Cincinnati City Council voted Wednesday not to suspend Council Member Wendell Young following his April indictment on a tampering with evidence charge related to the 2018 "Gang of Five" scandal.
Cincinnati City Councilman Wendell Young will remain on council after an effort to unseat him failed.
But a state suspension looms for the Democrat, who is facing a felony charge of tampering with records related to his destruction of text messages about city business in the Gang of 5 civil case.
Republican Councilwoman Betsy Sundermann sought a vote to suspend Young after votes overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure in the May primary giving council members the power to suspend a fellow member if they are indicted or arrested on a criminal charge related to their city job.
She needed a vote of 7, but only got 6.
The weight of the pandemic hung over critical decisions about how to spend money Wednesday.Both Cincinnati and Hamilton County leaders dealt with the big money matters separately and in starkly different ways.At City Hall, lawmakers split in a 5-4 vote in favor of a $29 million spending plan that left some Council Democrats lamenting a missed opportunity. They wanted more spent on youth jobs, child care and getting people in the restaurant industry and other businesses back to work. I do believe that this is a historic, you know, once in a generation opportunity, said Councilman Greg Landsman before the vote.He told his council colleagues the lack of affordable child care is the number one reason people are not back on the job. He and Jan Michele Kearney wanted to utilize $5 million of the American Recovery Plan dollars for child care.Republican Steve Goodin was on the winning side, looking to hold the line for that at $1 million. Traditionally, funding child care isn t the
Jason Whitman / WVXU
Another $29 million in Cincinnati s federal stimulus has been allocated to projects including housing, small business support, summer programs, and the Convention and Visitor s Bureau. Council voted 5-4 Wednesday on a spending plan for the remaining funds in the first year of the American Rescue Plan Act.
Council members debated the merits of two competing plans before voting, with agreement on more than half of the proposed projects, including:
$3 million for Bethany House s new shelter project
$1 million for public museum support
$1 million for a women s business program
$1 million for UC Medical Center EMS canopy
The winning plan, proposed by Interim Member Steve Goodin and backed by David Mann, mainly prioritizes small business; the plan proposed by Greg Landsman and Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney focused more on child care and youth jobs.