Part Two
Private or Anti-Public Service is also responsible for public utilities of all varieties. This puts them in active relationships with private for-profit electricity, gas, and recycling companies.
In the Columbus Way, private interests trump public. Ginther is in close association with Rumpke Recycling who prevents any competitor from building a plant required to compete with them. Rumpke is best known for not completing its regular routes.
City Attorney Zach Klein only sues negligent private building owners for code violations after their buildings collapse or explode. He informed me that he is unable to sue grifting, consumer-violating electric utilities like American Electric Power after they repeatedly fail and make consumers pay for corporate malfeasance, while he sues Kia, Hyundai, and the State of Ohio.
One case in point: the eight young women who rent the HomeTeam property next to my house immediately learned that the house’s connection to the city water main did not work. Of course, there had been no inspection. After some days, the connection was repaired.
But a dangerous large hole in the middle of the street and another on the sidewalk directly in front of the house remained unrepaired and unpaved for almost two months. That would not happen in the Short North, Colemanville (i.e., downtown), Victorian or German Village.
HomeTeam did nothing. I personally called Public Utilities several times. Eventually, Decker, a city-paid private contractor, came multiple times, accomplishing little until the end. They violated multiple city laws including blocking the streets and private driveways. They cursed at me and threatened physical harm when I asked them to move from blocking my alley way and obey the laws. Public Utilities does not care.
The eight residents do not thank their neighbors. They hold illegal gatherings and harass us. OSU Student Life and Fraternity and Sorority Buckeye Life encourages them. Greek houses and alumni contributions outweigh the law, civility, common courtesy, or respect. That is the OSU Way.
Columbus Police, the City Attorney’s office, the private property owners, and OSU come together to endanger public safety of homeowners, long-term renters, and student tenants. We are assessed taxes and charged tuition and fees for this. This is a long-standing problem, but it worsened dramatically in recent years and more now.
To sum up a great deal: less than one month ago, I was told on two separate occasions by three Columbus Police Department (CPD) officers that they were “strongly advised”—in other words, ordered— “not to enforce the laws” and “not to give citations” in the University District. I asked: by whom? They responded: Jeffrey Furbee, the Assistant City Attorney, liaison to CPD.
The first time the officers shared this unpublicized, in fact illegal and dangerous “advice” was on a Saturday when they responded to my own and my neighbors’ reports of regular noise and public nuisance violations at NorthSteppe “party houses” rented by young men escaping the modest regulations of their fraternity houses. NorthSteppe and other absentee landlords believe, and have stated for the record in courtrooms, that they do not believe that the laws of the City apply to them. They communicate that to their tenants. Neither the City nor OSU make any attempt to correct them. Too much money is at stake.
I am well aware of the Capital University law graduate, and as far as I can tell not a member of the Ohio Bar, Furbee. Confirmed by my own interactions with him—for which he was warned about his rudeness by the City Attorney’s Office—Furbee is distrusted, indeed detested, by CPD officers. He misadvises them and confuses them regularly, for example, about the status of the city impound lot and whether they may chalk tires or windows of illegally parked vehicles.
In my first encounter with him, he misread court cases. He responded ignorantly and rudely for which he was cautioned. He later changed his advice without admitting his errors.
Recently, I asked CPD officers why they do not enforce traffic laws, for example, out of control speeding on Summit Avenue and elsewhere, and drivers not stopping at stop signs. A number answered: we do not have the support of Furbee, the City Attorney, or the Franklin County judiciary. More violation of public safety by the City itself: compromising law enforcement and harming the residents.
I immediately wrote to Zach Klein and Brian Schinn who is responsible for complaints, and also to councilor Emmanuel Remy, chair of the public safety committee, along with city council president and president pro tempore Shannon Harden and Rob Dorans.
Not one of them—not one—even acknowledged my repeated emails. Unresponsive, unrepresentative, anti-democratic, unprofessional, rude—and anti-public city officials.
Why do none of them care? Why will not one of them acknowledge an urgent communication, let alone respond like responsible civil servants? That’s the Columbus Way.
