that stadium on time and on budget,in stark contrast to the overruns at Paul Brown stadiumunder the watch of my predecessor commissioners and the prosecutor’s office. These same costcontrol measures and additional amendments to them,monitored by outside counsel,brought in
the riverfront infrastructure elements of the ballpark construction under budget and ahead of schedule – again in stark contrast to the former CountyCommission andtheir use of the county
prosecutor as their lawyers.Outside counsel has produced significant returns to county taxpayers. Since their retention, our outside lawyers have been directly involved in negotiating contracts; securing grants; anddefending litigation; that has netted or saved county taxpayers between $260 million and $277million. In other words, our expenditure of money on outside counsel has netted taxpayers abouta 2000% increase in dollars over what we have spent on their fees. I don’t know of any other investment of county dollars that has produced anywhere close to that rate of return.I also took substantial personal risk and exposure by bringing a taxpayer suit against the Bengalsin an effort to try to reform the lease agreement and get other financial concessionsto try toensure the stadium fund remained solvent. Rather than help me,the Republican Commissioners
opposed me.(Republican Commissioner, Phil Heimlich, who was elected in 2002, did come onboard, but the court ultimately determined the statute of limitations expired before he loaned hissupport to the effort.)Rather than protect county taxpayers,the prosecutor’s office fought me
and refused to pursue the litigation. Their opposition and refusals delayed the county’s pursuit of the litigation until after the statutes of limitation expired, essentially killing the litigation.Yet COAST writes to taxpayers that we should be entrusting all of these issues to theprosecutor’s office and that David Pepper and I have caused this fiscal crisis. COAST would alsohave us walk away from the Banks redevelopment project. Why would we waste the taxpayer paid for infrastructure improvements that are in ground and ready to support almost $800 millionof private money that will create jobs and improve our revenue base and our riverfront? Whywould we break existing contracts resulting in costly litigation? If we did the things COAST wantsus to do,we would be wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, not the other wayaround.Our use of outside counsel has actually saved county taxpayers tens of millions of dollars more than what we actually spent.I haven'tyetmade up my mindabout what needs to be done.I do think that what we do should
reflect the framework approved by the voters in 1996. In other words, the voters agreed tosubstitute a sales tax for property taxes in an amount of 30% of the sales taxes generated. Thesales taxes were supposed to cover the cost of building two stadiums; the public infrastructuresupporting them; and the infrastructure between them to allow for development to occur. Thesales taxes were also supposed to cover a contribution to Cincinnati Public Schools for dedicateddebt service funding for a percentage of the schools’ long term capital plan. The failure of thesales tax to grow as projected,coupled with the fiscal failures and legal failures by both the 1990sCountyCommission and county prosecutor’s civil legal staff has placed us squarely where we are
today. But we must, I believe, try to come up with a solution that keeps the faith with theframework of the stadium tax deal which is sales taxes to replace property taxes and to cover thecost of all obligations.I am looking at all options. Many people would like for us to maintain the property tax reductionfor residential property owners by making additional cuts in county services. I don’t believe wecan do that without doing great harm to public safety and to our legal obligations.If it comes fromour general fund it will require massive cuts to the recently approved budget – a budget that was just balanced after laying off over 1000 county employees and reducing overall expenditures byover $62 million in two years.If we exempt our safety functions and make cuts only out of non-safety operations we will be unable to run the rest of the county. A pro rata reduction in other operations, for example, will result in a 42% reduction in funding for the county Auditor,
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