encouraging UC to restart a certified list of preferred rental locations around campus, which would only include housing properties that pass fire safety inspections.

“I am touched that those close to Ellen and Chad contacted me, so that we can work with our city administration to prevent similar tragedies in the future,” Quinlivan said in a statement.

Two weeks ago, City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that requires all rental properties be equipped with photoelectric smoke detectors that are better at detecting slow, smoldering fires, which have been linked to more fatalities than the flaming, fast-moving fires picked up by the more traditional ionization smoke detectors, according to the vice mayor’s office. CityBeat covered that legislation here.

The region’s seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate shot up in January, with the City of Cincinnati at 8.6 percent, up from 6.7 percent in December; Hamilton County at 7.9 percent, up from 6.2 percent; and Greater Cincinnati at 8 percent, up from 6.4 percent. The rates were still lower than January 2012, when Cincinnati was at 8.8 percent, Hamilton County was at 8.3 percent and Greater Cincinnati was at 8.5 percent. But the civilian labor force, which measures the amount of people working and looking for jobs, was larger across-the-board in January 2012 than it was in January 2013. Federal and state employment rates are normally adjusted for seasonal factors, but local rates are not. The full data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services can be seen here.

Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald launched an “exploratory committee” for a gubernatorial election campaign that intends to unseat Gov. John Kasich. In his announcement video, FitzGerald says state leaders have let down Ohioans and he can provide a better alternative.

The Cincinnati Tea Party is protesting Kasich’s plan to expand Medicaid to include anyone up to or at 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The tea party says the expansion, which is financially supported by Obamacare, is financed by the federal government’s debt and creates more long-term problems by failing to address current issues with the U.S. health care system. The Health Policy Institute of Ohio says the Medicaid expansion will save the state money in the next decade and provide health insurance to 456,000 Ohioans by 2022. CityBeat covered Kasich’s budget proposal, which includes the Medicaid expansion, in further detail here.

Yesterday, Kasich’s administration tried to explain why it did not seek legislative approval before transferring about $6.5 million in taxpayer money to JobsOhio, but it did not provide any evidence for its claim that the grants used do not require legislative approval. State Democrats are getting increasingly critical of the lack of transparency behind JobsOhio, a publicly funded nonprofit agency that Kasich established to eventually replace the Ohio Department of Development. Recently, State Auditor Dave Yost has been pushing to fully audit JobsOhio’s finances, even its private funds, but Kasich and General Assembly Republicans argue the state auditor can only check on public funds.

Bipartisan efforts to get rid of traffic cameras are underway, largely because the policy is seen as a money grab, may be unconstitutional and likely to be put to referendum, anyway.

A nun, poll worker and widower have been indicted in the Hamilton County Board of Election’s voter fraud case. The board says the charges are only the beginning, and other investigations are ongoing.

In order to meet new state standards, Cincinnati will implement safety improvements for pedestrians, including changes to lines separating pedestrian crosswalks and countdowns on more pedestrian signals.

The University of Cincinnati is investing $1.6 million in its doctoral programs and accepting proposals to support others to show how it would result in better faculty, student research productivity, recruitment, retention of top students and ability to leverage extended funding.

With yesterday’s approved changes to the state’s transportation budget, Ohio could be moving to a 70 mile-per-hour speed limit soon.

A dad hacked the game Donkey Kong to allow his daughter to play a heroine instead of Mario.

With a new artificial intelligence app that tweets even after a person dies, mortality is no longer a concern for retaining Twitter followers.

Cincinnati’s plan to lease parking assets to the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority remains on hold as a lawsuit arguing the law should be subject to referendum works through the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. The legal dispute is focused on City Council’s use of the emergency clause, which eliminates a 30-day waiting period on implementing laws and takes away the possibility of a referendum. Emergency clauses are routinely deployed in City Council, but opponents of the parking plan say that doesn’t make them right.

Whether the parking deal does go through or not, the Tower Place Mall renovations will be carried out. The city originally included the renovations as part of the plan, but Meg Olberding, city spokesperson, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that the city is planning on selling the the property to a subsidiary of JDL Warm Construction for an undisclosed sum, and the company will then pay an estimated $5 million for the redevelopment.

