Cincinnati officials spent $11,500 on five signs that critics say are political and were initially proposed to come down the day after Election Day.
The signs credit President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris with upcoming road projects that received funding from a bipartisan infrastructure law.
They were originally supposed to credit only Biden. However, before the signs were installed, city officials decided to add Harris’ name after she became the Democratic presidential candidate.
“The notion that we're going to put up some signs and tell people what's going on, I think that is perfectly reasonable,” said University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven. “That there was a change specifically to incorporate the vice president's name, that is hard to justify. It's hard to see that as particularly necessary.”
Niven reviewed city documents and emails obtained by Scripps News Cincinnati through a public records request that revealed the backstory of the signs.
He found it “particularly egregious” that a city employee wrote an email to Prus Construction asking for pricing on temporary project signs that would need to be installed by Oct. 1, and may need to be removed as soon as Nov. 6, the day after the election.
“This reads like a conversation that took place that no one ever expected to have to justify … that no one ever expected would be scrutinized,” Niven said. “That’s an unfortunate part of this story.”
Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, a Democrat, and city manager Sheryl Long declined interviews through spokespersons.
The signs cost $2,300 each, initially drawn from the emergency street repair fund. This fund pays for various road maintenance and repairs included in the city’s contract with Prus, such as installing new pavement, painting and striping, street grinding and signage.
However, a city spokesperson said the sign cost will be reimbursed to the street repair fund from a separate fund in the city manager’s office for grant administration activities. City officials anticipate receiving a grant to refund the cost of the signs.
“I don’t think I would count on that if I were them,” said Todd Zinser, a West Price Hill resident who served as inspector general of the U.S. Department of Commerce and spent years rooting out fraud and waste as a deputy inspector general in the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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Zinser said he doubts the city will be reimbursed by a grant because he doesn’t think it followed federal guidelines about sign design.
Other communities nationwide installed similar signs promoting federally funded transportation projects, but those signs only had Biden’s name, Zinser said.
“It just shows you how irregular the situation is with Cincinnati,” Zinser said. “That it's not being duplicated in other cities.”
Steve Goodin, president of Clifton Town Meeting, said he was shocked city officials spent money on these signs when so many neighborhood councils are asking for money for extra crosswalks or speed cushions to make it safer for pedestrians.
His community council has been trying to find $20,000 to fix a bike lane with a severe pedestrian safety concern, Goodin said.
“To me, the big issue is these are city dollars, No. 1. No. 2, our budgets are tight. No. 3, our neighborhoods are crying out for pedestrian safety interventions — most of which are pretty cheap — and they’re routinely being told there’s not enough money to fund them,” he said. “Yet they could find money for this nonsense.”
Goodin, a former Republican city council member, is now acting chair of the Charter Committee of Cincinnati. He said the city’s charter mandates that the city manager be nonpartisan, nonpolitical and independent.
“You see on these emails clear political direction coming from a lobbyist in D.C. to the mayor’s office to the city manager’s employees. And that political considerations are clearly first and foremost in this expenditure of public funds,” Goodin said. “That is a charter problem, that is a culture problem, that is something that is not good for the city.”
A city spokesperson said the city manager did not violate the city charter.
“These signs do not promote the Harris campaign or engage in prohibited political activity,” city spokesperson Ben Breuninger wrote in response to WCPO’s questions. “The city works hard to secure federal funding for a variety of projects and is proud to celebrate successful grant applications, promote our partnership with the federal government, and inform residents and visitors of the administration’s efforts to pursue available dollars. The party affiliation of federal leadership is irrelevant to these activities.”
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The city’s lobbyist suggested the original signs to the mayor, who agreed and passed the idea onto the administration, Breuninger wrote.
“This is going to be a new push from the administration — as they want the public to understand how the law is actually delivering results — and the signage helping to make the linkage is important. I’m not sure how the mayor feels about doing that — but I will note that it would score a ton of goodwill and brownie points with DOT and the administration (this push is coming from the WH),” Leslie Pollner, a lobbyist with the D.C. firm Holland & Knight, wrote in a January email to the mayor’s chief of staff, Keizayla Fambro and others.
“We are being asked by the city manager to install some temporary project signs … We are waiting for the mayor’s office to select which of the four sign options they would like us to use,” Jennifer Russell, a supervising engineer in the city’s transportation and engineering department wrote in a July 11 email to Prus.
She noted the signs may need to be removed as soon as Nov. 6 but a city spokesperson said the signs will stay up beyond that date.
"The Oct. 1 — Nov. 6 time frame was originally asserted by a DOTE employee who does not have the authority to make the decision, and the City’s intention is to leave the signs up beyond that time frame," Breuninger wrote to WCPO.
Once Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21, city officials soon after agreed to change the sign design to add Harris’ name.
An employee in the city manager’s office was the first person to suggest using both names on the signs, and the mayor’s office agreed to the idea, Breuninger said.
"It's a key role of the mayor's office to support the administration in managing our relationship with federal partners. When we learned about the push around the nation for signage, we were eager to fulfill it here quickly,” according to Pureval’s statement. "Cincinnati has received transformational support from federal partners like USDOT, and to maximize our relationship in the future, it’s important that we provide the proper recognition and information to residents."
But that’s not how Goodin views it.
“The signs themselves are political and then secondly rewriting the signs is extremely political,” Goodin said.
Goodin, a Republican, said he would have the same objections if the signs promoted leaders from his party.
“These signs are not the end of the world. It's not the beginning of some giant corruption scandal but it does speak to a cultural problem that’s going to lead to bigger and bigger problems if it's not addressed,” Goodin said.
But Zinser wants the five signs taken down.
“If they want to put up new signs that are consistent or compliant with the federal guidelines have at it, but the way they are now I think they are clearly political signs,” Zinser said.
As for Niven, while the handling of the situation showed sloppiness and clumsiness, he said “it’s not corrupt, it’s not wrong.”
“This seems like an unforced error and one that kind of distracts from the basic premise of the sign in the first place, which was, that this was a rare moment when people from both parties came together and got something done,” Niven said.
The signs are at five project sites.
This article was originally written by Paula Christian for Scripps News Cincinnati.
