My “Shredding the Curtain” column, Patterns of precedents in this week’s Toledo Free Press is an attempt to raise awareness as to the precedent related to the City of Toledo paying the employee portion of the pension pick up. Some members of Toledo City Council have been advocating for having their own private legal counsel, what took place on July 20 is a good example of a situation where that would have been helpful since the members of the Law Department were representing the Clerk of Courts and not Council. While the relationship between the Mayor and Council may appear more cordial than the past administration, there have been several instances when the Mayor or his administration has asked for Council to support their position when voting and not enough members of Council have.
The request to reject the Factfinder’s Report for AFSCME Local 3411 was one situation that took place on July 20, Council’s failure to accept reimbursement from Penn National for casino at 1968 Miami, $1,038,613 was another.
In doing some research into why this was raised prior to the vote instead of during last week’s Agenda Review, documents were obtained that shed some light on where the questions came from. In reading some of the material that came from January, I contacted Vlad Cica of the Ohio EPA to find out if anything had changed where there was a risk of the City being in a position where they would have to re-pay all or a portion of the almost 3 million dollars they received to do remediation on the site where the Hollywood Casino – Toledo will be built. He had stated in a Jan. 4 e-mail that the Ohio EPA did not err and that the discrepancies that existed were ones that could be addressed administratively.
Ohio Epa: Toledo did not violate grant for casino location also in this week’s Toledo Free Press, shares part of the information Cica told me on July 21.
For the summary of that council meeting click here.