It is only a small step, from one floor to another in city offices to Columbus’ uniquely unrepresentative, undemocratic, unqualified city council and mayor in name only. All are beneficiaries of sponsored mobility and political patronage, rising step by step through the uneven ranks of today’s Columbus and Ohio “Democratic” Parties.
Not one has an actual constituency to whom they are directly responsible, other than the City’s controlling private interests who they reward at every opportunity and beyond. That’s exactly what gets them and keeps them in office. They specialize in propagating unusually poor, false, and empty slogans when they are not simply transferring public funds to private interests and pseudo-public ones directly and through publicly harmful tax abatements.
Anyone in doubt needs only to look at the schools, streets, public safety, and the structure and function of City operations. Why does the mayor campaigning for reelection send his daughter to a private school? How should the public interpret his full throated support of the City Schools proposed tax levy that is not accompanied by a plan for specific actions?
Why do none of them respond to direct communications that include information, questions, direct requests, and reported complaints from a knowledgeable, senior citizen, homeowner, taxpayer, and voter?
Just as the City will not hire a decent advertising agency, it cannot read its own slim code of ethics and standards, conduct itself professionally, responsibly, and respectfully to residents. Why does its Chief of Staff brazenly lie?
Why won’t the City hire a desperately needed qualified city manager? A responsible professional head urban planner? A trained chief traffic engineer? When I raise these questions with city council members before they colluded to ignore me, none know what these fundamental urban professionals do.
More influential than ever, former mayor Michael Coleman and his Downtown Development Corporation and the Columbus Partnership whose leaders live outside the city alternatively don’t order them to do so, or command them not to perform their duties responsibly. Ginther receives his orders at weekly lunches with his master.
Similarity, their communications and the actual conduct of public meetings severely limit any degree of actual direct public participation. Speakers’ time limits are unusually short. Communications and public access to records are both comparatively and absolutely unacceptable for a city of almost one million population.
I provide another revealing personal example. In contrast to 2 ½ years ago, no one on council and until August only one legislative aide would even acknowledge an email from me.
A number of councilors and aides were ordered in June 2022 by council president Shannon Harden’s chief of staff Mb—former tourism director Michael Brown—not to communicate with me. I am still awaiting promised answers to questions about Public (aka Private) Service. One aide and one council member told me that they were commanded into unethical, quite likely illegal silence.
For his part, Mb blatantly lied to me about “council heard you.” No one did. There is no record to produce.
In July, the only one who continued communications haltingly and never following through screeched to his end but only after unprofessionally, unethically, and dishonestly condemning me.
Dorval apparently does not remember that at his request that I personally gave him a walking tour of the University District where he had never set foot after he began to work for the Neighborhood group in late summer-early autumn 2022. Nor does he remember being a guest in my home on three occasions, the last of which accompanying his new boss, novice councilor Bankston who did his best to trip me up foolishly in a conversation intended to help orient two new members of council, Bankston and Remy. Remy was all but dragged by his former legislative aide. He brought fellow newbie Bankston to protect himself from “the professor who speaks directly.”
Dorval takes special pleasure in insulting a 74-year-old, retired renowned scholar and longtime Columbus homeowner who only communicates factually. In August, I asked him if he—like other aides and several councilors who admitted that Mb or Michael Brown, council chief of staff, ordered them not to communicate with me, in one case after information was promised—was permitted to communicate with me.
Despite knowing that history, Dorval unprofessionally and disrespectfully wrote: “No one has informed me to cease communications, despite your attempts to say otherwise. Being angry gives you no right to take a personal shot at me yet again…. Despite my repeated requests for you to cease personal attacks, you continue. I now realize that you believe that is the appropriate way to treat and communicate with people.”
I have never “attacked” the young man “personally.” The opposite is much closer to the truth.
The falseness and audacity of his young council aide took my breath away. In Dorval’s, his boss Bankston’s, and the rest of council’s view, I have no rights, neither to free speech, respect, responsible civic service, or honesty. There is no civil service in the city with no identity.
City Council and the City Attorney ruled ten months ago that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not stand for members of City of Columbus, Ohio commissions. It also does not apply to constituent/residents.
