Should Government Employees be Involved in Politics?
Mohamed Al-Hamdani argues that a provision in the City of Dayton Charter prohibiting city employees from participating in political activities is unconstitutional. We look at the history of such restrictions along with Supreme Court precedent to argue that Al-Hamdani is making a disingenuous argument. Striking this provision from the charter would open the doors to political corruption in ways that would help the political party Al-Hamdani is an active member of.
Heck Uses Bonuses to Circumvent Ohio Administrative Code
In our coverage of the bonus scandal from the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office, we first looked at how Mat Heck has provided bonuses averaging $8,851.35 to employees in 2020. Then we looked at Heck’s history of graft and previous reports that called him out for misusing public funds. Today we look at the powers prosecutors hold and how Heck’s use of extravagant bonuses amounts to an illegal abuse of that power by tipping the scales against the public defender’s office.
Decades of Graft by Mat Heck
In our continuing coverage of the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office bonus scandal, we look at previous attempts by media outlets to hold Mat Heck accountable. He has long been willing to partake in graft and has disregarded attempts to hold him accountable. We also spoke with a county official who claims that county employees are too intimidated by Heck to try and reign him in.
Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office Siphons Budget Surpluses for Large Employee Bonuses
According to employee bonus letters acquired by Reconstructing Dayton through a public records request, Montgomery County employees receive large bonuses at the end of each year with money that would otherwise go back to the county. These are not normal sized bonuses. For the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s office, they range from $4,679.98 to $23,405.24 given to 125 employees in 2019 and all 119 employees in 2020. 2019 bonuses averaged $8,348 and 2020 bonuses averaged $8,851.35. In 2019, the...
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Please consider donating to Reconstructing Dayton to help fund our work going into 2021. Our primary benefactors are small businesses that have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, so we need to reach out and collect more individual donations this year. You donations to Reconstructing Dayton will help fund our ranked-choice voting initiative, regionalism studies, and advocacy for more efficient local government in Montgomery County.
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Culture of Corruption? Try Paying Officials More.
Recently, Cincinnati councilman P.G. Sittenfeld was arrested for soliciting and accepting bribes. He is the third Cincinnati council member to be arrested for corruption this year, and the FBI has declared Cincinnati, like Dayton, has a "culture of corruption." This is all old hat for Ohio cities. In the late '70s the FBI came down hard on Summit County and Akron, inspiring a county charter to reorganize things to fix systemic issues. The same thing happened during the aughts in Cleveland. In...