Cincinnati Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls Wants Bail Bond Accounting: Sees $$$$ Due City Cops To Battle Neighborhood Street Crime

Qualls Says Show Me The Money

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Roxanne Qualls heads the City Council's budget and finance committee and is looking for every penny available to close a $60 million budget gap.  Qualls has written Republican Clerk of Courts Patricia M. Clancy seeking a "formal accounting of cash bonds that are uncollected and the amount due to the CPD" -- Cincinnati police division.  The letter was hand-delivered to the clerk's office last Friday.  So far, Qualls has not gotten a response.  The Daily Bellwether has been reporting for nearly two weeks that Hamilton County judges have ordered cash bonds forfeited and that more than $4 million could be due and owing. Some of the uncollected bail bond money dates back to the mid-1990s.

 Meanwhile, there is a new twist to the bail bond scandal that seems to involve missing records.  Last week, the clerk of court's office released a computer printout showing it had 56 separate felony case where forfeited bonds had not been collected. But it now appears the list wasn't entirely accurate.  Perhaps there was a book keeper error, perhaps a mistake.  Or maybe the public records are just not up to date.  Or maybe something was being hidden.   



Judgment Missing from List 

 The Bellwether noticed that Case No. B-0802589 was not on the list made public last Thursday. The list was released in response to a freedom of information request filed by Hamilton County Democratic Chairman Tim Burke, who asked to see every forfeited bond that was owed. There is a $100,051 judgment for a forfeited bond in B-0802589 that was put on the books last year. The judgment has not been cancelled, according to county records. The case involves a convicted sex offender -- now a state prison parolee -- who failed to show up on court on charges that accused him of failing to register in Hamilton County. Interestingly, that offender had been shipped off to prison in an earlier criminal case, B-0403402, decided by Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge John Andrew "Skip" West. The plot thickens a bit because West forfeited a $20,000 cash bond after the defendant didn't show up for a court date. And that forfeiture is still owed to the county. Bottom line: one sex offender accounts for $120,000 in uncollected bail bond forfeitures involving two separate cases that date back six years.

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann Admits Affair: A Democrat Who Must Quickly Resign

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The admission that he broke his marital vow is here. But Marc Dann's unfaithful behavior is a sign of deeper character flaws. He has the heart not of a peoples' champion, but of a coalpit -- a lightless, dank coalpit. He admits he lacks both wisdom and a moral compass. He is vain and unfit, and ran an office inebriated by hypocrisy. There will be no turning away the wrath aimed at the man who placed hypocrisy in public service -- witness the rat-killing that came via resignations and firings -- ahead of complete and total honesty. He should be lost to shame for playing lurid tricks on the citizens of this state. That is now clear as a sunbeam. And his tedious and insipid remarks today at a press conference that he was not prepared for the office he won in November 2006 -- an office he sought and now says he did not expect to win -- means one thing: A fool and his office should soon be parted. He is a fraud, a poseur, a sneak. He is Ohio's accidental attorney general, a man who awoke one morning and found himself famous. Now, he is notorious. There is an old saying -- "to many, fame comes too late." For Ohio's 46-year-old attorney general, it came too soon. He squandered everything. And what is the reward for those who put their faith in Marc Dann? To see everything, all the evidence of things previously not seen. The Democrats of Ohio should well remember the words from Matthew XV.14, "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."