Tag: Politics

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Celebrate election night at Moerlein Lager House with fellow Cincinnati urbanists

We hope that you have already gone out and cast your vote, but if not, we hope that you are able to make time today or tomorrow so that you can fill out your ballot. After that, come out to Moerlein Lager House Tuesday evening and celebrate the end of the 2012 election season with us for November’s URBANexchange.

This month we will once again gather in the biergarten at the Moerlein Lager House (map) at 5:30pm, and stay as long as people are interested. As always, there will be terrific food and drink available for purchase, with a portion of the sales going to support Smale Riverfront Park.

This will not be a partisan event, but rather an opportunity to enjoy the evening with other urbanists, and discuss the issues facing cities today.

It should be an exciting evening given that the Presidential Election will be decided by Ohioans, with Hamilton County being the most populated swing county up for grabs.

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News Opinion Politics

Ohio early voting rules work against voters from heavily populated counties

Line for early voting on Saturday, November 3 outside of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. Photograph by David Pepper.

Early voting for this 2012 election season comes to an end today. Those registered to vote, in Hamilton County, will be able to do so by visiting the Board of Elections office at 824 Broadway Street from 8am to 2pm.

According to the Hamilton County Board of Elections, 564,429 people have been registered to vote in Hamilton County – a number slightly higher than that in 2008. The difference between 564,429 voters in 2012, however, is that their early voting days have been greatly reduced.

On top of the reduced number of days to vote early, voters across Ohio are only allowed to cast an early vote at one location per county. This means that voters in heavily populated counties with big cities are subjected to longer waits. So far, voters in Hamilton County have reported up to 4.5-hour-long waits downtown.

Polling numbers show an incredibly tight presidential race that may come down to how Ohio votes on Tuesday. Furthermore, with Hamilton County being the most populated swing county in Ohio, the race for the presidency may end up being decided in Cincinnati. It’s no wonder President Obama (D) held a rally before 13,500 people at the University of Cincinnati last night.

UrbanCincy would like to see all voters offered the opportunity to cast their ballot for every election. It is extremely unfortunate, however, that the cities are at the front line of having voting capacity restricted.

Not only do politicians in Washington D.C. rarely talk about cities, which include the vast majority of Americans, but the fact that a segment of those politicians are actively working to reduce the ability of urban voters to vote is truly disgusting.

While it is too late to change anything for this election, we would like to see the administration of Governor Kasich (R) move quickly to expand early voting for future elections, and expand the number of voting locations in each county based on population totals.

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Opinion Politics

Will the passage of Issue 4 pave the way for a future ward-based council?

Cincinnati’s sweeping 1924 voter-approved charter reforms were designed to enable the ouster of the Boss Cox Machine, and continue to form the framework of today’s municipal government. Although the new charter’s proponents, especially Murray Seasongood, celebrated the supposed perfection of their replacement City Manager System, the new city government was not designed for the long-term benefit of the citizenry so much as to keep the Cox Machine from returning to power in the 1927 or 1929 elections.

Since being implemented, the city manager and a nine-member council have remained a constant, but important features of the 1924 reforms have since been eliminated or replaced one-by-one by periodic voter-approved charter amendments.

Proportional representation ended in 1957, eight-year council term limits were introduced in 1991, and an independently elected mayor began in 1999.


Will the passage of Issue 4 pave the way for even more political reforms at City Hall?

The charter reforms destroyed the Cox Machine by changing nearly every feature of municipal government with the notable exception of council’s two-year term. Under Cox, an executive mayor reigned over a 32-seat council that was under machine control – although there might be significant turnover in a particular council election, new personnel had no real effect on the city’s direction.

With two-year terms, Cincinnati’s reform charter “good government” become chronically susceptible to flip-flopping and obstructionism due to at-large elections, the disappearance of the executive mayor, and tying the hands of a political machine that controlled who could run for council and how they voted once installed.

Issue 4, which is prominently discussed with Terry Grundy during Episode 11 of The UrbanCincy Podcast, promises to stabilize and therefore improve the effectiveness of city government by replacing the chaotic two-year election cycle with four-year terms held in the same years as mayoral elections. This arrangement will enable a mayor to set a four-year agenda he or she determines practical given the makeup of council. The charter language reads:

“Shall the Charter of the City of Cincinnati be amended to provide that the members of City Council shall be elected at-large for four-year terms by amending existing Sections 4, 5 and 5a of Article II, “Legislative Power”, existing Section 3 of Article III, “Mayor”, existing Sections 1, 2a and 2b of Article IX, “Nominations and Elections”, and existing Sections 1, 4 and 7 of Article XIII, “Campaign Finance”?”

