Further Insight into How Cincinnati Streets Were Named cincinnatimagazine.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cincinnatimagazine.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A century ago, reformers significantly changed the way Cincinnati s city government works.
Those reforms didn t come out of the blue. They were in response to a corrupt political machine that had run the city for decades, mostly under the direction of George Boss Cox, a bar owner and powerful behind-the-scenes powerbroker. Cox traded favors for votes and government contracts, keeping his fellow Republicans in power through the late 19th and into the early 20th centuries.
With corruption and government ethics front of mind for many Cincinnatians these days, what can we learn from the Boss Cox era and subsequent reforms?
Jay Hanselman / WVXU
So how did Cincinnati end up with the council-manager form of government, where a professional city manager runs the day-to-day operations and a nine-member council sets policy?
It was a case of political bossism gone haywire in the 1920s that pushed Cincinnati into this relatively new, clean and efficient form of government – one that had little hint of scandal or corruption until 2020, when no less than three council members were indicted on federal corruption charges.
There was a period for over 40 years in the late 19th century and early 20th century when many of Cincinnati s citizens seemed willing to close their eyes and pretend they didn t see the corruption of the city s Republican political bosses.