County tries as City wastes...

I was following the June 2018 public hearings held by the Hamilton County Commissioners that the city and MSD failed to attend. The meetings were intended to be a joint presentation of how the EPA Consent Decree was to be addressed in the years to come...except the county and city cannot agree on a plan. Hamilton County cannot even get the City of Cincinnati and the MSD to the table. I observed first-hand the bipartisan frustration of the Hamilton County Commissioners at the second public feedback meeting in Delhi. 

The issue of the MSD looks to be going back to court as the City of Cincinnati continues to block cooperation with Hamilton County and admits again its own failure to produce results.

Exhibit 7

From the email, "...We have been instructed that there is no need for further transition meetings at this time.  I wanted to let you know that we are postponing the upcoming IT discussion and any future meetings indefinitely..."

The County Commissioners, led by President Todd Portune, have repeatedly tried to get the MSD and city to collaborate further. In their frustration the communication above has become part of their documentation submitted to the federal judge for the June 30th 2018 deadline.

The issue is further complicated by the admitted waste by the city. Part of the filing by Hamilton County for the June 30th, 2018 deadline is a communication from the Cincinnati City Solicitor that unerscores hundreds of hours of staff time wasted:

Excerpt from Exhibit 9

From the memo, "...Despite such efforts that accounted for hunderds of hours of CIty staff time, Plante Moran failed to produce a single shared services agreement or any work product at all..." Having worked in project managment this is a failing of the City, where were the milestones and accountability?

We certainly want to see more documentation on this issue for what was spent and what the expectations were but the firm mentioned in the communications has a good reputation so the first assumption is they were thrown under the bus...Cincinnati and Hamilton County deserve better than this. The City Council has to work through their internal 'issues'.