Lemmie Discriminating Against White Employees?

Harris donated to Reece campaign

Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken and City Manager Valerie Lemmie have presided over the most mismanaged, incompet, and corrupt administration since the adoption of the city charter. Helping them is their legal hack, City Solicitor Julia LaRita McNeil.

Kevin Osborne reported in Wednesday's Cincinnati Post story "City employee is fired over campaign donation" that Lemmie fired Assistant City Solicitor Robert Weise for contributing $40 to Cincinnati Mayoral candidate Justin Jeffre's campaign in violation of the Charter.

Under the city's charter, municipal employees are prohibited from contributing to the campaigns of anyone seeking a city elective office - a provision that is enforced by the Law Department.

Weise gave the cash donation during an April 2 fund raiser for Jeffre at Purgatory nightclub in Over-the-Rhine, an event hosted by Jeffre's ex-bandmate, singer and MTV star Nick Lachey.

Weise, who was asked to resign but refused, initially told his supervisors that he thought the money was for a cover charge to get into the club.

"It's my understanding that he contributed to the campaign of Justin Jeffre," said City Solicitor J. Rita McNeil. "There may be some dispute as to whether he knew it and when he knew it."

Regardless, that doesn't affect the termination, which also involved other factors, she added.

"He was an unclassified employee who served at the pleasure of the city solicitor," said McNeil, declining further comment.

If City employees are violating the Charter they deserve to be fired. And city residents have a right to expect Lemmie and McNeil to enforce the law. The law doesn't need defending. There are plenty of sound reasons for prohibiting city employees (and contractors like Cincinnati Human Relations Commission Director Cecil Thomas) from engaging in politics, including contributing to campaigns, or campaigning wearing a city uniform. But they don't even need to be addressed here because the bottom line is the law prohibits the conduct. From what I'm told, city employees are told about restrictions on their involvement in politics when they get hired and at least once a year afterward. The restrictions are well known. We've all heard the phrase, "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and it applies here.

Weise got fired and the Post carried the story on Wednesday. In the next day's edition of The Whistleblower old, elephant-memory-having, Charles Foster Kane reminded his readers that Cincinnati Firefighter Jeff Harris (past president of the Cincinnati African American Firefighters Association) donated $20 to Cincinnati Vice Mayor Alicia Reece's campaign in 1999 and wasn't fired. The Whistleblower asked a good question.

...[W]hy wasn't former CAAFA President, firefighter, and one of Stevecia Reece's "150 good friends" Jeff Harris fired for contributing $20 to Stevecia's 1999 campaign, as indicated by her finance reports? Where's the Vice Mayor's "One Set of Rules" when we need them?

The Whistleblower asked a good question and even provided a source for his allegations -- the campaign finance reports. The question deserves an answer from Lemmie.

I hate double standards, especially when skin color is involved. It doesn't matter to me if the skin color of the person getting preferential or disparate treatment is white or black. We need one set of equally enforced rules. By letting some employees get away with breaking the rules on political activity (i.e., slap on the wrist for Streicher campaigning in uniform, Harris donating to Reece campaign, etc) is setting a precident that will come back to bite the city in the butt should it choose to enforce the rule at a later date. Employees will point to Streicher, Harris, et al. and say you didn't do anything to them when they broke the rule so you can't do anything to me. And they'll be right.

I can already hear the excuses and hair splitting: Weise wasn't a classified employee and didn't have union protection like Harris. Ultimately, they'll blame it on somebody else!

The City should go back and do a check of campaign finance records for at least 10 years. If you are like me, you'd like to know if other city employees have contributed to political campaigns, and, if so, why they haven't been fired?

I'm not against the African American Firefighters or Jeff Harris but some of the stuff they do is so sloppy it's almost unbelievable. They know the stuff they're doing is wrong but they do it anyway. In the coming days, I plan to blog on CAFA's illegal money raising on behalf of, and campaigning through, their non-existent political action committee. What are they paying their white lawyer for? (How many Jewish organizations have Black lawyers representing them? But that's another story!)

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