The current eight-year term limits, enacted in 1991, will remain in effect. However, those new councilmen elected in 2011 including Yvette Simpson (D), Christopher Smitherman (I), P.G. Sittenfeld (D), Chris Seelbach (D), and Wendell Young (D) will be able to keep seats for a total of ten years if they are reelected in 2013 and 2017. While Roxanne Qualls (C) is eligible for a four-year term following three two-year terms, it is expected that she will run for mayor rather than council in 2013.

Opposing Arguments
Opponents have cast Issue 4 as a “power grab” by those currently holding seats on council. They also claim that council members should have to “face the voters” every two years, insinuating that council is inherently susceptible to corruption while ignoring the obstructionism that is enflamed by the two-year election cycle. Opponents also claim that short terms force council members to engage the city’s neighborhoods every two years as part of their reelection efforts.

Other opponents, including The Cincinnati Herald, argue that Cincinnati City Council should serve two-year terms because the U.S. and Ohio House of Representatives serve two-year terms. However, the U.S. and Ohio House are each one arm of bicameral legislatures – Everett, MA is the only remaining U.S. municipality with a bicameral city council.

Reappearance of Wards?
Issue 4 opponents have also argued against four-year terms by suggesting that switching City Council to a ward system will lead to better neighborhood representation and better city governance overall.

Under the current at-large system, many of Cincinnati’s 52 neighborhoods are being ignored in favor of Downtown and Over-the-Rhine, ward system advocates claim. The true motivation for wards, however, appears to be an attempt to break up the current Democrat majority, several of whom reside Downtown and in Over-the-Rhine.

If Issue 4 passes this November, we might see an effort in 2013 for sweeping charter reforms, including wards, intended to disrupt the potential eight-year tenure of Roxanne Qualls as mayor and a majority Democrat-led city council.

Those who would like to learn more about the Boss Cox era of politics in Cincinnati can do so by reading Jake Mecklenborg’s book, Cincinnati’s Incomplete Subway: The Complete History, which profiles how the charter reform government, led by Murray Seasongood, smeared the subway project in its efforts to embarrass Boss Cox.

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Up To Speed

What happens when urban farms get too big?

What happens when urban farms get too big?.

Urban farms are all the rage nowadays. Cities across North America have been incorporating them into the cityscape to fill the void left behind by shuttered industry, or abandoned housing. While the benefits seem to have been fully vetted, is there a risk to allowing urban farms to grow too large? More from Grist:

More than a few environmentalists have argued that urban farms must remain small or risk suburbanizing the city. One of the most prominent is Kaid Benfield, a smart-growth guru with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Benfield worries that urban farming, if practiced on a large scale, will dilute the walkability and density that defines cities.

“I support the growing of food in cities, and have even done it myself,” Benfield cautions. But it should be done in ways that support urbanism and not displace it…I’m not sure we’re talking about a city any more if we’re going to have fields of 20 acres and more.” By seeding large farms in the city, he says, “we risk locking in long-term environmental problems in terms of not having a healthy urban core. Central cities are starting to revive.”

One problem is that most of the best para-urban land (or land just outside cities) — which was once seen as ideal for growing food without huge transportation costs — has already been swallowed up by suburban development.

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Up To Speed

What does the decline of the nuclear family mean for America’s cities?

What does the decline of the nuclear family mean for America’s cities?.

What has long been considered to be the traditional family household in America is changing. People are living longer, young individuals are putting off marriage, women are increasingly becoming dominant in the workforce, and same-sex couples are taking a more prominent role in our society. These changes mean a variety of things socially, but it also means that our types of housing are and need to continue to change. More from Urbanophile:

As affluent people who choose to remain childless remain in more urban areas, and those who choose to have kids live in suburban ones, we’ll have legitimate matters of interest driving them apart politically. In a piece called “Geographies in Conflict” I noted how different economic geographies in the same physical space is an inherent conflict. Red states and blue states don’t just have different political points of views. They increasingly do different things. If you are Texas and are in the business of energy, chemicals, logistics, and manufacturing, the things that you need to be successful are very different from a Silicon Valley or Manhattan, which specialize in ultra-high end, high value service industries. The conflicts are as much a product of legitimate self-interest as political philosophy.

I think we’ll see similar conflicts between the needs, wants, and desires of the childless urban population and those of the suburban families with kids. It’s kind of nice to do your shopping daily on foot or by bicycle at the local market and such when you don’t have three kids to buy for and haul around with you. Bloomberg’s proposed micro-apartments in New York are an example of a market designed to cater to singles, not families. It’s not a matter of one being good and another bad. It’s merely that singles (or childless married couples) and people with children have very different priorities and concerns in life.