Third member of Cincinnati city council charged with corruption

For Cincinnati, it was a one-two-three punch.

The first blow came in February when Tamaya Dennard, interim president of Cincinnati City Council, was arrested and charged with accepting $ 15,000 in bribes in exchange for a council vote. She pleaded guilty in June and faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced in federal court next week.

The second landed last week when Jeffrey Pastor, another city council member, was accused of taking $ 55,000 in bribes in exchange for promises to help city development projects, including including the redevelopment of a building in the city center. Mr. Pastor pleaded not guilty and resisted calls to resign.

Then, on Thursday, Alexander Sittenfeld became the third member of city council charged with corruption when he was arrested at his home and accused of taking $ 40,000 in bribes while promising to “deliver the votes” for the same downtown development project that Mr. Pastor was on. involved, federal prosecutors said.

The charges against a third member of the council, made up of nine people, stunned local political leaders and reinforced what federal prosecutors called a “culture of corruption” that has undermined trust in town hall.

“The citizens of Cincinnati must ask themselves right now: How can this trust be restored when a third of city council has been arrested this year for corruption and extortion and honest service?” Chris Hoffman, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Cincinnati, said at a press conference Thursday.

The charges against Mr. Sittenfeld immediately upended the political pecking order in Cincinnati.

A Democrat known as the PG, Mr Sittenfeld lost to former Governor Ted Strickland in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in 2016, but was seen as a promising candidate for mayor next year. A Princeton University graduate who received a Marshall Scholarship to attend a graduate school at the University of Oxford, he was first elected to city council in 2011 and was Cincinnati’s top vote voter in of the last two city-wide elections, according to his Council biography.

“He was the bright young boy in Cincinnati City politics with Ivy League pedigree and old money family,” said David Niven, associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. “It was not a local pol that everyone expected, mixed with the more serious political aspect.”

Prosecutors said Sittenfeld accepted six checks totaling $ 40,000 from federal agents posing as real estate investors and hid the money in a political action committee he secretly controlled.

According to a six-count indictment, Mr Sittenfeld accepted the bribe money in 2018 and 2019, while promising to ‘give the votes’ and perform other official acts for the downtown development project, which required municipal council approval.

The case began in 2018 when Mr Sittenfeld asked for money Chinedum Ndukwe, a former Cincinnati Bengals player, whom Mr Sittenfeld knew was actively seeking a deal with the city to develop the project and had failed in his attempts, prosecutors told me.

Mr Sittenfeld was unaware that Mr Ndukwe was already cooperating with federal authorities on the investigation which would lead to corruption charges against Mr Pastor, a Republican.

At a meeting in November 2018 organized with the help of Mr. Ndukwe, Mr. Sittenfeld went to lunch at a restaurant in downtown Cincinnati and told undercover officers he would lead the votes for the project. real estate, prosecutors said.

He presented voting data showing he was politically popular in Cincinnati and said he would likely be the next mayor, prosecutors said.

“I can move more votes than any other single person,” Sittenfeld said, according to the indictment. On another occasion, in December 2018, he said: “Don’t let these be my famous last words, but I can still get a vote to my left or a vote to my right,” according to prosecutors.

Over the following months, prosecutors said, Mr Sittenfeld told undercover officers he continued to pressure officials to support the project.

David M. DeVillers, the US attorney for the Southern Ohio District, said prosecutors did not believe Mr. Pastor and Mr. Sittenfeld were working together, even though their cases both involved Mr. Ndukwe as a witness cooperating.

Mr Sittenfeld has been charged with two counts each of wire fraud, corruption and attempted extortion by a government official, prosecutors said. He pleaded not guilty in federal court in Cincinnati on Thursday and was released without cash bond. His lawyer, Diane Menashe, declined to comment.

Political leaders have expressed outrage at the accusations, saying they have severely damaged public confidence in local government. Mayor John Cranley, a Democrat who is due to step down next year due to term limits, called on Mr Sittenfeld to step down and urged new candidates to get involved in city politics.

“With three council members arrested, it is hard not to say that there is a culture of the corruption problem in City Council,” he told reporters. “We have to clean the house and change it.”

Distinguishing between the two previous corruption cases and the one against Mr Sittenfeld, Mr Cranley said that while Mr Pastor and Ms Dennard, a Democrat, appeared ‘desperate for money’ Mr Sittenfeld seemed motivated by the “Accumulation of power”.

Alex Triantafilou, Chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party, said the leaders of the two parties must come together “to eliminate the bad actors and restore confidence in our city”.

“This city of Cincinnati is now on its knees” he wrote on Twitter. “We need radical reform, unlike anything we have ever seen in the history of this city. Voters in this city need to make some serious changes in 2021 and they need to understand how broken City Hall really is.