Gov. John Kasich’s plan to expand the sales tax to fund tax cuts is being heavily criticized by some members of the business community, but Rep. Ron Amstutz, chairman of the Ohio House Finance & Appropriations Committee, says he is looking into ways to save the proposal. Kasich’s plan would expand the application of the sales tax to include more services, including cable TV and admission to sport events, but it would lower the sales tax rate from 5.5 percent to 5 percent and carry out 20-percent across-the-board income tax cuts. CityBeat wrote about Kasich’s budget proposal in further detail here.

As part of Kasich’s education plans, the state’s school voucher program is expanding to help students meet a Third Grade Reading Guarantee, which requires third-graders pass a test in reading proficiency before they can move onto fourth grade. Supporters argue the voucher program provides more choice and control for parents, but opponents say the state should not be paying for private educations. A previous Policy Matters Ohio report found expanded school choice through more vouchers can have negative effects on education, including worse results for students and teachers.

State Auditor Dave Yost is pushing for a full audit of JobsOhio, the publicly funded private, nonprofit agency, but Republican state legislators are joining Kasich in opposition. The opposing Republicans say the state auditor can track any public funds used for JobsOhio, but they say the agency is allowed to keep its private funds under wraps. Kasich says he plans to replace the Ohio Department of Development, which can be fully audited by the state auditor at any time, with JobsOhio.

The Ohio Department of Education apparently knew or should have known of ongoing data scrubbing in schools as early as 2008, according to The Toledo Blade. Emails acquired by The Blade show officials analyzed and discussed data reports that year after media reports detailed how urban districts excluded thousands of test scores on state report cards.

Supporters of the Anna Louise Inn gathered Friday in celebration of International Women’s Day and to stand against Western & Southern’s repeated efforts to run the Inn out of the neighborhood.

The U.S. Census Bureau says Cincinnati commutes are much shorter than the national average, with only 2.9 percent of Cincinnatians spending more than 60 minutes one-way during their commute, as compared to the 8.1 percent national average.

The Cincinnati Enquirer unveiled its new tabloid format today. Ben Kaufman says it looks nice and arrived on time.

The Killers are coming to the Horseshoe Casino.

A new study says results from fMRI scans are unintentionally distorted and inaccurate — to the point that some studies on the human brain that use fMRI results may be seriously questionable.

The plan to lease Cincinnati’s parking assets to the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority remains up in the air today after court rulings kept a court-mandated restraining order in place until at least March 15, when a hearing is scheduled at the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court.

The hearing on March 15 will establish whether the lawsuit should move forward and whether the restraining order will remain until the lawsuit is resolved. The latter poses a budgetary challenge to the city; if the restraining order is kept in place and opponents gather the signatures required for a November referendum on the parking plan, the city says it will have to make cuts before July to balance the budget for fiscal year 2014, which could result in layoffs.

“We’ve been very clear that, by state law, we need to have a balanced budget starting July 1, so we will need to do all things necessary at that point,” says Meg Olberding, city spokesperson.

The lawsuit was originally moved to federal courts on March 7 because it included complaints regarding civil rights. Plaintiffs removed the mention of civil rights, which then prompted Judge Michael Barrett to send the lawsuit back to the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court.

City Council approved the parking plan in a 5-4 vote on March 6, but the plan was almost immediately held up by a temporary restraining order from Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Winkler. The restraining order is meant to provide enough time to process a lawsuit filed by Curt Hartman, an attorney who represents the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), on behalf of local activists who oppose the plan and argue it should be subject to referendum.

“If there was even five seconds without a temporary restraining order in place, the city’s going to sign that lease,” Chris Finney, another attorney that represents COAST, said in a public statement after the hearing with Barrett. “At that point, the city will argue that the case has moved and that the (referendum) petitions are void.”

The legal dispute is focused on City Council’s use of the emergency clause, which eliminates a 30-day waiting period on implementing laws but takes away the possibility of a referendum. 

In an interview on March 7, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, who voted for the parking plan, told CityBeat the dispute over emergency clauses is politically motivated: “I think it’s nothing but a political controversy that’s generated for political gain and for political purposes. Council passes many of its ordinances with emergency clauses. In fact, the other candidate for mayor himself consistently voted for emergency clauses.”

The other mayoral candidate Qualls is referring to is John Cranley, a former council member who opposes the parking plan and says he will support a referendum effort.

“Just because the emergency clause may be used too often doesn’t make it right,” says Cranley. “I never voted for an emergency clause when there was a stated grassroots effort to have a referendum on a vote that I was facing.”

CityBeat previously covered the parking plan in further detail here.