The certified hate group the Proud Boys has more rights in this city than homeowning, senior citizens. Recall CPD’s conduct when without permit, the Proud Boys “protested,” i.e., harassing an annual theatrical drag events in a Clintonville church. The “mayor” and the now in hiding police chief complimented officers for their warm relationships with the gun-toting terrorists.
I requested an apology. Dorval along with his boss Bankston and City Council president Harden and president pro tempore Dorans all ignored me
I am speaking with attorneys and researching the most appropriate state and federal agencies with whom to file complaints. My wife and I are reviewing choices and prices for house homes and condominiums in more livable, responsive, respectful, and honest cities with identities, histories, and distinguished institutions.
The Columbus Way has no place for no knowledge of rights or responsibilities, professionalism, common courtesy, or respect. This accompanies, indeed is inseparable from willful ignorance of the city that they are paid to govern by my and your taxes and fees.
There is no adherence to city or state codes of ethics, thin as they are. Nor the basic rights of residents. The complete disdain for anyone but private interest groups helps to explain the failing state of the city with no identity and no history.
Here is the Columbus Way and the ongoing death of a city—and its inhabitants of all ages.
References
Kevin Cox, Boomtown Columbus: Ohio’s Sunbelt City and How Developers Got Their Way. Ohio State University Press, 2021
Mansel G. Blackford, Columbus, Ohio: Two Centuries of Business and Environmental Change. Ohio State University Press, 2016
by Harvey J. Graff
“Columbus’ identity crisis and its media,” Columbus Underground, July 23, 2021
“Response to Columbus Alive, ‘The list: Reasons that Columbus Underground
opinion piece is trash,’ by Andy Downing and Joel Oliphint, Columbus Alive, July
26: A visit to journalism fantasy land,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov.
7, 2021
“Notes on current politics in Columbus and Ohio: Thoughts in response to questions
from my editor,” Columbus Free Press, Oct. 21, 2021
“Columbus City Government is Undemocratic and Disorganized: It’s 2021 and we
need a revolution in this city,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 20,
2021
“Columbus searches for its Downtown with historical, urbanist, and developers’
blinders,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Dec. 22, 2021
“Columbus, Ohio, searches to be a city: The myth of the Columbus Way,” Busting
Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan. 9, 2022
“Intel and the Ohio Way: Secrecy, deals, public neglect, myth making, and re
election campaigning,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan. 27, 2022
“Columbus’ major ‘news media’ against democratic politics and the public,”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Mar. 10, 2022
“Is Columbus really a City?” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Apr. 7, 2022
“Columbus isn’t Cowtown or Silicon Valley Heartland; It’s the lawless wild-wild-
Midwest,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, April 20, 2022
“How Columbus, Ohio State University, and major developers destroyed a historic
neighborhood,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Part One, Apr. 26, 2022
“How Columbus, Ohio State University, and major developers destroyed a historic
neighborhood,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Part Two, Apr. 29, 2022
“How Columbus, Ohio State University, and major developers destroyed a historic
neighborhood—A continuing legacy,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, May
2, 2022
“My short life as a ‘civic leader’ in the directionless maze called the City of
Columbus, Part One, Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, May 11, 2022
“My short life as a ‘civic leader’ in the directionless maze called the City of
Columbus, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, May 14, 2022
“Franklinton, 1797-2022 and Columbus’ Contradictions, Part 1,” Columbus Free
Press, June 5, 2022
“Franklinton, 1797-2022 and Columbus’ Contradictions, Part 2,” Columbus Free
Press, June 9, 2022
“How the Harvard Business School and the Columbus Way attempt to enrich each
other: Lessons in the promiscuous relationships between Columbus’ private
interests and an elite university’s profiteering,” with Bob Eckhart, Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, June 12, 2022
“An open letter to Kenny McDonald, new head of the ‘Columbus Partnership,’”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, June 16, 2022
“The Columbus Way versus the rights of residents, Part One,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, June 21, 2022
“The Columbus Way versus the rights of residents, Part Two, Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, June 24, 2022
“The Columbus Way versus the rights of residents, Part Three,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, June 27, 2022
“The Columbus Way versus the rights of residents, Part Four,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, June 30, 2022
“Remaking the City of Columbus for the 21st or is it the 20th century?” Busting
Myths, Columbus Free Press, July 5, 2022
“My ongoing struggles for responsibility from the City of Columbus,” Busting
Myths, Columbus Free Press, July 12, 2022
“Is Columbus the corruption capital of a corrupt state? Mismanagement, no
management, and corruption in the 2020s,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
July17, 2022
“Mr. Mayor and City Council: May I introduce you to the city of Columbus?
