Report from Clermont County

Barrett Brunsman reports:

MILFORD – Todd Portune and David Pepper can’t vote for Theresa Conover in the Democrat’s bid to replace Mary Walker as a Clermont County commissioner, but the two Hamilton County commissioners are urging others to do so.

“The future growth, stability, security and prosperity of both Clermont and Hamilton counties requires that we work together,” Portune said in a statement released by Conover. “The elected leadership of both counties collaborating on those issues … will revitalize our corner of the state.”
Portune, who is also a Democrat, said Conover “is the partner that I have been looking for on the Clermont County commission.”

Conover said regional cooperation is important, but added that the image of Clermont County is marred by cronyism and nepotism.

She would like to see “ordinary citizens” play a role in government, “instead of having our husbands and our brothers-in-law and our pals from the political party on all of our boards and commissions.”

Clermont voters will decide on Nov. 4 between Conover and Miami Township Trustee Ed Humphrey, who beat out Walker for the Republican nomination for her seat on the Board of Commissioners.

Pepper, also a Democrat, said in a statement that Conover “has the perfect credentials to make a very effective commissioner.”

Conover is a member of the Milford Board of Zoning Appeals and a former member of the Clermont County Planning Commission. She also is a former member of the Cincinnati Board of Zoning Appeals, and she served for several years as a neighborhood liaison on the Eastern Corridor Task Force of the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments.
“I would like to see principles of smart growth addressed – or at least analyzed,” said Conover, who has a bachelor’s degree in urban planning and a master’s in public administration.
Conover made headlines in 2006 when she brought to a halt a $40 million-plus housing development in her native Miami Township, across Ohio 131 from her 141-year-old farmhouse in Milford.

She claimed the safety of her children was at stake because of a road-widening project to accommodate the subdivision.

The developer of the Reserves of Grey Cliff finally agreed to a settlement after Conover’s deft maneuvering through the bureaucratic layers frustrated state, county and local officials – including Humphrey – who spent countless hours trying to resolve the matter.