There will be a giant swarm of purple in front of the Western & Southern headquarters (400 Broadway St.) in Lytle Park beginning at noon today in support of the Anna Louise Inn, which provides shelter to low-income women, to coincide with International Women's Day. 

The rally is intended to demonstrate both local support for the Anna Louise Inn and its missions and oppose Western & Southern's long-standing attack on the ALI. Sponsoring organizations stretch far beyond the Inn, including the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, Nuns on the Bus, League of Women Voters, Women's City Club, Women's Political Caucus and others.

According to the press release, the rally will be "strong and noticeable with singing, chanting and signs," so it's likely the execs at Western & Southern will be forced to take notice. Attendees will all wear purple sashes — purple is the color of the logo for International Women's Day, which is intended to both celebrate and continue to lobby for advances in gender equality across the world. 

Most recently in the Western & Southern/Anna Louise Inn debacle, the Ohio First District Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that Cincinnati Union Bethel, which owns the Inn, filed an "incomplete" permit application, requiring them to resubmit funding requests to the city, including more thorough details about the Inn and its Off the Streets program, which helps formerly prostituted women turn their lives around. That means the Inn is required to once again jump through another series of legal hoops based on minor technicalities that would have never been an issue if Western & Southern had accepted they missed their chance at the plot already.

Click here to see an archive of all CityBeat's Anna Louise Inn coverage.

In February, the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, from 7.9 percent in January, and the nation added 236,000 jobs. Many of the new jobs — about 48,000 — came from construction, while government employment saw a drop even before sequestration, a series of across-the-board federal spending cuts, began on March 1. Economists seem quite positive about the report.

In January, Ohio’s unemployment rate rose to 7 percent, from 6.7 percent in December, with the number of unemployed in the state rising to 399,000, from 385,000 the month before. Goods-producing and service-providing industries and local government saw a rise in employment, while jobs were lost in trade, transportation, utilities, financial activities, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, state government and federal government. In January, U.S. unemployment rose to 7.9 percent, from 7.8 percent in December.

A new report outlined renovations for the city-owned Tower Place Mall, which is getting a makeover as part of Cincinnati’s parking plan. A lot of the retail space in the mall will be replaced to make room for parking that will be accessed through what is currently Pogue’s Garage, but two rings of retail space will remain, according to the report. The parking plan was approved by City Council Wednesday, but it was temporarily halted by a Hamilton County judge. The legal contest has now moved to federal court, and it’s set to get a hearing today.

Meet the mayoral candidates through CityBeat’s two extensive Q&As: Roxanne Qualls and John Cranley. Qualls spoke mostly about her support for immigration, the parking plan and streetcar, while Cranley discussed his opposition to the parking plan and streetcar and some of his ideas for Cincinnati.

A Hamilton County court ruled against the controversial traffic cameras in Elmwood Place, and the Ohio legislature is considering a statewide ban on the cameras. In his ruling, Judge Robert Ruehlman pointed out there were no signs making motorists aware of the cameras and the cameras are calibrated once a year by a for-profit operator. The judge added, “Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-card Monty. … It is a scam that motorists can’t win.” Bipartisan legislation was recently introduced to prohibit traffic cameras in Ohio.

JobsOhio, the state-funded nonprofit corporation, quietly got $5.3 million in state grants, even though the state legislature only appropriated $1 million for startup costs. JobsOhio says it needed the extra funds because legal challenges have held up liquor profits that were originally supposed to provide funding. In the past few days, State Auditor Dave Yost, a Republican, has been pushing Republican Gov. John Kasich and JobsOhio to release more details about the nonprofit corporation’s finances, but Kasich and JobsOhio have been pushing back.

Advocates for Ohio’s charter schools say Kasich’s budget amounts to a per-pupil cut, with funding dropping from $5,704 per pupil to $5,000 plus some targeted assistance that ranges from hundreds of dollars to nothing depending on the school. A previous CityBeat report on online schools found traditional public schools get about $3,193 per student — much less than the funding that apparently goes to charter schools.

Fountain Square will be getting a new television from Cincinnati-based LSI Industries with the help of Fifth-Third Bank and the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC). The new video board will have better image quality and viewing angles, but it will also come with more screen space for sponsors.

Ohio’s casino revenues rose in January. That could be a good sign for Cincinnati’s Horseshoe Casino, which opened Monday.

In light of recent discussion, Popular Science posted a Q&A on drones.