Beyond the Short North and the Scioto River Bank, there is a diverse complicated
city,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, July 31, 2022
“Still searching for Downtown: ‘Ideas considered for Downtown plan,’” Busting
Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 14, 2022
“Frederic Bertley, Salesperson, Meet Science and English Expression,” Busting
Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 17, 2022
“You can’t sue City Hall, can you? But we should educate the public and use the
ballot box: That’s the American Way, not the Columbus Way,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, Aug. 21, 2022
“Columbus continues as franchise and fast-food chain leader: Columbus Classical
Academies,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 24, 2022
“Why I remain in Columbus despite Columbus. . . .” Busting Myths, Columbus
Free Press, Sept. 16, 2022
“Columbus, meet a ‘real’ city: Toronto,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
Oct. 1, 2022
“The City of Columbus and The Ohio State University: Two peas in a pod, one
bigger than the other, relatively speaking, but so much the same. Part One,”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 8, 2022
“The City of Columbus and The Ohio State University: Two peas in a pod, one
bigger than the other, relatively speaking, but so much the same. Part Two,”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 14, 2022
“Why won’t Columbus, Ohio, grow up?” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
Oct. 22, 2022
“Abandoned by my elected and unelected officials (unless I pay to play): The
Columbus Way, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 30, 2022
“Abandoned by my elected and unelected officials (unless I pay to play): The
Columbus Way, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 2, 2022
“I call on the Columbus Dispatch, aka Dishpan or Dishrag, to do the city a public
service and close up shop,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 5, 2022
“How universities fail their students: The president may be “born to be a
Buckeye,” but the students are not. A call to eliminate Offices of Student Life and
invest directly in students’ lives,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 10,
2022
“The City that breaks its laws has a police force that refuses to enforce the city’s
laws: The Columbus Way, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov.
13, 2022
“The City that breaks its laws has a police force that refuses to enforce the city’s
laws: The Columbus Way, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
Nov. 16. 2022
“Andy Ginther as Columbus, Ohio’s very own shabby 21st century limitation of
New York City’s 1860-1870s Boss Tweed,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
Nov. 19, 2022
“Columbus meet another ‘real’ city, nearby, smaller, but….Pittsburgh,” Busting
Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 30, 2022
“Columbus’ anachronistic, private interest-dominated ‘area commissions’ and
neighborhood organizations’ must go,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Dec.
3, 2022
“Columbus City Council muddies, no--defaces art in public: $250,000 in
uninformed boosterism for the ‘little city that can’t,’” Busting Myths, Columbus
Free Press, Dec. 8, 2022
“Columbus’ home-grown illegal landlords in a destroyed historic district,” Busting
Myths, Columbus Free Press, Dec. 11, 2022
“The plague city: Daily life in Columbus, Ohio,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free
Press, Dec. 17, 2022
“Columbus mayor election campaign, 2023,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free
Press, Jan. 1, 2023
“Columbus, Ohio: Rude and Crude: The little big city that refuses to represent.
serve, or respect its publics, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan.
15, 2022
“Columbus, Ohio: Rude and Crude: The little big city that refuses to represent.
serve, or respect its publics, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan.
