Sales tax shuffle

Kimball Perry reports

When officials first announced they were going to place on the fall ballot a proposed quarter-cent sales tax increase to pay for a jail, the issue was publicly supported by powerful names.

Now, two of those powerful names – Hamilton County Commissioner Phil Heimlich and financier Carl Lindner Jr. – have been replaced by other big names – Prosecutor Joe Deters and Coroner O’dell Owens.

The join Sheriff Simon Leis Jr., the only of the original, to form the co-chairs for the proposed sales tax increase.

Why the changes?

“We wanted to keep it separate from the Heimlich campaign,” Deters, a Republican, said Tuesday.

Heimlich is a Republican incumbent seeking re-election. He’s also the one who pushed for a 10-year sales tax increase to pay for a new $230 million jail and $30 million property tax rollback.
Deters agreed to accept the co-chair status for the issue – Issue 12 on the Nov. 7 ballot – only if it was “separate and apart” from the Heimlich re-election campaign.

“I wanted bi-partisan support,” Deters said.

That’s one reason why Owens, a Democrat, was added.

Another is that Owens is a huge proponent of providing social services – drug- and alcohol rehabilitation, education – behind bars and creating a criminal justice commission to oversee those services and ensure they are provided.

“I wouldn’t be here if this was just another jail. No way,” Owens said of his support for the issue.
The proposal calls for adding 800 additional beds – giving Hamilton County about 3,000 – while centralizing those social services in one building and eliminating three of the county’s four jails.

Another might be that Owens is black.

A decade ago when a half-cent sales tax increase was proposed to pay for, among other items, a jail expansion, the Baptist Ministers Conference, a group of about 100 mostly black churches, spoke out against it helping defeat it.




“I think there is in our polling a racial component to it,” Deters said of the issue’s chance of passing.

The Rev. James Pankey, head of the Baptist Ministers Conference of Greater Cincinnati, wouldn’t discuss Issue 12, saying the Conference is holding a 10 a.m. Tuesday Press Conference at Temple Baptist College – Reading Road and Whitier intersection – to discuss how it stands on Issue 12.

Deters added, though, that once they are educated about the new jail and its social services programs, “blacks move very strongly in favor of the issue, more strongly than the white community.”

In an atmosphere Deters said was so “anti-government” that he expects the election to be painful for many Republicans and issues seeking public money, the proposed sales tax increase will be boosted by “more than $300,000” spent advertising it.

A big chunk of that money came from Lindner and his supporters, Deters said.

“And there’s no guarantee it’s going to pass,” Deters said.