For better or worse, Cincinnati will have to deal with another major election cycle in 2013. With a few hot-button issues already grabbing the public spotlight, a lot could be at stake when voters pull the lever on Nov. 5 — making a proper understanding of the candidates all the more important.

Most people get to know candidates through fragments of information spread out in multiple stories and media outlets, but a comprehensive question-and-answer format provides candidates with a chance to speak on their own terms. CityBeat already did a one-on-one with Democratic mayoral candidate John Cranley, which can be read here.

Next up, CityBeat sat down with Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls, another Democrat who is running for mayor, to discuss her campaign and what ideas she’s bringing to the table. Qualls has been a strong advocate of the streetcar (“Back on the Ballot,” issue of Jan. 23) and parking plan (“Parking Stimulus,” issue of Feb. 27), and she says she wants to continue development in Downtown and Cincinnati’s neighborhoods to create sustainable growth. We asked her about those issues and more, and the extensive conversation (with some edits for clarity and brevity) can be read below.

CityBeat: How do you feel about the campaign in general so far?

Roxanne Qualls: I’m very excited about the campaign. You know, a mayor’s race is very different than a council race. A mayor’s race has many more components to it: higher fundraising goals and more intensive outreach. I’ve been very encouraged by the folks who are volunteering and those who are stepping up and making contributions. It’s still early, but I’ve been excited.

CB: What kind of support have you seen so far?

RQ: Support is good. A lot of neighborhood folks are coming forward, partly because of the work I’ve been doing with them on council to help them achieve their own visions for their communities and neighborhoods. And I’m also getting support from different groups of people who I’ve been working for a number of years on major projects that help move the city and also the neighborhoods forward.

CB: Before we get into parking and the streetcar, one of the resolutions passed by City Council yesterday asked Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Do you think there’s anything the city could do to be more inviting to immigrants?

RQ: Even though it was a resolution and is therefore a symbolic act of the council, that symbolic act was very, very important to the members of the immigrant community in Cincinnati because many other communities are unwilling to say they even want immigrants.

My own personal and professional belief is that if we’re actually going to grow as a city and really thrive in the future in a sustainable way, we have to encourage immigrants to come into the city of Cincinnati. If you look around the country at cities that have increased their population significantly, they don’t do it relying on baby boomers moving back to the city and Gen Y-ers — those folks are important, but they’re not sufficient. You have to have immigrants come into your community, buy up homes, buy up stores and regenerate and rejuvenate the neighborhoods.

As a city that went from over 500,000 people to now under 300,000, we have to fill that gap. When I’m mayor, I will set a goal that by 2025 we will increase our population by 100,000 people. We’re only going to do that with immigrants.

CB: So what kind of programs do you think would help in that area?

RQ: A couple things, but there are things already happening that many people are unaware of. For example, if you were to go to Roberts Paideia at Price Hill, you would find 30 percent of the children there were not speaking English in their households before attending school. So a very strong Spanish-speaking community is growing up in Price Hill. First and foremost, having an educational system that recognizes and responds is very important.

The other thing is to be a very welcoming community, particularly when it comes to issues of safety and security. We’re very fortunate that District 3 has become very responsive, as is District 4, to immigrants. The entire police department is sensitive, but we have a very high concentration of folks who are Latinos in District 3 — that’s why I focused on District 3 as very critical in terms of the response.

The third thing that we need to do is work with organizations like the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Chinese Chamber of Commerce to really strengthen business relations and the support that’s necessary for many of the small businesses that provide opportunities and employment within those communities. As the city develops its small business program, we need to pay attention to the fact that very small businesses — under $100,000, let’s say, in terms of annual volume — are those businesses that really are neighborhood-serving. They’re businesses we should be encouraging within the immigrant community.

CB: One of the surprising statistics with public safety is that a very small amount of the police force — 2 out of 981 — speaks Spanish. Do you think there’s anything we could do to encourage more Spanish speakers?

RQ: There’s an increasing recognition that it’s important for people who provide services to speak more than one language, so the police department can encourage its members to speak more than English.

But there are other things we can do in general, not just that would impact the police. I’ve been trying to do something as simple as multilingual signage. 

The city could also aggressively promote simultaneous translation via its own website and the information it puts out. On my own personal website, one of the things that we use is the Google Translator. So anyone who wants to read anything on the website, all they have to do is press the Google Translator and have it translate to any language.