19, 2023
“A city versus its neighborhoods: Columbus, Ohio,” Busting Myths, Columbus
Free Press, Jan. 25, 2023
“Appreciating—so to speak--Columbus and Ohio humor, such as they are…,”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, 1, 2023
“Unsafe at any speed: The unsafe city—from mayor to city council to CPD,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Feb. 16, 2023
“J’accuse: The City of Columbus Division of Public (aka Private) Service,”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Mar. 3, 2023
“Columbus’ right wing Democrats vs. the city’s publics,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, Mar. 8, 2023
“The Columbus City Council and City Attorney’s Office the First Amendment on
March 6, 2023,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Mar. 10, 2023
“How can a city with no history destroy its history? The Columbus Way,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Mar. 18, 2023
“Career politician and candidate for re-election: Andy Ginther’s Anti-State of the
City Address, March 2023,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Mar. 25, 2023
“A call for reparations from the City of Columbus, the large corporate landlords,
and The Ohio State University for the destruction of neighborhoods with a focus on
the University District,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Apr. 1, 2023
“Rob Dorans and the real Columbus ‘crew’ vs. the city of Columbus, again,”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Apr. 8, 2023
“The plague of Columbus’ streets and sidewalks: Electric scooters illegally fueled
by the City’s Division of Public (aka Private) Services,” Busting Myths, Columbus
Free Press, Apr. 14, 2023
“Why does Columbus have no legitimate media” Busting Myths, Columbus Free
Press, Apr. 2023
“Lawless, Unsafe, and Dirty: The Dying University District.” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, May 2, 2023
“Ohio State University and its Dying University District: The Oval and the
Campus Beyond,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, May 5, 2023
“Columbus’ identity failure: The mad scramble to fabricate a ‘brand’ for the
biggest little city in the US,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, May 11, 2023
“The private city and the secret city: Columbus is dying and no one in
Colemanville knows or cares. Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
May 20, 2023
“The private city and the secret city: Columbus is dying and no one in
Colemanville knows or cares. Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
May 25, 2023
“The private city and the secret city: Columbus is dying and no one in
Colemanville knows or cares. Part Three,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
June 2, 2023
“Andy Ginther, Guns, and Unsafe Columbus,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free
Press, June 7, 2023
“Andy Ginther doesn’t live in Columbus. Does he live in the United States? On
planet Earth?” Busting Myths, Columbus, Free Press, June 26, 2023
“The Columbus US Postal Service fails well beyond the national USPS. It lies
about its illegal lack of service and private profiteering in advertisements paid for
by my taxes, and lies to my face. Under major investor Louis De
Joy, only Amazon counts,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, July 6, 2023
“A week in the life of the failing City of Columbus: One weekend’s low lights,”
Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, July8, 2023
“August 2, 2023 Weekly Headline Notes,” Columbus Free Press, Aug. 2, 2023
“The broken, no—the evil—triangle of the City of Columbus vs. its residents.
Destroying the physical city and the semblance of neighborhoods: Zoning
(Un)enforcement, Public (Private) Service, and 311, with the assistance of OSU,
the City Attorney, CPD, City Council, and Mayor, Part One,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, Aug. 4, 2023
“The broken, no—the evil—triangle of the City of Columbus vs. its residents.
Destroying the physical city and the semblance of neighborhoods: Zoning
(Un)enforcement, Public (Private) Service, and 311, with the assistance of OSU,
the City Attorney, CPD, City Council, and Mayor, Part Two,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, Aug. 8, 2023
“Emergency Bulletin: The City of Columbus, OSU, and landlords against student
tenants and homeowners—dramatic case in point,” Columbus Free Press, Aug. 21,
2023
“Columbus is lost among midwestern metropolises. Can it learn from others and
finally begin to find itself? Or is it too late?” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
Oct. 4, 2023
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Harvey J. Graff is Professor Emeritus of English and History, inaugural Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies, and Academy Professor, Ohio State University . Author of many books on social history, the history of literacy and education, and interdisciplinarity, he writes about social history and higher education for Times Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, Washington Monthly, Publishers Weekly, Against the Current, Columbus Free Press, and newspapers. Searching for Literacy: The Social and Intellectual Origins of Literacy Studies was published in 2022. My Life with Literacy: The Continuing Education of a Historian. The Intersections of the Personal, the Political, the Academic, and Place is forthcoming. He is now writing Reconstructing the “Uni-versity” from the Ashes of the “Mega- and Multi-versity.”