CB: The other thing that was covered in City Council yesterday was the parking plan. You supported it. What do you think it will do for the city?

RQ: There are a couple things it’s going to do. Simply on the level of parking, it’s going to provide the resources to modernize the system. For the garages, that means all the capital improvements that are necessary. For the meters, that’s everything everybody has heard about in terms of putting in electronic meters, allowing the use of smartphone apps, making it much more convenient for people and giving us the ability as technology evolves over time to adapt. For example, we shouldn’t assume that 30 years from now there will be such things as meters in existence. We need to be able to adapt in that environment. Already in other countries, you don’t have meters, but you do have sensors and you do have means of paying, but it doesn’t involve a physical object to do it with. It’s all oriented toward customer service and staying up with the times.

The second thing is it gives us the resources to invest in things like the MLK/I-71 Interchange, which everybody, I believe, at this point agrees is a major economic development investment and will pay off in significant job growth in the medical-university area of uptown. 

It also allows us to invest in some critical pieces of downtown development that involve garages and residential development that will help us capture the market. I think if you read all the papers, everybody should realize that there’s no available product to meet the demand for downtown housing. Any time something comes into the market, it is either rented out or sold out. So we need to bring residential online at a much faster pace in Downtown.

And we get to increase our reserves, so that the rating agencies will be encouraged that we’re taking steps to ensure that we can responsibly manage our budget. And for the moment, for fiscal year 2014, it will help us reduce the deficit. 

So there’s, one, modernization itself and, two, the ability to invest in opportunities over the long term that will grow our revenues and help us become more sustainable as a city.

CB: With the modernization part, do you think it’s necessary to make this deal because the city can’t otherwise afford to make improvements?

RQ: If you look at the money that comes into the current parking system and look at the needs of the parking system, the current parking system can’t support the level of investment required for modernization. By doing this lease agreement, those upgrades can occur.

CB: On the deficit-reduction side, how do you think the city will solve its structural deficit once the one-time money does run out?

RQ: In fiscal year 2014, obviously a portion of the money is there to help balance the budget. Other members of council and I feel very strongly that this, starting now, is the opportunity to bring the structural deficit under control. Between June 2013 and July 2014, we need to put in place a deficit reduction plan.

Now, the city manager has begun to talk about some of that, but that needs to be accelerated. Among the things that we need to do to make it a realistic possibility is we need to bring certain players to the table: the folks who represent our collective bargaining units, fire, police and AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). They have as much of an interest in figuring out how to deal with this issue as I do as an elected official, as the city manager does, as anybody does. So they really need to be at the table, talking — not in negotiations, but just talking — about how we’re going to begin to approach this in a way that ensures what we all want, which is a safe community that provides good quality jobs, great quality service and great quality of life.

The other people that can come to the table is the business community because they can bring their expertise, help and resources, but also the civic community and neighborhoods who are the ones who live and breathe the effects of anything that we do.

The other thing is that we already can begin to identify certain areas that we should be exploring. Something very simple, for example, is one of the major expense items is gas. We are buying new vehicles for the police department that are better for gas mileage, but we’re not doing that fast enough.

CB: Do you think any of the deficit reduction could involve attrition?

RQ: The bottom line for either police and fire is there are minimal service levels. For police, how many of the officers are actually available for the street? For the fire department, how do you make sure that the response time is within acceptable parameters and that the consequence of falling below a certain level isn’t such extensive brownouts that you end up endangering people’s lives?

My own personal feeling is there’s a lot of professional judgment that needs to be involved in this discussion and decision. I would be incredibly hesitant to fall below the minimum staffing levels without the support of Police Chief James Craig or Fire Chief Richard Braun.

CB: How do you feel about the controversy surrounding the emergency clause? 

RQ: I think it’s nothing but a political controversy that’s generated for political gain and for political purposes. Council passes many of its ordinances with emergency clauses. In fact, the other candidate for mayor himself consistently voted for emergency clauses.

The emergency clause is necessary so that we can proceed to construct the budget for fiscal year 2014 by July.

CB: So you don’t think the referendum part of the emergency clause could be separated from the part that expedites the process?

RQ: No, because it is going to take until at least June to get everything in place. We would like to move as quickly as possible, so before we actually approve the budget by July 1, we actually have the money to balance it. If that doesn’t happen, the city manager will have to start sending out layoff notices. By law, we would be required to do that because we would not have that money in place.

CB: So not having the money would force Plan B or something like it?

RQ: Yes, a referendum would result in Plan B or something similar. Regardless of whether you want to call it Plan B or Plan Z, people should not be foolish enough to think that there would not be layoffs. You cannot balance a budget deficit of $25 million without personnel reductions.

CB: The other big item in the mayor’s race is the streetcar. I’ve talked to you about this in the past, and you said you will push through the next phase during your mayor’s term. How exactly do you envision that?

RQ: Currently, there are studies that are being undertaken that are looking for alternatives in streetcar circulation in the uptown area.

If we can connect the streetcar into uptown and have it circulate up there, you have it benefiting these institutions and immediately adjoining neighborhoods. One of the greatest pressures in very dense neighborhoods is that we want to take the pressure off of both the streets in terms of the volume of traffic and parking because parking garages are very expensive and consume a lot of land. We can create an environment in the uptown area that would have a great synergy that would result in the redevelopment of these neighborhoods. Once people get that as the vision, I think the streetcar, even for folks who will never use it, becomes more understandable.

CB: One of the recurring problems with the streetcar project has been delays. What would you do as mayor to have the streetcar ready in time for the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which you previously said you would like?

RQ: I have said I want it ready in time for the 2015 All-Star Game, but that was before the three construction bids came in much higher than expected. The big issue immediately is how to get those costs under control. We have yet to hear from the administration; they’re still reviewing the bids and approaches to handling the cost issues. 

As mayor, my approach to it would be to insist that the administration value engineer this project to ensure that for what is being invested, we are actually getting results that we want.

I am a firm supporter of the streetcar, but I also want people to be very clear that this is not an open checkbook. I don’t think anyone — supporter or opponent — has ever believed it’s an open checkbook. Within the budget that we have given, we should be able to build this system.

CB: What do you mean by value engineering?

RQ: Look at what the actual proposed design is. This is kind of standard in all major projects. You have all the designers and engineers who have put together the original designs for the system. Then what you do is have other eyes who are also experts sit down and start looking at it to ask if there are other things we can do to start saving money.

CB: Do you think the framework of the original bid process was off?

RQ: I think very strongly that it was probably off. We saw that reflected when over 80 contractors downloaded the bid documents and only three bids were received. That says something about those bid documents.

CB: A lot of the mayor’s race has focused on the streetcar and parking deal, but can you give a rundown of some other ideas you have for the city?

RQ: Absolutely. Well, we already talked about one (increasing the population of the city by 100,000). There are a variety of ways to do it — one of which is to be an opening, welcoming city to everybody, but particularly opening and welcoming to immigrants.

The second thing we need to do is look at the tax structure. Currently, there is a commission, which I helped establish, called Investing in the Future Commission, which is examining that and will be making recommendations on specific things that we can do to reward people for making the choice to live and work in the city. That’s very critical.

When looking at job creation, we know that we are very fortunate to have Children’s Hospital, the University of Cincinnati and all of the research coming out of the uptown area. We are very competitive as a region when it comes to patents, but we are laggards when it comes to commercialization of research. Given the institutions we’re blessed to have within city limits, we need to financially support the environments where commercialization can actually occur to make sure we are retaining startup businesses so that they don’t just start here, they stay here. Again, looking at the tax structure would encourage those startups to stay in a way we’re not doing right now.

When you’re looking at neighborhoods, redevelopment of neighborhoods is a critical piece of anybody’s agenda. The good news is we have a lot of good things happening, but neighborhoods need financial support. Part of the $92 million from the parking deal is to provide financial support to some neighborhoods. More importantly, there’s using the casino revenue to actually support transformative developments in neighborhoods. We’ve started to do that, but we have to expand.

Another area is a stronger partnership with the Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) system. There are many people who like to criticize CPS, but the reality is they have some great-performing schools. We need to make sure that we capitalize on that relationship by working in partnership with CPS to ensure that community learning centers are in enough schools so that any young family with kids has access. Right now, there are about 600 families on the waiting list because there’s not enough room. That’s a specific thing we could be doing right now that would really encourage young families with children to stay in the city.

CB: That covers everything I had to ask. Is there anything you would like to add?

RQ: This election for mayor is about vision, leadership and results. It’s also about looking to the future and saying yes to the future. Lots of decisions will have to be made by the next mayor that will be tough decisions, will require resources and will require investment. Cincinnati needs a mayor that is willing to say yes and work with people and organizations to move the community forward.